Shunya's Notes

Marketing the Military

Check out these military recruitment ads from around the world: Russia, Taiwan, Ukraine, Estonia, Japan, Sweden, France, Australia, England, Lebanon, Singpore, and the US. They pack in so many clues to national character and the state of society. Consider, for instance, the ad below from India, where recruits largely come from the lower middle class — from, say, the 40% of the population beneath the top 20%. In a society riven by class, how does the Indian military market itself? — as a ticket to a higher class, where people follow "the best traditions", strive to "be the best", dress smartly, speak Hinglish, attend garden parties, sail, play golf, ride horses, and frequent swimming pools. Indeed, borrowing a page from Bollywood fantasies, it almost makes the military seem like an exciting vacation package! Be sure to check out the other ads, no less fascinating! (Via Leanne Ogasawara)

You Think, Therefore, You Can

Neurobiology tells us that when we think or feel, a host of neurons in our brains fire electrical signals. It turns out that certain thoughts—like wishing an object to move spatially—and certain emotions, have electrical signatures that can be identified by external sensors attached to our heads. This discovery is not new. What is new is an inexpensive headset from Emotiv Systems that can "read our minds" and issue commands to machines. Check out the video below and ponder both the positive and negative possibilities of this technology.

Confucius and Modern China

An interesting article on China's emerging political culture by Daniel A. Bell, professor of ethics and political philosophy at Tsinghua University, Beijing. A communitarian at heart, he has written perceptively about the so-called Asian values and against the universal pretensions of western liberalism. He is also the author of China's New Confucianism: Politics and Everyday Life in a Changing Society.

Four decades ago, it would have been suicidal to say a good word about Confucius in Beijing. Confucius was the reactionary enemy, and all Chinese were encouraged to struggle against him. Chairman Mao himself was photographed on the cover of a revolutionary newspaper that announced the desecration of Confucius’s grave in Qufu. My own university was a hotbed of extreme leftism.

How times have changed. Today, the Chinese Communist Party approves a film about Confucius starring the handsome leading man Chow Yun-Fat. The master is depicted as an astute military commander and teacher of humane and progressive values, with a soft spot for female beauty. What does this say about China’s political future? Confucius bombed at the box office, leading many to think that the revival of Confucianism will go the same way as the anti-Confucius campaigns in the Cultural Revolution.

But perhaps it’s just a bad movie. Confucius received the kiss of death when it went head-to-head against the blockbuster Avatar. A vote for Confucius was seen as a vote against the heroic blue creatures from outer space. In the long term, however, Confucian revivalists may be on the right side of history.

More here. To get a better measure of the man, check out this 2008 video interview (17 minutes; the interviewer is a tad painful!).

UPDATE: Here are two more articles of related interest. One by Mark Lilla, One Set of Shoulders: China's Hidden Revolution, and another by Perry Link, Waiting for WikiLeaks: Beijing's Seven Secrets. Beneath Link's article, read the comments by Jack Cameron (esp his second one), which I suspect Bell might agree with strongly. Also interesting is Stanford Encyclopedia's entry on Communitarianism, written by Bell.

Bollywood's India

Here is a lecture on Bollywood by Rachel Dwyer, Prof of Indian Cultures and Cinema at the University of London (Nov 09). You may find it worth watching for its sociological insights, or even just to learn what a leading scholar of Bollywood now says about "Hindi cinema as a guide to modern India" in under an hour (rest is Q&A). For South Asians, a bonus might be the many nostalgia-inducing clips from old Hindi movies. (Bollywood scholarship is apparently hot, says this article.)

The Life and Times of Evert Cilliers

Here is an excellent piece by one of my co-authors at 3QD, Evert Cilliers: ‘The World Cup, My White Africaner Skin, My Fascist Parents, Mandela, Obama, and Forgiveness’. Evert grew up in South Africa, left some decades ago, and now lives in the US. I learned a good deal about South Africa from his personal journey and from the everyday human details he relates. I particularly liked his take on the life he had in the upper crust of white society, his relationships, and various episodes from his past. His writing has a couple of things that are rather rare: honesty and heart. The piece is long for a blog post but definitely worth it.

Five weeks ago I said to my brilliant girlfriend: “I'd like to see my father before he dies.” She said: “Congratulations.” She'd been asking me on and off for two years whether I'd like to go and visit him where he lives in Cape Town, South Africa, and my stock answer had always been: “I don't have the slightest interest in ever seeing my father again.”

So what changed?

You here at 3quarksdaily know me as a passionate ranter against our irresponsible elites (for my favorite screed ever, google this title: “Government Is Not The Problem, Private Enterprise Is: The Global Terrorism Of Al Qaeda, BP And Goldman Sachs”). However, that's not what I'm up to now. This time out, I'm autobiographical. Personal. Self-revelatory. Unbuttoned. A la Moll Flanders. Or Paris Hilton. Confessions of an Opium Eater or something, at double the length of my usual rants.

I made the big Gauguin move of my life two decades ago, when I walked out on my South African Jewish Princess wife in our seven-room, three-bathroom apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Except I didn't go to Tahiti. I went to a garret on Manhattan's Lower East Side. For fifteen years, while I was poor and wrote, wrote, wrote my seven unpublished novels (and became the 90s slam poet Evert Eden), my ex-wife and I didn't communicate. Then, out of the blue, I got a call from her.

"I'd like to see you,” she said.

"Why?” I asked.

"I'm dying.”

More here.

The Majestic Plastic Bag

(The Majestic Plastic Bag: A Mockumentary, via The Browser)

On Caste Privilege

(Cross-posted on 3 Quarks Daily, where it has received many comments.)

An early goal of British imperialists in India was to create a class of local elites in their own image. They would be, wrote Macaulay, ‘interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect.’ An elite class did emerge, not surprisingly from the socially dominant upper-caste Hindus of urban India.

These elites, chin-deep in caste identities, saw themselves as innately superior to other Indians, mirroring the class- and race-based prejudices of the British. No wonder they got along so well. Later, when these Indians opposed the British, they used the same language of political rights and liberalism that the Europeans preached at home but didn’t practice in their colonies. It was this elite class, led by Anglicized lawyers and bureaucrats, that succeeded the British. In the first Indian parliament in 1952, Brahmins, who account for under 5% of the population, cornered almost 25% of the directly elected seats; altogether the upper-castes, about 20% of the population, claimed over 85% of the seats.[1]

In a representative democracy, the idea of ‘representation’ is that an upper-caste Hindu man can fairly represent the interests of the lower-castes, minorities, and women. But one can persuasively argue that this did not happen in the early decades of the Indian republic. Deep disparities along caste lines remained; religious minorities grew alienated; women remained marginal as before. India was effectively a democracy of the few, by the few, for the few.

Since the 70s, India has seen the rise of caste-based politics. Built on the idea that only a member of your own (or proximate) caste can represent your interests, its primary driver was the failure of upper-caste politicians to represent the lower-castes, and the latter realizing the power of their vote. Votes began fragmenting along caste lines, not the least because—besides being central to one’s social identity—caste shaped one’s share of opportunity, deprivation, and discrimination in life.

When the lower-castes began mobilizing and putting up their own candidates, the elites grew anxious and began decrying the rise of caste-based politics and vote banks. ‘So regressive!’ they complained, ‘a betrayal of the spirit and ideals of democracy!’ But of course, with hardly an egalitarian bone in their bodies, they had played a rigged game all along. Their anxiety, above all, came from a visceral fear—fear of the ‘impure’ masses, fear of losing their privileges, fear of being overrun by the boors. In no area is this anxiety more evident than in the debate on caste-based affirmative action, aka reservations, in public sector jobs and college admissions.

Writing fifty years ago in The Wretched of the Earth, Franz Fanon lamented ‘the unpreparedness of the elite, the lack of practical ties between them and the masses, their apathy, and, yes, their cowardice at the crucial moment in the struggle.’ These elites, he wrote, ‘simultaneously resisted the insidious agenda of colonialism and paved the way for the emergence of the current struggles.’

Fanon had in mind the post-colonial elites of North Africa, but his remark is no less apt for the Indians. India needed a real program of socioeconomic justice—via, say, land reform, universal education, and fighting caste discrimination. What legislation the elites did pass they didn’t push far enough. Instead, they consolidated their domination over politics, the economy, education, cultural institutions, and the media—for instance, the richest 10% monopolize more land now than in 1951.[2] Having done quite well for itself, self-congratulation has come easy to this class. In an attempt to restore some balance, this insider, dear reader, will now relate to you its benightedness.

The Minangkabau: Mixing Islam and Matriarchy

(Cross-posted on 3 Quarks Daily, where it has received many comments.)

“In your marriage, who is the boss?” our driver, Arman, asked in a playfully provocative tone, like he was setting up the punchline of a joke.

My partner and I looked at each other, laughed, and shrugged. Arman belonged to the Minangkabau, the society recognized among anthropologists as the world’s largest and most stable surviving matriarchy* (though some prefer to call it a gylany, matrix, matrifocal or matricentric society, or something else to avoid conjuring images of mythical Amazons). Knowing this, I presumed his question was part of a routine entertainment for tourists.

“For us it is the woman who is boss,” he continued, predictably. “The woman has all the privileges; she owns everything. The men, we own nothing.”

I knew that the Minangkabau, like most Indonesians, are Muslims. In May 2009, one of the first things I noticed upon arriving in their homeland—a stretch of volcanic highlands running along the western coast of Sumatra—was that a higher percentage of women here wear the hijab (here called jilbab) than did further north, near Medan and around Lake Toba. In fact, well over half of the adult women covered their hair in public. But here, as elsewhere on Sumatra, the headscarf appears to be as much a fashion statement as a covering for modesty. It’s often brightly colored or festooned with beads, sequins, rhinestones, small brooches, lace, or shimmery ribbons. Many women sport styles with a dainty sun visor in the front. Pretty much anything you can do to a hat is done to the Sumatran jilbab.

These observations, and Arman’s good humor at his lack of patrimony, made me wonder how I should understand the Minangkabau matriarchaat (their word, borrowed from the Dutch). What truce had been struck between Islam and matriarchy?

§

In the small villages surrounding Mount Merapi, which lies at the center of the Minangkabau creation myths, Arman lead us down tangled lanes lined with traditional Minangkabau homes. Many of these were great wooden structures, some as much as 300 years old, tattered or rotting in places, patched or expanded upon over the years. These traditional homes are long, each enclosing a broad rectangular hall over an empty ground floor, once used to house livestock. Their roofs are arched to suggest the horns of a buffalo. There were newer dwellings too, without the ground floor for livestock, with SUVs parked out front, satellite dishes growing like mushrooms of modernity from balconies and awnings.

On Power, Human Nature, Justice

I saw this 1971 exchange between Chomsky and Foucault some years ago (I especially resonate with the latter's take on these topics). Part 1 is below, here is Part 2. I wish the entire exchange was available online but it's not—here is a transcript (thanks, Louise).

How Facts Backfire

Joe Keohane on "a surprising threat to democracy: our brains":

It’s one of the great assumptions underlying modern democracy that an informed citizenry is preferable to an uninformed one. “Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government,” Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1789. This notion, carried down through the years, underlies everything from humble political pamphlets to presidential debates to the very notion of a free press. Mankind may be crooked timber, as Kant put it, uniquely susceptible to ignorance and misinformation, but it’s an article of faith that knowledge is the best remedy. If people are furnished with the facts, they will be clearer thinkers and better citizens. If they are ignorant, facts will enlighten them. If they are mistaken, facts will set them straight.

In the end, truth will out. Won’t it?

Maybe not. Recently, a few political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information. It’s this: Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger.

More here (via 3QD).

Sex at Dawn

 Eric Michael Johnson reviews "Sex at Dawn" by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá over at SEED:

But why should a species often described as monogamous be so hypersexual? Monogamous animals by definition don’t have to compete for reproduction and, as a result, are generally characterized by a low level of sexual activity. But according to Ryan and Jethá humans top a very short list of species that engage in sex for pleasure. “No animal spends more of its allotted time on Earth fussing over sex than Homo sapiens,” they write. In fact, the animal world is filled with species who confine their sexual behavior to just a few periods each year, the only times when conception is possible. Among apes the only monogamous species are the gibbons whose infrequent, reproduction-only copulations make them much better adherents of the Vatican’s guidelines than we are. In this way, Ryan and Jethá argue, repressing our sexuality should not be confused with reining in an “animal” nature; rather, it is denying one of the most unique aspects of what it means to be human.

....

However, by looking at modern indigenous societies and comparing the findings of anthropologists with the latest results in behavioral psychology and biology, Ryan and Jethá piece together a remarkably coherent pattern from an otherwise fractured understanding of human sexuality. From societies that believe that multiple men are necessary for a successful pregnancy (what researchers refer to as “partible paternity”) to those where not having an extra-marital tryst will cause a man to be labeled “stingy of one’s genitals” by his female suitors, the authors conclude that marriage may be an established social arrangement among many hunter-gatherers but it’s one in which sexuality is decidedly fluid. A range of physiological evidence from Western populations is further offered to support this position, from the year-round libido in both sexes, to the unusually large size of men’s genitalia compared to other apes, to the shifting sexual strategy during various stages in women’s reproductive cycle (and lest we forget multiple female orgasms?). All suggest that our species is adapted for several concurrent sexual partners.

Blocked by Caste

Is urbanization and industrial development defeating the inequities of caste in India, as many upper-caste Indians like to believe (using it to buttress their opposition to caste-based reservations)? Well, not quite.

Cities do offer greater anonymity and a diversity of jobs unrelated to traditional caste occupations, thereby weakening many, perhaps even the worst, forms of rural casteism. An office-going Brahmin is unlikely to worry about being polluted if he brushes against a Dalit in a crowded bus, or object to eating out lest a Dalit prepared the meal. But even as many old caste abuses have vanished or weakened in the face of urbanization, others have arisen or evolved into malignant forms. Industrialization is indeed a turbulent force for the caste system, but it is not in itself a socially progressive force. Depending on the injustice and inequities already present, capital and industry can deepen preexisting social privileges and discrimination, which seems to be the case in India.

As many historians of caste have noted, caste in the urban milieu has morphed to behave more like an ethnic community, whose members not only harbor notions of "ethnic" distinctiveness but also a strong consciousness of rank vs. other caste communities. This continuing lack of egalitarianism then poisons urban civic life. It impacts hiring decisions; access to rental housing, health care, and public services; response from law enforcement; judicial verdicts; etc. In our age of economic liberalization, even the Indian private sector oozes discrimination from all its pores. If this is a surprise, a recent and extensive study, Blocked by Caste, should decisively dispel the belief that the private sector is mostly caste-blind and hires based on ‘merit’. It shows that equally qualified Dalit and Muslim résumés are much less likely to get picked than upper-caste ones, and exposes other "hidden nuances of caste prejudice in the language of globalisation that contemporary India speaks."

Below are two reviews of Blocked by Caste. The obvious question this study raises is: shouldn’t affirmative action be part of the strategy for equalizing opportunity in the private sector? I've included another related study (and here is a story about housing discrimination in Delhi).

The economics of caste inequity

"HR bosses, one and all, swore by merit in their choice of candidates and were dead set against reservation of jobs. But, the commitment to merit was voiced along with the conviction that merit tends to be distributed by caste or region! Such stereotyping, [the authors of the study] found, made it impossible for highly qualified, low-caste applicants to be hired for their skills and accomplishments. In sum, employers were not “caste blind” as they claimed."

Caste & the labour market

"There is a myth, however, that caste does not matter in the urban milieu and that, with the anonymity of the big city and with education and associated job and occupational mobility (assisted by affirmative action), traditional caste-based discriminatory practices disappear." ... "Caste discrimination not only persists but has taken new forms and penetrated into new systems."

Dalit is a Dalit even in a ‘free’ market

"Sirswal, 75, had started off as a sweeper but is now one of the oldest businessmen in Panipat, Haryana. He quit his sweeper’s job once his handloom unit was on its feet. His success, he says, came largely because he hid the fact that he was born a Valmiki Dalit. Customers who discovered his caste origins shunned him. Banks would not give loans because caste matters to them too, and Dalit entrepreneurs are too few and far between to work the system as a group like the upper castes do."

The Discreet Charm of the Chimpanzee

Here are three interesting articles on the social life of chimpanzees, on how they learn, fight, and console.

Prestige Affects Cultural Learning in Chimpanzees

Humans follow the example of prestigious, high-status individuals much more readily than that of others, such as when we copy the behavior of village elders, community leaders, or celebrities. This tendency has been declared uniquely human, yet remains untested in other species. Experimental studies of animal learning have typically focused on the learning mechanism rather than on social issues, such as who learns from whom. The latter, however, is essential to understanding how habits spread. Here we report that when given opportunities to watch alternative solutions to a foraging problem performed by two different models of their own species, chimpanzees preferentially copy the method shown by the older, higher-ranking individual with a prior track-record of success. Since both solutions were equally difficult, shown an equal number of times by each model and resulted in equal rewards, we interpret this outcome as evidence that the preferred model in each of the two groups tested enjoyed a significant degree of prestige in terms of whose example other chimpanzees chose to follow. Such prestige-based cultural transmission is a phenomenon shared with our own species. If similar biases operate in wild animal populations, the adoption of culturally transmitted innovations may be significantly shaped by the characteristics of performers.

More here (via culture and cognition). Follow an interesting exchange on this here and here.

  Why chimpanzees attack and kill each other

Chimpanzees (along with bonobos) are humans' closest living relatives. Anthropologists have long known that they kill their neighbors, and they suspected that they did so to seize their land. "Although some previous observations appear to support that hypothesis, until now, we have lacked clear-cut evidence," Mitani said.

The bouts occurred when the primates were on routine, stealth "boundary patrols" into neighboring territory. Amsler, who conducted field work on this project described one of the attacks she witnessed far to the northwest of the Ngogo territory. She and a colleague were following 27 adult and adolescent males and one adult female.

"They had been on patrol outside of their territory for more than two hours when they surprised a small group of females from the community to the northwest," Amsler said. "Almost immediately upon making contact, the adult males in the patrol party began attacking the unknown females, two of whom were carrying dependent infants." 

More here (via 3QD).

Simian Solicitude: Like Humans, Chimpanzees Console Victims of Aggression

Chimpanzees may comfort others in distress in ways very similar to how people do, according to what may be the largest study of consolation in animals by far. The new findings in our closest living relatives could help shed light on the roots of empathy in humans.

The spontaneous consolation of someone in distress with a hug, a pat on the back or other friendly display of physical contact has been studied in human children as a sign of sympathetic concern for others for decades. This kind of demonstrative empathy is often thought to be a large part of what sets humanity apart from other animals.

More here (via 3QD).

The Lost Art of Democratic Debate

The inimitable Michael Sandel's TED talk, a short digest of his brilliant Harvard course that I heartily recommend for one and all.

Putty in Her Hands

(An excerpt from a longer work of fiction. Cross-posted on 3 Quarks Daily)

    Sasha calls on Saturday afternoon, ‘Are you free?’

    Sasha is a Russian escort, 28, slim, dark-haired, with dreamy green eyes. She needs a ride in an hour to Plaza Hotel, downtown. After a three-day break, she accepted a two-hour job today, but her car will not start. ‘I’ll make up to you,’ she tells Ved suggestively.

    Ved imagines her pacing the living room in her red silk robe. He can practically smell her perfume on the phone. San Francisco at this hour would be easy to navigate. ‘I’ll pick you up in fifty minutes. Be ready and wait downstairs.’ He showers, gets dressed, and leaves.
_______

    He found her nine months ago on an escort girls’ website. Fragments of her online ad have stayed with him: I am all natural and very fit … I specialize in fantasy role-plays: nurse, housemaid, nun, schoolgirl, cop (special requests welcome). My Russian accent will make you putty in my hands, in all seven languages I speak.

    In one online photo, a profile pose, she was down on all fours on what seemed open grassland. Her makeup and her ornate dress, bunched above her bare butt, evoked for him disreputable belly dancers. Another was a close-up shot of her bust, donning nothing but a two-string pearl necklace. She had large expressive eyes.

    He vividly remembers their first meeting last winter in a mid-range hotel. It was Friday. After much uneasy deliberation, he had called her during the day for a two-hour tryst. He left work earlier than usual to allow time for a shower and snack. On his way out of his apartment, he picked up the Russian Matryoshka doll that a friend had given him long ago and to which he had built no special attachment.

    The hotel lobby was almost empty when he arrived. No one noticed his nerves as he went through a long corridor and knocked on her room. The door opened to reveal her face. From behind the door she signaled him in. She wore a pleated, knee-length pink chiffon skirt. He gave her the doll which amused her greatly, broke the ice. He was at once charmed by her youthful voice and accent. Putty in her hands, huh.

The Battle for Niyamgiri

The "Avatar style" battle between the big bad British corporation Vedanta Resources and Dongria Kondh, an endangered Primitive Tribal Group in Orissa, India, has attracted the attention of Bianca Jagger.

For generations, the Kondh of Orissa, in India, have lived on a fertile mountain which they revere as a god. But since the arrival in 2008 of a British aluminium refinery, their land has been poisoned and the villagers imprisoned. Now, the tribes people are making what could be their last stand.

Also check out this interesting video story on the Kondh's plight that I found on Survival International. 

Gloom Boom & Doom

Marc Faber is the pessimist's economist, a "contrarian" who has been frequently right, and publisher of the investment newsletter "The Gloom Boom & Doom Report". His website is even adorned by the Dance of Death paintings by Kaspar Meglinger. In this wide-ranging lecture, Faber analyzes the recent past and the future of global economics (1 hr, 8 mins). If you prefer a bullet-point summary, here is a decent one.

Deresiewicz on Education

A really good essay by William Deresiewicz on what it means to be educated, and the many downsides of attending elite universities. It also made me think of my own gripe four years ago against my alma mater, IIT Kharagpur. :)

... if you’re afraid to fail, you’re afraid to take risks, which begins to explain the final and most damning disadvantage of an elite education: that it is profoundly anti-intellectual. This will seem counterintuitive. Aren’t kids at elite schools the smartest ones around, at least in the narrow academic sense? Don’t they work harder than anyone else—indeed, harder than any previous generation? They are. They do. But being an intellectual is not the same as being smart. Being an intellectual means more than doing your homework.

If so few kids come to college understanding this, it is no wonder. They are products of a system that rarely asked them to think about something bigger than the next assignment. The system forgot to teach them, along the way to the prestige admissions and the lucrative jobs, that the most important achievements can’t be measured by a letter or a number or a name. It forgot that the true purpose of education is to make minds, not careers.

Collateral Murder

I came across this harrowing footage from 2007 of a US Apache helicopter attack in which two Reuters employees, Saeed Chmagh and Namir Noor-Eldeen, as well as nine others get hunted down like animals in a Baghdad public square. Then it gets worse. It was leaked in April this year by Bradley Manning, a 22-year old Army Intelligence analyst, who was just found out and is now behind bars. 

Storybooks for a Plural World

Here is an article that examines children's storybooks in India, the kind I grew up reading, like the popular series Amar Chitra Katha. I did of course enjoy them as a kid but as an adult, I've had to unlearn so much of their implicit worldview and "wisdom". Indeed, were I responsible for a child today, I'd agonize over exposing her to most Indian storybooks. Others might say the same about storybooks from other cultures, but for years now, I've wanted to write an article such as this about Indian storybooks:

... Yet more than 50 years later, it comes as a shock to find, in book after book ... both protagonist and audience so obviously elite and upper caste. It took the women’s movement and activists raising questions of caste and religious community for the public to realise how systemic, and how related to the nature of power and authority, these representations were.

In India, children’s reading materials were long (and continue to be) addressed to an urban, middle- and upper-caste child in ways that reflected his or her economic resources, family relationships, beliefs, school experiences, food habits and language. They recorded and endorsed the world, the sensibility and the authority of this child, resulting in a self-assured hold over the world that was later a key enabling factor in such children’s success. Other children, however, were not provided with such psychic support. In such books we hardly ever found a child who had come to school hungry and sits there dreaming about food, for instance, or one who had to scheme in order to acquire books for class. Children from different contexts sometimes did find a place in these stories, but were generally forced to establish their ‘smartness’. A tribal boy, for instance, needed to establish that his knowledge of the forest can be valuable for his urban, middle-class classmates; a disabled girl must excel as a craftsperson. Even in the case of middle-class children, only a restricted set of situations were generally admissible, thus glossing over the fact that children often lead complex lives. We rarely encountered a child whose mother was depressed or one who was coping with a death in the family – such children lived with the knowledge that they must anxiously guard such secrets.
...

Over the years ... it has become particularly clear that the concept and metaphor of inclusion is inadequate to address issues of marginalisation in India today. Equality and self-respect of minorities requires a rearrangement of the way that the ‘life worlds’ themselves are imagined – a process that involves a critical pulling-away from old certainties. It suggests new frameworks in which we can think about the challenge of education in a plural world, but it also involves the creation of new narrative fragments, new figures, new settings and new dramas – ultimately, a new structure of feeling and knowing, a new idiom of speech. These are radical tasks. Yet they are necessary tasks for a contemporary aesthetic.

More here.

Rajiv Nema Learns Chatting

It's time for a comedy break with Rajiv Nema, an actor and comedian originally from Indore, MP, the state I grew up in as well. I've seen him in a couple of Naatak productions in the SF Bay Area. In this video, Nema plays a provincial chap from Indore explaining to his wife the power of the computer, or should I say Kumpootar? Watch it, it's quite hilarious (Hindi comprehension required).

He has many more on his youtube channel but here are six to check out next: a typical conversation in Indore,  Indori GPS,  gift planning, Indore style,  asking for directions in Indore,  a shopping experience in Indore, and Nema goes to the Oscars.

Awakening Giants, Feet of Clay

Comparing China and India has become a popular pastime in some quarters, including aspects of their national economies, political systems, infrastructure, human development, environment, and more. In this audio interview, Romesh Vaitilingam interviews Pranab Bardhan of UC Berkeley about his new book ‘Awakening Giants, Feet of Clay: Assessing the Economic Rise of China and India’. It is a brisk yet insightful overview (via Robin Varghese/3QD).

Click below to listen. 

Radical Women, Embracing Tradition

Here is an inspiring lecture in which "Kavita Ramdas of the Global Fund for Women talks about three encounters with powerful women who fight to make the world better—while preserving the traditions that sustain them." On her bio page is this quote: "Being a philanthropist doesn't mean necessarily writing a huge check. It can mean mobilizing your community to start asking questions."

The Dance of Indian Democracy

(Cross-posted on 3 Quarks Daily.)

The Republic of India began life as an unlikely nation. Gaining independence in 1947, India adopted a democratic form of governance, a liberal constitution, and secular public institutions. None of these sprang from a living indigenous tradition.[1] Rather, they were chosen by an elite class of Indians that had developed a taste for them via their exposure to the West, and had even acquired some experience in representative self-rule in the closing decades of the British Raj. Many observers thought the experiment was doomed to failure. Among them was the stodgy imperialist Winston Churchill, who felt that if the British left, India would ‘fall back quite rapidly through the centuries into the barbarism and privations of the Middle Ages.’ Indians were unfit to govern themselves, and needed ‘the sober and resolute forces of the British Empire.’

Doubters abounded for decades after independence. Unlike so many post-colonial nations, including those in South Asia, the continued existence of democracy in India—its fair elections and peaceful transfers of power—puzzled not just the lay observers, but it also became, according to historian Ramachandra Guha,

an anomaly for academic political science … That India ‘could sustain democratic institutions seems, on the face of it, highly improbable,’ wrote the distinguished political scientist Robert Dahl, adding: ‘It lacks all the favorable conditions.’ ‘India has a well-established reputation for violating social scientific generalizations,’ wrote another American scholar, adding, ‘Nonetheless, the findings of this article furnish grounds for skepticism regarding the viability of democracy in India.’ [2]

The naysayers rightly saw democracy as an outgrowth of a particular historical experience in the West, rooted in a consciousness we now call modernity. They spoke of the conditions thought to be necessary for the flourishing of democracy: an egalitarian social order, an ethos of individualism, and a culture of secular politics and pluralist tolerance. India had practically the opposite: a deeply hierarchical social order, subservience of the individual to family and community, and a culture of political quietism, though it did have pluralist tolerance (more on this later). Only a tiny class of Indians saw themselves as citizens of a nation-state, or could lay claim to political participation. Nor had the masses agitated to be rid of the hundreds of kings in as many princely states of British India, though discontent did exist in pockets. Indians were notoriously diverse, with identities spanning caste, class, region, custom, language, religion, and more, all impediments to a shared ideal of citizenship. Indeed, how was democracy expected to survive in such inhospitable terrain?

NREGA: A Progress Report

Here is an excellent investigative piece full of very human stories on what I think is India's first and only economic safety net for its citizens. Launched in 2006 via the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), it promises 100 days of employment to one member of every rural household each year. However, things have not gone according to plan and Mehboob Jeelani tells us why.

Until 2004, India had 456 million people living below the international poverty line. Yet after four years of NREGA, the number of poor, which was expected to decline, has increased from 456 to 488 million. So what went wrong?  ...

NREGA can appear as a success. After all, some records show the government provided employment to 44.1 million people in the last four years. The Ministry of Rural Development believes it has rescued thousands of farmers from debt through cash payments. The scheme has decreased urban migration by 30 percent, according to a survey by the Centre for Civil Society, and has increased the bargaining power of unskilled labourers, forcing private contractors to pay as much as 130 rupees per day to compete with NREGA. Through the construction of shovel-ready projects, NREGA has also vastly improved rural infrastructure. If the 2009 election results are any indication, wrote Mainstream weekly, NREGA and the money it injected into rural India ensured the re-election of the Congress. Thus, Manmohan Singh became the first prime minister to return to power after completing a full five-year term since Jawaharlal Nehru.

But NREGA hasn’t been an unqualified success. Today, the same welfare economists and grassroots activists who championed NREGA openly criticise it. They contend the government is killing a good scheme. Dreze and Roy think the government, instead of ensuring NREGA’s proper implementation, is watering down the social welfare elements by converging it with other government programmes. Several studies, including governmental ones, acknowledge widespread corruption in NREGA—fabricating vouchers is just one method of diverting funds. Caste-based discrimination is widespread. There is also a lack of political coordination between the Centre and state and local bodies. Most importantly, the promise of 100 days of guaranteed employment hasn’t been fulfilled. This leads one to wonder, four years on, what’s gone wrong with India’s Keynesian scheme?

Between Heaven and Earth

A most excellent article by Ronald Aronson on the false choice between god and science: 

It is as subjects, indeed social subjects, that we know, we decide on truth, and we judge right and wrong. As social subjects we decide on the rules of “communicative action” in which these activities take place. And these rules include the existence of such a thing as objective truth, and the active belief that people are capable of arriving at it. If we are truth-seeking animals, we might of course ask how we got that way, but we must also ask what our truths are and what are the rules for arriving there.

This of course entails giving up any pretense to absolute knowledge. It entails allowing oneself to enter into discussion, to submit what one says to the judgment of others, to be proven wrong by them, to be seen as fallible, and thus to realise that any particular piece of knowledge is always tentative, always demanding verification. This in turn implies a commitment to a communicative process in which we are always in dialogue with others, and in which they are always looking over our shoulders and commenting on what we claim to be true.

Truth shifts historically and is framed according to one’s disciplinary standpoint. It is never absolute but is objective. It is never raised above humans, but always takes place with, for, and about others. This is even, or especially, true of science. Its knowledge is necessarily provisional, it can be challenged and even overturned – which makes it dramatically different from the supposed “absolute knowledge” conferred by religious faith. But this also places science within a larger human project, rather than supporting any scientific claim to ultimacy.

Tariq Ramadan on Muslims in the West

I liked this Al Jazeera interview by Riz Khan, in which Tariq Ramadan, Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies at Oxford University, talks about a range of issues that relate to the experience of Muslims in the West. (via 3QD)

New York's Unique Collection of Languages

Linguists today are realizing that New York is a language "hot spot," where they can study several of the world's disappearing languages:

The chances of overhearing a conversation in Vlashki, a variant of Istro-Romanian, are greater in Queens than in the remote mountain villages in Croatia that immigrants now living in New York left years ago.

Husni Husain, 67, says he doesn’t know of any other person in New York who speaks Mamuju, an Austronesian language.

At a Roman Catholic church in the Morrisania section of the Bronx, Mass is said once a month in Garifuna, an Arawakan language that originated with descendants of African slaves shipwrecked near St. Vincent in the Caribbean and later exiled to Central America. Today, Garifuna is virtually as common in the Bronx and in Brooklyn as in Honduras and Belize.

And Rego Park, Queens, is home to Husni Husain, who, as far as he knows, is the only person in New York who speaks Mamuju, the Austronesian language he learned growing up in the Indonesian province of West Sulawesi. Mr. Husain, 67, has nobody to talk to, not even his wife or children.

“My wife is from Java, and my children were born in Jakarta — they don’t associate with the Mamuju,” he said. “I don’t read books in Mamuju. They don’t publish any. I only speak Mamuju when I go back or when I talk to my brother on the telephone.”

These are not just some of the languages that make New York the most linguistically diverse city in the world. They are part of a remarkable trove of endangered tongues that have taken root in New York — languages born in every corner of the globe and now more commonly heard in various corners of New York than anywhere else.

More here. Also from the New York Times, here's a video in which you can hear bits of many rare languages.

The Man in the BMW

(An excerpt from a longer work of fiction. Cross-posted on 3 Quarks Daily, where it has received many comments.)

    On their way to China Town, they pass an area with red curtained massage parlors and hookers pacing the streets in tight clothes. They stop at a red light behind a BMW. A hooker approaches its curbside window, talks to the driver, and hops in. Ved notices Liz shaking her head in what appears to be disapproval.

    ‘Consenting adults!’ he provokes her.

    ‘You don’t need to tell me that,’ she says sharply.

    ‘Why the disapproval then?’

    ‘Because it is so sad. I just wish these women had other options.’

    ‘Maybe they do. I doubt they are doing this against their will, at least not in San Francisco.’

    ‘Just because they do this, quote-unquote, voluntarily, doesn’t mean they do it because they are happy to. It’s because they don’t recognize other options. Or they are addicted to abuse, or full of self-loathing and given to self-destruction.’ Her voice bristles. ‘It doesn’t mean they like it, or choose it with a healthy frame of mind.’

    ‘But if they do it voluntarily—so let’s exclude the drug addicts—can we say we know better? Who should be allowed to save people from themselves? So many others don’t like their jobs either, or choose them with a healthy frame of mind. I have met—’

    She sighs. ‘I know that line of reasoning, but taking a job flipping burgers is not quite comparable to letting a horny customer finger your private parts.’

Selections from Dalit Writing

Dalit writing in India has appeared in vernacular languages for many decades. Many Dalits now also write in English (as did Ambedkar) or are increasingly translated into English—the language of modernity and power in India—which also makes the Dalit experience known to the wider world. Even among this small set, there is great diversity of opinion on the caste system: its current state and trajectory, and strategies to combat it. Here are five articles I've read recently that I think illustrate this diversity and offer notable perspectives:

M. Swathy Margaret:

"I appeal to young Dalit women not to get subsumed in the relatively macro-identities of mainstream progressive movements such as the male Dalit movement or the upper-caste feminist movement. It is only by retaining our unique voice within these movements that we can contribute meaningfully to these movements and benefit from them. Giving ourselves a separate space does not mean we want a complete break with these movements."

Meena Kandasamy:

"The readiness to destroy caste requires us to destroy a part of ourselves. But finally it will culminate in the end of imagined or assumed inferiorities and superiorities. That is why, irrespective of where we find ourselves in that hierarchy, we can militate against caste only if each of us make it a personal rebellion, a conscious choice to defy that oppressive, self-defeating system."

Anand Teltumbde:

"Contrary to commonplace view, the problem of castes has become much simpler today than ever before. The existential castes are confined to a divide between dalits and non-dalits, quite like the racial divide between blacks and white or the class division between capitalists and proletariat. No time in history, castes rendered themselves as easy for combating against as they do now. The historical project of annihilation of castes is accomplishable now, provided the forces swearing by it are ready to act."