Recent Posts from Author
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Civic Sense for Change
My TEDx talk on “Civic Sense of Change”, on why civic sense matters, why we Indians have so little of it, and what might raise it (15 min).
“Is India’s civic-sense problem a result of our unrealized potential or the cause of it? As any Indian with knowledge or experience of international travel will tell you, things just aren’t the same “there”, and things “there” are just different and better. Going beyond the basic factors of national wealth and urban planning, why does India seem to be caught in a cycle of disillusionment, a strong sense of public entitlement and a weak sense of civic responsibility? Namit Arora explains in his TEDx talk how Indians themselves are part of the problem, and what we can do to address these issues.” [—TEDxGurugram team]
FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
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The Lottery of Birth
Friends, I’m pleased to announce my first book, ‘The Lottery of Birth: On Inherited Social Inequalities’. This collection of fifteen essays has been in the works for over seven years, and includes extensively updated versions of many essays that first appeared in other online or print venues. Published by Three Essays Collective, the book is now available worldwide. I hope you will give it a look and spread the word. I can arrange a complimentary copy for anyone interested in reviewing the book on any forum. Simply send me a message with a mailing address.
A New Book on Inequalities in IndiaThe Lottery of Birth: On Inherited Social Inequalities by Namit Arora
Publisher: Three Essays Collective | April 2017 | Paperback, 300 pages | Kindle | Excerpt
Purchase: From Publisher (free shipping) | Flipkart | Amazon IN, US, UK, FR, DE, IT, ES | B&N -
The Reality of Artificial Intelligence
A great deal of fear, excitement, and hype has lately grown around Artificial Intelligence (AI). This is partly because advances in machine learning keep surprising—and even overtaking—us in a growing number of domains, such as disease diagnosis, driving, language translation, and complex forecasting. To add fuel to fire, AI enthusiasts keep making dramatic claims about the imminence of Singularity, human-level AI, super intelligence, and the threat of machines taking over the world and even enslaving us! How warranted are these claims? We owe it to ourselves to better understand both the current state, the potential, and the limitations of AI, to separate hype from reality, and to reflect on the problem of AI philosophically—so we can focus on the actual challenges we’re likely to face as AI becomes more common.AI can certainly improve human lives on many fronts, but this promise coexists with the fear that AI will cause havoc in labor markets by not just appropriating more blue collar work, as industrial automation has been doing for decades, but even a lot of skilled white collar work. This disruption—which will further concentrate wealth and create jobless hordes and cause new social upheavals in nation-states—will likely occur and needs to be taken seriously. What makes AI-led disruption different than earlier waves of technological disruption is that earlier the loss of manufacturing jobs was met by the rise of services sector jobs, but this time the latter too are at risk, with no evident replacement in sight. This is a recipe for jobless growth, with GDP and unemployment rising together—a grave problem that may well require disruptive solutions.
As for the more dramatic claims about AI, my view, which I articulated in The Dearth of Artificial Intelligence (2009), remains that even if we develop ‘intelligent’ machines (much depends here on what we deem ‘intelligent’), odds are near-zero that machines will come to rival human-level general intelligence if their creation bypasses the particular embodied experience of humans forged by eons of evolution. By human-level intelligence (or strong AI, versus weak or domain-specific AI), I mean intelligence that’s analogous to ours: rivaling our social and emotional intelligence; mirroring our instincts, intuitions, insights, tastes, aversions, adaptability; similar to how we make sense of brand new contexts and use our creativity, imagination, and judgment to breathe meaning and significance into novel ideas and concepts; to approach being and time like we do, informed by our fear, desire, delight, sense of aging and death; and so on. Incorporating all of this in a machine will not happen by combining computing power with algorithmic wizardry. Unless machines can experience and relate to the world like we do—which no one has a clue how—machines can’t make decisions like we do. Unless machines can suffer like us, they will not think like us. (Another way to say this is that reductionism has limits, esp. for highly complex systems like the biosphere and human mind/culture, when the laws of nature run out of descriptive and predictive steam—not because our science is inadequate but due to irreducible and unpredictable emergent properties inherent in complex systems.)
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Harari on Nationalism vs. Globalism
Here is a breezy conversation that abounds with big picture thinking. If you enjoy this, listen to a talk by Harari, The Future of Humanity, and read this interview where he describes what he gets out of Vipassana meditation, this article on the rise of Donald Trump, and this Q&A.
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Where is India’s ACLU?
Where is the equivalent of the ACLU in India? Here is an excellent overview of the scene in India by Alok Prasanna Kumar, a lawyer based in Bengaluru. Support these organizations people; the stronger they are, the better our democracy will be.
The United States is fiercely resisting its regime of deplorables: first came the three-million strong Women’s March, and this past weekend hordes of lawyers joined the battle after the #MuslimBan, obtaining injunctions and emergency stay orders for those affected, promising to fight until Trump’s (sad!) executive order is struck down by the courts.Here at home, many have been asking where India’s version of the American Civil Liberties Union is. Has our legal machinery ever been called in to defend the public interest with such speed and effectiveness – and is it even possible? Good news: it has happened, and we do have more than one counterpart to the ACLU. The complication: none of these bodies are exactly like it, so there’s no easy answer to the question, “Where is India’s ACLU?”
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The Lottery of Birth
Announcing a new book on inequalities in India
Title | Author: The Lottery of Birth: On Inherited Social Inequalities | Namit Arora
Publisher: Three Essays Collective | April 2017 | Paperback, 300 pages | Kindle e-book
Purchase: Publisher site (free shipping worldwide) | Amazon IN, US, UK, FR, DE, IT, ESAn egalitarian ethos has not been a prominent feature of Indian civilization, at least since the decline of Buddhism over a thousand years ago. All people, it is believed, are created unequal, born into a hierarchy of status and dignity, and endowed not with universal but particular rights and duties. This has greatly amplified the unfairness of accidents of birth in shaping one’s lot in life. Despite a long history of resistance, such inequalities have thrived and mutated, including under European rule, modernity, and markets.
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RIP, Pran Kurup (1966-2016)
My dearest friend, Pran Kurup (3 Oct 1966 — 3 Sep 2016), passed away yesterday from a cardiac arrest. He had been in India for several months. His funeral will take place in Trivandrum at 2 PM on Monday, 5th September.I met Pran at IIT Kharagpur 31 years ago. After our first year, some of us freshmen became close friends and moved into a hostel wing. Pran and I took rooms next to each other. He used to wake me up each morning; I would have missed a lot of classes without his help. Not that I learned much in class; I mostly remember my college years for some of the friendships I made, and my friendship with Pran was among the most precious in my life. He was also, as another friend noted yesterday, the heart and soul of our wing, everybody’s favorite guy. Years later, he is still the glue that holds our wing-mates together, encouraging us to communicate and meet often.
In 1989, after four years at IIT, Pran and I went to the U.S. for grad school. There we shared a journey of personal growth and learning, especially during our two decades in California. We spent much time together. With another friend, we even went on a road trip in 1993 to Death Valley, Vegas, Grand Canyon, and southern Utah. At times we would retreat into the lingo and bawdy humor of our college days, and tease each other about our college crushes and unrequited loves—a ribbing that had a rare and sweet intimacy. We sized up our respective dates and eventual mates. I watched him become a deeply involved dad to a daughter and a son. After a couple of company jobs, he founded and ran his own small business focused on e-learning solutions, with a team in Trivandrum. We were immersed in each other’s emotional, intellectual, and professional lives.
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Please Vote for Me
Here is a fascinating documentary film from China. Among other things, it reveals how democracy works in real life and the sort of political animals we tend to become under it, age notwithstanding. Below is the abridged version (34 mins) of the full-length version (52 mins, 2007).
‘What kind of thing is “Democracy”?’
‘Born into an authoritarian state that professes to value the greater good over individual expression, many Chinese children have little familiarity with Western ideals of democracy. Nevertheless, they prove themselves quick studies in Please Vote For Me, which chronicles China’s first ever modern classroom election, held among third-graders in the city of Wuhan. After the students learn the basic tenets of democracy, a campaign for the position of class monitor swiftly descends into an all too familiar jumble of campaign promises, back-room deals and dirty tricks. Funny, touching and full of small surprises, the Chinese director Weijun Chen’s documentary is a wry look at the democratic process and all its chaotic, imperfect promise.’
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The Two-faced Politics of Indian-Americans
Indian-Americans, a group that includes me, are one of the most visible and successful global diasporas. With the highest per capita income of any ethnic group in the US, we’re often called a ‘model minority’ in America. But what can be said about our politics as a group?Historically, we Indian-Americans—and here I’m speaking primarily of Indians who’re naturalized US citizens or permanent residents—have overwhelmingly supported the Democrats, more so than any other large Asian group in the US. Over 80 percent of us voted for Barack Obama in 2008, second only to black Americans. This year, less than ten percent might vote for the Republican Donald Trump. Curiously, contrary to what one might expect, success and wealth haven’t driven most of us to vote for the Republicans, who’re seen as friendlier to the rich. What can explain this? Is it because we are remarkably liberal as a group?
Consider some more facts. We Indian-Americans overwhelmingly support Narendra Modi too, at a rate much higher than among Indians in India. We host rockstar receptions for him in arenas like Madison Square Garden in NY and SAP Center in Silicon Valley. This despite Trump and Modi being similar in so many ways. They’re both authoritarian and anti-democratic; anti-Muslim; steeped in nationalism (white/Hindu); allied with far-right groups (Christian Right/RSS); high on patriarchy; economically conservative votaries of trickle-down economics; anti-labor union; thuggish (think Amit Shah); big on defense spending; and so on. Both have provided cover to far-right groups who terrorize minorities. Even if we concede that Trump is worse than Modi—though some will disagree—their proximities are undeniable. So why do we Indian-Americans despise Trump yet love Modi? What’s behind this apparent paradox?
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The Last Train in Nepal
Check out this brilliant documentary film, The Last Train in Nepal, directed by Tarun Bhartiya (59 mins). It’s “the story of an international railway line that runs for twenty miles from the little-known town of Janakpur in Nepal to Jaynagar junction in India.” The film, a truly wonderful depiction of life on the Indo-Nepal border, is full of riveting human portraits. The rickety train itself emerges as a lovable character in the film. Not surprisingly, Tarun bagged the Royal Television Society Yorkshire Award for Best Director in June 2016.
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Milanovic on Global Inequality
An insightful, though-provoking lecture by Branko Milanovic, a leading expert and historian of global inequality, on his major new work of empirical economics that “presents a bold account of the dynamics that drive inequality on a global scale.” It’s followed by responses from other experts and Q&A. Among his key contributions is the “elephant curve” which illustrates how the gains of globalization were distributed in recent decades (it benefited much of the world population but not so much the middle/working-classes in the US, UK, and a few other high income countries), and his theory of Kuznets waves, a replacement for the Kuznets curve (a much contested idea in development economics; Thomas Piketty didn’t show much fondness for the Kuznets curve in Capital).
Read some book reviews: one, two, three, four, a book excerpt, and his articles on income inequality and citizenship and inequality in India.
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Beyond Man and Woman: The Life of a Hijra
On being transgender in India and glimpses from The Truth About Me, a powerful memoir by A. Revathi, which aims to introduce readers ‘to the lives of hijras, their distinct culture, and their dreams and desires.’ (Cross-posted on 3 Quarks Daily.)
Most Indians encounter hijras at some point in their lives. Hijras are the most visible subset of transgender people in South Asia, usually biological men who identify more closely as being female or feminine. They often appear in groups, and most Indians associate them with singing and dancing, flashy women’s attire and makeup, aggressive begging styles, acts and manners that are like burlesques of femininity, a distinctive hand-clap, and the blessing of newlyweds and newborn males in exchange for gifts.Most modern societies embrace a binary idea of gender. To the biologically salient binary division of humans into male/female, they attach binary social-behavioral norms. They presume two discrete ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ identities to which all biological males and females are expected to conform. These two gender identities are imbued with ideal, essential, and distinct social roles and traits. In other words, the binary schema assumes a default alignment between sex, gender, and sexuality. In reality, however, gender identities and sexual orientations are not binary and exist on a spectrum, including for people who identify as transgender—an umbrella term for those whose inner sense of their gender conflicts with the presumed norms for their assigned sex (unlike for cisgender people). Transgender people often feel they’re neither ‘men’ nor ‘women’.
Category: 3QD, Anthropology & Archaeology, Biography, Books & Authors, Culture, History, Justice, Religion -
Venerating the Army: A Pathology of Nationalism
(Cross-posted on 3 Quarks Daily and Raiot)
A cloying veneration of army men is yet another pathology of nationalism that’s more pervasive than ever in India today. Army men are now widely seen as paragons of nobility and patriotism. Whether their deaths are due to freak accidents or border skirmishes, they’re eulogized for “making the supreme sacrifice for the nation”. Politicians routinely signal their patriotism by chanting Bhārat Mātā ki Jai, victory to mother India, and fall over each other for photo ops where they’re seen honoring soldiers, dead or alive.Curiously, this adoration for army men seems most intense in urban middle-class families, including those who don’t want their own kids to join their nation’s army. Instead, they want their kids to prepare for more lucrative professions, pursue office jobs in multinationals, live in gated high-rise apartments, and own nice cars. Or perhaps leave India for greener pastures abroad. A textbook case of hypocrisy?
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A New Shunya!
I’m happy to announce a major update to Shunya.net! It has a cleaner look, fewer ads, more readable article pages, a slideshow on all photo pages, and attractive banners that change with each refresh. Of course, all this comes with the same great content that made you a regular visitor in the first place! 🙂Check out the new home page. To explore the article pages, read, for instance, my recently expanded article on linguistic hierarchies, Decolonizing My Mind.
To explore the photo pages and the slideshow, visit, for instance, the Victoria Falls page from our recent trip to Zambia.
Category: Daily Noise -
The Genomic Ancient DNA Revolution
Population genetics is an emerging field that’s shedding new light on ancient human migrations. It complements linguistics and archaeology, which have until now been the primary avenues for understanding prehistory. David Reich, a leading geneticist and a Harvard professor, has taken special interest in the much contested issue of the original homeland of Indo-European (IE) languages and the mixing of populations in India. Watch a video conversation with him on the edge.org page below (also transcribed).
Nothing Reich says will comfort the “out-of-India” theorists, largely a Hindutva brigade of “scholars” who claim that there was no Aryan migration into India; that instead a migration happened from India to Europe; that IE languages originated in the Indian Subcontinent from a proto-Sanskrit; that the people of the Indus Valley Civilization spoke this proto-Sanskrit (never mind that their script remains undeciphered; there’s no consensus on whether it is even a linguistic script); that the Vedas are wholly indigenous in inspiration, etc. It’s amazing how many people on the Internet confidently assert that the Aryan migration theory has been “discredited”.
Of course much of this was/is nationalistic windbaggery, based on wishful thinking and gaps in rival theories, not on any solid evidence from linguistics or archaeology. Population genetics is now producing a clearer picture once and for all. But we’re not there yet, even though Reich’s work has bolstered the Kurgan hypothesis, which puts the IE homeland in the Pontic-Caspian steppe. Watch this field for more definitive revelations in the years ahead.
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The Road to Fixing Air Pollution in Delhi
I have a piece in The Wire today: The Road to Fixing Air Pollution in Delhi, Beyond Odd-even. Among other things, this attempts to distill the research and learning from my recent months at the Delhi Dialogue Commission, an advisory body to the Government of NCT of Delhi. Also an announcement on the right for my talk this weekend that’s open to all.
An unprecedented public health crisis has been unfolding in Delhi: 40% of our kids now fail lung capacity tests. Respiratory emergencies have tripled in the last seven years, with no relief in sight. Just breathing our air, full of toxic gases and particulates, has raised the incidence of strokes, heart disease, cancers, birth defects, pneumonia, and more. In Delhi alone, an estimated 80 people are dying daily from conditions provoked by air pollution. Much like smoking cigarettes, it’s shaving years off our lives.Though some fare worse than others, none are immune: rich or poor, young or old. A high burden of disease erodes quality of life, family finances, and the economy. What will be the cost of this health crisis, in human lives, in healthcare, in lost productivity?
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Draw the Prophet
A Muslim student is asked to draw the Prophet in this short film set in France, a few days after the Charlie Hebdo attack in Jan 2015. See what he comes up with (5 min).
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A Journey to Zambia
(Click on thumbnails below for pictures, slideshows, and notes from Usha and Namit on their journey to Zambia, Oct 2015.)
We entered Zambia by bus from Malawi and first saw the amazing South Luangwa National Park. From there we took a bus to Lusaka, the urbane metropolis of the bipedal Zambians. We had the nicest bus yet on our African trip, with video screens that however played gospel musical videos—evidently inspired by American Evangelical musical videos—for the full nine hours of the journey! This would’ve been a lot less bearable without the famed musical talents of Africans, at once rich and resonant (perfect weather, short naps, and the beautiful landscape helped too). Nearly everyone in Zambia is now Christian. Local preachers sometimes board long-distance buses from one stop to the next and sermonize; passengers even sing along. The president of Zambia recently held a national prayer day to beseech the Lord to arrest the decline of the Zambian currency in international markets.
It astonished me yet again: Here too an entire population so quickly and so totally embraced a religious tradition so alien to their own. Old layers of magical thinking made room for new layers, such as the strange story of a son of a male God coming to earth and dying for other people’s sins. Christianization in Zambia has also meant that, over a few generations, society has become more patrilineal from its mostly matrilineal roots, aspects of which nevertheless survive. A Zambian man we met couldn’t comprehend the Indian practice of dowry, the polar opposite of their own custom of men paying bride price.
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A Journey to Malawi
(Click on thumbnails below for pictures, slideshows, and notes from Usha and Namit on their journey to Malawi, Oct 2015.)
We crossed into Malawi from Mozambique and immediately found traveling easier: its distances shorter, tourist facilities and transportation better, and English a lingua franca. The gigantic Lake Malawi has long shaped patterns of life in this most densely populated of sub-Saharan countries, encompassing nine major ethnic groups, many of which are matrilineal and Christian. All of its native languages belong to the Bantu family, and while English is the official language, more widely spoken is the national language, Chichewa (similar to Hindi in north India; ATM machines operate in both English and Chichewa). At least nominally, a third of the population is Catholic, a third Protestant, and a fifth Muslim; people variously combine monotheistic lore with native beliefs that include animism, ancestor worship, and witchcraft.
Compared to Mozambique, I saw a more hopeful economic dynamism in Malawi’s rural and semi-urban areas, reflected in its many micro enterprises, provision stores, roadside bars and eateries, and emerging consumer economy. Aspirations for upward mobility seem common enough. Its young democracy is taking root and its religious and ethnic groups coexist rather well, with differences among the latter (and their historical endogamy) yielding to a more inclusive “Malawian identity”. These aspects however coexist with some grim realities: half the population is under 15; a quarter of them don’t attend school; public corruption is rife; life expectancy is only 54 (due largely to malaria and AIDS); its lakes and rivers are very overfished; and its fast growing population is coming in greater conflict with wildlife. In this part of Africa, too, China looms large, evoking both admiration and disquiet. Many locals appreciate the Chinese investing in Malawi—for creating jobs and building its infrastructure, including its shiny new parliament building, its first five-star hotel, and a science university—but they worry about back-room dealings and unfair mining, timber, and trade concessions that the Chinese seem to be extracting from Malawi’s politicians.
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Combating Air Pollution in Delhi
(Full disclosure: I’m currently leading a task force on air pollution at the Delhi Dialogue Commission, a think tank of the Delhi government.)
The government of Delhi recently announced several measures to combat the hazardous levels of air pollution in the city. This includes emergency measures to reduce some of the eighty daily deaths from the current spike in cardiopulmonary cases in Delhi’s hospitals. It also declared some medium- and long-term actions, such as shutting down one coal power plant and possibly another; raising of vehicle and fuel emissions standards from Bharat IV to VI in just one year (a very bold move that leapfrogs Bharat V entirely, pulling in Bharat VI earlier than anyone had thought possible); limiting operating hours and enforcing emission standards for diesel trucks entering Delhi; adding more bus and metro services; taking steps to reduce road dust, and the open burning of trash, leaves, and other biomass in Delhi.What intrigues me is how many of the chatterati have focused on the alternate-day driving restrictions for a fortnight (based on the license plate’s even/odd last digit) to the exclusion of other measures. Is this because it’s the only measure that calls for a bit of sacrifice from them? They’re posting articles on why such rationing of road space won’t work, or how car owners will rush to buy cheap used cars that’ll be even more polluting. They’re conveniently ignoring the fact that this is a 15-day emergency measure, that no rich man is likely to buy another car for the 8 out of 15 days that he won’t be able to drive his primary car. The complainers seem to include: (1) entitled upper-class folks who forget that driving is not a right but a privilege, that the right to non-toxic air precedes the right to drive; and (2) those who have no idea how bad Delhi’s air is right now and what it’s doing to our bodies.
