Waves of Disquiet

It seems the only way I can write is in semi-fiction mode. What else will I write but about myself and my life? What is interesting other than that? 

Politics has changed in this country. The election changed everything. People are rejoicing in the huge victory of the leader. Was it their leader? I wonder. How are they able to show such a vigorous support for him? Do they know him so much? How can they put so much of faith in him? I cannot understand. It is the way humans are. The mass resists to be understood.

I can't write about the mass, its choices, its urges and its behaviour. I don't want to know either. Life is led by a vacuum of desires and drives and motivations. When you are engrossed in that vacuum, you don't even know that it is a vacuum. Everything -- shouts, rejoice, hopes, virtues, morality, values, sense of wellness, happiness, joy, ambitions, devotion, dedication, convention, tradition, culture, revolution, genocide, holocaust, hegemony, slavery, debt, wealth, assets, investment, confidence, comfort, anxiety, anger, desperation, fear, animosity, hatred, pride, redemption, struggles, wars, ethnic cleansing, riots, rape, liberty, surveillance, internet, pornography, vendetta, defamation, corruption, sexuality, fellatio, fetishism, pederasty, perversion, hunger, poverty, democracy, monarchy, fanaticism, machismo, emasculation, feminism, writing, poetry, cinema, smile, laughter -- revolves around that vacuum. A vacuum which reveals itself as an absolute presence, a nothingness which appears itself as a fullness, a hole which portrays itself as a gravitational pull. 

I also feel the illusion of that presence, that fullness, that pull, but I also feel its absence, the emptiness, lack of any force and direction. Perhaps, I have some inherent deformities -- maybe blind, maybe insane, maybe something else. But I am away from the madness of a crowd. I hate crowd. I am timid of a crowd. I can't subscribe to the crowd's interests. I am away. I am alone. It is not that I want to be away, alone. It is that I am alone and away, that is why I am alone and away.

I am not living in a desert. Yet, I find myself alone as if in a desert. I find my voice getting crushed in the continuous flow of loud shouts from outside. Those shouts, when deciphered, form a vehement call for a change -- an unacceptable, unwarranted change. They want to create a homogeneous voice -- a loud, monotonic, unending sound. A deafening sound that is external and absurd. That sound will not compromise on its monotonousness, homogeneity, and superiority. It wants to eliminate all the different tones, all the variations. The colour of that sound is a pure, boring white. An insipid white. White that will not tolerate any other shades on the canvas. 

I am a stain in a pure white canvas, a canvas which people mistake for containing a beautiful painting. I am a wrong note, a deviation, in a monotonic music, which people mistakes for a beautiful music. I can't make their painting pristine nor make their music pure. I am here to stay as a stain, a deviation, as I am, eluding even my own understanding of it. The truth is that I am a stain even I can't clean myself. I am a deviation even I can't rectify myself. Perhaps that deviation, the sense of being a stain, defines me. Perhaps I have different sensitivities than the crowd. 

Who knows it right? The more I observe anything, the more it eludes me!

Sandeep

Chennai, May 25, 2014.

Facing Uncertainties

That was stupid -- my last post in this blog. Not the content, but the way I wrote it! Later, even I could not follow my last post. Especially, the first paragraph is too difficult to follow. Looking back, I remember the urge I experienced to make that post difficult to read. I had the feeling, still I possess this feeling, that online writings like blogs are useless. They are worthless. They serve no particular purpose. Some argue that internet gives us the real democratic experience and help us show the power of the powerless and the downtrodden. But, unfortunately, I am increasingly feeling that this is untrue. Internet publishing helps us share our feeling. But whether it will serve humanity to direct itself towards some goal, political or economic or anything like that, is doubtful. The flow of information makes us more confused and unfocused. The previous blog manifested this feeling I was experiencing those days. Those feelings are only strengthened now. But I continue writing despite knowing its futility. And I write for no reason and no end. This may sound pessimistic, but right now this is what I feel.

In the last post, my main point was how an issue (Mullapperiyar dam controversy) was about to divide the people of Kerala and Tamil Nadu. One month is gone after I wrote that post. Now, we see those peoples divided! Violence broke out between the peoples and, admittedly, was more intense on the Tamil Nadu side than on the other side. We saw how a small group of people exploited the opportunity for gaining narrow political ends. Moreover, the issue remains unsolved.

The Mullapperiyar dam issue is actually an engineering problem, which has but now become a social problem (I mean people's problem). It is taken to a state where engineers alone cannot solve it amicably. The question of whether the dam will collapse and, if yes, under what conditions, does not have any definite answer. Any answer will finally boil down to probability and reliability. The aim of science and engineering should be to reduce the probability of disaster as small as possible, thereby making the reliability of the construction as large as possible. How reliable is the dam is therefore can be answered only by engineers in statistical terms. The problem becomes social because people, the laymen, are unable to understand and accept the statistical promises. Such problems cannot be only resolved by engineers. The role of powerful statesmen with long term vision becomes important and apparent at this s juncture. It is doubtful whether we still have such leaders. This doubt arises by observing the way the issue is being approached by our leaders.

Related is the issue of Koodamkulam nuclear power plant. Is it safe? Is nuclear energy safe for humanity? Even scientists are divided on this issue. So are the politicians. The answer again boils down to be a statistical one. Again, the probability of failure of the measures taken by the scientists and engineers to make the power plant safe against natural calamities like earthquake, tsunamis and cyclones dictates the answer. If our calculation fails? This may be an emotional question. Perhaps, I am just being over cautious. But am I not over cautious about the very existence of the human race? Am I not justifiable on this ground in asking this question?

Perhaps, we have no answers. Perhaps, there is no way to arrive at a definite answer. Perhaps, uncertainty rules everywhere. But we must find some resolution to face such uncertainties, and our resolution must be based on facts and reason. That is all I have to say.

Regarding violence: a few perverts can cause a large violence, but restoration of peace would need efforts of large number of lofty minds.

Some say that if Kerala and Tamil Nadu were two countries, a war would have broken out by this time. This argument leads me to a more terrible thought: China is building a dam in Brahmaputra, which is supposed to finish by the year 2015. Will they divert water from Brahmaputra to China? What would be the outcome? Are we facing a war?

P.S.: I am not able to sleep calmly these days!

Sandeep

Dec 29, 2011.

The Number of Sand Grains in Calicut Beach, or Writing in Water

So much of reading and so less of writing. This is bad. Even though reading gives me a lot of strength, it is writing that stabilizes the strength thus acquired. While reading makes me more confused, writing gives me clarity. From an information theoretic perspective, reading causes an increase in entropy, while writing helps me reduce the entropy by efficiently decoding, or, equivalently, understanding, or grasping, or putting in the right light, the information ("information" in the sense used in "information technology" not in "information theory"; instead, one could almost always, i.e., with negligibly small probability of being misunderstood, use the word "noise") that I have gathered through reading. (Remember, the more the entropy, the more is the disorder, or uncertainty, or confusion.) That is why I decided to write this post. It came as an inner urge, almost similar to the one human beings experience prior to defecation. The urge was to write a serious post after a long  while. (In our most golden -- the price of gold is at the record peak in history-- times, a blog post is serious if it required little effort to write and would require onerous effort to read. My goal is, honestly, such a post.)  However, I had to struggle to fix a topic. For me, topics are plenty, because the unwritten words (which are written in the mind) substantially exceed in trillions and trillions of bytes (1 byte = 8 bits, 1 bit = 1 binary digit, and binary digits are nothing and everything, or, in other words, none and one) compared to the written words. Then I fixed a contemporary topic, which I assign the reader to decipher from below, after reading the post entirely, and then doing some tantric deconstruction (to do this one has to be well versed in tantras and mantras and pujas and hypocrisy). If the reader does not want such unnecessary burdens or feels not qualified to do this, I urge not to read this post. I am a ruthless writer, and on top of that I am not going to call you "the respected reader" or "the most diligent reader" or any of that shit. I expect the reader to be as conceited and therefore as stupid -- and vice versa -- as I am.

Breaking from the conventions of the previous posts in this blog, I would like to dedicate this post to Jean Paul Sartre, who taught me how to "write", which I, being unscrupulous, have managed not to realize in practice.

The issue of Mullapperiyar dam is now raging at its peak between Kerala and Tamil Nadu. This may be attributed to the facts that (1) it is rainy season in Kerala and hence the dam is inundated with water, (2) there has been a few earth quakes in the past few months in the areas surrounding the dam, (3) a junk movie "Dam 999" has been released in India, which, despite having got the permission for screening from the censor board of India, has been banned in Tamil Nadu by its Government, reasoning that it would mislead and hurt the sentiments of the people, (4) and the Malayalam television media has taken up the issue with paramount importance. Although the panic created by the media among the people by making them believe that the dam will collapse today or tomorrow or even in the next nano-second may sound illogical enough to be fake, the threat posed by the weakness of the dam is truly of paramount importance. While the lease agreement for the dam between Kerala and Tamil Nadu is actually for nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine (999) years, it is clear that a dam will not stay that long. While constructing a new dam as an immediate precaution to save the people from its possible yet unpredictable collapse seems to be a solution, the bitter fact that the new dam will soon (in another hundred years?) turn out to be a similar threat to the same people, or precisely their future generation, is a paradox that has been pointed out by some thinking fanatics living in isolated islands.

You might have noticed that I have written the previous paragraph in the most insipid manner, keeping myself distant from the issue, and adopting a very neutral, diplomatic tone. You must understand that this is not because I am a Malayali who is living in Tamil Nadu, so that I have to satisfy both my Tamil friends and Malayali friends thereby saving myself from the otherwise imminent peril. Having dedicated this post to Sartre, will my super-ego ever spare me from the guilt generated by doing so? Though I conceal my fear in my heart, the fact is that I am more interested in something else.

Yes, more interestingly, though the slogan "water for Tamil Nadu, safety for Kerala" formulated by the Kerala Government sounds post-modern and liberal enough, and sounds to be in terms with the modern thoughts and moral sense, however contemptuous and worthless this sense may be, the Tamil Nadu Government's and political parties' adamant rejection of the plea for co-operation to construct a new dam by the Kerala Government gives us some glimpses to the nature of (modern) India. Particularly, the fact remains that India has not yet become an integral country, but stays divided by language, culture, caste, religion, location, and other identities. The Mullapperiyar issue exemplifies the failure of a group of people (or their leaders) to understand the need of another group of people living in the neighbourhood in the same country, only differing in language and culture. Here, being Tamil or Malayali is not the issue. The fact that I, the author of this post, am a Malayali is also not a very important issue (notwithstanding that I have mentally broken free from such an narrow identity). The true issue is that this kind of division exists not only between Tamils and Malayali, but between Tamils and Kannadigas, Kannadigas and Marathis, Kannadigas and Malayalis, Marathis and Hindi-speaking people, Biharis and Bengalis, Kashmiris and other Indians, and so on and so on. Such division can be seen even between people living in the same state, speaking the same language (e.g. South Kerala and North Kerala). A serious and active issue Similar to the Mullapperiyar is the demand for the division of Andra Pradhesh into two, which, again, reflects the mistrust and jealousy between peoples living in different geographical locations within a single state, speaking the same language notwithstanding some colloquial vernacular differences. 

The solution to this most important problem India as an integral nation has been facing can be achieved, however, not by creating an all encompassing Indian identity, for no identity can be truly all encompassing, but, I believe, by educating the people in values concerning freedom and liberty, both social and individual, thereby helping them to mature to a mental state in which they can live peacefully with others. In a country, from where a painter, whether he is great or not, had to flee for using his freedom of expression in his painting; in a country, where a study on different versions of Ramayana told in different places and countries is removed from the academic syllabus for religious reasons; in a country, where a movie or book is banned whenever it is against some narrow ideology held by a group; in a country, err... I'm bored to continue giving these examples, believe me; by the way, what is the number of sand grains in Calicut beach? 

All I mean to say is that in this country, such a solution will not succeed -- I say this with boundless optimism (ideologically, I must have used "pessimism", but, unfortunately, pessimism is not the ideology I have sided with). This country needs a gang-bang change, not the pseudo-moral revolution preached by Anna Hazare and people like him, but a truly violent revolution. Wait a minute, do not misunderstand me here. I used the term violent in the same sense used by Slavoj Zizek when he said almost like this: "Hitler was not violent enough; Gandhi was more violent than Hitler [in challenging the basic structure of the prevailing [British] system]" (emphases might have been added, I'm not sure).

Tail piece: Perhaps the Mullapperiyar issue also shows us how a majority of Indian people are deeply influenced and ideologically possessed by a minority of leaders, politicians and institutions.

S. Palakkal,
Nov 30, 2011,
Chennai.

Beware of mangoes ripened by calcium carbide!

Eurocentrism, blah blah blah....

Eurocentrism is a conscious or unconscious perspective that whatever coming from the Europe is right and true. This word had been prevalent in the last century, especially during the European colonialist era, and was used critically. So why I got interested in it, and what are the interesting things about it?

I got interested in this word because of some reasons. Recently, I heard one of my friends quoting from a speech he listened to: "...whatever coming from the West (from the Indian point of view, the West means the European and American) is regarded as science and whatever coming from the east (Asia or India) is considered as ___ (the person could not remember the word; it must be pseudoscience, metaphysics, religious, spiritual, or even nonsense)...". Whoever the speaker be, I felt this was incorrect. Science has a set of fundamental rules to accept something true. They include objectivity, repeatability, etc. For example, the basic laws of motions, discovered by Newton applies all over the world. The same must be true for anything that can be called science. And if somebody claims something is science, which is not repeatable or objectively verifiable, I will look at him with suspicion. For example, in the same talk, the speaker claimed that "it was scientifically proved that water has memory". I don't know the truth about this, but I feel suspicious! On the other hand, I have a question: do we accept everything coming from the West as true? For example, the movie Jurassic Park comes from the West (though from the United States). But do we consider it true? It's just a fantasy, according to all of us, isn't it? There are numerous science fiction coming from the West; do we consider them true?

Now a days, we have so much of exposure to what is going on around the world. I followed Prof. Richard Dawkins in Youtube. I found him talking to many religious people, taking part in debates and just talking science to us. One of these videos [1] I would like to mention here is the one where he talks with the Indian holistic healer Mr. Deepak Chopra about the relation between quantum mechanics and his so called quantum-healing process. But Mr. Chopra soon realizes that he can't argue with an eminent scientist like Prof. Hawkins, who is also a man of an extremely rational mind. Then Mr. Chopra says that he never claimed any relationship with the quantum mechanics, he used the word "quantum" only as a metaphor, and in fact, it was quantum mechanics that had hijacked the word "quantum". In a later video [2], Chopra says Dawkins point of view is "mechanistic, Newtonian, outmoded and obsolete". Here, I am confused! Who is outmoded? Dawkins or Chopra? But our point is different: is Dawkins Eurocentric just because he argues rationally, or just because he comes from the United Kingdom? I don't need to explain this point. You catch on Dawkins on Youtube and Google videos, and you will be able to judge.

A third reason why I was tempted to know more about Eurocentrism is the following. One of my friends sent me a speech titled as For America to Live, Europe Must Die [3] by the Native American activist Russell Means (according to him, he is not the Native American, which is a misnomer, but he is the real "Indian"!). He claims that all the European concepts like modern science, modern physics, modern philosophy, Marxism, capitalism, etc. have a hidden agenda of European cultural expansionism, and the proponents of the above fields were trying to expand Christanity in disguise: a version of the "secularized" Christianity. He views Karl Marx, Issac Newton, John Locke, Adam Smith, Decartes, and every other European intellectuals as travellers on the same boat: expand the European culture! Of course, expand against the Native American, Indian (my India:-)) or other cultures. He says, for example, that "European culture itself is responsible [for the sufferings of the Native Americans]. Marxism is just the latest continuation of this tradition, not a solution to it. To ally with Marxism is to ally with the very same forces that declare us an acceptable cost." I understand that this is a cultural argument. He says "After all, Europeans consider themselves godlike in their rationalism and science. God is the Supreme Being; all else must be inferior." This is a religious argument. So, I think this third point which prompted me to think about Eurocentrism is the matters concerned with identity, religion and culture. I have come across the same opposition against the "European thought" such as science, mathematics etc. among some people with Nationalist sentiments in my India, too. The Islamic problem of identity and religion, and their struggle against "the West" in the Middle-East also can be looked at from the same perspective. However, isn't it ridiculous to look at every thing European, including modern science, sharing a common ground and cling obstinately to culture and identity?

In my short search to find out what was Eurocentrism, I came across another interesting fact: Eurocentrist attitude towards Indian mathematics. Forget the nonsense of the Vedic Mathematics, which is a system "consisting of a few isolated tips, totally lacking in coherence and conceptual utility" [4] or "is only an assortment of tricks, based on simple algebraic principles" [5], and whose vedic credentials are disputed. We are talking about the "real" Indian mathematics. An overview of the Indian and Kerala mathematics of ancient times, and how the European historians had neglected and rejected to recognize the Indian contribution to mathematics, is given in Indian Mathematics: Readdressing the Balance [6] by Ian G. Pearce. This, I think, a very good and acceptable example of Eurocentrism.

I would like to end this post by discussing what the Slovenian leftist intellectual Prof. Slavoj Zizek [7] given to the online magazine Bad Subjects. He admits the existence of Eurocentrism and the Christian influence on it (even otherwise, there is no dispute on its existence or the Christian influence; but on what grounds can we attack it is the question). But he says that, as modern humans, we can't help accepting the concept of "universalism", which is clearly a European proposal, influenced by Christianity. Universalism is an attempt to show the world that there is something applicable to every human being, in any culture, religion and ideology. For example, the concept of human well-being or ethics, is universal. If you define separate ethics for Europeans, Indians, Native Indians, Christians, Hindus, Muslims and the Buddhists, then we end up in chaos (the modern world is in such a chaos now!); we'll not be able to define it! I remember Erich Fromm proposing the same idea of universalism in his book Man for Himself. 

I think the only answer to the human problem is by accepting the axiom of universalism. More than belief, identity and culture, we have to accept universalism, when defining at least the concept of human well-being. Similarly, we must accept the European(?) notion of objectivity, at least in science, so that its pursuit is satisfied. However, when these concepts are applied to human society, I think we must be careful. There, humanity, not objectivity or materialistic view, is important. Differing from Russell Means I would say that Marxism is not materialistic. It is, on the contrary, to look at the humans as humans, not as workers, and to free them from the exploitations of the forced labour and the powerful class. Marxism dreams [8] of a world, where every human being is a poet!  We can argue its Utopian edge, whether China or Soviet Union could materialize this vision, etc. sometime else.

At the same time, we must not eradicate the culture and identity of some race or ethnic group, and any attempt to do so will meet adverse and dangerous results. Moreover, concepts of universality is not only European or Christian; every other culture or religion contains it, in some way or the other. We must assimilate the good points from the individual cultures, after scrutiny, and dream of the rise of a modern, intellectual (more modern and intellectual than us) race of humanity.

References:

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-FaXD_igv4

[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-OtVS-icNc

[3] http://www.dickshovel.com/Banks.html

[4] S. G. Dani, "'Vedic Maths' : facts and myths", One India One People, Vol 4/6, January 2001, pp. 20-21, available online http://www.math.tifr.res.in/~dani/ .

[5] S. G. Dani, "Vedic Mathematics" : a dubious pursuit, published in Newsletter of the Ramanujan Mathematical Society, available online http://www.math.tifr.res.in/~dani/ .

[6] http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/Projects/Pearce/index.html

[7] http://bad.eserver.org/issues/2002/59/zizek.html

[8] Erich Fromm, Marx's Concept of Man, 1961.

Stupid AMMA

Shameful, they call it AMMA -- a word that symbolizes love and unselfish service. By AMMA, I mean the "Association of Malayalam Movie Artists".  They embarrassed all the Malayalis by keeping themselves away from the ONAM celebration function organized by the Govt. of Kerala to honor the great actor Kamal Hassan [1].  AMMA says that Kamal is not a Malayali, and the Govt. of Kerala should choose a Malayali actor to honor rather than a Tamil actor.  This is a blunder -- a Himalayan blunder.  Fortunately, other associations in the Malayalam film industry did not subscribe to AMMA's views but actively participated in the program.

Kerala Chief Minister V.S. Achuthananthan honoring Kamal Hassan on 22 Aug, 2010, at Thiruvananthapuram. (Photo courtesy Mathrubhumi Malayalam daily)

In a larger perspective, the AMMA's argument caters to nothing less but the narrow-minded regionalism, which is otherwise unheard in Kerala.  This attitude is always destructive.  The Chief Minister V.S. Achuthananthan may be right to say that the Malayali actors are coveting only fame and recognition; they have no respect for the true art.  We know this from the recent experience.  The golden age of Malayalam cinema was in the 80's and 90's.  Those days are gone.  To save Malayalam cinema from the grave peril of forgetfulness, new talents are to rise.  Then, the old, sterile idiots will be wiped out forever.  For the sake of the art I wish this happens soon.

[1] Mathrubhumi news -- 23/08/2010

A Lesson on Discrimination and Education

Thanks to Swapna (visit her here: http://swapnaravindran.blogspot.com/) I went through the following website and gained some insights into a few things, especially, social discrimination and education.  The web-link is http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divided/.  The story is exciting: in 1968, after Martin Luther King was assassinated, Jane Elliott,a school teacher, finds it difficult to explain her third-grade students why a national hero was assassinated suddenly.  She does not know how to explain social discrimination to those small kids, but is inventive enough (very much!) to find a way out -- that is, to make them experience it.  She divides her class into two -- those with blue eyes and those with brown eyes.  Then she tells the class that the blue-eyed people are superior to the brown-eyed ones, and make rules to treat the students separately, where all the rules are advantageous to blue-eyed people.  She observes the students, their behaviour and reactions.  The next day she tells the class that in fact it was the brown-eyed people superior than the blue-eyed ones, and reverts all the rules.  The revelations of her study were startling.  Those who were treated as superior started to behave that way and performed well in the tasks assigned to them, while other group grew sad first, angry later, and performed poorly.  In this way, the teacher was trying to prove that (or learn that) social discrimination is evil and creates antagonism among people.  She also was successful to help the students experience the effects of discrimination themselves.  She was also successful in finishing this experiment peacefully, teaching the lesson to the students positively, and bringing back the harmony among the students that prevailed before the experiment started.

Her experiment is not only a lesson on social discrimination, but also in education: how to be a good teacher, how to focus on the lesson rather than emotion.  For example, she has repeated this experiment on several groups of students and adults, and once when applied on a group of inmates in a prison, the adults reacted very badly.  She maintained her composure, responded logically, without losing her focus on the subject -- that is, what she wanted to prove or teach.  These classes are recorded in video and are available in the website.  I suggest everyone watch these videos and take the lessons home.

A Personal Experience:
Regarding discrimination, after watching the videos I can recall how similar my feelings were when treated as inferior on a few situations earlier, especially as a boy.  I still remember an occasion when one of my family members compared me with some children who were around, during a party, citing they were more cheerful and smarter than me.  That person said it was because they were English medium students (I was doing my school in my mother tongue -- Malayalam).  Ever since, I thought I was inferior to every English medium student.  It was a really bad feeling, rather painful and shameful -- a feeling of inferiority.  Though I had long forgotten this incident, I remembered it two or three years ago when a person, after talking at length with me in English, asked which medium I finished my school in.  I said it was Malayalam.  And he was astonished and gave me a strange look, partly in doubt and partly in amazement.  I asked the reason.  He told me that I spoke good English, I finished my post-graduation in a top engineering college of India, and besides, I was planning for higher studies.  He continued that he could not believe that a person educated in vernacular language could do so.  These are his comments.  I'm not here to say that I am smart, but to point out a wrong belief prevailing among the people -- that people who are schooled in their local language are inferior to English medium students!  See how this belief becomes a source of social discrimination.  Just after writing this, I am reminded of our great former President: Dr. K. R. Narayanan, who struggled and made his way from the lowest strata of the society, finally to become the President of India; I used to admire him very much.

In this world there are more stupid reasons to discriminate people.  In India, they are religion, caste, colour, local language, and so on.  While religion, caste etc. are universal sources of discrimination, local language should be typically Indian, I feel.  Indians are not a single people; they are divided as Malayalis, Tamils, Kannadigas, Telugus, Marathis, Kashmiris, Panjabis, and so on. Or, even as North Indians and South Indians.  To handle the Indian situation, to impart knowledge to Indian students, to keep the harmony between our people, I think, we need thousands of teachers like Jane Elliott.

Dialectical Materialism and Bachchan

"Since Amitabh Bachchan is the brand ambassador for Modi's Gujarat government, he is not fit to become Kerala's brand ambassador" --CPI(M).

I don't understand the logic. If the aversion is against Modi, what Amitab has to do with him? If it is against the capitalist concepts of marketing and brand ambassador, then, again, what Amitab has to do with it? The logic against capitalism and industry did not work when West Bengal invited Tata to start the Nano manufacturing plant in their state. WB is also ruled by CPI(M)!

Boy, dialectical materialism is sometimes hard to understand! My limited intellect tells me: "may god save CPI(M)".

Any way, it is very bad to insult a great actor like Amitab in the name of "Dialectic Materialism". Amitab should've been excluded before inviting him. The image now is that CPI(M) lacks integrity.

Women's Bill: The First Step

Indian Rajya Sabha passes with 191 against 1 votes "the women's bill" for reservation up to 33% for women in the parliament seats. Now the Lok Sabha should pass the same for it to become effective; will it happen?

"Now the fight is no longer between the boys, but between us--girls": Sushma and Brinda celebrating the moment. (photo courtsey to The Hindu daily, March 10, 2010).

A reason to laugh: Constitutional Rights; Fabrication; Twist; and Forgery.

Rathore refused to speak to the media, saying, “Only if you have the constitutional right to make me speak, I will talk."

The Hindu, Dec 31, 2009.

Does a 14 year old girl, who is a budding tennis player, living in India, have the constitutional rights to grow up, playing tennis, leading a successful career and a happy life, with her parents and brother, or does she have the constitutional rights at least to dream so, without having been raped and harassed, and finally prompted to commit suicide, by a person who knows and talks about the constitutional rights, like you for example, Mr. Rathore sir? Does a 14 year old boy, living in India, have constitutional rights to register a complaint against a police officer who raped his sister, without the fear of being charged with fake cases and humiliated in the public and the police station? I am an ignorant, so do I ask these questions.

[Rathore's] wife Abha, who is also his lawyer in the case...alleged that “fabricated, twisted and forged” allegations were being presented by the family of the victim in the case, in which Rathore was sentenced to six months in jail. 

The Hindu, Dec 31, 2009.

Ms. Abha, possibly you know that the victim has a brother. When the case against your husband was going on, the brother, who was just 14 years old, was "framed" and a number of "twisted and forged" cases were charged against him by your husband, who was the DGP of Haryana, and his men. That young boy not only faced "fabricated, twisted and forged" allegations, but was undergone horrendous torture. We would like to hear your valuable comments on this, not as a lawyer, nor as Rathore's wife, but as a civilized human being.

Mr. Rathore, I don't hate you, because you are just a human being. But I just would like to remind you that you are a grave shame to humanity. And you know it... you know that you are guilty!

Dear reader (if there is any), what do you feel? Aren't these people making a mockery of all of us? Do you feel hurt, or shame, or nothing at all? Or, do you, like me, just feel like laughing?

Tamil Nadu's "activity based learning" gets recognition from China

Yet another reason to smile: "China seeks state expertise on activity based learning method" (ref. The Hindu, Front page, Nov 16, 2009, http://www.hindu.com/2009/11/16/stories/2009111657980100.htm).

Tamil Nadu government and education department can be very proud of this, along with the central government; and thus, all Indians can too. The Hon. Adviser, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, Tamil Nadu, Mr. M.P. Vijayakumar says "... The Chinese delegation was impressed with the way our students of government schools were enthusiastic in classrooms because of the interactive learning and teaching style". Once again, this proves the importance and efficacy of activity based learning.

Kerala has a state designed system of similar kind for government schools. It is called District Primary Education Programme (DPEP) and is supported by the World Bank. People were very scared of this system, and still they feel that this system will only spoil the education of the children who study in government schools. They feel that the rich people will send their children to private schools, where DPEP is not established, and the poor students have to "suffer from DPEP". And they feel that teaching students through "dancing, singing, collecting all the unwanted stuff from the surroundings, etc." will make them morons!

I don't know what is the difference between the activity based learning in Tamil Nadu and DPEP. However, I believe, from my own experience, that learning by doing is more effective than learning from the usual lectures and through writing exams. If I take the sum of all what I have learned, say in engineering, the amount I learned from lectures will be insignificantly small; I learned more myself by direct reading, thinking, experimenting, and discussing with my peers.

I hope things will change and education system will improve. In fact, I know teachers who are steadfast in changing their own teaching methods to make learning process more effective. However, sadly, a vast majority still believes that "we can only teach, it is the student's responsibility to read the books and learn by himself/herself. And if they do not come up to a good level, it is because they don't have aptitude and ability, or because they don't work hard".

I wish to quote what Dr. K. B. M. Namboodiripad, who is the dean of Amrita School of Engineering, Kollam, used to tell us, when I was a lecturer there: "So far teachers have been focusing on the quality of their teaching. Our objective is to shift the focus from teaching to learning". How thrilling, intelligent, wise and moving are these words! Aren't they? Yes, like those of Karl Marx's: "Philosophers have defined the world in many ways. The point is to change it".

--Sandeep Palakkal

Tears, silence and some pessimism

On October 5th, 2009, I  woke up to the terrible news of  a huge flood that badly affected Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.  The photograph in the front page of The Hindu daily was very much disturbing.  No other photo of any calamity or anything else has ever wounded me so deeply before.  Expressing courtesy to The Hindu, let me add a copy of the same here; it is small and of low resolution, unlike the one in the hard copy of the newspaper.  The same, along with that day's news is available here: http://www.hindu.com/2009/10/05/stories/2009100557090100.htm.
The caption reads like this: "SHATTERED HOPE: A woman cries on seeing her submerged house at P. Garlapadu village, about 180 km from Hyderabad, in Mahabubnagar district of Andhra Pradesh on Sunday".

I invite you to take a close look at the picture, see the heartbreaking sorrow on her face.  This is not from a movie that I watch sometime: this is real, so chillingly real.  I don't know why I was deeply hurt by it...  I sat on my bed, wordless, looking at the picture for quite a while.  My mind was trying to imagine what all agonies were going on in  that poor woman's mind.  She must be one from that vast majority of the Indian population who struggle for their everyday meal, who don't have time, knowledge, patience and privilege to think about what people like me are worried about: faster internet connection, technology revolution, IT parks, economic recession, the poor quality of roads, whether Shashi Tharoor was right to use the word "cattle class", whether drinking coco-cola was unhealthy, if Indian movies are up to the mark from the international perspective, whether "The Name of the Rose" is the best novel I've ever read, whether ancient Indian contribution to science and mathematics is rightly acknowledged, whether finding water in moon was important to science at all, what are the best skills an engineer should possess, and so on.  All she used to worry about was just the everyday meal, not even about her children's education or diet, for they were too luxurious for her to afford.  Now, she has lost everything --- everything she has built on through years of hard work, which she can't even dream of doing again.  The loss of all hopes, all dreams, and the knowledge that she has no chance of being happy ever again... a bunch of emotions this emptiness can create in you --- this is what I can read on her face.  She, as her belongings, is encountering a horrifying state of oblivion from which there is no escape.  All she can do is just cry helplessly --- and that is what she is doing.  I feel deeply wounded, very deeply wounded....  I am more and more ashamed thinking of the privileges I am enjoying in this world, and all my complaints, anxieties, self-pride, self-esteem, self-respect, are belittled and silenced at once in front of her tears.

Time and again, we have said that India is yet to grow like the US or UK or France or Malaysia etc., that we don't have good facilities, that our people have no civic sense, that we have no self-respect and so on.  Now I understand the cold reality of the Indian situation, or broadly the human condition on earth.  And I understand my nation, its limitations and its poverty unconditionally.  I am just silenced, and I have no more complaints but only an inner awareness of a new enlightenment on the need to make India, not a super power, a hub of technology and science and business, but, at least, a place for humans to live, loving each other, without the need for  an unjustifiably herculean effort to do so.  She will be (is already) an inspiration for me throughout my life.

--Sandeep Palakkal

On Mullaperiyar and then, on an old brotherhood: continued...

To my previous article "on Mullaperiyar and then, on an old brotherhood", I would like to add something.  This issue should be seen in the light of the recent flood in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, and the Telungana Rashtra Samithi chief K. Chandrashekhara Rao's allegation that it was due to the bad and unscientific irrigation works ('Jalayagnam') motivated by bribery and corruption of the late Y.S.R. Reddy-led Congress government that was truly responsible for it, and not the nature's fury.  Whether this allegation is true is yet to be established.  However, taking a disillusioned look at the presence of corruption in the Indian government offices and politics, it may be reasonable to argue that there is a significant probability that this allegation could be true, or something like this can happen.  Forget the corruption story.  Think if something similar happens in Kerala due to the raising of the water level as TN advocates.  Think how horrifying it would be.  Think how much damage it can cause, not only to the lives of the human beings living around the dam, but to the relationship between the states and its peoples!  It will be a great damage to India as a nation.  It is time to take a responsible decision and to act.

On Mullaperiyar and then, on an old brotherhood

Foreword: I am afraid this is a long note, and if a reader does not have the patience to read it fully, it is not surprising. In that case, I urge you to read the end part, for a partial read may result in misunderstandings.

I was wondering about the ongoing dispute between the Kerala and Tamil Nadu governments (luckily not peoples) on the Mullaperiyar dam.  This very dam is inside the Kerala state, but the dam and the surrounding areas are owned by Tamil Nadu (TN).  TN wants to increase the water storage level to 142 feet from the current (I am not sure if it is still current) 136 feet, a move that Kerala opposes, citing that the dam is not strong enough to withstand this and that the surrounding area is heavily crowded by humans; human safety is more important.  Kerala is ready to build a new dam, which TN can continue to use.  But, for some reason or the other, TN does not agree with this proposition.  Kerala was asked to maintain the 142 feet water level by the Hon. Supreme court of India in 2006.  However, the later studies on the safety of the dam, conducted independently by two teams comprising the professors from IIT Roorkee and IIT Delhi, both concluded that the dam was "hydrologically unsafe".  TN has rejected this report, saying that "the study by IITs can't be relied upon", and that another study by the state (TN) has shown that the dam was safe!  I personally don't understand the logic behind this argument.  Kerala has repeatedly informed the Hon. Supreme court of India that it was "more concerned with the safety of our people" (The Hindu, Feb 12, 2009).  And, TN has rejected (on Feb 12, 2009) the Supreme court’s (not Kerala government's) proposal to form an expert committee to examine if the dam can withstand the pressure of the raised water level. Why is this (I will call 'negative') attitude from TN?

A couple of days back TN has gone to the Supreme court again, this time to stay the permission the central government (through the Union Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh) has given to Kerala to conduct a survey and an investigation in the Periyar Tiger Reserve to find out the possibilities of constructing a new dam in place of the existing Mullaperiyar dam.  What is ironic is that, Ms. Jayalalitha, who is the main political foe of Mr. Karunanidhi, the Hon. Chief Minister (CM) of TN, has hailed this decision of the government!  To see the irony, you must remember that Jayalalitha's appreciation of Karunanidhi's decision came just one day after she had criticized the state's (TN) and the center's move to help the "stateless" Srilankan Tamils who took refuge in India to get settled here by making them permanent citizens.  In reply, DMK (the political front led by Karunanidhi) criticized Jayalalitha "for politicizing the issue" of Srilankan Tamils.  Reading between the lines, it may be relevant to ask a question:  is Mullaperiyar issue a matter of prestige than reason among the political parties of TN?  Because, in all other issues they fight each other, but only in this issue they "stand together"!

Well, I don't intend to construe the situation in any way.  I just asked a question, that's all.  I know how bold a stand Karunanidhi had taken in the past regarding the RAMASETHU issue.  He had stayed with reason and scientific logic than religious feelings and mythology.  He did not change his stand even after most of the Indian leaders deplored his comments in the later days.  This demands great respect.  I wish if he takes the similar stand in the Mullaperiyar issue also.  To grow above ones own biases and prejudices and stand with the logic is not only heroic but very much required to maintain amity between the societies, and we expect this quality more from the leaders because their responsibilities are greater.

Now let me tell you why I suddenly wrote this article.  There are mainly two reasons: out of concern and out of love.  First, let me explain my concern.  Today, Kerala's water resource minister Mr. N.K. Premachandran said that the response of the TN's recent move for a stay on the survey will be "strong protest".  I don't understand the logic behind this either.  First of all, there is a speculation that the TN's attitude is due to political reasons than logical.  In  that case, how can a "strong protest", however strong that may be, help?  If I were the minister, I would have understood the special nature of the situation and tried in all possible ways (through discussions, dialogues, meetings and every democratic and diplomatic means) to convince the TN government and its people the seriousness and truth of the situation and the need for constructing a new dam at the earliest.  I would have also listened to all concerns of TN regarding the new dam and taken measures to alleviate them.  Our politicians have to mature yet.  Now the second reason for writing this note: love.  It is rather brotherhood or love between the brothers.  Kerala minister Mr. M.A. Baby came to Chennai recently for participating in an Onam celebration of Chennai Malayalees.  He asked the Malayali community here and to the people of TN to uphold the long standing brotherhood between them.  And it was in the recent past that Karunanidhi declared Onam a holiday immediately (just in three days, the Hindu newspaper says) at the request of the Chennai Malayali community.  There is an obvious long standing relationship between the states.  But the recent disputes (besides the Mullaperyar, we have the Southern railway division issue also) are quite disturbing.  When one looks into the comments by Malayalis and Tamils in websites and groups discussing these disputes, there is a split.  Well, I don't want to mention those comments here, which will only malign my blog.  On the other hand, the objective is to forget them and reaffirm the age-old ties. It is only through  amicable, diplomatic and democratic proceedings that we can sort out this (seemingly simple) issue; this needs a lot of discipline from both parties.  I hope this will happen soon and my country (India, not just Kerala) will be safe and out of any internal splits.

This is my personal view, which is obviously not very educated, for I am not an expert in all these; I am just an engineer(ing student).  I have not given a precise list of references I have used to write this article; by and large, it is the Hindu newspaper's online contents and some other chhotta-motta websites.  The article about the Mullaperiyar dispute in wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mullaperiyar_Dam) has been a good read; the references therein are also very helpful.  For a comprehensive history of the dispute, which I did not mention in the article, see R. Krishnakumar's article in Frontline at http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl1724/17240420.htm.

If someone find out any kind of bias or prejudice in the above article, please convey the same to me.  I hope there is none.  I don't look at Kerala and Tamil Nadu differently, and so not at Tamils and Malayalis.  I love both.  If Malayalam is my great mother, Tamil is my great grandmother.  And  greater is my beloved nation: India.

--Sandeep Palakkal.