Justice And Civil Society Nurture Each Other

Homayun Taba





In a world where voices are getting `shriekier', each trying to shut the other out, where narratives thrive on combativeness on our daily TV screen, the light of civil society grows dimmer by the day . What are we to do?
They asked the wise Loqman, this cultivated man of unusual civility and character, from whom he had learnt `adab', civility? He said, from the `be-adabaan', the uncivil; whatever seemed `naa-pasand', reprehensible, i refrained from doing.Uncivil means distasteful, rude, abusive, intrusive, disruptive, inconsiderate. Civility by extension implies maintaining one's poise, control of rough emotions and reactivity in inappropriate settings.
Another meaning of adab is breeding, so baa-adab is well-bred and be-adab is ill-bred. Which brings us to what Seneca says: no man is good by accident, virtue has to be learnt. We need then to look at modern day family settings and popular TV serials to see from where the next generation is picking up its civility ­ or lack of it.
An old saying goes: If a way to be Better there be; it exacts a full look at the Worst. In other words, it is also helpful to look at anti-role models, as examples of what not to do. Seneca again: “If you wish to be stripped of your vices you must get right away from the examples others set of them.“ If you notice others' errors and these serve to wake you to your own, everybody becomes a teacher to you, and the whole life becomes your classroom.
We speak of `civil society' as if it will come into being by itself, forgetting it is the deliberately chosen, collective behaviour of each citizen that creates it.In such a society both leaders and other citizens do not go in for only sensational declarations and gestures, but demonstrate their intentions in a thousand considerate small daily acts ­ in driving they signal their turn, they give pedestrians a chance to walk across, request rather than demand, talk with dignity with their juniors, are inclusive and respectful. The list is long but the values are simple to follow.
To unpack the word `civility' or `civil' we need to know that it is much deeper than the surface observances of etiquette and codes of politeness; it is all about genuine concern and a wider perspective. It calls for sensitivity and compassionate attentiveness to the next person, whoever that might be.
Civil society is marked by the degree of the core values of consideration and compassion.An unjust society , where each ks of itself and forgets the cell thinks of itself and forgets the well-being of the whole organism, cannot boast of being a civil society . The unethical, adharmic behaviour here means `only to think of oneself '. This gradually weakens and negates the rule of law, allowing more injustice to emerge. What happens next is inequality , de-humanisation and other indignities; social injustice on a large scale. Justice and civil society nurture and strengthen each other.
In the light of declining standards of social interaction, and of graciousness being in such a short supply, the fuelling of disharmonious acts should not be treated as peripheral or fringe issues. Incremental uncivil acts gnaw away at the roots of a civil society and can create irreversible damage. Each one needs to exercise affectionate solidarity not by sloganeering but by example. Civility brings decency, consideration, respect, kindness to the canvas of a civil society.

17th IASSI ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2016 9-10 December 2016, Chandigarh.

17th IASSI ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2016 9-10 December 2016, Chandigarh.

17^TH IASSI ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2016

9-10 December 2016, Chandigarh

CALL FOR PAPERS AND INVITATION FOR PARTICIPATION

Theme: Educational Development: Issues, Challenges and Opportunities

Venue: Centre for Research in Rural & Industrial Development CRRID), Chandigarh

ABOUT: The 17th Annual Conference of the Indian Association of Social Science Institutions (IASSI) for the year 2016-17 will be held during 9-10 December 2016 at the Centre for Research in Rural & Industrial Development (CRRID), Chandigarh.

For details please visit: www.iassi.org

CONTACT: 

1) Conference Organising Secretary, PROF. SUCHA SINGH GILLOrganising Secretary, IASSI Annual Conference 2016
Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development
2-A, Madhya Marg, Sector 19, Chandigarh-160019
Phones: 0172-2784133, 2725406
Email: gsuchasingh@gmail.com/sscrrid@hub.nic.in

2) Co-Conference Organising Secretary, PROF. S.K. GUPTAIndian Association of Social Science Instituions
Room No. 76, IIPA Hostel Indian Institute of Public Administration (IIPA)
IP Estate, Mahatma Gandhi Marg, New Delhi-110002

Phone: 23324581; 23356834
Email: iassi.conference@gmail.com

Source: http://iassi.org/confrence/call_for_page.html

The right to copy

In this age of copy-and-paste, plagiarism and piracy are rarely regarded as serious issues.

Who invented the revolver? I am not sure the question deserves an answer, since multiple people invented multiple things. Forced to give an answer, most people will opt for Samuel Colt. Thanks to Samuel Colt’s patent (there were separate British and US patents), he had a monopoly on manufacturing revolvers till 1856. The limited point is that because of Colt’s patents and his attempts to guard against infringement, innovations and development of firearms manufacture were impeded. Until the Colt patent expired, Smith and Wesson couldn’t do much.

Researchers agree, from a social welfare point of view, these patents did more harm than good. There is a similar hypothesis, though contested, about how patent wars impeded the initial development of aviation in the US, with the Wright brothers (holders of the patent) fighting Glenn Curtiss and others. Therefore, at the time of World War I, US airplanes weren’t good enough and the government had to enforce a patent pool. All forms of intellectual property right (IPR) protection involve a limited monopoly. That’s an incentive for placing details of the invention in the public domain and the static welfare loss (because of the monopoly) is compensated by dynamic welfare gains through new inventions and investments. The National Intellectual Property Rights Policy of May 2016 cites these arguments.

That trade-off between the static and the dynamic, the immediate short-term and the medium term, is an old debate and we have legislation (WTO, World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), bilateral, unilateral) on IPR protection. There are various forms of intellectual property — copyrights and related rights, trademarks/service marks, geographical indications, industrial designs, patents, lay-out designs of integrated circuits, plant varieties, undisclosed information. Some implementation (patents, designs, trademarks, GI-s) is with the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion and the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks, plant varieties with the agriculture ministry, integrated circuits with Department of Information Technology and biodiversity with environment and forests ministry. Finally, copyrights are with the human resource development ministry. We may have reduced all kinds of IPR to a common conceptual template, such as through the WIPO, but the two roots and antecedents are different — the Paris Convention (1883) for Protection of Industrial Property and the Berne Convention (1886) for Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. In the general discourse and debate, irrespective of legislation, we have accepted IPR more for varieties of industrial property, trade marks, industrial designs, patents, integrated circuits. We haven’t quite accepted IPR for copyright and related domains such as performing artists, recordings, broadcasters. At the back of our minds, we accept the Paris Convention stuff as inherently commercial, the Berne Convention stuff less so.

There was a recent Delhi High Court judgement, involving Delhi University and a photocopying kiosk inside the Delhi School of Economics. The kiosk prepared study packs — photocopying parts of books — and a few publishers brought an infringement case. The court dismissed the suit.
Under Section 52(1)(a), this act of photocopying was “a fair dealing with a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work”. My intention is not to get into the judgement. In any case, that is only about a very specific form of copying. How many people walk into a store and walk out with a stolen product? Barring thieves, this is a rare phenomenon. Within the set of honest people, how many have used pirated software, or downloaded and watched pirated films, musical performances and songs? Let’s ignore those who indulge in commercial counterfeiting and piracy. Barring them, even within the honest set, the number who have indulged in piracy will be high. Notice, a person will not typically steal a music CD from a store, but is quite amenable to downloading songs from the internet. Stated differently, there is a notion of theft when there is something physical or tangible, not otherwise. Copyright and related rights may assume physical form, but the notion is inherently that of something intangible and non-physical. We don’t accept these things as commercial. To the extent we accept copyright and related rights as commercial, we do it more for neighbouring rights and less for old-fashioned and narrow copyrights. Hence, plagiarism is rarely regarded as a serious issue, in this age of copy and paste.

Add to this a perception that copyrights benefit publishers, not authors (this debate on authors versus publishers goes back to the late 19th century). Books by Charles Dickens were published in the US for which he received no royalties. “Show me the distinction between such pilfering as this, and picking a man’s pocket in the street: Unless, indeed, it be, that the legislature has a regard for pocket-handkerchiefs, and leaves men’s brains, except when they are knocked out by violence, to take care of themselves.” This is a quote from Nicholas Nickleby by Dickens. Books by Edgar Allan Poe were published in Britain and he got no royalties either. Legislation for author versus publisher relationships may have improved since then, but there is still the perception that authors get little royalty from books. Those huge advances are extremely rare. An average (varies between hardback and paperback) royalty will be between 7.5 per cent and 12.5 per cent of the printed price, with a large part of that price swallowed up in the distribution chain. On royalties and sales records, few authors are happy with publishers and this undoubtedly reinforces the general impression of publishers being sharks. There is a famous economist with left-wing views. Being left-wing and anti-market, he doesn’t like IPR and vehemently argues against it. But his books always indicate the copyright is in his own name and he too rails against publishers.

The writer is member, Niti Aayog. Views are personal

Source: Indian Express, 13-10-2016

Unless social infrastructure improves, India will not get out of the hunger trap

Hunger levels in developing countries may have fallen 29% since 2000, but unfortunately, India is still rated as a country with ‘serious’ hunger levels in 2016, says the Global Hunger Index (GHI), which was released on Tuesday. It also said that the country is slated to become the world’s most populous nation in six years, and it’s crucial that it meets this milestone with a record of ensuring that the expected 1.4 billion Indians have enough nutritious food to lead healthy and successful lives. Since 2000, the country has reduced its GHI score by a quarter and has a score in 2016 of 28.5 (rank 97 of 118 countries). Recent data show that almost 40% of Indian children under five years of age are stunted compared to over 60% in the early 1990s. The GHI ranks countries based on four key indicators: Undernourishment, child mortality, child wasting and child stunting.

The report brings back the focus on the implementation of the National Food Security Act. To date, several states and Union Territories have implemented the food security law and the basic entitlement s are being delivered. However, it will not be entirely correct to say that only implementation of the Act will solve the India’s problem. This is because hunger and malnourishment are closely linked to sanitation issues. According to Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health professor Jean Humphrey, the stunting in children is not simply due to a lack of food. The constant ambush of germs and bacteria from their environment forces “these children’s bodies [to] divert energy and nutrients away from growth and brain development to prioritise infection-fighting survival,” Dr Humphrey told The New York Times.

Then there are other issues such as health, the anganwadi infrastructure and incomes of people. India’s health infrastructure is in a pitiable state and that has a direct impact on maternal health, which in turn impacts the health of children. As far as incomes are concerned, rural distress has been quite widespread in India for the last couple of years. In other words, unless and until the full social infrastructure improves, India will not be able to get out of the hunger trap.

Source: Hindustan Times, 12-10-2016

Higher-status people are more likely to whine

BLOOMBERG





Workers With Better Education And Income More Stressed & Less Happy Than Lower-Income Ones: Study

Money and education confer plenty of ad vantages in life, and re search has long shown that people who have them live healthier, longer lives and tend to have more stable, lessmonotonous jobs. But they also report feeling a lot more stress at work than people with lower salaries and fewer degrees, a recent study found.To measure stress levels during the work day , Penn State University researchers gave 122 workers living in a northeast US city Palm Pilots to carry with them on the job.Several times a day , the handheld computers prompted them to rate how stressed and how happy they felt. The idea was to measure stress in real time, rather than ask people at the end of the day , when other factors such as commutes or family obligations might influence their stress levels.
People with higher incomes and levels of education reported being about 28% more stressed and 8.3% less happy overall than workers with lower incomes and levels of education did, according to Matthew Zawadzki, now a professor at University of California-Merced, who wrote the study with Penn State professors Sarah Damaske and Joshua Smyth.
In addition to reporting be ing more stressed and less happy from moment to moment, those higher-status workers -that is, those in the top fifth of a combined measure of income and education, tending to earn at least $100,000 (approx. Rs 66.85 lakh, as on Wednesday) a year -also reported having more trouble meeting the demands of their jobs.
“These individuals who report higher stress are probably individuals who simply have more authority or decision-making duties than oth ers,“ said University of Toronto sociology professor Scott Schieman, who was not involved in the study but called it “important“ research.
The study's results certain ly don't mean low-status workers have it easier. Obviously , low-status jobs can create all sorts of problems for workers, such as making it more difficult for them to pay bills.“Even though that's caused by work, maybe it's a stressor you can leave behind for the moment when you get to work,“ said Damaske. She and her coauthors found in a 2014 study that people with lower incomes tended to report more stress at home than at work the opposite of what higher-income people reported.
Stress and happiness are also pretty subjective feelings, and people express their moods and deal with stress in different ways. Could it be that higher-status people are just more likely to whine when things don't go their way?
More research is needed, Damaske said, but the study contains a clue: In addition to answering questions, the subjects also submitted saliva so her team could measure their levels of the stress-related hormone, cortisol -and those levels didn't indicate significantly more stress among betterpaid workers.

Source: Times of India, 13-10-2016

Building Spiritual Capital For Happiness

Jaya Row





Spiritual awareness is an important component in human development.Spirituality is relating to a higher Power that is benevolent and good.Emotional people tend to align with a personal god. Intellectuals think of a transcendental Being that pervades the universe and beyond.
Children are born with a natural sense of the spiritual. Lisa Miller, psychologist, says spiritual awareness surges in adolescence. Teenagers commonly feel a loss of meaning, confidence and identity . Some try to fill the void with alcohol and drugs. A few cultivate their spiritual instincts. According to Miller's research, adolescents with a strong connection to the transcendental are 80% less likely to engage in substance abuse. A strong spiritual sense protects against depression.
Not everyone is born intelligent, has high IQ or access to education and wealth.But everyone has the Spirit in equal measure. Once you tap into the Spirit you soar above shortcomings and achieve perfection. This vast resource in human beings has been totally neglected.
In ancient India, everyone was exposed to spiritual knowledge at age seven. This led to the unique rajarishis or king-sages who were kingly externally but sagely within. When they lost their spiritual wealth they lost their kingdoms! Spiritual values will empower people and give them a sense of direction.Their talent and energies will be t used positively . Yet, there is little attempt at cultivating this most important advantage. Sages prescribed different paths to the Spirit to suit varied natures of people. The spiritual journey begins with an understanding of the world, the individual and the technique of right contact with the world.
The world is made of pairs of opposites. Pleasure-pain, joy-sorrow and honour-dishonour are all inherent features of the world. Do you ride over them or succumb to their influence? The world is in a constant flux of unpredictable change. It would be foolish to depend on the world. Even the mighty ocean liner is rocked by the waves because it rests on them. A lighthouse is unaffected as it is anchored to the ocean bed. You may live in the world, enjoy its resources and transact with it but do not depend on it. Only the Spirit is dependable.
Connect with it. Marvel at it.
same world that is now And the same world that is now traumatising you will become enjoyable.
You know only the body , mind and intellect. Rise above their limitations to experience the power, serenity and bliss of Atman, your real Self.
To be spiritual you only have to change your thinking. Do not give up your business or family . Just discard foolish concepts and false notions.
Shift from an attitude of taking to that of giving. Think of how you can add value to others, give, contribute, serve; you will receive much more in return.Grab you lose, give you gain. You will be happy and grow spiritually . At the emotional level, replace hatred, separateness and disgust with understanding, love and oneness. People will work with you, yielding success. You will be happy and desires will reduce. Intellectually , focus on the permanent. You will gain clarity and sharpness which will bring success and happiness. You will grow into a towering personality .

Dear Reader

May the divine blessings of the goddess be with you on the auspicious day of Ashtami and always!

Nine evenings of party and prayer
 May Maa always keep you in Her
May all your problems leave you
 Praise her each Navratri Day.

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