Tuesday, December 06, 2016

Let Compassion And Love Guide Your Actions

M P K Kutty

Prince Siddhartha renounced the world and went on a search for Truth when moved by the abundance of sorrow and suffering all around him. He wanted to find an answer to sufferings of the world. He became the Buddha and shared his insights with those who were willing to listen to him.In the contemporary world, there are those who respond to suffering maybe differently but with the intention of making a positive difference to those who suffer.In Gujarat, a diamond businessman, perhaps, moved by reports of suffering, did just that. His annual business turnover ran into several thousand crores of rupees. His 20-something son was welleducated. He gave him a small sum and asked him to go to Kerala, live among blue collar workers and earn his livelihood on his own.
The businessman, born in poverty in a Gujarat village, had no opportunity for a good education, having studied only up to Class V. By dint of hard work he built up his business empire dealing in diamonds. He wanted his son to gain the wisdom that one can't gain merely from formal education.
Suffering increases our sensitivity towards others who are similarly afflicted or subject to injustices of all kinds.This is one way we become compassionate. True compassion means not only feeling another's pain but also being moved to help relieve it. Human compassion binds us all. In a society where love and compassion become the guiding principles, suffering ought to cease.
Indeed the diamond businessman, who came up in life the hard way, had acquired a wisdom that mere bookish education can't give. He had learnt to share. He had distributed among his employees, 400 flats and 1,200 cars worth Rs 51crore as Deepavali gifts.
“Doing nothing for others is the undoing of one's self. We must be purposely kind and generous or we miss the best part of existence. The heart that extends itself becomes joyful. This is the great secret of inner life. We do ourselves the most good by doing something for others,“ wrote Horace Mann, the American education reformer.
If we do not do so, we are in danger of judgment. “For i was hungry and you gave nothing to eat, i was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink. I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, i needed clothes and you did not clothe me, i was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.“ (Matthew 25:42.) To that lament Jesus added: “In that you have not done it unto the least of these, my brethren, you have not done it to me.“
Glaring inequalities represent the failings of a community . It is well to recall here Aristotle's statement that poverty is the parent of revolution and crime. Peace will prevail in any society only when injustices are removed. A saint who lived in the fourth century wrote: “The bread you store up belongs to the hungry; the cloak that lies in your chest belongs to the naked; the gold you have hidden in the ground belongs to the poor.“
It is in the same spirit, that Albert Einstein had declared that the only life worth living is a life lived for others!

Monday, December 05, 2016

What makes America great?

Presidential inaugurations and commencement ceremonies are usually very emotional events. They are rites of passage that mark both an end and a new beginning in the life of a country or an individual.

As a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, I attend our commencement ceremony every year. Despite this regularity, I still become emotional as I see my students complete a phase of their lives and contemplate their future.

One of the highlights of our ceremony is a video in which several professors and public personalities read, line by line, John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address. It is a text written 56 years ago, in a different world, where the Cold War, the threat of nuclear Armageddon, and the challenges faced by so many newly independent poor states dominated policymakers’ concerns. And yet, running at under 14 minutes, it never fails to move and inspire everyone in the audience, including that half of the graduates and their families who hail from other countries, near and far.

To understand why, it is useful to recall a few of the most famous passages. For starters, there was Kennedy’s vow to defend freedom for its friends and from its enemies: “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

There was also his commitment to fight poverty: “To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required—not because the communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.”

And this commitment was part and parcel of hemispheric solidarity: “To our sister republics south of our border, we offer a special pledge—to convert our good words into good deeds—in a new alliance for progress—to assist free men and free governments in casting off the chains of poverty.”

Finally, there was Kennedy’s ethic of service on behalf of the commonwealth: “And so, my fellow Americans: Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: Ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.”

These words’ enduring emotional appeal is rooted in their embrace of a potentially difficult course of action, motivated by a pledge to uphold values shared by citizens of America and the world alike. It was this approach—one founded on a value-based system of rules, not on individual deals —that enabled the US to create and sustain a coalition of countries that could maintain peace and international cooperation.

Fast forward to today. President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign narrative was based on the assumption that the US has fallen from its former greatness. Jobs have moved to Mexico and China because weak leaders negotiated bad deals. Immigrants, mostly illegal, have taken the few jobs that remain, killing and raping in their free time. It follows that the US needs a president who will put America first and knows how to extract the best deals for it at every opportunity, using the country’s full might to advance its interests.

I doubt that an inaugural address based on these ideas will awe and inspire many audiences at commencement ceremonies, especially where many of those in attendance are citizens of other countries. Such a speech will encourage no one to “bear any burden” for the sake of any universal principle or challenge, be it human rights or global warming. It will not exhort us to focus on something bigger than ourselves.

Over the course of history, very few powerful states have developed a sense of themselves as being based not on ethnic heritage, but on a set of values that all citizens can live by. For the US, it was “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. For the Soviet Union, it was international proletarian solidarity—“workers of the world, unite!” The European Union is based on universal values and principles that are so attractive that 28 countries have opted to join it; and, Brexit notwithstanding, some halfdozen more are trying to get in.

By contrast, a great and powerful Russia or China today—or the Third Reich in its time—may be able to garner the support of its citizens; but such states cannot constitute the basis of an international order that others find appealing, because they are based on a vision of themselves that does not encompass others.

The basis of America’s greatness and ability to lead the world stems from universal values that underpin a set of rules that uphold the others’ rights, not an America that tries to base its greatness on a set of deals aimed at getting the better of others. Such an America will find its ability to lead the world compromised by a shortage of goodwill and an abundance of distrust. Other countries will huddle together to protect themselves from the US bully.

If Trump really wants to make America great again, he should ponder how his inaugural address will sound to a global audience 56 years from now. Will it inspire the Class of 2073 the way Kennedy’s address still inspires graduates today?

Source: Mintepaper, 5-12-2016

Economic and Political Weekly: Table of Contents

Vol. 51, Issue No. 49, 03 Dec, 2016

Editorials

Fast Losing Currency

Firing Up the Fireworks Debate

Comment

Fidel and Cuba

Bernard D'Mello

Margin Speak

Demonetisation

Anand Teltumbde

Commentary

Book Reviews

Space Matters

Srikumar Chattopadhyay

Gripping Narrative but Just One Shade of Truth

Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal

Special Articles

Ambedkar's Gita

Meera Nanda

Financial Inclusion in India

Jyoti Prasad Mukhopadhyay

Minority Claims and Majoritarian Anxieties

Manisha Sethi

Discussion

Biased and Prejudiced View of Sociologists

K L Sharma

Criticism without Academic Substantiation

Vivek Kumar

Current Statistics

EPW Research Foundation

Postscript

1984 ≠ 2014 + 2016

Nayanika Mathur

Exploiting the Cache of Fame

Ishaan Saha

Last Lines

Letters

Bose Revisited

Shankar Chatterjee

Discourses of Subregional Connectivity

Sujan Ghosh

In the Name of ‘Common Man’

Arup Kumar Sen

The Will to Change

Ketan K Shah

- See more at: http://www.epw.in/journal/2016/49-0#sthash.bTEtxjw2.dpuf

Prepare for the civil service exam online

The website theupsconline.com offers a free and accessible platform for candidates attempting the UPSC exam to discuss and clarify their doubts

The Internet today is choc-a-bloc with education apps and platforms attempting to cater to a wide range of students appearing for all sorts of examinations. The competition appears to be severe in this market and so, on the business side of things, each app or website tries its best to secure a decent market share and develop a revenue model that is both sustainable and customer-friendly. Curiously, against the din of this commotion is a small, yet significant space like theupsconline.com where words like revenue model and market share are the last priorities.

Founded by Somashekar Hulmani, this website, designed to be the go-to space for those writing the civil service exams, is accessible to all for free. And Somashekar, who set it up just more than a month ago, insists that he would like to keep the website free in the future as well. The reason for this, he says, is his motivation to set up such a platform in the first place. "I'm a civil service aspirant myself. I've gone up till the interview round but unfortunately did not make it after that. During my preparation for the exams, I felt that there is a need for a space that civil service aspirants can turn to for guidance with ease. There are plenty of coaching centres yes, but not everyone finds them accessible-- either because of the fee some of them charge or because many villages and towns are cut off from these centres,” he explains.

Moreover, he explains, if you want to get your answers/answersheets evaluated, often, one finds it difficult to find an expert who will do it immediately. The cost too is quite high for the same, he says. “This is why I thought there should be a platform where students preparing for the exam can log on, post their questions and get answers in real time."

The inspiration for the platform, Somashekar says, also came from his wife who is currently preparing for the UPSC exams. "She would ask questions during her preparation and we would both try to figure out the answers. I realised that there would be many others like us who would like to be a part of a larger peer group and get their doubts clarified in an easy manner," he adds.

So, with the support of his wife, his friend Tejas Jain who designed the site and a few more friends, some of whom are already civil servants, Somashekhar set uptheupsconline.com.

The website which has a pretty basic template is primarily dedicated to resolving doubts. "We currently have an expert team of 7-8 people who answer questions that are posted on the site. The problem often is not what the answer itself is, but how to write that answer. So, it helps that there are people who have successfully attempted the exam and are telling others how to do it," he explains.

There is a separate section called ‘ASK A QUESTION’ for this. Then there is a compilation of all the recent discussions on the site under the ‘ALL ACTIVITY’ button. Apart from this, there is another section for a group chat and even links to study materials.

“A civil service aspirant has a number of questions at every stage: whether he or she requires coaching, how does one undertake self-study, how to draw up a timetable and so on. We have received all sorts of queries from basic logistical planning to higher conceptual ones,” says Somashekhar.

“There is another aspect that makes the UPSC exam stand out,” he continues. “The preparation is better if you study together in a group. The Internet has its own way of making this happen by reducing boundaries and distance between cities and between experts and students,” explains Somashekhar.

But has he experienced any compulsions to charge a fee?

“I cannot say I haven’t thought about it. The website is pretty simple also because the resources at our disposal are limited. We set aside a part of our salary and try our best to keep it running. We are open to getting more experts on board to answer and compile responses; the only criterion is that they should have attempted the Mains at least once. We even conducted a poll on the site on whether we should introduce a fee for our services. But I personally would like to keep it free because there is a need for an accessible platform like this for the UPSC exam whose aspirants come from a variety of backgrounds.”

Source: The Hindu, 29-11-2016

Due diligence, unsafe drugs

Good intentions alone are not enough to secure the public interest. For governments, the manner in which it is protected is equally vital. The Delhi High Court verdict quashing all notifications banning the manufacture and sale of 344 Fixed Dose Combination (FDC) drugs is a lesson in how not to administer a regulatory law. The ban on combination drugs that have little therapeutic value was undoubtedly done for bona fide reasons. However, the government could not convince the court that the ban was valid despite statutory bodies such as the Drug Testing Advisory Board (DTAB) and the Drugs Consultative Committee (DCC) not being involved in the process. There is little doubt that a number of combination drugs should be taken off the shelf. The government believes, as do many health activists, that some combinations are unsafe and/or promote antibiotic resistance, while others lack particular therapeutic value, justification or advantage. Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw has correctly refrained from going into the merits of the ban, and has chosen to subject to scrutiny the process by which the decision was arrived at. While concluding that the ban was invalid because the power under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act was exercised without consulting the DTAB and DCC, he has found that the government went about the process in a haphazard manner.

Initially it was noted that in the case of FDC drugs for which manufacturing licences were granted by State licensing authorities between September 1988 and October 2012, the process was done without any approval from the Drugs Controller. When they applied afresh to the Centre, on being asked to do so, their applications were not considered by the Drugs Controller; instead, the Centre formed 10 committees. When these panels failed to consider all the applications, another one, the Kokate Committee, was formed. However, this panel went into the question whether these drugs posed a risk to consumers or lacked therapeutic value and justification. Based on its report, the Centre issued notifications banning these FDCs. In effect, the Centre seemed to have delegated its power to ban drugs to a non-statutory committee, when the Act itself provided for expert bodies through which technical aspects of administering the law were to be considered. The government ought to have been more mindful of the processes. It is possible that an appeal will be filed on the legal aspects of the judgment, but the real lesson from the episode concerns governance, and not the law alone.

Source: The Hindu, 5-12-2016

It’s time to brush up on your science fiction

Paul Krugman would stand in line to meet Charlie Stross. The Nobel Prize winning economist who spoke at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit last week is a sci-fi buff and, with the conviction of a true zealot looking for an argument (I’ve been there, so trust me), told me that the British writer is the best science fiction writer alive. This was at a pre-summit dinner and the small group that had gathered around Krugman – managers of private equity funds, CEOs of global and local companies – didn’t really seem to care. Later that evening, we briefly discussed the economics and probability of commercial space travel of the kind that could enable the colonisation of Mars.

That we were having a serious discussion on what was once a popular theme in sci-fi (Mars books are legion) is a sign of the times. Towards the end of the tumultuous decade that started in 2008, and characterised by flat-lining incomes, the rise of authoritarian leaders selling simple (and usually shallow, but very popular) ideas, and general unhappiness and strife, it is clear that everyone, including economists, needs to accept that the future is upon us. Indeed, in recent years we have seen a profusion of literature trying to understand what would happen if the homo economicus (or the economic and rational human) is replaced by machina economicus (an interpretative translation would be the perfectly rational machine).

For the benefit of those who have been away on Mars, let’s make a list. In the ongoing decade since 2008, Artificial Intelligence has finally stopped being a buzzword and become reality thanks to what is called deep learning (simply put, teaching a machine to think and learn); self-driving cars have been launched; advances in gene-editing have put the 100-year life (borrowed from the title of a book on what longevity means to life and work by Andrew Scott and Lynda Gratton) within our grasp, and AR and VR (augmented and virtual reality) are disrupting everything from pornography to education (although, sometimes, pornography is educative). I’ve left out the more ordinary innovations including homes that think, phones that talk back, robots that greet you at stores, transparent yet secure ledgers of everything (as some have described Blockchain) or household 3D printers.

Pause for a moment and think. And then, if you want to, trivialise. I am told there are no queues in Mars.

I’d like to call this an ex machina moment for businesses. Start-ups and incumbents that understand the power and utility of these technologies will be able to write the new rules of business and define not just industry standards but industries themselves. For instance, artificial intelligence could take away 60-80% of service sector jobs. That voice at the other end of the line when you call your bank (if you are one of those who still calls banks) could soon belong to an intelligent agent. How soon? Yesterday.

Read: The complex issue of AI and ethics

Where would we find such companies? Actually, all around us, and even in India (and I use the word even not as an expression of disparagement but with a sense of pride because one would typically expect to find such companies in the US, Japan, or the country with the most digital society in the world, South Korea). Within a 25km radius of the Hindustan Times newsroom in central Delhi is a start-up that makes industrial robots. There are a few dozen companies in the country working in the area of artificial intelligence, including a handful that would be recognised as true AI companies anywhere in the world. Mint has been profiling some of these companies as part of its Mint40 series, an ongoing listing that also covers popular companies that do not use cutting edge technologies but which could dominate the country’s business landscape in the 2020s. As the name suggests, the listing will have 40 companies – 40 companies that could well constitute an index of the future.

In the 1990s, pharma firms such as Dr Reddy’s Laboratories and IT companies such as Infosys were among the bright lights in this landscape (although both companies were founded earlier). In the 2000s, it was telcos such as Bharti Airtel Ltd. And in the 2010s, this role was taken up by the e-commerce marketplaces. Capital and the best human resources gravitated towards them. They received glowing (and sometimes gushing) media coverage. And they were valued disproportionately.

This doesn’t mean today’s large companies will simply roll over and die. The smarter ones among these – one example is industrial conglomerate General Electric – are already re-inventing themselves, using their existing and obvious advantages to innovate, define standards, even acquire hot start-ups. But, at the risk of repetition, disproportionate value will be created by start-ups in these new areas.

That’s why smart venture capitalists, analysts, journalists and job-seekers would do well to brush up on their science fiction.

R Sukumar is editor, Mint.

Source: Hindustan Times, 5-12-2016

What Is It That Makes A Good Person?

Binaifer Dulani

I recently took an `Are you a good person?' online test. It came with a statutory warning that this test might change my worldview about myself. I took it anyway. Had i ever lied, taken anything that didn't belong to me, looked at anyone with a feeling of lust? Yes. Yes. And yes.Different charges were levied on me based on God's word in different scriptures. By the end of the test i should have felt pretty sad about failing the `good person' test and immediately signed up for those religious readings; but funnily that didn't happen and soon one thing became very clear to me.We are all striving to be the best version of ourselves. And our best version will always be seen through our own lens. Sure, the Bible may say `Never take God's name in vain' or the Bhagwad Gita might say, `People who prepare food for a personal sense of enjoyment, verily eat only sin' but honestly, i don't see much wrong with either. And that's why the scriptures may often fail to guide our path because we can only internalise so much without reasoning with it.
How do i ensure a `good' upbringing for my child when what makes a good person itself is punctuated with a host of discrepancies? By drawing parallels? Sure. But even saintly people like Gandhiji would somewhere fall short. He heralded the nation to freedom with his values of ahimsa and satyagraha but he also stole from his family a father figure to become the nation's father. I could surely expose my child to the right kind of stimuli movies and music. But then again the social fabric of society itself is so fragile. While frugality was once revered, today it is materialism live a good life they say, value what has been bestowed upon you. Or do what parents have done for generations; exposed their kids to mythology and let the gods and goddesses do the job. But i wouldn't want my kid to grow up thinking that giving his wife an `agnipariksha' is accep table. Or going through with it is the right thing either.
Fact is, we can aim to be a good person only within the context of our own lives. A daughter who once had a toxic relationship with her mother can aim to be a good person only by learning from it and ensuring a healthy relationship with her own kid. And that's why awareness is what makes a person, a good person.
Every mistake we commit and learn from is a leap forward in our spiritual growth. However, it is easy to get lost in a web of unhealthy coping mechanisms. By turning to rationalisation for comfort `What i'm doing to my daughter is what even i went through with my mother and that's just how mother-daughter relationships work' when you forget all the pain you endured and normalise it, because processing it is too difficult is when you aren't making the progression towards being a good person.
There will never be a perfect formula to be a good person. But if there was one it would surely be awareness.Think of all the actions of others that have made you feel positive and those that have disconcerted you. Make it a point to indulge in the former.

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