We need democracy because people can be wrong

It’s the only political system that allows us to regularly check the mistakes we make, bloodlessly, and correct them

The people are always right. No? Ah, but then they vote for leaders like Donald Trump and… Oh well, we can add to the list, internationally and nationally!

Does this mean that democracy is a mistake? No, quite the contrary! But we have to hack away at some stubborn centuries-old shrubbery in order to see the foundation of this clearly enough.

One of the greatest myths about democracy — started largely by the Left in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and continued with a twist by the Right into the 21st — relates to the most common rationale behind it. The people are always right, claimed the Left in the past. The market, or the consumer, is always right, claims the capitalist Right today, tweaking the Leftist argument cleverly.

Between them, they justify democracy as a form of political organisation based on human beings being basically ‘always right’. Very little in the past — from the picnics at public hangings outside London jails to the genocides of colonisation and Nazism — justifies such confidence in people being always right. Over centuries, people have been horribly wrong at times.

Majority’s mistrust

Way back in 1882, Henrik Ibsen, the great Norwegian playwright, wrote An Enemy of the People (adapted into a film, Ganashatru, by Satyajit Ray in his last years) around one aspect of this perception, arguing that one needs to be morally and intellectually ahead of ‘people’ in order to be right. Ideas and ‘truths’, Ibsen suggests in this play, get dated, habitual and platitudinous, and hence the majority, which lives habitually by grasping on to platitudes, tends to mistrust the truly ethical and intellectual individual. In other words, if you are Jesus, you risk getting crucified.

But even this argument is faulty: a lot of intelligent people can go horribly wrong. Cleverness does not necessarily save you from mistakes, and even ethics can be twisted in painful ways: there are many in the U.S. who claim to be ‘pro-life’ and hence will criminalise abortions, but they spare little thought (and no money) for the plight of women forced into unhappy pregnancies or the future of poor, abandoned and unwanted children.

History is full of brilliant people — ‘great’ leaders, scientists, thinkers, planners — who helped destroy a village, a nation or an age. Sometimes it appears that intelligence, on its own, merely provides a person with an easier ability to make excuses for his or her mistakes, and hoodwink others in the process.

So if people — whether as individual or group, entrepreneur or consumer, tribe or republic, nation or political party, king or voter — seem to make horrible mistakes much of the time, what hope is there for democracy? Why believe in democracy at all?

Actually, one can argue that the main justification of democracy is exactly this: that anyone — ordinary voter or monarch — can be wrong about any given matter. The ability to make mistakes is human — neither power nor riches nor education can eradicate it, though self-awareness might help. A king or dictator can make a mistake as well as the majority of voters in an election who vote in a party or a leader with bad plans. But in a democracy, after a period, during the next elections, such mistakes can be corrected.

A democracy, in other words, allows us to regularly check the mistakes we make — bloodlessly — and correct them when their disastrous consequences become finally clear to us. This is far more difficult, and costly, to do in any other kind of (autocratic) regime, whether justified in worldly or ‘divine’ terms.

Living with one’s opponents

Democracies are not necessary because people are always right: if we were certain of being right all the time, we would not need any political organisation at all, let alone a democracy. We would be gods. Democracy is necessary because people — groups and individuals — can be wrong. Hence, in a democracy one learns to live with one’s opponents, not exile or murder them. This is a political version of the fact that in life we always live with others — or with the Other, the self who is not and cannot be (by definition) entirely yourself.

Democracy is the only political option that allows us to mitigate the effects of our own mistakes, and the mistakes of others. Democracy is necessary not because the people are always right, but because human beings are often wrong. We forget this only at great peril to ourselves and others.

Source: The Hindu, 19-02-2017

Migrants could get a job in any state as domicile quotas may go

Cut off from subsidised ration. Deprived from welfare schemes. Harassed and assaulted for just being “outsiders”.

But the long sufferings of migrant workers in India could be a thing of the past if the government accepts the recommendations of a panel that looked into the working conditions of millions of people who move to other states in search of better opportunities.

In India, migrants constitute approximately 29% of the workforce but are often cut off from government schemes including the benefits of subsidised ration in fair price shops.

Besides, they also face harassment in many states such as Maharashtra where strong anti-outsider sentiments have led to attacks on migrant workers over fears of them usurping job opportunities of local residents.

In its report submitted last month to the ministry, the panel headed by Partho Mukhopadhyay, senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, has pushed for portability of public distribution system (PDS) benefits across fair price shop system, affordable housing options and setting up of migrant helpline to provide information about protections and benefits available to them.

Under the PDS, ration cards are invalid in their work state. The panel has recommended “expanding” and “accelerating” portability of PDS as well as healthcare benefits within states with appropriate technology and universal coverage.

The panel was set up by the Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation ministry.

“Many argue that the provisions outlining domicile/minimum duration of local residence are required in order to protect local workers. But these arguments are ill-founded and mischievous…What is needed are strong regulations pertaining to wages and conditions at work, which would prevent all workers -- local or migrant -- from being exploited,” said Indrajit Roy, research fellow, Department of International Development, University of Oxford.

Roy, the principal investigator of University of Oxford’s study titled Lives on the Move said that some states are already ahead on the curve.

“For example, Punjab is one of the states to have instituted a migrant welfare board and Kerala inaugurated an inter-state migrant worker scheme, implemented through the Kerala construction workers’ welfare fund.”

The 2017 Economic Survey report has also recommended portability of PDS benefits.

“These migrants depend either on their employer or labour contractor for food provisions or purchase food in the open market. This significantly increases their cost of living and reduces the additional earnings they might hope to remit to their families,” Roy said.

The ministry is yet to take a call on the working group’s report.

“Implementing these recommendations is easier said than done. It is the states, which will have to implement them and they may not agree because of political pressures,” said a government official.

Source: Hindustan Times, 20-02-2017

Freedom From Desire

DADA J P VASWANI





The Buddha said that desire is the root cause of all sorrow. If we really want to be free of misery , sorrow, delusion and disappointment, we must learn to overcome desires. Here are a few practical suggestions:1 To overcome desire, stop focusing on the self and become selfless. Think less of yourself; think of others, of how to make their lives better, and alleviate their suffering and misery .
2 Those who give, live; those who do not, are no better than dead souls. All that you have, all that you are, all your talents, skills, wealth and comforts are given to you in trust -as a loan -to share with others who are not as fortunate as you are. Give and you shall receive.
3 Cultivate the virtue of detachment: Learn to overcome attachment to money and material possessions.
4 Santosha, or contentment, is another virtue we must cultivate. There is nothing wrong in enjoying the pleasures and delights of this beautiful world that God has created for us. The only thing that is wrong is selfish attachment and craving for more and more.
5 Know thyself: Krishna's words tell us how to overcome lower passions, “Therefore, knowing that consciousness is superior to intelligence, steady your mind by Self-realisation and overcome this insatiable enemy: lust.“
As the Gita tells us, cultivating higher awareness is the first step. Therefore, let us build a loving relationship with God. Let everything you do strengthen this relationship that is the embodiment of the highest love we are capable of.

McGraw Hill Education India launches 1st Edition of Ancient and Medieval India for UPSC and State Civil Services Examinations preparation

New Delhi: McGraw Hill Education India, a learning science company, launched Ancient and Medieval India for UPSC and State Civil Services Examinations preparation. The book was unveiled by Chief Guest, Mr. Rajiv Mehrishi, Home Secretary of India and Mr. Tanmoy Roychowdhury, General Manager, -Test Preparation, McGraw Hill Education India at the Press Club of India.

Ancient and Medieval India has been designed for candidates preparing for the Union Civil Services, as well as various state public service examinations. The book covers the complete syllabus of Ancient and Medieval history for the Main Union Civil Service exam and also has material for the Prelims. The book provides current and relevant content that has been developed following thorough analysis of the current syllabus and questions asked in previous years. Moreover, the book consists of numerous practice questions chapter wise, making it more user-friendly.

Chief Guest, Mr. Rajiv Mehrishi, Home Secretary of India, said, "The book covers all aspects of Ancient and Medieval history in India in a detailed format and can be used as a one stop solution to prepare for the exams on these subjects. The book is very well compiled and should provide the required guidance to the civil service aspirants. I congratulate the author on the launch of the book and wish all the success to the civil services aspirants.” 

Also speaking at the launch, Tanmoy Roychowdhury, General Manager, - Test Preparation, McGraw Hill Education India, said, “This book covers the UPSC syllabus related to Ancient and Medieval history of India in detail. The comprehensive content was developed after in-depth research of the current syllabus and is structured in a student friendly format.” He added, “We are committed to providing well-designed self preparatory books to the civil services aspirants and hope the book proves to be instrumental in the civil services, as well as for state public service examinations.”

 Poonam Dalal Dahiya, the author and a commissioned Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer, said, “It is extremely satisfying to see one’s efforts take shape like this and make a

 

contribution in other’s lives. It was an enriching and fulfilling experience to work on the book, and I am happy to have played my part. I am hoping the book will offer the right direction to all the civil services aspirants in preparation of the exams, and I hope it proves to be a crucial tool for examination preparations.”

The text will come in bi-colour, and there are detachable charts included that students may tear out and use as a mnemonic by placing them in front of them or pasting them on a wall. The book is available at all leading book stores and online platforms across India.

Source: Indiaeducationdiary14-02-2017

The Learning Curve: Kosha Shah

It is a win-win situation for me as I gain lessons of life while sharing my subject knowledge

I never let schooling interfere with my education’

—Mark Twain

As a freelance lecturer, I had the privilege of teaching media and communication-related subjects at various colleges and institutes in Mumbai. On the one hand, this option requires me to sharpen my teaching skills, but, on the other, it throws open a whole new spectrum of learning opportunities. It is a win-win situation for me as I gain lessons of life while sharing my subject knowledge.

Adaptability: There is no doubt that the environment in which I have grown as a student, without the digital platform, and the time now is completely different. The biggest learning for me is to see how the students adapt through changing technology. It is one thing to learn a new technology and be tech-savvy, but the more difficult part is to fine tune all aspects of lives, be it communication, relationship, education, emotional maturity or money management. And I would say most of them have phenomenal adaptability and they are a great inspiration for me. On a lighter note, my Facebook account was opened on insistence from students, my WhatsApp is functional thanks to them, and my web surfing skills have improved only after reading their webliographies!

Resilience: For the young adults, with each passing year, the threshold to prove themselves (be it in examinations, internships, project submissions or placement interviews) has gone up. The examination dates get postponed or brought forward, the syllabi changes at the last minute, there is reservation playing at every step. While I encourage them to face these challenges and guide them on how to emerge successful, I do believe it is easier said than done. I admire their resilience; how they look in the eye of competition, corruption and uncertainty. Acceptance of these things seem better for a grown-up of my age but for the students who are beginning to grow as confident individuals handling these things require a lot of maturity.

Enthusiasm: Majority of the students I cross roads with know to multitask. Apart from their regular study they either pursue their hobbies or do part-time jobs. Their enthusiasm for doing what they like to do is amazing. Their hobbies range from the normal dancing, singing, travelling to adventurous sports, collecting feathers, coins or even quaint essentials like buttons, acting, film-making, photography, gardening, landscaping and taking care of pets. Many do jobs to sustain their hobbies, many work to get practical training in their field of study, many prepare for entrance examinations for further studies. I get a lot of motivation to be on-the-go. My oldest student was of my father’s age, making me realise that positive utilisation of time is so important. My most accomplished student so far is a prominent playback singer. When I recall her attitude in the classroom I feel she deserves every bit of success she has got.

Going by Mark Twain’s words, my schooling has stopped but my education hasn’t.

(The writer is a guest lecturer in media colleges and freelance writer)

Source: DNA, 17-02-2017

Not so great walls

Gated communities don’t make cities safer — only offer a bubble

We are surrounded by them in all our suburbs. They are so ubiquitous that we don’t even think of them as a separate urban form. Big, private residential spaces, enclosed by a wall and tall gates, inside which are worlds unto themselves, containing a swimming pool, a club house and tennis court at least, and sometimes, restaurants, golf greens and spas. They have names like Nirvana, Garden City or Laburnum, that evoke luxury and exotic chic. Their ads describe them in florid prose, extolling their closeness to nature, exclusivity and promise of luxury.

Gated communities. The modern-day version of the fortresses that medieval nobility built to keep themselves safe and private. The trend for such dwellings picked up in southern California in the 1960s; these continue to form a major share of the real estate market in the US. But their most remarkable growth has been in countries like Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Turkey and, of course, India, where they have proliferated largely because of a lack of confidence in law enforcement.

In India, as the middle class grew more disappointed with the state’s ability to assure personal safety or basic utilities like continuous power supply and clean water, it ran into the waiting arms of property developers, who offered walled residences where everything that the state failed to provide could be bought. A security industry, itself often dubious and ill-equipped, emerged in parallel. A fear of crime and the “outsider” have always been fundamental reasons for people moving into gated communities: But are we any safer here? In the US, when gated communities were growing rapidly in the 1990s, studies showed that the long-term crime rate altered very marginally. Some studies concluded that the crime gets pushed to low income, less secure neighbourhoods. In India too, there are frequent reports in the mass media about criminals who easily breach the porous security of a gated complex.

Eventually, every gated community dweller must engage with the city. A woman living in a complex in Gurgaon still has to go to work, possibly in Delhi. Even if she drives a car, lonely parking lots, possible harassment at traffic signals and the risk of provoking road rage in a driver by daring to overtake him are still a reality. There is only so much running away from the city that you can do because you cannot fortify yourself from the business of living. There are offices and schools to attend, markets to visit, people to meet. To not keep looking over your shoulder — which Indian women are instinctively used to doing — our streets and public transport need to be safe. Outside the gates of the posh complex, the reality of the city bites hard.

In fact, it becomes even more stark because of the wall around the complex. All the action, children in playgrounds, kids playing football, happens within the gates. At some distance is a slum or a village. In-between are streets on which only a few walk, fearful of any passing motorbike, wary of the silence. If the wall wasn’t there, life would be conducted outside. Children would come to a public park to play, homemakers would walk to the neighbourhood market, retired people would stroll on the pavements. There would be more noise, more people out and therefore, greater social surveillance against petty crimes. That’s how it was just about two decades ago when there were no urban islands inviting you to live in “another place, another world”, to quote the taglines of a builder’s advertisement.

The tall gates of the complex are a message to the poor that their world is separate from ours and we wish to safeguard ourselves from the “contamination” they represent. The separation of “us” and “them” is anathema to social harmony and can only foster resentment, laying the basis for more crime. Gated communities may have made rich Indians “feel” more secure — but they haven’t made the streets any safer. That needs a different response altogether from the state. Hiding ourselves in private enclaves cannot be a solution to our unsafe cities.

Vasudevan studies urban spaces, mobility and gender and has authored ‘Urban Villager: Life in an Indian Satellite Town’

Source: Indian Express, 17-02-2017

The Zuckerberg manifesto: How he plans to debug the world

Mark Zuckerberg’s long-term vision for Facebook, laid out in a sweeping manifesto , sometimes sounds more like a utopian social guide than a business plan. Are we, he asks, “building the world we all want?”

While most people now use Facebook to connect with friends and family, Zuckerberg hopes that the social network can encourage more civic engagement, an informed public and community support in the years to come. Facebook now has nearly 2 billion members, which makes it larger than any nation in the world.

His 5,800-word essay positions Facebook in direct opposition to a rising tide of isolationism and fear of outsiders, both in the US and abroad. In a phone interview with The Associated Press, Zuckerberg stressed that he wasn’t motivated by the US election or any other particular event. Rather, he said, it’s the growing sentiment in many parts of the world that “connecting the world” — the founding idea behind Facebook — is no longer a good thing.

“Across the world there are people left behind by globalization, and movements for withdrawing from global connection,” Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook in a Harvard dorm room in 2004, wrote on Thursday. “In times like these, the most important thing we at Facebook can do is develop the social infrastructure to give people the power to build a global community that works for all of us.”

Zuckerberg, 32, told the AP that he still strongly believes that more connectedness is the right direction for the world. But, he adds, it’s “not enough if it’s good for some people but it’s doesn’t work for other people. We really have to bring everyone along.”

It’s hardly a surprise that Zuckerberg wants to find ways to bring more people together, especially on Facebook. After all, getting more people to come together on the social network more frequently would give Facebook more opportunities to sell the ads that generate most of its revenue, which totaled $27 billion last year. And bringing in more money probably would boost Facebook’s stock price to make Zuckerberg — already worth an estimated $56 billion — even richer.

And while the idea of unifying the world is laudable, some critics — backed various studies — contend Facebook makes some people feel lonelier and more isolated as they scroll through the mostly ebullient posts and photos shared on the social network. Facebook’s famous “like” button also makes it easy to engage in a form of “one-click” communication that replaces meaningful dialogue.

Facebook also has been lambasted as polarizing force by circulating posts espousing similar viewpoints and interests among like-minded people, creating an “echo chamber” that can harden opinions and widen political and cultural chasms.

Community support

Today, most of Facebook’s 1.86 billion members — about 85 percent — live outside of the US and Canada. The Menlo Park, California-based company has offices everywhere from Amsterdam to Jakarta, Indonesia, to Tel Aviv, Israel. (It is banned in China, the world’s most populous country, though some people get around the ban.) Naturally, Zuckerberg takes a global view of Facebook and sees potential that goes beyond borders, cities and nations.

And that could allow the social network to step up as more traditional cultural ties fray. People already use Facebook to connect with strangers who have the same rare disease, to post political diatribes, to share news links (and sometimes fake news links ). Facebook has also pushed its users to register to vote, to donate to causes, to mark themselves safe after natural disasters, and to “go live .” For many, it’s become a utility. Some 1.23 billion people use it daily.

“For the past decade, Facebook has focused on connecting friends and families. With that foundation, our next focus will be developing the social infrastructure for community — for supporting us, for keeping us safe, for informing us, for civic engagement, and for inclusion of all,” he wrote.

Long view

Zuckerberg has gotten Facebook to this position of global dominance — one that MySpace and Twitter, for instance, never even approached — partly thanks to his audacious, long-term view of the company and its place in the world.

Last fall, Zuckerberg and his wife, the doctor Priscilla Chan, unveiled the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative , a long-term effort aimed at eradicating all disease by the end of this century. Then, as now, Zuckerberg preferred to look far down the road to the potential of scientific and technological innovations that have not been perfected, or even invented yet. This includes artificial intelligence.

“Looking ahead, one of our greatest opportunities to keep people safe is building artificial intelligence to understand more quickly and accurately what is happening across our community,” he wrote.

Speaking to the AP, Zuckerberg said he understands that we might not “solve all the issues that we want” in the short term.

“One of my favourite quotes is this Bill Gates quote, that ‘people overestimate what they can get done in two years and underestimate what they can get done in 10 years.’ And that’s an important mindset that I hope more people take today,” he said.

Source: Hindustan Times, 17-02-2017