What is O-ring theory in Economics?

Also known as the O-ring model of economic development, this refers to the theory that even the smallest components of a complex production process must be performed properly if the end product of the process is to have any useful value. In other words, a mistake that creeps into even the smallest of tasks can cause the final product to possess absolutely no value to users. The O-ring theory derives its name from a 1986 incident in which the Challenger space shuttle was completely destroyed as a result of the failure of a simple gasket, or O-ring, to work properly. It was first proposed by American development economist Michael Kremer in 1993.

Source: The Hindu, 24/10/2018

Metoo: The movement to create equality should begin at home

If we want to create a better world where women feel absolutely safe, men truly and genuinely respect every human irrespective of the gender and there is equality in its truest sense, we need to teach men to respect women

Written by Apoorva Bapna

I have been reading a lot on #MeToo since this became the most trending topic on Twitter. Unfortunately, it caught the attention only when it went to social media, when so many accomplished women brought out sexual harassment stories of their past to the forefront.

Technology has been the single-most contributor to the empowerment of women and more so in the urban areas. In a world, where speaking about many topics is considered a taboo even today, sexual harassment being one of them, technology has almost given them wings to fly — to express opinions blatantly or anonymously.

Harassment has always been rampant and, in fact, starts at home. Nine out of 10 women would have been harassed in their personal lives much before they stepped into the professional world. A decade ago one didn’t even know what harassment meant. If you did, could you muster the courage to speak up? Could you speak to your own family members? Not really.

Even if you did, you were told to ignore and to be “careful” in future. Careful of what? Like, don’t come in front of that sick uncle who saw you as nothing but an object of his lust. Or stop learning music from a teacher who touched you in places which he should not have.

We live in a world where women are and will be subjected to this kind of treatment and such movements will come and go without changing much. Have rapes stopped after the Nirbhaya incident? The civil society made so much noise, the government machinery got into action and stricter laws were passed. But what happened? Every day a girl or a woman is still raped, assaulted or ill-treated. And so many of these incidents take place at home and not outside.

If we want to create a better world where women feel absolutely safe, men truly and genuinely respect every human irrespective of the gender and there is equality in its truest sense, we need to teach men to respect women. And women to respect women. And this can’t be taught when you have grown up, entered the professional world. It needs to start from the day the child is born. The sense of equality needs to be ingrained right from the beginning. It needs to start at home. Girls and boys should be taught everything — a boy should know how to work in a kitchen just as a girl should be interested in sports.

Today gender diversity at the workplace is a boardroom discussion topic and every leader wants to drive this agenda. We know an organisation’s sustained success is a function of how diverse the leadership team is and this has been proven and validated by many reports generated by the McKinseys of the world. But before it becomes a boardroom agenda, it must become every home’s agenda to create an inclusive family where everyone is treated equally, everyone’s point of views are respected equally and children are given equal opportunity to make decisions about the life they want to lead, whether it’s a son or a daughter.

I write this after having gone through a divorce which was my decision. It took me three years to convince my family that I needed to move on for my sanity. It wasn’t easy, but it finally happened. Even today, I am reminded of my decision and that I should have compromised or I was too assertive or I did not look after my husband well enough.

I don’t CARE. For once I chose to be selfish for me and my daughter’s sake. I was clear, I did not want her to grow up in a house where all she would see were two unhappy, distant parents. She would grow up to either hate men or marriage or both.

So while the #MeToo campaign is good if it is genuine and helps shame the men who need to be, but what we really need is a #WeToo campaign to make this world more equal, where there is genuine respect for everyone, laws that truly protect and create a sense of fear and strong set of values which helps in building a strong civil society.

It is easy to always blame “someone else” — like the system/the law/the government, but movement to create equality should begin at home, instil the right values in both the son and daughter and create a sense of respect for humans.

And then the world will surely become a better place to be.

Source: Indian Express, 26/10/2018

My books, my truths

My work reflects the lived realities of marginalised communities. A methodology that depends on secondary data cannot do justice to first-hand knowledge

A member of the Delhi University’s Standing Committee for Academic Affairs, among the teachers who demanded that three of my books be removed from the university’s curricula, argued that “Ilaiah’s understanding of the Hindu faith is wrong and there is no empirical data to establish his understanding”. Let me refer to three of my books: God As Political Philosopher: Buddha’s challenge to Brahminism, Why I am Not a Hindu: A Sudra critique of Hindutva philosophy, culture and political economy and Post-Hindu India: A discourse on Dalit-Bahujan socio-spiritual and scientific revolution.

The first book evolved out of my PhD thesis on ancient Indian political thought; hence it is well referenced and has a lot of citations. The other two books — they have been questioned by Delhi University’s committee — are full of data pertaining to Dalit-Bahujan, upper Shudra, Adivasi and Brahmin-Bania communities, largely from the Telugu-speaking region. They are about lived realities, work, instruments, culture and social relations. They are products of years of field work and are not referenced for sound methodological reasons.

Historically, books are products of two kinds of quests: One, the search for knowledge and two, revisiting already codified knowledge. In ancient times, such quests were of two types. One pertained to spiritual issues. Such texts focussed on god. The Bible, Vedas and Quran are good examples of such literature.

The other kind of literature was produced by people who looked for knowledge in their own milieu and in other environments. First-hand information about peoples’ lives cannot draw from other books for the simple reason that there were none at all. Such knowledge can be verified by revisiting the subjects and sources.

Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Politics do not have modern-style references from other works. In India, the first ever social science writing of this kind was done by Kautilya. Hence, the Arthashastra does not have a reference list. Even Manu’s Dharmashastra was written in a similar manner. Such a search for knowledge, in my view, leads to the production of foundational texts.

Referencing and quoting other works is a modern practice. It evolved in the post-Renaissance times. The re-search method either borrows ideas from other literature or combines field work — empirical data collection — with an analysis of other texts. Scholars from the West re-searched the knowledge of peoples, classes and races and this endeavour led to the production of referenced literature. But even in the West, post-modernist writing has reverted to the method of not using quotes.

Books that are based on information about people’s lived experiences — habits, social relations, imaginations, food culture, even philosophy — have changed the way knowledge is constructed. Such works do not rely on quotations.

Modernist scholarship — the so-called nationalist and Marxist schools — and Hindu fundamentalist academicians do not accept the post-modernist search method. According to them, to be eligible for a PhD degree, a work should rely on the modernist re-search method. The Hindutva academic school is the most backward of them. This school recognises books that cite the Vedas, Ramayana, Mahabharata, Arthashastra, Dharmashastra, V D Savarkar’s Hindutva:Who Is a Hindu, M S Golwalkar’s Bunch of Thoughts and so on. The others, of course, insist on quotations from multiple sources.

I confronted a major methodological problem during the anti-Mandal agitation in the 1990s. How to defend reservations? There was no quotation-based literature to defend reservation. At that time, Indian Marxists quoted from the writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao. I departed from the citation-based methodology and wrote an article in the Economic and Political Weekly, “Reservations: Experience as a Framework of Debate”. That piece made many anti-reservationists re-think their positions.

I then realised that one cannot draw on written texts to learn about the history, culture and lived experiences of the Shudras, OBCs, Dalits and Adivasis. The Vedas, epics such as the Ramayana and Mahabharata and the writings of Kautilya and Manu do not reflect the knowledge of these people. Modernist works also did not do justice to such knowledge. My first major attempt to bring such knowledge to light led me to write, Why I am not a Hindu. Shashi Tharoor’s Why I am a Hindu adopts a diametrically-opposite method — it draws from several other books. Hence, there is no original statement in that book.

Post-Hindu India draws on a much more rigorous collection of information from Adivasis, Dalits, OBCs and upper Shudras as well as Banias and Brahmins. It tries to deal with every major community. I could not re-search about their instruments, skills, proverbs and philosophy and past by drawing on secondary data. I had to do first-hand work in villages. For theoretical justification, I did not quote anybody because no one has done work on these people.

I formulated my theoretical positions in much the same way as Plato, Aristotle or Kautilya. Like these savants, I was also not unbiased. What many academicians do not understand is that the caste compartmentalisation of Indian society has not allowed a holistic construction of knowledge about the country. We have not been good at experimenting with newer ways of writing and building knowledge. Universities have to do that.

My training in a regional university allowed me to retain a productive association with several communities. I have been an activist, apart from a being a teacher. This is an area where the nationalist, Marxist and Hindu fundamentalist schools of academicians have, unfortunately, failed us. A scholar conducting such experiments at the PhD level is unlikely to get a degree. That was why I used the traditional method to write my PhD.

The intellectuals from the RSS/BJP do not want the political philosophy of Gautam Buddha to be taught in our universities. There is no codified political philosophy of Sri Ram. There is some philosophy of Sri Krishna in the Bhagvad Gita but that has to be examined from the point of view of the agrarian producers — not the priest and politician.

Universities are meant to be breeding grounds for change. The discovery of new methods of writing should come from them. They should not be fearful of change. All those who oppose my books must read them and tear them apart in their writings. That will help students.

The writer is director, Centre for Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy (CSSEIP) at Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad

Source: Indian Express, 27/10/2018

#MeTooIndia: Will it change the way men behave?

Women can expose men and cost them their jobs. Power is a language that men understand

Judge Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to the United States Supreme Court after allegations of attempted rape against him divided the country on his nomination. In India, politicians were mostly silent on the allegations against M.J. Akbar until public pressure and more allegations forced him to resign as Minister of State for External Affairs. Actor Nana Patekar, who had the support of faceless online mobs, has not shown any remorse after the allegations against him. Both Mr. Akbar and Mr. Patekar have filed criminal defamation suits against their accusers.

It’s hard to be hopeful and say that the behaviour of men will change after the #MeToo movement. However, I would like to believe that this will happen. The first and toughest step in fighting any oppression is to tell the oppressor that his power over you is not absolute and that it will not remain unchallenged. #MeToo has enabled women to take that step against workplace harassment. Such harassment had been normalised to the extent that most women believed that it was a price they had to pay to become a part of the workforce. The next generation of women will not grow up with that flawed belief.

Male dominance over women is systematic, institutionalised, and, above all, physical. Power has been demonstrated through threats of harassment and rape, sexual assault, acid attacks, domestic violence and making spaces of cohabitation a source of constant threat. Women have taken to social media to challenge this and it’s working.

Men are rattled

Despite the vicious fightback by the accused and their supporters, powerful men are evidently rattled. A film production and distribution company, Phantom Films, has been dissolved; a Minister of State was forced to step down; Aamir Khan has ‘stepped away’ from Mogul after sexual misconduct allegations against a team member; journalists in more than one prominent media organisation have been asked to step down, or have volunteered to do so, after allegations against them; filmmaker Sajid Khan’s Housefull 4 has been stalled; Farhan Akhtar, along with several leading women directors, has decided not to work with harassers; and so on. Beyond the headlines, invisible wheels have started turning. Industries that had no sexual harassment policy or redress mechanisms are being forced to set up committees. Corporates are being forced to proclaim that they have zero tolerance for sexual harassment. Conversations around sexual harassment that were earlier hush-hush have become loud. The lasting impact of #MeToo, long after it stops making the headlines, will be on men who know that they don’t have the guarantee of silence, that they will be made answerable for abuse, and that their ‘boys club’ won’t be enough to protect them.

Empowering women

Despite the number of men who have come out in support of #MeToo, I do not believe men will have a sudden change of heart. But their actions will change because #MeToo has forged an alliance of the sisterhood.

The modern economy needs women in the workforce. The #MeToo movement has made it evident that being on the wrong side is also bad for business. And economy is a language that men understand. #MeToo has given women the power to expose men, socially shame them, take away their jobs, and upset their private and professional lives. Power is a language that men understand. Fear, too, is a language that men will soon come to understand.

Source: The Hindu, 26/10/2018

Struggling with cancer, this JNU professor writes a book examining progress in promotion research on disability studies

Professor Karna, a disability right activist, has penned the book titled Curriculum Development on Disability Studies. For the past 18 months, he has been struggling with cancer.

Gajendra Narayan Karna, a JNU professor, who was affected by polio at the age of three, has written a book critically examining the progress made in promoting teaching and research on disability studies. He said the UGC has not yet taken the initiative to constitute a model curriculum development committee on disability studies for its advancement.

Karna who is also a disability right activist, has penned the book titled Curriculum Development on Disability Studies.

For the past 18 months, he has been struggling with cancer.

The discipline of disability studies was granted recognition as an academic discipline by the ministry of human resource development in September 2005, he said.

The University Grants Commission was directed to extend support to universities and colleges in setting up special department or centre on disability studies as also instituting Rajiv Gandhi Chair in Disability Studies in central universities, Karna added.

It was further reinforced by the 11th five-year plan in working group on disability.

“Notwithstanding all these developments, the UGC has not taken as yet even the basic initiative of constituting a model curriculum development committee on disability studies (as has been done in the case of Gandhian studies, human rights, dalit studies and other academic disciplines),” he claimed.

Meanwhile, more than 17 universities/academic institutions (including TISS, IGNOU, JNU and DU) have moved towards launching disability studies programmes, though in a haphazard manner because of a lack of model curriculum, he claimed.

He said his book is intended to examine critically the progress made with regard to promotion of teaching and research on disability studies, and thereby attempting to develop a model curriculum on disability studies for various programmes of studies being offered by Indian universities and academic institutions.

Source: Hindustan Times, 26/10/2018

Pollution in India has now become a national health crisis

Phasing out the most polluting vehicles — old trucks, buses and tempos — at the earliest is unavoidable

India has 14 of the 15 cities in the world with the maximum air pollution. In Delhi, pollution levels attain dangerous proportions as Diwali approaches. The lungs and brains of a large percentage of children are getting irreversibly damaged. The country has the highest rate of deaths from chronic respiratory diseases and asthma. This is a national health crisis which calls for urgent action.

While there is no magic bullet such as odd-even, there are feasible measures which would make a huge difference in a few years. The easiest would be to get all households to use clean energy for cooking with liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), or, electricity. Burning of cow dung cakes and firewood for cooking not only harms the lungs and eyes of women, it is also a major source of all air pollution. Electricity is targeted to reach all households by next year. Its use for cooking can be promoted. LPG cylinders through Ujjwala can be made to reach everybody in a few years. However, the really poor cannot afford to pay more than Rs 200 or so a month for cooking. The first hundred units of electricity in a month, enough for lighting and cooking, could be provided at Rs 3 per unit, or, a LPG cylinder for Rs 300. This can be done through a subsidy from the government, or, cross-subsidy by the energy companies.

A market-based solution for the burning of crop residue would work best. An attractive enough price for crop residue for conversion to briquettes to be burnt in coal fired stations, or, for generating electricity directly through gasification would put an end to crop burning. The transition would be driven by private investment and without any subsidy. Thermal plants need to offer a viable price for briquettes and the distribution companies for electricity from crop residue.

Phasing out the most polluting vehicles, such as old trucks, buses and tempos, at the earliest, is an unavoidable necessity. This has to be a countrywide measure as air pollution moves across villages and towns. Implementation would be easier if there is a considerably lower price for a new vehicle when the old one is traded in and there is a system of scrapping old vehicles that can be closely monitored.It could easily be done by the government foregoing a substantial portion of the GST on such vehicles. Germany successfully implemented a trade in programme at the time of the global financial crisis of 2008 to generate additional demand for their auto industry.

The supply of fuel of contemporary international standards, Bharat Stage Six (BS 6), now being implemented, would make a difference only gradually as more new BS 6 compliant vehicles get on the road. But for an immediate impact, all new taxi, bus and three wheeler permits for running within cities should be given only for electric vehicles. Sufficient number of charging stations would naturally need to be created well in advance. The huge potential of electric vehicles in reducing air pollution is not being adequately recognised.

Old coal-fired thermal power plants in, or, those close to major urban centres need to be closed down forthwith. This can be done without difficulty as there is surplus power generating capacity with much more in the pipeline. However, only a firm central mandate will make this happen.

All industrial clusters need a diagnostic audit for air pollution. Technically feasible measures with state financial assistance and in partnership with industrial units would have to be implemented to reduce air pollution. Clearly, the use of coal for energy and heating by small industrial units has to be phased out. The extension of a gas grid to all industrial areas has been unduly delayed in the country. Electricity for continuous process industries to be provided at lower rates reflecting actual costs of supply would also help.

For all this and more to happen, the central, state and city governments have to agree to do what it takes, including providing adequate funds. Finances can come from the coal, or, a new clean air cess. The health costs to the nation of inaction are far higher. Coordinated action across multiple institutions is never easy. Sustained political commitment would be an essential prerequisite.

Ajay Shankar is distinguished fellow, TERI

Source: Hindustan Times, 25/10/2018

Conscious or Unconscious?

In life, either things happen to us or we allow things to happen to us. There is no third possibility, really. Things happen to us means we are unconsciousness of those things. When we allow things to happen to us is, that is through consciousness. Though things happening to us unconsciously cannot be termed as a choice in the literal sense, still, the fact remains that it is a kind of ‘passive choice’ that is made in unawareness. The difference between the two is of quality, which we know as consciousness. When our actions are compulsive in nature, that is, happening out of our karma, past memory, then we say that things are happening to us. Something just happened rather automatically, repetitively and in a set-pattern as if someone is driving or forcing us to do that. Unconsciousness is the reason and basis for our bondage, which makes us move in circles and takes us nowhere. Seeing things as they are and doing what is needed is about being conscious. It’s a quality that perhaps only human beings have. By practising and exercising this privilege in our life, we can become completely free — free from the cycles of life, free from the birth-death cycle. Consciousness is our true nature. It is the freedom in which life happens to us. There is no bondage or compulsiveness in it. Only a life lived in awareness is worth living. Life lived in unconsciousness is of no value even if lived for a hundred years or for a hundred lifetimes. And that is what spirituality and spiritual practices are about — moving from unconsciousness to consciousness.

Source: Economic Times, 26/10/2018