Creative Energy

There is a different motive that can easily equal the energy of the ego, if not far surpass it. I call it egoless passion. The goal is to awaken egoless passion in human beings. It is all about awakened, deeply conscious, profoundly passionate, committed participation in the life process. The word “passion” is automatically associated with ego or a very strong self-sense. But there is a different kind of passion that is absolutely free from ego. This passion is synonymous with the energy or the impulse behind the evolutionary process itself, the force of creation itself. Egoless passion makes it possible to create and manifest things that one would never ordinarily be able to do if it were coming from ego. One begins to express something that’s profound and meaningful in a non-personal way. This passion has no end. There’s never a point where it’s over, because there’s always more to be done. When a conscious human being — who has transcended the fears and desires of the separate ego to a significant degree — feels this intense passion for evolution awakening within, it’s recognised as a sense of care, that something must happen that’s more important than anything else. And there’s a tremendous impersonal, non-egotistic passion in this. One has nothing personal to gain from it. It is possible to begin to care that much about something that one has nothing personal to benefit from. When it’s egotistical passion, one has everything to gain from it. It’s all about personal glory. But this passion comes from an overwhelming compulsion. It’s not for oneself.

Source: Economic Times, 14/11/2018

National Register of Citizens: A dangerous game

Reckless identity politics in Assam runs risk of reviving old spectres. Politicians, civil society must heed warning signs.

For months now, the faultlines in Assam have been growing wider, as the debate over the question — who is an Assamese? — grows ever more divisive and unaccommodating. The implementation of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and talk of a proposed Citizenship (Amendment) Bill has thrown the state in tumult, dredging out old anxieties and communal resentments between the ethnic Assamese, indigenous tribes and a sizeable Bengali-speaking population. While this was looked upon as a necessary, if difficult, state of flux that would make way for greater clarity, that seems increasingly to be wishful thinking. A warning from a senior Assam police official is a red flag that ought not to be ignored.

Special DGP (Special Branch) of the Assam Police, Pallab Bhattacharyya, has said that the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill has deepened the rift between Assamese and Bengali-speaking communities — and given a new lease of life to the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA). The militant outfit, say the police, is responsible for the killing of five Bengali-speaking men in Tinsukia district earlier this month, all allegedly targeted because of the language they spoke. The history of Assam — and its intersection with the legacy of colonialism and Partition — is an impossibly complicated one to untangle. It is also not a past that is buried and cold: Even a few decades ago, the tussle over language led to violence in the state, and inspired a subnationalism that transmogrified into the extremism of outfits like the ULFA. In the last few months, however, the ruling BJP government has recklessly stoked the fire of identity politics, with an eye, apparently, on its mainland vote banks. Its national president has called the NRC an exercise to weed out “termites”, dehumanising 40 lakh people who still have a chance to prove their citizenship, according to the Supreme Court. Assamese civil society and media, too, have chosen to hoist the flag of jatiyota.

For all its talk of fair process, of righting historical wrongs, the identity politics of Assam has been painfully short of empathy and sympathy for the many communities which have coexisted for years. The narrative of sub-nationalism has refused to engage with the despair of those deemed stateless, nor addressed the fears of Assam’s minorities. But as Bhattacharyya’s words reveal, this is a wake-up call for the hypernationalists in both politics and the larger society. The crude calculus of differences might benefit politically, but it is a dangerous game. It runs the risk of leaving behind an utterly divided state, high on distrust and hate, low on humanity — an invitation to violent extremism. Who will then put out the fire?

Source: Indian Express, 13/11/2018

A history we must confront

From the World Wars to Partition, there is a need to fill in the big gaps in Indian history textbooks

Two days ago, I watched my children being introduced to a parcel of their history — a tightly bundled up piece of the past that is difficult to confront. They were watching a Doctor Who episode on Partition called ‘Demons of the Punjab’. My son has just turned nine, roughly the age that my father was when Viceroy Mountbatten announced the results of Cyril Radcliffe’s red pen slashing through the map of imperial India. With that announcement, both my parents lost their ancestral homes, but they were the lucky ones for their nuclear families happened to be on the right side of that cartographical red line. Some of their extended family were not so fortunate.

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The brutality of Partition

I watched my nine- and almost-11-year-olds grapple with the senseless violence that was hinted at, but mercifully not shown. As the protagonists of this television series travel back to August 1947, the lead character, the Doctor, says to Yas, whose history they are exploring, “It’s not just the country that gets divided. Tens of millions of people about to be displaced. More than a million about to die.” Coming as it did at the end of the ceremonies to commemorate the centenary of Armistice Day that marked the end of World War I, we were reflecting on the blood that has been spilled for our freedom, but I know I will have trouble helping them work through what they saw before going to bed that evening. As one character, a Hindu farmer living on land divided by the Radcliffe Line, says: “We’ve lived together for decades, Hindu, Muslim and Sikh. And now we’re being told our differences are more important than what unites us.” He is shot by his brother for marrying his neighbour and childhood sweetheart, a Muslim.

From the poppies of remembrance to the frenzied blood of communal hatred, that one day was emotionally draining. India, too, observed the centenary of the Armistice. It is finally acknowledging a part of its history that it has had an uneasy relationship with. For too long, India’s contributions in the two World Wars have been ignored. After all, India sent more than a million troops to fight for freedom in the Great War: at least 74,187, by one count, made the ultimate sacrifice. Indian soldiers fought and died in German East Africa and mainland Europe. ‘Vipers’ entered the Punjabi lexicon, without us honouring the soil at Ypres that soaked up Indian blood. Two decades later, almost two and a half million Indian soldiers would serve again in another bloody global conflagration. Indians fought with great bravery and distinction in north Africa, continental Europe, south and southeast Asia. Though this was not a war of India’s choosing, we sometimes forget that the war came into our country through the northeast. Some of the deaths of the Second World War were of Indian solders defending Indian soil. To ignore their deaths because this was not ‘our’ war would be a grave dishonour. We are finally rectifying what has been a gap in our observance of the contributions in blood and treasure that India has made in the two World Wars.

History in school

I never studied these wars in school. We studied ancient Indian history, ancient Rome, ancient Greece, Mesopotamia, etc. Back on the subcontinent, we worked our way up to the 20th century, and then to the freedom movement, eliding the Great War. We spent more time on the Khilafat movement without actually studying the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, and using the Second World War as a prop for the last push towards Independence. Yes, the Quit India Movement was vital, but we cannot continue to allow the sacrifices of India’s soldiers to be merely supporting structures in our history. Surely, we can honour both.

Of course we did not study Partition in school. As a nation, we have chosen to look away from the horror of the savagery we visited on one another in the name of religion. Yes, the British played their part with ruthless efficiency in their policy of divide and rule, assiduously visited on the nation as they consolidated their hold after 1857. But the knives and bullets and the hands that wielded them and other weapons were our own. That is the conversation I will have to have with my children tomorrow. That is my history that we must confront.

Priyanjali Malik is a London-based independent researcher focussing on politics and nuclear security in South Asia

Source: The Hindu, 13/11/2018

What is ‘disguised unemployment’ in economics?

Also known as hidden unemployment, this refers to a situation where labour that is employed in a job is not actually utilised for the production of goods and services. In other words, such employment does not contribute to the output of an economy and is thus akin to a form of unemployment. Sometimes disguised unemployment could simply be a form of underemployment wherein the skills of a labour force are not utilised to their full capacity. In many other cases, however, such unemployment could simply be due to the lack of other alternative avenues of production where the surplus labour could be employed profitably.

Source: The Hindu, 13/11/2018

A gated revolution

Current forms of urban politics construct a new aam aadmi: The relatively privileged white-collar professional who feels he has been denied his rights due to ‘appeasement’ of the poor.

Urban India is the site of the most dramatic changes in human life. The manner in which we work, live, play, do business, enter into relationships and construct communities is firmly entrenched in the life of our cities. The romanticised village of post-Independence cinema holds little interest for young people in particular, as they seek new futures within possibilities offered by the inexorable expansion of urban agglomerations. Through unplanned and semi-planned means, our cities absorb — with different degrees of hospitality — migrants of different capacities, including those escaping provincial feudal social and economic structures and the fading promise of regional development. In 2011, for the first time since the Census came into being, the absolute urban growth recorded a higher rate than the rural one. Urban life for many may still be brutish, but it is possibly longer and not as short as in the countryside.

The exuberant abandon of urban growth has been accompanied by a quieter but just as significant process that will also deeply influence city life in subsequent years: A very significant middle-class participation in urban planning and development. This new aspect of the urban can be most frequently witnessed in the manner in which Residents Welfare Associations (RWAs) are able to galvanise members to act on an issue that affects their perceived interests. The growth of RWAs is, in turn, linked to both political nurturing of an important constituency (such as the Delhi Bhagidari scheme under the Congress) and a gathering sense of self among middle-class urban residents.

This is a new form of activism, enacted through lycra-clad bicycle enthusiasts, leisure activists, environmentalists, bird-watchers and “ordinary mums and dads” who want a better life in the city. The ongoing residents’ campaign against the construction of a six-lane highway through Gurgaon’s Aravalli Bio-Diversity Park that stretches over 400 acres is a case in point. Spurred through word of mouth, social media and news reports, protesters have gathered in their thousands, with steely resolve and placards aloft. Alongside, local editions of national newspapers have carried extended coverage of protests as well as columns by Gurgaon residents that speak of the kinds of sustainable infrastructure that cities need for a decent life. The protagonists are articulate and rational in their evaluation: The urban fabric requires careful attention to the balance between physical and natural surroundings. “Who will bring back the birds?”, they rightly ask in one strong voice.

Strangely, however, cities such as Gurgaon hardly ever elicit such response — and it is difficult to gather a group of 50 protesters — when it is the social fabric of the city that is in question. In the very recent past, the city has been witness to events that are fundamental to defining the social nature of cities. In Gurgaon, for example, one religious community’s public right to worship has been sought to be curtailed (while placing no limits on others) and there have been severe disturbances that relate to working conditions of factory labour, including those at Maruti’s factory in Manesar.

Another site of significant urban development near Delhi, Noida, witnessed a riot-like situation when workers stormed a gated enclave to protest against the alleged overnight detention of one of their colleagues who worked in the complex. These, too, are issues and events that determine the nature of a city.

However, it frequently appears that the more our cities expand, the more narrow — and gated — our perspective of our place within them. It is striking that the well-off primarily consider urban life as the sum-total of its physical infrastructure, gathering in large numbers to protest against it or argue for it. However, the social life of a city — a decent existence for its most vulnerable populations — appears to not interest many. The emerging nature of urban politics, an apparent revolution that primarily concerns itself with the interests of a small group versus wider discontent that parades in tattered saris and trousers has the potential to produce deeply fragmented cities, if it hasn’t already done so.

The current forms of urban politics are quite different from mass political movements we have seen in the past and it is this difference that holds the key to the kind of society we may end up with. Its key concerns are based on redefining the idea of the “ordinary” person. The ordinary person now is the relatively privileged white-collar professional who, it is asserted, has been exploited and denied his or her rights because of state “appeasement” of the poor. The ordinary person pays taxes and gets little in return; the ordinary person pays for electricity while slum-dwellers steal it. The anger of this ordinary man is at the heart of a new sense of the city where the apparently dispossessed stake a claim through agitational activities that are increasingly narrowly defined in terms of their objectives. This new outlook seems particularly prevalent in newer urban locations where the separation between the well-off and the poor is embedded in the fundamentals of planning.

Our cities will fail not just because we lack parks, gardens and highways. Rather, they will slide into dystopian states because of a failure of the imagination. The nature of a liveable city is fundamentally connected to the possibilities of freedom and decency of life for the vast majority that has limited means to influence these aspects. A “global” or “smart” city is, primarily, an advanced form of habitation because of the manner in which its residents think. What is required is an urban consciousness that is concerned with both the physical infrastructure as well as its social one: Diversity, equity, and fair treatment of its most vulnerable workers. Without such a consciousness, we will end up with a situation where it is easy to gather the well-off to defend a park but impossible to make them rise to defend the idea of a city.

The writer is professor of sociology at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi

Source: Indian Express, 13/11/2018

There is no evidence that Internet shutdowns work

Extensive arguments have been made by many organisations and researchers, who have clearly established that Internet shutdowns, set a domino in motion that damages fundamental rights, the digital economy and in instances even public safety and order

Internet shutdowns have many names. An online curfew, network bans, information blackouts, and our favourite for its augury, the digital kill switch. It captures the growing centrality of electronic communications in modern society. Going beyond the mere disruption to a flow of information, to a halt to life itself. Access to the Internet is not only a recognised human right but practised tangibly in Digital India by the second highest number of Internet users in the world. A growing number, which according to the telecom regulator, includes about 4 in 10 Indians. But worryingly the Internet continues to be shut down, in more states and with higher frequency. Take the case of a recent state services exam in Rajasthan for which mobile Internet services were shut down in the cities of Ajmer, Bharatpur and Jodhpur in early August. This was the third such instance in recent months.

Such disruptions are clearly disproportionate and even counterproductive. Extensive arguments have been made by many organisations and researchers, who have clearly established that Internet shutdowns set a domino in motion that damages fundamental rights, the digital economy and, in instances, even public safety and order. Despite these, there seems to be a hardening of positions both in the legal rules which authorise shutdowns, and their increasing execution which is becoming a standard measure in the administrative toolkit. What explains this?

Two key levers leading to a policy gridlock are a lack of transparency and irrationality. Both are playing dutiful twins, supporting each other in the state apparatus which is approaching this issue under the blanket of national security but is ultimately being used in instances to prevent cheating in entrance exams. Since the practice of state governments to shut down the Internet was first noticed in India in 2013, people started keeping count. By maintaining a number with the date, the reasons and the place of occurrence. With the when, where and why, we could be educated and form a national policy that weighed the competing interests at play. While some organisations maintained trackers built primarily off press reports (given that most RTIs were refused), there were constant demands, even questions by members of parliament, across party lines, to gain knowledge of such data.

The answer has been evasion as the central government till date has refused to provide any count or centralise a reporting and disclosure system. We should not fear such data, and that such calculation may put us to shame, for even existing news reports , India enjoys the top rank as the global leader in the number of Internet shutdowns. These trends were apparent even in 2016 before the central government made legal rules to regulate Internet shutdowns. These rules were made without any public consultation or even a ministerial or high-level bureaucratic statement despite the prominence of the issue.

What was further worrying was several of its clauses seemed to be broadly drafted, giving extensive grounds to shut down the Internet without safeguards or oversight mechanisms as has been recently pointed out in an analysis by Nakul Nayak, legal fellow at the Internet Freedom Foundation. To get to know more about these rules, the Internet Freedom Foundation filed a series of representations, that culminated in RTIs and Appeals. The result was another dead end, in which the response refused information on who was consulted for the drafting of the rules, what were their comments on them, and vague references were made to national security. This secrecy prevents an objective examination of not only the rules but permeates their implementation which fails on any definition of reason.

For many of these concerns, a standard response is that Internet shutdowns are used in states with problems of militancy and as precautionary measures for security. Let us be clear. There cannot be any higher value than human life. But we certainly cannot punish entire populations of a region, deprive them of Internet access to secure their safety. This by itself, even if a measure limited in time to a few hours, is a precipitous path. Restrictions on rights, when left to unaccountable systems, ultimately increase in severity as they become a normalised implement of administrative control. This is precisely what has happened over time on the issue of Internet shutdowns. Coming back to Rajasthan, there is little to no evidence on how and what cheating was curbed with cutting off access to the Internet. There is a complete absence to engage meaningfully in other policy alternatives which are less restrictive, or even the consideration of more traditional, natural options such as more invigilators in exam halls, better measure for depositing mobile phones at entry gates or in case of paper leaks, launching a criminal investigation. In an age and time, in which data-driven policymaking is de rigueur, there is almost a fatalist humour which often characterises the excess of state power. Two days before the Internet was shut down, a tweet from the Twitter handle of the Ajmer Police was hastily deleted after being ridiculed on July 12. It translated to, “From midnight 13 July Internet will be shut down in all of Rajasthan due to the Entrance Exam. Candidates are requested to download their admit cards in advance by the e-mitra service”.

While we hope this makes the reader smile, our sincere hope is that this subject is addressed with greater seriousness by the government.

Apar Gupta is a lawyer and the executive director of the Internet Freedom Foundation. Raman Jit Singh Chima is the Policy Director at Access Now.

Source: Hindustan Times, 13/11/2018

Divine Avatars

 Krishna assures in the Bhagwad Gita, “For the protection of the good, for the destruction of evil forces and the firm establishment of dharma, I am born in every age.” It is believed that God manifests periodically in every age as an avatar. Though gurus and saints are many, an avatar is a separate and singular phenomenon comparable to none other. The guru is a realised soul on the ascent. When an avatar takes birth, it is a case of ‘avatarana’, or descent of divinity, in order to facilitate man’s ‘arohana’, or ascent to divinity. An avatar’s birth is voluntary through Vidya Maya or Yoga Maya, whereas man is born under the spell of Avidya Maya, or ignorance. Man’s body is ‘mrinmayam’, made up of natural elements, and his birth is ‘karma janam’, or due to his past actions, good or bad. The avatar’s body is ‘chinmayam’, embodiment of chith, or pure consciousness, and His birth is either ‘prem janam’ (embodiment of love) or ‘leela janam’ (sportive), brought about by prayers. God’s descent on earth in human form can only be an act of supreme compassion and love, to give you the key to ‘ananda’, bliss. He comes for the spiritual regeneration of humanity through truth and love. Though 21 avatars are mentioned in the Maha Bhagawata, there are references to 10: Matsya, Kurma, Varaha, Narasimha, Vaamana, Parashurama, Rama, Krishna, Buddha and Kalki. They summarise the seekers’ own spiritual evolution and progress. The avatar behaves in a human way, so that mankind can feel kinship with Him and emulate the ideal behaviours

Source: Economic Times, 13/11/2018