Soothing Sufiana

 Sufism is a mystical dimension of Islam, transcending all religions. It is a way of experiencing truth and Self-realisation and, in the process, takes the seeker on a path of serenity, piety and divinity by means of love and devotion to God. Truth is the substance. Truth is the courage, it is the power of flight; some fly and some remain in the garden, some go beyond the stars. Sufi music is evolved and illuminated. It is the enchanting outcome of the interface between Hinduism and Islam. The word ‘sufi’ comes from the Arabic word ‘suf ’ that means pure. Sufi music is all about the relationship between the moods of the lover-poet-saint and the beloved. Sufism originated with the foundation of the Chishti order in Khorasam, Persia. Sufi compositions contain effusive verses with an esoteric dimension written in an ornate language. Dargah Sharif at Ajmer — resting place of Saint Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti — is renowned for its qawwals and is a popular pilgrimage destination. It is where one can intensely feel the Sufi experience. Particularly on Thursdays, the entire area of the Dargah Sharif is suffused with spirituality. Qawwalis, raga-based compositions, are sung in tandem with the combination of harmonium and tabla. Sufism transcends all boundaries of language and religion. Sufi music has the power to heal and its philosophy has a soothing effect. Qawwali is an expression of love between the lover and the beloved that elevates the spirit, bringing God and performer together. In such exaltations, the listener could slip into a mystical trance.

Source: Economic Times, 7/02/2019

India’s Youth Suicide Binge

Younger people, and married women, are more prone to suicide in India

In most countries suicide mortality increases with age. In India, the opposite happens. The suicide rate among young adults aged 15-29 is more than three times the national average. This makes us a country with one of the highest suicide rates among youth in the world. What explains this oddity? The answer lies in yet another oddity: India has a relatively high suicide rate among young adult women. Globally, suicide is much commoner among men than women. The battle to reduce suicide has also been more successful for women than men. Across nations, suicide rates for men are three to seven times as high as for women. The same pattern prevails in India across most age groups, though here the gender gap is less sharp. The oddity is among young adults for whom the gender gap virtually vanishes, and in certain locations, suicide is higher among women. One study published in the Lancet a few years ago found that suicide rate of girls aged 15-19 around Vellore, Tamil Nadu, was 148 per lakh, almost thrice the rate for similarly aged boys. The gender gap in suicide gets worse after marriage. Here is another oddity. In most Western countries, married women are less likely to commit suicide than formerly married women. India is an outlier: married women are more likely to commit suicide than divorced, widowed and separated women, according to the Million Death study, a research project based on a nationally representative mortality survey on the causes of death occurring in 1.1million homes in 6,671areas chosen randomly across the country. Science does not tell us much about the exact cause of suicide. Broadly, we know that biological, environmental and cultural factors make certain populations more vulnerable than others. High suicide rates for young married women in India could flow from a combination of these factors. It is tempting to interpret this high rate as the result of psychological and physical torture from husbands and in-laws, that is common in India. Curiously, a geographic element weakens the gender explanation of high suicide rates among young married women. South Indian states, well-known for better gender relations and female empowerment than north Indian states, have much higher youth mortality. Neighbouring Sri Lanka, with excellent social indicators and higher women’s empowerment, also has a high youth female suicide rate. This could simply reflect greater sociocultural tolerance of suicide as a way out of mental stress. In India, we have a tendency to link suicides with income or economic distress. Farmers have captured all the recent attention on suicides. Suicide among farmers is considered evidence of exceptionally high economic distress among them. Public discourse is politically motivated, highly charged, generally irreverent of facts, and substantially non-serious. In fact the suicide rate is lower for farmers than nonfarmers.
Most extant research does not associate poverty with suicide mortality. Indeed, suicide mortality in India is higher among the more educated, who are typically better off than the less educated. Crosscountry comparisons also reject a link between poverty and suicide. Among well-off OECD countries, Japan has the highest suicide rate at 20 per lakh population, followed by Switzerland at 14 per lakh. Much-poorer India’s suicide rate is 11 per lakh population. Data across Indian states lead to the same conclusion. Suicide rates are up to 10 times higher in richer southern states than in poorer northern states. Now, economic or other shocks can push the vulnerable over the edge. The collapse of the Soviet Union, for instance, sharply increased the suicide rate there. What matters is a relative worsening of economic conditions, not the absolute level of incomes. While the exact causes of suicide remain obscure, the good news is that, globally, the battle against suicides has been a successful one. Since 1994, suicide rates have fallen by more than a third globally. The sharpest decline has been in Russia, South Korea and Japan – the three countries that also have among the highest rates in the world. As in many dimensions of well-being, China has been a leader in the battle against suicide. Its rate has fallen to 7 per lakh in recent years. Like India, China used to have high suicide rates for young women, but that rate has fallen by 90% since the mid-1990s. A contributing factor is urbanisation that granted women greater freedom of work; opportunities to leave violent husbands and in-laws; and live relatively stress-free lives in cities. Means restriction is one of the most effective strategies. In Britain, simply repackaging of painkillers from bottles to blister packs reduced suicide death from overdose of paracetamol by 44%. Limiting access to guns in Australia and restricting alcohol distribution in Russia lowered suicides. In India, toxic pesticides are often used to end life. Better packaging and restricted access of pesticides could reduce the risk of suicide in rural areas. Globally, a major factor contributing towards reduced suicide is better diagnosis and treatment of mental illnesses. Anti-depressants, psychiatric help, access to suicide lifelines, and just the availability of somebody to talk to sympathetically can curb suicides. It would have to be a societal effort and not just something left to the government. This requires compassion and caring towards a targeted vulnerable population, and cannot be simply addressed with buckets of money. Farm loan waiver, every politician’s favourite policy choice to tackle suicide, is extremely blunt, leaky and wasteful. Imagine the chance that a state or nation-wide loan waiver will reach the 0.008% of farmers who are at risk of committing suicide?

 The writer is Professor of Social Policy at Columbia University

Source: Times of India, 7/02/2019

Focus on the positive, not the negative

As clichéd as it sounds, looking at the positives, rather than negatives, does help

I was casually chatting with a friend of mine, a medical practitioner, a doctor, when he was approached by a senior gentleman. The elder was complaining about his apparent ill health.

The gentleman had lived a healthy existence for most of his life, and now owing to his having grown old, seemed to suffer mild infirmities.

He asked my friend as he shared his plight, ‘why me’?

My friend recounted an incident from the life of the legendary Arthur Ashe, the tennis player, which struck me as significant.

Ashe was diagnosed with terminal illness owing to the poor blood transfusion he had been subjected to. Several of his well-wishers came to commiserate with him and one asked “why should you have got this?” Ashe with equanimity responded, “I did not ask ‘Why me?’ when I won the Wimbledon, why should I therefore now ask ‘Why me?’”

When joy envelops us we accept it without thanks many times, yet when we are overcome with sadness we ask ‘why me?’

My friend then suggested to the ageing gentleman, “Look back on all the good times you have had, and in doing so, the suffering you are currently undergoing will be less daunting.”

This I thought was true for me. If I can remember with thanks and recall the good times in my life, the pain of what I may be going through currently may distract me less and I can then re-direct my energy to focus on possibilities rather than paucity.

The writer is an organisational and behavioural consultant.

Source: The Hindu, 4/02/2019

Cracks in the framework

With the systematic weakening of institutions, the government risks pushing all resistance to the streets

The Government of India has reportedly suppressed its own data on current employment, or rather job loss, in the country. It has, thereby, compromised the autonomy and the standing of the National Statistical Commission. This is the latest instalment in the rather sordid story of institutional decay in India, overseen by the leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). This is not to suggest that previous governments did not undermine institutions. The internal Emergency imposed on the country from 1975 to 1977 initiated the process. The government tried to tame bureaucrats as well as the highest court in the land. Postings and appointments were manipulated to suit the ruling dispensation. The BJP government has, however, earned the dubious distinction of sabotaging the autonomy of several political institutions in rapid succession.

Necessary checks

Institutional decay occasions worry because it affects ordinary citizens in disastrous ways. All governments, even those which have been democratically elected, betray an inexorable will to power. Expectedly, expansion of government power violates constitutional rights to freedom, equality and justice. The only way citizens can be protected against any arbitrary and unlawful exercise of power is by limiting the power of government. Liberal democrats, always sceptical of state power, have tried to contain dramatic surges of power by charting out of constitutions and institutional design. Institutions, as the embodiment of formal and informal rules, assure citizens that the government exercises power according to some norms that enable as well as regulate state capacity.

This makes for good political sense when we remember that most human activity is structured by systems of rules — take the intricate and rule-bound game of chess or cricket. Relationships, households, the economy, society, the games we play and do not play take place and develop within the framework of rules. Human beings are social, but we cannot be social unless we know what is expected of us, and what we should do or not do. Without rules that govern relationships — for example, the norm that friendship is based on trust— we will not know what is worthwhile and what is not, what is preferable and what should be avoided, and what is appropriate and what is expedient.

The Canadian political philosopher Charles Taylor has argued in his famous work, Sources of the Self (1989), that institutions embody ‘strong evaluations’. We learn to discriminate between right and wrong, better and worse, and higher and lower. These evaluations are not judged subjectively by our own desires or impulses. Institutions, which stand independently of us, give us standards that allow us to evaluate. Following Taylor, we can rightly wonder why political power should be exercised, implemented and executed without rules. Assertions of political power adversely affect our interests and our projects. We should be in a position to judge when this power is exercised fairly or unfairly. Rules in a democracy assure us that justice is synonymous with fairness.

Moreover, rules make our worlds predictable. We know what the boundaries of the freedom of expression are, we know that if the police arrests us tomorrow, we have the right to appoint a lawyer and appeal to the judiciary. Without institutions and rules our life would be chancy, unpredictable and fickle. We would inhabit a space empty of certainties, expectations, aspirations and evaluations.

Rules, not whims

In a democracy, individuals are governed by institutions, and not by men. If we do not live in an institutional universe, we will be at the mercy of capricious individuals. Democrats would rather be administered by a system of rules we can scrutinise and evaluate. Of course, rules can be, and are, unfair. But at least we can struggle against rules. We do not have to commit murders to get the ruling dispensation out of power. We might have to carry out a thousand peaceful demonstrations, approach the courts, lobby our legislative representatives, engage in civil disobedience, or withhold our vote. In a world stamped by the decline of institutions and the exercise of arbitrary power, the only way to dislodge a government is through violence.

The present government has tampered with institutions by appointing its own people to positions of authority, and by using the Enforcement Directorate, Income Tax authorities, the Central Bureau of Investigation and the police as bulldozers to flatten out any site of opposition. In civil society, human rights organisations have been pulverised by blockage of funds, raids and arrests. The shameful way in which human rights activists have been incarcerated without a shred of evidence testifies to the subversion of the rule of law. The ultimate aim of government action is to dismantle institutions, and the delicate relationship of checks and balances among them. This bodes ill for democracy.

The development contravenes the spirit of the freedom struggle. As far back as the 1928 Motilal Nehru constitutional draft, the leadership of the national movement opted for constitutionalism to abridge unpredictable use of power, and grant basic rights to citizens. On November 4, 1948, B.R. Ambedkar, responding to criticism of the draft Constitution in the Constituent Assembly, clarified that the Constitution provided but a framework for future governments. But: “If things go wrong under the new Constitution, the reason will not be that we have a bad constitution. What we will have to say is that Man was vile.” The Indian Constitution established major political institutions, Parliament, executive and the judiciary, laid out the relationship between them, provided for judicial review, and codified political and civil rights. The constitutional framework does not provide thick or substantive conceptions of how we shall think, and in what we shall believe. It provides us with a thin framework that guarantees constitutional morality, or respect for the Constitution as the basis of political life.

Today the ruling party wants to legislate a thick conception of the good. We are instructed to worship the nation, respect the cow, glorify the coercive arm of the state, and listen on bended knees to leaders. Frankly the discourse is reminiscent of the naïve, and often crude, nationalist scripts authored and acted out by the film star Manoj Kumar in the 1960s. We can avoid watching his films without fear of harassment, but we cannot defy the government without being abused and subjected to violence of the pen and tongue.

Upending the balance

The government arrests civil society activists who engage with policy, and vigilante groups attack individuals who dare transport cattle, legitimately, from one part of India to another. Immediately the sympathies of the police and magistrates, some sections of the media and public opinion swing towards the perpetrator, not the victim. The leaders of our ruling dispensation seem to have no respect for the rule of law, nor for the rules that regulate speech in public spaces.

Ultimately institutionalised power that is subject to regulation, and that can withstand the scrutiny of the political public, is meant to protect citizens. Unfortunately, in the India of today institutions are used to protect the ruling class, and its sins of omission and commission. The people who rule us should know that when the relationship between citizens and the state is governed not by institutions but by individuals, politics takes to the streets. And then a thousand revolts happen. We pay heavily for institutional decline.

Neera Chandhoke is a former Professor of Political Science at Delhi University

Source: The Hindu, 6/02/2019

To clean India, invest in water conservation

The Northeastern part of India is doing well in the Swachh Bharat Mission. But an emerging water crisis in the Himalayas could reduce the gains made

Nagaland is pristine and gorgeous. But one needs a strong heart and a much stronger back to enjoy the Himalayan state. The roads are dirt tracks and tourist facilities are non-existent. The infrastructure-deficit Himalayan state, however, is not a laggard on one count: toilet infrastructure, especially in its rural areas. Recently, rural Nagaland was declared Open Defecation Free (ODF) by the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM). In fact, unlike in many other sectors, SBM’s record — not just in Nagaland — but across the Northeastern region (NE) has kept pace with the country’s expanding sanitation coverage. According to the ministry of drinking water and sanitation, five out of seven states are ODF, with Assam and Tripura being the exceptions.

The NE’s good ODF record, experts say, is due to several reasons. First, high literacy levels; second, strong community-based institutional structures (church groups, students’ organisations, youth groups, and village-level water and sanitation committees, which ensure that all members of a community adhere to decisions such as banning open defecation); third, a progressive mindset with a strong focus on an integrated approach covering aspects of water, sanitation and hygiene; and fourth, an absence of any caste-related ritual pollution and purity concerns, which often make people resist the idea of building toilets inside their homes (a problem in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar). The negative impact such pollution-purity issues could have on the pace and success of SBM has been well documented by economists Diane Coffey and Dean Spears in Where India Goes, Abandoned Toilets, Stunted Development and the Costs of Caste.

However, the commendable gains made by these Himalayan states (the Centre bears 90% of the cost of building a toilet in these states), despite their undulating topography, may take a hit in the future due to an emerging water crisis, being sparked by deforestation (which will impact rainfall, soil health and consequently water availability), overpopulation (which will put stress on existing natural resources), and climate change (which will also affect water availability, among other things).

The first signs are already here.

“Population has been increasing over the years. Natural water bodies, streams and springs — the region’s core source of water — are getting polluted. Villages already face acute water problem… drilling boreholes is not an option,” explained Assam-based Samuel Therieh, a sanitation expert for World Vision India. “Many Himalayan villages are located on hilltops and in many cases away from the water sources. It’s not always possible to build pipelines due to the topography. If nearby water sources dry up, then people will find it difficult to get water for sanitation purposes.”

The ministry of water resources estimates that each rural household in India needs 40 litres of water every day, out of which 15 to 20 litres are required for sanitation. But as of 2017, almost 19,000 villages in India were yet to have access to piped water supply. Even the ones that do get piped water, getting 40 litres a day remains a distant dream. On an average, a well supplied rural household receives 8-10 litres of water per day. As water is mostly utilised for cooking, drinking and washing, using it for sanitation becomes the last priority. The government has said that it is committed to covering 90% of Indian rural households with piped water supply by 2022.

“A lot of the funds for sanitation came at the expense of water. So while the need for water increased because of toilet usage, the investment in water to augment domestic water supplies decreased. With challenging geography, the situation gets more complex,” says Indira Khurana , water and sanitation expert, and author of Reflections on Managing Water, Earth’s Greatest Natural Resource.

The absence of water resources was also raised by a parliamentary panel in 2018. The panel, headed by Lok Sabha member, Dr P Venugopal, said that going through the factual and ground realities prevalent in the country, it is perplexed as to how ODF can be achieved without the availability of adequate water provisions. The panel recommended that the ministry of drinking water and sanitation prioritise the provision of water availability along with the construction of toilets under SBM and apprise it of actual figures of toilets with water facilities that have been constructed.

Economists Coffey and Spears, however, argue that if social forces against open defecation are strong enough ------ as it is in the NE ------ people without water connections will also be willing to fill buckets to flush their latrines. This momentum must not be lost. To ensure that people keep using toilets, it is not just critical to develop and construct toilets that use less water (such as TATA Trusts rural pans), but also augment water security so that people are not forced to exit the programme. Building pipelines is an expensive and time consuming proposition. It is, therefore, critical to invest in the renovation of traditional wells, rain water harvesting systems and reviving the natural springs that dot the mountain landscape. These efforts can ensure a steady source of water for sanitation in the Northeast, and consolidate the gains of SBM.

kumkum.dasgupta@htlive.com

Source: Hindustan Times, 5/02/2019

Create a research culture for the growth of science in India

Our best can be also be more daring in the questions they themselves address, thinking with more originality and ambition

On January 26, India entered its 70th year as a republic. With our economic and geographical size, and our young population, India shoulders a great responsibility to our citizens and to the world. In this, science has a key role to play.

Today, our planet is in a perilous state. Our route to this precipice started at least a century before 1950. Industrial revolutions and their consequent growth pulled hundreds of millions into the middle class, first in the West, and later, elsewhere. Some analysts have pointed out that health benefits, education, assured food and housing are available to more people now than ever before. In India, primary health and vaccination programmes, education, the green revolution, and liberalisation have moved us from a near-static economy to the world’s fastest growing one. However, the way we, on earth, have grown, has caused climate change, consequent global warming, and major environmental degradation.

The development of new technologies leading up to, and including, the fourth industrial revolution have also greatly sharpened inequalities, concentrating extraordinary wealth and power in the hands of a global elite. If we are to retrieve our planet, we need to address these prevalent threats as well as emerging ones. This needs to be done while satisfying the legitimate demand to take all our people out of poverty. Success requires a new route and meaning to growth. Here, science in India can define this new approach and shape it.

The most important role for our scientists today is in the training of the next generation to make critical thinking second nature and research commonplace. Our best science and technology research environments cater to less than 5% of our students. Quality research, driven by the search for knowledge understanding, must also be done in our state universities, which cater to 95% of our students, and where first generation students enter in the millions. Tomorrow’s global elite will have the exploitative power, not only from material resources, but mainly from the ability to use data. A poorly educated workforce will make India a vassal state, with our rich data parked elsewhere and our population impoverished by the lack of understanding and control over its use. Mathematics, statistics and data science, along with computer science, need to be added to foundational skilling, through language-neutral teaching material accessible in quality across our geographies.

Our best scientists and science institutions are fully up to this task of expanding the footprint of research and excellence. Over the past two decades, the median quality of our researchers has gone up noticeably. From theoretical physics and mathematics to cell biology and health research, more Indians are globally noticed. Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay and Ritabrata Munshi in computer science and mathematics are examples as are Upinder Bhalla, Yamuna Krishnan and Rohini Godbole in neuroscience, chemical-biology and high-energy physics respectively. Yet these, and many other such scientists come mainly from a handful of institutions. These institutions must now lead in the expansion of quality, so that there are more of them.

Our best researchers must be more daring in the questions they themselves address, thinking with more originality and ambition. Currently, with some notable and admirable exceptions, such as the ones named above, our excellent scientists and institutions aspire, at most, to be as good as those elsewhere. While this does not seem a bad goal, it destines us to be followers of moving targets set by others. We should simply aim to address and solve the most challenging problems, fundamental or applied, national or global. If we do this, we can be better than the best in many ways, while others are the best in their own ways. If we focus on trying to be the best by imitation, we may be very good by global metrics but very boring, unimaginative and without national and global impact. Our best will be admired for their ability to fit in and serve imaginative leaders from elsewhere, but rarely for our ability to break new paths.

Our scientific ambitions can and must be diverse, from abstract mathematics to cosmology, and everything basic and applied, in between. Our major sites of investment in intellectual power, Bengaluru, Pune, Hyderabad etc can leap ahead if they form hubs in each city that link to develop spokes elsewhere, locally or thematically. In past decades, the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) have been playing nationally transformative roles. Today, these and other institutions must be ambitious again. They have the leadership to do so. The IISc, for example, can and must form a confederation of major institutions in Bengaluru, which keeps intact and enhances their best features and autonomy but links them inexorably in teaching, research collaborations and ambitious projects. This can be done in other cities too, led by each major institution there. Such clusters have been articulated top down in the past few years. But our great scientists and science leaders need to demonstrate bottom-up hunger too. The population of Bengaluru is comparable to that of the Netherlands. With leadership from the IISc and partnerships from the best institutions in Bengaluru, the IT-Biotech engines, the labs of ISRO, DRDO, CSIR, IARI etc., magic can be worked. And, while doing so, this cluster can help transform our state universities.

India can grow rapidly in a sustainable manner. For this to become reality, our leading scientists and institutions need to combine their competence with a comprehension that moves us to firmly address big issues intelligently. With courage and original thinking, a science powerhouse that is different, but as remarkable as those in the UK, Netherlands or Sweden, can bloom in every major hub. This can actively stimulate the spread of a research culture among our students in the spokes. The creation of such a culture is our primary investment for progress and the only insurance against the vagaries of the future.

K Vijay Raghavan is the principal scientific adviser, government of India

Source: Hindustan Times, 5/02/2019

Going abroad for studies? You may’ve to register with govt

Indian students looking to study abroad may soon have to register with the government before they take that flight to their destination of choice for higher studies. The proposal is a part of the draft Emigration Bill 2019 which the ministry of external affairs (MEA) will introduce in Parliament once it has completed the process of feedback which it is seeking from the public. Official sources said though the bill is out in the public domain since January 9, it is not yet final and, depending upon public feedback, several changes could be made. The process of registration/intimation by students is unlikely to be cumbersome as it will be done online, said officials. “The Bill makes mandatory registration/intimation of all categories of Indian nationals proceeding for overseas employment as well as students pursuing studies abroad. Registration/intimation is proposed to be technology/digital platform driven so as to keep emigration a swift, efficient and hassle-free process,’’ says the proposed bill, adding that necessary provisions have been incorporated to exempt certain categories in this regard on a need basis. India had this year made similar registration mandatory for those seeking work in 18 countries — UAE, Afghanistan, Bahrain, Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, Thailand, and Yemen. According to the government, mandatory registration/intimation by students and Indian nationals working abroad are aimed at assisting them in times of distress and emergency and putting in place an “effective emigration management framework”. The bill, it says, aims at optimum utilisation of existing resources and manpower than creating new elaborate structures. The bill further makes mandatory registration of recruitment and student enrolment agencies and also includes provision for their rating. “Sub-agents working with recruitment agencies have also been brought under the ambit of proposed bill,” it says. The government is looking to create with the bill an Emigration Management Authority (EMA). It proposes that the EMA be led by a secretary-level officer from MEA, the nodal ministry for all emigration related matters, and have representatives also from MHA and HRD ministries.

Source: Times of India, 6/02/2019