Know Ironic Awareness

Ironic awareness means being aware of the irony and paradox of life, at the existential level as well as in matters of everyday life. This phrase originated as a term of literary criticism. In the context of spirituality, ironic awareness enables one to live life robustly, knowing well that we live in the shadow of death; to respect money, knowing fully that it can be the root of misery; to enjoy the world, despite knowing that the world is an illusion. It involves understanding the play of maya and being amused by it, rather than being overwhelmed by it, in happy as much as in unhappy events. Hypocrisy is rooted in falsehood and cunning; ironic awareness is rooted in truth and wisdom. It is different from cynicism. Oscar Wilde described a cynic as one who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Ironic awareness is to know the value of everything and the price of nothing. Ironic awareness can be easily defined as the state of being able to see both sides of a coin. This, however, is only partly right. Ironic awareness is the ability to reconcile in an informed, instinctive way the opposite sides of the coin, so as to be able to see both sides in each side. This involves perceiving the essential unity even as you wonder at and enjoy the diversity. Inclusive perception comes from a habit of multidirectional, cross-directional sympathy. This is the essence of universal love. This requires a high-resolution vision — outer and the inner — functioning in sync and capable of seeing into the heart of every matter.

Source: Economic Times, 15/02/2019

A clarion call to combat climate change

The Green New Deal acknowledges the responsibility of the U.S. for its historical emissions

When almost all news about climate change concerns catastrophic events, there are a few shining lights in the U.S. and Europe. One is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 29, the newly elected member of the U.S. House of Representatives. The other is Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old Swede whose school strike outside the Swedish Parliament, in a clear-minded effort to force politicians to act on climate change, has inspired students in many countries to walk out of their classrooms and make similar demands. If Ms. Thunberg’s voice is inspiring for the way it has roused the youth, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is daring in her imagination and policies.

The Green New Deal “is a four-part programme for moving America quickly out of crisis into a secure, sustainable future”. It takes its name from U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt’s famous New Deal, a series of economic and social measures launched in the 1930s to end the Great Depression. The Green New Deal audaciously aspires to make sweeping changes to the environment and economy and meet all of the U.S.’s power demand from clean, renewable and zero emission energy sources by 2030, while at the same time addressing racial and economic justice. Thus, in many ways, it is more than just a climate change plan. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez along with Massachusetts Senator Edward Markey introduced the resolution in the House and Senate on February 7.

What the deal says

The resolution acknowledges the 1.5° report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the U.S. Fourth National Climate Assessment. It identifies the worldwide effects from warming, the disproportionate responsibility borne by the U.S. as a result of its historical emissions, and calls for the country to step up as a global leader. It speaks about the fall in life expectancy, economic stagnation, erosion of workers’ rights, and rising inequality in the U.S. Climate change that will asymmetrically affect the most vulnerable sections of U.S. society and ought to be considered a direct threat to national security.

The resolution goes on to recognise the momentous opportunity available to take action. It states that it is the responsibility of the federal government to create a Green New Deal, which would meet its power demand through renewable sources in 10 years. It calls for a 10-year national mobilisation that would build infrastructure, eliminate pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, as much as is technologically feasible, and reduce risks posed by the impacts of climate change.

These goals entail dramatic changes in manufacturing, electricity generation, education, livelihoods, sustainable farming, food systems, an overhaul of transportation, waste management, health care, and strong pollution-control measures. The resolution also calls for international action by the U.S. on climate change. It recognises that public funds would be needed for these changes and need to be leveraged. It states that the federal government needs to take the full social and environmental costs of climate change into consideration through new laws, policies and programmes. Importantly, the Green New Deal calls for a federal jobs guarantee for all.

A welcome surprise

How far this resolution will go and whether and how it will be diluted in the U.S. Congress is unclear. Many details of the proposal still need to be worked out. It has been called “ridiculous” by some Republicans and has made some Democratic leaders uneasy as well.

But various progressive elected officials, groups, and some activists have lent their support. Almost all Democrats who have announced their candidacy for the 2020 election have backed the resolution. A poll conducted by Yale and George Mason Universities showed that there was support for the deal among most Democratic voters and a majority of the Republicans. One does not know if this appetite for the deal will be sustained, but if extreme events related to climate change continue, people are likely to view radical change as essential. If we look at the political situation when Roosevelt passed the New Deal, both Houses of Congress were under the Democrats. On the other hand, the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act were passed by President Richard Nixon and were regarded as being radical in their time.

If any country has the “capability” to increase its commitment in renewables, it is the U.S. This clarion call by Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and Mr. Markey is therefore a welcome surprise. The share of fossil fuels in total electricity generation in the U.S. in 2017 was 63%, the share of renewables was 17%, and the share of nuclear was 20%.

The future

It should be noted that until now no U.S. agency or civil society group has publicly acknowledged the responsibility of the country for its historical emissions. The Green New Deal is the sort of resolution the U.S. should have passed after the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. Instead, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed the Byrd-Hagel Resolution, according to which the U.S. ought not to be a signatory to any protocol or agreement regarding the United Nations Climate Convention that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions for Annex-1 Parties, the wealthy countries, unless developing countries were also similarly required to limit their emissions.

Meanwhile, Ms. Thunberg’s school boycott movement has inspired protests in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Australia and elsewhere. If this spreads to many more countries, it can help apply pressure on governments and the fossil fuel industry and create a bottom-up movement led by the youth for major changes in dealing with climate change.

The Green New Deal is an acknowledgement by politicians that economic growth, the environment and social well-being go together. While these bold moves by two young women have opened windows to winds of change, how far these can progress and whether they will bring the scale of change needed as rapidly as it is required to deal with the world’s dire challenge remains to be seen.

Sujatha Byravan is a scientist who studies science, technology and development policy

Source: The Hindu, 14/02/2019

Exam and Peace

Education is essentially war. It is devoid of joy and humour, creative play and aesthetic celebration.

Should the child be blamed for not having learnt the problems of algebra before coming into the world?

Rabindranath Tagore

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As the board examinations approach, and the dialectic of “success” and “failure” begins to haunt young learners and their anxiety-ridden parents, we realise once again that the pattern of education we have normalised is inherently pathological. The creation of a violent/hierarchical/schooled consciousness seems to be its latent function.

Even though an empathic look at the educational ideals of Rabindranath Tagore, Sri Aurobindo and J Krishnamurti would suggest that there is no dearth of critical and creative thinking on liberating pedagogy, we dislike experimentation and new possibilities, and make a superficial distinction between “pragmatism” and “idealism”.

No wonder, we have become used to the routinisation of the practice of glorifying the “success stories” of the “toppers”, and, at the same time, inviting the psychiatrists on television channels to reflect on the “suicide narratives” of those who could not bear the stigma of “failure”. And meanwhile, everything would function as usual — the practice of “black education” would flourish in coaching centres, the publishers of “guide books” would make a lot of money, and school principals heavily burdened with the “ranking” of their schools would alert insecure parents of “problematic” children that in the age of inflated “cut off points” for admission in “branded” colleges, the future is bleak without 99 per cent in English, or 100 per cent in Physics.

Why is it so? There are three reasons I would emphasise. First, here is a system that closes the mind of the young learner, and abhors the desirability of making meaningful choices relating to academic quest and vocation. How are choices possible if schools — possibly, because of the age of techno-science and commerce that we live in — have already hierarchised knowledge traditions: Science or economics for the “intelligent” ones, and humanities for the “leftovers”?

Or does the child ever get the space to contemplate on her own inclinations and aptitudes at a time when peer pressure negates self-reflection and generates a crowd mentality, or when struggling parents — guided by the longing for upward social mobility — have already decided that she has to pass through the most travelled “Aakash/Fitjee/IIT” highway, and all other paths are “risky” and “impractical”, particularly in a society like ours traumatised by an acute sense of scarcity? Moreover, we have promoted a strange classification of academic disciplines. It is impossible for one to opt for, say, Physics, History and Music. It is taken for granted that if you have interest in literature, you cannot be equally inclined towards statistics. In other words, we decide the fate of our children so early. Not surprisingly, then, schooling prepares the ground for an alienated existence.

econd, here is a system obsessed with the quantification of knowledge and evaluation. With the burden of information, examinations as ceremonies of power, and a reckless process of measuring even one’s “happiness” and “moral quotient”, schools have robbed the practice of education of the ecstasy of social awakening, scientific reasoning and poetic imagination. A careful look at weekly tests, classroom transactions and summer projects would suggest that the system asks a young child to become what Prime Minister Narendra Modi (in his role as an instantaneous “educationist”) loves to celebrate as an “exam-warrior”.

Be a strategist; acquire the technique of memorising the bullet points; and reduce everything — be it a poem by Kamala Das, a narrative on Partition and “the challenges before the newly independent nation”, or a trigonometric equation — into a typical CBSE puzzle to be solved for securing good marks. It is essentially war. It is devoid of joy and humour, and creative play and aesthetic celebration. While the “successful warriors” join the IITs and colleges like LSR, Presidency and Stephen’s, those who are not so lucky — or, deprived of the kind of cultural capital needed to survive — would be compelled to realise that it is painful to be young, wounded and stigmatised. No, there is no peace in this system, even if schools hire counsellors, invite motivational speakers, and ask children to read self-help books in their “relaxed” times.

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And third, as the lifeworld gets increasingly colonised by the market, “success” is equated with a purely instrumental orientation to life, and the virtues of the doctrine of the “survival of the fittest” are celebrated with all sorts of media simulations. Education becomes merely a “performance” — a packaged good for sale. A teacher becomes merely a “subject expert” or a “skill-provider”. There is no communion that Martin Buber longed for; there is no sunset that Jidu Krishnamurti wanted children to look at; and there is no union of the “physical, vital, mental and psychic” that Sri Aurobindo imagined. What prevails is only a standardised scale of measurement intoxicated with the urge to eliminate innumerable young minds and throw them into the dustbin of a “meritocratic” universe. And our exam-centric education sanctifies it.

Well, children, even though I convey my best wishes for your board exams, I have no hesitation in saying that as adults, teachers and policy-makers we have betrayed you. Like T S Eliot, I too would admit that we have lost knowledge in information, and wisdom in knowledge.

Source: Indian Express, 14/02/2019

Artificial Intelligence models may have a few issues, algorithms don’t

Not all the concerns about AI models are unfounded. But most of the problem lies with the human element in the entire process: the selection of training and testing data.

As machine learning — fashionably branded as artificial intelligence (AI) — continues to flourish, a veritable cottage industry of activists has accused it of reflecting and perpetuating pretty much everything that ails the world: racial inequity, sexism, financial exploitation, big-business connivance, you name it. To be fair, new technologies must be questioned, probed, and “problematized” (to use one of their favourite buzzwords) — and it is indeed a democratic prerogative. That said, there seems to be persistent confusion around the very basics of the discipline.

No other example demonstrates this best than the conflation of objectives, algorithms and models. Simplifying a little, the life cycle in creating a machine learning model from scratch is the following. The first step is to set a high-level practical objective: What the model is supposed to do, such as recognising images or speech. This objective is then translated into a mathematical problem amenable to computing. This computational problem, in turn, is solved using one or more machine learning algorithms: specific mathematical procedures that perform numerical tasks in efficient ways. Up to this stage, no data is involved. The algorithms, by themselves, do not contain any.

The machine learning algorithms are then “trained” on a data sample selected at human discretion from a data pool. In simple terms, this means that the sample data is fed into the algorithms to obtain patterns. Whether these patterns are useful or not (or, often, whether they have predictive value) is verified using “testing” data — a data set different from the training sample, though selected from the same data pool. A machine learning model is born: The algorithm, along with the training and testing data sets, which meets the set practical objective. The model is then let loose on the world. (In a few cases, as the model interacts with this much larger universe of data, it fine-tunes itself and evolves; the model’s interaction with users helps it expand its training data set.) From predictive financial analytics to more glamorous cat-recognising systems, most current AI models follow this life cycle.

To reiterate, the algorithms themselves do not contain data; the model does. Algorithms are simply mathematical recipes and, as such, go way before computers. When you are dividing two numbers by the long division method, you are implementing an algorithm. Simpler still, when you are adding two, you are also implementing another. A commonly used algorithm to classify images — Support Vector Machines — is a simple way to solve a geometrical problem, invented in the early 1960s. Despite the bombastic moniker, it is not a machine, merely a recipe. Another with an equally impressive name, the Perceptron, also has a dry mathematical statement despite sounding like something out of a science fiction film.

All of the above would have sounded like idle pedantry had prominent voices not continued to conflate models with algorithms. Last month, America’s latest cause célèbre, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, noted that “algorithms are still pegged to basic human assumptions”. Unless you count basic logic as one such impediment, no other assumptions hide behind an algorithm. Yet another American professor published a book titled “Algorithms of Oppression.” While all of this may be for rhetorical effect — and algorithms as shorthand for artificial intelligence whatchamacallit — it reveals a cavalier attitude towards notions, especially among those who are in positions to shape technology policy.

This is not to say that concerns about AI models are unfounded. But most of the problem lies with the human element in the entire process: the selection of training and testing data. Suppose a developer draws on historical incarceration data to build a model to predict criminal behaviour. Chances are likely that the results will appear skewed and reflect human biases. Similarly, when Amazon’s voice responsive speaker Alexa told a user to “kill your foster parents”, it was pointed out that Reddit (not the politest of chat platforms) was part of its training set. Finally, as a recent MIT Technology Review article put it, the conversion of a practical objective into a computational problem (again, a human activity) may also introduce biases into an AI model. As an example, the article asked, how does one operationalise a fair definition of “creditworthiness” for an algorithm to understand and process?

At the end, the issue is not whether AI systems are problematic in themselves. It is that we are, as we choose data and definitions to feed into algorithms. In that, technology is often a mirror we hold in front of ourselves. But algorithms are independent of our predilections, built, as they are, only out of logic.

Abhijnan Rej is a New Delhi-based security analyst and mathematical scientist

Source: Hindustan Times, 14/02/2019

Scientists identify seven universal moral rules

Oxford researchers have identified seven universal moral rules common around the world, suggesting that people across cultures live by the same basic ethical codes and values. The rules include helping your family and group, returning favours, being brave, deferring to superiors, dividing resources fairly, and respecting others’ property. Previous studies have looked at some of these rules in some places – but none has looked at all of them in a large representative sample of societies. The study, published in Current Anthropology, is the largest and most comprehensive crosscultural survey of morals ever conducted, researchers said. The team from University of Oxford in the UK analysed ethnographic accounts of ethics from 60 societies, comprising over 600,000 words from over 600 sources. “The debate between moral universalists and moral relativists has raged for centuries, but now we have some answers,” said Oliver Scott Curry, senior researcher at Oxford. “People everywhere face a similar set of social problems, and use a similar set of moral rules to solve them,” said Curry. “As predicted, these seven moral rules appear to be universal across cultures. Everyone everywhere shares a common moral code. All agree that cooperating, promoting the common good, is the right thing to do,” he said. The study tested the theory that morality evolved to promote cooperation, and that – because there are many types of cooperation – there are many types of morality. The research found that these seven cooperative behaviours were always considered morally good. Examples of most of these morals were found in most societies. Crucially, there were no counterexamples – no societies in which any of these behaviours were considered morally bad, researchers said. The study also detected “variation on a theme” – although all societies seemed to agree on the seven basic moral rules, they varied in how they prioritised or ranked them. The team has now developed a new moral values questionnaire to gather data on modern moral values, and is investigating whether cross-cultural variation in moral values reflects variation in the value of cooperation under different social conditions.

Source: Midday, 14/02/2019 

Virtues of Solitude

Gregarious by nature, human beings need company to talk to, to intermingle and interact with one another. To be alone is, therefore, perceived as a curse, and so, solitary confinement is considered appropriate punishment for grave offenders of law. In colonial India, solitary prison cells of the Cellular Jail in the Andaman Islands were reserved for freedom fighters (‘traitors’). But the narrow, lonely cells failed to daunt their spirited inmates. On the contrary, the stunning isolation led prisoners to attain true realisation, strengthening them with vigour; they embraced death with a smile when condemned to the gallows. The body is like a piece of attire that with death is shed as worn-out garments. Likewise, the embodied soul casts off worn-out bodies and enters into other, new ones. Nothing that you gain or earn is eternal; and nothing is in your control. When revealing His Vishwaroop (world vision) on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, Krishna told Arjuna that he should not be depressed and sad at having to wage war with his kith and kin because their death had been destined to happen with Arjuna being a mere instrument. There is a Supreme guiding force to whom you should surrender — lay your acts and deeds at the lotus feet of this Supreme Guide and be duty-bound without expecting reward or result. The Bhagavad Gita says, “A stable mind is one which remains unperturbed amid joys and sorrows, is free from passion, fear and anger and is unattached to worldly pleasures.”

Source: Economic Times, 14/02/2019

A case for Commons sense

There needs to be a review of how biodiversity and natural resources are governed  

When 196 countries met at Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt, last November for the 14th meeting of the Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), a key question on top of the agenda was how to govern biological resources (or biodiversity) at different levels for the world’s sustainable future.

The meeting had come at a significant time: it was the CBD’s 25th year of implementation, countries had approximately 350 days to meet global biodiversity targets, and there was the backdrop of a damning report that humans have mismanaged biodiversity so badly that we have lost 60% of resources (which can never be recouped). Finally, there was growing concern on how the Convention’s objectives of conservation, sustainable use and equitable sharing of benefits were being compromised, including by the parties themselves.

For thousands of years, humans have considered natural resources and the environment as a global public good, with communities having diligently managed these resources using the principle of ‘Commons’.

In simple terms, these are a set of resources such as air, land, water and biodiversity that do not belong to one community or individual, but to humanity. All developments we see in the establishment of civilisations across the world as well as agricultural development feeding the world today are a result of such ‘Commons’ being managed by communities for centuries.

Then came the urge of those with money and power to privatise these resources for individual prosperity in the form of property management principles, intellectual property rights and others. In one form the CBD — a multi-lateral environmental agreement that has provided legal certainty to countries through the principle of sovereign rights over biodiversity — also contributed to states now owning the resources, including their rights on use and management.

Today, states control and manage biodiversity with strict oversight of who can use what and how. The intent of the CBD and having sovereign rights was to manage resources better. But the results of such management have been questionable. A key reason cited is that ‘Commons’ and common property resource management principles and approaches are ignored and compromised.

Why ‘Commons’?

According to estimates, a third of the global population depends on ‘Commons’ for their survival; 65% of global land area is under ‘Commons’, in different forms. At least 293,061 million metric tonnes of carbon (MtC) are stored in the collective forestlands of indigenous peoples and local communities. This is 33 times the global energy emissions in 2017. The significance of ‘Commons’ in supporting pollination (the cost estimated to be worth $224 billion annually at global levels) cannot be overlooked.

In India, the extent of ‘Common’ land ranges between 48.69 million and 84.2 million hectares, constituting 15-25% of its total geographical area. ‘Common’-pool resources contribute $5 billion a year to the incomes of poor Indian households. Around 77% of India’s livestock is kept in grazing-based or extensive systems and dependent on ‘Commons’ pool resources. And 53% of India’s milk and 74% of its meat requirements are met from livestock kept in extensive ‘Common’ systems.

Despite their significance, ‘Commons’ in India have suffered continued decline and degradation. National Sample Survey Office data show a 1.9% quinquennial rate of decline in the area of ‘Common’ lands, though microstudies show a much more rapid decline of 31-55% over 50 years, jeopardising the health of systemic drivers such as soil, moisture, nutrient, biomass and biodiversity, in turn aggravating food, fodder and water crises. As of 2013, India’s annual cost of environmental degradation has been estimated to be Rs. 3.75 trillion per year, i.e. 5.7% of GDP according to the World Bank.

Why the concern?

‘Commons’ becoming uncommon is a major socio-political, economic and environmental problem. While the state can have oversight over resource management, keeping people away from using and managing ‘Commons’ is against effective governance of ‘Commons’.

The sovereign rights provided for, legally, under the CBD should not be misunderstood by the state as a handle to do away with ‘Commons’-based approaches to managing biodiversity, land, water and other resources.

Current discussions under the United Nations should focus on how and why ‘Commons’ have been negatively impacted by progressive pronouncements to save the earth and people.

Another key concern is the changing socio-political impact of migration. Gone are the days when we can consider ‘Commons’ as resources relevant only for rural communities. ‘Commons’ are now a major provider of livelihood options for both urban and peri-urban populations. The relevance of ‘Commons’ impacting urban dwellers cannot be overlooked with more urbanisation happening.

Approaches for the future

There needs to be a review of current governance of biodiversity and natural resources. After 18 years of action to reduce the rate of loss of biodiversity, it is very likely that the same 196 countries will meet in 2020 to apologise to the world for having failed to meet the objectives of the convention.

In addition to seeking more money, time and capacities to deal with biodiversity and natural resource management, we need to focus on three specific approaches: one, to re-introduce more strongly, the management and governance principles of ‘Commons’ approaches into decision-making and implementation of conservation, use and benefit sharing action; two, to use Joseph Schumpeter’s approach of creative destruction to put resource management in the hands of the people; and three, to re-look at Elinor Ostrom’s Nobel Prize winning principles of dealing with ‘Commons’.

The time for corrective approaches and action is now.

Balakrishna Pisupati, currently working on the promise of ‘Commons’, is Chairperson, Forum for Law, Environment, Development and Governance (FLEDGE) and former Chief of Biodiversity, Land Law and Governance at the United Nations Environment Programme

Source: The Hindu, 13/02/2019