Is there a case for reservation for the forward classes?

Social justice is not possible if we exclude the economically backward sections of our society

Social justice is inclusive in nature. It means ensuring that no marker of backwardness is left untouched. Poverty is one such marker of backwardness, and a very strong one, which denies certain basic rights, and equality in society, to individuals affected by it.

The Preamble, which is the soul of the Constitution, promises to all citizens social, economic and political justice. The economic status of citizens constitutes one of the three tests of backwardness. Hence, the ends of social justice cannot be truly met if we exclude the economically backward sections of society from availing the fruits of development in an equal manner.

A move to help the poor

Poverty denies equality of opportunity to individuals in education and employment. It denies them the opportunity of a decent and sustainable livelihood. Reservation, by the prevalent logic, ensures participation of the disadvantaged sections in employment through positive discrimination. Hence, there was a strong case for making a provision for reservation for the economically backward in the general category in education and employment to ensure that they also get reasonable opportunities to advance in life.

The present provision of 10% reservation for the economically backward in the general category is being referred to as reservation for the ‘savarnas’, or upper castes. However, reservation under this category is not limited to upper caste Hindus; it is available to the poor in all general categories, who were not eligible for reservation under any other category hitherto. As for the upper caste Hindus, a significant proportion of the population live in the villages and in remote areas with limited economic opportunities. They face disadvantages in the matter of getting access to education and employment. Hence, it was necessary to lend a helping hand to them as well.

The test of constitutionality

To those who point to the Supreme Court’s capping of reservation at 50% in the famous Indira Sawhney case, I wish to mention that this ceiling is applicable only for reservation for the socially and educationally backward category, i.e. to the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes (SCs/STs) and the Other Backward Classes (OBC) categories under Articles 15(4) and 16(4) of the Constitution. It does not apply to the present case of reservation, which has been provided as a special provision through a constitutional amendment.

Further, to those who mistake the provision of reservation under the Constitution to be applicable only to the SCs/STs and OBCs, I wish to remind them that the present quota, introduced through the 124th Constitution Amendment Bill, is provided through adequate amendments in Articles 15 and 16 of the Constitution, which allow for making “special provision for the advancement of any economically weaker sections of the citizens”. Hence, it can stand the test of constitutionality in the Supreme Court.

Social justice is a dynamic concept which has evolved over time in accordance with the changing needs and circumstances of our society. The concept has not been defined in our Constitution. It has rightly been left to the wisdom of the lawmakers to increase its ambit from time to time, according to the needs of the time. A quota for poor citizens was a crying need of our times. The Modi government realised this and, under the true spirit of ‘Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas’, made the dream of 10% reservation a reality. For other political parties, this had been nothing more than an electoral gambit all along.

Meenakshi Lekhi is a BJP member and a lawyer

Nothing stopped the government from providing jobs or scholarships to the poor

The 124th Constitution Amendment Bill, proposed and promulgated in just a few days, is a gross and wilful subversion of the principle of social justice, which the Supreme Court has held to be the part of the basic structure of the Constitution. It is hard to understand how the government, which has all the legal resources and counsel at its disposal, chose to characterise reservations mandated by the Constitution as a job guarantee or a poverty alleviation programme. Reservations for students in public institutions of higher education and jobs in the public sector were envisioned to bring about adequate representation to those sections of society that are oppressed by caste discrimination. Reservations along with legal protections against discrimination form the juridical structure for social upliftment of the backward classes of Indian society.

Constitutionally invalid

The Constituent Assembly amended Article 15 by inserting Clause (4), which states: “Nothing in this article or in Clause (2) of Article 29 shall prevent the State from making any special provision for the advancement of any socially and educationally backward classes of citizens or for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes.” The use of income or economic criteria for providing reservation for those not included in the backward classes, or for those belonging to the general sections, is thus constitutionally invalid.

If indeed the Narendra Modi government wished to benefit the poorer sections of those not included in the backward classes, Scheduled Castes and Tribes, there was nothing that stopped it from creating jobs along the lines of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, which also created rural infrastructure. Nothing stopped it from instituting new universities and colleges and providing need-based scholarships for poor students. Granting 10% reservation in government jobs and education institutions to households in the general category with an income of less than ₹8 lakh per annum will make little difference to their poverty levels as corporate-led jobless growth has increased income inequality exponentially.

A mere fig leaf

True to its ‘jumla’-gimmickry model of governance, the Modi government chose not to increase the size of the pie but to cut away another slice from the already shrinking pie of public sector institutions. The promise of existing reservations is nowhere near to being fully realised. Public spending for scholarships for students in the SC/ST/OBC categories (and minority students) has come to a near halt. Rohith Vemula’s suicide is a direct result of such tactical obstacles propped by this government in the path of social justice.

The move reverses the progress made in India over decades. It was perhaps put in place as the government was unable to provide any relief from the economic distress felt by small farmers, manufacturers, entrepreneurs, traders and the working class. In fact, this distress was worsened by the impact of the rash decision called demonetisation and the poor implementation of the Goods and Services Tax.

The 10% reservation is nothing but a fig leaf to cover the monumental failure of this government on all fronts. It is a ploy that will cost India dearly and push away further its hope for social harmony.

Manoj Kumar Jha is an academic and a Rajya Sabha MP

IT’S COMPLICATED | BHARTRUHARI MAHTAB

When you allow reservation for the advanced classes, it changes the meaning of reservation

During the Lok Sabha debate on the 124th Constitution Amendment Bill, to provide reservation in jobs and education for the economically weaker sections in the general category, an opinion was expressed that 50% of the States have to approve it. But that is not the case. Under Article 368(2), Parliament can amend the Constitution by passing the Bill in each House by a majority of the total membership of that House present and voting. Thereafter, the President shall give his assent to the Bill and the Constitution will stand amended.

But amendments which seek to make a change in certain specific provisions, including Articles 54, 55, 73, Chapter IV of Part V, Chapter V of Part VI or Chapter I of Part XI, or any of the Lists in the Seventh Schedule, or the representation of States in Parliament, shall require to be ratified by the Legislatures of not less than one-half of the States.

Providing the context

Article 15 guarantees the fundamental right of prohibition of discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex, or place of birth. Article 15(1) and (2) broadly state that the “State” shall not discriminate against “any citizen” on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them. Article 15(3) onwards, the Constitution lays down provisions relating to protective discrimination — the policy of granting special privileges to underprivileged sections. Article 15(3) and 15(4) are the foundations for reservations in education and employment in the country.

Article 15(5) was introduced by the Constitution (93rd Amendment) Act, 2005. It is an enabling clause that empowers the State to make such provision for the advancement of SCs, STs and socially and educationally backward classes of citizens in relation to a specific subject, namely, admission to educational institutions including private educational institutions, whether aided or unaided by the state, notwithstanding the provisions of Article 19(1)(g). This was challenged in the court. In 2008, a five-judge Bench headed by the then Chief Justice of India, K.G. Balakrishnan, upheld the law providing 27% quota for OBCs in IITs, IIMs and other central educational institutions, but said it would not apply to the creamy layer. The Supreme Court upheld the validity of the Constitution (93rd Amendment) Act, 2005. It also held that the amendment does not violate the basic structure of the Constitution.

It is in this context that the reservation for the economically weaker sections is to be considered. A nine-judge Bench of Supreme Court had ruled that reservation is a remedy for historical discrimination and its continuing ill-effects. The court had also said that reservation is not aimed at economic uplift or poverty alleviation. Economic weakness is on account of social backwardness. The economic criteria will lead, in effect, to the virtual deletion of Article 16(4) from the Constitution.

Is this the new poverty line?

Since the new amendment talks of economic criteria and addresses the grievances of Brahmins, Baniyas, Patels, Marathas, Gujjars, Thakurs and even Muslims and Christians for the first time, many think it will be broad-based. It is the responsibility of the state to uplift the poor. Traditionally marginalised sections need affirmative action. But the current policy says those households earning less than ₹8 lakh annually or owning less than 5 acres of land can avail of the quota. That is a salary of ₹66,000 a month. If so, is this the new poverty line of India? And if so, why are those earning more than ₹25,000 a month being taxed? The moment you make reservation for the advanced classes, it changes the meaning of reservation altogether. Reservation is not an anti-poverty programme.

Bhartruhari Mahtab is an MP from the Biju Janata Dal

Source: The Hindu, 1/02/2019

Is the unemployment crisis for real?

Employment opportunities, formal jobs andthe labour force are all shrinking

The jobs situation in India does not reflect a crisis, but it is a matter of serious concern. A crisis is understood as an emergency that demands immediate attention, without which we could see a calamity of sorts. There is no immediate calamity of any kind on hand. But there is a deeply insidious problem at work in the form of shrinking employment opportunities, shrinking formal jobs, and a shrinking labour force.

A populous and demographically young country like India has a lot to gain if the expanding working-age population can join the labour force and be provided with gainful employment. More hands at work can ensure greater prosperity and relatively evenly spread growth.

Problems of unemployment

But if India cannot provide employment to its growing working-age population, it does not just miss a chance to become a prosperous country, but also risks becoming an unmanageable or unruly country. Unemployed youth, beyond a threshold, can lose hope of a job and can easily stray into becoming unsocial elements.

A bigger problem is that those who do get jobs and prosper do not appreciate the plight of those who do not. It is mistakenly believed that those who do not get good jobs are not worthy of getting them. The blame is placed at the door of the unemployed as if it is entirely their problem. The macro-economic and social dimension of the problem is not appreciated in India.

Statistics give us clues of the brewing problem and its insidious nature. First, we are in the midst of a serious investments deficit. CMIE’s CapEx database demonstrates the persistent fall in new investment proposals since 2011-12. New investment proposals had peaked at Rs. 25 trillion in 2010-11. In 2017-18, these were down to Rs. 11 trillion, and in 2018-19, these are unlikely to cross Rs. 10 trillion.

The impact of this fall in investments is visible in shrinking jobs. In a point-to-point comparison, in 2018, the number of persons employed declined by 11 million. An estimated 408 million people were employed in December 2017. This fell to 397 million in December 2018. The average employment in 2017 was 406.5 million. This fell to an average of 402.1 million in 2018. This shows a smaller fall of 4.5 million. Either way, we see a very substantial fall in employment. One (11 million) is only much worse than a fairly bad fall of 4.5 million, or 10%.

Labour participation rate

This fall in jobs is not translating into a proportionate rise in unemployment. But it is showing up in a fall in the labour participation rate. A rise in unemployment is bad, but a fall in the labour participation rate is worse. The former reflects a shortage of jobs compared to the number of people looking for jobs. The latter reflects a fall in the number of people looking for jobs. When we juxtapose this against falling jobs, we see a glimpse of the hopelessness of people who should be looking for jobs.

The crisis is the response

Our real crisis is in the nature of the government’s response to the situation. When the establishment works hard to rubbish sound statistical practices and results of large sample household surveys and instead uses back-of-the-envelope calculations to measure employment, we are headed towards a bigger crisis than the jobs crisis.

Source: The Hindu, 15/02/2019

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