Followers

Friday, February 11, 2022

The lesson we should take from Nadal for our own lives

 In June 2005, playing in his first French Open final, a 19-year-old Rafael Nadal found himself in a spot of bother. Deep into the fourth set, his opponent, the unseeded Mariano Puerta, had two set points on his serve to take the match into a decider. But Nadal wouldn’t allow it. He produced drop shots of unerring accuracy and struck his ground-strokes with a ferocity that belied his age. It was clear that a new star was born, that the genius of Roger Federer had found itself a worthy rival. But how long was Nadal going to be able to last? Unlike Federer, Nadal — for all his preternatural abilities — seemed to invest every ounce of his energies into every point he played. Each match, to him, was a final reckoning.

Yet, here we are, in the most turbulent of years, when almost everything seems to have gone awry, and Nadal has done what he almost always does: win the French Open. He is now a champion at Roland Garros for the thirteenth time, having lost just twice in the 102 matches that he’s played at the venue — a dominance so unfathomable that until the middle of 2009, Pete Sampras, who won 14 major titles, held the record for most grand slams by a men’s tennis player.

The score-line in the final against Novak Djokovic suggests this came easy, but it was anything but. Just as he did all those years ago, Nadal played like his life depended on the match. He chased every ball down, from one wing to another, ran down Djokovic’s drop shots, and turned defence into attack with infallible poise — he created, to borrow Simon Barnes’s words, an “illusion of complicity”. No other tennis player lives the moment like Nadal does; he brings to each rally an intensity so severe that we can feel it searing on our television screens thousands of miles away.

It wasn’t all that long ago, though, that Nadal was written off by critics. In 2015, after he lost in five sets to Fabio Fognini in the third round of the U.S Open, his physical shape seemed to have waned; the unrelenting style of his tennis, many believed, had taken an irreversible toll. For the first time, Nadal ended a calendar year without winning a single major. It wasn’t that he was merely being toppled by his rivals, but he was losing to — and being outclassed by — all manners of journeymen. In Wimbledon the same year, when he lost to the 102-ranked Dustin Brown, it was hard to tell who the champion was.

Tennis players, unlike footballers, do not have teammates to prop them up. Competing can be a lonely pursuit and, with injuries mounting, Nadal looked more and more a spent force. But 2017 brought with it a revival — he won two majors, including, impressively, on the hard courts at the U.S. Open. To what did Nadal owe this metamorphosis?

To present the best version of himself, to bring to every match, to every training session, the same level of dedication that he brought to the final at Roland Garros, is, to Nadal, the most basic ask. In this distilled philosophy, there is perhaps a learning for all of us: to take seriously our ethical responsibility to become the best versions of ourselves.

There were unquestionably minor tweaks that he made to his game. His first serve was now an improved weapon, and he shortened points by attacking sooner into rallies than he might have earlier in his career. But his resurgence emanated out of a renewed dedication to the foundations on which his game is built. When commentators implore players to treat every point equally it can sound like a cliché. But, for Nadal, this has been a career’s motif: a willingness to chase down every ball and to commit himself wholly to every point.

Remarkably, before the French Open final this year, many believed that Djokovic had the edge, on account chiefly of the cooler weather, with the tournament being staged in October, and the closed roof above the court. Writing off Nadal though is a fool’s errand. The final showed us that even at 34 he is capable of being an implacable force, of summoning greatness at will.

Is there anything, though, that we can absorb from Nadal’s endeavours? To be sure, there are qualities in his late-career excellence for other sportspersons to study: his grit and his determination; his integrity on and off the court; his devotion to practice and training; and his willingness to think through strategies to combat specific opponents, Indeed, the women’s singles champion at the French Open, the talented teenager Iga Swiatek, said Nadal is the only player that she looked up to. But what about the rest of us, outside the world of sport?

There are good reasons to think of sport as a metaphor for life. Unlike Nadal, not all of us has a competitor staring at us from the other side of a net, but we still seek meaning in sport. Following Nadal makes sense for many reasons. For one, watching him play tennis gives us a sense of what greatness in motion can look like. But there is also something compelling in his approach to life that transcends the sport in some ways — the “Tao of Rafa” as the New York Times’ Karen Crouse recently described it.

In his interview after the final, Nadal was clearly delighted, but he didn’t see the manner of his victory as a particular cause for revelry. He pointed instead to the Australian Open last year when Djokovic had beaten him in similar fashion, in a match that barely lasted two hours. It is Nadal’s perspective on his majors’ tally, though, that is especially telling. As always, he brushed aside the tedious debate on who — between him, Federer, and Djokovic — was the greatest of all time. To him, spending time thinking about what others around him had achieved was futile. “You have to live your personal life,” he said. “Personally, that’s the thing I did during all my career, try my best every single day. In terms of these records, of course that I care [about]. I am a big fan of sport in general. I respect a lot that.”

To present the best version of himself, to bring to every match, to every training session, the same level of dedication that he brought to the final at Roland Garros, is, to Nadal, the most basic ask. It is a mantra that he has often repeated, both in triumph and in adversity. In this distilled philosophy, there is perhaps a learning for all of us: to take seriously our ethical responsibility to become the best versions of ourselves. To treat our lives as a challenge, as Nadal does, as one where we take our private responsibilities seriously, ought to strike us as an example worth emulating.


Suhrith Parthasarathy


Source: The Hindu, 20/08/20

The many layers of our unemployment problem

 Last month witnessed protests in several parts of north India by students who had appeared for the Non-Technical Popular Categories exam conducted by the Railway Recruitment Board. This was to fill up 35,000 posts for which 12.5 million candidates had applied. While the RRB’s decision to set up a committee to examine the issue may have pacified students for the time being, it is unlikely to offer any solution for the bigger problem of employment and earnings in the Indian economy.

As an employer, the Railways is our second largest after the defence ministry. But its problem is not with the recruitment process but the huge number of applicants for low-skill jobs. How big is 12.5 million? It is almost 10% of all those aged 20-25 in the country. So every tenth person in this age group was an applicant for the lowest category of employment in the Railways.

None of this is unknown and multiple data sources, including the government’s own estimates from Periodic Labour Force Surveys (PLFS), have shown the enormity of our employment crisis. Even by the PLFS, the 18-25 age group’s unemployment rate at 24.5% for 2019-20 is not only extremely high, it’s among the highest in the world if small and conflict-ridden countries are excluded. With a labour force participation rate of around 40%, it also means that every tenth young person in the country is unemployed by the official definition. While this may appear too high, even this is a gross underestimate of joblessness in the country. A significant majority of those who were on the streets protesting against the RRB are unlikely to be captured as unemployed by our official statistics. Most would be counted as students rather than as unemployed. A small minority of them would actually be working for private establishments but looking for a better job with security of tenure, better wages and social protection, which informal jobs lack. By the PLFS estimates, two-thirds of regular salaried workers in 2019-20 did not have a written job contract and most had no social security.

Underestimation of unemployment is as much a statistical issue as it is an economic reality. Despite improvements in standards of living and rising per capita income, a third of our population is poor by official estimates. For these households that must feed themselves, being jobless is a luxury they can hardly afford. By default, they tend to accept work at whatever wages are available. The social stigma attached to being unemployed also means that many would prefer the disguise of employment in agriculture and other enterprises even though they might not be contributing to production. For many others, being stuck in informal work arrangements at exploitative wages may be their only option. Even with the best of definitions and survey mechanisms, it is difficult to get a true estimate of unemployment, given the complexity and multitude of work arrangements that exist. But an effort at getting a better understanding of the problem by strengthening our statistical system should be a priority for the government.

Unfortunately, while this government has shown little regard for official data, the denial of unemployment as a major challenge for the economy is no longer a statistical issue. It has already become a public issue in almost all states that are in the midst of electoral battles to elect governments. Several political parties in the fray, including the Bharatiya Janata Party, have promised unemployment allowances to woo the electorate.

Recognition of the severity of India’s employment crisis is only the beginning for us to resolve the problem, which is arguably the economy’s biggest. Ideas like an unemployment allowance or an urban employment guarantee are unlikely to solve the problem in its entirety. Even as a temporary reprieve from the crisis, these are insufficient. However, the politicization of India’s job scarcity should lead to a discussion on long-term solutions.

The country requires a policy push not just for creating additional employment, but also to ensure that the jobs so created provide decent wages, security of tenure and social protection. Given that the incentive structure built into the current policy regime favours capital- intensive growth at the cost of labour utilization, a structural solution to the employment problem would require a close re-examination of the prevalent structure of production.

At a time our economy is struggling with low demand and a crisis of income in the rural economy, reviving rural demand through public expenditure is not just a necessity for economic revival, it is also the best way to increase the employment content of growth.

Himanshu is associate professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University and visiting fellow at the Centre de Sciences Humaines, New Delhi

Source: Mintepaper, 11/02/22

Thursday, February 10, 2022

Quote of the Day February 10, 2022

 

“God, grant me the serenity to accept things that I cannot change; The courage to change the things I can; And the wisdom to know the difference.”
Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr
“हे भगवान, मुझे उन बातों को स्वीकार करने का धैर्य प्रदान करो जिन्हें मैं बदल नहीं सकता हूं; जिन चीजों को मैं बदल सकता हूं उनको बदलने का साहस दो; तथा इन दोनों में अंतर करने के लिए बुद्धि प्रदान करो।”
डा. रीनहोल्ड नीबुहर

Homen Borgohain — the workhorse of the Assamese literary scene

 

The late literary maven was instrumental in seeding and nurturing many an aspiring writer, journalist, or academician


On May 12, 2021, the Assamese lost one of their guardian angels. In tributes and condolence messages flowing in from all sides, Homen Borgohain (1932~2021) has been referred to as a 'batabrikkha', a revered banyan tree that sustained an entire ecosystem of readers, writers and literary enthusiasts, now uprooted.

Having lived not just a moderately long life, but a meaningfully productive one, Borgohain has left behind a massive body of work. He has to his credit five collections of short stories, thirteen novels and novellas, around fifty volumes of non-fictional prose, four books that are autobiographical, several edited volumes, and a single book of poems titled Hoimonti (1987). He won the Sahitya Akademi award in 1978 for his novel Pita-Putra (1999) but returned it in 2015 in protest against the Dadri lynching. Two of his other notable books of fiction, namely Matsyagandha (1987) and Halodhiya Soraiye Baodhan Khai (1973) were made into feature films, and the latter, directed by Jahnu Barua, won the national award in 1988. His Subala (1963) is notable not just for being the first ever work in Assamese literature on the life of a prostitute but also for being a decisive point in the development of post-war Assamese fiction, in the same rank as Birinchi Kumar Barua’s Jibanar Batat (1945) in waking up Assamese fiction from its long hibernation.

An esteemed journalist known for his thought-provoking and razor-sharp political writings, he was the founding editor of many weekly magazines like Nilachal (1968), Nagarik (1977), Samakal (1987), Sutradhar (1989). He also served as a special correspondent at the Calcutta-based daily Aajkaal, his work featuring in its North-East section, for a few years from 1981, where he wrote many pieces and was the first person from Assam to interview Mrs. Gandhi at length.

In his own words, he studied each day of his life like a student who was preparing for his exams. When interviewed, he put it thus: "I write two hours and read for two hours every day." This, in addition to the work he did in the capacity of a chief editor for various dailies, weeklies, and monthlies throughout his life. There is a word of Bengali origin in relation to music, 'riyaaz' — a constant honing of one's musical skills. Borgohain did that to his writing because he knew it required constant sharpening. To him the act of writing was what we call in Assamese neerab sadhana — quiet meditation — and he practised it rigorously, regularly and religiously so that the gift never left him.

Hailing from the remote and backward village of Dhakuakhana in the Lakhimpur district of Assam, Borgohain was an example of what a man of humble origins and unexceptional looks (it made him suffer from inferiority complex during the Cotton College days as mentioned in his immensely popular autobiography Atmanusandhan) could achieve. He was an inspiration to generations of Assamese youth in the latter half of the twentieth century and beyond, most of whom forayed into the world of reading with his books. On his death, the Assamese as a people are almost chanting in unison, “He introduced us to the world of books. Our love for literature began with reading him.” Not that the Assamese did not read before him, but the range and habits of reading changed substantially, a new reading public emerged from the lower and lower-middle classes.

A voracious reader himself, he did in the world of Assamese letters what the medieval saints did to the sacred texts by translating them from classical languages to regional ones, thus decoding these for common people and making knowledge open to all. Borgohain popularised the form of the personal essay in Assam, and applied his wealth of reading into these pieces, combining personal experiences and moments of introspection with allusions to and anecdotes from the worlds of literature, philosophy, civilisational history, etc. The 154 personal essays collected in the three volumes of Mor Tokabahir Pora (Pages from My Notebook) have reserved their due place in the canon for posterity. The index of contents from one of his earliest collection of nonfictional prose called Ananda Aru Bedanar Sandhanat (In Search of Joy and Sorrow) introduces the masses to names like Jorge Luis Borges, Edgar Lee Masters, Goethe and Charlotte von Stein, Heinrich Heine, Dag Hammarskjold. He was not the intellectual’s writer (although he had everything that it took to be one) but the people’s writer. Like capsules, he packed knowledge in the simplest of forms, making it accessible to the masses, that too in a pre-Amazon and pre-ebooks era when not just readers but even bookshops were numbered.

Borgohain had a gift for spotting fresh or obscure talent — and not just spotting but encouraging them onwards. Despite his busy schedule, he took time out to draft letters of appreciation to these young minds, sent for them from his office, or rang them up asking them to submit work. He provided platforms to new and emerging voices, put his faith in writers whose works were turned down by other leading magazines that played it safe by only publishing trusted and revered writers. While it is not unlikely that a senior and experienced writer anywhere in the world would help or guide aspirants in that field, what sets Borgohain apart from all of them is the sheer number of people he had helped take flight. In Assam at present, be it established or struggling writers, or journalists, academicians or intelligentsia, there may be few who, at one point or the other, had not been mentored by him or taken him as a role model. That measures the magnitude of the Borgohain effect.

Immediately after the news of his demise spread, an old video of the stalwart has resurfaced, and has been doing the rounds, widely shared and forwarded in social media platforms. It is an interview where he is heard saying, “Till my last breath I will keep labouring hard. Just as you extract the juice out of sugarcane until only the bagasse remains, I will work till the last drop of life is strained out of me so that when I discard the mortal flesh I am no more than bagasse [translation mine].” And so he did. He remained active as the editor-in-chief of the Assamese daily Niyomiya Barta until his death, caused by post-Covid complications. What the Assamese as a race should remember and emulate is Homen Borgohain’s proclivity for hard work.

I would like to end this write-up with my translation of one of Borgohain’s poems, ‘Smriti’ (Memory); more often than not death and art reveal their true merit only retrospectively.

And all of a sudden, the familiar bird falls silent,

The ripe fruit drops so silently

The tree gets no hint of it;

The fields turn desolate, the rats maddened by the scent of corn

Silently vanish into the dark insides of a snake.

 

The silent workings of Death is a primordial law of Nature.

I, am its only, arrogant exception.

When Death’s infallible hand touches me

A fierce cry of protest cracks my heart open.

I look back again and again, a gory lament

Piercing out my throat disturbs

the ice-cold breeze of eternity, echoes endlessly.

 

Because tied to my very essence is a memory undying

of an endless time past and an unmapped time future,

The impress of a beloved’s face in the depths of the soul,

through the pain of separation endlessly unfading.

 

Memory is what is absent from the heart of Nature;

And thus, I recreate Nature’s old archetypes,

The bright lamp-like words penetrate Death’s infernal spread

So that defying the laws of Nature my undying grief

Can exercise its rights in another universe

Where I am immortal, an eternal promise of Creation.

*

(Here is a list of Homen Borgohain’s writings in English translation for those who do not read Assamese)

· The Collected Works of Homen Borgohain; translated by Pradipta Borgohain, Amaryllis, 2017.

· Astorag (Sunset). Translated by Ashok Bhagawati, Sahitya Akademi, 1996.

· The Field of Gold and Tears; Translated by Pradipta Borgohain, Spectrum Publishers, Guwahati, 1997.

· Pita-Putra (Father & Son). Translated by Ranjita Biswas, National Book Trust, 1999.

· Image and Representation: Stories of Muslim Lives in India; Edited by Hasan Mushirul and Asaduddin M. (contains his story “In Search of Ismail Sheikh”), OUP, 2002.

· The Muffled Heart: Stories of the Disempowered Male (2005) translated by Jayita Sengupta.

· Asomiya Hand-picked Fictions selected by the North East Writers’ Forum (containing his story “In Search of Ismail Sheikh” tr. by Pradipta Borgohain), Katha, 2003.

(Written with inputs from Bijit Borthakur)


Source: The Hindu, 28/05/21

Current Affairs-February 10, 2022

 

INDIA

– Atal Tunnel recognised as ‘Longest Highway Tunnel above 10,000 feet’ by World Book of Records; connects Manali to the Lahaul-Spiti Valley
– 4,844 foreigners granted Indian citizenship in past 5 years under Citizenship Act 1955

ECONOMY & CORPORATE

– India received Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows worth USD 339.55 billion in last 5 years
– PSU THDC India Limited (THDCIL) signs agreement to set up 10,000MW solar projects in Rajasthan

WORLD

– EU unveils plan to quadruple the supply of semiconductors in Europe by 2030; reduce dependence on Asia
– Scientists in Britain smash fusion energy record; generated 59 megajoules of sustained energy during an experiment in December
– India to help Sri Lanka implement a ‘Unitary Digital Identity framework’ modelled on the Aadhaar card

SPORTS

– IPL 2022: Ahmedabad IPL franchise to be called ‘Gujarat Titans’

IIT-Delhi launches website to tutor school kids for JEE Mains, Advanced, IAT, NEET

 

The interactive IIT-PAL website — iitpal.iitd.ac.in — will provide free video lectures to class 11 and 12 students who are preparing for competitive exams such as JEE, NEET, IAT and others.


The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi launched an interactive IIT-PAL website — iitpal.iitd.ac.in — to provide free video lectures to class 11 and 12 students who are preparing for competitive exams such as JEE, NEET, IAT and others.

This initiative of the Ministry of Education (MoE) had started with an aim to make their understanding of the science subjects (Physics, Chemistry, Maths and Biology) better and to help self-studying students do well in competitive exams like JEE, NEET, IAT and others. Now, to bring all resources together, IIT-D has launched a website.

The website — iitpal.iitd.ac.in — will act as a single platform where students across India can access video lectures that are telecast on the Ministry of Education’s Swayam Prabha Channels, interact live with IIT Professors and ask them questions. “This website will be helpful to students especially from regions where they may not have access to specialist teachers in science subjects and coaching opportunities”, Prof Joby Joseph, IIT Delhi and National Coordinator, IIT-PAL said.

On this website, videos and lectures related to Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Biology in classes 11 and 12 will be listed as per the NCERT syllabus. This will enable students to chronologically and conveniently learn each of the subject topics given in the syllabus.

In addition to this, registered students can submit their topic wise doubts in English or Hindi. A team of professors/experts at IIT-PAL will coordinate to find answers to these questions and answers to selected questions will be posted on the website, which can be viewed by all registered students.

Registered students can also also request for a live interaction on specific topics in English or Hindi, and once there are a number of requests about a specific topic, a live session for that specific topic will be scheduled with an expert through an online video platform.

Source: Indian Express, 10/02/22

Wednesday, February 09, 2022

Quote of the Day February 9, 2022

 

“The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.”
Dolly Parton
“मेरे विचार से यदि आप इन्द्रधनुष चाहते हैं, तो आपको वर्षा को सहना होगा।”
डॉली पार्टन