How superstitious are we?

One fine evening as I was walking down a road near my home, I saw a huge crowd in front of a gate. Seeing the crowd I thought it might be a raashan shop (Fair Price Shop), but curiosity made my eyes get a closer look. I saw the hand symbol. No, it was not a Congress office (got to be kidding me!!), it was an astrologer's office!! The number of people standing there shocked me. Then I thought may be in few days something "auspicious" might be coming that's why the crowd. But I was wrong. Everytime I pass that gate, I see the same rush if not more. In India, many believe that they can understand what is going to happen in their future with the help of astrology, even the educated ones. Superstitions mar the rationality inside us. This is how I saw that. This begged me to ask myself how superstitious are we?

Lets start with something light hearted, the superstitions of sports persons are well known- Sourav Ganguly did not use to shave while playing a test match, somebody as rational as Rahul Dravid believed in putting on the left batting-pad first. In exams many like to carry the pen that fetched good marks in the last exam etc etc. Apart from these localized ones, unfortunately, there are many superstitions followed across the world that lead to unwarranted consequences and send wrong messages. For instance, in many societies, Friday is an unlucky day and thirteen is an unlucky number. Mind you the ISRO (a premiere science based institution) skipped its PSLV being numbered C13. Continuing with the examples, crossing of black cat on one’s path is bad omen in Western countries and India. But, it is a good omen in Egypt. As the examples themselves show, there is no logical rational backing to any of these practices or beliefs. This itself is the biggest threat of superstition, As I said earlier superstitions mar the rationality inside us.

Superstition is the blind faith in an idea without giving any consideration to reason, logic and evidence. Not just that, they breed ignorance and fear of the unknown and incomprehensible. The impact of superstitions is so alarming that it decimates the reasoning capacity of well educated human, let alone the illiterates. Not just that, these superstitions ruin the material resources (money, time, energy) of the people who believe in them. The made snana  at certain temples or the appearance of Makarjyoti are some of the examples for this.

Looking at another extreme of superstitions, there is the prevalence of black magic or Bhanamathi. Falling of stones on one's house, appearance of fire from nowhere are some of the examples of the black magic tricks. The extent of this degradable practice can be imagined by the fact that even the politicians fall prey to this to get easy victory over their opponents. The politicians of Karnataka are highly notorious for this (apart from watching pornographic content in assembly). Even the local and regional media pry on these fears and try to get mileage out of such activities (remember the ridiculous Heegoo Unte! on TV9 Kannada?!).

I am not telling anything new or anything unknown. Now that's the issue, though the irrationality of superstition is known, very little has been done to counter it. Very few people have taken the bold rationalist stand. It has been a David versus Goliath kind of fight. Unfortunately, people who have been bold enough have been punished for it. Narendra Dabholkar was killed around a year back as he fought against the evil of superstition. Lately, Avijit Roy, a blogger was heckled to death in Bangladesh for his anti-superstitious and secular stands. On the other hand people like Asaram Bapu, Sant Rampal roam around freely and even enjoy popular support.

Now that's the point, superstitions have popular belief base. Why? I feel that is because superstitions dwell on fear, and fear is what keeps most people from being rational or logical. It makes them ignorant. To overcome the fear people take shelter in meaningless rituals or practices. You are not getting married? go and pour milk on the ant's hill- for the snake/nagadevata of course. 

There are talks of bringing in legislation to counter the superstitions. As far fetched to reality it may seem to be actually getting it done, it might not even work. Irony is that we all know what needs to be done to eradicate this evil. We all know that we need to develop a scientific temper (which is by the way a fundamental duty) and motivate ourselves to think rationally, but will that happen? Ever? Elders have always told me to be optimistic but in this case I am not. I am going to end this piece with a quote from an English philosopher Francis Bacon- "superstition dismounts all the outward moral values and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men." 

Fight against Freedom of Expression : A political tool?

Freedom is a vague word. Though we get a good feeling when we hear the word, freedom does not actually mean freedom. It is not absolute, it always comes with caveats. And rightly so, absolute freedom is a humbug. It does not exist, atleast in the modern society. This is because, if a society boasts of absolute freedom, the actions of one might inadvertently infringe upon the absolute freedom of other person. This means the second person in the discussion never had absolute freedom. This generates a paradoxical situation. Thus, every modern society, though, talks about freedom, it always has reasonable restrictions on them for the smooth functioning of the society. The same is true for freedom of speech or expression. Recent events linked to Charlie Hebdo, PK, AIB roast have opened up many dimensions of freedom of speech or expression (FoE).

For cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo their FoE enabled them to propagate their beliefs in the form of satirical cartoons. Offence was intended. The idea behind this intentional offence might have been to show a particular community about certain rigidness in its practices, or even the intention might have been something hideous, I am not here to judge that. But, it was right under the ambit of their FoE. Charlie Hebdo had been publishing cartoons that were offensive to Islam, and other religions including Christianity alike, for quite some time now, how many times did the representatives of Islamic fraternity in France tried to reason with editorial team of the magazine regarding their reservations? The fault is equally with the Charlie Hebdo team, did they ever thought of having one or two Muslim members in their team so that they could have given them a different perspective. I am nowhere condoning the heinous act of AQIY, the terrorist organization here in question had its agenda well thought out. These terrorist organizations come with peculiar political agenda, they knew that this shooting will not stop the Charlie Hebdo to stop publishing pictures but infact polarize the society there, which has some good number of Algerian origin Muslims. Behind the purda of so called "protectionists of Islam" they achieved this agenda quite perfectly. Anyways, what I intend to say here is that the existence of intellectual paucity both in the Charlie Hebdo team and the Islamic fraternity in France leading to the lack of understanding of the caveats that FoE comes with, helped the fundamentalist opportunists to polarize the society.

The opposition to film PK is on the grounds that it hurts the sentiments of a particular religion. Ok even if one agrees to that, what could be the next step if sentiments are hurt. There are legal ways to tackle that and laws in our country are quite good to handle such phenomena. Thus, nobody has the right to go and tear posters, make character assassinations of the creative people involved in the making of the movie. But yet posters were torn, screenings were halted, character assassinations done. The people who did this were quite aware of the legal ways to handle the issue but they chose to ignore that because one, there allegations could not have stood the scrutiny of law and two, the process would not have caught the eye balls of the people. Hence, this conscious inculcation of hate and vocal showcase of dissent were used as a political tool to garner some media space, publicity and were nowhere related to FoE or hurting sentiments.

FoE definitely comes with caveats and any infringement of one's right should not be tolerated in a democratic society. But the dissent to FoE can be shown in civilized manner without any noise and blood being spewed. Law will take its course. But as has been shown above, the incredible hurt victimhood card played here is nothing but another political tool.

Delhi- Paneer, Power and Politics

Yeh Dilli hain mere yaar.!! In my 18 months of stay at Delhi, there are many things that were memorable. They range from 6 rupees Tandoori roti, the under nutritioned rickshaw pullers, the angry car drivers, noisy CNG buses to high flying Thiranga at the Connaught Place, the Republic Day parade. Apart from these, the omnipresent Paneer made the cuisines exciting as well as boring. One thing that I noticed in Delhi is its unrelenting romance with power and politics. Power is to Delhi what money is to Mumbai or tech is to Bengaluru. I understood it within the first three months of my stay there, when I saw a homeopathy doctor with a revolver tucked to his `90s style trouser.

This romance of Delhi with power and politics is what has made the current assembly elections the cynosure of all the happenings in the country (atleast w. r. t. politics). The campaign for the election was high octane with BJP coming with full force to counter the "Muffler Man". All is done, voting is over. Results are awaited. Exit polls are showing a majority to AAP. If the exit polls turn out to be true then this would come as a major embarrassment to the ruling BJP. Especially to Mr. Shah who used lots of strategies to counter the AAP's influence.

Ironically, I think, one of these strategies backfired fatally to Mr. Shah, and that was the induction of Ms. Bedi to the party and making her the CM candidate. One of the cartoons in "The Hindu" rightly depicted this irony, the arrows fired by BJP at AAP, manifested as feathers on the AAP's Gandhi Topi. I can't say that Ms Bedi would turn out badly in politics but to her merit I think she should have been given some more time to understand the intricacies of politics before she was anointed as the CM candidate. Her speeches have not been influential, rather have been dampener, but her credentials and experience in bureaucracy provide right pedigree to turn her into a good politician. Time is all she needs.

Coming back to the elections, politics of Delhi has some considerable influence on rest of India and a defeat in this election would come as a timely wake up call to the BJP and would make it to relook at its 9 months rule. Though the govt has taken a lots of right steps but there are some missteps too. A defeat here would mean a more vigilant govt = more development steps+ curbing fringe Hindutva elements - rhetoric talk.

I would personally want AK and AAP to come out as victorious. Yes, AK fumbled the first time, but he seems to have learnt from his anarchist phase of life that politics is not about rhetoric talk. As is the case with Ms. Bedi, time is all AK needs. Time on the political high seat. Has Delhi given both AK and Ms. Bedi the time they need?

Local Finality in the governance system

One of many factors that has driven me and keeps driving me to pursue civil service is the condition of poverty stricken compatriots. Nothing squeezes my soul more than the sight of homeless people, people with less than two sets of meal. Poverty is the sin that we have to live amidst, it showcases the hypocrisy of human race and of humanity as a virtue. If one wants to feel the pain of this then read the heart-wrenching depiction of poverty and human hypocrisy in the Late Shri K.V.Puttappa's poetry rendition Kalki.

The state of poverty is not new to India or to the entire world. The various governments of independent India have taken many measures to alleviate people from poverty. The definitions of poverty line have changed many times since it was first laid down in 1970s, yet the pain, the struggle remains for many people across the nation. Governments under the aegis of social justice has laid out many social welfare programmes like Integrated Rural Development Programme, Rural Employment Guarantee Schemes, Self Employment Programmes like National Rural Livelihood Mission yet more than 50% of our population lives with an income of less than 2 USD per day. The programmes do not have any problems per se but they have failed to deliver the required results. Why?

India is a nation with diverse population belonging to different races, ethnicity, religion etc. There is geographical diversity as well. The diversity reflects in the needs and requirements of the people as well. The requirements of people from Haryana are different from the requirements of the people from Kerala. Here in lies the problem, various schemes aka programmes have been designed in a uniform manner at a centralized pedestal known as Planning Commission. PC theoretically, gets inputs from Panchayats and other grass root organizations but when you plan for entire nation than in the adventure of looking at the big picture the reality fades away. The plans, though good, fail to accommodate the needs of the people. For instance, the NRLM strives to promote income generation especially in the female fraternity. It does so by setting up of Self Help Groups and by imparting skill training. The programme has failed to flourish and deliver the desired results as it employed uniform approach throughout the country devoid of the regional or local requirements or needs. It especially failed in tribal dominated region as the officials failed to understand the differing culture of tribal people. This is a clear indication that we need to develop a decentralized system of governance.

The concept of decentralized governance system is not new to India. Gandhiji preached about Sarvoday through Antyodaya which means welfare of all can only be achieved when it includes welfare of the most oppressed sections of society. To inculcate this inclusive approach there is urgent need to align the policies of the government with the needs of the people. One of the examples of this can be taken from the 70 point manifesto drawn by the Aam Aadmi Party. The party volunteers conducted mohalla sabhas in different constituencies and arrived at different plans for the different constituencies based on the needs of the locals.

If only two out of ten people are susceptible to contract a disease then it does not make sense to give preventive medicine to all 10 people. It is sheer wastage of resources. It is time to realize that local problems should be solved locally- this is called local finality. Local finality in the governance system is the need of the hour. It is high time the government attends to the needs of the poor and the needy, else the poor will manifest into Kalki and the fire of their hunger will burn everything to ashes.