Thursday 25 February 2021

Crush the Enemy Within


 A careful examination of the reactions of the civil-society; the secularists, and the reporting by the media connected with the “incidents and events” in India, over the last 28 years, beginning with the 1993 Mumbai blasts shows a very hypocritical prejudice. When those seen as perpetrators of the crime were Muslims, the standard line was, “terrorism has no religion.” And there were numerous instances of the kind. However, in an exceptional instance, where the crime could be attributed to Hindus; the untoward event was showcased as unassailable “Hindu Terrorism.”

To kill even the imagery of “killing for or in the name of religion” Hindus are possibly the only people in the world, who, rather than kill, have got killed. They have never attacked anyone for propagating their religion. Hindus have welcomed people of all nationalities, faiths and cultures, when they came pursuing their personal, logical dreams and aspirations. Only under a threat to their own survival caused by a “Fire & Sword” tenet of the external aggressors, did the Hindus invoke “Maa Kali” to rekindle their sacrificial fire and then did not stop until they have driven the aggressors back to where they came from.

Christian or Muslim, though they have just recently converted and still have lots of Hindu content in their spiritual lives, somehow believe that they belong to a cultural unit altogether different form the Hindu one. Hindustan to them is where they live, yet it is not Holy land to them, which is far off in Arabia or Palestine. Naturally therefore, their love is divided. They must set their Holy-land above India in their love and allegiance. It is however, a folly, when Indian Muslims start looking at Pakistan as their fatherland and/or holy-land. If the majority of the Indian Muslims can free themselves from their prejudices coming from such ignorance, and as the patriotic and noble – minded amongst them have always been doing; and begin to love Hindustan as their fatherland, the story of their conversions, forcible in millions of cases is too recent to make them forget . . . that they inherit Hindu blood in their veins.

If a Sister Nivedita or an Annie Besant could become a Hindustani in spite of being from a different Nation (rashtra), Race (Jati), Civilization (Sanskriti) and Holy land (pavitra bhoomi); Hindu-ness must be something more profound than the what it is being made out to be by the propagators  of the malicious scare of “Hindu-Terror.” This propaganda gives fire to the deviant and the misled to form into scattered hooligan groups adorning the “saffron” and creating mischief. All these are rudderless groups of young people out seeking media limelight through acts of misplaced adventurism. They are ‘rogues and goondas’ exhibiting a religious fervour at the most, not necessarily driven by religion; some of them neither Hindus nor with Hindu names; but for sure, not terrorists.

Unfortunately, there are no external aggressors and there is no “fire & sword” tenet in the present day attacks on Hindu-ness of India which has always stood for universal peace and brotherhood. The aggressors are enemies within; and they are using the tenets of “propaganda, unrest and division.” They are not the enemies of Hindus or friends of Muslims. They are simply bigoted, selfish, blood-thirsty hyenas waiting to feast on the remnants of the wealth and flesh of India, which they believe would fall prey to the roaring lion of “Maa Kali” or the ‘tandava’ of “Bhagawan Shiva

True Hindus are trying their best, as they ought to do, to develop the consciousness of and a sense of attachment to the greater whole, whereby Hindus, Muslims, Parsis, Christians and Jews would feel as Indians first and every other thing afterwards. But whatever progress India may have made to that goal one thing remains almost axiomatically true – not only in India but everywhere in the world – that a nation requires a foundation to stand upon and the essence of the life of a nation is the life of that portion of its citizens whose interest and history and aspirations are most closely bound up with the land and who thus provide the real foundation to the structure of their national state.

Multiple ethnicity and religiosity is the strength of India. This provides cultural and social diversity, variety and enrichment within the mega space called Bharat. Hindutva or Hindu-ness is plural and should not be mistaken as a synonym for Hindu-religion. Yet India needs cleansing in the nature of weeding out of the enemy within. It is unfortunate that most of such enemies have Hindu names and origins. They are deep in a new kind of “Intellectual terrorism.”  Indians and Hindus cannot drink with equanimity this cup of bitterness and political servitude at the hands of those whose only aspiration is to feast on the putrefied flesh from the corpse of Hindustan. Whenever under aggression, Hindustan has looked to Vedic wisdom. “Arise, awake, and stop not till the goal is reached” is a shloka of Katha Upanishad which was popularized in the late 19th century by Swami Vivekananda.

 

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Multiple sources of like-minded thought are humbly acknowledged for the above expressions. First published 25 Feb 2021

 

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Tuesday 16 February 2021

Gains and Setbacks of Education Minister’s Plans

 


Education Minister’s plans of truncating the secondary school curriculum to meet the academic calendar timelines for the entry to tertiary education is fraught with long-term perils. The Minister seems to focus on college entry when really we should be talking about school completion.

There is no denying the fact that 2020 brought untold and unexpected misery in the form of COVID-19 upsetting the end of academic year 2019-20 as well as the commencement of academic year 2020-21 for all secondary and tertiary education. Of course, access is critically important, since a task cannot be completed unless it is begun, but if we devise a plan to increase access without simultaneously working to increase successful completion, the waste of human and financial resources will be enormous. Trimming the secondary school curriculum to meet timelines is a compromise with learning delineated to school-level and this jeopardises the preparation and worthiness of a school pass out to enter the tertiary education.

These are the students who will be forgoing the planned learning at school level and enter higher education with inadequate preparation. Will there be remedial or additional learning planned at the entry point of Higher education in the academic year 2021-22? Or will this turn out to be a national disgrace.

Any plan to ensure timely enrolment of students at tertiary institutions, if it is to achieve its intended social purpose, must work simultaneously to ensure that the entry-cohort is not ill prepared. There is good reason to believe that the Nishank plan would have the opposite effect. Policy that shifts the focus from adequate completion to timely completion is self-defeating in nearly every realm of life.

The problem with this shift is that, were the institutions of higher education to control for selectivity and level of academic preparedness, a lot of school-leaving children at the end of academic year 2020-21 may find themselves failing to find an entry in such institutions. On the contrary, if the institutions of higher education were to offer an easier and less selective entry, they will be saddled with the task of making up for prior deficiencies in learning for the entrants as well as compromising on the so called ‘merit’ of the candidates. Policy should not be designed merely to preserve the existence of any particular colleges and schools or their academic calendars but ensure that they do well what they have been tasked to do.

The Nishank plan appeals to children and parents because it ensures timely delivery of certificates of Senior School completion. Hidden behind such alluring façade of minimising the temporal (time) costs are the long-term economic and social costs that would surface in future.

Any sustainable solution to the problems arising out of COVID-19 have to be an overall cost-optimisation rather than just temporal cost reduction. This will require sensible and responsible action by both policy makers and institutions.

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First published 29 Jan 2021

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Tuesday 9 February 2021

COVID-19 and INDIA

 


The Indian ethos is centred on the twin concepts of BHAGYA and KARMA. PURUSHARTHA, which denotes an ‘object of human pursuit,’ is KARMA. It is a key concept in Hinduism, and refers to the four proper goals or aims of a human life. The four PURUSHARTHA are DHARMA (righteousness, moral values), ARTHA (prosperity, economic values), KAMA (pleasure, love, psychological values) and MOKSHA (liberation, spiritual values). Since Hinduism believes in cyclical life, BHAGYA, which is understood as fate, luck, destiny or fortune can naively be understood as KARMA of past or previous life. KARMA of this life will be the BHAGYA of next life. 

Thus, we inherit our past actions and we act to improve upon what we inherited. We inherit circumstances; we improve them for the next generation.

Spread of COVID-19, like wildfire, across the world showed how connected the world has become, and yet how people feel more alone than ever.

Given the considerable uncertainty about when the COVID-19 pandemic will end, how and when a vaccine will be deployed to the public, when we will travel across the world to see family and friends, and how each of our bodies will react to this virus, people are coping with a myriad of emotions and mind-sets and with unpredictability. Depression, anger, denial, aggression or silence, people have oscillated between these reactions to constant stress and anxiety.

An unfortunate coping reaction dominating the people in the west has been to become apathetic towards the struggles of others with numbness substituting for empathy. In contrast, more people in India have shown a renewed purpose, hope, and sense of community. Scientists and Corona-warriors have responded with dedication to developing vaccines, treatments and appropriate care and guidance. Ordinary citizens have taken on roles in their communities running welfare groups.

Expectedly, people are split over whether they think more about the collective health of society, or prioritise individual interests. Perhaps the most difficult part is how to take the open wounds and inequalities that COVID-19 has exposed. Where does one’s responsibility to others begin and end? What is selfishness in the context of a pandemic?

It is to be seen as to whom among the politicians will forego their turn to get a vaccine and offer it to someone else. The pandemic will show who each of us really is.

(First published – 19 Nov 2020)

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Monday 1 February 2021

When, Where and How will we get the Vaccine?


Indian society has a tendency to understand risk in all-or-nothing terms as has come into sharp focus during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is a realm where individual liberty takes primacy over collective responsibility.

The experience of the last 10-months shows the focus of the government on the risk of spread of the infection from an infected to others, rather than the risk that the infected person faces through the infection.  Public health messaging through ‘Aarogya Setu’ app refers to “high-risk” “moderate-risk” or “healthy or low-risk” individuals. Public-service announcements on radio are framing ‘using sanitisers’ ‘wearing of masks’ and ‘social-distancing’ as “virtuous” thereby semantically differentiating the refusal to do so as admirably masculine and nonconformist.

India on Saturday 16 January kicked off the world’s largest immunisation exercise against Covid-19. If all goes to plan, 30 crore people may be vaccinated against the contagion by July end. This mass-vaccination project, unfortunately, for the moment targets barely 2% of the population, 30 million persons out of a population of 1400 million. In first 4-days, less than 1% of these 30 million targeted-persons have actually received the first of the two-shot-regimen. Nearly one-thirds of the targeted-persons did not turn-up to get the vaccination done. At this pace, even this project will take next 100 weeks for completion. 100 weeks is 2-years, which means well into 2023. What would become of the rest 98% of the population is not clear at this moment. The Government of India’s moral, international and legal obligations make it imperative that COVID-19 vaccines are free and universal. There is no doubting the sincerity of the intentions of the government, but the implementation of the intentions leaves people in a limbo.

Social shaming and punitive enforcement of public health measures are both ineffective and unethical. Shaming and policing tactics shift undue responsibility for contagion management from institutions to individuals, and places further burdens on communities that, in the case of COVID, already suffer disproportionate rates of infection.

The risks are never unidirectional and that risk management always involves weighing multiple factors. COVID-19 is not the only risk people have to consider when they make decisions about most aspects of their daily lives. An inability to work from home means very real, material risks like losing income, losing housing, losing the ability to provide and care for families. Shaming people for their risk behaviours is not just unethical and ineffective. Such behaviours are not a binary matter of “risky” or “not risky,” but one of choosing which risks to take.

It is critical for the Government to correctly diagnose, manage, mitigate, and treat COVID-19 as it occurs. , and to do their best to keep it from having major. It is an even more critical thing for the government to consider communal consequences, with regard to COVID, which is far more easily transmissible and whose uncontrolled spread has massive costs for nearly every aspect of public life.

It is important to find ways to help people live their lives during the pandemic. Nevertheless, doing so must not come at the expense of other people’s ability to stay alive, let alone be in public at all. The more inconsiderate those nondisabled people are about containment measures, the longer many disabled and chronically ill people will have to maintain the strictest possible measures simply to stay alive.

It is true that all social activities bear some level of risk. It is equally true that, to a certain extent, we must each decide how to balance the risk of contracting and transmitting the virus against the psychological, social, economic, and often competing medical risks of limiting various kinds of activity. The evil complexity of risk management during this pandemic requires all of us to be better, more considerate social actors. When we as individuals make decisions about what risks to take, we should look at the details soberly and seriously consider how our choices affect what choices are available to others in our communities.

We should direct our frustration at institutional failures instead of individual ones. The amount of COVID-related talk that is exclusively about individual risk management is neither accidental nor inevitable. It is a consequence of the massive disregard of duty on the part of the governments to give clear information and distribute the resources necessary for everyone. It is equally a consequence of the ways our political and healthcare systems already make it gratuitously difficult to access vital care and resources by way of inadequate health coverage.

Putting it bluntly, the almost exclusive focus on individual risk that has characterised governmental speech on COVID persists because institutions tasked with reducing the risk burdens of individual cannot or will not do their jobs.

This emphasis on individual attention to risk-mitigation is especially poignant and unsettling when one realises that this governmental discourse is occurring in tandem with their awareness that the infrastructure necessary to manage that status lies in ruins.

Our public institutions have the obligation to manage and mitigate the infection risk in ways that allow everyone to flourish. We must not lose sight of where the burden of risk management ought to fall. We must not fall prey to the temptation to punish individuals for institutional failures.

We are unable to figure out how to proceed amid caring for one another and watching more and more of our number suffer or even die. Even if we have the ability to pay for the vaccine, willingness to pay for it, ability to reject taking the vaccine and the ability to raise our voice against the system, we do not seem to have the ability to get the vaccine in reality.

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First published 19 Jan 2021.

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