Politics of Commotion: Superficial Dialogue through Digital and Social Media

 

Over the last several years, we are witnessing, may be not perceiving it seriously, that political discourse in India is now getting confined to TV and Social Media and is commandeered by the scheduling consideration of these media options.

To enable the TV editors to gather participants for the debates and encapsulate content for prime time viewing, the messages are created no later than 5:00 pm. Likewise, to ensure proper rest for the media persons and the message sources, political activities, agitations, rallies, sloganeering, press-conferences, are all usually held after 10:00 am but before 2:00 pm.

The use and proliferation of digital and social media has radically changed both the way we are using language and the way we are ‘doing politics’ these days. Virtual space has now become the ‘natural habitat’ of an increasing number of individuals around the world; a space where they engage in discussions, work, shop, bank, hangout, relax, vote, find love partners, conduct their day-to-day activities, and so forth. A large proportion of day-to-day verbal and visual communication has migrated to various participatory web platforms. Social media have been hailed as either emancipatory tools contributing to a more participatory democracy, creating instant awareness about different social issues, a new public space of sorts (‘Arab Spring’ and the ‘Occupy’ movement are two widely cited examples).

A public sphere is a space of political communication and access to resources that allow citizens to participate in it. In this sense, given the exclusionary and commodified character of digital and social media, they cannot be considered as public spheres nor should they raise our hopes that revolution will be tweeted. Social and digital Media is dominated by corporations that make money by exploiting and commodifying users and this is why they can never be truly participatory. On a serious consideration, digital and social media are just another tool of control and containment, a profoundly depoliticising arena that fetishizes technology leading to a denial of a more fundamental political disempowerment.

One can realize the magnitude and impact of the medium if they consider that in the famous ‘Russia meddling,’ posts from a Russian company had reached the newsfeeds of 126 million users on Facebook during the 2016 US election and hundreds of thousands of bots posted political messages during the election on Twitter alone.

Digital and Social media is a new kind of an effective political instrument that, in the context of advanced capitalism, both dehumanizes politics and struggles and absolves people from the guilt of inertia in the face of major social and economic crises. It serves as an escape from the stress of intelligence, the pain and tension which accompany autonomous mental activity. Social Media is actually an effective anaesthesia against the mind in its socially disturbing, critical functions – leading to the knocking out of the mental agitation. Social media, as tools for producing and consuming different kinds of texts promotes a one-dimensional discourse. Consider the characteristics of Twitter’s one-dimensional discourse:

Language used in Twitter is short, fragmented and decontextualized: it is a language that tends to express and promote the immediate identification of reason and fact, truth and established truth, essence and existence, the thing and its function leaving no room for a dialogue and counter-reason. Twitter demands simplicity, promotes impulsivity, and fosters incivility.

Digital media takes the pedestal of instrumental and technological rationality and reduce audiences to the status of commodities and consumers of advertisements.  Such audience commodities that the media consumers become themselves are than sold as an audience to the advertising clients of the media.

Face-book, Twitter and other sites serve as an escape from the mechanised work process, and a breather to muster strength in order to be able to cope with the next round of work again. This allows social media to be marketed as entertainment – an entertainment that is accessible, on demand, any time and every time. For this entertainment to remain as a pleasure, it must not demand any effort of independent thinking from the audience. This constructs an involvement through inertia that creates a false sense of participation, security, homogeneity and consensus. Everyone is presumed to be a producer as well as a consumer of content, and the meaning of the messages get lost.

While there is around-the-clock exposure, constant access, and immediacy (all content is immediately available for reading and commenting), the message in the digital and social media is often decontextualized. The context is always that of-the-moment, limiting broader interpretations, connections and exploration of ramifications. Such content have a planned obsolescence, as the next programme or tweet will draw even more attention, commentary, visibility, and currency. The contents history is the here and now, as an ongoing critique of reality. Meaning loses history.

It comes, then, as no surprise that digital and social media have been serving as the ideal medium for populist parties and their leaders promoting the Politics of Commotion.  Digital and social media constitute an alternative to the mainstream media. Political campaigns started using social media as early as 2009, but it was with the 2019 General Elections that their use was taken to the next level.

Today, most political figures and parties use digital and social media platforms to disseminate their agendas and this has largely changed the way politics is conducted. This is a time when politics is ‘branded’ through social media. While democracies need liberation of the individuals from politics over which they have no effective control,  it seems that digital and social media have a firm grip on a large percentage of the our population, while people, in turn, have no control over digital and social media.

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First published 05 Aug 21

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COVID Confusions

 

COVID-19 is a new acronym coined for Corona-Virus-Induced-Disease of the year 2019. Year 2020 made some old word or phrases suddenly very fashionable and buzzing with new meanings, and injected them into active vocabulary of people. Corona, a word hitherto associated with the Sun, novelty and SARS-Coronavirus-1 was not so much in use but became suddenly a dreaded word linked to COVID-19. Positivity, a word that was generally used for the practice of being or tendency to be positive or optimistic in attitude up until then, took on the other meaning of the presence rather than absence of a certain substance, condition, or feature, now a measure of incidence of disease.

 

Check out some of these words or phrases for yourself, because your inability to use them in conversations may be mistaken as your ignorance – animal-human interface, asymptomatic, carrier, clinical trials, community spread, contact tracing, Contagious, Droplets, Epidemic, flatten the curve, herd immunity, HRCT scan, incubation period, Isolation, Mask, mRNA Vaccines, Mutant, Outbreak, Oxygen-concentrator, Oximeter, Pandemic, Pathogen, patient zero, PCR test, personal protective equipment (PPE), Plasma, Quarantine, Rapid-Antigen Test, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Corona Virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), Screening, self-isolate, social distancing, Super spreader, Symptomatic, Transmission, Vax, Ventilator, Viral Vector Vaccines, Zoonotic – and the list goes on.

 

Some proper nouns also made their way in the active vocabulary – Wuhan, AstraZeneca, Covax, Covaxin, Covishield, Sputnik5, Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen, Novavax, Coronil, CoviSelf, Remdesivir, 2-DG, and so on; but the most conspicuous proper noun is FAUCI.

 

Anthony Stephen FAUCI (born December 24, 1940) is an American physician-scientist and immunologist who serves as the director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the chief medical advisor to the president. He has acted as an advisor to every U.S. president since Ronald Reagan. From 1983 to 2002, Fauci was one of the world's most frequently cited scientists across all scientific journals. In the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, The New Yorker and The New York Times described Fauci as one of the most trusted medical figures in the United States. Currently Fauci is the Chief Medical Advisor to President Joe Biden, officially appointed in 2021.

 

After initially declaring in April of last year that the virus was “not a major threat to the people of the United States” and that it was “not something the citizens of the United States right now should be worried about,” Fauci repeatedly urged Americans not to wear masks early in the pandemic. Later, Fauci admitted that he had believed all along that masks were effective but said he had wanted to ensure that supplies would be reserved for medical professionals. In other words, he asserted that he had the right to lie to the public for what he believed to be their own benefit. If Fauci is correct that masks effectively contain the spread, then the cost of his misinformation as the pandemic worsened may be incalculably large, for the US community. (https://www.delcotimes.com/opinion/chris-freind-dr-fauci-needs-a-dose-of-reality/article_9bce984e-7641-11eb-8c87-4f0114a8a7a2.html )

 

After repeatedly dismissing the theory that the COVID-19 virus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, Fauci now says he cannot rule out the theory.

 

Fauci has now backtracked on his comments about the National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding for the Chinese lab under his leadership, that funding was not for “gain of function” research, a laboratory technique that intentionally makes pathogens more dangerous and transmissible. Gain of function research in Wuhan was indeed funded through one of Fauci’s grants.

 

Late last week, COVID policies stated that fully vaccinated individuals do not need to wear masks indoors or outdoors, any longer. Defending the policy, Fauci declared that the abolition of mask mandates was not a contradiction of previous policy but instead followed “evolving science” on the virus; although no examples of this supposedly new scientific evidence were forthcoming. Fauci then added to the confusion by declaring, apparently on his own authority, that young children would still be required to wear masks in school. Then, just a gay later, Fauci suggested that it was “reasonable” for businesses to maintain mask mandates even for vaccinated Americans, in blatant defiance of the CDC’s recent guidance. Whichever way one looks at it, Fauci has become a key player in the current controversy, which completes his transformation from an independent doctor into a political football, at the age of 80 years.

 

Fauci has also steadily moved the goalposts on the percentage of the population that will need to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity. Earlier this year, he said herd immunity would be achieved when 60% were vaccinated; in recent interviews, he has spewed out numbers as high as 85%. At the very least, the top infectious diseases expert of the US and chief medical adviser to Biden is loose with the facts and is prone to changing his mind. To be fair, the pandemic caught a lot of people unaware, but the thing about Fauci is that he always is so sure of himself. (https://nypost.com/2021/01/24/dr-fauci-needs-to-be-held-responsible-for-mistakes-devine/ ).

 

India has done well in vaccinating the armed forces personnel with 90% of them having already received both doses of vaccine. India did not listen to the US guidelines (CDC) on reopening of schools, which is now being associated with untold misery that followed in Texas.

 

Luckily, Indian policy-makers do listen to Dr. Anthony Fauci but do not blindly subscribe to all his utterances. Good, is not it, that while being open to all the information, suggestions, knowledge and advice coming from everywhere, we have a mind of our own. When it comes to inconsistent and improvisational COVID messaging, no one can surpass Dr. Anthony Fauci.

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First published 24 May 21

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Some Unsought Advice for the Prime Minister Shri Modi !!

The situation where you are running from pillar to post to find a hospital bed or an oxygen cylinder for your loved one, and there is nowhere to go, you feel frustrated, helpless and angry.  If you are the lucky one to find some place, the ban on visitors makes you more edgy because you could not be with your loved one to offer comfort and support when he/she needed it most. The thought of not being able to see or comfort a loved one who is living with an advanced illness is heart breaking.

Time seems to freeze when you learn that someone you love has slipped from medical care to critical care in a COVID-19 facility. Maybe you instinctively pushed the news away, or perhaps you cried, or swung into action. You and your loved one may have pursued promising treatments and perhaps enjoyed some respite from the illness over the last few days.

The loss of a loved one is life's most stressful event and can cause a major emotional crisis. All kinds of emotions, denial, disbelief, confusion, shock, sadness, yearning, anger, humiliation, despair, guilt, can flood people’s minds.

 

SUCCESS, WHICH THE GOVERNMENT IS TRUMPETING

The data given out by Ministry of Health and Family Welfare website https://www.mohfw.gov.in/.

COVID-19 CASES IN INDIA as on: 15 May 2021, 08:00 IST (GMT+5:30)

Active – 3673802   Discharged – 20432898    Deaths - 266207    

Until date (15 May 2021), 24372907 people have been identified to be infected, of which 15.07% (3673802) are Active cases right now, 83.83% (20432898) have successfully survived the infection but unfortunately, the balance 1.09% (266207) could not survive and have died.

Yes, your government is right that Indian has done exceedingly well, on an aggregate basis, in management of the COVID-19 crisis as compared to any of the countries in the world. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the mismanagement of second wave of COVID is hidden behind the exemplary management of the COVID. Your government was successful in flattening the curve of cases and deaths of the first wave over a period of 11-months, something which the Western world could not do. The same cannot however be said for the second wave.

 

FAILURE, WHICH OVERWHELMED INDIA

You do not have to go to any other source of data to see this. Failure, which overwhelmed India, is buried, not too deep, in these very numbers.

Please have a relook at the data given out by Ministry of Health and Family Welfare website https://www.mohfw.gov.in/.

COVID-19 CASES IN INDIA as on: 15 May 2021, 08:00 IST (GMT+5:30)

Active – 3673802   Discharged – 20432898    Deaths - 266207    

COVID-19 CASES IN INDIA as on: 15 April 2021, 08:00 IST (GMT+5:30)

Active – 1471877   Discharged – 12429564    Deaths - 173123    

Of the 24372907 people identified as infected so far (over the last 15 and one half month – the first case was reported on 30.01.2020), 10499082 (43.08%) cases came during the last one month. Out of 266207 deaths recorded so far, 94122 (35.36%) deaths occurred during the last one month.

This is not a joke or a mere spike. It is a deluge.

·        Of all the cases – 43% came in last one month;

·        Of all the people dying – 35% died in last one month.

COVID-19 began 𝗁𝗂𝗍𝗍𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝗐𝖺𝗒 𝗍𝗈𝗈 𝖼𝗅𝗈𝗌𝖾 𝗍𝗈 𝖾𝗏𝖾𝗋𝗒𝗈𝗇𝖾'𝗌 𝗁𝗈𝗆𝖾. What were merely numbers for people during the first wave, started turning into names and those names 𝗂𝗇𝗍𝗈 real 𝗉𝖾𝗈𝗉𝗅𝖾 whom people know?

 

WHAT WENT WRONG

With micro-situations continuously evolving and rapidly changing, managing Pandemics at the ground level is a very complex phenomenon involving case-by-case tactical and urgent decisions that need ‘thinking fast’. However, the policy level, at which the office of the Prime Minister sits, the foresight and strategy based thereon, is an important decision that allows wider consultations, reviews and ‘thinking slow.’

At the strategy level, dealing with pandemics involve only two sub-strategies, ensuring that the pandemic does not spread (Restriction strategy) and ensuring that those infected are able to recover from the disease (Treatment strategy).

Restriction is about reducing the number of cases, which is accomplished through controlling the spread of infection (Appropriate Behaviour and immunisation through vaccines). Where the disease is contagious, isolation and quarantine of the prospect (contact tracing) and the suspect case (symptomatic cases) is as important as that of the confirmed case. In case like COVID, where not every infected person shows the symptoms of being infected (asymptomatic cases) the inter-people-contact has to be clamped down.

Treatment is about reducing the mortality rate among the cases through proper and timely diagnosis and treatment.

 

YOU HAVE RIGHTFULLY TAKEN CREDIT FOR MANAGING THE FIRST WAVE

You had the foresight and the promptness in March-April 2020, in using the Restriction strategy, when the first wave of the pandemic broke out, which resulted into definitive reduction in spread of infection and reduction in the mortality rates. Numbers speak for themselves.

However, the second wave, which started knocking at our doors towards the end of February 2021 and is peaking now, has left much to be desired at your level.

 

SHOW THE GRIT IN ACCEPTING THE DISCREDIT FOR MISMANAGING THE SECOND WAVE

COVID-19 patients tend to be sick for a long time, spending weeks in the intensive care unit in some cases. Patients improve up to a point, and then it can be several weeks before one would see them continue to improve. Families need to prepare for that, as well as peaks and valleys seen so often in the sickest patients. Hospital restrictions that prohibit visiting COVID-19 patients have been major stressors for families, as well as those in the hospital. In the unfortunate events of patients losing the fight against COVID-19, not every one of their families and friends have the emotional strength of suffering the pain sagaciously or silently. Patients, their families, and other caregivers have little patience or tolerance, and their short fuses can explode on the very people trying to care for them.

Doctors and nurses are withstanding the worst of a much angrier, more frustrated, and weary bunch. Medics falter when they witness rudeness and other bad behaviour. It interferes with their working memory and decreases their performance. Frustrated patients are making health care workers’ jobs even harder.

No medical-care infrastructure, in terms of both physical dimensions and human dimensions, can have the capacity to deal with such deluge.  No society can cope with such agony and death. Yes, Treatment Strategy has limitations in dealing with such tsunami of cases.

However, you have faltered in making use of the Restriction Strategy once the coming of the second wave was clearly visible towards the end of February 2021. This failure has resulted into the ‘unforeseen’ deluge of cases and deaths. In ability to see these coming, is itself a failure of leadership and his advisors.

Overtly or covertly, this failure is being attributed not to any lack of your foresight regarding COVID, but to your political ambitions in West Bengal and other states. I am not a political strategist, but the results tell us a story.

 

FAILURE IN STATE ELECTIONS 2021

Ever since you brought in the US Presidential style of electioneering to Indian politics in 2014, people vote for the leader as much as they vote for a party. Your inability to win Rajasthan, Punjab, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh had shown an association in your inability to project an unambiguous leader who could campaign in the same style in the state as yours in the national elections.

When you or any of your central leaders campaign in a state election, the electorate asks themselves – are you or any of those central leaders going to be their Chief Minister? Even when they wish to vote for your party, they do not know who is going to rule them. As they say, a known foe is better than an unknown friend is, the electorate ends up making choices, which may look poor from a larger perspective, but they are the best picks that the electorate could make from within the choices available to them.

Let us not forget that a day after the first round of polling took place on 20 May 1991, former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated while campaigning. The remaining election days were postponed until mid-June and voting finally took place on 12 and 15 June. When the surge in COVID cases was so visible by the end of March for everyone to see, not postponing the elections was neither good strategy nor good politics. The votes polled in your favour in successive rounds of polling have shown a negative association with the rising COVID-cases in the country. Who knows, if the state elections were postponed for a better time, their results for you could have been better.

 

WHAT NEXT

Dear Prime Minister! As a leader, please accept the fact that you won the battle against the first wave but lost the battle against the second wave. You do not win all the battles. It is important that you win the war – war against COVID-19.

You won people’s mandate because they trusted you. You used your high visibility and high credibility in winning over their emotions. Trust is after all an emotion.

All Indians are one but they are not the same. Similar people are grouped into states. That we have 29 states shows similarity of people within the states but dissimilarity of people across the states. Indians are not like Americans, who have little diversity in language, culture or religion.

The unified central-command structure of decision making which you could use so successfully in running the Government in Gujarat may not be an optimal design for running the Union Government. Please remember that the entire bureaucracy that you handled in Gujarat was a unified Gujarat cadre but when you handle the union Government, your bureaucracy is not one cadre. The rules of engaging with the opposition leaders and bureaucracy within Gujarat are not suited to engaging with the opposition leaders and bureaucracy in the matters of the Union.

They still trust you but the untold agony and death, which they have seen over the last one month, has broken them emotionally. Fear & grief of COVID-19 is overwhelming ordinary people and your political rivals and bruised media (you have taken away many of their free bees) are adding fuel to this fire. Emotions are contagious. Our brains are wired to mirror the body language and emotion of others. In an era of social media, opinions occlude information and truth becomes matter of opinion. Absolute truth makes way for pre-truths, half-truths, developing truths, post-truths, my truths, your truths and no-one-knows whose-truth.

There is no denying that you are suffering from a loss in your credibility. Your high visibility and waning credibility is untenable in public space. You cannot be complacent or disheartened. You need to make a serious course-correction.

You have to rise as a leader and restore the confidence of people in their ability to overcome and succeed under your leadership. Please work towards decreasing the COVID-19 test-positivity rate & case fatality rate and increasing the EMOTIONAL POSITIVITY among the people of India.

To everyone locked inside their homes, in fear or anxiety, and to everyone locked out from the joys of life as usual, please put a confidence in them that the sun will come again. Remind them of the vibration that passed all over their lives, make them remember everything that they shared with their loved ones, thank the Gods who helped them face the untold grief over the last one month.

You have to rise from the ashes of the second wave. YOU HAVE TO WIN ALL THE FORTHCOMING BATTLES AGAINST THE THIRD AND THE FOURTH WAVE. YOU HAVE TO WIN THE WAR.

 

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First Published 17 May 2021

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Neither a ‘MODI-BHAKT’ nor a ‘FAMILY-LOYALIST’

 

Loyalty is behaviour in which one stays firm in one’s friendship or support for someone or something. Loyalties are feelings of friendship, support, allegiance or duty.

I am loyal to my country and to my family. I neither need nor seek anyone’s certification for my loyalty.

BHAKTI literally means "attachment, state of mind where the devotees surrender himself or herself unquestioningly to God.

Bhakti in Indian culture is "emotional devotion" particularly to a personal God or to spiritual ideas. Thus, bhakti requires a relationship between the devotee and the deity. The term also refers to a movement, pioneered by Alvars and Nayanars, which developed around the gods Vishnu (Vaishnavism), Brahma (Brahmanism), Shiva (Shaivism) and Devi (Shaktism) in the second half of the 1st millennium CE. The union of the human soul with a supreme God, man's love and devotion for God are some of the concepts, which were dwelt upon by the saints. In ancient texts, such as the SHVETASHVATARA UPANISHAD, the term simply means participation, devotion and love for any endeavour, while in the BHAGAVAD GITA; it connotes ‘Bhakti Marg’ one of the possible paths of spirituality and towards moksha.

Bhakti is also found in other religions practiced in India. Nirguni bhakti (devotion to the divine without attributes) is found in Sikhism, as well as Hinduism. Outside India, emotional devotion is found in some Southeast Asian and East Asian Buddhist traditions. 

It grew rapidly in India after the 12th century in the various Hindu traditions, possibly in response to the arrival of Islam in India.

Loyalty other than the loyalty to one’s country and one’s family is slavery; slavery enforced upon someone or accepted by someone due to that one’s weakness. Loyalty is otherwise a trait found in some animals. Such loyalty in those animals is appreciated and acknowledged. Dogs are thought to be the most loyal to their MASTERS. Horses are also loyal to their MASTERS. The expression MASTERS is not about ownership; it is more akin to as in RINGMASTER in a circus.

I do not intend to make judgments about my friends or strangers, many of whom are completely at ease being a MODI-BHAKT or a GANDHI-NEHRU-FAMILY-LOYALIST. I merely wish to say that BHAKTI and LOYALTY are not the two poles of the same characteristic but two entirely different characteristics.

For me, Loyalty to my country comes first, followed by loyalty to my family. Then comes Bhakti to my God and religion. All other kinds of Loyalty and Bhakti is redundant and a mere reflection of my weaknesses. A caveat though, all other kinds of loyalty or Bhakti to any other being or any other object is the same thing.

 

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First published 17 Feb 2021

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NIRF Rankings Are Ludicrous

On November 30, 2020, the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) invited applications for India Rankings 2021, the Sixth edition of this annual exercise. NIRF was launched in 2015 to rank higher educational institutions in the country. NIRF makes a loud claim of its purpose as “promoting competitive excellence in the higher educational institutions” and its process as “being based on objective criteria” is approved, endorsed and supported by the Ministry of Education of the Government of India.

Rankings for Educational Institutions are accorded great significance by institutional staff and leadership teams and when awarded by the Government itself, the outcomes of the ranking have significant material consequences. Year after year, NIRF has been publishing its Annual Rankings inciting excitement across academic social media. Nothing wrong in celebratory and congratulatory banter that follows; but what is unsettling is the fact that the academic scholars take things like a ranking as a confirmation, or evidence, of how good, or bad for that matter, they are having it as compared to everyone else.

Let me make it clear from the start that my intention here is not to criticise rankings. This is not a story about flawed methodologies or their adverse effects, about how some rankings, other than the NIRF, are produced for making profit, or about how opaque or poorly governed they are.  The intent here is to draw attention to a highly problematic assumption that there is, or that there could be, a meaningful relationship between a ranking, on the one hand, and, what an Educational Institution is and does in comparison to others, on the other.  

To avoid any embarrassment to the Indian Ranking Systems, let us take an example from three of the most popular rankings- Academic Ranking of World Universities 2020 (Shanghai Ranking), The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2021 and QS World University Rankings 2021. Furthermore, to avoid any embarrassment to the Indian educational institutions, cases of educational institutions from our neighbouring country is taken. 

Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad does not have a mechanical engineering department; in fact, it does not offer engineering of any kind. Yet the department of mechanical engineering at Quaid-e-Azam University was rated 76-100 in 2017. (http://www.shanghairanking.com/Shanghairanking-Subject-Rankings-2017/mechanical-engineering.html). This placed it just below Tokyo University and just above Manchester University. Wow! Thereafter every year QAU improved its score and in 2020 it jumped into the 51-75 range putting it under McGill University but higher than Oxford University. (http://www.shanghairanking.com/Shanghairanking-Subject-Rankings/mechanical-engineering.html). The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2021 declared the Abdul Wali Khan University in Mardan as Pakistan’s top university (https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/2021/world-ranking#!/page/0/length/25/locations/PK/sort_by/rank/sort_order/asc/cols/stats). The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2020 did not even list The Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan. (https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/2020/world-ranking#!/page/0/length/25/locations/PK/sort_by/rank/sort_order/asc/cols/stats). The QS World University Rankings 2021, which were released soon after the release of The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2021, put National University of Sciences And Technology (NUST) Islamabad at Pakistan’s number one and The Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan was not even on the list. (https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2021).    

There is nothing exceptional about these examples beyond them being striking examples of how arbitrary rankings are.

Most ranking organisations, including the NIRF, never send assessors to the thousands of educational institutions they rank. Instead, they simply design forms for the officials of the institutions to fill and submit. The ranking criteria are periodically adjusted (for whose benefit?). Everyone (except the student) has something in the rankings for them.

Across the world, ranking organisations have been exposed as inconsistent, changing metrics from year to year, and omitting critical pieces of information. Smart academics and administrators have also learned to game the system. This speeds up their promotions and brings in recognitions and rewards.

Rankings are artificial zero-sum games. Artificial because they force a strict hierarchy upon educational institutions; artificial also because it is not realistic that an educational institution can only improve its reputation for performance exclusively at the expense of the reputations of other institutions. The most ludicrous aspect of it all is the belief, which may seem like a rational explanation that when an institution goes “up,” this must be because it has actually improved. If it goes “down,” it is being punished for underperforming. Such linear-causal kind of reasoning is absurd.

One of the hallmarks of any rankings are the numbers of research publications and citations.

Hundreds (the precise number is 1494) of Indian scientists and academics have been chosen from nearly 160 thousand (1,59,683 to be precise) scientists in universities across the world, ranked by their number of research publications and how often they were cited. (https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/science-and-tech/1494-indians-among-top-2-scientists-in-world-stanford).

Stanford University reportedly declared these Hundreds of Indian luminaries in the world’s top two per cent of scientists. THAT IS A TOTAL LIE! Stanford University has not sanctioned any such report. This doctored news wrongly draws upon the enormous prestige of Stanford. Only one of the four authors, John P.A. Ioannidis, has a Stanford affiliation. He is a professor of medical statistics while the other three authors are from the private sector. Their published work inputs numbers from an existing database into a computer that crunches them into a list. That list is meaningless for India. It does not represent scientific acumen or achievement.

Generating scientific research papers without knowing any science or doing actual research has been honed into a fine art by academic smarties at home and abroad. The stuff produced has to be published for which smart professors have developed many tricks including a membership to the cartel of international referees. The next and most difficult stage is to generate citations after the paper is published.

At this point, the smart professor relies upon smart friends to cite him and boost his ratings. Those friends have their friends in India, China, or elsewhere. This international web of connections is known as a citation cartel. Cartel members generate reams of scientific gibberish that the world of mainstream science refuses to even notice. Some of the individuals who made it to the exalted ‘Stanford scientist list’ would surprise people if they could pass a tough high-school-level exam for entering undergraduate studies in a decent university like Stanford. Others could certainly be genuine. No one would be able to tell.

Yet in India, the rewards are handsome, and the smart professor soon becomes chairperson, dean, vice-chancellor, or an influence peddler. One can expect nothing from the present gatekeepers of academia because fraud is a way of life for most. These gatekeepers shunt out all genuine academics lest they be challenged from below. This is creating a spiralling down vortex of mediocrity and upward spiral of favouritism. So many ‘category A’ NAAC accreditations of educational institutions are merely Self-congratulations and reflect the official policies that encourage academic dishonesty, all of whom have inflicted massive damage upon Indian higher education system.

Rankings are release and presented with much fanfare. Numbers, calculations, tables and other visual devices, “carefully calibrated” methodologies, and all that, are there to convince us that rankings are rooted in logic and  quasi-scientific reasoning. Rankings are made to appear as if they were works of science, they most definitely are not. However, maintaining the appearance of being factual is crucial for rankings.

The policy regime in India places a lot of importance on the rankings. That creates a problem, as more than a few educational institutions have started hiring consultants to help them raise their rankings. When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. This is the generalized Goodhart's law which comes from Strathern's paper, not from any of Goodhart's writings [Strathern, Marilyn (1997). "'Improving ratings': audit in the British University system". European Review. John Wiley & Sons. 5 (3): 305–321].

To assume that a rank, in any ranking, could possibly say anything meaningful about the quality of an educational institution relative to other institutions, is downright irrational. It is, however, precisely this assumption that makes rankings highly consequential, especially when it goes not only unchallenged, but also openly and publicly embraced, by the scholars themselves.

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First published 24 Mar 2021

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