ABSTRACT
DEVELOPMENT PERSPECTIVES ON THE DIGITAL DIVIDE
The digital divide is a phenomenon that is discussed ad nauseum in the current discourses on development both at the national as well as the international level. It can be broadly understood as the difference in the way that different sections of the population are able to relate at different levels to the new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and the resultant disparity caused therein.
First a broad definition to ‘digital divide’ is given in the paper. In this attempt, the need to understand the digital divide by taking into account its multidimensional complexities is reiterated. Then, this divide is sought to be located within two major theories of development namely, the Dependency theory and the Modernization theory.
To get a holistic understanding of the digital divide, the different dimensions of the divide are seen. The democratic potential of cyberspace is analyzed to see if it can give a political voice to the hitherto marginalized sections. The economic dimension is then elaborated and is seen to be the most important dimension. The actual cultural dimension of the divide between English and non-English linguistic groups are then seen. The potential cultural divide is also explained. Then the link between the spatial development divide and the hierarchy of computer networks are then seen. The broad social dimensions like that of gender, of the digital divide are analyzed. The difference between exclusion from information and exclusion by information is then seen. The reason for the contrast between the enormous amount of discourses generated on this topic and the lack of substantive efforts being taken at the ground level has to be explained. Whether the digital divide builds on the existing fault-lines of society and whether it widens or narrows down that fault-line has to be analyzed.
There can be two extreme perspectives that can be applied to understand the digital divide. One is Technological determinism and the other is Social determinism. This paper tries to find out the most appropriate scientific perspective that can be applied for understanding the digital divide and arrives at the Social Shaping of Technology or the SST perspective. The validity of this perspective and the need for adopting this perspective is explained.
After getting an appropriate perspective, there is a need for understanding whether the digital divide is an effect or a cause of wider extra-digital socio-economic phenomena. For this, a framework for understanding the digital divide is evolved. This framework also tries to integrate the digital divide with the wider socio-economic development divide. The insights that can be got from the framework and the practical implications of this framework if any are analyzed.
CONTENTS
1. INTRODUCTION
2. DEFINITION AND MEANING
3. MAJOR DIMENSIONS OF THE DIGITAL DIVIDE
4. DIGITAL DIVIDE AND THE THEORIES OF DEVELOPMENT
5. TECHNOLOGY, SOCIETY AND THE DIGITAL DIVIDE
6. A FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE
7. CONCLUSION
8. REFERENCES
1. INTRODUCTION
Currently, the developed countries of the world and the bulk of the developing countries seem to be in the Information Age or seem to be in the development trajectory that will take them to the Information age. The Information age is one that is characterized by the primacy of information in all spheres of society. There can be many reasons for this primacy being given to information but in the realm of technology, it is due to those technologies which can be broadly termed as the ICTs (the Information and Communication Technologies). The ICTs are those revolutionary kind of technologies which have evolved as a result of the fusion of two hitherto distinct kind of technologies, viz, the Information Technologies and the Telecommunication technologies.
Closely associated with this Information age is a concept which goes by the name of the "digital divide". In a very broad sense, digital divide can be said to denote the difference in the way different sections of the society relate at different levels to the ICTs and the resultant extra-technological disparities therein. The term "digital divide" appears to have originated in newspaper reports and was popularized in the 1995 U.S. government report "Falling through the Net. (Hawkins 2003).
Analyzing the digital divide becomes important for two reasons. The first is that if the digital divide is bridged, it may contribute to economic growth. The second and the more important reason is that the digital divide remains one of the most patent examples of an iniquitous fact of the current trajectory of global development. So, bridging this digital divide becomes an economic as well as a moral imperative. In the context of this paper, the term digital technologies and cyberspace are meant to connote not only internet but also all the telecommunications technologies in the broadest sense of the term. The context in which this paper has been written includes the global, the national and the local.
2. DEFINITION AND MEANING
Before a rigorous analysis is done, it may be instructive to define this concept at the very basic level.
The concept of the digital divide has three dimensions (Steyaert 2002) viz,
i) Physical access to the Information technologies.
ii) Technology-illiteracy: It refers to the knowledge to operate the technology.
iii) Information-illiteracy. This refers to the attitude to search for relevant information, translate that to one's own situation and implement the necessary actions. This is the most critical element that makes the 'digital divide' a societal issue of extreme importance.
Physical access has two components, firstly, direct access to the new ICTs and secondly, the possibility to actually use those ICTs even if there is access. For example, Indian Dalits may technically have physical access to an Information Kiosk but may not be able to access it due to caste restrictions. Although physical access to computers and networks appears to be problematic on the short run, in the long run, the other two are more critical.
Viewed analytically, the digital divide may be of different types. They are (Keniston & Kumar 2004).
a) The digital divide that exists within every nation
b) The digital divide between sections of the population which are differently enabled in the cultural sense. Even between the genders, there may be a definite cultural divide.
c) The digital divide between the rich and the poor nations.
3. MAJOR DIMENSIONS OF THE DIGITAL DIVIDE
Here, an analysis of the digital divide across its various dimensions like the spatial, political, economical, social and the cultural realm is done. In all of these realms, the analysis of the dynamics of the divide can be done by locating it in a historical timeframe. Across all these realms, the divide can be conceptualized in two ways, ie, how the access to ICTs is affected by the pre-existing divide in these realms and how this differential access shapes the existing extra-technological divide in these realms. The analysis can also be at different levels like the micro, national and the international level.
3.1. Economic Dimensions
The idea of bridging the digital divide in the literature reflects the developed world’s view of what is lacking in the developing countries, of what developed countries have and developing countries have not (IPTS 2001). This may be understood as a feature of the modernization paradigm of development.
Riggins (2004) states that the digital divide artificially segments the marketplace and bridging the divide can result in lower product quality and lesser service for low-type consumers. So, the patent aim of bridging the digital divide can also serve as a marketing strategy by the corporate sector for market segmentation. Regarding e-commerce, it requires a level of business acumen and support structures that are as yet rare in the world. (Wresch 2003). So, overall, the development of e-commerce may result in the deepening of the digital divide in spite of developments like e-chouppal of ITC which aim at using e-commerce to bring rural producers to the mainstream markets.
For Quah (1996), the defining feature of the new economy is the increasing variety of goods and services, from business computer software to music, that take the form and properties of knowledge goods, namely, ‘infinite expansibility’, ‘weightlessness’ or ‘dematerialization’, and ‘non-rivalrousness’. Infinite expansibility means that the marginal costs of production is minuscule, weightlessness signifies that goods can be distributed virtually, and non-rivalry means that one individual's consumption does not prevent another's. In principle, these features should lead to an increasingly egalitarian world but in practice, as Quah pointed out, social divisions are widening. How can this paradox be explained?
Within capitalist societies, infinite expansibility and weightlessness leads to economic concentration. Infinite expansibility means that knowledge goods are subject to increasing economies of scale and therefore a tendency to monopoly, because the low marginal cost means that firms can always lower their prices temporarily to eliminate new competitors. Quah (1996). Infinite expansibility of the knowledge goods without an attendant increase in access may mean that the digital divide may increase to infinite proportions. Another issue is that being digitally connected has an influence on the international economic attractiveness of countries by making them targets for FDI and other investments. (Steyaert 2002). This means that countries which are not able to achieve the critical mass necessary, will lag behind in the digital race in a qualitative manner.
Telecommunications costs are inversely related to the number of subscribers (“network effect”) and so the developing countries will have to increase their telecom capacities at a higher cost because in most developing countries there are proportionately fewer subscribers to the telecommunication system than in industrialized countries (Campbell 2001).
This economic factor of the digital divide outweigh all others in predicting cross-national differences in access to the information society. (Norris 2001). One study says that the gap between developed and developing countries has continued to widen since the early 1990s. (Guillén & Suárez 2004).
Sometimes, the discourses on bridging the digital divide become one that aids the process of liberalization, privatization and globalization. The need for the government loosening its control over this ICT industry and allowing the free operations of the private players is posited as a technological need, something that will take the technology to the masses. In the case of India, T.H Chowdary says, ‘In 1998, the Internet Service Policy (ISP) was first enunciated which ended the monopoly of the government company, VSNL in the area of internet service provision. The licence conditions were fantabulously different from those that were for the other services like the fixed and mobile telephony, radio paging, e-mail etc. In the light of this, the previous licences for those other services appeared ridiculous.’ (Chowdary 2004). We find that, over here, the rhetoric is couched in a language that promoted de-licensing and hence liberalization and its twin cousin of privatization.
The discourses at both the national and the international level which are apparently aimed at bridging the digital divide, often become proposals for increasing the growth of the IT business (Keniston & Kumar 2004). The software industry may actually widens the economic gap between the digerati (the newly affluent elite) and the other people of the developing nations. This means that there is a lot of credibility in the thesis that, the discourses at the national level of developing countries may actually benefit only the newly formed elite of the Information age.
Economic dimension of the digital divide
Formation of monopolies.
Development divide between different nations widens.
‘Digital divide’- a strategy for creating markets
E-commerce induced disparity between different firms.
Techno –economic problems compound it.
Entry of ICTs -coupled with privatization
Figure 1
3.2. Political Dimensions
Most internet communications occurs along fiber-optic lines leased from telecommunications companies (which carry 80% of international communications), many of which are state regulated, in contrast to the largely unregulated state of the internet itself. (Warf 2001). So, it means that there is considerable scope for the government’s political influence vis-à-vis the digital divide. But the governments of different nation states don’t seem to be influencing the digital divide in the right direction. Their initiatives regarding deregulation in telecommunications, started with the breakup of AT&T by the US government and the privatization of British Telecommunications by the British government. This has spread rapidly in many countries and this will most likely lead to more use-based pricing and fewer cross-subsidies a trend that is likely to make access to cyberspace less affordable. (Warf 2001).
The constraints to internet access are not only economic but also political, given that the electronic dissemination of knowledge, by making people aware of their rights and by disseminating news and views about the injustices of society can challenge established relations of power (Warf 2001). This may mean that the provision of internet facilities may not be in the interest of the dominant powers that be. Theoretically, in a technical sense, the internet can enable everyone to participate in the political process on a more or less equal footing. Further, it can give a political voice to the numerous marginalized groups across the world by allowing them to network with each other and by broadcasting their plight to the rest of the world. The internet can also qualitatively quicken up the different political processes like elections, referenda, recall etc. Thus the internet has an enormous democratic potential. But, this potential may not be realized because the internet may only mean democracy for a chosen few. “While a relatively small, educated, and affluent elite in a few countries and cities would have access to an extraordinary tool for accessing information and for political participation, actually enhancing their citizenship, the uneducated, switched off masses of the world, and of the country, would remain excluded from the new democratic core, as were slaves and barbarians at the onset of democracy in classical Greece'' (Castells, 1997).
Indeed, cyberspace may open up ‘public spheres’ in the Habermasian sense which stand for a space where citizens can interact and one that can provide an operating platform for democratic communication systems. And this public spheres may provide for unfettered political discourses. But the problem is that, in an age in which social life is not only increasingly mediated through computer networks but fundamentally altered by them, the annihilation of public spaces and their reconstruction around the increasingly commodified, privatized spaces of cyberspace has disturbing implications for those without the wealth and power to gain access to the internet.(Grossman, 1995). So, the political divide seems to have assumed newer and deeper dimensions rather than being obliterated by cyberspace.
Political dimensions
Democracy for a chosen few.
Potential for government regulation.to bridge the divide
Potential for ICTs to challenge the dominant political powers.
Figure 2
3.3. Spatial Dimensions
There is a hype that cyberspace spells the `end of geography' because of the instantaneous communication that it can offer to its users. Cyberspace also promises universal, democratic entree to the electronic highways of the world economy. But contrary to these claims, access to the internet is very unevenly distributed both socially and spatially (Warf 2001). The spatial dimensions of the divide can be understood by seeing that more than 97% of all internet hosts are in developed countries that are home to only 16% of the world's population (Okoli et al 2003).
Regarding the distribution of ICT firms, there could still theoretically be a widely spatially dispersed pattern of large ICT firms supplying global markets. However, because external economies of scale are important for these knowledge firms, there are only a limited number of clusters, such as the "milieu of innovation" found in New York (Manhattan), San Francisco, the City of London, Paris (Quartier de l'opera), Tokyo (Shibuya), or Sao Paulo (Nova Faria Lima), that connect with the entire world (Castells 2001, 228-29). Moreover, so far, the ICT sector has developed largely by attracting people to these spatial "milieus of innovation", rather than by developing local skills, and thus this region-specific development has become a part of, rather than challenging, the digital divide. (Perrons 2004). Thus the development divide between these milieus of innovation and the rest of the geographical spaces tends to increase.
The term ‘digerati’ denotes the nouveau riche classes cutting across the developing countries who got their new status due to their professional association with ICTs. (Brockman, 1996). The development of the internet is likely to cause the global `digerati' become increasingly disconnected from the local environments of their own cities and countries. Since its inception at the hands of the US military, the very architecture of the internet has revolved around a handful of nodes that route internet traffic, all of which have been clustered in cities of academic or governmental significance. The resulting patterns of service provision became steadily restructured by corporate Internet Service Providers in partnership with backbone providers (such as AT&T, MCIWorldcom, and Sprint), generating a geography centered largely in metropolitan areas, whose concentrations of affluent users generate economies of scale that lead to the highest rates of profit (Warf 2001). This seems to be the trend in the third world countries also. The implications could be that the ICTs exacerbate the spatial development divide in all countries.
Access to the internet is deeply conditioned by where one is, which is in turn a reflection of relations of wealth and power. Long-standing categories of core and periphery are all too apparent within cyberspace, such as the divisions between developed and less-developed nations, or cities and rural areas. Thus, electronic systems simultaneously reflect and transform existing topographies of class, gender, and ethnicity, creating and recreating hierarchies of places mirrored in the spatial architecture of computer networks (Warf 2001). Thus there seems to be a two-way causality between spatial architecture of computer networks with its hierarchies and the hierarchies of geographical spaces.
Global access to the internet is deeply conditioned by the density, reliability, and affordability of national telephone systems, which form the heart of the architecture of cyberspace. During the Cold War: Soviet-backed regimes distrusted the telephone, which allows two-way communication, and preferred television, which allows only one-way flows of information (Warf 2001). So, the countries of the erstwhile Eastern block have to grapple with the baggage of history while contending with the problem of the digital divide.
Spatial dimensions
Access to ICTs - unevenly distributed
Limited number of ICT innovation clusters concentrated in metropolises
Innovation clusters exacerbate the spatial development divide
Two-way causality between spatial architectural hierarchies of computer N/Ws and hierarchies of geographical spaces.
Figure 3
3.4. Social Dimensions
Scholars have noted that the internet tends to reinforce existing class and social relations both within and across countries (Mosco 1996; McChesney 1999; Everett 1998). The digital divide does not create new fault lines in society, but by and large replicates the existing social stratification (at least when defined in terms of physical access). (Steyaert 2002). This should hold good for telecommunications also to a smaller extent. Further, certain sectors and societies are completely excluded from the new networks of information, effectively creating ’black holes of informational capitalism’. These black holes constitute the Fourth World, which comprises ‘large areas of the globe, such as sub-Saharan Africa...impoverished rural areas of Latin America and Asia’ (Castells, 2000).
A recent paper from demos (an UK based think-tank) argues that the real challenge is not exclusion from information, but exclusion by information. If there is information about a person, then the dominant powers that be can decide whether to include or exclude that person in other networks of power, influence or wealth. “ The rise of a digital economy based on detailed personal profiles means that organisations - public, private and voluntary - are increasingly able to exclude large numbers of people from access to basic services and opportunities on the grounds that they constitute 'bad risks'”. (Gourova 2001). This exclusion may happen even if these excluded people, by themselves, have technical access to the ICTs.
Nowadays, talking about the ‘digital divide’ is fashionable not only in the international multilateral agencies, but in national policy formulation circles, in academic discourses and in other multilateral fora. ‘The digital divide–the gap between those sections of the population with and those without access to information technology (IT)–is a highly debated social issue’ (Norris 2001). But there seems to be more of intellectual debates and discussions going on about the ‘digital divide’ than substantive efforts being taken to bridge the divide. This may just be taken as just another example of the fractured relationship between theory and practice in any aspect of human development. But a closer analysis may reveal something else. We are currently in a phase of history which is unprecedented in the levels of economic inequality seen. So, as a society the ‘collective conscience’ as Emile Durkheim would say, has to be satisfied that there is no grave injustice being done and that everything is fine (Haralambos 1980). This is needed because only then can society function as it is. So, the huge amount of discourse about the need for bridging the digital divide may serve this purpose of a self-fulfilling legitimizing mechanism which helps to maintain a healthy collective conscience at the national and the global realm, which helps to legitimize the status-quo.
Internet use is heavily gendered (Doheny-Farina, 1996; Miller, 1996). In a patriarchal culture, the socialization of girls does not make them friendly to technology. To them, technology is said to be a `guy thing' and the internet is no exception to this rule. So, they are frequently under-confident when working with machines.
Discourses about digital divide - a means to soothe society’s collective conscience.
Normal fault lines of society replicated in cyberspace
Exclusion by Information
Gender divisions carried on to the digital realm.
Some sections completely
excluded.
Social dimensions
Figure 4
3.5. Cultural Dimensions
Language is a definite barrier since roughly 90% of all internet content today is in English (Roussel, 1999). So, one cultural dimension of the divide is currently manifested as a divide between the English and the non-English speakers. But for those huge regions that share common languages and thus have big linguistic groups like the Arab world and much of Latin America – the internet can be the great unifier and creator of business opportunities and hence of higher living standards.(Cattaui 2001). But a digital divide may potentially emerge between these big linguistic groups and the rest of the small linguistic groups which don’t have such a common critical cultural mass.
Cultural dimensions of the digital divide
Between English and Non-English groups of users. (actual)
Between big linguistic groups and small linguistic groups of users. (potential)
Figure 5
4. DIGITAL DIVIDE AND THE THEORIES OF DEVELOPMENT
Here, we’ll see how digital divide, as we broadly understand it, can be located within two major theories of development, viz, the modernization theory and the dependency theory.
4.1 Digital divide and the Modernization theory
The modernization theory of development assumes that there is a single goal of ‘modernity’ and ‘development’ towards which all societies have to ‘progress’. Presented as a detached rationality capable to improve human condition, the modernization discourse creates a regime of truth, which passes judgment on social groups, determines their needs, prescribes how they should change and towards what goals they should change (Avergou 2000).
Applying this idea of modernization, we realize that the theme underlying the digital divide is one that considers the developed countries to be at an advanced stage of informatization and these countries are seen to be a model for the developing countries which have to bridge the ‘gap’ or ‘divide’ between themselves and the developed countries as regards the information technologies. The modernization paradigm of development gives an important role to technology in the process of development. ‘The modernization discourse conceives social life as a technical issue, and its improvement is entrusted to technical experts, capable of rational decision making and management’. (Avergou 2000). This agrees with the underlying importance given to technology in the discourses on the digital divide.
Moreover, modernization theory believes that the transfer of foreign technologies from developed countries to developing countries is a costless process which happens automatically and this results in positive knowledge externalities that serve as a public good available for free. This can solve the problem of technological backwardness and this can usher in modernization. (Rothboeck 2000). So, according to the modernization paradigm, the digital divide can be bridged by simple transfer of technology from the developed to the developing countries. But this kind of an understanding does not seem to cover the complex reality of the process of technology transfer.
4.2. Digital divide and the Dependency theory
Here, we’ll see how digital divide, as we broadly understand it, can be located within the dependency theory of development. The weltanschuang of this school sees the world as divided into the ‘Centre’ and the ‘Periphery’. The countries of the Centre are the advanced capitalist countries and the countries of the Periphery are the developing and the least developed countries. Dependency theory says that the developing countries are dependent on more advanced ones for capital, technology and access to information. As a result, peripheral countries become relatively more impoverished (Pritchett 1997). Into this dependency relationship, if the factor of ‘Information dependency’ is also introduced, then it may enhance the dependency relationship in a qualitative manner and thus exacerbate the development divide. Research has shown that the geographical distribution of high-technology exports, computer power, and internet hosts follows the hierarchical pattern of the core-periphery system. (Gunaratne 2002).
As regards the information technologies, Communication scholars attuned to dependency theory have long pointed out that the development of the media and the digital revolution are driven by politico-economic forces, including the activities of media corporations and the policies of the dominant nation-states in the world (Davidson 2002; McChesney 1999; Mosco 1996; Schiller 1996). This means that the development of these information technologies and hence the divide associated with these technologies is something that is not the natural outcome of the operation of economic forces but is an integral part of the associated political processes.
Information technology, by making it simpler to ship off individual parts of the economic production process overseas, has contributed to the de-industrialization of parts of the developed world and has rendered much more complex the division of labour between the developed and the third world countries, which can no longer be analyzed in terms of a simple distinction between the ‘head’ and the ‘hands’ as in the classical Dependency theory (Brusco, Siegel, Bluestone, Harrison 1982). It seems that we are on the threshold of a world that is divided on digital fault-lines. That fault-line need not correspond with national boundaries but may lie very well within nations of both the centre and the periphery. Digital divide within nations and the digital divide between the digitally empowered enclaves of the world from the rest may become an area of greater concern than the digital divide between nations.
In recent times, there is a hope evinced in certain quarters that the rapid development of the ICT sector in some developing countries of Asia may serve as an engine of growth for the rest of the economy. But while industrial production has been internationalized, strategic planning and lucrative pace-setting innovations in the ICT sector are still concentrated in a few dominant regions mainly in the USA, Japan and in certain cases in Europe. (Bornschier and Chase-Dunn 1992; Hein 1995). For example, in the software industry, India’s competitive advantage lies not in the innovative field of complete software packages production but in standardized programming and data entry (Rothboeck 2000). Even South Korea, has not been yet been able to overcome the problem of technology dependency (OECD 1996a,b). So, it may not be possible for the ICT enabled thrust given to economic growth in the periphery, will enable it to break the chains of dependency that bind it to the core.
5. TECHNOLOGY, SOCIETY AND THE DIGITAL DIVIDE
A correct understanding of the digital divide needs a correct scientific perspective. The notion of restructuring society on more egalitarian lines with the help of ICTs cannot be compared to the alleged “deep“, or “fundamental“ modernization suggested by the rhetoric of “radical“ change, the IT-“revolution“, the complete “reengineering“ of whole societies, etc., as emphasized in a multiplicity of local and supra-local discourses. (Ilyes 2003). The process of restructuring through ICTs appears to be a similar to a process called ”conservative modernization“ wherein politically induced reforms or restructuring did not lead to a new distribution of property, as hoped for, but perpetuated traditional concentrations of income, and by that the traditional pattern of inequality (Ilyes 2003; Graziano 2002).
There can be three different perspectives on the relation between development and technology. One on the one extreme, we have Technological determinism and on the other, we have Social determinism of technology.
Technological determinism means that it is the development of technology that determines the evolution of social institutions. All through history we have seen that many technological innovations have been closely associated with major changes in the evolution of society. For example, the invention of the plough was closely associated with settled agriculture and the rise of ancient river valley civilizations like Sumeria, Indus valley etc, the invention of the printing press was closely associated with the Renaissance and the subsequent Reformation in Europe. But the singular fact that technological innovations happen in the same period of history as social transformations does not suggest even a causality between the two leave alone giving us the liberty to assume that technological transformations cause social upheavals.
Social determinism means that it is the social institutions that shape the evolution and usage of technology. It says that technology is just a tool of the class or the section or institution of society that uses it and that it does not have autonomy of its own. For example, in ancient Egypt, the invention of the technology of writing helped to form an elite class of clerks which helped to further consolidate the powers of the Egyptian Pharaoh. But the weakness of this perspective is that it completely ignores the autonomy that technology per se might be having in determining the change in the evolution of social institutions.
In contrast to both the perspective of Technological determinism and the Social determinism of technology, there is this SST or Social Shaping of Technology perspective which takes a middle ground (Russell & Williams, 2002). It says that technology can have some autonomy of its own. The general position regarding social shaping may be enunciated as follows: social processes shape not only the form and features (i.e., the content) of particular technologies, but also the patterns, general characteristics, and direction of technologies across whole areas of development and application (Russell & Williams, 2002). Central to the social shaping approach is the idea that there are 'choices' (though not necessarily conscious choices) inherent in both the design of individual artefacts and systems, and in the direction or trajectory of innovation programmes (Williams & Edge, 1996). Choices between different socio-technical options potentially available at every stage are highlighted (Genus & Nor 2005). Application of a social shaping perspective draws attention to other factors of significance towards bridging the international digital divide. They have been cited above to include skill and self-efficacy to use ICTs effectively, intellectual, social and human capital, and technological culturation. (Genus & Nor 2005).
Under this SST approach, cyberspace can be viewed as a socially constructed discourse that simultaneously reflects and constitutes social reality. So, the social institutions constituting society as such and cyberspace have a two-way dialectic relationship with each other with each influencing the evolution and dynamics of the other. The evolution of cyberspace and its dynamics are influenced by forces from inside the sphere of social relations and not from some alien force outside it.
SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS
CYBERSPACE
Direction of influence
Figure 6
The SST perspective seems to strike the correct balance between the two extreme positions of Technological determinism and Social determinism of technology. It gives a place for all kinds of social institutions in the analytical framework that can be employed to understand the interaction of technology with social reality. So, it seems that this is the most epistemologically sound of all perspectives to understand the place of technology in social reality.
TECHNOLOGICAL DETERMINISM
SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS
TECHNOLOGY
SOCIAL DETERMINISM OF TECHNOLOGY
SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS
TECHNOLOGY
SOCIAL SHAPING OF TECHNOLOGY
SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS
TECHNOLOGY
Direction of influence
Figure 7
6. A FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE
The digital divide is, a varying landscape which manifests itself in a range of indigenous factors and external structures. (Gourova 2001). It has been found that the digital divide can be defined in terms of the technology and infrastructure that forms the base of ICTs, ICT tools, ICT content, ICT related knowledge and skills, and in terms of international power relations. (Gourova et al 2001). But such approaches are clearly lacking in depth and by and large don’t provide a very scientific analysis because they don’t realize the social embeddedness of technology and the multifarious complexity of the problem. Most of these approaches tend to take a techno-managerial view of the problem.
Here a theoretical framework for understanding the digital divide is developed. The digital divide should be seen as a dynamic phenomenon and should not be viewed with an ahistorical perspective. A scientific understanding of the digital divide will need us to take a middle-path between the socio-technological structure, human agency and the social institutions. Hence the framework to be proposed is best situated in the SST or the Social Shaping of Technology perspective. The digital divide, if analyzed under the Social Shaping of Technology perspective can be analytically understood as both a cause and effect, with it being first a cause and then an effect and then this effect becomes a cause for further widening of the digital divide.
From Steyaert’s (2002) definition of the digital divide, it consists of three dimensions, they are,
a) Physical access
b) 'Informacy'
c) Information-illiteracy
The above mentioned three dimensions constitute the ‘Cause’ Dimension of the digital divide. The ‘Cause’ dimension of the digital divide will influence a part of the existing development divide and this can be termed as the ‘Effect’ dimension of the digital divide. This ‘Effect dimension’ will be of different types like economic, social, political, cultural, spatial divide etc. All these development divides are inextricably linked with each other and influence each other. All these aspects of the development divide feedback into the ‘Cause’ dimension of the digital divide.
DIGITAL DIVIDE
CAUSE
EFFECT
PHYSICAL ACCESS
INFORMACY
INFORMATION ILLITERACY
DEVELOPMENT DIVIDE COMPONENTS
Economic
Cultural
Political
Spatial
Direction of influence
Social
Figure 8
The advantage of this framework is that, it tries to reflect the multidimensional complexity of the problem. By providing for the reverse influence of social institutions on technology, it also avoids the mistake of ossifying technology and freezing it for the purpose of understanding its effects. By bringing in a human-influenced dynamism into the relation between the different elements that constitute the framework, it avoids committing the fallacy of reification, ie, of considering the relation between people to be a relation between extra-human “things”. The lines of influence between the different components of the framework should not be taken as connoting a rigorous causality because in the complex process of development, cause and effect relations cannot be established easily.
7. CONCLUSION
Digital divide is a complex phenomenon. At this stage in the evolution of ICTs and their integration into social production and social life, it cannot be said with certainty whether the digital divide is decreasing or increasing at all levels. Regarding a solution to bridge the divide, there is no simple or single solution. The attempt at bridging the digital divide will need us to think beyond ICTs and reflect on the wider extra-digital divides in society. That attempt has to be dovetailed with the other attempts at bridging the numerous other divides at the national as well as the global level. The framework that has been proposed will help in this regard. The solution proposed also has to come as much from social science as from management or technology per se.
The framework proposed, because of its circular causation, foretells that there may be a danger of a ever-widening digital divide. This should alert policy makers and other concerned citizens and business houses to the gravity of the problem and make them take steps which might be of a radical nature. The framework can give broad pointers to policy makers to tackle this phenomenal problem.
REFERENCES:
Avergou, C. 2000, “Recognizing Alternative Rationalities in the Deployment of Information Systems”, Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries (3:7), 2000, pp. 1-15.
Campbell, Duncan. 2001, “Can the digital divide be contained?”. This article is based on several findings of the ILO’s World Employment Report 2001: Life at work in the information economy, downloaded from http://www.geog.psu.edu/courses/geog497b/Readings/ on 21/11/05
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Dossal, Amir 2001, The UN in action, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, The OECD Observer. Paris: Jan 2001., Iss. 224; pp. 88, 3
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Graziano, Francisco. 2002, “The Agricultural Model. Social Issues”, Ministry of Foreign Relations, Brazil downloaded from http://www.mre.gov.br/cdbrasil/itamaraty/web/ingles/polsoc/refagra/hoje/modagr/apresent.htm (10/2002). on 17/10/05
Guillén, Mauro F. and Suárez, Sandra L. 2004, from The University Of Pennsylvania And Temple University Respectively, “Explaining The Global digital divide: Economic, Political, And Sociological Drivers Of Cross-National Internet Use”, Working Paper of the University of Pennsylvania, September 2004, downloaded from http://emertech.wharton.upenn.edu/Working_Papers/InternetPolPaper5.SocForces.pdf on 17/11/05
Haralambos, M. and Heald, R.M. 1980, Sociology – Themes and Perspectives, Oxford University Press, Oxford
Hawkins, Eliza Tanner. 2003, “Bridging Latin America's digital divide: Government Policies And Internet Access”, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Columbia: Autumn 2003.Vol.80, Iss. 3; pp. 646
Ilyes, Petra. 2003, “Ambivalent Elites and Conservative Modernizers. Studying Sideways in Transnational Contexts”, Working Paper Number 2 October 2003, Research Group Transnationalism, Institute of Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, downloaded from frankfurt.de/fb09/kulturanthro/research/tn/wp/download/wp002_ilyes.pdf on 27/09/05
Keniston, Kenneth. & Kumar, Deepak 2004, Experience in India, Bridging the digital divide, Sage Publications, New Delhi
Ministry of Information Technology 2005, from www.mit.gov.in
Mistry, Jamshed J. 2005, “A Conceptual Framework For The Role Of Government In Bridging The digital divide”, Journal of Global Information Technology Management. Marietta: 2005.Vol.8, Iss. 3; pp. 28, 19
Okoli, Chitu., Mbarika, Victor A W. 2003, “A framework for assessing e-commerce in Sub-Saharan Africa”, Journal of Global Information Technology Management. Marietta:, Vol.6, Iss. 3; pp. 44
Perrons, Diane. 2004, “Understanding Social and Spatial Divisions in the New Economy: New Media Clusters and the digital divide”, Economic Geography. Worcester: Jan 2004.Vol.80, Iss. 1; pp. 45, 17
Pritchett, Lant. 1997, “Divergence, Big Time” Journal of Economic Perspectives 11:3, pp.3-7.
Quah, D. 1996, “The invisible hand and the weightless economy”, Centre for Economic Performance, Occasional paper No. 12, London School of Economics, (transcript from a public lecture given on 26t February, 1996), downloaded from http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/occasional/OP012.pdf on 18/11/05
Riggins, F. J. 2004, “A Multichannel Model of Separating Equilibrium in the Face of the digital divide”. Journal of Management Information Systems, 21 (2), pp. 161-179.
Rothboeck, Sandra 2000, “Information Technologies and Late Development: Innovative Capacity or Hidden Reproduction of Core-Periphery Cleavages?”, Science, Technology & Society 5:1, Sage Publications
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Ruttan, Vernon W. 2000, Technology, Growth and Development - An induced innovation perspective, Oxford University Press, New York
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Warf, Barney. 2001, “Segueways into cyberspace: multiple geographies of the digital divide”, Department of Geography, Florida State University, Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 2001, volume 28 pp. 3-19
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ADDITIONAL REFERENCES:
Anonymous 2001, “OECD and developing countries join Dot.force to tackle digital divide”, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, The OECD Observer. Paris: Mar 2001, Iss. 225; pp. 48, 1
Bluestone, B. and Harrison, B. 1982, The Deindustrialization of America, New York: Basic Books
Bornschier, V. and Chase-Dunn, C. 1992, TNCs and Underdevelopment: A comment on Firebaugh. Not published, see http://www.unizh.ch/suz/bornschier/, quoted in Rothboeck, Sandra 2000, “Information Technologies and Late Development: Innovative Capacity or Hidden Reproduction of Core-Periphery Cleavages?”, Science, Technology & Society 5:1, Sage Publications
Brockman, J. 1996, Digerati: Encounters with the Cyber Elite (Hardwired, New York)
Brusco, S. 1981, “Labour Market Structures, Company Policies and Technological Progress: The Case of Italy”, in Capital and Labour, ed. O.Diettrich and J. Morley (Brussels:EEC); Siegel,L. et. al., Background Report on Silicon Valley (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Studies Centre, 1982); Bluestone, B. and Harrison, B. The Deindustrialization of America, New York: Basic Books, 1982
Castells, M. 1997, The Power of Identity (Blackwell, Oxford)
Castells, M. 2000, The information age: Economy, society and culture, volume III: The end of the millennium (2nd edition). Oxford, UK: Blackwells.
Castells, Manuel. 2001, The Internet Galaxy New York: Oxford University Press
Davidson, Theresa. , Sooryamoorthy, R. and Shrum, Wesley. 2002. “Kerala Connections: Will the Internet Affect Science in Developing Areas?” pp. 496-519 in The Internet in Everyday Life, edited by Barry Wellman and Caroline Haythornthwaite. Oxford: Blackwell.
Doheny-Farina S, 1996, The Wired Neighborhood (Yale University Press, New Haven, CT)
Grossman, L. 1995, The Electronic Republic: Reshaping Democracy in the Information Age (Viking Press, New York)
Gunaratne, Shelton A. 2002, “An Evolving Triadic World: A Theoretical Framework for Global Communication Research.” Journal of World-Systems Research 8(3): pp. 329-365.
International Labour Organization 2001, “Reducing the Decent Work Deficit: A Global Challenge”, Geneva
IPTS 2001, Institute for Prospective Technological Studies , From discussions held at a Review Workshop organised by IPTS in Venice on 27 March 2001. The invited participants were Jacques Arlandis (ENCIP, France), Jean-Claude Burgelman (SMIT-VUB, Belgium), Annie Chénoux-Loquay (CNRS, France), Richard Heeks (Manchester University, UK), Tim Kelly (ITU), Clare Milne (Antelope Consulting, UK), Daniel Pimienta (Funredes, Dominican Republic) and David Souter (Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation) from Gourova Elissaveta, Hermann Christoph, Leijten,Jos, Clements, Bernard, 2001, ”The digital divide – A Research Perspective - A Report To The G8 Opportunities Task Force”, March 2001, Report EUR, 19913 EN
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Wresch, W. 1996, Disconnected: Haves and Have-Nots in the Information Age, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Caste-Based Reservations and the Sociology of “Merit”
It was a hot day in Chennai, May, 2002. I checked into an internet café to see the results of the IAS exam, the interview for which I had attended the previous month at Delhi. I was in a state of nervous apprehension, as I had not only spent the previous five years of my life for this exam but had also jeopardized my software job in the process of preparing for this exam. The results showed that I had got an All India Rank of 260. Some of my friends, who had got lower ranks than me got through to elite services like the Foreign Service, IPS etc because they were in OBC/SC category, while I did not get any service as I was in the general category. So, whatever is being written hereafter is not written out of self-interest.
There is a view even amongst many well-meaning people that caste-based reservations dilute “merit”, “equality of opportunity” etc. A small minority of them are against reservations as that would rob them of their status which they had hitherto enjoyed. But this article is for the majority of the people who are against reservations because they don’t simply understand the logic behind reservation itself. They cannot be faulted when respected former directors of elite educational institutions write articles in newspapers against reservations. With due respects, an understanding of the logic behind reservation needs a basic grounding in social science which unfortunately, an education system heavily tilted towards professional-skills does not prepare most Indian youth for.
We’ll go through a set of myths behind the opposition to caste-based reservation.
Myth No.1: Reservation should be based on economic criteria and not on social criteria like caste
This is the biggest myth of all. Reservations have nothing to do with making the poor rich though that might be an upshot of reservation. The preamble to our constitution promises to secure to the citizens of India, a Tri-Dimensional notion of Justice, viz, Social, Economic and Political. Reservation is aimed squarely at this notion of Social Justice.
The concept of self-esteem is central to the essence of the human-being as man is not a bread-seeking animal. The dignity that is needed for human existence is something that may not come with money per se. “Social status” becomes a central aspect of securing that dignity. And in a semi-feudal country like India, the social status comes with education, government jobs etc is tremendous. If a school teacher is earning 8000/- pm and a small-time trader peddling animal feed is also earning 8000/- pm, the social status differential between both will be definitely huge indeed, a differential which will reflect on the life-chances of their respective off-springs.
Myth No: 2: Upper castes are more meritorious than lower castes because they deserve it
Without taking its name, let us take the example of a prominent private management school in India. It does not have any reservation policy. Empirically, it has been found out that, out of the students who manage to join the institute, 90% are from the upper castes while the proportion of the upper castes in the Indian population is just about 15%. What is the reason? Why are only a certain set of castes able to get access to institutions of higher learning while others are not able to? Does this mean that the upper castes have a higher IQ while the lower castes don’t have that much IQ? If we endorse this kind of a simplistic reasoning, we run the risk of justifying the natural inequality of mankind based on which ideologies like fascism thrive.
So, we have to accept that all human beings have equal intellectual endowments at birth. Then how does only a certain set of castes able to prove themselves to be more intelligent and capable while others castes are not able to?. The reason has got to do with a concept with the name of “Cultural capital”. What we fail to understand is that upper castes are endowed with a certain kind of a “cultural capital” which lower castes might not have. Example of traits of “cultural capital” could be, the attitude towards education per se, knowing what to study, where to study, how to study, how to use education for self-advancement, how to use their existing networks of power and prestige etc. The fact of the matter is, this cultural capital has been usurped and monopolized by upper castes in India over a period of thousands of years by systematically excluding the lower castes through the legitimizing ideology of “Varnashrama Dharma”.
Myth No.3: Candidates who have availed the benefit of reservation need to feel guilty vis-à-vis the general candidates as they are enjoying a privilege which they don’t deserve in the first place.
Firstly, there are other huge structural imperfections in the system of education, job prospects based on education. With due respects to all braches of knowledge, anyone who has gone through courses like engineering would realize the kind of effort that one needs to put in to get admission and go through a good engineering course. But say, after an MBA course, an engineer might be regarded as an equal in terms of career prospects to an arts/commerce graduate who has also done his MBA and who might have put only a fraction of the effort that this engineer has put in for his graduation. So, if we assume that a person who has got an undeserved career prospect needs to feel “guilt”, does this mean that this arts/commerce graduate with an MBA needs to feel guilty vis-à-vis this engineer with an MBA? In a system with such huge imperfections, why should a candidate from reserved category feel guilty vis-à-vis the “meritorious” candidates just because he/she has got a few percentage points less?
More importantly, if we assume that candidates who have availed the benefit of reservation need to feel guilty, then the majority of humankind needs to feel guilty. Why should a software engineer get 50 times more salary than a manual scavenger when his job is far less de-humanizing than the job of a manual scavenger? There are so many of us who are enjoying so many benefits vis-à-vis so many others, which we don’t deserve in the first place. So if we all start feeling guilty, then half of humankind has to die of guilt before a single candidate who has to availed the benefits of reservation starts feeling a niggle of guilt vis-à-vis the “meritorious” candidates. So, nobody needs to feel “guilty”.
Myth No.4: Reservations will dilute “Merit”
This is the most interesting of all such myths. Here we need to delve deep into the sociology of “merit”. What is “merit”? Is it something that is decided by some percentile point difference in some competitive exams? Has humankind ever been able to devise perfect competitive exams which separate the wheat from the chaff? Can a person who has faced a competitive exam at one point in her life be branded a meritorious person or a dull person for the rest of her life? I know quite a few people who got such poor grades in their school leaving exams and did not manage to get admission in a full-time UG program. So they took up some clerical jobs and had to do their graduation through some correspondence program. But later on, they got enough motivation to prove themselves and became IAS exam toppers. Again there are so many competitive exams in which success or failure depends on whether one attended the proper coaching class rather than whether one is “meritorious”.
The stark reality is that, “Merit” is more of a chimera that provides a superb basis for legitimizing an ideational framework that justifies the various privileges which the elite of our society enjoy.
Myth No: 5: It is power-hungry, corrupt politicians who bring in concepts like caste-based reservations for the sake of getting votes
It has become fashionable in Indian middle-class circles to blame politicians for all the ills plaguing society. First we have to understand the definition of a “politician”. In a liberal democracy like ours, politicians basically represent the interests of the different sections of the society. So, if lower castes marshal the political strength to press for their demands, then the politician will represent their interests and further his own career in the process. This is a very natural process in a democracy and there is no evil manipulation of the masses by the politician in this kind of a process.
In a country like India where there are crores of children out of school, we, the members of the Indian middle class don’t have a problem if politicians earmark half the central budget for higher education for IITs & IIMs and the products of these institutions go abroad or join MNCs. But when the very same politicians press for reservation for the lower castes in these institutions, then the very same middle classes accuse the politicians of playing “vote-bank politics”, diluting “merit”, encroaching on the “professional autonomy” of academic institutes etc.
Myth No: 6: In critical sectors like health etc, there should not be any reservation as it will endanger the public
Let us take the example of a public hospital. Let us assume that all the doctors in the hospital are “meritorious” upper-caste people who have not availed of the benefit of reservation. In this scenario, a poor lower caste person may not even get access to the hospital services. In a country like India, without any personal “contacts”, it might be very difficult for a poor lower caste person to get even simple access to the services of a public hospital. But in a scenario wherein reservations are there, probably the lower caste person may have a distant relative or a friend who is working as a doctor in the very same hospital using whom he can gain access to the services of the hospital.
Myth No.7: Reservations benefit only the already well-off sections within the lower castes and hence should not be given.
While this may be true to some extent because of some procedural imperfections, the “creamy layer” concept is meant to rectify this problem. Much of the opposition to reservation from seductively named groups claiming to be for “Equality” voice this view and hence argue against reservations. If these very same people launch a campaign for ensuring that the fruits of reservation reach the really deserving sections amongst the lower castes, then the whole of India will be behind them. But it seems that their real worry is not that the deserving sections amongst the lower castes are not getting the fruits of reservation but that they themselves might lose the privileges that they have been enjoying so far.
Myth No: 8: Caste based reservations will make society more “casteist”
This kind of an argument will be tenable if there was nothing like “caste” in Indian society and caste based reservations will introduce an evil element called as “caste” into the Indian social fabric. I’ll recount an anecdote. One day, on the lawns of the IRMA mess, I was talking with the father of a PRM (the PG program in IRMA) girl who happens to be my friend. He is an upper caste person and a person whom I like and respect a lot at a personal level. He was saying that he would be happy if his daughter did not join up for a plum corporate job and instead joined a NGO for a low pay in a rural setting. Very few Indian parents will be as liberal and as spiritually evolved as him. But he also said something else. He said that he will disown his daughter if she married a scheduled caste person. The point over here is that even such an evolved and liberal person like him is not able to think beyond caste. We cannot blame him. The feudal prejudices which we have all imbibed over the last three thousand years cannot be changed in a generation or two. This goes to prove what Ambedkar said a long time back – only when caste becomes a non-issue in the matter of all marriages in India, then only can we accept that caste has been eradicated from the Indian social fabric.
If caste doesn’t exist, then why is it so that almost all of the one million strong manual scavengers in India are from the scheduled castes and almost none of them are from the upper castes? If any upper caste person checked the caste identities of all of her/his friends, she/he will find that they all are mostly from the upper castes. Why is this so? Not because we consciously avoid befriending other castes but because the social spaces and networks in which we have lived from our birth like neighbourhood, school and other such institutionalized spaces are more or less structured around broad caste based lines. For thousands of years, caste has been an oppressive part of the system in which you and I live in. So, what is wrong if the very same caste identity is made use of to fight caste-based oppression?
Myth No: 9: Instead of reservation, we should concentrate on making our public education system better so that all castes can come to an equal footing
Over here, we have to understand that caste based reservation is not mutually exclusive with making our public education system better. Nobody is saying that we should not have excellent educational systems for all of India’s children. Even if we start stupendous efforts in that direction, that alone may not suffice and so caste-based reservations become a necessity.
Myth No: 10: In the Indian constitution, Caste based reservations were envisaged only for 10 years initially and hence should not be continued.
Here we have to understand one thing. The Indian constitution is meant to be understood and followed in both the letter and the spirit. The spirit behind the caste based reservation envisaged in the constitution was to erase caste-based discrimination through reservation within 10 years, after which all castes will be brought on the same footing. 60 years after independence, has that purpose been achieved? No!. Even now, in all government jobs, avenues for higher education and in all kinds of elite jobs, the lower caste representation is below their proportion in the population. So, till the representation of lower castes becomes equal to their proportion in the population, we need to have caste-based reservations.
And once the oppression-based differential between the different castes vanish, then one day in the not-so-distant future, caste as an institution will wither away as it will have no more relevance. And in my humble opinion, till that golden day, we need to have caste-based reservations.
There is a view even amongst many well-meaning people that caste-based reservations dilute “merit”, “equality of opportunity” etc. A small minority of them are against reservations as that would rob them of their status which they had hitherto enjoyed. But this article is for the majority of the people who are against reservations because they don’t simply understand the logic behind reservation itself. They cannot be faulted when respected former directors of elite educational institutions write articles in newspapers against reservations. With due respects, an understanding of the logic behind reservation needs a basic grounding in social science which unfortunately, an education system heavily tilted towards professional-skills does not prepare most Indian youth for.
We’ll go through a set of myths behind the opposition to caste-based reservation.
Myth No.1: Reservation should be based on economic criteria and not on social criteria like caste
This is the biggest myth of all. Reservations have nothing to do with making the poor rich though that might be an upshot of reservation. The preamble to our constitution promises to secure to the citizens of India, a Tri-Dimensional notion of Justice, viz, Social, Economic and Political. Reservation is aimed squarely at this notion of Social Justice.
The concept of self-esteem is central to the essence of the human-being as man is not a bread-seeking animal. The dignity that is needed for human existence is something that may not come with money per se. “Social status” becomes a central aspect of securing that dignity. And in a semi-feudal country like India, the social status comes with education, government jobs etc is tremendous. If a school teacher is earning 8000/- pm and a small-time trader peddling animal feed is also earning 8000/- pm, the social status differential between both will be definitely huge indeed, a differential which will reflect on the life-chances of their respective off-springs.
Myth No: 2: Upper castes are more meritorious than lower castes because they deserve it
Without taking its name, let us take the example of a prominent private management school in India. It does not have any reservation policy. Empirically, it has been found out that, out of the students who manage to join the institute, 90% are from the upper castes while the proportion of the upper castes in the Indian population is just about 15%. What is the reason? Why are only a certain set of castes able to get access to institutions of higher learning while others are not able to? Does this mean that the upper castes have a higher IQ while the lower castes don’t have that much IQ? If we endorse this kind of a simplistic reasoning, we run the risk of justifying the natural inequality of mankind based on which ideologies like fascism thrive.
So, we have to accept that all human beings have equal intellectual endowments at birth. Then how does only a certain set of castes able to prove themselves to be more intelligent and capable while others castes are not able to?. The reason has got to do with a concept with the name of “Cultural capital”. What we fail to understand is that upper castes are endowed with a certain kind of a “cultural capital” which lower castes might not have. Example of traits of “cultural capital” could be, the attitude towards education per se, knowing what to study, where to study, how to study, how to use education for self-advancement, how to use their existing networks of power and prestige etc. The fact of the matter is, this cultural capital has been usurped and monopolized by upper castes in India over a period of thousands of years by systematically excluding the lower castes through the legitimizing ideology of “Varnashrama Dharma”.
Myth No.3: Candidates who have availed the benefit of reservation need to feel guilty vis-à-vis the general candidates as they are enjoying a privilege which they don’t deserve in the first place.
Firstly, there are other huge structural imperfections in the system of education, job prospects based on education. With due respects to all braches of knowledge, anyone who has gone through courses like engineering would realize the kind of effort that one needs to put in to get admission and go through a good engineering course. But say, after an MBA course, an engineer might be regarded as an equal in terms of career prospects to an arts/commerce graduate who has also done his MBA and who might have put only a fraction of the effort that this engineer has put in for his graduation. So, if we assume that a person who has got an undeserved career prospect needs to feel “guilt”, does this mean that this arts/commerce graduate with an MBA needs to feel guilty vis-à-vis this engineer with an MBA? In a system with such huge imperfections, why should a candidate from reserved category feel guilty vis-à-vis the “meritorious” candidates just because he/she has got a few percentage points less?
More importantly, if we assume that candidates who have availed the benefit of reservation need to feel guilty, then the majority of humankind needs to feel guilty. Why should a software engineer get 50 times more salary than a manual scavenger when his job is far less de-humanizing than the job of a manual scavenger? There are so many of us who are enjoying so many benefits vis-à-vis so many others, which we don’t deserve in the first place. So if we all start feeling guilty, then half of humankind has to die of guilt before a single candidate who has to availed the benefits of reservation starts feeling a niggle of guilt vis-à-vis the “meritorious” candidates. So, nobody needs to feel “guilty”.
Myth No.4: Reservations will dilute “Merit”
This is the most interesting of all such myths. Here we need to delve deep into the sociology of “merit”. What is “merit”? Is it something that is decided by some percentile point difference in some competitive exams? Has humankind ever been able to devise perfect competitive exams which separate the wheat from the chaff? Can a person who has faced a competitive exam at one point in her life be branded a meritorious person or a dull person for the rest of her life? I know quite a few people who got such poor grades in their school leaving exams and did not manage to get admission in a full-time UG program. So they took up some clerical jobs and had to do their graduation through some correspondence program. But later on, they got enough motivation to prove themselves and became IAS exam toppers. Again there are so many competitive exams in which success or failure depends on whether one attended the proper coaching class rather than whether one is “meritorious”.
The stark reality is that, “Merit” is more of a chimera that provides a superb basis for legitimizing an ideational framework that justifies the various privileges which the elite of our society enjoy.
Myth No: 5: It is power-hungry, corrupt politicians who bring in concepts like caste-based reservations for the sake of getting votes
It has become fashionable in Indian middle-class circles to blame politicians for all the ills plaguing society. First we have to understand the definition of a “politician”. In a liberal democracy like ours, politicians basically represent the interests of the different sections of the society. So, if lower castes marshal the political strength to press for their demands, then the politician will represent their interests and further his own career in the process. This is a very natural process in a democracy and there is no evil manipulation of the masses by the politician in this kind of a process.
In a country like India where there are crores of children out of school, we, the members of the Indian middle class don’t have a problem if politicians earmark half the central budget for higher education for IITs & IIMs and the products of these institutions go abroad or join MNCs. But when the very same politicians press for reservation for the lower castes in these institutions, then the very same middle classes accuse the politicians of playing “vote-bank politics”, diluting “merit”, encroaching on the “professional autonomy” of academic institutes etc.
Myth No: 6: In critical sectors like health etc, there should not be any reservation as it will endanger the public
Let us take the example of a public hospital. Let us assume that all the doctors in the hospital are “meritorious” upper-caste people who have not availed of the benefit of reservation. In this scenario, a poor lower caste person may not even get access to the hospital services. In a country like India, without any personal “contacts”, it might be very difficult for a poor lower caste person to get even simple access to the services of a public hospital. But in a scenario wherein reservations are there, probably the lower caste person may have a distant relative or a friend who is working as a doctor in the very same hospital using whom he can gain access to the services of the hospital.
Myth No.7: Reservations benefit only the already well-off sections within the lower castes and hence should not be given.
While this may be true to some extent because of some procedural imperfections, the “creamy layer” concept is meant to rectify this problem. Much of the opposition to reservation from seductively named groups claiming to be for “Equality” voice this view and hence argue against reservations. If these very same people launch a campaign for ensuring that the fruits of reservation reach the really deserving sections amongst the lower castes, then the whole of India will be behind them. But it seems that their real worry is not that the deserving sections amongst the lower castes are not getting the fruits of reservation but that they themselves might lose the privileges that they have been enjoying so far.
Myth No: 8: Caste based reservations will make society more “casteist”
This kind of an argument will be tenable if there was nothing like “caste” in Indian society and caste based reservations will introduce an evil element called as “caste” into the Indian social fabric. I’ll recount an anecdote. One day, on the lawns of the IRMA mess, I was talking with the father of a PRM (the PG program in IRMA) girl who happens to be my friend. He is an upper caste person and a person whom I like and respect a lot at a personal level. He was saying that he would be happy if his daughter did not join up for a plum corporate job and instead joined a NGO for a low pay in a rural setting. Very few Indian parents will be as liberal and as spiritually evolved as him. But he also said something else. He said that he will disown his daughter if she married a scheduled caste person. The point over here is that even such an evolved and liberal person like him is not able to think beyond caste. We cannot blame him. The feudal prejudices which we have all imbibed over the last three thousand years cannot be changed in a generation or two. This goes to prove what Ambedkar said a long time back – only when caste becomes a non-issue in the matter of all marriages in India, then only can we accept that caste has been eradicated from the Indian social fabric.
If caste doesn’t exist, then why is it so that almost all of the one million strong manual scavengers in India are from the scheduled castes and almost none of them are from the upper castes? If any upper caste person checked the caste identities of all of her/his friends, she/he will find that they all are mostly from the upper castes. Why is this so? Not because we consciously avoid befriending other castes but because the social spaces and networks in which we have lived from our birth like neighbourhood, school and other such institutionalized spaces are more or less structured around broad caste based lines. For thousands of years, caste has been an oppressive part of the system in which you and I live in. So, what is wrong if the very same caste identity is made use of to fight caste-based oppression?
Myth No: 9: Instead of reservation, we should concentrate on making our public education system better so that all castes can come to an equal footing
Over here, we have to understand that caste based reservation is not mutually exclusive with making our public education system better. Nobody is saying that we should not have excellent educational systems for all of India’s children. Even if we start stupendous efforts in that direction, that alone may not suffice and so caste-based reservations become a necessity.
Myth No: 10: In the Indian constitution, Caste based reservations were envisaged only for 10 years initially and hence should not be continued.
Here we have to understand one thing. The Indian constitution is meant to be understood and followed in both the letter and the spirit. The spirit behind the caste based reservation envisaged in the constitution was to erase caste-based discrimination through reservation within 10 years, after which all castes will be brought on the same footing. 60 years after independence, has that purpose been achieved? No!. Even now, in all government jobs, avenues for higher education and in all kinds of elite jobs, the lower caste representation is below their proportion in the population. So, till the representation of lower castes becomes equal to their proportion in the population, we need to have caste-based reservations.
And once the oppression-based differential between the different castes vanish, then one day in the not-so-distant future, caste as an institution will wither away as it will have no more relevance. And in my humble opinion, till that golden day, we need to have caste-based reservations.
DO WE NEED TO CAGE OUR WOMEN LIKE ANIMALS?
This essence of this write-up and the facts mentioned herein are taken from an article in the Sunday Express by T J S George with the same title. Before we start, the reader is cautioned that after reading this, he/she might be left with a sickening sensation or a lingering sense of poignancy. Ok, whenever we see those glamorous models participating in beauty pageants and willingly making themselves a party to the process of making a commodity out of the female body, we should remember the story of Saartje Baartman. Whenever we hear about the number of dowry deaths that happen on a single day in India and dismiss it as yet another one of those boring statistics, we should remember the story of Saartje Baartman. Whenever we hear about 50 % of Indian women being at the wrong end of domestic violence (across all social classes), and more shockingly when 60% of these very women justify the violence perpetrated against them by blaming themselves as the cause for that, we should remember the story of Saartje Baartman.
The tortured life of Saartje Baartman came to an end in 1814 when she was 27. In 2002, the mortal remains of this girl were excavated and flown from Paris to South Africa where she were buried with full state honours in a ceremony attended by none other than South African President Thabo Mbeki. Now, who is this Saartje Baartman? Was she an African nationalist? Was she a South African freedom fighter or a guerrilla leader a la Rani of Jhansi/Joan of Arc? Or was she a feminist of some hue or the other? Rest assured, she was definitely nothing of this sort.
In the early 19th century, the British colonized South Africa. Upon advancing on the Kalahari Desert, they hunted the native tribes like vermin to drive them away from their native land. Maybe they carried out these kind of operations as a part of what Rudyard Kipling euphemistically called as the 'White Man's burden' of 'civilizing' the dark continent. The woman of the Kalahari tribes were noted for their peculiarly shaped bodies. Here it is refrained from getting into the particularities of how exactly their bodies were different. Now, this girl Saartje Baartman's body was all the more different for its peculiar shape.
A British Marine surgeon got a brainwave after he saw her. He got her captured and transported her by ship to London. This kind of activity was legally permissible in those days as slavery was not yet abolished in the English empire. In London, she was displayed to the public. Where was she displayed? She was displayed in a cage in the London Zoo. And how was she displayed? - naked offcourse, we cannot expect the 'civilised' British folks to dress up their zoo animals, can we ? And obviously, the more ‘daring' of the Englishmen could also rent her out for a few days for more 'adventurous' pursuits.
After sometime, the London zoo authorities got bored of her and sold her to the French. The French, who are famous throughout the world for their 'Haute Couture' culture and more importantly had brought about the momentous French Revolution with its attendant soul-stirring slogans of 'Liberty, Equality and Fraternity', just 20 years ago(in 1789), also treated her in exactly the same manner as their English brethren. The only difference was that, the Paris Zoo, instead of the London zoo became the new home for Saartje Baartman. Maybe the French thought that their Liberty and Fraternity are applicable only to Francophone white men.
After sometime, death brought relief to Saartje Baartman. Her death is attributed to an illness that she contracted as she was not able to bear the rigours of the harsh Parisian winters on a naked body.
In recent times, the case of Saartje Baartman has become a Cause Celibre. She has become a strong symbol of colonial plunder, an inspiring symbol of resurgent African nationalism and a symbol of the redemption of African dignity. But most importantly she should be regarded as a symbol of all the things that have gone terribly wrong in the structured relationship between the male and the female of the homosapien species.
March 8…
Marching towards gender equality…
Hail international women’s day!
The tortured life of Saartje Baartman came to an end in 1814 when she was 27. In 2002, the mortal remains of this girl were excavated and flown from Paris to South Africa where she were buried with full state honours in a ceremony attended by none other than South African President Thabo Mbeki. Now, who is this Saartje Baartman? Was she an African nationalist? Was she a South African freedom fighter or a guerrilla leader a la Rani of Jhansi/Joan of Arc? Or was she a feminist of some hue or the other? Rest assured, she was definitely nothing of this sort.
In the early 19th century, the British colonized South Africa. Upon advancing on the Kalahari Desert, they hunted the native tribes like vermin to drive them away from their native land. Maybe they carried out these kind of operations as a part of what Rudyard Kipling euphemistically called as the 'White Man's burden' of 'civilizing' the dark continent. The woman of the Kalahari tribes were noted for their peculiarly shaped bodies. Here it is refrained from getting into the particularities of how exactly their bodies were different. Now, this girl Saartje Baartman's body was all the more different for its peculiar shape.
A British Marine surgeon got a brainwave after he saw her. He got her captured and transported her by ship to London. This kind of activity was legally permissible in those days as slavery was not yet abolished in the English empire. In London, she was displayed to the public. Where was she displayed? She was displayed in a cage in the London Zoo. And how was she displayed? - naked offcourse, we cannot expect the 'civilised' British folks to dress up their zoo animals, can we ? And obviously, the more ‘daring' of the Englishmen could also rent her out for a few days for more 'adventurous' pursuits.
After sometime, the London zoo authorities got bored of her and sold her to the French. The French, who are famous throughout the world for their 'Haute Couture' culture and more importantly had brought about the momentous French Revolution with its attendant soul-stirring slogans of 'Liberty, Equality and Fraternity', just 20 years ago(in 1789), also treated her in exactly the same manner as their English brethren. The only difference was that, the Paris Zoo, instead of the London zoo became the new home for Saartje Baartman. Maybe the French thought that their Liberty and Fraternity are applicable only to Francophone white men.
After sometime, death brought relief to Saartje Baartman. Her death is attributed to an illness that she contracted as she was not able to bear the rigours of the harsh Parisian winters on a naked body.
In recent times, the case of Saartje Baartman has become a Cause Celibre. She has become a strong symbol of colonial plunder, an inspiring symbol of resurgent African nationalism and a symbol of the redemption of African dignity. But most importantly she should be regarded as a symbol of all the things that have gone terribly wrong in the structured relationship between the male and the female of the homosapien species.
March 8…
Marching towards gender equality…
Hail international women’s day!
MUSINGS OF A WANNABE ACADEMIC
“A combination of timidity born out of careerism and an ignorance born out of overspecialization combine to form a vacuum at the heart of academic life.” – Nietzsche
In 1842, at the age of 24, a young man got his Phd in Greek Philosophy from the University of Jena. He tried for an academic job and found that he was banned from all further career opportunities in the academia. This was because he was a member of the radical “Young Hegelians” Group during his student days. This might have proved to be a blessing in disguise for him and for the world. If not for this ban, he might have very well ended up a non-descript academic in the German university system, not the revolutionary genius who showed a new philosophical direction for humankind to move on to the next higher phase of existence. The name of that young man was Karl Marx.
It is common knowledge that in a country like India, questions like the not-so-glamorous pay and prestige associated with an academic job are linked to broader structural issues. That cannot be debated in this limited space. But what could be debated are questions like, What exactly is a career in academics all about? What are its limitations? What is a social role of an academic? And what for should a young mind prepare itself for before deciding on a career in academics?
Coming to what exactly an academic is supposed to be, the foremost duty of an academic is to strive to give an intellectual justification to human existence per se. This is easier said than explained. A view of Kautilya that echoes in the philosophy of Plato is that an intellectual or a philosopher, which is what an academic is suppose to be, should have the qualities of “Saatva” or a refined spiritual state which transcends the material and social trappings of a normal human existence. But we realize that this remains as yet an utopian state. If an academic wants to overcome the limitations of his career, and become a real intellectual, he should strive to have three dimensions, viz,
1. Academic professional (being in an academic career)
This should be the primary identity of an academic. At the risk of sounding careerist, this dimension is necessary as an academic has to be a part of a formal academic institution involved in the production and the reproduction of knowledge. This is needed for the academic not so much as to fulfill her biological and social needs but for the fact that, being a part of a formal academic system may be the only way to ensure that she remains in appropriate social practice. Off course one might argue that being a part of formal academia was not needed for say, an intellectual like Gandhi. But Gandhi had the advantage of being associated with a mass movement of huge social relevance. Not all of us might be fortunate enough to be in such a meaningful association with a mass movement, that too at such an intense level so as to give us our primary identities.
Within an academic set-up, an academic should strive to transcend narrow disciplinary limitations Disciplines rule by controlling belief systems. They exercise control by defining reality - by devising ontological frameworks and giving guidelines for academic action. The need for conforming to a particular discipline as well as to transcend its confines is a classical dialectic that is the wellspring of all kinds of academic creativity.
2. Organic Intellectual
It was the inspiring Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci, who writing from a Fascist prison cell, coined the word “Organic Intellectual”. An organic intellectual is someone who is an organic part of the masses whose frustrations and aspirations he voices through erudite intellectual forms. For example, Ambedkar, being a Dalit had all rights to claim the mantle of an organic Dalit intellectual. But then, caste need not be the only way an intellectual can claim to represent the masses.
The need for being an organic intellectual arises from the fact that the intellectual source of an academic from which he gets his ideas and inspirations cannot be only a scientific laboratory or a rarefied library or an electronic database of e-journals. It also has to be, as C. Wright Mills, one of the few career academics who had a mass following in America says, one’s own life experience which has to be continually examined and interpreted. In order to maximize one’s own life experiences, it is in the fitness of things if one is able to able to relate to at least a section of the masses at the practical level.
3. Public intellectual
The best example of a public intellectual in the current context would be Noam Chomsky. His academic area is the rather rarified area of Linguistics. But he relates and is able to relate to a general audience across the world in areas as diverse as the future of capitalism or the current nature of neo-imperialism. Say, in an entire academic career, an academic may get to teach a total of about 3000 students. So, the narrow conduits of academic communications may not be adequate if an academic wants to relate to a wider audience. Hence the need to relate to a wider audience through whatever channels that are available like Newspapers, Blogs, Public speeches in any fora etc.
4. A virulent political critique of the existing social system
What this essentially means is that the academic should be also a part-time political activist if the phrase “political-activism” is understood in the broadest sense of the term. The cause of furthering truth is seldom served by conformity in thought. And non-conformity causes conflict. Conflict and struggle is the basis of all social change. Over here, what could be the role of an academic? She should initially facilitate the conflict at the ideational level. She should facilitate the asking of academic and extra-academic questions especially, uncomfortable, probing, conflict-provoking questions like 'Why?' and 'Why not?' rather than comfortable questions like 'How'. This is possible for the academic because the University is a refined cultural space which provides a simulated space for enacting the conflicts of society of whatever nature. And if the academic is both a public as well as an organic intellectual, she can help to take the ideational conflict to the actual world wherein it can get fructified in a productive and practical manner and result in meaningful social change.
This dimension of an academic will bring him into conflict with the existing powers that be, both in the academic system as well as outside. Because of that she may face a danger to both career as well as her person. But then danger and risk are a part of our daily lives. One may die even while crossing the road. It is just a question of taking a higher risk for the sake of being true to one’s own beliefs and value systems.
Maybe all these expectations are too much for a budding academic to shoulder in one short life-time. But then, we live but once and this only life has to be lived in the most meaningful way. Life has a more beautiful meaning than all those hedonistic meanings that assail our senses.
In 1842, at the age of 24, a young man got his Phd in Greek Philosophy from the University of Jena. He tried for an academic job and found that he was banned from all further career opportunities in the academia. This was because he was a member of the radical “Young Hegelians” Group during his student days. This might have proved to be a blessing in disguise for him and for the world. If not for this ban, he might have very well ended up a non-descript academic in the German university system, not the revolutionary genius who showed a new philosophical direction for humankind to move on to the next higher phase of existence. The name of that young man was Karl Marx.
It is common knowledge that in a country like India, questions like the not-so-glamorous pay and prestige associated with an academic job are linked to broader structural issues. That cannot be debated in this limited space. But what could be debated are questions like, What exactly is a career in academics all about? What are its limitations? What is a social role of an academic? And what for should a young mind prepare itself for before deciding on a career in academics?
Coming to what exactly an academic is supposed to be, the foremost duty of an academic is to strive to give an intellectual justification to human existence per se. This is easier said than explained. A view of Kautilya that echoes in the philosophy of Plato is that an intellectual or a philosopher, which is what an academic is suppose to be, should have the qualities of “Saatva” or a refined spiritual state which transcends the material and social trappings of a normal human existence. But we realize that this remains as yet an utopian state. If an academic wants to overcome the limitations of his career, and become a real intellectual, he should strive to have three dimensions, viz,
1. Academic professional (being in an academic career)
This should be the primary identity of an academic. At the risk of sounding careerist, this dimension is necessary as an academic has to be a part of a formal academic institution involved in the production and the reproduction of knowledge. This is needed for the academic not so much as to fulfill her biological and social needs but for the fact that, being a part of a formal academic system may be the only way to ensure that she remains in appropriate social practice. Off course one might argue that being a part of formal academia was not needed for say, an intellectual like Gandhi. But Gandhi had the advantage of being associated with a mass movement of huge social relevance. Not all of us might be fortunate enough to be in such a meaningful association with a mass movement, that too at such an intense level so as to give us our primary identities.
Within an academic set-up, an academic should strive to transcend narrow disciplinary limitations Disciplines rule by controlling belief systems. They exercise control by defining reality - by devising ontological frameworks and giving guidelines for academic action. The need for conforming to a particular discipline as well as to transcend its confines is a classical dialectic that is the wellspring of all kinds of academic creativity.
2. Organic Intellectual
It was the inspiring Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci, who writing from a Fascist prison cell, coined the word “Organic Intellectual”. An organic intellectual is someone who is an organic part of the masses whose frustrations and aspirations he voices through erudite intellectual forms. For example, Ambedkar, being a Dalit had all rights to claim the mantle of an organic Dalit intellectual. But then, caste need not be the only way an intellectual can claim to represent the masses.
The need for being an organic intellectual arises from the fact that the intellectual source of an academic from which he gets his ideas and inspirations cannot be only a scientific laboratory or a rarefied library or an electronic database of e-journals. It also has to be, as C. Wright Mills, one of the few career academics who had a mass following in America says, one’s own life experience which has to be continually examined and interpreted. In order to maximize one’s own life experiences, it is in the fitness of things if one is able to able to relate to at least a section of the masses at the practical level.
3. Public intellectual
The best example of a public intellectual in the current context would be Noam Chomsky. His academic area is the rather rarified area of Linguistics. But he relates and is able to relate to a general audience across the world in areas as diverse as the future of capitalism or the current nature of neo-imperialism. Say, in an entire academic career, an academic may get to teach a total of about 3000 students. So, the narrow conduits of academic communications may not be adequate if an academic wants to relate to a wider audience. Hence the need to relate to a wider audience through whatever channels that are available like Newspapers, Blogs, Public speeches in any fora etc.
4. A virulent political critique of the existing social system
What this essentially means is that the academic should be also a part-time political activist if the phrase “political-activism” is understood in the broadest sense of the term. The cause of furthering truth is seldom served by conformity in thought. And non-conformity causes conflict. Conflict and struggle is the basis of all social change. Over here, what could be the role of an academic? She should initially facilitate the conflict at the ideational level. She should facilitate the asking of academic and extra-academic questions especially, uncomfortable, probing, conflict-provoking questions like 'Why?' and 'Why not?' rather than comfortable questions like 'How'. This is possible for the academic because the University is a refined cultural space which provides a simulated space for enacting the conflicts of society of whatever nature. And if the academic is both a public as well as an organic intellectual, she can help to take the ideational conflict to the actual world wherein it can get fructified in a productive and practical manner and result in meaningful social change.
This dimension of an academic will bring him into conflict with the existing powers that be, both in the academic system as well as outside. Because of that she may face a danger to both career as well as her person. But then danger and risk are a part of our daily lives. One may die even while crossing the road. It is just a question of taking a higher risk for the sake of being true to one’s own beliefs and value systems.
Maybe all these expectations are too much for a budding academic to shoulder in one short life-time. But then, we live but once and this only life has to be lived in the most meaningful way. Life has a more beautiful meaning than all those hedonistic meanings that assail our senses.
WHY AM I AN ATHEIST?
(Partly adapted from an essay by Bhagat Singh with the same title, viz, “Why Am I An Atheist?” published in the Frontline)
“Socialism is a question of Atheism, a question of building a tower of Babel, consciously rejecting the help of God. The objective over here is not to reach unto heaven but to bring down heaven to earth.”- Fyodor Dostoyevsky in his magnum opus “Crime and Punishment”.
Most of us know that Shaheed Bhagat Singh was hanged to death at the tender age of 23 and that he popularized the slogan of 'Inquilab Zindabad’. But what most of us don't know is that he was a convinced Atheist and a Socialist of the classical Marxist traditions. Here, we’ll analyze an essay written by him from his prison cell a few days before he was hanged.
Bhagat Singh writes in “Why Am I An Atheist?”…..
“Iam of the opinion that the concept of 'God' was used by certain dominant interests to perpetuate their social hegemony using the institution called 'Religion'. The empirical proof of this is that no religion advocates to its adherents that they should a revolt against their mortal king. The British are now ruling India not because God wills it but because the textile millowners of Manchester will it. The Britishers don't rely on God to suppress us but on the police, the militia and the other coercive instruments of State power.
We are now seeing the most virulent of all crimes against humanity the exploitation an entire nation by another. Where is God? What is he doing? Is he a Nero who fiddles while Rome burns? or is he a Chengiz Khan? We don't need this kind of God. Down with him! My belief in atheism does not arise from a personal fancy but because I believe that the concept of 'God' is incompatible with our common struggle for a just world order.
Personally, I understand that a faith in god would make the circumstances of my harsh life seem less painful to me and would enable me to face death easier. A bit of religious mysticism will add a poetic touch to my impending death at the gallows. But I don't need any spiritual intoxication to face death because Iam a Realist. I neither have a fear of death nor a faith in God.”
Coming back to current times, a few years back, we saw 5 films being released from Bollywood on Bhagat Singh's life. This seems to be a welcome development, but the sad truth is these films cater to the some erroneous, populist notions of 'Patriotism' ie, the Hinduised version of patriotism which assumes a rabid Anti-Pakistan and a sober anti-Muslim dimension. This has become possible because a strong element in the Hindutva ideology doing the rounds has an unscientific, ahistorical understanding of Sikhism as the sword arm of Hinduism and so in the corollary, this gives rise to the false assumption that the Sikhs are no more than Hindus with turbans. Though the Sikh ‘Khalsa’ under Guru Gobind Singh arose as a militant protest against the Mughals, Sikhism as a religion per se has its roots in the Bhakthi and the Sufi movements of the 15th century which emphasized Hindu-Muslim unity and the universal brotherhood of mankind.
In these films that had been released, Bhagat Singh is depicted as a God-Fearing, Hindu-Sikh spiritualist, who resorts to a jingoistic kind of heroic, individualistic patriotism. This is nothing but a patent disrespect to the memory of that martyr. For instance, according to historical proof, when the jailor came to take him to the gallows, Bhagat Singh was reading a work of Lenin. But in these films, they show him to be reading the Bhagawad Gita. Here it is not implied that the Gita should not be read or that it is not valuable. The Gita may be dear to many spiritual adherents of Hinduism. It may also.have many insightful elements of a seminal epistemological value. It But why distort history to prove a parochial point?
Bhagat Singh was also not under the thrall of any adventuristic, heroic, individualistic ideas of the James Bond type. He was a member of the HSRA (the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army) which included other revolutionaries like Chandra Sekhar Azad, Bismillah, Ashfaquallah, Raj Guru etc. All the members of the HSRA, were conscious of the need for organizing a revolutionary party of the Indian people which can act as the vanguard of the historic struggle against British Imperialism. In no way were the HSRA members thinking of themselves as Robin Hood type ‘Heroes’ of the freedom struggle. Amongst the five films released, the only film which depicts the true story of Bhagat Singh in a sober realistic vein, is the one by Rajkumar Santhoshi.
We have to remember that Bhagat Singh lived and died not for the cause of 85 crore Hindus and Sikhs but for a cause dear to 650 crore humans - the cause of Human Liberty and Social Justice. And he did this not out of a disproportionate sense of individual heroic-adventurism but out of a profound scientific understanding of his own life’s purpose in that particular epoch of history.
“Socialism is a question of Atheism, a question of building a tower of Babel, consciously rejecting the help of God. The objective over here is not to reach unto heaven but to bring down heaven to earth.”- Fyodor Dostoyevsky in his magnum opus “Crime and Punishment”.
Most of us know that Shaheed Bhagat Singh was hanged to death at the tender age of 23 and that he popularized the slogan of 'Inquilab Zindabad’. But what most of us don't know is that he was a convinced Atheist and a Socialist of the classical Marxist traditions. Here, we’ll analyze an essay written by him from his prison cell a few days before he was hanged.
Bhagat Singh writes in “Why Am I An Atheist?”…..
“Iam of the opinion that the concept of 'God' was used by certain dominant interests to perpetuate their social hegemony using the institution called 'Religion'. The empirical proof of this is that no religion advocates to its adherents that they should a revolt against their mortal king. The British are now ruling India not because God wills it but because the textile millowners of Manchester will it. The Britishers don't rely on God to suppress us but on the police, the militia and the other coercive instruments of State power.
We are now seeing the most virulent of all crimes against humanity the exploitation an entire nation by another. Where is God? What is he doing? Is he a Nero who fiddles while Rome burns? or is he a Chengiz Khan? We don't need this kind of God. Down with him! My belief in atheism does not arise from a personal fancy but because I believe that the concept of 'God' is incompatible with our common struggle for a just world order.
Personally, I understand that a faith in god would make the circumstances of my harsh life seem less painful to me and would enable me to face death easier. A bit of religious mysticism will add a poetic touch to my impending death at the gallows. But I don't need any spiritual intoxication to face death because Iam a Realist. I neither have a fear of death nor a faith in God.”
Coming back to current times, a few years back, we saw 5 films being released from Bollywood on Bhagat Singh's life. This seems to be a welcome development, but the sad truth is these films cater to the some erroneous, populist notions of 'Patriotism' ie, the Hinduised version of patriotism which assumes a rabid Anti-Pakistan and a sober anti-Muslim dimension. This has become possible because a strong element in the Hindutva ideology doing the rounds has an unscientific, ahistorical understanding of Sikhism as the sword arm of Hinduism and so in the corollary, this gives rise to the false assumption that the Sikhs are no more than Hindus with turbans. Though the Sikh ‘Khalsa’ under Guru Gobind Singh arose as a militant protest against the Mughals, Sikhism as a religion per se has its roots in the Bhakthi and the Sufi movements of the 15th century which emphasized Hindu-Muslim unity and the universal brotherhood of mankind.
In these films that had been released, Bhagat Singh is depicted as a God-Fearing, Hindu-Sikh spiritualist, who resorts to a jingoistic kind of heroic, individualistic patriotism. This is nothing but a patent disrespect to the memory of that martyr. For instance, according to historical proof, when the jailor came to take him to the gallows, Bhagat Singh was reading a work of Lenin. But in these films, they show him to be reading the Bhagawad Gita. Here it is not implied that the Gita should not be read or that it is not valuable. The Gita may be dear to many spiritual adherents of Hinduism. It may also.have many insightful elements of a seminal epistemological value. It But why distort history to prove a parochial point?
Bhagat Singh was also not under the thrall of any adventuristic, heroic, individualistic ideas of the James Bond type. He was a member of the HSRA (the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army) which included other revolutionaries like Chandra Sekhar Azad, Bismillah, Ashfaquallah, Raj Guru etc. All the members of the HSRA, were conscious of the need for organizing a revolutionary party of the Indian people which can act as the vanguard of the historic struggle against British Imperialism. In no way were the HSRA members thinking of themselves as Robin Hood type ‘Heroes’ of the freedom struggle. Amongst the five films released, the only film which depicts the true story of Bhagat Singh in a sober realistic vein, is the one by Rajkumar Santhoshi.
We have to remember that Bhagat Singh lived and died not for the cause of 85 crore Hindus and Sikhs but for a cause dear to 650 crore humans - the cause of Human Liberty and Social Justice. And he did this not out of a disproportionate sense of individual heroic-adventurism but out of a profound scientific understanding of his own life’s purpose in that particular epoch of history.
The God of Small Things and a plausible reason for its Booker Prize
I was and I still am an ardent admirer of Arundhati Roy and her thoughts. I recently read Arundhati Roy’s “God of Small things”. If I can hazard a guess, I understood how it managed to get the Booker. Iam not an authority to comment on the aesthetic richness of a work of literature. But I could sense the political undercurrent of that novel. It was released in 1997. It was about 7 yrs after the collapse of Communism the world over. The book portrays the communist government in Kerala in a bad light by criticizing it and by privileging Dalit identity politics over it. Thus she has reflected the current trend which prioritizes caste and other primordial identities as a tool for political mobilization over the rather vague categorization of “class”. We cannot expect a rigorous analysis of societal problems in a piece of literature. That task belongs to the domain of social science. So, one can just accept her work as a beautiful critical reflection of Kerala society in the late 1960s. But I have one problem with her book.
Any piece of criticism of the system is welcome. Like for example, the current standing of Arundhati Roy as an independent critique of the system at the global, national and the local level is welcome. But any criticism will serve a political purpose. The communist experiment which started in 1917 in Russia and which spread all over the world and which collapsed around 1990 is one of the most radical attempt at reordering society on a more humane and rational basis. The broad causes for its downfall is well documented and well accepted. The entire attempt at achieving communism has to be understood as an experiment that went wrong. Then only the lessons of that experiment can be incorporated in any further experiments that could be conducted to evolve an alternative to capitalism. So, any criticism of the communist governments of the pre-1990 era, has to have a sympathetic understanding of what the entire, grandiose project of communism sought to attempt at. So, Arundhati Roy’s work should have been far more sympathetic to the communist government in Kerala.
She portrays the left government of Kerala in the 1960s as being unsympathetic to the cause of Dalits. But at that same period in Tamilnadu, the communists organized a vast number of landless labourers in Tanjore district. This resulted in the murder of 44 dalit labourers by a local landlord setting fire to a Dalit hamlet when people were sleeping in their huts. So, even though the communists did not use the “Dalit” cultural identity of the Dalits, they had used the class identity of these dalits being landless labourers for their political mobilization and struggle.
So, The God of Small Things, inadvertently becomes part of the neo-liberal project of creating an impression that communism is just another oppressive political system which did not mark any point of departure from the other existing systems. For this very purpose, it might have been bestowed the prestigious Booker Prize.
Any piece of criticism of the system is welcome. Like for example, the current standing of Arundhati Roy as an independent critique of the system at the global, national and the local level is welcome. But any criticism will serve a political purpose. The communist experiment which started in 1917 in Russia and which spread all over the world and which collapsed around 1990 is one of the most radical attempt at reordering society on a more humane and rational basis. The broad causes for its downfall is well documented and well accepted. The entire attempt at achieving communism has to be understood as an experiment that went wrong. Then only the lessons of that experiment can be incorporated in any further experiments that could be conducted to evolve an alternative to capitalism. So, any criticism of the communist governments of the pre-1990 era, has to have a sympathetic understanding of what the entire, grandiose project of communism sought to attempt at. So, Arundhati Roy’s work should have been far more sympathetic to the communist government in Kerala.
She portrays the left government of Kerala in the 1960s as being unsympathetic to the cause of Dalits. But at that same period in Tamilnadu, the communists organized a vast number of landless labourers in Tanjore district. This resulted in the murder of 44 dalit labourers by a local landlord setting fire to a Dalit hamlet when people were sleeping in their huts. So, even though the communists did not use the “Dalit” cultural identity of the Dalits, they had used the class identity of these dalits being landless labourers for their political mobilization and struggle.
So, The God of Small Things, inadvertently becomes part of the neo-liberal project of creating an impression that communism is just another oppressive political system which did not mark any point of departure from the other existing systems. For this very purpose, it might have been bestowed the prestigious Booker Prize.
The ‘Personal’ is the ‘Political’
“The word ‘apolitical’ exists only in the dictionary” – Sushil Kumar, PRM 27J
It was a hot evening in July. I was in Delhi to attend a conference related to my research and was staying with friends at JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University). Returning from the conference venue, I got down at the bus stop at Gangha Dhaba within JNU campus, not exactly knowing how to spend the evening. I bumped into an acquaintance, who I knew was part of a certain small but powerful leftist student’s union at JNU (within the broader JNU students union), a group wherein I had some friends. She was saying that she was waiting to catch a bus for a protest demonstration and rally from AIIMS and asked me to come along. I readily agreed because I knew that I could readily agree with whatever democratic cause that that particular students union would espouse. The bus came. It was chartered bus full of JNU students had been arranged by JNU students union arranged for ferrying all the students.
Throughout that evening, I was with the members of that small student’s union. They were singing some political songs in the bus. All 70-80 of us got down at AIIMS. It was amusing to see how all of us crossed the busy road in front of AIIMS. A particular chap will barge into the road and show his hand like a traffic constable and the traffic in one of the busiest roads in Delhi is supposed to stop. And it actually stopped for us to cross. Students out on a political purpose take the traffic laws into their own hands I guess.
The rally was for the cause of caste-based reservations in general and also against a particular set of anti-reservation policies followed at a at that time in a particular prestigious educational institution. We were supposed to go to AIIMS wherein we were supposed to join PMSF (Progressive Medicos and Students Front), a pro-reservation forum comprised of students and doctors within AIIMS and a forum of students from Delhi University called “Youth for Social Justice” were also supposed to join us there.
We crossed the road and entered the AIIMS campus. There was a policeman with a Walkie Talkie who, on seeing us said something like “Oo log aagaya” into the Walkie Talkie. It seems the police already knew that JNU students will be coming and were waiting for us. I admired the efficacy of the intelligence wing of the Delhi police. Inside AIIMS, we joined the batch of students from DU and a batch of doctors and students from AIIMS.
We all filed into two rows and started marching. Some guy thrust a placard into my hand. I was a bit shy of holding that but then I realized that there was nothing undignified in holding that. There were about 200 of us in total and when we came out of the AIIMS campus, we were joined by about 200 policemen armed to the teeth with machine guns. Those policemen also filed into two rows on both sides of our group and started marching in an orderly fashion. It was as if we had one police security for each one of us. At that time, I realized that I had become too dangerous that there was one paramilitary policeman armed to the teeth with a machine gun guarding me for the next few hours. I swelled with a sense of pride that at last the Indian state has realized my importance.
We marched through the busy roads of Delhi. Our aim was to go to the Prime Minsiter’s Office and submit a petition to him. Now, the real excitement started. Groups of students in different parts of the group started shouting slogans. And the small student-activist group of about 15 students from JNU of which I was a part were the most vociferous and militant of the lot. They will take turns in shouting slogans. The slogans were exciting and bordering on the soul-stirring. Something like “Manuvaadi Ko Ek Jawab.…. Inquilab Zindabad !”, “The People, United,…. shall never be defeated !! ” (which I remembered from my bookish knowledge, was coined by Bhagat Singh) and “JNUse Halla Bol !!” , “DUse Halla Bol !!” etc. I thought of shouting “IRMAse Halla Bol !” but then thought that mine will be a lone voice lost in the crowd and hence thought its better to keep mum.
Half of my group was populated by girls. The general crowd in the Delhi roads as well as the policemen accompanying us were staring at these vociferously militant girls with a look of quizzical respect. Probably they expected such kind of girls in modern dresses only in the luxury malls of Delhi and not in protest demonstration for a bigger cause out in the hot sun. It was funny to see the quizzical looks of the policemen turned into amazement when a couple of these girls started puffing some cigarettes in between their sloganeering. I thought that probably the protest was two-dimensional - one for reservation for lower castes and another, a demonstration that girls can also publicly storm a hitherto forbidden ‘smoky’ male bastion. The unofficial leader of my small group was a girl in her mid 20s. She was exhorting the group to shout some kind of slogans which I thought was bordering on the extreme, like say “Brahmanvaad Murdabad !” etc. Since I knew that girl, I realized (from her surname) that she herself came from the most elite sub-caste within Bengali Brahmins and my respect for her increased. We need more such people to de-class and come out of their class moorings out into people’s struggles and give these struggles the rich legitimacy that they deserve.
Before the rally started, I was having a headache and was tired and was not sure whether I’ll be able to fully participate in the protest march. But once I was a part of this group, I didn’t know where from my energy came. I felt that I can march with this group through the whole of New Delhi. I also realized how people manage to take risks for some bigger cause. Basically, as individuals we are all quite weak, insecure and vulnerable. The personal strength comes from the group or the movement that one is a part of. One feels that if one’s fellow comrades whom one loves and respects can take that risk, then he/she also can also can take that risk.
We marched through some flyovers (newly constructed for the fancy four-wheelers of Delhi) and after about a couple of hours, reached the PMO. The police stopped us a full half kilometer before the PMO through a barricade. There were two sets of barricades - one this barricade and another, just before the PMO about half-a-kilometer away. Some people from the crowd had been earlier shouting something which started like “Kada Karo, Kada Karo, Kada Karo Comrade….” and which ended with “Barricade!” and with my not-so-great knowledge of Hindi, I realized that it was meant to exhort the group to breach the police barricade.
Then, I remembered that, if someone from the rally breached the first barricade, then the police will only lathi-charge those protestors who did so but even if a single protestor out of a sense of “josh” breaches the second barricade, then the entire group of protestors will get lathi-charged. By the way, this piece of worldly wisdom, was told to me by a friend of mine who in his idealistic young student days, had the experience of getting lathi-charged by the police when he was protesting against some or the other large systemic imperfections. (By the way, this guy, later on came to his “practical senses”, cleared the Indian Foreign Service Exam and is now the Secretary in charge of Cultural Affairs in the Indian Embassy at Jordan, maybe a classic example of how the system co-opts the people who are opposed to it). Thinking of a possible lathi-charge, I, coming from my cosy, risk-averse, self-centered middle-class background, convinced myself that if at all anything like that was going to happen, then I’ll be the first to run away from the scene as fast as possible. I got reminded of something by Che Guevara, “Iam an adventurist who risks his skin to test his truths”. I was wearing a T-Shirt having a picture of Che Guevara but sadly, I realized that the similarity stopped abruptly at the T-Shirt level.
Anyway, our crowd stopped peacefully before the barricade and a representative from our group went to give the petition to the Prime Minister. He came back and said that the PM was not in the office which I thought was expected. Some us sat down on the road and some of were standing while one by one, the leaders from amongst us from AIIMS, DU etc started speaking to us. At last, the turn of the leader of the small JNU student group of which I was a part of came. She went and gave a speech about how the pro-reservation movement should not be looked at a movement by the not-so-elite for elite jobs and education but that it was an organic part of the wider peoples struggles across the Indian landmass at the grass-root level. The shocking part of that speech was that it was highly critical about the Indian State. I didn’t know what to admire, the guts of this girl, who gave this speech just before the PMO and being surrounded by about 200 policemen or the liberal democracy that India is, which permits such kind of a critical dissent under its very nose.
After sometime, we decided to wind up. And to me, political activism seemed to be a meaningful thing to do. Maybe my age of 30 was a bit late for getting into this activist kind of a mode. Again I got reminded of Che Guevara (may his soul rest in peace) who led a revolution in Cuba at the age of 30. But I got reassured that the philosopher Bertrand Russell who is known as an activist against nuclear weapons started his activist career at the age of 90. And so, filled with the happy hope that life has been armed with a brave new direction, I, along with my activist student friends boarded the DTC Bus No. 615 back to the JNU campus.
Post-Script: Nearly a year after this rally, when recently, the Supreme Court gave its order for OBC reservation in all central educational institutions, I felt that in a tiny way I had also done my bit for effecting this social re-engineering process.
It was a hot evening in July. I was in Delhi to attend a conference related to my research and was staying with friends at JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University). Returning from the conference venue, I got down at the bus stop at Gangha Dhaba within JNU campus, not exactly knowing how to spend the evening. I bumped into an acquaintance, who I knew was part of a certain small but powerful leftist student’s union at JNU (within the broader JNU students union), a group wherein I had some friends. She was saying that she was waiting to catch a bus for a protest demonstration and rally from AIIMS and asked me to come along. I readily agreed because I knew that I could readily agree with whatever democratic cause that that particular students union would espouse. The bus came. It was chartered bus full of JNU students had been arranged by JNU students union arranged for ferrying all the students.
Throughout that evening, I was with the members of that small student’s union. They were singing some political songs in the bus. All 70-80 of us got down at AIIMS. It was amusing to see how all of us crossed the busy road in front of AIIMS. A particular chap will barge into the road and show his hand like a traffic constable and the traffic in one of the busiest roads in Delhi is supposed to stop. And it actually stopped for us to cross. Students out on a political purpose take the traffic laws into their own hands I guess.
The rally was for the cause of caste-based reservations in general and also against a particular set of anti-reservation policies followed at a at that time in a particular prestigious educational institution. We were supposed to go to AIIMS wherein we were supposed to join PMSF (Progressive Medicos and Students Front), a pro-reservation forum comprised of students and doctors within AIIMS and a forum of students from Delhi University called “Youth for Social Justice” were also supposed to join us there.
We crossed the road and entered the AIIMS campus. There was a policeman with a Walkie Talkie who, on seeing us said something like “Oo log aagaya” into the Walkie Talkie. It seems the police already knew that JNU students will be coming and were waiting for us. I admired the efficacy of the intelligence wing of the Delhi police. Inside AIIMS, we joined the batch of students from DU and a batch of doctors and students from AIIMS.
We all filed into two rows and started marching. Some guy thrust a placard into my hand. I was a bit shy of holding that but then I realized that there was nothing undignified in holding that. There were about 200 of us in total and when we came out of the AIIMS campus, we were joined by about 200 policemen armed to the teeth with machine guns. Those policemen also filed into two rows on both sides of our group and started marching in an orderly fashion. It was as if we had one police security for each one of us. At that time, I realized that I had become too dangerous that there was one paramilitary policeman armed to the teeth with a machine gun guarding me for the next few hours. I swelled with a sense of pride that at last the Indian state has realized my importance.
We marched through the busy roads of Delhi. Our aim was to go to the Prime Minsiter’s Office and submit a petition to him. Now, the real excitement started. Groups of students in different parts of the group started shouting slogans. And the small student-activist group of about 15 students from JNU of which I was a part were the most vociferous and militant of the lot. They will take turns in shouting slogans. The slogans were exciting and bordering on the soul-stirring. Something like “Manuvaadi Ko Ek Jawab.…. Inquilab Zindabad !”, “The People, United,…. shall never be defeated !! ” (which I remembered from my bookish knowledge, was coined by Bhagat Singh) and “JNUse Halla Bol !!” , “DUse Halla Bol !!” etc. I thought of shouting “IRMAse Halla Bol !” but then thought that mine will be a lone voice lost in the crowd and hence thought its better to keep mum.
Half of my group was populated by girls. The general crowd in the Delhi roads as well as the policemen accompanying us were staring at these vociferously militant girls with a look of quizzical respect. Probably they expected such kind of girls in modern dresses only in the luxury malls of Delhi and not in protest demonstration for a bigger cause out in the hot sun. It was funny to see the quizzical looks of the policemen turned into amazement when a couple of these girls started puffing some cigarettes in between their sloganeering. I thought that probably the protest was two-dimensional - one for reservation for lower castes and another, a demonstration that girls can also publicly storm a hitherto forbidden ‘smoky’ male bastion. The unofficial leader of my small group was a girl in her mid 20s. She was exhorting the group to shout some kind of slogans which I thought was bordering on the extreme, like say “Brahmanvaad Murdabad !” etc. Since I knew that girl, I realized (from her surname) that she herself came from the most elite sub-caste within Bengali Brahmins and my respect for her increased. We need more such people to de-class and come out of their class moorings out into people’s struggles and give these struggles the rich legitimacy that they deserve.
Before the rally started, I was having a headache and was tired and was not sure whether I’ll be able to fully participate in the protest march. But once I was a part of this group, I didn’t know where from my energy came. I felt that I can march with this group through the whole of New Delhi. I also realized how people manage to take risks for some bigger cause. Basically, as individuals we are all quite weak, insecure and vulnerable. The personal strength comes from the group or the movement that one is a part of. One feels that if one’s fellow comrades whom one loves and respects can take that risk, then he/she also can also can take that risk.
We marched through some flyovers (newly constructed for the fancy four-wheelers of Delhi) and after about a couple of hours, reached the PMO. The police stopped us a full half kilometer before the PMO through a barricade. There were two sets of barricades - one this barricade and another, just before the PMO about half-a-kilometer away. Some people from the crowd had been earlier shouting something which started like “Kada Karo, Kada Karo, Kada Karo Comrade….” and which ended with “Barricade!” and with my not-so-great knowledge of Hindi, I realized that it was meant to exhort the group to breach the police barricade.
Then, I remembered that, if someone from the rally breached the first barricade, then the police will only lathi-charge those protestors who did so but even if a single protestor out of a sense of “josh” breaches the second barricade, then the entire group of protestors will get lathi-charged. By the way, this piece of worldly wisdom, was told to me by a friend of mine who in his idealistic young student days, had the experience of getting lathi-charged by the police when he was protesting against some or the other large systemic imperfections. (By the way, this guy, later on came to his “practical senses”, cleared the Indian Foreign Service Exam and is now the Secretary in charge of Cultural Affairs in the Indian Embassy at Jordan, maybe a classic example of how the system co-opts the people who are opposed to it). Thinking of a possible lathi-charge, I, coming from my cosy, risk-averse, self-centered middle-class background, convinced myself that if at all anything like that was going to happen, then I’ll be the first to run away from the scene as fast as possible. I got reminded of something by Che Guevara, “Iam an adventurist who risks his skin to test his truths”. I was wearing a T-Shirt having a picture of Che Guevara but sadly, I realized that the similarity stopped abruptly at the T-Shirt level.
Anyway, our crowd stopped peacefully before the barricade and a representative from our group went to give the petition to the Prime Minister. He came back and said that the PM was not in the office which I thought was expected. Some us sat down on the road and some of were standing while one by one, the leaders from amongst us from AIIMS, DU etc started speaking to us. At last, the turn of the leader of the small JNU student group of which I was a part of came. She went and gave a speech about how the pro-reservation movement should not be looked at a movement by the not-so-elite for elite jobs and education but that it was an organic part of the wider peoples struggles across the Indian landmass at the grass-root level. The shocking part of that speech was that it was highly critical about the Indian State. I didn’t know what to admire, the guts of this girl, who gave this speech just before the PMO and being surrounded by about 200 policemen or the liberal democracy that India is, which permits such kind of a critical dissent under its very nose.
After sometime, we decided to wind up. And to me, political activism seemed to be a meaningful thing to do. Maybe my age of 30 was a bit late for getting into this activist kind of a mode. Again I got reminded of Che Guevara (may his soul rest in peace) who led a revolution in Cuba at the age of 30. But I got reassured that the philosopher Bertrand Russell who is known as an activist against nuclear weapons started his activist career at the age of 90. And so, filled with the happy hope that life has been armed with a brave new direction, I, along with my activist student friends boarded the DTC Bus No. 615 back to the JNU campus.
Post-Script: Nearly a year after this rally, when recently, the Supreme Court gave its order for OBC reservation in all central educational institutions, I felt that in a tiny way I had also done my bit for effecting this social re-engineering process.
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