Why do we imprison people?

Kwame Anthony Appiah, a philosophy professor at Princeton University, in his article in the Washington Times on the subject of “What will future generations condemn us for?” had listed, among other things, our practice of imprisoning people, which, he believes, is certainly destined for future condemnation.

Coming to think of it, what do we really intend to achieve by imprisoning people? Prevent them from committing more crimes? Set examples that would serve to deter other budding offenders? Satisfy a principle that the ‘guilty should not go unpunished?

Two philosophers, Ken Taylor and John Terry, have tried to tackle the issue. They ask, “ What are prisons for? And run through five reasons. (source)

. retribution, crime deterrence, rehabilitation, restitution to the victims, or social denunciation.

In the first case, we should set up the system so that criminals are justly punished for what they did, though of course that raises the exceedingly thorny question of what, exactly, constitutes just punishment.

In the second case, however, we are concerned with affecting the criminal’s cost-benefit analysis, so to decrease the chances that he (most criminals, particularly of the violent type, are men) will not in fact engage in the crime to begin with.

In the case of rehabilitation, one cannot even properly talk of punishment, but rather of an attempt to change the ways of the individual and turn him into a productive member of society.

Restitution to the victims is yet another concept possibly informing how and why we imprison people, where the goal is to set up conditions that make it possible for the criminal to compensate (according to whatever parameters) the victim or the victim's family.

And finally, the social denunciation approach says that we imprison people because we wish to send the message that certain kinds of behavior are unacceptable in our society.

Naturally, we may wish to achieve more than one of these goals, but the point is that we ought to be clear on which ones, on how to prioritize them (is retribution more important than deterrence?), and especially on how to go about maximizing the likelihood of the intended outcome(s). But we don’t. The public and politicians don’t seem to make these (not so subtle) distinctions most of the time, let alone engage in serious reflection about what they mean and how they can be pursued. This is bizarre, considering that the prison system is dramatically affecting the lives of literally millions of people, many of whom arguably shouldn’t be there in the first place, as well as costing the rest of us an increasingly large bundle of money, at a time when cries of cutting the budget are all the rage

So, tell me, what is Kanimozhi in jail for?

'We will get him, wherever he is".

After Bin laden was eliminated, I heard a US media person (sorry, I didn’t note his name, but trust me, I heard him) say that it was a clear message sent to terrorists that you can’t mess around with America. “We’ll come after you wherever you are and get you’.

This is the classic response of those still living in a world of the past and conditioned by fairy tales, where victory in the last page of the story was what mattered. The villain may have led a jolly life for 70 years. But if you manage to score over him in the end, you are the real victor, even if you have been knocked around your entire life.

By executing the operations clinically and flawlessly and bringing down the WTC towers like a pack of cards – which should rank as one of the greatest engineering achievements ever, if you ignore the wrongness of the purpose- Osama had achieved what he wanted to. There was no more ‘victory’ that was left to be grabbed by the US. It was all over on 9/11.

Similarly, when Kasab was handed the death sentence by the Court, P.Chidambaram had come out with a statement: “The verdict (against) was a clear message to Pakistan. “If they do (export terrorism) and we apprehend the terrorists, then we will bring them to justice.”. This was just idle boasting. 26/11 was a plot planned meticulously and carried out efficiently. The intended purpose was achieved on that day, and victory was theirs. Catching one Kasab and hanging him is not going to send any message to the terrorists who are holed out in Pakistan. He was sent here to die and he came here mentally prepared to die on 26/11. He is now on extended time. A bonus period, so to say.

Just as rules of conventional warfare don’t apply in the case of war against terrorism, certain beliefs and honour codes that held sway in the era of conventional warfare need to be abandoned when dealing with terrorism. Victory is when you foil an attempt to blow up a building or when you nab the planners in their den based on intelligence tip-offs. It is when you manage to close in on the institutions that are operating as terror factories. Any post-facto action after the disaster cannot be claimed as a victory. It is too late by then.

Coverage of Rajinikant's illness

Once, during my school days (many decades back), a dreaded Science teacher was asked to stand in for a History teacher who was absent on that day. Many of us were convinced that, true to her Science class tradition, she would make us draw a picture of Emperor Akbar and name all the parts.

I remembered this when I saw a story in Times of India on Rajinikanth’s illness. I think the regular photographer was absent, so they deputed their science reporter to the hospital to get the full details. And sure enough, he drew a picture of Rajinikanth and named all his parts in gory detail.

The Chinese typist deserves respect

In his book, “Mother Tongue", Bill Bryson explains the difficulty of designing a typewriter to type out Chinese letters:

Since every word requires its own symbol, Chinese script is immensely complicated. It possesses some 50,000 characters of which about 4000 are in common use. Chinese typewriters are enormous and most trained typists cannot manage more than about ten words a minute. But even the most complex Chinese typewriter can manage only a fraction of the characters available. If a standard Western typewriter keyboard were expanded to take in every Chinese ideograph, it would have to be about fifteen feet long and five feet wide.

An article in “Wired” carries a photograph of a monster typewriter on display at a museum in Barcelona and explains how it worked.

The only part that resembles a QWERTY typewriter is the rubber roller at the back. From there, things quickly become absurd. Take a close look and you’ll see that the flat bed is in fact full of tiny metal symbols, similar to a letter case used for traditional typesetting.

In that case there are a couple of thousand characters, and other cases can be swapped in as needed. You’ll notice that there’s no keyboard — instead, the operator uses the levers to line up a kind of grabber over the required letter. Then he hits a switch and the letter is moved up to the paper and the letter printed. Slow? Very. Apparently a good typist averages just 20 characters per minute

What about computers? The “Wired” article adds:

It doesn’t get much easier with computers, either. Because Chinese is made up of meaningful symbols instead of letters built in to words, a keyboard simply can’t contain everything without being the size of a table. To get round this two methods are commonly used. Wubi is similar to actually drawing the ideograms — the typist hits keys one by one to build up the picture from a series of strokes marked on each key. This is then translated into the correct symbol.

Better is Pinyin, which involves typing the letters phonetically in Roman letters (the ones we use). The computer then translates these into symbols. This is still something of a pain, but short of dropping their entire alphabet, what are the Chinese to do.

Here’s a photo of a Chinese keyboard that I came across today and which prompted me to come up with this post. (via)

Bill Bryson, in the same book that I referred to in the opening para, points out another limitation of the pictorial language:

The consequences of not having an alphabet are considerable. There can be no crossword puzzles, no palindromes, no anagrams, no games like Scrabble, no Morse code. In the age of telegraphy, to get around the last problem, the Chinese designed a system in which each word in the language was designated a number. Person, for instance, was 0086. To this day in China, and other countries such as Japan where the writing system is also ideographic, there is no logical system for organizing documents. Filing systems often exist only in people’s heads. If the secretary dies, the whole office can fall apart.

 

Start...don't stop.

Jason Kottke links to a video of a wooden box with a flip switch. Once the switch is on, a bent rod pops out of the box and switches it off.

Here is how Arthur C Clarke described this mechanism that was invented by Claude Shannon, an American mathematician, electronic engineer, and cryptographer.

"Nothing could be simpler. It is merely a small wooden casket, the size and shape of a cigar box, with a single switch on one face. When you throw the switch, there is an angry, purposeful buzzing. The lid slowly rises, and from beneath it emerges a hand. The hand reaches down, turns the switch off and retreats into the box. With the finality of a closing coffin, the lid snaps shut, the buzzing ceases and peace reigns once more. The psychological effect, if you do not know what to expect, is devastating. There is something unspeakably sinister about a machine that does nothing - absolutely nothing - except switch itself off."

I can’t help thinking, rather cynically, that this box is a perfect metaphor for India. We’ve got sufficient resourcefulness and drive to switch ourselves on. But, as soon as we do this, a ‘hidden hand’ comes out and stops the process, preventing us from moving forward. It’s as if a Kareena Kapoor, like in her Airtel ad, is instructing us to ‘start’ followed immediately by a directive to ‘stop’.

We have the imagination to come up with grandiose schemes and the means to execute them too, but an inner, destabilising force soon materializes to put paid to the plans. All that energy that goes in to kick-start the process gets converted efficiently into a ‘braking force”. The gap between ‘intent’ and ‘achievement’ therefore remains huge. This is true for infrastructure projects, social welfare schemes, law making, reforms, etc.

To borrow from Clarke, there is something unspeakably sinister about a group of people who do nothing but pull others down, following the Crab principle. …

Learning from the metaphor, we will have to tweak the design a bit .Eliminating the ‘hidden evil hand’ is impossible. We’ll have to introduce another ‘rod’ that will spring into action a fraction of a second after the first one, and push the latter back inside before it switches off the box. What can that be?

On white dwarfs and Tamil

In an article in Science 2.0 that dealt with White dwarfs, Neutrons and Neutrinos, there is the inevitable reference to Dr Subrahmanyam Chandrasekhar, the Noble prize winner in Physics, for his calculations that showed that the weight of a white dwarf cannot exceed 1,44 times the mass of the sun.

The article carries a sketch that Dr Chandrasekhar had made in 1930 on his voyage to England. It is interesting that he wrote down the labels for the X axis and the Y axis  in Tamil.  Honestly, I didn't know the words, but the picture explains that they stand for ' radius' and 'mass'.

Dr Chandrasekhar had done his undergraduation course at the Presidency College, Madras where the subject must have been taught in English. But, the Tamil words must have come to him spontaneously, for some reason, when he was plotting the graph. Not that he knew that he was on to something big, when he was doing it.

The debriefing sessions

The British had a meticulous system of ‘examining’ their officers returning from India and collecting evidence. These were  elaborate sessions and the evidence was patiently recorded and documented. The questions could cover a wide assortment of issues- administration, governance, justice, feedback on the perception of the natives and many other.  

This compilation of ‘minutes of evidence taken before the Select Committee on the affairs of the East India Company” and published in the year 1832 makes interesting reading. Here is an extract from one of the questioning sessions ( begins on page 153)

SIR JAMES MACDONALD, BART., In The Chair.

Captain Turner Macan, called in; and Examined.

In what service are you?

The King's military service, in the 16th Captain T. Macan. Lancers.

For how many years were you in India?

Twenty-three years

During that period did you discharge also any civil functions in India?

For the last 12 years of my residence in India, I held the situation of Persian interpreter to three successive Commanders-in-chief, Lord Hastings, Sir Edward Paget, and Lord Combermere. It cannot be called a civil function, it has always been held by a military officer.

Did the duties of that situation necessarily bring you in contact with the civil servants of the Company ?

With the exception of the Persian secretary to government, the residents at native courts, and political agents, the duties of that situation did not bring me in official contact with the civil servants of the Company, but it brought me in contact with the natives of India, both in correspondence and in personal intercourse.

Were you conversant with any other Oriental languages than the Persian?

The Persian, Arabic and Hindostanee are the languages I am conversant in, but most so in the Persian.

You have stated, that during your 23. years residence in India you have had occasion to make frequent tours in the provinces; has your intercourse with the natives on those occasions been considerable ?

It has, partly from official duty, partly from my Oriental pursuits. I have occasionally corresponded and held personal intercourse with almost every native of rank and talent

Generally speaking, how have you found the natives affected towards the British Government?

I think they have almost universally acknowledged the superiority of the British government over all former Asiatic government; and the learned men have frequently observed, that we have realized in practice the theoretical perfection of the Institutes of Acbar. They admit our intentions to be always good, but they censure many of our regulations and much of our system, both judicial and revenue, as not being founded on sufficient experience and data. The tardiness of justice they complain of as the greatest of evils. In giving these favourable sentiments of the natives on our government, I do not mean that there is one man of them that would take up arms to defend it; on the contrary, except the mercantile population of Calcutta, or those connected with the mercantile interests generally, I do not believe there is a native in India who would not desire a change.

You find, then, the educated natives universally conversant with the details of the British government in India?

Not universally conversant either with the regulations or details, but with the practical effects of the administration.

You have stated that you consider that for the most part they would desire a change; will you define more particularly what you contemplate by the word change ?

Any native government instead of that of the British; I mean that our rule in India is supported, not by the justice and wisdom of our laws or the love of the people, but by our military supremacy alone.

Do you consider that they appeared to feel themselves aggrieved by their exclusion from what they would deem a share of the civil administration of the affairs of their country ?

I think a due share in the administration of the country would tend to attach them more to our government, and make them feel an interest in it, which they now do not.

Will you state to the Committee your opinion of their capacity for being admitted to a larger share of the administration of the government ?

Their intellectual capacity is undoubtedly great; their moral capacity has been much doubted; but under an arbitrary government, where every man who holds a public situation was supposed to be necessarily corrupt in extent to his powers, and was treated as if he had been, whether innocent or not, there was no encouragement to morality or virtue, and a man who could not escape the suspicion of corruption, would endeavour to have the sweets of it. The natives of India are acute and intelligent, have great capacity for business, and, in fact, much of the business of India is now transacted by the native Omlah, without the responsibility attaching to it.

By what means should you propose to ameliorate any existing moral defects in the character of the natives ?

By education; more particularly instruction through the means of the English language, and employment in civil administration.

Do you believe that a general system of education, coupled with opening to the natives all such civil offices as they might become competent to fill, would have that tendency ?

I think it would; if you give a man something to lose, he will be cautious how he loses it. I think their employment should be limited to the judicial and revenue branches of the service. A great part of the expense of our executive administration would undoubtedly be lessened by the employment of more natives and fewer Europeans.

You have stated that you consider the introduction more generally of English language as a great object, with a view to the better establishment of our power in India; by what system does it occur to you that it might be more generally introduced ?

I would propose, that a proclamation be issued in Calcutta, stating, that at the end of a specific period, say five years, which I think sufficient, the proceedings in all the courts under the Calcutta circuit should be conducted in the English language. In the schools in Calcutta there are many Hindoo boys who can read English, even Milton and Shakspeare, with much fluency, and explain difficult passages in those authors. The language now used in the different courts of justice is as foreign to the natives of the country as the English language, except Bengal and Orissa, because in those provinces the use of the vernacular dialect is optional; in all other provinces the Persian language is used: it was forced into judicial proceedings by Mahomedan conquerors, and is not understood by any one of the witnesses that are usually examined, and but imperfectly by the native officer who takes down the evidence, and perhaps still more imperfectly by the judge.

(Remember that this was in the year 1832, much before the rumblings of the freedom movement were heard or felt. In fact, it was much before the British Govt took over the administrative responsibility from the East India Company)

Vacuous and Verbose-27

A news report says:

Tamil Nadu chief minister M Karunanidhi today said Home Minister P Chidambaram's remark that Election Commission (EC) had adopted stringent guidelines in Tamil Nadu but followed different norms in other states that went to assembly polls, cannot be "ignored."

Stating that everyone in the state knew about the Election Commission adopting strong guidelines like vehicle check, seizure of cash and transfer of officials. Karunanidhi said the EC should act as a "neutral body".

It should not adopt different guidelines as it would not help democracy. This was what Chidambaram had said, Karunanidhi pointed out.

The CM actually wants us to sympathise with his party for having been caught with cash amounting to crores of rupees. How dare the EC check their vehicles and seize cash that was intended to bribe voters? How can the EC unilaterally impose such strong and ridiculous guidelines that the voter should not be bribed? While cribbing thus, he has the support of no less a person than the Home Minister.  

What difference does it make to the case in TN, even if it is true that the EC had not implemented the same guidelines in other states with the same level of strictness? Does it lessen the magnitude of the crime in TN?

Can I rape a woman in TN and when caught by the police cry foul and argue that some rapist in Delhi has not been pursued with the same vigour by the police there, and therefore the law is not neutral?


Update 04/05/11: The more I thought over this, the more I am outraged. The Home Minister, instead of lauding the EC's efforts in TN and arguing for the same strict guidelines to be enforced all over the country seems to be suggesting that TN should not be singled out and that the guidelines must be relaxed and diluted to ensure consistency with the other states. In other words, TN's politicians should not be robbed off their cash and unfairly denied their right to bribe the voters.

Ad men are as guilty as Godmen.

In his column in Mint, Salil Tripathi writes:

..what drew many to his (Sai Baba’s) fold were two central claims: that he was divine, and that he performed miracles. Nearly 60 years ago, Sai Baba began producing vibhuti, or holy ash, and assorted trinkets, watches, sweets and fruits, presumably from thin air. Magicians showed these were conjurers’ tricks, but to no avail. His followers dismissed the magicians as publicity-seeking tricksters. To experience his miracles, you had to submit to him first. That meant that in a nation of massive illiteracy, he was encouraging people to shelve logic. Sai Baba deftly avoided challengers: Rationalist Abraham Kovoor could never meet him, nor did other sceptics. In The Times of India, C.P. Surendran recalls the amusing story when his mother challenged Sai Baba to give her a jackfruit, after he said she could ask for anything, and he’d produce it magically. Sai Baba hadn’t expected her to ask for a jackfruit; he couldn’t; his followers panicked and shouted at her, driving her away.

Consider the allegation made above “that in a nation of massive illiteracy, he was encouraging people to shelve logic”.

As I argued in a post 5 years back, Sai Baba was no different from and no more guilty of manipulation than corporate brand-builders and advertising agencies.

If Sai Baba had to draw attention and create a mass following, he naturally had to differentiate himself from other mortals and create a brand identity of his own. The flowing saffron-coloured robes, his distinctive hairstyle, the hype and the hoopla over his ‘magical’ powers to pull out watches and gold rings out of thin hair, his Bhajan sessions which would send his followers into a trance- all went into the creation of the unique Sai Baba brand . Without this brand pull, he wouldn’t have enticed his followers to come into his fold seeking mental peace and serenity.

So, how is this any different from an advertiser luring you into a make-believe world and leading you to imagine that by procuring a certain type of talcum powder, you would be transported to a sanitized world of blue skies and green grass, where you would have a wonderful spouse, a lovely home, a cute little dog and a smile on all the time?

If you go through the advertising history of Coca Cola and the slogans that they used during various times, you will discern a clear intent to promote a feeling of well-being subliminally and to ensure a brand association with such a feeling. How is Coke’s claim that “things go better with Coca Cola” any different from Sai Baba claiming that “life goes better when you follow me”? Can Coca Cola substantiate this claim and submit to an investigation by a panel of rationalists and eminent scientists?

In fact, Coca Cola’s website describes how even “Santa Claus’ in his red attire was a marketing creation of theirs. Millions of people- not just children- have suspended their disbelief for generations.

In his book, “buy-ology’, which I have discussed earlier, Martin Lindstrom says:

Almost every leading religion has ten common pillars underlying its foundation: a sense of belonging, a clear vision, power over enemies, sensory appeal, story telling, grandeur, evangelism, symbols, mystery and rituals.

But, what is not so well acknowledged is the fact that these pillars happen to have a great deal in common with our most beloved brands and products.

and goes on to provide examples from both, for each of the ten pillars.

When brands and products can cast a relentless spell on seemingly educated  people and make them delude themselves into a false sense of well being, why accuse Sai Baba of encouraging illiterate people to shelve logic and single him out?

If godmen are guilty, so are ad men.

Not doing something.

Would you like to take a vacation that will not cost you anything, yet will rejuvenate your spirits?

I found out how this could be done, after reading a piece by P.G.Wodehouse, titled “The secret pleasures of Reginald”.

Reggie’s method involved not doing something, as opposed to doing nothing. For instance, he would deliberately not spend the weekend with a person of his acquaintance, Bodfish. Nothing was more awful to him than spending a weekend with Bodfish, and conversely nothing was more delightful than not spending a weekend with Bodfish.

Therefore, at the precise time when Reggie would have been heading to Bodfish’s place had he accepted the invitation, he would recline in a long chair in his club, eyes fixed glassily on the ceiling, and delight in not whirling down in his car on the country roads and later in not strolling down to Bodfish’s garage. Soon, he would not go into Bodfish’s house and not listen to Mrs Bodfish on the subject of her son’s premature intelligence. He would then look forward to the happy time after dinner, when he would pass it in not playing bridge with Bodfishes and their neighbour.

Other evenings, he would have a jolly time in not going to the theatre and not watching a play. And so on. These non-visits would perk him up and bring him back to office on a Monday morning feeling like a lion.

So, just apply this technique. Take a week off and deposit the LTA in the bank. Then sit at home or lie down on the sofa at the precise moment when you would have normally set off for office. Then take delight in not driving through traffic and not searching for a parking place for your car. Later, spend some time in not sitting down with your boss for those boring reviews. Enjoy the lunch hour in not eating that dreadful pantry meal at office. Devote an hour or two in not having those tiresome conference calls. And late in the evening, rejoice in not wading through the traffic again.

Do spare a few moments to not writing to me and to not telling me how it works.

How dare you be happy.

An opinion piece in the Open Page of The Hindu today is critical of the World Cup victory celebrations, or any celebrations for that matter, when farmers in rural India are committing suicide or are languishing in extreme poverty.

Sixty-seventy per cent of India's population is living on less than Rs. 20 a day. A bottle of Diet coke for us? The electricity used in a day-night match could help a farmer irrigate his fields for more than a few weeks! Do you know that loadshedding is also class dependent? Two hours in metros, 4 in towns and 8 in villages. Now, who needs electricity more? A farmer to look after his crop day and night, irrigate, pump water and use machines or a few bored, young professionals with disposable incomes, to log on to Facebook and watch IPL?

How can we splurge thousands on our birthday parties and zoom past in our AC vehicles and sit in cushy chairs in our AC offices and plan a weekend trip to Coorg when on the way, in those small villages, just a few minutes' walk from the roads, someone might be consuming pesticide or hanging himself from a tree for just Rs.10, 000? How can we?

This is not new. P.Sainath has never missed an opportunity to remind the nation, whenever it celebrated any success in any field, of its extreme insensitivity to the plight of farmers. “Nero fiddling while Rome was burning” has been the recurring charge levelled in all his speeches.

Today I saw a tweet which suggested that there should be a ban on ads on days when a prominent person had died. Is it not wrong for consumers to think of splurging on goodies, when a section of the population is grieving over the death of an individual?

Those who take such a grim view of the situation and recommend universal mourning till every single person is relieved of his suffering are appealing to your sense of guilt. How can you indulge in such joyous celebrations and festivities when elsewhere your own countrymen are wallowing in such misery? Implicit in their admonition is the presumption that happiness is a zero sum game. If I am happy, it must be at the cost of someone else in the world, which makes my state of happiness morally repugnant and unacceptable.

This argument does have some basis. In cases where farmers are deprived of their ancestral land to benefit or enrich an industry, or when rural India is denied basic facility while urban India gets disproportionate attention, they are victims of a zero-sum equation, which needs to be corrected. After all, the total funds available for development are finite, and there should be an equitable distribution.

But, even if and when such equity is established, we have to reckon with variation in human responses.

As the unit becomes larger- from families to neighbourhoods to towns to states to nations- the diversity among human beings increases. There would be a variety of moods and sentiments at any time arising out of unique developments in one’s vicinity, and unless it is a disaster of a large scale (war, earthquakes, and terror attacks) it is impossible to get all people emotionally aligned. On the continuum scale ranging from celebrations on one end to mourning on the other, different people in different locations will find themselves at different points at different times.

I must therefore have the right to celebrate a World Cup victory, without having to feel guilty for the misfortune that has befallen the farmers. This is not being insensitive or apathetic, nor am I belittling the problem that they face. I am merely exercising my right to be happy when the occasion so justifies.

"The Entitlement to moralise"

If public figure A criticizes another public figure B on issues involving morality or ethics, or takes a strong position on any matter, A immediately lays himself open for a scrutiny of his own credentials to speak out against B or to take up the cause.. When some evidence of past wrong-doing or an act of impropriety is found, A relinquishes the moral right to criticize B, and the sting is taken out.

Some recent examples: Within days of his successful fast as part of his anti-corruption crusade, Anna Hazare’s past was examined and some evidence found of some observations made by Justice Sawant against him. Arundhati Roy who has taken on the entire State on several issues was found to have constructed a house on notified farm land in violation of law. So, she stands discredited.

The principle here is that as Hazare and Roy do not practice what they preach, they undermine their own message and are guilty of hypocrisy. He who hasn’t sinned alone can cast the first stone at others.

For the sake of this argument, if we concede that both Hazare and Roy are well-intentioned in their respective crusades, does the fact of their wrongdoings elsewhere in the past make them unworthy of taking up the crusade or cause? Will dismissing them thus not amount to commiting an ad hominem fallacy?

A.C.Grayling examines such a moral dilemma in one his essays (" Entitlement to moralise") in his book, “Thinking of Answers”. He says:

There is a point of philosophical importance here for the endeavour of trying to live an ethically good life, It is that there is such a thing as “doing one’s moral best’, which may and usually does fall short of what counsels of perfection require, but nevertheless constitutes a serious gesture in the right direction. A person who is vegetarian, but owns leather belts and shoes, may reason that being an habitual meat-eater makes a vastly greater slaughter-footprint than owning a pair of leather shoes, and trusts that this will make some degree of difference towards the good.

…What the idea of ‘doing one’s moral best’ comes down to, when it is sincere and genuine, is something close to Aristotle’s idea that, in effect, one lives an ethically good life by trying to do so. The trying is itself the succeeding; otherwise the only good people would be perfect people, and all those striving to do their moral best would not be good people.

…In a sin culture, even a suspicion of hypocrisy in the messenger is enough to harm the message. The tacit idea is that if the source of the claim is polluted, the claim itself must be questionable. In the Greek view, the value of what is said and the character and the actions of the person who says it are separate things, and can be independently evaluated on their merits.

…Human beings are a mixed alloy, familiarly enough; the very same person is capable of being good and terribly bad at different times or in different respects, and that inescapable fact makes the greatest moral philosophers almost at one in insisting that we should resist the mistake of thinking that anyone is wholly one or the other, even at their best or worst moments respectively.

I would rather have an energy-wasting Gore fighting to save the planet than an energy-wasting Gore not caring about the planet. People like Gore have a platform and the worst thing they could do is fail to use the platform in support of worthwhile causes, whether or not they are personally no better than the rest of us in doing their individual bit.

Applying what Grayling says to our context, we can disagree with Hazare on his methods, and also his insistence on extra-constitutional appointments, but should not invoke some past misdeed of his to discredit him in this situation. Same with Arundhati Roy.

The cotton riches of India

The Mirror of Literature, Amusement and Instruction published in the year 1847, by Charles Ollier, describes the cotton wealth of India and makes an argument for Britain to pump in more capital to bring more land under cotton cultivation.

In old times, as now, the greatest cotton country in the world was India. If we will be at the pains to examine the history of that country as far as its manufactures are concerned, we shall find that in all ages it has been unrivalled for the production of cotton goods, its fabrics being still superior in fineness and beauty to anything produced by the looms of the West. Many circumstances, no doubt, have always concurred to ensure to it this distinction; but among these must unquestionably be reckoned the command of a profusion of the raw material of the most exquisite quality. For several generations the cotton goods of India were at once superior in quality and inferior in price to the fabrics of Europe; and as late as sixty years ago, it was very generally feared that the quantities of them poured into the home market by the East India Company would utterly swamp our own manufacturers.

This circumstance, which appeared at the time to be an evil, should probably be reckoned among the chief causes of our industrial prosperity; for, driven to compete with the productions of a country where both labour and the raw material were much cheaper than here in England, we applied our utmost ingenuity to the invention and improvement of machinery, by the aid of which we have been enabled to turn the tables but too effectually upon the Hindus. We can now take the cotton grown at their very doors, transport it sixteen or seventeen thousand miles by sea, spin, weave, and dye it in the heart of Great Britain, and then carry it back to India, and sell it much cheaper than they can afford to do. This is one of the most striking triumphs of modern civilisation, and tends to encourage the hope that, in mere physical processes, there is scarcely any limit to improvement.

There is scarcely any province in India in which some kind of cotton might not be grown. Throughout nearly the whole plains of the Punjab it is found to flourish luxuriantly, more especially in the ceded Doab of Jullender and in the contiguous one of Bari, still nominally at least under Sikh authority. Assam likewise, on the north-east, produces excellent cotton; and descending through every parallel of latitude, from the Doab of the Ganges and Jumna down to Coimbatore and Tinevelli, we find innumerable districts admirably adapted to the cultivation of cotton. Accordingly, from the remotest ages the natives of Hindustan have been clad almost in nothing else. Nor is this all. There is scarcely a single comfort or luxury of life in the promotion of which cotton is not an instrument. From the sumptuous beds, sofas, and divans of the Zenana, down to the humblest pack-saddle for an ass, every thing in India is stuffed with cotton. They have cotton tapestry, cotton carpets, cotton tents and hangings, cotton cordage and ropes, with nearly every thing else of a similar description.

Let us now endeavour to make some approximation to the amount of cotton thus consumed in India. Its inhabitants may be estimated in round numbers at two hundred millions of souls, each of whom consumes annually in clothing two pounds of cotton on an average, which will make four hundred million pounds of cotton appropriated to the manufacture of dress. At least an equal amount must be consumed in the other uses to which, as already stated, cotton is applied; so that the people of Hindustan themselves use annually the enormous amount of eight hundred million pounds of cotton, without taking at all into account the quantity they manufacture for exportation.

And yet not one-twentieth part of the land adapted to the cultivation of the cotton plant or shrub is appropriated to that species of cultivation. One obstacle, it is said, is the land-tax, which the East India Company has hitherto levied with too little regard to its own interests. To what extent taxes on cotton-grounds ought to be remitted, we are not here prepared to say; but it would most undoubtedly be wise in the Indian government to make all practicable sacrifices to encourage and facilitate the cultivation of cotton.

One preliminary step, however, must be the construction of railways and other roads, otherwise, when the cotton shall have been grown, its price will have been so much enhanced before it reaches the coast, that, however excellent in itself, it will be wholly unable to compete with the cottons of America. It is preeminently for our interest that the people of India should be wealthy; and to render them so, we can imagine no better means than pouring in among them annually many of those millions of capital which at present find their way across the Atlantic.

Smoking and movies

In one of his essays in his book, “Thinking of Answers”, A.C.Grayling writes on the ban on smoking and its effect on movie-making:

Here is a real problem for actors and directors of feature films: how do you convey human emotion without the aid of a cigarette? Before cigarettes changed from being the ultimate symbol of cool to a dangerous bad habit, they provided a hook for every conceivable important movie moment: mystery, suspense (the face between the upturned collar points on the dark street, momentarily illuminated by the flare of the cigarette lighter), lust, seduction (Laura Bacall asking Humphrey Bogart for a light), anger, disappointment, rest, elegance, relief, tension, tranquility – in short, the human condition in the glow at the end of the a little tube of rolled up intoxicant leaf

Yes, coming to think of it, cigarettes (along with beedis, pipes and cigars) have been used extensively by movie directors in a variety of scenes. Whether it was a villain casually stubbing it out preparatory to raping a woman; or Al Pacino tormenting a to-be victim in ‘Godfather” , or Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct, and several more, ‘smoking’ served as an excellent filler during a pause between action scenes or even during one. I guess it also made it easier for the actors to get their hands to do something and appear more natural.

Tamil movie watchers of my generation will remember Rajinikanth in this famous scene where he takes on the challenge of flipping his cigarette into the air and catching it with his mouth and to repeat this ten times. The prize if he succeeded: a Toyota car. And if he failed, he had to cut off his little finger. (Doesn’t matter that this was lifted from a Roald Dahl short story, “Man from the South”. )

A modest proposal

The 2011 Census, currently underway in India, is likely to come up with a population figure exceeding 1.2 billion.

If it keeps growing at this pace, the country will soon face a massive shortage of food and space, resulting in much misery for all. Everybody has been saying this all along but done nothing about it.

It therefore falls on my broad shoulders to lead humanity out of this crisis. I’ve been exercising my mind to find a solution to this problem and have drawn inspiration from a few science-fiction books and movies.

One method as suggested by the movie Soylent Green set in a dystopian future was to feed the population with processed food that was centrally manufactured by a Govt-controlled Corporation. The processed food was called Soylent Green and it was made from human bodies. This system is efficient and has other merits too, but is not very elegant if you ask me.

The film Logan’s Run came up with the idea of euthanasia. Those who reached the age of 30 were bumped off in a religious ceremony known as Carousel. This method is undoubtedly elegant, but is bound to cause some serious imbalance. You can't have the entire population made up of exuberant sub-30 creatures. You need some moderating influence and sagacity that comes only at my age.

I personally prefer the method advocated by Kurt Vonnegut in his story 2BR02B. For a change he doesn’t paint a dystopic future. He, in fact, describes a fairly Utopian setting where illness has been completely eliminated and death can happen only by accidents, if at all. But, the population of the USA is tightly regulated and maintained at forty million, through a combination of infanticide and assisted suicide. If you wanted to have a baby, you had to find someone to volunteer to die.

This is not only an elegant and simple mechanism, but can also be made foolproof using the efficiency of the free market. Those who desire to have birth certificates for their newborns must produce a ‘death certificate’ of some other person, purchased in a ‘Life Exchange’. The proceeds from the sale of the death certificate will go to the heirs of the deceased, offering them an incentive to put him up for sale in the first place.

Post-Census India will need some such model. Human inventiveness knows no bounds and I am sure that we will be able to build on this concept and refine it to the complete satisfaction of all.

Conversation with daughter-35

Daughter: This classmate of mine pisses me off completely….

Me: Hello, would you like to modify that sentence?

Daughter: Ok, this classmate of mine bugs me totally…

Me: That’s better. Why use a dirty word in a routine conversation?

Daughter: Appa, ‘piss off’ is not dirty. You can check the dictionary if you want. You confuse it with ‘piss” – which is your problem.

Me: Listen, the origin is same. Why use it when there are non-controversial alternatives available?

Daughter: Because the alternatives don’t have the same impact.

Me: You just replaced the word with ‘bug’ and I thought it made perfect sense to me.

Daughter: It will not, to someone of my generation.

Me: Look, when you talk to someone of my generation- maybe your professors and bosses in the future-  you have to be restrained. You could end up making a ‘negative’ impact by using a word which we were taught not to use.

Daughter: You need to change with the times..

Me: Don’t you think you’ll react the same way if, 20 years later, your daughter uses a word that you find dirty now, as part of a routine conversation?

Daughter: You are right. It sure will piss me off.

Vacuous and Verbose-26

In April 2010, newspapers reported that the Prime Minister was enumerated for Census. Yesterday was the turn of the Vice President to get enumerated.

I find the usage of the term ‘enumerated’ in the above sentences quite odd. I have always understood it to mean ‘to count one by one’. Apparently it can also be used, in the context of a census, to describe a single person being counted.

In his infamous radio broadcast during World War II as a German prisoner, P.G.Wodehouse described the tendency of the German guards to keep counting the prisoners with elaborate ritual and annoying frequency. They would ask the hundreds of inmates to stand in line once before breakfast, once after breakfast, once before the exercise drill, once before going to bed, etc and painstakingly take a head count.

One of the prisoners, according to Wodehouse, swore that if he ever got out of prison alive and became rich, he would buy a German soldier, keep him in his backyard and count him 10 times a day.

Do the Census officials mean this when they say that the VP has been enumerated? That they made him stand up and had him counted to make sure that there was only one of him?

Vacuous and Verbose-25

Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh is reported to have said yesterday:

“Corruption strikes at the roots of good governance. It is an impediment to faster growth. It dilutes, if not negates, our efforts at social inclusion. It dents our international image and it demeans us before our own people. This is a challenge which has to be faced frontally, boldly and quickly.”

Being very much a part of public life and heading a Govt that has faced multiple charges of monumental corruption for many years, one would think he would have the prudence not to pontificate to society at large, on this matter. But, no sir, preach he must.

A point of interest here is the unconnected manner in which the PM talks about corruption in public life. It is as though he is able to dissociate from his PM persona at will, and maintain an arms’ length relationship with it. As if the corrupt Govt that he is heading is a third party for him.

I think he is perfecting a new form of ‘illeism”.

Illeism, says Wikipedia,  is a style (though archaic) employed by authors to describe, in the third person, an event that they participated in. Example: Julius Caesar describing the wars he took part in, used illeism to impart an air of objective impartiality to the account, which included justifications of the author's actions. In this way personal bias was presented, albeit dishonestly, as objectivity.

Illeism can take different forms. Sportspersons sometimes advise themselves “X (being the speaker himself) has to work more on his free throws”. (source)

Wiki also gives the example of a theologian Richard B. Hays who wrote an essay where he challenged earlier findings of one Richard B. Hays. Similarly, Dr Manmohan Singh, the public speaker is able to come out of his PM’s garb and earn brownie points by talking freely and poker-faced about the rampant corruption that must be rooted out of our Govt and society. Admirable technique.

The Tri-colour

The National flag and the Congress Party flag carry the same combination of colours and in the same order. The difference is only in the emblem in the middle, the Ashok Chakra in the case of the former and the “hand’ in the case of the latter. When the flags are fluttering at a distance, the emblems are not visible and only the colours stand out.

As any brand manager would say, this causes “brand confusion” in the mind of the viewer, with two entities adopting similar symbols.

How was this allowed to happen?

As the website of the Congress Party explains, the erstwhile Indian National Congress adopted the tri-colour flag, with a spinning wheel in the middle, in the year 1921.

When the country attained independence, the Congress flag was adopted as the national flag, but with the ‘spinning wheel’ making way for the “Ashok Chakra”. As Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre narrate in their book, "Freedom at Midnight" ( via)

"For thirty years, the tricolour sash of homespun cotton khadi, soon to replace the Union Jack on India's horizons, had flown over meetings, marches and manifestations of a people thirsting for independence. Gandhi had designed the banner of a militant congress himself. At the centre of its horizontal bands of saffron, white and green, he had placed his personal seal, the humble instrument he'd proposed to the masses of India as the instrument of their non-violent redemption, the spinning-wheel.

"Now with independence at hand, voices in the ranks of congress contested the right of what they called 'Gandhiji's toy' to occupy the central place in what was about to become their nation's flag. To a growing number of party militants his spinning-wheel was a symbol of the past, a woman's thing, the hallmark of an archaic India turned inwards upon herself.

"At their insistence the place of honour on the national flag was assigned to another wheel, the martial sign of the conquering warriors of Ashoka, founder of the Hindu empire, had borne on their shields. Framed by a pair of lions for force and courage, Ashoka's proud symbol of strength and authority, his dharma chakra, the wheel of the cosmic order, became the symbol of the new India.

The Congress Party continued to use the tri-colour flag with the spinning wheel. The emblem changed to the ‘hand’ sign sometime in the “80s, after the break-away group of Indira Gandhi’s was given the right by the Election Commission to call itself the “Indian National Congress”. So, the party’s flag continues to sport the tri-colour with the ‘hand’ symbol in the middle. It can still be confused for the National Flag.

I am not aware if this has been challenged or taken up with the Election Commission. The Congress Party by using a flag deceptively similar to the National Flag may be subliminally planting the idea in the voter’s mind that it is the party that has the stature and the right to govern the country. Suits have been filed on far trivial or ridiculous grounds and I don’t see why this should not be taken up.

The Emblems and Names (Prevention of Improper Use) Act, 1950 prohibits the use of any of the emblems mentioned in the schedule (and the Indian National flag figures in that list) or any colourable imitation thereof, for the purpose of any trade, business, calling or profession, without the previous permission of the Central Govt.

Even though the Congress Party was the one in power for many years after independence, I doubt if the Govt formally granted the permission to the party to use an ‘imitation of the national flag” as its own. Perhaps, the party thought that it was the nation that had to feel obligated to the party for having lent it its flag.

Vacuous and Verbose- 24

The ghost writer who prepared the text of the Republic day address to be delivered by President Prathibha Patil, gave it the title. “Speech for the President of India Smt. Pratibha Devisingh Patil on the eve of Republic Day “.

The Press Information Bureau released it on their site with the same title, implying that it was a speech meant to be heard by the President and not to be inflicted on the public. Perhaps, the idea was to make the President realise how it felt to be at the receiving end.

And what a tiring cliché-ridden speech it is. The template is such that the hot air could have been delivered by any of the Presidents on any of the 60 anniversaries of Republic Day, or any of the anniversaries in the future.