Collective responsibility

One summer day a few years ago I was walking back from work to my flat on campus (Warwick Uni). It was a nice day, but I was tired and dirty from all the dish washing, so I just wanted to get back home, have a shower and sleep. Something changed my mood though. Three men I had never seen before stopped me and opened with the question: "are you a Hindu?" I am not religious, but they looked South Asian, and Hindu is as much a reference to how you are brought up and how you live your life, as it is to religion, so I said yes; thought I had nothing to lose, maybe make a few more acquaintances. Their reaction shocked me: they started giving me a spiel on Indian atrocities in Kashmir, Indian soldiers raping their women, killing their people. I was scared, they looked angry enough to start getting physical, I expected a gun in my face any second. But I was lucky, they wound up after a few minutes and walked away giving me dirty looks and muttering expletives.

I was shaken. One thought of irony kept coming back, that I had lived almost my entire life in India and I had not run into a single Kashmiri in all those years (of course, I remembered later that Coventry was a settlement zone for refugees, and that there probably were a few of them living in the area). After I had cooled down, I started thinking about the encounter. Short bursts of outrage at being blamed and attacked for something I hadn't done kept bubbling out from me every so often. Every other incidence of a situation where I was blamed for something I hadn't done started surfacing. Through all this a new conclusion surfaced: it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that I hadn't done any of it personally or even remotely.

The human mind associates and categorises, and the fact that I am an Indian and a Hindu was sufficient for them to associate me with the Indian army and the Indian state. I had no clue if the Indian army had done what they said it had or not, but again it did not matter either way: what mattered was that they honestly thought that it had. I am not building up to a sermon on how one should take responsibility for one's community, country, etc. No, what I am building up to is the fact that one is going to be held responsible by association whether one wants the responsibility or not. And this fact works for every possible categorisation, religion, race, profession, nationality, income...it doesn't have an end. One can not even pick and choose, one can not say I love my country and am willing to be held responsible for its every action, but I don't want to be held responsible for, say, all the doctors in the world: no, that doesn't work either.

Of course, it's not all bad. Given one's situation quite a few good things could come out of association too. In any case I am not writing to decide on the good or bad of it. I am more interested in how interwoven life is, and how it can surprise even the most aware with new or unthought of connections. 

Why I like anime

I discovered anime and consequently manga in 2007. I started with Naruto, which is fairly popular worldwide, and gradually moved to more esoteric anime and manga. Cartoons and comics, I had known of since I was a kid, but here was something different. With cartoons (and comics), there is always the perception that they are for kids, and while the perception is not true in some cases, Simpsons and South Park come to mind, it is mostly true. The target audience for most cartoons are kids and young teens at most. Anime (and manga) on the other hand start with young teens and continue on to mature adults as their audience. The themes that they are drawn on are much more varied as well, who would ever think about publishing a comic book about a pianist or a school teacher? But with manga they do that and more in all seriousness. Moreover, even the most generic manga dares to ask troubling, profound questions, and takes time to deal with them: when I first watched it I was astonished to see serious existential questions being debated in Naruto, a manga considered very average by manga esoterics (Naruto is a manga that was made into an anime, I watched the anime first, then read the manga).

Before anime, animation for me was just for entertainment, I did not attach any particular artistic significance to it. But, with anime I started seeing it differently, I realised that it was art in motion. That with animation one could think on things, one could portray things that just can not be captured on film. The human body is inadequate, space and time as we can capture it on film are inadequate to portray the thought, the emotion that asks to be shown: in animation one transcends these boundaries. Metaphors can be made visual, the bleeding heart of the lover shown. I put forward Neon Genesis Evangelion (the anime) as a case in point: the psychological struggle the characters go through can only be depicted through animation; it can be talked about on film, but the psychological turmoil itself can not be captured on film, animation is the right medium for it.

P.S:

Films that use excessive animation bore me, why not just make a fully animated film instead, what is point of using human beings as props in the midst of all that animation? I am not against using animation in film however, only against using it to the point where the humans artists start to look out of place.

Brain drain

I don't think that Indians should complain about brain drain any more. Not because it has stopped or because it is not an important factor: in fact, I read an article in the Economist recently about how the US is churning out too few doctors for its needs, and that it is a net importer of doctors, quite a few of them from poorer countries which educate the doctors at a huge cost to their meagre finances.

As a side, I often wonder why India has not taken any steps whatsoever to reduce brain drain when it has been perceived quite unanimously as a major problem for decades now. A simple but effective step would have been to ask prospective students to sign a bond committing themselves to work for say five or ten years in India after they graduate before they are given admittance to government run institutions: the government is paying for them after all. This does not get in the way of further education and such of the students, if they so seek to, because a deferment of three or four years on the fulfilment of the bond can always be granted in such situations. The Malaysian government has been doing something similar successfully for years now, in fact they go a step further: the government, and associated public sector companies, contract with students and send them abroad to get an international education, and when they are finished they employ the highly skilled graduates back home. Of course, the students always have the choice to break the contract by paying back the full amount spent on them by the government.

Anyway, getting back to my point, brain drain is happening, yes. But, it is only when it is held up in isolation as one issue that it appears to be so grave a problem. When we look at it as but a small part of the exchanges India as a willing participant of the global market engages in, this particular issue does not look quite so ominous. The issue, in retrospect, should have been a lot more important than it was for pre-1991 India, before we opened ourselves up to the global market. If one thinks about it, the apathy of the policy makers of India pre-1991 to the issue seems absurd: they wanted to run a self-sufficient socialist state, with highly restricted foreign investment and international trade, but they did not think it important to put any checks on valuable human resource nourished and paid for by the government just walking out of the country.

The situation is different now. India engages in international trade more and more freely every day. We gain some, we lose some. India exports water even though we are low on water resources (through products that are water intensive to produce). And India exports valuable human resource even though we are low on it. But we also gain access to technology we had no part in developing, and we gain access to wealth we didn't generate. So, instead of clamouring about our loss on one particular front, and advocating a protectionist policy, it is better to look at the entire picture and draft policies which would result in long term gains as a whole on the global market for the country. Of course, if there were a policy that would save us the loss of human resource, or maybe even gain some, while not affecting the bigger picture adversely (maybe a policy like the one the Malaysian government's following, perhaps), then by all means it would be welcome. 

Caste

The existence of caste system often announces itself to me in an unwelcome jarring fashion, much like random dissonance wakes me up from the trance I lose myself in when listening to a beautiful symphony. Having been brought up in a home where caste wasn't mentioned much, I grew up mostly unaware of the reality of caste system. Yes, I did read about it in the social science textbooks and such, but it wasn't information I readily connected to my everyday existence.

But, as I said, the issue has a way of announcing itself when I least expect it. I once called a classmate of mine (in 7th standard, I think) 'dharidhruda' (which roughly translated means degenerate) when he cheated me at one game or another. Until that point in the argument I was the wronged party, and had the force of righteous indignation on my side, but as soon as I said the word, he was hitting me with angry blows that caught me by surprise; the issue of cheating was all but forgotten. I could see that he was truly hurt and offended, but I was clueless as to the reason why. It was only after I was home that it was explained to me that it was an offensive word to those of the scheduled castes, and that they react very badly to it: I hadn't even known that he was from a scheduled caste.

Last year my grandmother was dissatisfied with the woman who washed her clothes, so she fired her. Then when she tried to get someone else to do the job for her, she couldn't: she was told that she needed the approval of the previous washerwoman to hire anyone else from the caste to do the job, and that anyone from another caste trying to do the job would be stopped. It took her months to get her washerwoman to agree to be replaced, in addition to a nice severance gift. And I didn't even know until then that there existed a caste for people who washed clothes.

My apathy aside, there is another reason for my lack of societal awareness on this issue. I grew up in an urban environment thinking that caste had become a non-issue, that it was a thing of the past, and given that we all now have the opportunity to do whatever we want it was unimportant. That enquiring after the nuances of the caste system, and identifying people by their caste was not just impolite, but backward and unethical: it just was not fashionable to do it.

It is only recently that I began realising that while legally caste system as a social structure was abolished decades ago, mindsets entrenched for millennia don't just vanish. Insecurity and complacency associated with various castes, camaraderie and kinsmanship shared with people of same caste, and antagonism towards those of other castes, self-perception and perception of identity based on caste, all are probably there to stay for a few more decades. I have realised that it is foolish not to take caste into account just because I wish for a world where it does not exist.

Passion

My great-grandfather was over ninety years old when he died. He had bowed legs and could not walk without a stick, and even then he would take over an hour to walk a kilometre. He had a passion for farming. Everything in his life revolved around farming and the seasons. Illness couldn't keep him away from his farm when there was something to be done. He used to walk the two kilometres to the farm and back on his bowed legs everyday.

I wasn't there when he died, so I only have my mother's account to go by. He broke his leg when he tripped and fell. There was no one to take care of him in the village, so after a few days his son and daughters decided to take him to the city. When he realised that he probably wouldn't be allowed to come back, he fought the decision. He became delirious, he wanted to go to his farm on his broken leg. They tied him to his bed to stop him from getting out of it, he cried and fought against the bonds for a day, then he stopped: he had lost his spirit, he became almost catatonic. He died a few days later. My mother often says that it was his passion for farming that made him will his body to function the last few years. And when he realised that he couldn't any more, there wasn't anything left to keep him here. I do not know how true my mother's account is medically, but I always thought that it was a good story to remember him by.

In my search for passion, and the depression that results from the lack of it, the memory of my grandfather often gives me hope: that for now, a passion to find passion as strong as my grandfather's is enough.

Hunger strikes and law making

Democracy as an idea allows a spectrum of political structures for states to base themselves on. We have direct democracy such as practised in California on one end, we have India with its conservative representative democracy on the other. Each manifestation of democracy has its merits and demerits.

Informed and educated people are a necessity for a healthy democracy. Information tells people what is happening, and education helps them understand the information and make a judgement. What a citizen can do to act upon this judgement differs from one type of democracy to another. In one form of direct democracy citizens in sufficient numbers, if they feel the need, can move a bill to be put to vote by the people, and on passing it becomes a law. In a conservative representative democracy like India on the other hand, the only thing citizens can do is to try and convince their representatives to take up their issue, put up a bill in the parliament, and pass it. Or, they can wait till the next election and try to elect representatives that they believe will take up their issue.

People attempt several approaches in their quest to convince their representatives to take up their cause. Of course, simply trying to reason with them is the first avenue. If that fails, the next step in a democracy, whichever route they may take to achieve it, is to gain public attention (actually, in India, bribery is probably the second option). Some choose violence. Others might try to disseminate information about their cause to the public, and hope for gradual increase in public interest. The most effective however (in India anyway), is a hunger strike, a fast unto death.

A genuine hunger strike conveys the protester's seriousness and honesty, it is generally perceived that one does not choose a slow excruciating death facetiously or for malicious interest. What is problematic for me though, is the element of coercion that accompanies a hunger strike. In comparison, for example, a peaceful protest march numbering even hundreds of thousands of people, does not carry with it the same element of coercion. A hunger strike has a finality to it, its own brand of violence, a gun to the head. What is worse, when carried out by revered figures, it also carries a promise of violence to come, if the protester's demands are not met. Even Gandhi must have known, however much he urged the people against it, that his death on a hunger strike would be followed by massive civil unrest and violence.

I accept, as I said before, that it is a very effective tool. It's just that it is a sort of blackmail, with an element of coercion involved. I am not going to condemn it here however. I am not going to condemn someone who is putting their life on the line in an attempt to be heard. If the cause has public support, it'll be taken up by others. If not, well, they'll die fighting. I do propose however that a hunger strike be considered as an option only when all others have been exhausted. 

Schools in India

State schooling in India is, for the most part, abysmal. The government has invested far too little in necessary education of the country's children, and what it has invested has been badly managed. There aren't enough teachers; and while the entry requirement for teachers is decent enough, there is no accountability once they get in. Teachers, like other government employees have their jobs secure until they retire. They are not reviewed on what they teach, or if they are maintaining or improving their knowledge and skills over the years. I know of teachers of English who struggle to form a sentence in English. Teachers in state schools have become, for the most part, no more than babysitters for children, just there to keep children occupied during the school day. Parents and the children have no say in anything regarding the school, apart from the choice to not go to the school if they so wish. Private schools are not much better. They give low salaries to teachers, or, sometimes I think the more valid perspective, there are no good teachers available even if they do want to spend money.

The state education boards, trying to look good, choose to lower the standard of exams to get a better pass percentage rather than trying to better the standard of education. We end up with the most ridiculous results: most above average students can get near full marks rendering the system worthless. Indian education system needs a major overhaul, the first focus being on teacher training, and reviewing teachers constantly on their performance.

The RTE act passed in 2009 is a step in the right direction, but I haven't seen any changes yet springing from it. I hope for change in the next few years.