Category Archives: Society

Personal, Society

Shit! There’s too much shit around!

Shit!

That’s what I wondered when I looked out, for the nth time, from the window of the Delhi Kalka morning Shatabdi. Trips to Delhi has been a little frequent lately, and wife is happier consequently [don’t think otherwise! Wifey stays in Delhi, and she is happy to find me frequenter there]. Mostly, on my way back to the hills, I catch the Shatabdi. That brings me to the issue of shit.

  • India has the second largest population in the world, and soon we may be numero uno. Consequently, we shit an awful lot. Soon, we would be the shittiest country in the world, overtaking China [which, the capitalists have been telling us, is the shittiest place anyway].
  • Even today, the majority in India do not have household or communal sanitary toilets. That means they shit wherever they find place. India is a mighty densely packed place – so what was once a fallow field has not turned into swarming slums. You throw a stone today, and there is a 12.3445% chance that it would hit a man, and 9.453% chance that it would hit a woman [being the shameless lot, men shit over a wider time horizon; women flock together in time while shitting]. Okay, I made that up, but you get the idea.
  • The government has been trying to get people to shit in their homes, in sanitary toilets. Earlier, it gave money to the people to shit likewise. The people ate the money, and shat more – in the open. Some built the toilets. Since they could not understand what to do with it, they did whatever they could. Some converted the toilets into the store, some into an extra room. There are apparently cases where the toilet were converted into the domestic temples. That being the tale, one does no know what all this hoopla is about regarding the utterances of Jairam Ramesh and Narender Modi.
  • Later the government thought that giving money on prepaid basis was not working. So they thought up the postpaid formula – build a toilet first, and then you can claim the money. This required a lot of brainwashing. In Himachal Pradesh, we thought we would do better – we cajoled the people into building toilets, and we did not pay them even. The money saved thus were ploughed back into community assets. We called the program Total Sanitation Campaign. The mandarins in the capital have now renamed it Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan, for whatever reason. We should take the bull by its horns and call it Hagandari Mukt abhiyan, as many practitioners actually call it.
  • When we were probationers, we had our baptism in development process through this scheme, among others. My first trip in the field, on the very first morning in the district, was to a function honouring those who had won awards for sanitation [Nirmal Gram Puraskar]. When I became a BDO, my first substantive posting, my broke my public speaking virginity by talking about shit, literally. Any place with more than five persons would have me launch me into the topic of shit and shitting. Long lectures had to be devised. I was the missionary teaching all the gospel of shitting.
  • My next posting was to the Spiti Valley, bordering the more famous Ladakh. Water freezes for half the year, leaving you high and dry literally [Spiti is at 3600 metres]. The geography makes people shit in what are called dry-toilets – toilets that uses no water for flushing, and seldom for ablutions. The toilet is just a room on the first floor with a hole in it, and shit just pops down on the ground floor. The shit is picked up and ploughed back in the farms the next summer as manure. Temperatures are seldom high enough for decomposition of the shit – that being the case, I am sure I have eaten and drunk an awful lot of shit. Spiti is part of Lahoul and Spiti district, and the former valley is famous for its potatoes. These potatoes are the seed potatoes that have been used throughout India for farming of potatoes for the chips and french fries industry. If you trace the MacDonalds and Lays potatoes, many would go back to Lahoul. So, chances are you have eaten a lot of shitty DNA in potatoes as well! During my posting there, I had the occasion to do a workshop on Ecological Sanitation, or EcoSan, in Trichy, Tamil Nadu. EcoSan is a technique of shitting and storing of shit wherein the piss and shit are segregated through separate holes during the shitting process, and stored in separate anaerobic containers/tanks – the warm oxygen-free environment breaks down all shitty bacteria, and you have fertiliser from your piss [that you can spray in the fields], and manure from your shit. We were taken to live sites, and were invited to open the toilet pits for hold the manure. Some did, I could not. Lecturing is good enough for me!

During these trips back to the hills, I realised that we still have to go a long way. It’s an easy task in Himachal where most people own a homestead which they can use to build a toilet. Much of India does not own its own homestead – that leaves open the question of where to shit. The only obvious answer seems to be the community toilet, but with such low community spirits as we have in India, maintenance of these toilets is problematic. Kapil Sharma, the comedian, chides a British who says he built the railways to run trains in India – you idiot, you made it so difficult for us to shit on the tracks now, as the trains keep coming! I realised what density means. People were shitting together as if it was a ceremonial and communal thing, quite different from the personal and private affair shitting is for all of us reading this post. It is also a natural thing and people not shitting around were least bothered. People walked beside those shitting, and there was hardly a fart. As the trains pass by, no one bothers to lift his ass – you can watch my royal ass or all I care. As they say, when you feel like shitting, you don’t bother if the King is beckoning you! The shit-yards are getting fuller and fuller, and the tide of shit is getting closer and closer to the hutments and the slums. I realised, shitting being common to both the sexes, the fairer sex was hardly the shy variety – they shit with as much concentration as their menfolk – please don’t disturb us while we shit. Inside the coaches the passengers pulled down the perforated drapes, a typical reaction of ours – out of sight, out of mind. That shit on his yard is not my problem. I looked on, shit or no shit. The green and warm plains looked good as I enjoyed the last few hours of good living before heading back to the shitty hills!

Civil Services, Society, Writing

Macaulay’s ‘Minute on Education’

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In this article I have tried to explain in a historical context what Macaulay’s Minute on Education has come to mean to modern India. While it is much larger than the Preamble to the Constitution of India, this is arguably the shortest written document that has had so far reaching effects on the future. If today India has the largest English speaking population and is riding on the wave of IT and ITES, a large part of the fortunate credit goes to this document about which not many might be aware. Today, Indian English is more rampant than American English or the Queen’s English. Today India is ahead of China in the service sector much due to this early linguistic advantage. It would seem that through a quirk of fate the British gave the opium to the Chinese, and English and modern science to the Indians. Despite this springboard, it required the humongous incompetence of our culture to consign us to the dumpyard of many a world’s endeavours.

Macaulay was a master of English, and much like Machiavelli with whom he shares much in reputation, Macaulay is read both in English and Political Science classes. A simple read of what he wanted to bring about, and what we have in its place (take up any newspaper to gauge the pedestrian nature of its prose) brings the stark irony to the forefront. But then it is never too late to make a virtue of an incompetence. Since we could not master Queen’s, we created our very own demesne – Indian English.

For those who might not have come across this document elsewhere, I present Macaulay’s Minute on Education here:
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Arth ki khoj mein, Bakch--di, Civil Services, IAS, India, Media, Philosophy, Society, The Times of India, Wikipedia, Writing

What’s the matter, Babu?

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There are many words in and out of the dictionary that are used with a certain passion, while their exact meaning remain confined to the pages of the dictionary. There are various categories of such words. Some sound sophisticated – raunchy, intrepid, serendipity. Some are just fashionable – fag, dude, anti-Semitism, imperialism. Some, with the passage of time, attain layers of grime and ignorance, and through a process of Semantical acrobatics (that’s a new word that I am trying to ‘coin’; once it has attained fringe parlance, it shall be called a ‘neologism’; once it is accepted as everyday parlance, not necessarily respectable as some books would tell you, it shall be inducted into the dictionary. For most words, mind you, that is ceremonial cremation. Once a word enters the portals of a tome, it remains forgotten and surfaces only when researched. A word in the dictionary is like a comatose on life support. Just joking) acquire absolutely new passion, absolutely new colours, absolutely new meaning. I can think of no better word to introduce this development than ‘babu’.

And while we are at it we shall beckon a ‘thought of the day’ and try to understand what someone said about lies.

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”
–Joseph Goebbels

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Goebbels was the Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda during the Nazi regime, and one of the closest advisors of the little genius. Do keep in mind that Goebbels started his life as a journalist. So, how was it that he proceeded to propagate the lie and garner enlightenment for his Chosen People. I would presume he recalled an incident from Medieval history on the shores of Mediterranean.

Everyone loves Alexander. At a young age he did what people thrice his age could only dream of. Across the world people spent the next 23 centuries trying to match his exploits. While not a match, there were quite a few common things between Hitler and Alexander – they were both short, they were both brave, they were both mad, they were both stubborn, they were both ravishers and thrived on rape and rapine and pillage, both came close to conquering the world, and both died rather ingloriously (Alexander died of mosquito bite or whatever, we still don’t quite know; Hitler reportedly took cyanide and simultaneously shot himself – one does not know what hit him first, the poison or the bullet). History, however, looks quite differently at the two. There is a city called Alexandria. There is no city called Adlofia or Hitleria. Hitleristan, anyone? Now for some strange reason we shall overlook, Alexandria had the world’s greatest library. Well, at that time, Alexandria was the greatest city for that matter. Any city that goes either too much towards the sky, or too much towards any other direction, incurs the wrath of gods or people. Sometime back those foolish people in the Middle East (can anyone tell me why is it called Middle East? I mean, there can be a west, there can be a east. If it is in the middle, it is called centre. But Middle East! Don’t much blame Tolkien for that matter. He must have got his Middle Earth designation from present geography only) tried to build a little tower in a city then called Babilu, now called Babylon. What happened? Well, something happened that we are not quite sure of, but the remains looked like the aftermath of some cosmic erectile dysfunction. In another city of a continent that is an accident of history (well, there was this fool who wanted to find India and sailed West when everyone went the other way. He met a few Neanderthals with bananas – he DID NOT find the plains of Punjab) people became vain again. And time and again like in the Biblical times, plagues rain down on New York. Sometimes it is a rather large dinosaur that stampedes across the town. Then come some gorillas. Then some icecaps melt up in the north, and it is flood. Sometimes huge rocks rain down from the sky. See, bible again and again. Then they built a tall tower. Wait, not one, but TWO. Whoever heard of such sacrilege. And see what happened.

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So, on the shores of the Mediterranean, the largest city of the ancient world was built. It was also the site of an ancient wonder, a wonder that withstood the wrath of man and god for more than a thousand years. Close to the Lighthouse of Alexandria, scholars from around the world came and studied everything under the sun and the moon. Every book that passed by the city was taken to the library – a copy was returned back. Of course, it was not the time of copyright yet. Outside of the library the city flourished, enticing traders. With trade comes prosperity. With prosperity come the people looking for a shortcut – marauders and conquerors. Like most cities, Alexandria was conquered not once but many times. But finally it fell to the Muslim army led by Amr ibn al ‘Aas (okay, that is not the origin of IBN!). Message was sent to the Caliph as to what is to be done with the library and its books. Amr received the famous reply:

“If what is written there is in the Koran, they are superfluous. If what is written is not in the Koran, it is blasphemous.”

Amr used the books to heat bathwater for his soldiers. Viru in Sholay got his idea of the coin from this monologue – heads I win, tails you lose. Goebbels got his inspiration to burn books from this example.

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Politics, Society

Whither Social Harmony?

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Education has been held up as a single panacea for all social ills. The championing of education, with valid merit in most cases, is universal and profound. The many advantages and the many positive externalities make education seem like the single shining point of light in the midst of gross societal chaos. In India it has taken curious routes – this championing of education – and the following random points are mere pointers at the total chaos in our understanding of this phenomenon:

  1. BooksThe value of education and knowledge is ingrained in and through religion, myth, ritual and a general cultural ethos.
  2. It is not without reason that our cultural history is sprinkled with systemic and individual efforts of devotion to knowledge, efforts that generated a whole social ethos closely related to the Brahminic culture. This association became so close as to become a metaphor – the brahmin is a synonym for a knowledgeable man.
  3. Quite conversely, this ethos of knowledge survived among its practitioners by systemic denial among others. A whole system of proprietorship was evolved, developed on the foundations of crafted religion and morals – a system that sanctified such knowledge as divine, and hence, only practitionable only by the chosen elite. The corollary was ignorance of this knowledge (this is never to allege that Brahminic knowledge is the only form of valid knowledge and knowing) among the vast majority.
  4. Independent India paid handsome homage to the value of knowledge, to the utlity of demolishing this structure and system of denial, to the logic of social benefit through dissemination of knowledge. And this homage was occasioned by and met with Herculean efforts at being an Ostrich. Our contemporary history is a peaen to our myopic objectives, of compromising the future for the present, of sacrificing the many for the few. This period saw our allegiance to the notion of education and to the practice of hypocrisy. Sixty years of ‘freedom’ and our social indicators are a mess when compared with the numerous success stories drafted at around the same time.
  5. Lately, our service sector is showing a stupendous buoyancy, and a few shrewd observers have commented that our penchant for and success in white collar jobs has much to do with this social ethos that generated today’s crop of achievement. There is confusing and controverted thinking involved here – while most deplore the low social expenditure of yore, many celebrate today’s achievement as a fallout of yesterday’s investment, however minimal.

It is obvious to find that as a society, as a polity and as individuals we have still not been able to define our approach towards education and knowledge, our committment to the idea of education as a panacea, and to its utility as a tool of social engineering.

Many a times I am personally perturbed, however, when eduation is thus championed as a panacea. Many months back during the Foundation days, we had the occasion to write essays on different topics. I chose a topic that assumed much the same in its very title – it said ‘Social Harmony is Possible Through Universal Education’. I wanted to counter this assumption, and hence I wrote my essay as a rebuttal to that assumption. I am presenting here that article to forward my arguments.

Social Harmony is Possible Through Universal Education – A Counter-View

Society

Wardi se panga : What I think is wrong with the men in uniform

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With an INSAS rifle at an elevated post, on way to TawangAs a part of our training we have what is popularly called ‘Bharat Darshan’. Bharat Darshan is a romantic experience, a part of popular myth among those who have done it, a source of inspiration and fantasy for those who aspire. It is an occasion that takes you across the length and breadth of the country much beyond the tourist circuit – here you get to see how the tribals live, how the villages work, how the army secures the border, how the big MNCs function, and much more, and during these travails you traverse about half of earth’s circumference. The Army Attachment forms part of the Bharat Darshan. During this attachment, you are ‘attached’ with a Army Unit or Division, and you live with them for many days so that you can get a close look at the Defence Forces at work. Here you can live the army life, with its varied hardship and romance, with the bullets and the bazooka, the vodka and the pretty wives of the officers.

Two and a half years back I too had got an opportunity to join the Army. I did not join, hoping to join Civil Service, which I did two years later. As such, I have a love and hate relationship with the Army, and in a haste to justify my decision post facto. Thus, I traversed through the attachment as a critic, finding all the holes in the army fatigue. We had to submit a report on the Army Attachment that was drafted by me. Only today I sneaked into the report and found that it had received an excellent evaluation by the Course Coordinator. Here I am reproducing the critical and analytical part of the report, chucking the descriptive and boring part to escape your viewing displeasure.

Army Report…