THE SCARCITY OF TRUTH

One of the things I've ended up concluding from the recent workshop about RCTs- Design, Analysis and Reporting at Indian Institute of Public Health, Delhi is that the ultimate aim of research after all is to uncover pieces of truth.

Truth - It is precious because it is scarce. It is scarce probably because of our unfailing commitment to cover up things, because of our innate preference for the opaqueness of lies over the transparency of truth, because of that onion in us. The world is like an onion - I write with no exceptions to myself. We all are layery beings, there are layers after layers of pretense and falsehood, sometimes reflecting truth in varied proportions  - people, places and situations are either lionised or demonised.

Our statistics from numerous surveys are so full of puzzles and contrasts. Sometimes I really wonder, especially after reading the paper by Deaton and Dreze about food and nutrition trends in India - probably one of the reasons that our researchers after doing a hell lot of analysis and applying statistical tool after tool, end up with puzzles and limbos is that the data in their hand COULD have all been COOKED up by someone down there. Only if truth could be ubiquitous...

Learning to uncover the truth through RCTs :P

When duality merges into ONE

Duality – it always made me uneasy. How can two contradictory things be implied by two equally true sounding statements? In the Symbolic Logic class, while proving arguments through formal proofs of validity, my teacher had remarked on a question whose result had ended in a contradiction. “you see, it is dangerous to start with a false premise, it may end up in a false conclusion”. The premise with which our proof had started was a false one, and there behold! The conclusion that was implied by the proof of validity was an equally ridiculous one. In this universe, I am taught, there are always two kinds of statements – ones that are true, others that are false, and there are only two types of arguments – ones that are valid, others that are invalid.

So once in a while, I bump into questions which are of the so called ‘grey’ shade and fail to satisfy my puny mind which is overwhelmed by the logic it is being fed with. And yes, I’m glad I have the liberty to question them. My parents have always encouraged me to question and explore anything and everything, even the most sacred and hallowed beliefs. The answers are not always easy to find, but yeah, they come to you, after some time, strike you like a flash of lightning – or just pop up as a strange correlation in your head when you see a similar thing happening but in a different context. Its like you see a microcosm of the answer you were desperately seeking for in a random comment made by someone, in a gesture that is passed around, in a new concept you just learnt in the classroom.

...And then the duality merges into one, just one – a pure answer with no adulteration. So, one of the dualities I came across was this. The scriptures say that everything is part of a divine design and that every single thing that traspires in our lives is planned. But here in a full page advertisement in the newspaper, stands a youth icon with a tagline ‘because destiny lies in your hands’. So who is doing all that is happening? Me or the supreme Power.

I hunted for the answer and got a lot of puzzling replies from diverse sets of people, all of which would seem to me a circling argument, their premise would somehow grope in the dark and come back to the premise itself. And I would be left unsatiated. And then, as it is always under His Plan, some agent is always created and the answer is delivered to you. So when I put forth my question to Uncle Jaswant Singh Neki , he looked at me, nodded in perfect assurance that the statement about destiny lying in ‘our hands’ was correct.

Baffled I asked him so is the former false?

He gazed down at my hands, and then politely asked with the innocence of a child, ‘but then, who gave you these hands?’ That was it.

The two statements merged into one, the contradiction departed and truth remained to create a beautiful implication that made me feel bliss.

I realised, that is what happens when two become one and the one stays with you forever, like an eternal truth. It seems to me that all science and social science in this world are striving for is the same optimizing function – resolving the dualities. My discipline that is economics, especially the IED classes are full of contrasts – the contrast between privileged children and underprivileged children, between developed societies and developing, between north delhi and south delhi, between kerala and bihar. All policies made by policy makers seek to resolve the duality that so intricately exists in our lives or in some cases the multiplicity of inequalities which in Mr Ayde’s words has ‘an octopus like grip’ in our society.

The other day, listening to kirtan in Bangla Sahib, I learnt a crucial lesson. Indeed, I understood the meaning of guess what, “One”! Yes, finally it made sense. I had not been parroting ‘Ek Oankar’ for long without a reason – it had a meaning, a beautiful meaning.

  Ghat ghat eko vartda (Only the ‘One’ resides in all the places)

The way the Ragi Singh had stressed on the ‘eko’ in that line, I was moved. I got a lump in my throat and realized how ubiquitous is the concept of One in this world as echoed through Sri Guru Granth Sahib. The Guru starts with ‘ik oankar’ – the fundamental reality of the universe.

Its like the Economic theories I study – every model starts with a basic assumption about the state of the world, following which equations and assertions are made and postulated. In the Guru’s model of Truth that he starts to explain, he starts not with the assumption but the fundamental fact or foundation on which everything else rests.

 One. Just One. There is one God. That’s it.

There, it resolves all inter-faith human-made divides about who are we ultimately worshipping. It is One. The same power who created all of us, the one who is making my fingers dance on the keyboard and write this – the One who is conducted this world drama. So the Guru starts with One, and then chooses to explain the various facets of the cosmos. He then makes logical arguments with astounding rationality that I’ve not known elsewhere and puts his conclusions forward.

 ‘What difference will it make, if you sacrifice a live animal or a human before a non-living God?’

 ‘Will a piece of thread be able to save me after I die, when it gets cremated with my body?’

 ‘Why are you prejudiced against women, for women give birth to King of Kings?’ Transivity would imply that if you respect a man, a king, and he respects his mother, then you should also respect his mother, who is none but a woman. So, why the gender bias, he questioned.

So how do you explain the duality and multiplicity that exists when people talk about Ram, Rahim, Allah – well, the Guru says, it does not change the reality. Ram, Rahim and Allah are just other names for the same Almighty, just like dad, papa, pitaji, père are different ways of addressing one’s father. It does not imply multiple fathers but just different names called out of love for one’s own dad! Isn’t it?

 There are dualities after dualities, contrasts after contrasts and ultimately they converge to One goal, just one, that’s what I’ve learnt. The ‘about me’ column on my facebook profile reads… ‘yet to discover myself’. For I feel life is a discovery, of continuous discoveries, of a slew of Nobel prizes for new inventions and discoveries and surely I have not fully discovered myself yet.

Day after day, some of the tangled mess and puzzles unfold and leave me all amazed and ecstatic. So what is the objective function of life? The purpose of life is a life of purpose, I know. But what purpose, then? The lesson I have learnt this day is that our common goal in this cosmos is nothing but to find the ‘One’, become ‘One’ with him and see the ‘One’ in all.

GOODBYE MARKET PHOBIA - Summer experiences at LSE (Ludhiana Stock Exchange)

I enter the wonderfully cooled air conditioned office amidst the sultry June heat every day. Even the AC smells of indices. There are LCD screens on walls around featuring minute to minute stock market news 24x7. I hear numbers spoken out by sub-brokers conversing all around, terms like derivatives, futures, options, margins. In a couple of days, things make perfect sense – the same conversations which sounded Persian to me few days back now become comprehensible! I understand the general mood of the office consisting of hundreds of sub brokers which is inevitably (i discover), a function of the stock market indices!!!


Contrary to my perception, the common salutation here was not ‘How are you’ or the ilk but yes in a forceful Punjabi accent, ‘Market kidaan?’ (How’s the market?) – The answers would range from overtly optimistic, slipping down to flat.


It’s a world full of numbers – live trading and incentives. If you’ve ever been inside a stock exchange, you would know. Although no live trading goes in this regional stock exchange, it functions as a brokerage under LSE Securities Ltd - the huge building is replete with offices of sub-brokers.


The most glaring thing that I noticed about this office was a strange sense of punctuality and sincerity of almost every employee at work. Now that’s not very common, at least in the public sector offices I have been to. The fledgling economist in me recognizes the beautiful alignment of incentives in this office. It is a stock exchange after all – a place to build fortunes and gambling with rules. It is the self interest in this typical ‘firm’ that makes each employee reach his/her chamber on time – its about incentives and mainly, monetary incentives. And these incentives are not lump-sum, not like a fixed pay at the end of the month which deadens all motivation to work, but on a MINUTE TO MINUTE lively basis. You get daily rewards and returns from this wonderful space called the stock market where funds are channeled from the idle to the industrious and capital gains pour heavily, though on the selected few.


Under my internship, I got a lively exposure into a wide array of things. Apart from attending a 1 hour class everyday in a smart classroom amidst 40- 50 other MBA students by the executives of different departments (clearing, depository participants, IPO, KYC, legal department etc.) on the basic working of all aspects of the stock markets, I also had the opportunity to work with the legal department of the exchange and with who else, but the Sr. GM here. I learnt a lot from my boss - a lively lady who conversed in a lovely Punjabi accent and was such a big motivator. She had spread her charm in the workplace with the effect that most of the officials from the receptionist to the accountants had such a high frequency of smiling. The ‘smile’ I discovered was a permanent client here.

Since this one-to-one attachment with the executive was not a formal part of the structured internship program, I had to figure out work for myself and offer help on whatever I could offer. On the second day, looking into my potential, I was handed over a list of targets to be fulfilled within a week. My work involved preparing a formal brochure for the internship program and figuring out the right combinations of evaluation strategies that the exchange should adopt for interns (from the next year onwards) – lo! Now that was fantastic – I now had to be in the judgement seat and figure out what would be the best incentive for a final year MBA student, say who ‘has’ to do an internship as a part of his boring college project and has no motivation to learn or contribute.

Another task I was allotted was to work on the Annual Report of the exchange – designing a cover page, I discovered needed a lot of economic and financial insight into the working of a firm over a year. I contributed my set of suggestions for both the programs at the end of program which were well received.

Not to forget, the cubicle I worked in had a wonderful occupant – the legal officer of the exchange who guided me into this new world. I discovered the legal procedures involved in the financial sector and working of the system.

As a last leg of the internship, interns were required to learn live trading and understand the analytics of the same. Well, that was simply WOW! Guess what? You push a button, and that’s it – the share is bought, another button, it is sold. You press F3 twice and you can view all the bids in your window pane. A sub-broker’s chamber is such a live and a bit confusing place initially. 5 sets of sleek desktop computers with different markets opened on each one, 6 sets of landline telephones with a vexing 8-calls-per- minute frequency, a TV showing live stocks and market news – that goes from 9.15 to 3.30, till the stock market finally closes.

The most interesting part of the internship apart from the formal learning was the vital insight into a workplace and the informal contacts I ended up building. The conversations over lunch at the set of tables with the light pink financial newspapers serving as the table cloth, the neat cutlery that would await the hard working employees at the strike of 1. 30 and not-to-mention the vibrant guffaws and informal exchanges of experiences at this time – it was an enthralling experience.

I guess, I receive my dividend from the 20 day long internship everyday - in the joy of reading Economic Times every morning. The pink newspaper is no longer a monotonous gibberish – it makes a lot more sense. I no longer have a ‘market-phobia’, so to say – it’s the ‘market magic’, I feel :)

A selfish, Hobbesian voter's views about the college elections - interspersed with a background drawn from the IED and Pol. Sciences classes :)

I like Nehru. Wasn’t non- alignment an awesome strategy in the wake of cold war? Reading a bit on game theory, I realized that in any two party game, the ‘third way’ could be better for any third party as opposed to aligning with one of the two in which case one invites the wrath of the rival camp. ....

Click on the text above to read more.

NREGA - a perspective

A First-Hand Experience of NREGA at a village on the international border in Rajasthan

Distance perpetuates poverty. As I travelled from the centre of the Sriganganagar district in Northern Rajasthan to the fringe, that is what I discovered - a parallel movement of the people working under NREGA from the centre to the fringes of their economic landscape.


The MGNREGA under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme is indeed a commendable act. Every family in the specified rural areas, measured by the number of chulhas serving a group of people is entitled to 100 days of assured employment within 5 km of their house. I chose to survey two NREGA sites in the district on the basis of the diversification of work in these areas and to record the work progress and gauge the success rate.


The first site we surveyed was Mirzewala, 12 kilometres from Sriganganagar where the road widening work was in progress from 16.06.2011. The road I was told was a State Highway. The labor force of 65 comprised of mostly women, not very young. A possible reason was the job card. Since each family is allotted one job card, workers may choose to complete their stipulated 100 days of work in turns with their family members – each member in a family of four could contribute 25 days of work working together or in different shifts over the year. The NREGA in Rajasthan where the minimum daily wage, right now is Rs 119 thus promises a wage of more than 10,000 per year to every family (contingent on the task performed by the group under the group system). However the wage as we enquired first hand from the women laborers at this site varied from Rs 90 to Rs 100. NREGA permits wage payments on daily rate as well as on piece rate. Since Rajasthan has followed the piece rate system – wages are paid in proportion to the work performed; earning the minimum wage requires completion of the prescribed task for the group.


The rest 265 days of the year, the source of employment for the section of people is agriculture which by its basic nature is seasonal in nature but promises a daily wage of Rs 60-70 for each laborer. NREGA has undoubtedly raised the wage income of the people during the period of agriculture off-season (non-sowing and non-harvesting months). Direct personal interview with the laborers here revealed a significant level of contentment at the wages received which had improved their living although no assets had been created using the additional income.
The progress towards the second site at Sangatpura located right at the international border through the desert landscape was a drive towards an economic desert. No toilets, no pakka houses, no implements supplied by the NREGA reached the region.


Poverty has become such a mechanical term in textbooks and classroom discussions. The abstract version of the term was what I saw in the eyes of the people here. Some of the ladies started crying as truth slowly started emanating out of some feigned responses by the bunch of old ladies here. I was surprised to see the change in their tone as the Sarpanch joined us. They veiled their faces and replied rather laconically thereafter. Only some brave old ladies took courage and spilled the beans.


The heart of the matter, as it came up was that much of the consumption expenditure gets drained into feeding their alcoholic husbands. They were also victims of domestic violence by the husband.


“Bachat karte hain aap?” I asked amateurishly.


They looked at each other and smiled at the irrelevance of the question – There are no savings, the income ends in feeding the family and does not translate into assets. “Paise aande baad cha a, asi tan pehla kadhaan nu karde haan”, I was told in a Punjabi accent. (We desperately wait for them to credit our account with the fortnightly wage, which we withdraw completely right off the bat).


So while the policy framed by the government is excellent, its promulgation is smooth, this is where it ends in the end. The social complexities in a region where illiteracy is rampant clog the channels for economic development. It ends in the pockets of their alcoholic husbands; drug addiction among the male members eats up the wage that is earned. While the constant and reliant stream of income from NREGA will help them survive, I have doubts if it will lift them above the poverty line.


As per the act, the wage should be transferred within 15 days into the accounts of the laborers, the villagers told us sometimes it took about 2 months for the transfer to occur and that the bank was far – it took a “hefty sum of Rs 5 to the bank and back”.


The survey of the border regions at Sangatpura and Sahibsinghwala presents a paradox. While the NREGA implements are not reaching the area, the laborers are bringing their personal implements to level the ground which banks the H5 minor distributary – there is easy availability of rivers of alcohol. The statistics are encouraging, the work is encouraging but the condition of the laborers is not. You find a disproportionate number of ladies working on the sites, a cursory inspection of their pale hands and nails points to their anemic condition. While the nurse appointed visits the site regularly, she can do little to save them from the beatings of their drunken husbands.


As a first year economics undergrad student who was on her first ground visit, I discovered how these laborers could not be crystallized into mere statistics I was holding in my hand. The dupattas of the women laborers wet with tears had tales to tell while I could just be a mouthpiece of their woes.

Faith

The ceiling was blurred; the room was full of moisture and an outflow of emotions. She had been missing home badly that month. There was nothing bad about her surroundings, but it was as if her soul was unable to find a reason to be happy. Everything in the world looked morose – the road outside festooned with dung cakes, the air conditioned air tight room, and the yellow paint on the wall in front. Holes had started appearing in her life – little tender holes of vacuum – of remembrance of her mama’s tight embrace, of her grandma’s warm hug and of her daddy’s instant jokes. The next day was her birthday and there she lay in her cuboidal room, cut off from the world – empty and terribly alone.

People talked about the omnipresence of God, of how God’s love could shoo away all the life’s dreariness. But where was God at this critical juncture? Where?

…in that dingy room? In the cupboard? On the study table?....the study table?

“You find God on your study table” - the Reverend had enunciated in the hall that day during the morning assembly. “In one of those moments of pure joy and enlightenment when you strike upon the answer to a tough question, the explanation to a confusing concept, the logic to a long vexing argument – clouds of confusion depart and you see light. That light, my children is God and God himself. “

She got up all teary eyed questioning the existence of the world. Looking beyond the pillow, wet with the secretions of her tear glands, she questioned ‘’Where are you, man? People find you on their study tables, you are not on mine --- are you, my Lord?”

The world became less blurred as she wiped her eyes with the towel kept beside the pillow and wore her spectacles. She switched on the light and blankly stared at her study table – one neat pile of books she had got issued from the library and another one of thick box files full of notes lay in perfect peace.

Her eyes wandered from the shelf to the lamp, searching for truth – tiny crystals of truth in the words she had heard at college. If only she could find a trace… if only a scintilla of evidence… if only a whisper… if only a reminder…

…and there her eyes wandering like a zombie stopped, stuck.

Amidst the pens and the pencils in her pen stand, stood a neat rose-stick, tall and cute. She found a small stick note stuck to the wall with words penned on it in red.


MAY GOD BLESS YOU
LOVE
VINOD AUNTY

The new warden in her block had written those words out of love and compassion, she mistook her birthday for that day and had left her gift on her study table while she was out.

The Reverend was right.

Incentives and Education

I was always fascinated by the concept since the day I read about it. People respond to incentives. It is easy to end it with a full-stop there acknowledging the veracity of the fact and accepting it as gospel truth. It is only when you bump into the dividing line between the good and the no-so-good incentives that you feel the need to question. More than anything, the unease stems from the dehumanized, asocial and antiseptic worldview that economics as a discipline resorts to sometimes.

One particular occasion when I was incensed was when I read Mankiw’s views on education in the chapter on earnings. So why do people study and why do they spend so much on education?

There has to be an incentive.

And my book said the incentive was money. That was harrowing. I remember venting out my ire and discontentment on a page in my diary. Isn’t it cheapening of the entire concept of education by relating it with pecuniary objectives of profit maximization?

On one side, I found myself philosophizing on the ‘purpose’ of education in Dr. Gabriel’s English class and here the discipline I loved spelled out ‘purposes’ like those. It all seemed to imply that:

I was studying economics so that I could earn for myself tomorrow, and that if the prospects of earning for an economist were nil, I would not be studying economics.

What the hell!

I was critical of this view on education (although I read about the human capital view which chimed with my thoughts) until the following happened.

The first day, my friend Geetika and I went looking for kids to teach, we spotted a construction site with a lot of migrant laborer families residing there along with of course, a lot of their (non-enrolled) kids.

We called them out in the park, made them sit for some ice-breaking éclair session. I perfunctorily asked them their names and then raised a question.

“ Batao, humhe parhna kyon chahiye?”, I asked in an innocent voice pressing them to think for themselves.

A little girl (whose name escapes my memory right now) rose and answered in a squeaky voice,
“Kyunki, parhne se ‘payysa’ milta hai”
The way she stressed on the word ‘payysa’ in her native accent, it struck a chord.

I found bells ringing. She was not enrolled in a school and surely Mankiw couldn’t have whispered that into her ear or crossed her dreams last night.

The phenomenon was universal. I learnt vital lessons.

1. Just because I thought in a certain way did not imply that the world too thought on similar lines. In short, my personal views could be illustrative but not exhaustive.

2. It isn’t an economist’s business to judge about the morality of rationality. In fact rationality itself as Hume remarked is a ‘slave of passions’.

3. ‘Tis true that had it not been for incomes, some people indeed might not have gone to school and also that this is a well known fact.

So if education is sought for such bright incentives as seeking higher future incomes, does this imply that the poor in our country are irrational?
Why does the government have to entice the poor with mid-day meals and scrapping school fees under the RTE? Isn’t wage an organic incentive already?

Perhaps, the answer to the question no. 1 is YES. The little girl can earn more in the future even in present discounted terms that she could earn today as a domestic help in a 'kothi'.

But the hard truth is that ‘FUTURE’ is a vague term and that earning in the present is always more lucrative than tomorrow’s since that ‘tomorrow’ is so uncertain. Do you know the reason why people are lax about sustainable development despite such awareness campaigns and why the Copenhagen summit was a fiasco? I have found it. It is because sustainable development concerns concern for ‘future’ generations and future, as I said is so vague a term.

The solution in my view is that the incentive in all such cases has to concern THE INDIVIDUAL HIMSELF (since self-interest rules) and that too in the PRESENT, to be effective.
Development has to concern the present generation first to be sustainable. Education has to lure people today, to be universal.

The incentives in education, I believe have to be somewhat like Kerala, where kids get to carry bags of rice and wheat home from school for use of the entire family. Education in short promises income in kind today apart from income in cash tomorrow.

Aren’t those truly intelligently-crafted-incentives.

ARE EXAMINATIONS MORE IMPORTANT THAN HUMAN BEINGS ???

We were texting each other late at 12 in the night. I was anxious to know about her visit to the slum at Majnu Ka Tilla that morning. Aleesha had talked to me on the subject a few days back. She had seen a poor lady sitting for alms for quite a few days where she went for her morning walk. There was something unusual about the lady, perhaps her composure that touched my friend and she decided to go up to her and talk. The lady narrated a poignant tale of disease, hardship and life in penury.

There was more to come. The poor lady never asked for alms, she just sat there and waited for some strangers to come by. On subsequent early morning meetings, she told my friend about the world she hailed from, how hard it was and how her family lived from hand to mouth. My friend decided to visit the slum she lived at – Majnu Ka Tilla near Vidhan Sabha. I had recently recovered from something called ‘acute gastroenteritis with hepatitis’ and was advised against venturing into unhygienic surroundings. Aleesha decided to tell me about the visit later. Together with Priyanka and Gaurav, two of our ultra sweet friends always ready to help, she personally went to the place hoping to get a feel of the ground situation to help the people.

It was late April – our exams were starting 12th May – University exams, the first ones we were going to take at the undergrad level. Texting was taxing since there was loads to talk about, so Aleesha called. As always, she had well thought of the entire situation and was charting out an action plan to help the people – calling on some NGOs, getting their kids to the college and organizing classes, writing to the government, googling about already existing schemes and the ilk. I patiently told her it was April already, we could always do this job later after exams.

“In June?”

“But we will go home in June or will be busy interning, so we could definitely do it in July when the college reopens? “ I replied in a voice seeking to pacify more than answer.

“It will be too late, Jalnidh…the lady suffers from T.B. and her husband is sick with a chronic illness…Tell me, are examinations more important or human beings? It’s a question of life and death for her and that of just a few extra marks for us.”

I realized the depth of her words and that of her soul, which stood in striking contrast with the shallowness of my thoughts.

The months passed. Its late June already. We were unable to help. I wonder what happened to the lady and if she still follows her early morning routine of coming to the ridge to beg. Perhaps Aleesha might have made an arrangement, we have been geographically dispersed for long and not quite been in touch.

Is it really?

But I still grapple with the question. Steven Levitt said numbers don’t lie – human beings and governments might. Would that number on my marksheet truly represent my worth as an economics undergrad student? Would it not conceal more than it will reveal? The true opportunity cost of preparing for the examination was huge and I had made unequivocally, an irrational choice. 

Arpan: Existing to Empower Underprivileged Girls Through Education

Arpan: Existing to Empower Underprivileged Girls Through Education

Correlation, Causation and superstitions

The chapter on correlation in my statistics course ended with a note which stayed with me for long. After learning all about the wonderful tools of regression and correlation, there I was presented with a WARNING : CORRELATION SHOULD NOT BE CONFUSED WITH CAUSATION.

Just to give you a flavour of the science I had learnt, correlation makes one capable of establishing if two variables move together in a particular direction. A positive correlation between say, population growth and pollution implies that when any one of the two variables increases, the other also increases since the variables are positively correlated. Yet this does not by itself imply that any one of them CAUSES the other. If X and Y are positively correlated, X may be causing Y, Y may be causing X or it may just be possible that both X and Y are being caused by a third exogenous variable!

A kingdom was once plagued by a pandemic that claimed a zillion lives. Tense, the king ordered a statistical enquiry. The statisticians presented the data - more the no. of doctors in the kingdom over the days, more is the occurence of the disease. The king took this relation of correlation for causation and ordered all the doctors in the kingdom to be executed!

Now lets apply the lesson - why do people believe in superstitions? A cat crossed the road before them, its a bad omen - they say out of experience. So if a sweet little pussy cat decides to cross the road just exactly when our jinxed hero steps out of his house, it makes him anticipate failure in his exam or the interview ahead. What explains this seemingly irrational and undoubtedly foolish viewpoint? Well, my theory goes thus. In the 'good' old days, it might have happened that in a good number of cases that the correlation between the 'crossing of a cat' and the 'occurence of failure' turned out to be positive, but people mistook the correlation for causation and concluded "Hence, the cat CAUSED the failure"!!!

Paul Samuelson listed something called a 'Post Hoc Fallacy' right at the beginning of his classic 'ECONOMICS'. The fallacy goes thus - If event Y follows event X, then you implicitly assume that Y was caused by X. If I sneezed before I slipped from the stairs, then the sneeze caused me to trip.

I guess our society needs to learn just a simple lesson and all the claptrap about black threads, wearing stones, reading horoscopes shall see the light of rationality.

P.S. If while reading this blog, lets say you slip off your chair ... kindly don't conclude that I caused it :P heehee :)

The Urge To Melt

QUESTIONS OF IDENTITY

Published in The Sikh Review, an international monthly from Kolkata in the issue of August, 2011 under 'The Urge to Merge' and 'Abstract of Sikh Studies', September 2011 as 'The Urge to Melt'.

Youth from minorities in most regions are faced with a choice as age bestows a host of freedoms. While identity pride is something that remains alive in their hearts, it does not quite manifest physically. As I look around, I find many Sikh friends in my friend list listing their religious preference as a Sikh but shunning off all those symbols which lie at the heart of Sikh identity. I have been grappling with questions of identity for long – what is an identity afterall, why do I need to be different, who am I, what do people mean when they say ‘I am what I am’ etc.

So, why is it that people in my community and in the minorities in general have an intrinsic desire to melt their identity into that of the crowd and get camouflaged? After reading this rare piece of fiction 'Beyong Identity' by P.S. Sandhawalia, I now feel in a better position to address questions of identity. I identify 6 reasons in my blog for such behavior.

1. One reason can be LOW SELF ESTEEM. An individual who is pining for attention among peer group and the society usually stoops to the level as seen. He/she tries to prove her worth by revealing the texture of his/her skin thus expecting adoration through some channel.

2. Second reason can be the HOLLOWNESS of the individual in the sense that when a person is say talentless and usually a fiasco academically or in a field that society tags value to, he/she in order to gain acceptance tries to do what the majority does.


3. Yet this does not quite explain why sometimes successful people may also adopt the majority identity. The possible explanation can be a LACK OF INNER COURAGE. It requires a lion’s strength to be distinct and unique and to swim against the tide. When the world talks of fashion, style and haircuts, it requires determination and grit to debate the motion. That is how the majority’s soft power works. It is an attempt to impose one’s culture, one’s viewpoint, one’s way of doing things on others in a way that the imposed gullibly accepts. As I learnt at school, it manufacturers consent – yes it manufactures it indeed by an overtly mechanical process.

4. Another thing that people often overlook in the dignity of differences. The most beautiful thing about differences is diversity which facilitates mutual enrichment and knowledge.


5. Another factor for assimilation is DISRESPECT. When an individual becomes illusioned with the core of his faith and the beliefs that hitherto carved his identity, he casually jettisons all the symbols associated with the belief as a 'bold' act of freedom and detaches himself from that community. For instance, a girl deciding to take off her burqa (remember I am not making a judgment about a faith by this example and this also does not mean that removing burqa is assimilation in the crowd and that not removing is somehow an act of courage, it may actually be the other way round, as per context).

6. Lastly, I feel that majority in this world are driven by a herd mentality. It’s a herd of sheep with a few roaring lions who have kept their identity intact, rest have shaven and joined the herd of sheep.

So what is exactly an ‘identity’? It is an amalgam of religion, language, culture, customs, symbols, traditions – something into which all of us are born – it is real, visible, palpable.
If we have respect for it and pride in it, we will retain it. Otherwise we will abandon it and assimilate.

Eclair - Illuminating Lives and Touching Souls

They are everywhere, hordes of street children, some of them rag pickers, others working as young maids and helpers with their parents in measly conditions, who romp around the streets all day until they are strong enough to do the heavy jobs and become bread earners.

And on the other end, there are so many of us, students who are free in vacations, or otherwise who have enough time to whine away on gossip, parties and facebook. Éclair (French word meaning enlightened) sought to bridge the gap. High school and college students turned teachers to these lovely street kids,…no ‘sweet’ kids! Started as a small informal class under the shade of a tree in a community park, éclair has now blossomed into a street school chain working in Ludhiana, Amritsar, Delhi and Sriganganagar.

The concept is to involve high school students and college students in imparting education to street kids in urban areas, thus channeling their free time and enthusiasm to the strata which needs it. All you need is a park, street kids and a bit of enthusiasm. You don’t need a room even!

Éclair now has about 15 spirited young volunteers, mostly college students who teach poor kids in parks in the evenings. The curriculum is flexible and context based. We start with the alphabet, English or Hindi, according to what is thought as suitable for the kids, for them to get enrolled in nearby schools. Eventually, counting and basic science is taught through innovative teaching techniques. Since most of us are students, we make sure that kids don’t get bored with what we teach and repetition and drilling don’t make our classrooms dull.

More than elementary knowledge, these kids are taught practical skills that they need the most in the kind of circumstances they live. Activities like how to cross road, knowing traffic lights, how to wash hands, how to brush are organized by our volunteers. All our volunteers are students, so we have a variety of curriculum here. Thanks to our BDS friends who help us in the tooth brushing activities while the Humanities friends introduce maps in our class – the kids love identifying the little India on the big world map. Our teen volunteers usually download interactive educational content on their cellphones and introduce in the classes which is thoroughly enjoyed by our kids. We have a Nepalese kid in our class too, lending it a multicultural touch.

Street kids are intellectually sharp and smart. They already know a lot of things around through experience and just viewing others. But the circumstances restrict their learning. We were reminded of this harsh reality on the very first day of the class when one of us told them all to bathe daily from next day onwards and then come to the class. One of the kids Ramjaan did not appear the next morning. When we asked the rest about it, they said, “Medam Ji, Ramjaan does not have any water connection in his house…so he couldn’t bathe and hence did not come”. It pains us when we discover the complex economics intertwined there.

The aim is to reform the outlook of the kids – they now know what is it to dream and to aspire. Éclair volunteers are doing a good job by being agents of hope for these kids and empowering their lives with quality education. Most of our éclair kids are now enrolled in nearby schools, an achievement that makes us all smile with pride. The success of an éclair class is gauged by the volume of its shrinkage!

Éclair has been publicizing primarily through Facebook. It’s simple, cheap and time saving. Most of us have huge friend following on social networking sites – that is what we use to network. We have been posting updates and pictures which have virtually flooded us with requests for volunteering and contributing.

We aim to build a deep long term commitment with the future of these kids; be the strength to give them better lives and eventually take éclair on a country wide scale to build a better nation.

* If you would like to support us or start an éclair nearby, contact us at eclairstreets@gmail.com