Justice

I have been thinking of writing about JUSTICE as I see the concept influencing my life and those of people around.

I define justice as ‘rightful quid pro quo’ – I get back what I deserve. If I contributed 50% to a project, a test or in organizing an event, I should get back AT LEAST 50% of the credit.

Credit, I understand can be a subjective term subject to individual egos and expectations of rewards. But I guess it would not be wrong to say that assessment of an individual’s worth, if transparent can turn out to be more acceptable and less debatable.

I had high opinion of the World Lung Foundation and its DU arm DUSFI (Delhi University Smoke Free Initiative), may be because of the creative names and the impact it would leave on a first time listener, until yesterday. At the essay competition organized under the initiative, a series of events and organizational mismanagement left me with a bad taste about WLF.

Surprisingly the judgment criteria at the Essay Contest reminded me of those old school head masters, one often reads of, who exist in backward schools in remote areas. Consider the marking scheme at the contest which was supposed to be an ‘essay writing contest’ – 30 for written essay, 30 for summary presentation of the essay and 40 for an interview with the candidate. Impressive!

Now consider how the latter category induced such level of subjectivity into the judgment criteria to the extent that the ingenuity of the essay received no credits at all.

Although the essay dealt with ‘the social, economic and environmental implications of tobacco consumption’, the interview related to none of the aspects. Neither did it try to assess the degree of sensitivity of the candidate to the issue. The kind of questions asked at the interview were the following:

1.       Name some of the chemicals that tobacco is composed of.

2.       What is the Green Tobacco Sickness caused by tobacco? How can we prevent it?

3.       Give me the date on which this act on tobacco was passed.

4.       Why is eucalyptus planted along with tobacco crop in farms?

It is precisely these kinds of questions which reminded me of those boring school EVS textbooks which we were encouraged to learn by heart to vomit out in the exams at school. The very difference between knowledge and education is that the latter is composed of stuff that cannot be googled. Education of a person is a cumulative sum of years of experience amidst knowledge.

I fail to understand how the real worth of a person would be gauged by mere factual interrogation which even a parrot could recite without hitch. Not to mention, the experience brought old school memories back.

                                                                 

I expected the initiative to be an eye-opener for students, something that would elicit our opinions on tobacco control and assess us on our ingenuity to think BEYOND the obvious! That is what most college level initiatives are supposed to be.

Alas! The school-headmasterly clichéd mindsets were hard to change, I realized – in fact, when I communicated the above views to the Director present there, he told me, “Everyone has copied the essay from the internet, so this interview is actually gauging how much you have actually retained” – he enunciated as if he was on the lookout of worthy parrots who could recite dates, figures and facts.

Strangely, at my interview I was told in candid words – ‘Miss Kaur, let me congratulate you at the outset because you are the only candidate who has written the entire essay by herself – rest all, as we have read, are fascimiles’

I felt as if I had bumped into a wrong place, being congratulated for the mere fact that I had composed an essay of my own and not through a ‘Ctrl C - Ctrl V’ act!

As it turned out in the end, the interview had greater weightage in the sum total i.e. factual rote learning was given credit over ingenuity and people who had shamelessly copied stuff and signed their names off it, were crowned as the 'best'.

What I argue here, is that the parameters taken into account compromised justice. Different people can give differential weights to different parameters - but the same if revealed beforehand in a transparent manner, can confer greater likelihood on the fairness of decisions.

I participated in my first British Parliamentary style of debate in my class 12 at school. The thing I liked the most here was the way in which adjudication was done. After the candidates were done, the judges would come to the podium and justify - 'you get x credits since you mentioned a, b, c, and d arguments which no other contestant could refute'. And usually the credits would be proportional to the number of arguments so that the question of subjectivity would not crop in. Each argument thus was given a default weightage of 1. An additional defense of the argument could attract another brownie point.

From a variety of experiences, I guess it would not be wrong to conclude that injustice happens behind closed doors, windows and curtains. It is corrupt practices specifically which undermine the fairness of decisions taken - be it in the bureaucracy too. The reason why people protest against corruption is that it compromises proportionate rewards to an individual for his effort and levies undue penalties on those who do not even deserve them - say waiting in line for days to get a simple work done in a public office.

And that is why RTI is so dear to us. It makes things transparent, makes the stakeholders conscious of public gaze and ensures speedy and effective justice. :)

Election fever

This short visit to Punjab was a novel experience. Had a chance to see some live campaigning by candidates from parties of all shades.

Attending a GD at the head office of Sukriet, a local NGO – I had a chance to engage into conversation with a PPP candidate from my constituency. I had a high view of the People’s Part of Punjab – not because it was headed by a Stephanian but because of the fiscal consolidation policies that I supported. I have been critical of excessive populist subsidies to large farmers back home – I call them populist because the subsidies do not serve a definitive purpose, I still get to see huge disturbing statistics of farmer suicides in a quick scan of the Ludhiana Tribune. Subsidies like humans should be mortal and should have a limited life span during the course of which a community can be supported and brought to a requisite starting line.

And so this short one-to-one meeting with the PPP candidate turned out to be flip-flop as the candidate ducked questions, knew little about the economy of Punjab as  a whole, and turned out to be someone who had joined the party just because no body else would give him a ticket because of nepotism within other long established parties.

The Story of A Driving License

"A simulator? Wow!"

I look at my friend wide eyed as she spells forth her experience of applying for a driving license.
She tells me how she was instructed to drive a perfect 'eight' on the road and was tested for her knowledge of road signs and that she was even made to drive on a simulator.

That is how things work in Bangalore, and in Hyderabad as another friend tells me.

Guess how it works in Ludhiana?

On a chilly winter morning, I accompany my dad to the Mini Secretariat. There is a new Suvidha Centre at the furnished place with a line of window counters. The system is efficient - you get allotted to a window number from outside, you seat yourself on the elegant bench and watch the Plasma TV screen while waiting for your token number to appear on the little red neon board above the window.

Your number appears, you get up and submit your documents, the DTO - probably experienced in the art of physiognomy looks at you and signs on your papers which say ''This person is found fit for driving and has cleared the driving test."

You pose in front of the webcam, you sign on the swanky electronic signature device and there...its done!

And there I got a call from my dad last week, ''We just received your driving license by post!" Just on time - you receive the laminated card.

No tests, no simulators, no screening - probably you'd call it a hassle-free system, but yeah at the end of the day - I miss the simulator.

"Ludhiana roads must be really unsafe then -- with such people driving?", my friend asks me after hearing that little tale.

"Hmmm...not really, I guess - Its the Darwinian survival of the fittest that makes all of us move on the Ludhiana roads..."

Afterthoughts

Probably I can write a blog every day at 9.35 am since this is the time I am flushed with all sorts of emotions - anger, rage, sadness, helplessness and a desire to turn all of them productive. 

                                                          

Ms Poonam Kalra had told us the first day, how this paper - Indian Economic Development since 1947 is a very pessimistic paper. It loads you with all the data and gruesome figures and facts about what all is wrong with Indian economy. Unfortunately, it does not provide any solutions, because YOU are expected to look for the solutions.

Solutions, I don’t have to even attempt to start thinking of them – I’m taught in a way that rouses the rebel in me…and solutions have to be crafted by none other than the youth.

This morning’s lecture was about comparative growth and development analysis of states within India. We set out to identify the reasons why Kerala and a state like Himachal Pradesh outperformed every other state. Two reasons that stood out apart from education was provision of PUBLIC UTILITIES and PUBLIC ACTION as an essential democratic process. Democracy, as I see, is not only about going to Ramlila Grounds and protesting with the crowd. There is much more relevance at the individual rather than collective level. How an individual deals with corruption at his level, when HE is faced with a bribing officer is the real test. Does he protest, does he raise his voice, does he use the public facilities, does he report, does he complain to the police, does he sting the scene or does he passively acquiesce and pay the bribe as a one-time quick fix solution?

What lacks in most states is this ability to protest.

I remember how heavenly excited I was when Mam Kochhar, my political science teacher had introduced in those powerful, soul-stirring words the chapter on RIGHTS in the constitution.

‘I have a RIGHT to something!’ and she had banged the desk and enunciated in a very demanding tone– I had never encountered such a bold description of the Articles 19 to 22.

The fact that people are not aware what to do, when they are faced with injustice lies at the core! The complexity of the procedures, the multiple levels of hierarchy end up making ‘justice seeking’ a time consuming and inefficient process.

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 :)