Fasting and democracy

Gautam Adhikari in this article makes three points:

• Democracy in this largest of all democratic nations seems to be working fine "at first glance"
• there's a lot that happens in the way we conduct our political life in between elections that is deeply disturbing
• Anna Hazare's fast-unto-death is a clear instance of misunderstood democracy...it's blackmail

I am left quite disturbed by the first, agree with the second and really chirped up at the third. Let's take this one by one.

Our democracy "working fine"??!!! Sure, we vote regularly, throw out parties in power, etc etc - but are these the only indicators of a fine working democracy? Criminals as lawmakers, dynasties in politics, corruption in legislatures - surely these could also be indicators of the "fineness" of our democracy.

Aren't these disturbing enough? Do we need to look at only those things that happen between elections to be disturbed?

Anna Hazare's fasting as blackmail - absolutely. And thank God for it. And it worked. For more than four decades, there has been a shortage of political will to combat corruption. On the contrary, first there was a tendency to turn a blind eye to it - witness that famous and witless request to 'Thoda kuch de do (Give him a little something)" in the case of Dharma Teja. During the Licence Raj, corruption was institutionalized. Now, of course, we have cabinet ministers in jail - not a proof of the fineness of our democracy, but more of the independence form political interference of our investigating agencies and the judiciary.

During the latest round of skirmishes between Anna and team and the Government, the reluctance of Government to do anything serious about tackling corruption had been totally apparent. If an attempt to show the will of crores of Indians, sick and disgusted and dismayed by corruption to an unresponsive Government is blackmail, so be it. Let's do it a lot more!!

Thank GOD she ain't Anna!

One of the biggest problems about the media blitz around Anna Hazare is that one is exposed to a barrage of comments, views, opinions, etc from 'experts', 'commentators' and self-appointed guides of perception that our fecund country breeds like rabbits. Hence, whether one likes it or not, one comes across stuff like "I'd rather not be Anna" by Arundhati Roy in the Hindu.

There are a set of assertions in this article which foxes me in this context of the fight against corruption:

• "the Maoists and the Jan Lokpal Bill have one thing in common — they both seek the overthrow of the Indian State"
• "‘The People' only means the audience that has gathered to watch the spectacle of a 74-year-old man threatening to starve himself to death if his Jan Lokpal Bill is not tabled and passed by Parliament"
• "...we've heard him say nothing about things of urgent concern. Nothing about the farmer's suicides in his neighbourhood, or about Operation Green Hunt further away. Nothing about Singur, Nandigram, Lalgarh, nothing about Posco, about farmer's agitations or the blight of SEZs. He doesn't seem to have a view about the Government's plans to deploy the Indian Army in the forests of Central India."
• "He does ... [support] Raj Thackeray's Marathi Manoos xenophobia and has praised the ‘development model' of Gujarat's Chief Minister who oversaw the 2002 pogrom against Muslims."
• In Anna's village community in Ralegan Siddhi, there have been no Gram Panchayat or Co-operative society elections in the last 25 years

Frankly, as a concerned citizen of India and a patriot, and on the face of it, at least as intelligent and well-aware as Roy, I can't figure out why these assertions find place in her article.

My line of thinking one this subject is simple: Indians are sick and tired of corruption. We want it out of our system and we know it won't disappear with a waft of a magic wand. But a start needs to be made somewhere. Anna Hazare is a rallying point for our dismay and disgust, this movement is our starting point and our new-found conviction that we can indeed do something about it.

I don't associate Anna with any other cause or issue, and as far as I can recall, I don't think that in the last few months, he has tried to grab our attention for any other purpose either.

So, why does Roy drag in things like suicides in his neighbourhood, or about Operation Green Hunt, Nandigram, Lalgarh, farmer's agitations, SEZs, the Government's plans to deploy the Indian Army in the forests of Central India, Narendra Modi, Marathi Manoos, Ralegan Siddhi... (I am sure Roy could have thought of a million other issues if she had put her mind to it). Why does Anna or anyone else for that matter have to have a point of view on all the issues that face our country? More important - having a point of view is easy, Roy shows us how extremely easy it is; she probably has thirty of them before breakfast - why should Anna or any one person be expected to do something about all of these issues?

He has picked on one, been able to mobilize support and attention to the extent of getting an extremely unwilling Government to finally get on its knees and cry uncle. Is this why Roy uses the phrase "overthrow of the Indian State?" If yes, since when is this ridiculous UPA Government equal to the Indian state?

Anna stands for the move to eradicate corruption - hopefully there will be other Annas who will take up and champion the other causes that Roy has listed, and do something about them, beyond just talk. Let's not expect one person to do everything - in our country of a billion plus people, there will be more Annas.

One other thing - since when is Roy the arbiter of who or what is "the People"? How did she come to the conclusion that the 'the people' only means what she wishes it to mean? Come on Roy, we Indians are infinitely more intelligent than you seem to give us credit for. Here's a story about people who did not gather to watch Anna fast, but went a little beyond that.

From the start of the latest round of Anna vs the UPA, the Congress has attempted at character assassination. Manish Tiwari said that Anna was “neck deep in corruption”. Since then, interestingly, there has been a retraction, and there has been reports of Tiwari being dragged to court for defamation. There was a news item that Anna was a deserter from the Indian Army; this attempt also backfired. Maybe there were other attempts as well - I don't recall.

In David Lean's classic "Lawrence of Arabia", there is this classic one-liner: "Is he your tongue?" I am tempted to ask Roy the question "whose tongue are you?"

The phony intimacy of the global village

A couple of weeks ago, I was reading Graham Petrie's 1970 book on Francois Truffaut, and I came across this wonderful phrase which I have used as the title for this post. “The phony intimacy of the global village.” Perhaps this phrase shows its age: “the global village”, was a product of the 1960s US. Invented by possibly the first guru of the 1960s generation, Marshall McLuhan, he created this term, and popularized it in his books "The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man" and "Understanding Media". McLuhan described how the globe has been contracted into a village by electric technology and the instantaneous movement of information from every quarter to every point at the same time. In bringing all social and political functions together in a sudden implosion, electric speed heightened human awareness of responsibility to an intense degree.

T years before the invention of the Internet, Marshall McLuhan had already presupposed its existence and impact and had described it as an "extension of consciousness" in "The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man".: "The next medium, whatever it is - it may be the extension of consciousness - will include television as its content, not as its environment, and will transform television into an art form. A computer as a research and communication instrument could enhance retrieval, obsolesce mass library organization, retrieve the individual's encyclopedic function and flip into a private line to speedily tailored data of a saleable kind."

It was media which created the global village. First, television made information available across the globe; satellite television made this simultaneous and immediate. It also helped create common aspirations, desires, consumptions, and finally common cultures. This created the pathway for global brands. Examples are too numerous to quote. In any case, this phenomenon too obvious to need explanation and examples.

With the arrival of the Internet, a new dynamic entered the equation. Internet is not the preserve of the media empires; it is real democracy at work – for the people, of the people, by the people. (check out the actual quotation) While huge corporations 'own' significant platforms funded by advertising revenues, without you and I providing 'content', these platforms are worth nothing.

Why 'real' democracy? Consider this. Two people, sitting in a car in Egypt, launched the Arab Spring in Egypt. The Egyptian regime fell. The fall of Gaddafi has been similarly fueled by Facebook, Twitter, Skype, etc. The regimes in other Arab countries are under threat of popular revolt. Right here in India, the tsunami of popular support from young India behind Anna Hazare and his cause has been driven largely by digital platforms, and for free, rather than by traditional media, like television.

Two such platforms – Facebook and Twitter – have created this truly global village exactly as McLuhan had imagined; they are indeed the "extensions of consciousness" that McLuhan had described. Which is possibly the reason why so many people spend so much of their time on these. The world is now divided into four parts:

• Those of us who are on one or both of these
• Those of us who are not too good at using these platforms, but would rather die than acknowledge that we are not on either or these platforms
• And, of course, there are a few of us who, being contrarians, take pride in staying away from one or both of these and saying so aloud

So, now here we are – with our very own presences in the Internet space, connected with lots and lots of people through FB, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other such platforms. The last-named is possibly the most functional of all. When I need to find people with specific knowledge and skills for a specific job, this is one of the best ways to find them.

But FB and Twitter? I discovered the other day that I have more than six hundred friends on Facebook. Six hundred! Friends!! Somewhat astonished, I went through the list of my six hundred plus 'friends', and here's what I found:

• there is one distinct set of people who are students whom I had taught, and we stay in touch sporadically. But whenever we do get in touch, there is genuine affection and respect
• there is another set of people whom I had added on as friends some years ago, but with whom there hasn't been any exchange for many many moons. In some of these cases, I have had to scratch my head to recall who they are and why did I add them to my friends list. No doubt they are also assiduously scratching their heads at the same time for the same reason
  
• a third group are really friends going back many years – surely I don't need FB for them. We speak to each other on the phone pretty frequently, at least once a fortnight anyway, even if we are separated by the seven seas
• another group comprises old friends, lost years ago, but found – serendipity! - through FB. That's really great – a lot of the old affection still remains in many of these cases
• a fifth group are alumni from my alma mater – and on hindsight, this is also really great, because FB has helped build bridges across batches, geographies, disciplines, walks of life, etc and built a strong bond across two or three generations

This led me to ponder the phrase “phony intimacy”. If I did a quick count of my FB friends on the criterion of 'intimacy' (dictionary meaning: "close or warm friendship or understanding; personal relationship" as per Collins English Dictionary"), maybe 40% of the list would survive. Would I miss the balance 60? Probably not. Would this balance 60% of my 'friends' on FB miss me? Most probably not either. If I contacted this 60% tomorrow, I guess most of them scratch their heads to figure out who I am and why have I suddenly lurched out of the woodwork, and what do I want out of them.

And that's where the 'phony' part kicks in. And that's why FB and Twitter and other such platforms are such great marketing opportunities. My new book is ready for launch, so I need to drum up awareness for the product. So I go out and blitz all my friends in FB and Twitter and other such platforms about the book, how great it is, etc – I don't need to bother about intimacy at all, as long as each 'friend' is a prospective buyer of my book. I have switched from an 'intimate' person mode to a marketer mode. Remember this from the McLuhan quote earlier: "tailored data of a saleable kind?" That's my book - the tailored data of a saleable kind.

All this may sound cynical, and of course, I have exaggerated in some parts in order to make my point. It may be worthwhile for someone to research this area in some detail. For now, I would love to get some reactions from the readers of this blog.

India the patient country

This morning, on Independence Day, I glanced through the usual newspaper articles about where this country is going, what our young people think, what do our celebrities have to say - all the usual stuff. One sentence jumped out and grabbed me by the collar. A young lady states that "India is a patient country."

How very true, and how very insightful. India is today 65 years old as an independent nation - and I am not getting into any debate about the times of the Mauryas, Guptas, etal. Also, no jokes about 65 years old, hence a senior citizen. 65 is quite young for a nation.

I am impressed by the word "patient". I am 59 going on 60, and I can remember the pride with which my parents talked of Aug 15th, 1947, and the dreams for a new India which was going to be built. I remember, vividly, their passion and their love for this new India, in spite of the pain of partition, food riots, dependency on PL480 funds, not much milk to feed me, etc etc.

It was a dream in the minds of my parents, and millions of others like them. The leaders were trusted, they had sacrificed so much to get us Independence, they had suffered so much.

Dr Bidhan Chandra Roy was the then CM of West Bengal, and he was a practicing physician who had the common touch - in fact, I was taken to him as a baby for consultation, that's what my granny told me. Pandit Nehru, for all his upper class afflictions, and his stance against Netaji, was still trusted, though he certainly did not win the hearts and minds of my parents as completely as did Dr Roy. But, he was trusted and somewhat liked as well.

I remember how slowly their idealism faded. My father passed away just a few years ago, but till then, he still felt that India would make it big. Yes, he had hoped that it would happen in his lifetime, but okay, didn't happen. Then he had hoped it would happen in his son's lifetime. Well...somethings did happen, but no, not all of it. When he passed away, he said that this will definitely happen in the lifetime of his grandson, though he would not be alive to see it.

What he did mean by "making it big?" What did he want to happen? Very simple, really. Everybody would get a good square meal a day, a decent place to live in, a fair chance of going to school and get a decent education, a fair chance of getting a decent job with which he or she could sustain a family and educate their kids. And all these getting perpetuated over many generations.

No more starvation, no more starvation suicides, no more selling daughters into prostitution to provide for the next meal, etc. No more food riots. No more bribery, no more corruption. No more tugging your forelocks at your politicians and babus - after all, the spirit of nation building will make them honest, wouldn't it?

My mother's dream faded quite a bit faster than my dad's. For years now, she has no dreams about the future, except for whatever relates to her grandson. A one-time card-holding member of the undivided Communist Party of India, she tore this into little bits out of sheer disgust when Jyoti Basu became the CM of West Bengal. I remember the long tirades she used to launch into when I was still in school, and asked her questions about the political developments in post-Independence Day India. Then she clammed up, and refused to entertain questions like those anymore.

They had lost patience.

But India did not. I did not, nor did my wife or our friends. We felt that good things will happen - not just to us, but to all Indians.

And, yes, good things, some good things at least, did happen. P V Narasimha Rao happened, Manmohan Singh as FM (not the recent PM avatar) happened. Liberalisation happened.

Growth happened. All the usual pundits - Montek, Kamath, Gurcharan Das, ad infinitum ad nauseam - tell us all about it, and how good this is. They don't, of course, talk about what did not happen : redistribution of wealth - there are three estimates of the population below poverty line: these range from 28.5% to 38% to 50%. Scary, right? I don't which figure is correct - but they are all equally scary.

Kashmir is still a problem. China is still a threat. Many of the have-nots in India probably believe that they now belong to a new class - the never-will-haves.

I am losing patience, and fast.

India remains patient. She is built like that.

Will all Indians remain patient? And for all how long?

Very insightful - found this fascinating

How to Escape Perfectionism - Peter Bregman

According to the World Database of Happiness (yes, there is one), Iceland is the happiest place on earth. That's right, Iceland. Yes, I know it's cold and dark six months out of the year there. I'm just giving you the data. The secret to their happiness? Eric Weiner, Author of The Geography of Bliss, traveled to Iceland to find out. After interviewing a number of Icelanders, Weiner discovered that their culture doesn't stigmatize failure.Icelanders aren't afraid to fail — or to be imperfect — and so they're more willing to pursue what they enjoy. That's one reason Iceland has more artists per capita than any other nation. "There's no one on the island telling them they're not good enough, so they just go ahead and sing and paint and write," Weiner writes.

Which makes them incredibly productive. They don't just sit around thinking they'd like to do something. They do it. According to the psychologist Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi, who wrote the book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience,"It is not the skills we actually have that determine how we feel but the ones we think we have."

So if you think you're good at something, whether or not you are, you'll do it. The converse is also true: if you think you aren't good enough at something, you won't do it.

A friend of mine, Jeff, has wanted for some time to start a business teaching guitar*. But he hasn't yet. Why? When you sift through his various explanations and excuses it comes down to one simple problem.

He's a perfectionist.

Which means he'll never think he's good enough at guitar to teach it. And he'll never feel like he knows enough about running a business to start one.

Perfectionists have a hard time starting things and an even harder time finishing them. At the beginning, it's they who aren't ready. At the end, it's their product that's not. So either they don't start the screenplay or it sits in their drawer for ten years because they don't want to show it to anyone.

But the world doesn't reward perfection. It rewards productivity. And productivity can only be achieved through imperfection. Make a decision. Follow through. Learn from the outcome. Repeat over and over and over again. It's the scientific method of trial and error. Only by wading through the imperfect can we begin to achieve glimpses of the perfect.

So how do we escape perfectionism? I have three ideas:

1. Don't try to get it right in one big step. Just get it going.

Don't write a book, write a page. Don't create the entire presentation, just create a slide. Don't expect to be a great manager in your first six months, just try to set expectations well. Pick a small, manageable goal and follow through. Then pursue the next. This gives you the opportunity to succeed more often, which will build your confidence. If each of your goals can be achieved in a day or less, that's a lot of opportunity to succeed.

2. Do what feels right to you, not to others.

My wife Eleanor is a fantastic mother to our three children. Sleep is extremely important to her and in her early days of parenting she read a tremendous number of parenting books, each one with different advice on how to predictably get children to sleep through the night. Each expert contradicted the next. The only thing those books succeeded in doing was convince her she didn't know what she was doing. It was only after throwing all the books away that she was able to find herself as a parent. It's not that she found the answer. In fact, what helped is that she stopped looking for the answer. What she found was heranswer. And that allowed her to settle into her parenting. It made her calmer, more consistent, more confident. And that, of course, helped our children sleep better. By all means, read, listen, and learn from others. But then put all the advice away, and shoot for what I consider to be the new gold standard: good enough.

Be the good-enough parent. The good-enough employee. The good-enough writer. That'll keep you going. Because ultimately, the key to perfection isn't getting it right. It's getting it often. If you do that, then, eventually, you'll get it right.

3. Choose your friends, coworkers, and bosses wisely.

Critical feedback is helpful as long as it's offered with care and support. But the feedback that comes from jealousy or insecurity or arrogance or without any real knowledge of you? Ignore it.

And if you're a manager, your first duty is to do no harm. A friend of mine, Kendall Wright, once told me that a manager's job is to remove the obstacles that prevent people from making their maximum contribution. That's as good a definition as I've ever heard.

And yet sometimes, we are the obstacle. As managers, we're often the ones who stand in judgment of other people and their work. And when we're too hard on someone or watch too closely or correct too often or focus on the mistakes more than the successes, then we sap their confidence. And without confidence, no one can achieve much.

Catch someone doing seven things right before you point out one thing they're doing wrong. Keep up that 7:1 ratio and you'll keep your employees moving in the right direction.

These three ideas are a good start. Don't worry about following them perfectly though. Just well enough.