क्लासरूम के लेक्चेर्स नेट पर -3

बी.ऐ भाग दो में पूँजी एवं संपत्ति का भारतीय राजनीति का क्या योगदान है , इस विषय पर एक छोटा सा पॉडकास्ट । इसकी विशेषता यह है कि इसमें वामपंथी दृष्टिकोण न लेकर Libertarian दृष्टिकोण से इस मुद्दे को देखा गया है। सुनिए , क्लीक यहाँ करें।

क्लासरूम के लेक्चेर्स नेट पर -2

इसी श्रृंखला में बी.ऐ भाग दो के छात्रों के लिए भारतीय राजनीती की भूमिका पर एक छोटा सा लेक्चेर निम्न ऑडियो फाइल में उपलब्ध है। क्लिक करें

क्लास रूम के लेक्चेर्स नेट पर

कुछ समय से सूचना टेक्नोलॉजी के फायदों को सीधा क्लास्सरूम से जोड़ने की कोशिश कर रहा था। टेप रिकॉर्डर से रिकॉर्ड करना तो आसान है पर उस अनालोग फाइल को डिजीटल फाइल में बदलना न केवल मुश्किल है बल्कि महंगा भी है। फिर किसी ने AUDACITY SOFTWARE के बारे में बताया और कुछ प्रयोग करने पर बात बन गई। बी. ऐ के छात्रों के लिए कुछ लेक्चेर्स रिकॉर्ड करने का सोचा है। चूंकि मेरा विषय राजनीति-शास्त्र है, इसलिए उसी से जुड़े कुछ टोपिक्स को धीरे-धीरे कर डालता रहूँगा। पहला लेक्चेर बी.ऐ -भाग तीन के छात्रों के लिए अन्तर-राष्ट्रीय राजनीति के एक महत्वपूर्ण मुद्दे -डॉलर की प्रभुसत्ता पर है। जिसकी ऑडियो फाइल पर क्लिक करें।

Hernando desoto-a discovery for me

For some days or so, I have been reading something interesting thanks to a reference from Sauvik Chakraverti. It is about a Peruvian Economist, Hernando Desoto who re-invented the concept of Property in the informal or extr-legeal sector of the economy. I have been in the process of assimilating this brilliant thought in the context of Indian informal economy which is much larger than even the official GDP of the country. But as the idea is too profound for me to reflect immediately in detail, I am reproducing an article by Hernando Desoto that was published in the Time in April 16, 2001.

The Secrets of Nonsuccess by Hernando de Soto
"Picture a country, whose private property laws are so deficient that no one can tell who owns what. Where home addresses cannot be easily verified and people cannot be forced to pay up debts; a system where people cannot use their house or business as collateral to secure credit. Picture a property system where a successful business cannot split its stock to sell to other investors. Where there isn't even a standardized and commercially viable way to describe assets.
Welcome to the daily routine of the Third World, where five sixths of the world's population lives. Their living conditions embody a paradox: Capitalism should, supposedly, be the solution to global underdevelopment, however, so far it hasn't had the opportunity to prove it. What's even worse is that it hasn't even tried. In a capitalist economy all operations are based in the laws of property and its transactions, however, Third World property laws do not include 80% of its population's assets and transactions. The dispossessed are as far apart from economic activity, as blacks and poor whites once where under South African apartheid.
Why is this so important? Conventional microeconomic reform programs have always ignored the poor, assuming that they do not have the resources upon which to build and generate aggregate value. Flagrant error: I, along with my team of researchers, recently finished a series of studies on Third World underground economies and concluded that, in fact, the disposed are no so poor after all.
Their assets in Peru amount to close to 90.000 million dollars, or 11 times over the value of all the stocks listed in the Peruvian Stock Market and 40 times more than the sum of the foreign aid that the country has gotten since the end of WWII. In Mexico the estimated amount is 315.000 million, seven times more than the value of PEMEX, that country's national oil corporation.
The real problem lie in the fact the poor and the middleclass are not allowed to use their assets as the more privileged classes are. One of the great political challenges facing the Third World is to have these goods move from the "extralegal" sector, where they stand now, to a less excluding legal property system, where they may be more productive for all, in addition to generating capital for their owners.
Third World governments have already proved that it is possible to reform deficient property systems, at least when it comes to dealing with the rich. For instance, in 1990 the Peruvian Telephone Company (CPT) was quoted at 53 million dollars total value. However, the government was unable to sell CPT stock to foreign investors, due to problems with property titles over many of its assets. Peruvians decided to gather their best and brightest legal minds to come up with a legal title, in accord with standards set by the global economy.
As a result, the property was easily converted to stocks. Rules to protect third party interests and to generate enough confidence to attract credit and investors were generated. The legal team also designed laws for litigation in patrimonial cases, bypassing the cumbersome and corrupt Peruvian judicial system. Three years later, CPT entered the world of liquid capital selling for a total of 2.000 million dollars, or 37 times its initial market value. That's how far the power of a good property system can go. For the dispossessed to have access to legal titles for their assets so they can have a tool to free their potential capital, it would be necessary to know what is it they really own. How could we know this?
Nine years ago the Indonesian Government invited me as a consultant to identify the extralegal sector assets, in which 90% of its population lives. Far from being an expert about that country, I noticed that whenever I went to a rice farm a different dog came barking out. Dogs did not have to have a PhD to know their master's assets. Therefore my advise to their Cabinet members was for them to start "listening to these barks." Ah, Jakum Adat, the people's rights", answered one of the Secretaries.
The history of western capitalism tells in fact how governments, during hundreds of years, have been adapting "the people's rights" to uniform rules and codes that all could understand and abide by. Properties represented by dogs, fences and armed guards were turned into titles, stock and certificates. Once the west managed to focus a home property title instead of the house itself, it gained a great advantage over the rest of the world. Titles, stocks and patrimonial laws allowed to consider the goods, not just for what they are - a house as a refugee - but, for what they could be turned into - collateral to obtain credit to start a business - Almost seamlessly, through standardized property systems that integrate all, western nations build a stairway that allowed its citizens to claim up from the chaotic underground of the material world to a representative universe where capital is created.
Far from being a problem, the poor are in fact a solution. And now is the precise time for politicians to start thinking of them in these terms, and not the just the elites, who would be in charge to define property."

Do schools kill creativity?

Taking a break from the series "Waiting for DropD", I happened to watch a beautiful video lecture by Sir Ken Robinson on TED. I would like to share that with all of my readers.

Waiting for DropD-4

A couple of months back, I was delivering a lecture on Mahabharata in an Institute of Mass Communications. A lot of questions were asked after that. One question that really turned out to be outstanding and long-lasting was, “Why lust is considered as negative only? I tried to answer that question but I feel that there is possibility of a re-look at this issue because there are still some problems hidden behind it. Without focusing on them, there is remote possibility of understanding the real crux. The very first point is why we feel the need to define something as lust and something not as lust. The second point is why there has to be a public definition of lust instead of private definition. The third point is if the definition of lust can be determined before an act or inside an act. Let's discuss all three points one by one in the context of “The Reader”.
Michael and Hanna have involved themselves into an act of “lust”. He is a 15-year-old boy and she is a 36-year-old woman. He is not even an adult and therefore the question of being consenting partners doesn't even arise. There is no sexual compatibility as far as the social definitions of permissible sex are concerned. In a mediaeval age, Hanna would have been convicted as a witch and would have been burnt alive. This time, things are not that bad and safety of the situation is that their affair remains a very private matter unknown to anybody. The best that could be safely extracted out of the situation is that this affair should have no future; it should end in a permanent manner. It should be forgotten and should leave no trace of any sort. But things don't turn out to be as per expectations. She resurfaces in his life on a much bigger canvas where he would have to retrace the innocence of a lost relationship. It's a story where both Michael and Hanna don't even bother about the question of lust rather they allow this relationship to undertake much deeper and riskier enterprise.
The first point is why we have institutionalised lust as a vice or something very negative. Do we mean to say that we are very clear about what virtue is or what purity is? Do you mean to say that we have decided the methods of transformation from an impure to pure soul? Are we really in a position to decide who is pure and who is not? Of course, this is a very serious political question and it will create a lot of problems particularly related with caste and gender. If we even ignore that, we still have a deeper social conditioning through which we have developed the formulae of purity versus impurity. Such kind of fixed equations create a kind of hegemonic structure through which the entire space is reconfigured as comprising moral space in contrast to immoral space. The moment this dichotomy is created, public pressure towards the expansion of moral space drives out the immoral space. “Only I can exist and you shall die”-this is the kind of response that becomes the commonsense of morality. What happens eventually is that the so-called immoral space is officially driven out of all the spaces of public engagement and resurfaces in the hidden forms in the so-called moral space. The enemy that we drove outside the walls of our moral city is back in every house, in every corner and in every soul. The tragedy of this phenomenon is that despite this failure of human design, people don't re-think about the notion of space. It has never been moral or immoral rather it is simply there and it will remain simply there. But we find very difficult to engage with the space as it is. It is fluid sometimes turbulent and sometimes pacific. This natural reality disturbs our comfort zone. Only a few want to remain in this uncomfortable zone of eternal chaos. In order to develop suitable definitions, we transform chaos from a natural phenomenon into a negative value. This begins our march into the static but comfortable domain of artificiality. This is also the beginning of the unnatural. Precisely at this moment, a need is felt to determine this ‘unnatural’ into something dangerous. That's where lust is defined. The existence of lust is based upon the denial of nature. All the structures based upon this denial have to ensure that lust should be banned from the system but it goes nowhere rather it stays and keeps staying very powerfully.
The second point is directly the result of the first one. The moment morality is codified, it becomes an instrument of law. It can be used as a mode of control. This kind of control may be direct or indirect but it produces the same result. It acts as a censor in our lives. Instead of allowing a natural order to emerge and evolve, there is constructed a wall and a barrier. Human behaviour now comes within this black and white category of rule and punishment. In total contrast to it, there is a private equation between the two individuals. It can also be called a mutual binary between the two. The ugliness of a situation gets enhanced when the public definition overpowers the domain of mutual binary. A man and a woman may want a lot from each other but the most they want is to explore the other without any inhibition. A dead-end on this front means the death of a relationship but who should have the authority of delivering this final judgement. How can someone outside determine the destiny of two persons who are deeply related? Let a question of lust be decided first by a man and a woman. Let them face each other in the presence of lust. The depth of mutual binary is such a powerful force that it can submerge a thousand definitions of lust. But generally, people are so conditioned that they don't look into the eyes of lust. Somehow, they try to avoid it. I don't mean to say that one can have an interview with lust rather it is like a shadow. If you run away from it, it will follow you but if you face it and go close to it, it will start diminishing to the point of extinction. The mockery of the situation is that most of the people are more concerned with the lust of others but not with the lust of one's own self. This kind of preoccupation takes the shape of consistent eavesdropping. They find all the methods to peep into the so-called lustful relationship of others but they remain idiotic enough not to face their own lust. The development of institution of lust is based upon a collective embrace of falsehood and fear. That is why love despite being the most desired entity, does not evolve because the first door of love and lust is the same i.e. attraction of beauty.
The third point flows out of the second one. Can the definition of lust be decided before an act or within an act? As far as the public definitions are concerned, there is only one answer that it can be decided only before the beginning of an act. This is also a kind of self-serving argument where first definition of lust is created, then authority of judgement is created and finally the methodology of judgement is decided. These kinds of control machines will only bother about sustaining their own structures of falsehood and status quo. They will never bother to allow two individuals to come out with their own definitions. But a simple question can unsettle this entire equation. How can a seed be declared unfit for growth without even giving it a chance of growth? The possibility of an ecological experience between a couple can arise only if they keep exploring the complexity of a relationship. If it is stratified, things will never grow to the extent of being rewarding and beautiful. In case of Michael and Hanna, the relationship drops all forms of falsehood, fear and artificiality. They go beyond these constructs to build a new definition and a new ecological moment for them.

Waiting for DropD-3

“The Reader” is still in my mind. I had been waiting for a stage when my lust for cinema could transform itself into love for cinema. Love here means a kind of meditative relationship with the image and the theme of the film. Generally, cinema gets reduced down into a heap of incoherent images which somebody wants to unshackle but is unable to. Of late, I feel that I have learned to relax with a film, agitate with a film and live with a film. That is what I call the beginning of a relationship with cinema. When I thought of starting this series, I had in my mind this particular series of relationships with the landmark films that I have seen through and lived through. Cinema is just not a context anymore rather it is the text, the subtext, inter-text and the hypertext also. I know that this kind of visuality is not same as a phenomenon of “darshan” would be. Still, the visual discourse is the closest to the kind of experience I am looking for. “The Reader” has somewhat fallen into this personal category.
The historical context of this film is built around the tragedy of Holocaust. Hanna Schmitz has two identities in this film, a public and a private. On a private level, she is a secretive human being; she doesn't seem to have friends or family and she doesn't seem to be much concerned with the broader issues of her times. But she is a compassionate human being. She helps young Michael when he is suffering from fever. She doesn't know him but that doesn't deter her from caring him. He turns out to be an accidental partner in her lonely life. She doesn't seem to be much attached with him but still, she gets passionately involved with him. He is an intelligent student of classical languages and literature. He reads out some brilliant pieces of fiction to her. A sudden eruption of beauty and pleasure happens to create a magical equation that heals her long concealed handicap-an inability to read and write. Her desire to explore the aesthetic world is fulfilled through a chance meeting with Michael when he manifests his reading skills. He seems to have an idea of her incapacity but does not reveal it because he loves reading out to her. A bond of love and literature binds both of them into a memorable affair though the intensity of feeling is much visible in Michael than in Hanna. To her, the relationship is more like an exchange of gifts. She receives the gift of aesthetic word from him and he receives the gift of love from her. The privacy of this arrangement fits well into the solitary life of hers.
On a public level, she is a German serving as a tram conductress in the times of Hitler. She serves a system which is openly revengeful in total contrast to her private secretive and compassionate nature. She looks at the system only from the angle of duty that enables her to earn her livelihood. She's neither interested nor seems to be capable of understanding the macro-issues related with the ethics of a system. In the pursuit of this narrow single-mindedness, she happens to commit a responsibility which is not just a war crime but also a crime against humanity. After being promoted as a security guard in German army, she is given the custody of Jews for whom only death has been chosen. She keeps herself locked in the narrow confines of duty and allows all kinds of injustice and cruelty to them though she doesn't participate in any such act directly. Her public identity is that of a criminal who is accused of crime against humanity.
Michael is torn apart between these two extremes. How can he accept the simultaneity of these two opposite identities? Is it a tragedy for only Michael or even for the entire Europe? What to talk of Europe, is it not common to Indian subcontinent where genocide and ethnic cleansing have resurrected themselves on multiple occasions in different forms whether it was partition, 1984 “Blue Star” operation, Godhra/Best Bakery or hundreds of caste-based clashes and so on. The possibility of recreating this story is present in so many moments and spaces all around that it is almost closer to being a universal story. In case of Europe, it was racial hegemony that destroyed human relationships the most. In case of Indian subcontinent, there are so many forms of hegemony built around caste, religion, gender, ethnicity and habitat that even relationship is made impossible in certain contexts. If I quote Ritwik Ghatak, I would say that there are “rows and rows of fences” between the human beings. In terms of imprisonment, I feel there is no difference being an Indian or a Westerner. That is why hegemonic walls are the biggest obstacles for relationships. This film is a story of struggle against these walls, a story of transcendence and a story of purgation. It comprises three parts: the first part manifests revelation of beauty and its vanishing; the second part unravels the hidden pain and the third part shows the re-collecting of lost beauty and love.
This film also has one additional reason for me to write about it. A couple of months back, I happened to read a beautiful article on this film by a scholar, Shelly Walia in ‘The Frontline’. Under the title, “Tragedy of history”, Mr. Walia elaborated upon the theme of the film in the context of political philosophy. I could see him wading through the debates on justice to find the eternally missing meaning. He was flexible enough not to get jinxed over the static definitions of good and evil. He says in favour of Hanna Schmitz, “She has no pleasure in cruelty, but has acquired the faculty of shutting her mind to it. This is regimentation under the strict bureaucracy. She lacks the criminal mind......... the fact that Hanna Schmitz enjoys her teenage paramour reading to her from the classics and that she permits him to make love to her only after she has relished the reading shows that her reprehensible act does not come from an evil mind.” These words were hitting rightly at the philosophical puzzle that has been posed in this film. Love is a deeply private and universal enterprise. It has to find its way through the public constructions that are denial of love. Michael represents this long journey throughout. Hanna is represented as an indifferent person and Michael doubles up thinking and feeling on her behalf. After eight years of Hanna’s vanishing, he comes across her in a courtroom where she is under trial. She has been charged of being a complicit in a church fire that killed hundreds of mothers and children who were locked inside. She was security guard controlling access to the doors. She was doing her duty but in the pages of history, an act of genocide was being committed. After having such a sudden face-off with her lost love, he finds himself stretched beyond limits. Whom did he love? A criminal or a beautiful and a compassionate woman.