Design as if people mattered: A report

Settling down into the madness that is IISc, but had to complete a (somewhat tiny) report for my final semester here in JSS college, Mysore. It is an account of theoretical and practical issues and experiences that one should consider while trying to design something which has to be used by others. It’s main focus is on rural areas and LED lighting, but I believe that the principles are quite general in nature. The interplay of science with everything else is quite obvious in this report, if somewhat implicit since that was not the main focus. You can find the report here and the slides here, or check out the documentation section.

Review: A Pedagogue’s Romance by Krishna Kumar

Contrast between the Ideal and the Real

This book is a collection of the author’s short essays and deals with a wide range of topics, ranging from spitting and its implications to selection of ‘talented’ students for special attention to concern about lack of understanding of adolescent development in the Indian context to concern about elimination of Nature and Handicrafts from schools.

Anyone with an interest to work with children and would like to understand what one is getting into rather than jump right in and wreak unintended havoc (like yours truly) must give this book a shot. Not only does the author try to discuss the various reasons why education in India has become a new means of social exclusion, like the caste system, but also what can be done to make it better, and what should be the ultimate goal of an education.

Even though the themes are varied, all of them have a strong connection running through them: As the author puts it (paraphrased) :

Education is reflection in the process of relating (to one’s environment, society, etc )

Reflection, in the sense of leisured observation and understanding. Most of the author’s analyses use this as the analytical looking glass to view the system by, and obviously it fails miserably to live upto such an ideal. He discusses many problems which make education such a difficult system to reform like lack of social status for teachers, competitive and narrowly focused, results-oriented pedagogy and the social scenario within which a school is embedded. He also deals with gender issues and induction of everyday life into schooling.

He deplores a system which is so mixed up as to require a separate ‘value education’ or ‘moral education’ class. Another major issue, that of a scientifically based caste system which is being set up due to our primary schooling system, which eliminates almost 80% of children by class 10 takes up quite a bit of his time.

Culturally and linguistically relevant education is also something that he stresses and having handicrafts as a core curricular activity to both learn the value of manual labor and save the varied heritage of India which is fast disappearing.

Definitely worth anyone’s money.

Should we be worried about the (your favorite word here) Sene?

One has to stop watching NDTV news. They were among the most vocal in their campaign against the ‘Talibanization’ of Mangalore and almost suddenly went quiet and now are most vocal about Slumdog Millionaire, what with Anil Kapoor being their special correspondent and all. If they complain about ‘rightists’ stoking emotional fires in India for political purposes, they seem to be doing the same for commercial purposes. Now that we have appropriated an English film as our own and celebrating it, however grudgingly, everything else seems to go into the background.

But yes, the Rama Sene has almost completely gone off the TV/media radar for the moment, until they do something else  (someone else seems to have taken over the baton in Bangalore).  The media seems to have given them what they wanted: their two minutes in the limelight to show that they have ‘arrived’. The media showed, in its typical sensationalist form, an India that we are embarrassed of and would like to wish away. Talking to people not from the middle class in buses and trains, one gets a feeling that they are not as opposed to it as we would like them to be.

Social delinquency is not as rare as one might imagine it to be. India has always been deeply divided on the questions of caste, class, gender and religion. Things always seem to be simmering below, and sporadic outbursts are a public manifestation of these issues. It is not as if the Sene members woke up one day and decided to beat up people.

But the million dollar question is : Can this cause widespread social change ? If it is, then all minorities and women in India are in for some trouble. In answering this, we must first realise that all nationalist movements (be they Indian nationalism, Hindu, Kannada, whatever) have always been urban phenomena. The members of the Congress were upper middle class professionals and businessmen, Kannada Rakshana Vedike has most of its rallies in Tier-1 and Tier-2 cities, and Mangalore has been simmering for some time now, on questions of conversion and culture, BJP’s main voter base has always been in the cities. So, nothing in the scale at which the Taliban operated can be achieved, all the more so since violence cannot be made mainstream without a organised militia (which no *-Sene has, but the Sangh Parivar does, but not comparable in scale to the Police or the Army).

This means that making a Nationalist agenda on whatever grounds cannot be widely accepted if it does not have the blessings of mainstream political parties. The Hindu Renaissance that the BJP claims to be spearheading has taken years of organization, building of cadres ( both with legal sanction (RSS) and otherwise (Bajrang Dal, et al) ). Even with such an organized machinery, their coming into power can be blamed on the Congress Party’s incapacity to produce good leaders. No other nationalist organization, neither the Rama Sene or the Karnataka Rakshana Vedike have such firm ideological grounding or discipline. Also, militant actions make it easy for the State to deal with such organizations, and this makes it necessary for them to toe the line and reduce violent actions ( Anyone remember large scale violence by the KRV recently ?).

The BJP itself has had troubles implementing its agenda at a national level due to the fractured results that the Indian polity returns. Coalitions are hardly the ideal ground for pushing hardline policies. Then, it is unlikely that smaller, less organized movements can have much impact. They can capture the public imagination for some time, but the combination of existing rival interests (KRV has already broken into two factions, so has the Shiv Sena) and short term public memory makes it difficult to build on such gains.

Will conflicts based on caste, culture, religion go away anytime soon ? No. Will they be the major talking point of any political party ? Not anytime soon. Should we be worried about *-Sene ? In their present form, No.

Review: Russell’s Education and the Social order, Aiyar’s Smoke and Mirrors

The problem with long breaks in between writing blog posts is that too many things happen and recounting everything is usually tedious.

Finished Russel’s interesting views on education, which is put forth in his inimitable style. His main purpose in

Brick in the wall!

the book is to analyse the function that education plays in the modern nation-state. He also analyses its aims and what it actually ends up achieving. The range of topics covered is large, ranging from the effects of education on individualism, on how topics like religion, nationalism, sex, class feeling, competition are put forth in an educational institution to the big debate on home vs. school and how education is handled in Communist Russia.

For a logician, he is surprisingly forgiving about facets of our personality which are not governed by reason, like emotions and the subconscious. I have not read Russell in such a forgiving, pragmatic mood!! He seems to accept the tradeoff between individualism and stability, and between control and freedom of children. He is also quite happy and expectant of the results of the ‘Communist experiment’ going on in Russia, which was common to all the left-leaning intellectuals of that time.

The book tears apart the rigid, dogmatic system of education which he himself was probably subjected to, pointing out that it expects children to accept things that are patently incorrect (like the fact that his/her own country is the best in the world, and glorifying wars) and false on the pretext that they are ‘too young’ or their ‘minds must not be sullied’. He correctly understands that the education is built to consolidate the system which it represents.

To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, there are always two kinds of people: the ones who believe that people need to be saved from themselves and others that believe that people can be at their best if encouraged. The educational system is built by the former and Russell is obviously from the latter category, which leads to quite a clash. (Jefferson used this quote in the context of American political parties. No prizes for guessing which is which!) Russell supports an education system which is quite opposite to the one which is followed even to this day: one that encourages independent thinking and asking difficult questions. He understands the needs of social stability which is fostered by the experiences that a child has in school (i.e, socialization) but discourages moral codes being propagated by falsehoods, knowing that one, it does not really work, and two, finding out that something he/she believes in is false is not really good for morality.

Overall, excellent read. This is obviously not the place to discuss the book out, but I do recommend it!

The other book that I’m almost done with is Smoke and Mirrors by journalist Pallavi Aiyar.

The whys and hows of China

One thing good about books written by journalists is that they are heavy on data and reflections and light on philosophy. Thomas Friedman is an unfortunate exception to this category. Like the title of the book says, this is about the author’s experiences in a new, foreign world and how many of the things that she believed in like democracy and freedom of expresssion were put to the test in this paradox of a nation-state. I fortunately got the last copy from Sapna in Mysore, and it is turning out to be a very interesting and highly readable buy.

Some of the major themes that the book deals with are paradox of free market liberalism in the economy and communist repression in the political arena, the pervasiveness of the State in all facets of the country, from the psychology of the individual to the running of the Shaolin temple. The success of the Communist Party in entering the minds and imaginations of the common people is quite amazingly put out in this book. She also writes with amusement about the assumptions made by the Indians and Chinese about each other and the cultural faux pas which happen when one visits a banquet hosted by the other.

Grudingly, she also acknowledges the amazing efficiency of the State in building infrastructure (one hospital in seven days, yes SEVEN days), and although economic disparities are large, the abject poverty that one finds in India is not present. The excellent social infrastructure that China possesses has even been appreciated by Amartya Sen. But she notes the underlying tensions that an oppressive regime is bound to generate which is kept in check by the Party by stupendous economic growth and new found love for religious tolerance and Confucianism (which promotes social harmony, they say! Mostly lip service, but anything to keep the people from, ironically, revolting).

She stays in a part of Beijing that has not yet been bulldozed to make way for skyscrapers and notes the huge difference in the perceptions, lifestyles of the people here.

All in all, two good additions :)

Sociable sociopaths – is it the system ?

System Analysis is simply another way of looking at the world, trying to look at the structure and composition of an aggregate of anything from computer code to people to machines.

For those unaware of terminology (which would be anyone who has not taken a systems course), a system is an entity with certain inputs and outputs, and which converts inputs to outputs through a certain mechanism. It can be completely defined by its inputs, outputs, external limits and feedback systems. Limits determine the boundaries within which the system must operate, like the size of our parliament is limited by the number of rich and powerful idiots in the country. Feedback systems determine the response of the system to changes in its output or environment, like the elections are a feedback in a democracy.

Another factor which determines the performance of the system is delay in the feedback systems. Scientists have been telling economists to change developmental objectives to include climate change issues for many decades and yet it has come into focus only very recently. Even today, development does not include many environmental issues like deforestation and toxic dumps and species extinction. This can be called as a large delay between output changes and the attendant change in system performance.

Why is systems thinking important ? From a business perspective, it can help analyse the people and objects that determine how a system (company) behaves, and how certain kinds of behavior of these ‘components’ can affect overall system output. For example, car manufacturers should change the specifications of their car according to general consumer tastes. Therefore, there must be some system feature that links car specification with consumer taste. If the person who is in charge of implementing this feature in this system fails to do her job well, system output (which is cars) will fail to make the desired impact.

Therefore, most social systems – religion, corporation, state – come up with a set of desired behaviors that the components that make up the system should have, and this is inculcated by various mechanisms – schools, corporate orientation, religious instruction and so on.

One can, if one has considerable amount of time to burn, apply systems principles to the present situation in India. First, a look at the state. The state is a glorified watchman of sorts, taking money from us taxpayers and giving political, social and economic protection. The recent spate of terrorist attacks have underlined the fact that it is unable to deal with the phenomenon of terrorism which is structurally very different from the normal antisocial elements that it is used to dealing with. Highly motivated individuals, working in small groups, from varied backgrounds, with no monetary motivation causing mayhem is something no state can cope with: it was simply not designed for such a task. And there goes physical safety that we were supposed to have.

Next thing to go was religious tolerance. Talking to random people on the train shows that the average Hindu looks at his Christian neighbor with suspicion and will be more hesitant than before to attend religious festivals. This is due to the sensationalist feedback systems which have been set in place called the media and no doubt supported by a political party that wants to expel Pakistani and Bangladeshi nationals (only those with expired visas, of course, preferably Muslims) since they might be terrorists. Never mind the fact that terrorists will go to great lengths to see that their papers are in order, and are not stupid enough to be in a place where checks are taking place. A system is only as good as the people that make it up, and this is shown well in Karnataka now and Gujarat before.

Before these was, of course, financial security. A global economic system needs global  regulatory agencies, a role which the IMF and World Bank ostensibly play. The present crisis shows that a system designed around rational ordering and behavior of individuals completely fails when greed, fear and panic are the inputs. The subprime crisis surfaced around this time last year and its effects are showing now, a huge delay between input and output. This kind of behavior can only mean worse things in the coming year. IMF and the World Bank probably should stick to bullying third world nations.

All these developments are having interesting effects – terrorism has made grassroot level spying a noble duty in service of the state (Orwellian nightmare!), people belonging to different religious groups are eyeing each other with suspicion, and people with money to lose are running around like headless chickens. If people are taken as a system, and if insecurity is an input, the system moves towards whatever promises stability. Therefore, unfortunately, the State and religious organizations are going to be more powerful than before when the dust settles. The last bastion of reliable information feedback, the internet, is now becoming more prone to State intervention. Wonder what the status of the people will be after this – are we going to be sociable components of sociopathic systems ?