Are you against Corruption? Really?

When my fellow Indians are united in their show of support to Mr Anna Hazare, I am now wondering what cause are they exactly supporting. Is it merely being reduced to a show of status messages on Facebook or is it really a fight against corruption or now as it is being called- India's second struggle for independence. Really now, this is bordering on the corny.

Corruption as being understood now is narrowly construed as being involved in bribery but what about the corruption that we blatantly and willingly do when we refuse to exercise our right to vote. Just supporting Hazare's cause and believing that it is time to bring about a change is foolhardy. When words have to be translated to action, very few stand up to be counted.

I have become increasingly disillusioned by Anna Hazare's campaign of India against corruption. Here is a man who was initially known for changing the face of Ralegaon Siddhi and also the recipient of the Padma Bhushan. But hunt for the stories behind this and you will find a dangerously authoritarian man who preaches Gandhi but doesn't blink an eye while endorsing public flogging. People in the village are not permitted to listen or view films, television programs, they aren't allowed to consume meat because it is unbrahminical to do so. People are only allowed to listen to religious music. People acquiesce to these decision due to fear. So is this the kind of democracy that Hazare is rooting for?

By not supporting Hazare's crusade against corruption doesn't make me a supporter of UPA, the opposition or any other political party. I do not subscribe to any political ideology but this disenchantment is harder to ignore by the day. The government's charges against Hazare exposing his 'corruption' is certainly laughable and just goes to show how the hapless government is now jumping on any opportunity to discredit Hazare and his creed. To call it a circus also doesn't do justice to the kind of rigmarole playing out on our television sets.

The very middle class who is miffed at the abstract notion of black money is in support of the movement which has fast yet again turned into an elitist middle class event. Where is this middle class when it comes to paying a wee little bit of money to speed up their work or to escape the clutches of the traffic policeman? What people are actually doing is registering their disdain for an utterly incompetent government. It is quite clear that Hazare's movement is a way to vent their frustration against our hapless government.

Corruption has reached such alarming proportions due to wicked policies that are always anti-people. Cleverly disguised under words such as development and liberalisation, all our resources of land and water have been siphoned off while our people have become refugees 10 times over. How many of us know that Medha Patkar is fasting against the eviction of people from the slums in Mumbai? Irom Sharmila has completed 11 years of fasting now. Aren't they all too fighting against apathetic instititutions? Are their fasts going to just be in vain? I wish there was a way to get rid of the government, pull them down. But what are the other options? The opposition seems to be grappling with its own internal problems. It's akin to being caught between the devil and the deep sea.

This is not a critique of Hazare or the Government (though the government deserves a more violent diatribe) nor am I self-styling myself to be a saint. If there is a chance self introspection take it. I end with a small incident. Recently, late at night I was headed back home. Just the fact that it is the night doesn't give one the right to speed through one-way stretches. If I wouldn't have braked and swerved in the nick of time, it would have been catastrophic. Isn't that too being corrupt too? How in the world does the other person get the authority to play with my life? Corruption as I see it is not just about exchange of bribes. Corruption transcends all these perceptions and in the end rests at moral corruption. And in the end who is to know whether the committee created by the Jan Lok Pal Bill will be devoid of corruption. Who is to say that this committee will be totally free of being dishonest. Who watches over them? What justifies resting so much power in the committee?

Power corrupts, doesn't it? In the meantime, the hunt for an all encompassing solution continues. But that is being too optimistic, isn't it

This is not a diatribe

I protest. Strongly. A low comedy played out today and it was too absurd even to evict any emotion resembling laughter. Our final presentations were scheduled today and a person no less than our very own HOD walked in to evaluate the students. After months of intense hard work I was looking forward to the presentations because I was looking for feedback on my work and it was an opportunity to share my experiences with my classmates.

My presentation was the first one that she evaluated. I was expecting a fair and critical analysis from the evaluators with concrete suggestions that we could incorporate in our work in the future. But what transpired was very different from my expectations.

It all started because I had essentially carried out research in the social sciences and the HOD has a chemistry background fortified by the rigors of laboratory work and being buried under piles of unnecessary paper work.

But that shouldn't make a difference, should it? Inspite of being from a pure science background, she could have been more open to the fact that research in social science is possible. She refused to believe that data in social science is generated by talking to people, by taking into account people's perceptions and relying on independent observations. Why else would it be called a 'social' science then? Her eyebrows were in danger of disappearing into her hair when I informed her that I generated primary data by interviewing people. Why else would it be called primary data?

She expressed extreme surprise, astonishment and dismissed my entire work because I spent only 21 days doing field work. How could I explain to her that I encountered conditions where I had to eat food infested with rat shit and cockroaches and that some nights I went without food as I was too disgusted to eat the crap anymore? But I am digressing here. Why does the number of days that I spend on field matter as long as I collect data that is reliable and proves my hypothesis right? It is immaterial whether I spend 10 days or 30 days. All the days of walking for 10 kms everyday for long hours in the sun boiled down to this. The quality of the time spent should matter and not the quantity.

She was also disbelieving of the fact that I conducted 50 interviews and that each interview consisted of nearly 200 closed and open ended questions. She expected me to list all the questions on the slides that I had prepared. Really now, come on!

According to her, I spending 21 days on field for my work is very less because a period of 6 months is granted to us. Just to make it clear- we are granted only 4 months out of which the major chunk is spent in conducting a literature review, working out and managing the logistics of the field visit, scheduling interviews, framing relevant questions to be included in the questionnaire and analysing data.

Another problematic area was the classification of my respondents. I had used the standard method of classification where respondents are grouped in categories based on the amount of land that they possess.

Large Farmers: >10 acres

Medium Farmers: 5-10 acres

Small Farmers: 0.01-5 acres

Herders

Landless

This is the protocol followed in my field of interest (watershed development). She said that this kind of classification is wrong because a farmer cannot be large, medium or small in the real sense. Really madam, your quibbling over semantics exposed your pettiness and your scientific approach. Pray,  where is the logic?

And it is not just about me. When another student gave her presentation, our HOD was disbelieving that Self Help Groups are formed by NGOs in areas where watershed development projects are carried out to bring the community together. Her ignorance can be forgiven but not her arrogance.

She was keen to drive home the point that conducting a thesis out of the University is an exercise in futility as students end up having a gala time outside their homes. Sorry, this did not hold true in majority of my classmates. We got an opportunity to step out of the hallowed precincts of our department and explore the world outside. Unfortunately she sees that as a waste of time and now has scrapped this system for our juniors who will be expected to conduct their projects under faculty (which is virtually non-existent and the few that are there are incompetent) who are all from the chemistry background. They will be expected to perfect their skills in titration, BOD and COD estimation, chromatography and the like. Now I don't have anything against laboratory work. I myself come from a pure science background and I just discovered my calling pulling me in another direction. But I believe that our HOD needs to wake and understand that research in pure science and social science is complementary to each other. Research is but not limited to sitting for long hours in the laboratory where one has to prepare chemicals and medium, autoclave and sterilize instruments, incubate microorganisms, etc. She dismissed the fields of anthropology, history and ethnography in a wave of her hand. She believes that what people say is not does not come under the realm of hard and verifiable facts. Of course she doesn't know that there are certain methods used in social science to verify what people say. Like I said, her ignorance can be forgiven.

To be fair, there was another evaluator who despite being an ecologist asked me fair and pertinent questions about my work. She was neither judgmental nor did she have any preconceived biases against the social sciences. She interrogated me in a way that could be called real defense. My close friend gave her presentation before mine in which the HOD was not present and even she had conducted her research in the domain of the social sciences. This evaluator was fair to her too and asked very pointed and relevant questions. 

This is not a personal vendetta against our HOD. It is just a ranting by a frustrated student who is caught is the grasp of people who come from a peculiar mindset that looks down upon the social sciences. It speaks volumes about the encouragement the department provides when people try to do something other than spending time in the closed and controlled conditions of the laboratory.

I will be giving a seminar shortly where I work and I believe that this will be where that I will be truly evaluated. The faculty here come from varied backgrounds but they are not dismissive about other fields. They listen and understand and encourage research from all fields. It is progressive while my department seems to be stepping into the middle ages with their initiatives of scrapping the policy of conducting projects outside Pune. She thinks that we have wasted our time having 'fun'. Stepping out of my department have opened up new avenues for me. I have learnt what it means to work in the field of academics and it was like a breath of fresh air after the unnecessary hurdles of slow and lumbering pace of work of our department.

And this wasn't true only for me. I being from a city decided to spend 4 months of my time someplace else all because of the opportunities that open up when one is out of one's comfort zone. There are some people in my class who come from rural Maharashtra and they worked in institutes like ISRO and it has done wonders for their confidence.

However, our HOD is quite determined to believe otherwise.

All is not all right in this world and the injustice rankles. I wish that I could proudly state that I have done my Masters from this department. But even I am determined to believe otherwise.

And so I rest my case.

Chaos and colour

The state of the mind these days. Whirling dervishes-strong winds-flashing lights-brandishing lights that look like knives-need to kill.
Waits are long, longer than it takes to say somethings.
Words fall short to describe and pinpoint that exact temperature.
Twiddling thumbs and whistling out of tune, whiling away the ticks and the tocks.
And then when you get it for keeps, you realize that you were better off without it.
Chaos and colour-all jumbled. What if everything was just black and white?

Results

This is how my marksheet in my nightmare read:

Pollution- Logical

Environmental Economics-Emotional

GIS and Remote Sensing-Lachrymose

Statistics-Leering

Computers-Provisionally Passed

Practicals-********

I think my results might be in a few weeks time. I hope I pass. This nightmare  doesn't portend a very  promising result for me. I'm superstitious and these things unconsciously play at the back of the mind. I swear to God that I will really study the next time around. Anything to keep nightmares like these at bay.

Sariska Tigers set up bar. Serve Cold Beer.

Well well what do you know the things tigers in Sariska Reserve are up to now-a-days? Why they obviously lead a jolly good 'ol life and their preferred drink to lead a jolly good 'ol life is of course cold beer.

Three cheers to that. Seems like some people out there are

a) getting broad-minded about serving hard drinks to tigers

or

b) conducting some 'tiger-gone' crazy experiments on the tigers

I think what they are doing is hiding cold beer in secret and mysterious locations, hoping that their wives will not find out that they are drinking on the sly. But the willy tiger is outfoxing them. The smart tiger finds the cold beer and sets of on a jolly good roller-coaster ride.

"The Tiger prefers to hunt large deer specially sambar, chital, nilgai and omnivore COLD BEER."

Check the poster.

Link