Missing dad

In the Mahabharata, Yudhishtira was asked by the Yaksha of the lake what the greatest wonder in the world was. Yudhishtira replies promptly: “Day after day countless creatures are going to the abode of Yama, yet those that remain behind live their lives as though they’ll live forever. What can be more wondrous than this?”

I was in a similar state, until last Tuesday when my father passed away after a hard-fought battle with pneumonia.

Nothing is more final than death. Nothing is more gut-wrenching than doctors and nurses referring to your loved one as “the body”. Nothing is more shocking than seeing the body of your loved ones burn and their bones get handed down to you in a pot. 

Over the past year and a half, my father was diagnosed with multiple health problems. He had a blocked Right Coronary Artery, his kidneys were failing, and in April last year, he had a fall that led to a hemorrhage in his brain. Still, he and his doctors fought hard, which led to a partial recovery from all the ailments, sufficient enough for him to lead a near-normal life. However, from January this year, he was forced onto dialysis, and his health kept deteriorating until the final blow came in the form of pneumonia that proved to be untreatable.

I miss him.

While my dad had many accomplishments to his credit, the one that mattered to me the most was that he was an intense dad. The intensity with which he approached his role as a father (or grandfather) had to be seen to be believed. Be it carrying a sick 8 year old (me) for over six kilometers to get treatment, or waiting hours in front of my school to pick me up after my exams, or waiting in queues so that I didn’t have to - my dad always put my needs, desires, and even wishes before himself. He was always there for me and my brother – even for my nephews, when we needed him. He set the dad bar very high for my family.

Today, I feel orphaned – even though it was I (and my brother/wife/sister-in-law and mother) who was taking care of him! I realize now how many things my father had insulated us from; how many responsibilities, duties and dirty tasks he had taken on his shoulders so that we wouldn’t feel the burden. Suddenly, I feel like a teenager who woke up one morning to find himself a middle-aged man.

However, life must go on, lessons must be learnt, and we must look ahead. Therefore, let me conclude with some bit of advice from this experience:

* Get regular medical checkups: True, it is a hassle, it takes at least 1/2 a day, and it is tremendously annoying. But it detects many potentially deadly disorders in advance. So, if you are over 30, get a checkup done at least once in two years. If you are over 40, get a checkup done at least once a year. We came to know about my dad’s kidney failure only when it was too late to remedy it.

* Get health insurance: While it was heart rending to see my father take ill and be in pain, we were spared financial pain, thanks to a superb health insurance policy offered by Microsoft and my dad’s CGHS facility. If your company offers health insurance, ensure that you have at least a 5 lakh cover, and that your parents, spouse and kids are covered.

* Don’t take antibiotics at random: One of the most difficult aspects of my dad’s illness was seeing that a curable disease like pneumonia became incurable because of resistance to antibiotics. Apparently, this is because of indiscriminate use of antibiotics in the general population, both with and without doctor prescriptions, leading to the evolution of more and more resistant strains of bacteria and virii.

* Do talk to the people you love regularly: My father was in the ICU for nearly 4 weeks, during which he couldn’t utter a word. Day after day, we would go in only to see him either unconscious or unable to speak. He probably wanted to tell us something, but couldn’t. Neither could we convey to him any words of strength. Do not postpone words of love, encouragement or strength.

If there is a soul, I hope his finds peace. If not, there are our memories where he’ll be cherished as long as we live. Thanks dad, for all you did for me. And If I ever have kids of my own, I hope I can be half as good a dad to them as you were to me.

Scientific Temper

Scientific temper. n., An attitude which involves the application of logic and the avoidance of bias and preconceived notions.

-Wikipedia

When in high school, I won a competition (I think it was an essay writing competition), the prize for which was a book about Scientific Temper. Naturally, I lost mine, and cursed the organizers for being stupid enough to give a class VIII student a book that was clearly intended for adults. What hurt further was the organizer invoking the Indian Constitution to justify his selection of the prize. (For those not in the know, the Indian constitution mandates the cultivation of scientific temper as one of the fundamental duties of the citizen.) I sulked for days on end.
 

In time, curiosity (and boredom) got the better of me and I finally read the book. It was a good read, and it brought out a clear distinction between scientific and unscientific thinking. Elimination of bias, reproducibility and validity of hypothesis, experiments and data,  avoiding the Post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, and statistical significance were some of the themes of the book. It emphasized that the scientific method conformed to these themes, while unscientific ones didn’t.
 

Why bring it up now? Over time, I’ve come to the conclusion that so many of our problems are because our people either haven’t developed scientific temper or are reluctant to use it. An obvious example is the reception saffron- (or green- or white-) clad gurus get on TV. But think also of supposedly intellectual debates on TV, and in parliament, and in various fora, which  have no grounding in reality, let alone the scientific method. A sad, but relevant example is the solutions suggested by influential people to prevent the kind of rapes that have happened in the recent past.
 

Bias: RSS chief Bhagawat takes the cake here, showing his bias against both women, and against ‘western culture’.
Invalidity of data and/or hypotheses: All those who want to pass stricter laws – have strict laws prevented any crime from happening in any country?
Post hoc ergo propter hoc: Rapes have gone up. So has the number of women wearing jeans/going out to work/going to discos/mixing with men/marrying in the same gotra/getting married late/…, Therefore, rapes are because of the number of women wearing jeans/going out to work/…you get the idea.
Statistical significance: One girl was raped coming home late in the night. So preventing girls from going out late in the night will prevent all rapes.

The wide prevalence of these fallacies along with an obstinate refusal to get to the bottom of any issue make a debate or discussion on any issue a self-defeating one.
 

This lack of rigor has an insidious effect, literally, on people’s health. Now, many of us believe in the Indian system of medicine, Ayurveda. Ayurveda has found to have effective medicine for liver treatments, for (in)digestion, for bone maladies and for many such diseases. Practitioners also claim miracle cures for diseases like cancer and kidney failure. But how does one verify the veracity of these claims?  Apart from some medicinal compounds like Turmeric, few Ayurvedic medicines have been scientifically tested. All you see are claims of a person X who had disease Y for Z years and was cured in a week, or of person K who had a enzyme level of L which reduced to M in N days. Papers are published in local journals without even double-blind experiments. Further, no Ayurvedic practitioner can explain how their medicines counteract disease in terms that are accepted by the broad medical community. To blame is also the allopathic community which has refused to even examine the vast wealth of knowledge accumulated by Ayurveda. And the pharma companies who fear that traditional medicine would kill their golden geese, patents. And the one entity⁺ which could be a honest broker in the exercise, but is too busy politicking to care about the wellbeing of the citizenry.
 

While his own scientific temper could be questioned, Nehru was spot on when he said “The future belongs to science and those who make friends with science”. Too bad we have looked the other way.

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⁺ The government

One word solution to all problems

In my last post I attempted to correct some of the fallacies surrounding the gang rape of the 23-year old Delhi woman. (Seriously, who calls a 23-year old a ‘girl’?) In this post, I want to propose a single word solution to this and associated problems.

ACCOUNTABILITY

Seriously, that is all we need. From the police, the judiciary, the politicians, the public and the media. All we need is for people to be made accountable for the actions/inactions. We’ll see a different India then.

(Postscript: I almost never agree with what Shashi Tharoor says, but this time he is right on the ball for suggesting that the new anti-rape bill be named after the victim. This has two advantages: First, it removes the notion of shame that surrounds victims of rape, and second, every time a case comes up under this law, the judge will be reminded of what happened in this incident.)

Fallacies of rape

In this unfortunate season of rapes and crimes against women, I thought I’ll point out some fallacies surrounding the debate.

The first and the one that afflicts most people is that the severity of punishment is a deterrent. If that were so, there would be no murders because the punishment prescribed is death. Gladwell has shown that it is the guarantee and immediacy of punishment, and the guarantee of ostracism by friends and family that act as a deterrent, not the severity of punishment. Also, severity of crimes committed by criminals almost always increases, the longer they are allowed to go scot-free. I can bet my pathetic salary on the theory that every major criminal would have committed other, probably minor crimes previously and gained ‘confidence’ from the lack of punishment. So what needs to be fixed is policing and judicial hearings and not sentencing.

Another fallacy is that the commoditization of women by the media has caused women to be treated as objects which in turn lowers their respect in society and leads to crime. When has anyone of those ‘commodity women’ been victims of crime? Why are they respected and feared in society?  Why is it that crimes against women in power is rare? It is because crimes against women, particularly sex crimes are typically about power, very rarely about sex or anything else – the more powerful a woman gets, the less the chance of her being targeted. See how most of the victims of rape are children, the physically weak, or the ones who have no voice in society, or women who are in situations of weakness. And it is almost never the women who are ‘commodities’.

There is also a line of thought that it is the loss of our traditional values that has led to increased crime against women. This farcical notion is spread by the right-wing lunatics, and (particularly) by older folks who are otherwise sane. Again, nothing is further from the truth – a good number of the perpetrators of these crimes did so because the women defied their notions of purity and ‘satitva’. Think Khap panchayats, or honour killings, or this rape incident, or even the lawyer who was killed by the guard of her apartment complex – perps who committed these crimes thought they were white knights bringing honour to society by becoming outlaws themselves.  Think also, pub attacks, acid attacks and forced marriage revocations. Or that the reason the accused gave for gang raping the 23-year old in Delhi: they wanted to teach her a lesson for going out in the night with a man, and for talking back at them. And do note that these perpetrators come from communities where ‘traditional values’ are the strongest.

People also tend to identify differences between eve teasing, beating up girls in a pub (or couples in a park), and between rape. However, what should not be mistaken is that all these crimes spring from the same sick mentality and should be treated as such. (I am not suggesting the death penalty for eve teasing, but I AM suggesting that it should be taken seriously and disrespectful tendencies nipped in the bud.) All these also spring from the same power tussle. And what cannot be forgotten is the lack of respect that we as a people have for individual freedom: a woman is not an individual with rights but a collective – to be owned by her family, her community and by the state. A woman is a family’s honour, a community’s honour or a country’s honour, to be protected and salvaged (more likely, savaged) by men controlling her with violence and threats of violence.

And you would have heard cries, particularly in the English media not to politicize this issue. But this _is_ a political issue. An unsaid rule of a democracy is that citizen voluntarily give up their right to use force to the government with the guarantee that the government will protect the citizen against others who inflict unjust violence, and will use force legally, in correct measure and only as a last resort. What we are seeing under the UPA (particularly UPA-2) is the opposite: protection of guilty, indiscriminate and disproportional use of force against innocent civilians, and complete forgiveness for those who break the law, particularly when they are related to or minions of the first UPA family. In short, the UPA, given its Italian influence, is leading the mafiazation of the country. If this isn’t politics, what is it? 

Finally, I want to tackle the notion that somehow women understand this issue better than men. Something like the theory that you need to be a Dalit to understand the pangs of the dalits. Of course, there are women who do, and I will not deny that. But look at the response of the some important women in the country, and you’ll realize that not all women are equally outraged by these incidents. For instance, in this case, the Sphinx maintained her enigma until forced by public pressure, a Delhi woman officer commended police action and the Delhi CM shed politically correct tears, but allowed the cops to beat up women protesters. In an earlier case the Notional (oops, National) Commission of Women wore makeup, outed the victim with no regard to her privacy, and issued toothless statements against crime. Even the leader of the opposition, Sushma Swaraj, showed her ‘traditional values’ by proclaiming the victim to be living dead! And of course, all of them have their difficulties, particularly the NCW which has no legal teeth. But why didn’t the chairperson join the protest and ask for legal teeth? Why didn’t Sushma Swaraj, or Sonia Gandhi come out and say that they would relinquish half their 36 Z+ security guards to protect the public? Why were the CM, the PM and the Sphinx silent when innocent citizens were brutalized by the police?

Well, to harp on the point, it is political again. It is because we the middle class don’t matter politically. It is because despite all the abuses, we the middle class don’t vote in large numbers. And it is because we are not a vote bank for justice, peace and prosperity.

Perhaps it is time this changed.

Privatizing public responsibility

One problem with specialists in a field, particularly a theoretical one is that they get entrapped in dogma. Now, the naive are also victims of dogma (ex: Apple buyers), but they do not command the language or terminology of a field to convince others of their beliefs. Specialist dogma, on the other hand is more threatening, because specialists can summon both language and superficially correct evidence to support their dogma which may convince non-specialists to follow their lead.

The dogma of the UPA government starts with the assumption that the public sector cannot be fixed (or won’t be fixed) and that the private sector is the ONLY efficient source of delivery of all services. The inevitable conclusion from this is to outsource all government functions to private parties.

They did it with 2G, by outsourcing decision making to an individual and with coal, outsourcing it to a committee of individuals with private vested interests. Unfortunately, successful outsourcing means outsourcing non-essential functions and not your core competency, and the UPA is out to remake the government into a defunct body of fat cats riding in red light cars. (Clay Christensen has a different opinion on core and non-core functions here, but I’ll stick with dogma!)

This trend started with the RTE act. With an interesting twist of language, the government hoisted the responsibility of protecting the Right to education on the private schools. The consequences of this and the subsequent approval by the Supreme Court of the act mean that governments now have no incentive to improve public schools. Anyone who asks for quality education will be directed to beg at the nearby private school. Never mind that outside the big cities, private schools are in much worse shape than their government counterparts. Never mind that this opens up new avenues of corruption for government servants. Never mind that this will lead to a huge influx of people into the major cities simply looking for a better education for their children.

Further evidence comes in the form of FDI in retail. Whatever be the merits or demerits of the policy, a much-publicised reason for opening up retail for FDI is that the Walmarts of the world will create cold chains in India and reduce agricultural wastage. Now, I was thinking, Walmarts will be allowed in 53 cities in India, so how many cold chains will they need to create? 10, 20, 50? In contrast, the Food Corporation has 69,474.96 godowns (Page 42) with an income of 74,711 crores (roughly 15 billion USD). Not to mention, the 5300 cold chains already in operation in the private and public sectors. Now, I don’t know how much it costs to build a cold chain, but surely it would cost less than 15 billion USD to upgrade FCI godowns to cold chains? Again, observe the underlying dogma. (On an aside, I got these stats within 3 minutes - why can’t the media find stats like these and ask the right questions instead of simply thrusting mikes in suited faces?)

The latest in this is the cash transfer program. As recognized by dozens of committees and mentioned in hundreds of reports, the problem in government is the delivery mechanism, not what is being delivered. So, how can a system that can’t deliver grains deliver cash? Why wouldn’t the leakages that persist in delivering goods not remain in delivering cash? How will the system prevent the drunken husband from beating his wife and drowning all the cash in drink?

Unfortunately, for those who run the country, such questions are not worth answering.

More freedom…

In 2007, I wrote a post entitled “Unit of Freedom” that described India as a mobocracy. Ever since there has been accumulating evidence of the same, the latest being the arrest of two girls, one for posting an innocuous comment on facebook, and the other, for liking it.

What is most tragic however, is that the judge actually allowed the charges under section 295A and under 64 A of the IT act  to stick, and only released the girls on a bail of Rs. 15,000. He did not consider the manner of the arrest, the innocuous nature of the complaint or the motives of the complainant, and instead applied the ‘law’ like a robot.

With protecters of the law like this judge and the Maharashtra police, no wonder people have to turn to Thackerays for protection.

Namma alateyannu…

There is a famous essay by Dr. Kota Shivaram Karanth titled “Namma alateyannu meeralarada devaru” which, loosely translated means “The god who cannot exceed our limitations”. Dr. Karanth, a quintessential rationalist explains the origins of God in our minds – how the magnificence of the god who created the universe^* is entrapped in the puny imagination of humans.

I read (well, was supposed to read, but skimmed) the essay in my I PUC Kannada text book and I’m unable to locate it now. However, I remember the summary of the essay very well – that God is essentially a creation of the “puja” establishment, and therefore, he does not exceed human limitations.

You ask, why bring this up now? Well, I reached a tipping point in my antipathy towards organized religion on a recent trip to Kukke Subramanya and I was trying to find that article so that I could write this blog!⁺

Have you wondered how similar the god of an organized religion is to a King of the ancient times ? Kings are all powerful in their realms and have the power of life and death over their people. Kings have huge egos and need frequent displays of obsequiousness to satiate them. They take offence easily and frequently run campaigns of terror against their offenders. And nothing offends them more than praising another king. Kings offer protection for *their* people, and only until the protected acknowledge the protection and are (publicly) grateful for it. Access to kings and favours dispensed by them are mediated by agents beholden to the king. Replace kings with God and agents by priests, and what do you have? organized religion!

And while we are at it, I (naively) hope the overzealous internet police of India do not see this post and haul me off for arrest, but instead focus on tackling real security issues like the violence committed by Shiv Sena activists in Mumbai.

* I am not saying that a God created the universe, nor am I refuting current physics which believes that the sum of the energy and mass in the universe is zero, which is a convenient place for a self-starting universe. I’m merely stating scripture.

+ On an aside, I am terribly disappointed by the lack of Kannada literature, particularly classic Kannada literature on the web. Is the Ka Sa Pa listening?

A f’cking crazy country

Going by the recent controversies over cartoons in India, one might think that the Lashkar is misguided in training armed militia to fight against the country. After all, if a cartoonist can be so dangerous that he is charged under the same section as Ajmal Kasab, all the Lashkar has to do is train sufficient militants in cartooning skills and it can take over the country!

Goddamn f’cking state.

But what pisses me off is how stupid the judge should be to admit the charge instead of throwing it out and charging the cops with unlawful arrest. Or how stupid one of our national icons Mr. Narayana Murthy is, that he is proud of Mania’s⁺ record in protecting free speech!? Or how stupid is the compere on a national channel who cannot differentiate between a charge of sedition and the decision of the National Broadcasting Association not to show the offending cartoons?

God save this country. But no, he cannot either. Just an express train ride on the way to total doom. Folks, if you have a chance, get out of his hell hole while you still can.

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⁺Mania = Ma(n Mohan) + (So)nia