1 The problems of academic misfits
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Many things are said which might require a background without
which they may appear to be incoherent, or is it that they are
actually incoherent and background is not required at all?
Maybe I should less drink coffee, otherwise such sense making
non-stuff comes of me out ….
Miserable lives, pathetic people:
1
——
What happens when you get stuck up with a job that you do not like,
but have to do it because you could not get to the place you wanted
to be in? At times you feel that the place doesn’t deserve you. You
are over-smart for the place. The place is meant for people who are
far behind you in the evolutionary seqeuence. This is the feeling
that many people in my working place share. They think that they
are smart, and are stuck up at this place because of some bad
luck. Their heart doesn’t lie in the work that they are doing, but
somewhere else. So what do they do to overcome this personal
failure of theirs? They make an attempt to make other people’s
likfe miserable, just as their own is. I am particularly using the
word attempt, as it does not succeed. This just shows the
pathological state of mind they are in. Their personal failure of
not being able to get into a place where they think their
intelligence might be in good company, is displayed in the malice
they carry around with their persona.
2
——
They would take up smallest issues and make mountains out it. Hold
a personal vendetta against the ones they dislike. This comes to
fore in public meetings where their pathetic attempts to undermine
other people’s work. So pathetic are their attempts that one can
only but laugh at their incompetence even in doing this. This
reminds of the series of Rowan Atkinson called The Black Adder. Its
dark comedy all around. They should forget about getting to their
dream place with this kind of incompetence. Most of them are
rejects from places of so called “higher intelliegence” who by hook
or crook somehow found their way in this space. Others tell you
that their know this person, or is related to that person /who/ is
at this high position. Maybe they all conspired to get them
here. They were so incompetent that even such people in high
position could not get them to their dream places. And what is the
result? They are perpetually under cloud of failure, and hence they
want to see others also fail. How can others succeed when they, the
intelligent beings of the lot, have failed?
3
——
People who have realized this truth behind their hollow lives give
them the most fear. Because they know these people are not going to
be intimidated by the false aura of intelligence they carry around
them. These people can see through them for what they are. They do
not give them the false respect that they force their juniors and
people working under them to give them. “Call me Sir!” they say, as
if the British crown has knighted them. And they are offended deeply
if they are not called so. This behaviour is anti-academic, if
nothing else. In other places I have seen even the most senior most
scientists being called by their first names. But these “academic
misfits” think otherwise, to boost their fragile self-ego they make
the people under them give them respect forcibly. This perhaps
gives them a 10 footer.
4
——
The very fact that they were not able to get to a place which they
so much desired, but instead their getting into a ‘popular’ place
makes them think that all around them are like that. For jandiced
people the whole world appears with a yellowish tint. So it is with
this people suffering from academia misfitia. They think they being
so much intelligent and superior to others are stuck here, /hence/
the other lesser mortals must also be so. So they think that all
others in such a place are also misfits, and perhaps of a worse
kind (we yet don’t even have a PhD!).
5
——
To justify their presence in a place where they do not belong what
do they do? They change the goals of the place so that they will
somehow fit in the new goals. This is the easiest thing to do. When
facts are against you, you change the standards of
measurement. This is much like what Rutherford had said about
science: “Science is what scientists do.” So the goal of a place is
the work that people there do. This way they can justify whatever
work that they do, no matter whether it fits the agenda of the
place or not. But what do they do when you point out that this does
not fit into the original agendas? They know they cannot get any
higher in academia, if they could they would not be here. So they
adapt a time tested approach of being a douchebag. If you cannot
rise above others, make others sink. Make their work look as if it
is nothing, as /compared/ to theirs. Attack them in public seminars
to make them look like fools in front of the people. But even this
attempt ends in failure. How much failure one can take? Then they
claim that theirs is a ‘serious’ kind of work and any other work
which they do not do is a ‘popular’ kind of work, not worthy of
anything. And academics is serious work, not popular. If it is so
why are they in a place where this happens? This is because they
are themselves not good enough for serious work, perhaps only
semi-serious work, hence they are stuck here.
6
——
And what is the nature of ‘serious’ work that they take pride in?
It is the pinnacle of a huge commercial industry, where they are
basking in lights given off from others. There is a joke which is
similar to this situation. A scientist, one by one plucks of all
the legs of a cockroach and yells it to after pulling out one
leg. Initially the cockroach tries to run with the remaining legs,
but after last leg is removed it can no longer run. The scientist
concludes that the cockroach cannot hear when all the legs are
removed. This joke is related to much of the ‘(semi?)-serious’ work
by the misfits. They do the first error in statistics, confusing
correlation with causality (no wonder they are stuck here). They
think that it is their final leg pulling which produces the
required results and this they get published in the ever breaking
news hungry pop-media! All the false pride that they carry and
respect that they get is due to the position they got themselves in
by hook or by crook. It is this position as gatekeepers of the last
leg, they have developed the pathetic arrogance that they have.
There is much to say about these matters, but that will be another
post….
india
Anonymity and community in the age of RTI
(Draft under work.)The year 2005 was a significant event in the history of India, as it
saw the introduction of bill for Right to Information. Under this
act any person could request data from government departments
pertaining to issues of interest. This was seen as first step
towards transparency of government of India, and indeed it was. The
RTI act was a weapon in hands of activists, who could now get the
required information officially. What was important also was that
there was a timeline which had to be adhered to while replying to
the RTI query. The information gathered from the various RTI queries
which individuals across the country empowered the citizens about
their rights regarding many issues. Also equally importantly RTI was
a tool for exposing the corruption running rampant in various
government departments. A RTI query could expose the irregularities
and bypassing of rules and regulations, leading to
corruption. There are many famous cases for their expose of big
names and massive corruption which were brought to light. (Some
examples?)
Some people became what are now known as RTI activists. The RTI
activists were whistleblowers of the RTI age. These activists
exposed many scams at local and national levels. Such expose make
the people involved very uncomfortable. And as it happens in many
cases the people involved are very powerful and would not stop at
anything to attain their goals. In many such cases the RTI activists
were “easy” targets. By using the four-fold approach of /saam/,
/daam/, /dand/ and finally /bhed/ those in trouble try to stop the RTI
activists. Unfortunately in many cases, it turns out the activists
were killed as a result of their whistleblowing acts. (Give
examples)
What the RTI activists in various parts lack is a safety net, by
this I mean they lack support from people with similar
interests. They also lack, in a sense, a feeling of community who
will stand by them in case of such bad incidents. What can be done
for them? What kind of mechanism can result in their protection?
There was a proposed whistleblower bill, which if enacted will
provide security to such people. But the bill was not passed. Is
there any other option? Is there a way in which people can still ask
for information under RTI, without revealing their identity, so that
they cannot be “targetted” as whistleblowers. Is there a way in
which despite being anonymous there is a sense of community among
the activists of the RTI? It seems there can be an alternative way in
which we the people can provide a sense of anonymity and at the same
time that of a community to the RTI activists. What follows is
such a proposal which will try to cover these fundamental issues.
The proposal is to setup a front, which for lack of a name I would
call a /collective/ for now, which will mask those requesting RTI
from various government departments. The activists can send their
queries to the government departments through this collective. This
collective will in a sense create a buffer between activists and the
respective government departments, and associated problematic
elements. Since the RTI queries will be sent through this
collective, there will be sense of anonymity for the RTI activists,
as their names wouldn’t come under spotlight as in the earlier
case. One can also have a way in which the activist need not reveal
their identity to collective, that is we should also allow for
anonymous requests for queries. Some may point out that this might
be abused, but we have to give in this possibility hoping that pros
will outnumber the cons. Thus at no point we would have any data
regarding the identity of the applicant, hence we will not be able
to reveal it, when asked. This as will be pointed out can be abused,
but Thus the collective will form a mask for all the RTI
requests. Of coure people who want their name displayed for their
work, will be proud public faces of the collective. It would be much
more difficult to subdue or silence or attack the collective as it
would not be single point contact, but rather a distributed system.
So what do the activists gain by submitting to the collective,
apart from the anonymity. The collective will have a policy that
all the data that it receives from these RTI queries, will be put
up in public domain. This will in turn create a public archive of
information which will be accessible to anyone. Such a archive will
address many issues, like redundancy in filing of RTI queries, or
making the future RTI queries much more pointed and making material
available for researchers.
Such is a very rough proposal for the formation of the
collective. Suggestions and refinements in the proposal and
possible way of execution of this collective are needed.
Privatization, Responsibility and Corruption
Privatisation seems to have gone from dynamic ideological choice, to route of least resistance for the state to abdicate its responsibility in a variety of policy areas. Anything difficult and measurable – problem schools; elderly care; waste disposal; big infrastructure projects – is left to private capital. In exactly the same way that outsourcing has evolved for private enterprise, it has become an expensive way of getting rid of problems to which those in charge have no solutions.
…
It is much easier to close a free school than to explain why a state school has gone disastrously wrong.
via theguardian
The same is happening in India. Now they are planning to privatize airports and Indian Airlines on the reasons of efficiency. For education, the government supports private school with aids. When the same money could have been used to better the government schools. In each sector the reliance on private sector to do the jobs is increasing. Even in case of vehicles in government offices, the trend is that you employ a private vehicle and a driver, instead of having a driver on the payroll. So is the case with computer maintenance. In each government office there are private firms which are paid large sums to make sure that the computers are kept running. Why can’t there be an internal department to look after that? The privatization both complete and contractual, lead to massive corruption opportunities for both politicians and the bureaucrats as can be seen in the recent series of scams that have surfaced in India. The main problem that is facing the people is privatization of our natural resources and that of responsibilities of the Government, the resulting corruption is just the tip of the iceberg. It is a symptom of the disease. Even then the major media houses never question, why these mega scams became possible in the first place? They are more eager to make scapegoats out of certain people, but the system which allowed the scams to happen is never challenged.
That said, it seems the ideological stance privatization, resulting in denial of responsibility of state and loss of money from the public purse cannot be halted unless there is a strong pressure from within to halt such measures.
Cost of environment
Former Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha on Tuesday blamed Congress leader and union minister Jairam Ramesh as being “singularly responsible for shaving off 2.5% of the GDP” by not giving environmental clearance to projects during his stint as the environment minister, escalating the war of words between the two.
via ET
Mr. Sinha should understand that economy is not everything. If at all protecting environment costs so much of GDP indirectly, even then it is okay. Perhaps we should provide 2.5% of GDP to protect our environment, and that would ensure it will remain for posterity. The rampant rape of environment in form of various “developmental” projects and its toll on the flora and fauna is something that needs to be stopped. For example consider the illegal and legal mining in Goa and its impact on the fragile ecosystem there. Ramesh had a choice, and he exercised it. How many ministers do that? If the environment ministry will itself not worry about the environment then who will? Sinha in criticizing Ramesh seems to have forgotten this basic fact. Otherwise what is the reason for the Environment ministry to exist? For there are certain things that cannot be equalized in terms of money, and our flora and fauna is one of them. Mr. Sinha should understand that extinction is forever, no amount of money can bring back lost species or lost ecosystems. But people who are corrupted by lure of money at any cost (to environment and other people) will not understand this. Even if they do, their priorities are set by the bottom line, which is money.
Politics and future
“When politics decides your future, decide what your politics must be.”
via Tehelka
Indians at Olympics
… and perhaps for the first time, the Indian badminton contingent will not be travelling as tourists to the Olympics.
via Firstpost.
I also sincerely hope so.
Cram, don’t think
The message from 15 years of education in my country – first at a top-notch school and then at one of the best known colleges in India – was:
Facts are more important than thought and imagination; that it’s more important to know the answers than think critically; that exams are more important than knowledge itself. Some may say that in college the majority of us chose the convenient way out and they are right.Our system of education, even at the undergraduate level, does not encourage us – in fact, gives us every opportunity not to think independently, critically, creatively or analytically.
via The Hindu
Love or Lust?
My predecessors believed only good people fall in love and bad people have sex. This was the simple thing — falling in love is the aspiration that should be endorsed and having sex is something that should be outlawed. The garden needs to be weeded off this thing called lust.
Mahesh Bhatt via Tehelka.
Which category do you fall in?
Irony at its best!
The President (well there is only one President, the President of US of A, rest others are just presidents) said,
“In our global economy, we can’t just have a few leaders of the most advanced economies making decisions that touch the lives of billions of people around the world.”
via Firstpost
Isn’t it ironical that President Obama is saying this. Him, his predecessors and his successors have done it, he is doing it, and they will continue to do it. Is it still a secret that the decisions that indeed affect lives of billions of people are taken by “just a few leaders of the most advanced economies.” How do you otherwise explain monopolies of a few companies over most of the economy in the “Free World”?
… तर मराठी शाळा बंद पडतील
मैदाने आहेत , पण क्रीडा साहित्य नाही .. प्रयोगशाळेत प्रयोगाचे साहित्य नाही .. तुटके बेंच आणि गळकी छपरे .. अशा दारुण स्थितीत असलेल्या मराठी शाळांना संजीवनी मिळावी , यासाठी वेतनेतर अनुदान तातडीने सुरु करावे , अशी मागणी राज्य शिक्षक परिषदेने केली आहे . हे अनुदान न मिलाल्यास राज्यातील शेकडो मराठी शाळा बंद पडतील अशी भीती परिषदेने व्यक्त केली आहे .
via Maharashtra Times.
आता आपण काही केले नाही तर मग कोण करणार? आमच्या खैरात शाळे मध्ये विज बिल भरायची काही तरतुदच नाही आहे. त्यामुळे तिथला विज पुरवठा खंडित पण करण्यात आला होता.