democracy and public institutions and process

That the levels of public discourse and language have stooped to hooliganism, outright abuse and unacceptable civic behaviour and manner is not so much of a shock. After all, many of them are simply put criminals or of criminal backgrounds (proven or otherwise) and more certainly of criminal mindsets. What is of a bigger concern is the absolute dysfunction, neutralizing and debasement of public and constitutional institutions. To make matters worse, some of them are often engaged in a bid to outdo each other in phsychopancy and becoming an instrument in the hands of the powers of the day - the government and even the ruling party.

"Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" someone said long before and we have had many instances across different ages, times, geographies and nation states where we witnessed macabre forms of abuse of power. The sinister designs and demands of such fascist, totalitarian and authoritarian regimes are such. We need to simple look back a few years or look around to see evidence of how such designs were implemented. They will look to manipulate public opinion, control means and resources for few, decimate opposition of any kind whether in parliaments, streets or media (these days, social media as well) and yes all of it in your name (race, religion, country, whatever works wherever). "If you oppose us you are anti-national" "go to another country if this doesn't suit you" "annihilate the opposition and the ones that do not fall in line". You can see the pattern if you want to. 

However, it is to safeguard against such planned and wilful misuse of powers, that the constitution has set up mechanisms and institutions which act as guardians of the very fabric of democracy.

Institutions such as the Election Commission, the Judiciary, the CBI, the Police, the Information Commission and others. Some of them have been set up by governments by acts of legislation. 

I agree, institutions, process and systems have not been the best selling products of the India brand, but they have been there, and more often than not , their doggedness, sticky-ness, cumbersome-ness and the sheer number of them, have been written and discussed about in abundance. I for one, belong to a bunch called consultants who talk and even earn out of the poor state of governance, systems and processes. But, we have also had traditions and patches of excellence in all such institutions. 

Election Commission under TN Sheshan had teeth and used to bite when required; the judiciary had the righteousness and courage to call the election of a member of Parliament, none other than Prime Minister of the country - a certain Indira Gandhi illegal; the CBI has often successfully convicted and put the seemingly insurmountable and all-resourceful behind bars; the simple RTI query gave the common powerless man a right to ask a pertinent question and expect an answer from a high and mighty officer.

A strong and large democracy needs strong and well functioning institutions. Institutions that are independent, unbiased and can outlive a particular exceptional leader. Institutions that have values (yes they do), visions and missions that guide them; processes that are so well-defined that they do not lend to arbitrary misuse and yet allow flexibility and agility; where leadership and accountability is distributed; systems that are stable and yet respond and change with needs of time. Idealistic? Well, democracy is idealistic. 

Ideals are what we must strive for and hence they are enshrined upon the preamble of our constitution. No matter, where we are on the continuum, our trajectory is determined - excellence, ideals and fundamental principles. In a large, diverse and growing democracy there will be violations, excesses and mistakes but there must be processes and institutions to spot such deviations, call them out and have a recourse for correction. These actions must be definitive, time taken must be adequate and yet not delayed, the actors incorruptible and protected from influence. These institutions are hence the watch-dogs, the robin-hoods, the justice-makers, the equalisers and in some cases the healers. 

Unfortunately, this the government and the resourceful also know. Hence, the moment they get an opportunity they systematically try to reduce the institutions to  puppets in their hands and use them to rather their advantage. The CBI, the enforcement directorate, the election commission and police are prime and straightforward examples of that. This must be prevented and yes this must start by people who are at the helm of affairs at such institutions. As was famously determined at the Nuremberg trials (and I was enlightened by an article by Prof. Prabhat Patnaik recently), the plea of 'simply following orders' doesn't work. Every individual can and does operate from his/her own agency of willpower and judgement and that must be the cornerstone of that individual's actions. I will leave this article at that thought. 

the history of statistics - NPR, NCR and other registers

We all know counting was important and probably that contributed to the evolution and further work on mathematics but what necessitated the troubled, much-maligned, less-understood, selectively-fancied world of statistics? What brought words such as 'population', 'sample', 'mean', 'normal', 'probability', 'chance' and other more technical 'standard deviation', 'variance', 't-test', 'chi-square' etc. into popular and not so-popular (only the thick, be-spectacled nerdy professors and their students okay!) use.
Thanks to a wonderful book (I don't have statistics to prove it but I loved it!) called 'Statistics - A graphic guide' by Eileen Magnello (author) and Borin Van loon (illustrator), I spent my weekend on, I  had very interesting and unexpected answers to some of the questions above and some other's which capture the headlines of our newspapers. So, here we go.

"The word "statistics" is derived from Latin status further Italian statista - referring to a statista or statesman - someone concerned with matters of the state. Early statistics were quantitative systems for describing matters of state". So, you see, not just the PhD Scholar who has to submit her dissertation, her professor submitting a paper for a double, blind-peer reviewed journal of repute, the economists aspiring for a nobel prize or highly paid data scientists (we all know by now, what that means and how much that pays!), but everyone who is concerned with matters of the state is a statistic and could be interested in statistics. 

The philosophy behind statistics is actually determinism. "Determinism means that there is meaning and order in the universe." Thus there has to be somethings which confirms to a particular thought, size, shape and then there are things that do not or those that 'vary'.  The earliest application of this was in the field of evolutionary biology (Darwin et al) and the concept of species. So, there has to be an ideal type (usually the average or common) which typologists and taxonomists would classify as a particular special of say moths or insects and then any variation (depending on how much) would confirm as a different species. So, good old Darwin was the first to see evolution as a purely statistically process. This is important. Because, in later times, we the humans tend to define common features as build narratives around the same. We look like this so we are 'whites' or 'blacks' or 'brown' or 'yellow'; we all speak the French language so we are French; we all are 'Aryan' races; we are pure; and yes those who do not fit into 'us and our' definition are 'others'. Statisticians only call them as outliers or call them a different species. But how do we deal with the 'others'?

Now, it is natural that counting people or undertaking census was one of the oldest uses and application of statistics. People in Babylon, Egypt and China all collected statistical information about there people. But the purpose is important - to collect taxes and determine number of people/men who could be enlisted in military. The word Census is derived from Roman Censors - people whose duty was to count people. The censors maintained a register of Roman citizens and their property. Scandinavian countries did this is 17th century, US in 1790 for conducting election. Then there were Parish registers. The church has always played a pivotal role in birth and death of people. It was natural a register of the same be maintained and became a part of the duties of the clergy. Yet again, it is useful to note who were included and who were excluded. Those who belonged to the faith were included and those who were not of the same faith or did not practice it and (again importantly) "could not afford to pay the fee for ecclesiastical registration" were summarily excluded. It is almost obvious. The maintenance of any such register is bound to take effort, time and expenses. Who pays of it? Those who are included. Those who are not included due to reasons of being not a part of the average or mean definition (by faith, by birth, by occupation, by language or by nationaliy) did not pay or were not a part of such registers. It also means that conversely, by simply your ability of not being able to pay for maintenance of register (i.e. the very poor) you will not be a part of the register. It should not be too difficult to draw parallels to the current planned exercises in the country and see where is this all heading. Someone said emphatically, 'those who do not take lessons from history, are bound to face it again and again' or something like that.

Some mathematicians, scientists and statistics, wanted to find the total population of nations and world. Again the purpose was noble. They wanted to understand if it was increasing or decreasing or about the same. Malthus, the economist argued that the unchecked human population would always exceed the means of subsistence (food supply) and human improvement will depend on the limits of reproduction as opposed to means of trying to improve food supply. Darwin said the same in other words and implied that since means are limited only the fittest would survive. The fittest has come to mean different things - from being the mightiest, most powerful to most intelligent to most affluent. Thus the science of population or demography became the study of poverty. "The first census in UK, around 1851 included age, sex, occupation and birthplace and counted the blind and deaf". There was more details on death and diseases, and also pointed to appalling sanitary conditions in towns. Overcrowding of towns and impact on sewers or the lack of it and associated health risks are understandable. Thus statistics helped in undertaking some of the first planned sanitary reforms.

Florence Nightangle, the 'lady with the lamp' was another famous user of statistics. She was appalled at the state of record-keeping in military hospitals and war-time casualties. She put together some data around the Crimean Wars and others and presented in beautiful visualisations the number of deaths, overall mortality and reasons to show what all should know very well intuitively - that wars destroy lives. But, as with some of the modern statistics and data, measurement and visualisations may not lead to any action. Wars continued then as they do now. Another beautiful visualisation graph was that by Minard of Napoleon's troops and their ill-fated adventure to Russia in 1812. I have personally used that to teach/train on data visualisations to tell a story. Yet again, the purpose or the outcome was not just depiction of figures but the fact that the futility of wars, the impact on human lives was brilliantly portrayed to tell a story to those that cared to listen.

The modern comparisons of statistics to mini-skirts or bikinis are well known and they too point to the fact that what is the purpose that you are trying to achieve, what is the story you are trying to tell.

It is here that this massive exercise of NPR, NRC, CAA and the ilk fail me and many others. What is this trying to achieve? For who? Who said so? Who asked for it? Why? In whose name?
This exercise is not an announcement by new free or rental plan on Jio, it is not Amazon's sale week, it is not a erection of a statue, or change of a name of a road or city. This is massive, will involve more than a billion people, considerable amount of time, effort and money. Estimates put the expenditure anywhere around 60,000 Cr+; I do not want to comment to timelines and effectiveness - we all know what happened to Aadhaar and demonetisation. There are still people who believe both were great achievements but I am equally entitled to my views that both were bogus, unnecessary, ill-planned and ill-implemented things which did not achieve anything for the common man. There were electoral gains made in UP due to demonetisation and surely some people benefited, not the economy, not the country at large for sure. NPR, NRC and other names that will come up, will be garangutan state exercises which apart from the time, expenses and resources will divert attention of the government, private sector, NGOs and other statistics from things far more important and urgent.

Should the government, policy makers, private sector players, innovators, media people, activists be rather not working on poverty, education, health, social welfare and jobs? Or we also believe like some of our leaders, victrolas and media that 'all is well' and 'achhe din' are here and all these are imaginary problems that only the opposition parties, classes, liberals, nobel laureates, urban naxals, students and biased media can see. Inflation doesn't exist, if we don't eat onions. If we don't publish the right data and hush the messengers, then there is no job crisis (the worst in decades). Farmers do not commit suicides, some or the other party (depending who is in power) is making an issue of it for poll gains. No one killed people on mere suspicion of eating beef - they died because they did not drink cow urine. Gauri Lankesh and Kaluburgi were not killed by anyone, especially not by bigoted, extremists. The attacks on students at campuses and protestors on streets across the country was done by the Pakistan army or ISI, the Indian/Delhi police were merely protecting the law and order. Our education system is in excellent condition because my and your children are speaking English better than english kids (in British accent learnt via youtube), can count Peppa Pigs and are even taking German and French classes. Who goes and cares about children going to government schools. Our health system is world class today - there are cafe's and play areas that would resemble a mall. We don't know what the government hospitals and health centres are upto. Who cares.

There are real problems. There are dire situations that a large number of our fellows brothers and sisters face. The statistas - I repeat those who care about matters of the state, need to know how many and who.
We need statistics for that. There is census. There are records of child birth, at anganwadis, at our schools, at our colleges. We need to know how many are stunted? How many are malnourished?
We need to know how many of our children are dropping out of schools? How many are not learning? How many mothers die at childbirth? How many infants do not make it to age 5? How many are affected by curable diseases?
How many of our graduating students do not have skills to get them jobs? How many people of working age are not working? What are they doing? What do they need to do to get jobs?

More importantly, all of us need to do something about one or few of these questions, challenges and real issues. Only then will things improve. Data, science, mathematics and statistics has mostly been about that. Knowing and knowing with a purpose and then acting upon it. The purpose can only be development and well-being of all.

"Sarve bhavantu sukhinah...sarve santo niramaya". I repeat "Sarve". All.  

On my citizenship

Har ek baat pe kehte ho, ki tu kya hai? Tumhi kaho ye andaaz-e-guftagu kya hai !

The sense of belongingness doesn't come easily. Ask that to the millions of people who are homeless, seeking refugee in foreign lands, forced to leave their homes due to prolonged conflicts and living in makeshift-camps/places. It is a matter of who we are, where do we come from, what do we believe in and who we consider as our brothers and sisters. No one likes being questioned about these things. 

Belonging to a country, being a citizen, is not just a matter of having a passport, a birth certificate, a voter ID, a particular number (Aadhar or social security), a PAN card or any set of documents. It is a matter of belonging to a collective identity, a culture, a set of beliefs, a world-view and a sense of togetherness developed, formed and articulated over many centuries and for a country like India over a thousands of years. It is not only difficult and dangerous but almost impossible to define this identity in any one particular way simply because of millions of influences and practices that shape this over such a long span of time. For a diverse and plural society that is India, it can not be language, region, appearance, colour, occupation or religion. Pluralism was not just something that we humans (Indians in this case) created and fostered over hundreds of years, it was in the air, land, climate and geography of the region. There are sands of Rajasthan for every chinar leaf of Kashmir, there are rains of Meghalaya for the snowfall of Himachal and Uttarakhand, there are flood plains of Ganges and there are the dry white sands of Kutch, there are backwaters of Kerala and the lofty Himalayan mountains of Ladakh, there are forests of Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand and there are ancient-modern town-cities such as Kashi, Delhi and others. 

It was imperative that this plurality is protected, this diversity be encouraged and this spirit be understood. Hence, the founding fathers of the modern nation-state of republic of India tried to do just that by articulating the same unmistakably in the document was to govern the way we carried out our lives as countrymen - the Constitution of India. Again, as if to protect it against misuse, dilution and change (subtle and stark both) in the years that were to come, they made these principles, values integral to the very basic nature of the Constitution and as a part of the preamble. This constitution is then studied by children in schools, practiced by executive and legislative arms of the union and protected by the judiciary.

Any question or attack on the Constitution is then not just a questioning of a document, it is an attack on the very idea of this country, on each and every citizen and vice-versa. Let us try to put it the other way - any questioning of the ordinary Indian, or citizen especially about his/her existence, about his/her definition of country, is an attack on these very basic principles and values and a direct attack on the Constitution.

This is fundamentally problematic and hence, despite the claims of technical complexities, chronological anomalies, misleading narratives, this is very easily understood by most Indians and summarily rejected by a large number of them. The outbursts, the protests, the anger on streets or otherwise is a testament to that. To term this a misled, leaderless, opposition-conspired, liberal and intellectual futile expression is missing the point completely or simply being an ostrich.

My idea of this country is mine, it is not based on my religion, it is not based on the language I speak, it is not based on how I look, the colour of my skin or what I do. I am not obliged to tell it to any one if I do not choose to or shout at rooftops if I so feel like it as long as I do not I do it peacefully without breaking the law and order. I am not obliged to answer any of such questions. That answer was given for all of us, all of us Indians who could express and who could not express themselves, the majority and the minority, the rich and the poor - in the Constitution. That answer was that, "we the People of India.... will secure for all citizens (no qualifiers here!) 

JUSTICE, social, economic and political;

LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship;
EQUALITY of status and of opportunity;

And, in the years following the independence and adoption of the Constitution, the debate and discussion, the disagreements and agreements were on the modalities of achieving these ideals. The 'hows'. Whether, socialism was the way or capitalism and market, whether a vibrant and independent media was the better option or a one that was controlled by the state, whether empowered institutions such as the Election Commission, CBI, Lokpal others were important for functioning of state, in simpler terms left, right or centre? But, rarely has there been a question on 'who' and trying to assert that Justice, Liberty and Equality will be for some and not be for some basis a set of documents. This is not acceptable.

Firstly, I have a say. The constitution was adopted and enacted by me or my father or my grandfather or grandmother on my behalf along with millions together when we became a republic. I also decided that there are certain provisions and principles that won't be changed or played with in future simply because people in executive and legislation think so.

Second, the idea of my citizenship and my link to this country can't be questioned. More so on the basis of my belief, my faith, my thoughts and my expression. I would not profess to any one or two or three sets of ideas or beliefs or any and I can't be forced. I am free and this right is guaranteed to me by me or my forefathers.

Thirdly, whether I have a set of documents or not, whether I have the capacity to even understand these documents or not, whether I have used these documents to vote, elect governments, pay taxes, travel abroad or not, I am an Indian and I do not need to prove that.

Finally, what's the need? What are we trying to do here? Why? Even if it assures me (no idea how?) of more economic prosperity, more social acceptability or political voice, I reject it as nothing can come at the cost of my existence. Stop asking me and attacking me for who I am. I reject this language, tone and this manner of conversation.