Change

It's so difficult, complicated and almost impossible to get some of the basic things done in the 'right' way in India, that it doesn't take long for one to conclude that 'right' is actually terribly 'wrong' here. Registering a marriage, registering a vehicle in a state different from the one where it was bought or paying the corresponding road tax, getting one's name in the right voter list, police verification for passport, getting a postpaid mobile connection if you are not married or home-owner, not having an electricity bill, gas bill, ration card, aadhaar card, or some such shit with your name on it - are just a few examples.

The past few years, I have suffered a lot of inconvenience because of one document that everyone seems to want and for which I am always forced to resort to crazy meaningless workarounds - it's the 'local address proof'. It's insane to expect everyone to own a house in the present times, and that too in the city/state one is living in, when a lot of guys and gals in cities are originally from somewhere else and live in rented apartments, which most even share with others. Given that, a rent agreement should be accepted, but it's not accepted, probably coz it's easy to create an agreement when none exists. There is something called a 'registered' agreement, which is hardly accepted anywhere; not even by government agencies. Workarounds exist, most of which are just acceptable documents not really proving what they are accepted for but actually standing for something else - bank statement as proof of address, for example.

Why can't we have a rule that is relevant, convenient and meaningful, so that we don't have people lying about something that could be so simple and transparent? That India is large, crowded and complex is not an excuse. We have made India 100 times (or 100x100 times or whatever) more complicated than it should have been. And this is true even about the way India's private service companies work. Political parties' election promises still include things like water in taps and electricity connections to homes. And that reflects the fact that for a country that still doesn't have the basic things in place, nor a strong will to do so, talking of processes, imperfect procedures and fraudulent paperwork is too much ahead of its time.

As Manis and I were discussing about how pathetic the state of affairs is in India and how badly we have failed to manage this Country, an analogy occurred to me as to what we do with a company with lot of valuable assets yet unable to do profitable business - either the company is sold or its assets are sold.

Our cultures have groomed our minds to develop a lot of emotion for one's country. Whereas, except for a few individuals, those associated with a company are largely motivated by what they earn out of being related. And will be open to moving out if the company is not fulfilling enough - financially or psychologically. The same does not happen so easily when it comes to one's country. Even those who move out for a better life, do cling on to their nationalities and cultures, which they try to protect with all sincerity. Proves that fight for money, and thereby one's claim over earth's resources, makes people behave far more sensibly and practically. And in all this they manage to ignore the hollow words of employers who try to invoke emotions and try to trap employees through drawing connect beyond money and work. Whereas in a country, leaders manage to trap people by invoking emotions, even if they don't really do what they can to ensure people get their fair share of resources.

Just like the fact that a company is much more than its assets, a country is much more than its resources. Ownership of all assets in a country, even land, does not amount to ownership of the country. A company is owned by definite individuals, and they can be paid and parts of the company be bought. A country is not owned by individuals. Individuals only own assets of a country. Even the Government does not own the country. It only governs. Probably nobody 'owns' a country, because none of us 'created' it. Let's say God created this earth. So the country, being a part, is created by God. Whoever played a role in carving out a specific region and defining it as an entity called country can be credited with playing the biggest managerial or leadership role in that country's history. Even that individual would not be the owner of the country because he has his importance and draws his power only from the ideological support of the subjects. If he deviates, he's gone. Probably am thinking in a democratic framework.

A dictator is also not an owner, he just imposes himself on the masses. Same is the case with a king. But with a king, the rule has elements of ownership in the kind of decisions he takes and the hereditary passing of control. And at the root of it is power and might. And a more powerful and mighty can uproot the king and take control. It is therefore 'control' rather than 'ownership'. And power and might, drawn from whatever sources, is at the heart of all forms of control - governments - democratic, dictatorial, monarchial, communist, military, etc. etc.

I could still not answer the ownership question. Probably coz it's unknown. We humans, even the powerful ones, wud be stupid to think we own the world or a country. A few of us just manage to be powerful enough to control stuff somewhere. But that's temporary, in the overall scheme of things. Those few are just more powerful in comparison - to other humans and other living beings.

For the ownership - I guess we should stick to the thing we call God. But then a country cannot be sold, coz God is simply non-existent in the form that is of any use for us to make a transaction. But then, I wonder what would selling a country really mean for us, given that I tried to justify above that a country cannot be owned by an earthly being. In fact, an actual sale would happen between Gods in that case, if there are many. I realize this is a totally useless line of analysis of ownership, as this has no practical significance for us.

What really matters for us is 'control', not 'ownership'. Control can be structured in the right manner so as to ensure that whoever is best suited for a specific task holds the reins for that task, although the ultimate control over everything can lie with some governing idiot. And then, an incentive & penalty model can be designed to further ensure that people incharge are doing their jobs. But who is going to design these models, systems and institutions in the right manner? In a democracy, the ultimate controller is theoretically people, which is not a singular entity, nor has a unique point of view. It's a game of simple majorities, which often means a system with consent of a minority, which itself neither understasnds much nor cares much nor is allowed to participate much to affect things in any significant way. Many sensible people fight for changes which they believe in. Many selfish people also fight to screw up systems in ways that would benefit them. May be we must just hope 'evolution' is the answer over the long term. But I don't have so much faith in evolution, when it comes to our own systems. Rather, not so much faith that things will evolve in ways that are best and right for us humans, at least a large majority of us.

Evolution is a frustratingly slow process. And I am not sure whether there are mini-evolutions happening to ensure right configurations for all systems in the universe. Possibly evolution is 'one' universal phenomenon to maintain a balance and beauty across the universe; and doesn't really care how humans share resources or discipline themselves or treat eachother. May be that's not the case. Who knows. And in any case, it apparently happens over generations. And what excitement would I have in trying to change anything if the change is not likely to happen to a significant extent in my lifetime? I believe those who still fight for changing the system do so not for the end but for the means - they really enjoy fight for change. It's like enjoying a job. It's in such people among us that we rest our hopes, and live with what we've got, that's constantly changing, hopefully for the better. Hopefully for the better of us.

India so Tedious and Frustrating

Rahul Gandhi has become an object of widespread criticism and mockery, and has been so for a while. And yet, he continues to stay on. And his party continues to be sycophant to the Gandhi family like before, and there is no visible change the way the Congress party works. Probably the old members of the party neither know any other way of working nor are capable of adapting and changing with the changing times, since they've learned and perfected their traits over many decades, and had once believed them to be the winning formula, and the challenges that have emerged now were unforeseen.

Let the Congress go to hell. Why should I care. We now have alternatives that seem to make better sense and seem to stand for real ideologies aimed at improving lives of common people. I want to vote for AAP, and have initiated trying to register into a voter list in Mumbai, to which I recently migrated.

Which reminds me - systems and processes for some of the most basic things in India are so complex, I find it frustrating and surprising.
A few examples:

1. Getting yourself registered in a voter list to be able to cast your vote. You are highly unlikely to be able to vote if you move around within the country very often. Remember, we are a democracy. Yet we've made it too difficult for our citizens to vote. Please don't expect each individual, especially one 18 year old or from early voting age population, to be such a strong believer in the power of his vote that he will take pains beyond a certain extent to get himself registered. Rather give him a chance to try democracy like a lot of other things the 18 year old experiment with, and create transparent and responsive systems to demonstrate the effectiveness of democracy and generate that belief in the model. We expect people to believe in flawed instances of great theoretical models like they are Hindu gods and goddesses. With that we can only end up creating temples that need dakshina for pujaari in the name of God. As this analogy struck me, I could see so clearly why bribes don't seem so terribly criminal to most of us Indians.

2. Getting a passport. Besides issues like having to pay bribes for getting police verification cleared (I had to pay Rs 2000/- last year), and many more stupid stuff, the whole deal is so tied to having an address where one has stayed for quite some time. It's all quite messy if one hasn't. Lot of people prefer giving false clean info rather than honest true info that's more a messy reality of the contemporary times but an abnormality 50 years ago. May be not. May be the rules were intentionally made absurd in the first place.

3. Vehicle registration. All vehicles are tied to a State. You move out, your vehicle doesn't belong there. And past 6 years, I've lived in 3 states, and this is not a lot of movement in the current times. And getting the vehicle registered in a 'foreign' Indian State, or at least payment of the road tax there, cannot happen without paying a huge bribe. Without getting into a lot of details, let me say it's insane. Thank God our driving licenses are nationally valid. But getting one without a bribe is another battle many don't want to fight.

4. Marriage registration. I'm yet to get married and attempt a registration, but from what I hear from everybody, this can get terribly complex and tedious. I guess bribes can get it done a bit faster. Given that marriage registration is legally compulsory in India, this should have been a simple thing to do, so that people happily adhere to the law, not get beaten down trying to follow it.

May be old ways of doing things. May be systems designed for corruption by the corrupt and powerful. But these and a lot of other things like these are because of which we Indians find it hard to comply with rules, adhere to legal requirements, participate in building the nation, and be proud of who and where we are.

Randomness of Change

One of the main tenets of modern capitalist philosophy is to let every person seek his own gains and rest assured that the whole human civilization will progress as a result. While this may be true in aggregate and average terms, there are two levels where it needs to be analyzed whether we make real progress and not aggregate material progress alone. One, is the attainment of psychological satisfaction which includes emotional and intellectual well being. In other words, the level of happiness, both at aggregate and individual levels. Two, is the nature of the competition between individuals and the human values manifested in human interactions on the ground. Since humans are such emotional species, it is necessary that human happiness and feeling of satisfaction be accounted for into economics and we have more civilized economic models.

Of course it is easier said than done. And besides, the economically powerful, sitting at the peaks of current hierarchies as defined by current models exercise all their powers to keep things in ways that best serve them. And the poor, unhappy masses are still incapable of taking them out. Coz democracy in real world is the weakest approach of extracting what one wants from the system. We've seen it fill Indian political system with criminals whom nobody likes, yet we elect them through democratic election process, where candidates get elected through simple majority albeit by getting small percentage of votes coz there are so many parties contesting, and then we have an absolute majority group of such minority voted elected representatives together forming the government, where the very reason most guys from that group get together is just so that they get to be part of the government and share the loot that's the implicit purpose of forming governments in India.

I don't know how things will change in India and elsewhere - of course different problems with different intensities in different places, mostly coz of the differences in respective prevalent cultures that define the way people think and behave. And India is doing terribly. I often conclude, although with lot of reluctance and embarrassment, that our culture sucks, specifically the cultural elements that matter most in our lives. Of course we have great temples, music, dance and cuisine, but in terms of human values, we are terrible. Aspects of culture which define how we treat each other are more important than art forms and food. And it's these cultural aspects which set the context for people with certain traits and engaging in certain kinds of actions to rise to seats of power. And it's the powerful that choose what's to be done from the options that they have. Sometimes it's with the consensus with the other powerful guys, so as to ensure the cartel is safe. By peaceful means, the common man can just make some noise and hope to be heard. By aggressive means, violent or non-violent, the common man can replace the cartel with some other cartel and hope it works for his interests. But in a society that is defined by certain values, power just differentiates between the haves and have-nots. Once a have-not becomes a have, he'll become who he always hated when he was a have-not.

Therefore, we are talking about cultural transformation. Which is impossible in the short term. And in the long term, it is impossible to transform culture in a specific direction one wants. And who is that one anyway? It is random, chaotic, yet evolving. So little, local disruptions are all one can create and hope that things fall in place in the long broad term to lead to change that one had strived for in his small lifetime and which was carried forward by other small disruptions which may or may not have culminated into large revolutions.

I could not reach a definite conclusion on how our models can be transformed to achieve what is best for the human kind. I think that is because it is not totally in our hands. We can only demand for it, may be mobilize people and resources too, and create minor local short-term impact, be optimistic that many more would see value in it and strive for similar change after our lifetime, and hope that in a few hundred years things would be different.

But that leaves me with another question - what is the incentive for a human being to strive for change of such nature which he would not experience or benefit from in his own lifetime? Why should someone screw his own life to achieve something for future generations? There are many who seem to have done that. But it's also possible that they were actually not screwing their lives but were enjoying what they were doing, and that drove them to it, and the long-term future-generations impact was not really a driving force. Or another possibility is the hope that things will change sooner than they do, the stupid mind hoping against hope. Or yet another possibility is the foolish belief that one is going to live forever. And then, there might be other guys working equally hard for another change that might be totally contradictory or nullifying what one is fighting for. Well, humans are crazy! We end up having something we never imagined and imagining something we'd never have...

Note: Masculine forms like he, his, guys, etc. have been used just for ease of writing. They apply to both men and women, without meaning any difference whatsoever.

Blogging into darkness

Once upon a time, the reason I blogged was to be read, understood and agreed to. Now I blog just to speak into the darkness, coz blogs are hardly read these days. And it's satisfying, albeit in a strange and inexplicable way. It's perhaps for the same reason that people wrote personal diaries, more commonly about 20 years back. I remember those movies where one's diary acted as a great source of useful information for solving criminal cases after his/her murder... sound funny when I think of those now.

When I moved my blog from o3.indiatimes to livejournal and later to blogger, I stopped enjoying blogging as I was hardly read and commented on. Back then, I used to feel it was no use writing volumes when nobody was gonna read. And eventually a few comments with agreement and appreciation would be the least I should get in return for the effort of writing - that's how I thought. I guess I sought acceptance for my thoughts, my feelings and, well, me.

But over the years as my blog has moved and matured to some extent, so have I, to some extent. Writing for me now has become a way of feeling that connection with myself. When I connect my thoughts into a chain and give it meaningful ends with anchor and grip, I sometimes manage to tie down an idea, that I find beautiful. Sometimes, it's still loose chains of ideas, but if I am able to see links, deliberate or incidental, I still feel happy coz I always struggle with my mind that continuously throws too many bits and pieces of creative or real images that fail to have a sequence of relevant and connected snapshots. Writing helps me force my mind to go back repeatedly and produce focussed and aligned thoughts based on which I can draw tangible conclusions about stuff of life. The natural randomness built into my thinking, however, makes me creative in interesting ways. I just need to capture each of the random thoughts and build on it, possibly by writing about it! And writing into this darkness called blog works quite well as a way to experiment with ideas.

And if I want some post of mine to be read or noticed, I post a link to it on facebook, and I do get a few hits, often driven by subconscious curiosity lost before my page opens in an adjoining browser. Still, I do have a way of turning on a twinkling star in the dark sky. And that's all the hope I need to go on staring into space and wondering about all that is, or is not. And ya, with a pen in my hand and a page to run it on... metaphorical, of course...

Gutthi come back

I used to like Gutthi in 'Comedy Nights with Kapil', but never felt he was so much the backbone of the show until he left the show. It's sad he has, and Comedy Nights is no more what it used to be. It gets boring very often now, while earlier I used to find quite a few bits very funny, and I used to forgive the few boring bits, like those by the buaa.

But the show itself has been fundamentally amazing. Totally desi. And appeals to my sense of humor.

It seems stand up comedy in India has reached a point where it can now explode ahead in a big way... Thanks to The Great Indian Laughter Challenge a few years back, for giving Indian humor and the Indian humorous a platform to take off.

But where have we lost our Haasya Kavis? The best ones have aged. And the younger good ones are not so keen (Kumar Vishwas for example). And they've been outdone by modern media in terms of focused delivery of comic content. And nobody cares much for poetry these days, especially that delivered as such. Besides, I believe poetry is not a requirement for humor. It's more an element of linguistic adornment, more relevant to songs these days. But then, it seems Haasya Kavis were more poets than comedians. So, although it's not right to compare them with the current breed of standup comedians, their business and popularity, whatever little it was before, has been affected by the latter.

Coming back to what I started with, I hope Gutthi comes back...

Need parallel models

I don't have any numbers but I believe a significant number of customers are driven away from stores because the guys in the store, who are there to assist, jump unnecessarily in front of everyone who enters the shop and ask what he/she is looking for. Most shy customers like me simply say nothing or that they are just looking and walk away or out of the store. A lot of impulse buyers and a few serious buyers are driven away in the process. All customers are not alike. One size doesn't fit all. The world needs parallel models for shy and introverted people, which right now are there only for the extroverts and the shameless (pardon the word... does shy have a better antonym? :P).

and then, you wait...

The professional skills of an individual make sense only with respect to a context in which they are desired. Our educational institutions fail to create good professionals because of their inability or unwillingness to create the right setting for imparting and testing the skills that they intend to. What comes out is not someone who is refined by education, but someone whose natural skills are rusted, yet still can be in shape with slight professional oiling, and certain other skills which he can claim he possess coz his education has misled him into believing himself as what he is not, nor trained him adequately to really acquire that skill with an adequate degree of skillfulness. (Equally applies to her but using only him for convenience). Often people get into jobs demanding the latter set of skills, coz that's what their degrees say they possess and then they end up with stressed and distressed careers. And often the former set of 'natural' skills are abandoned or forgotten, since either the market for such skills is not that lucrative or one is not able to find the right gaps in the market where they can fit in with their natural inclinations. But then, it is very stupid to expect every individual to also be skillful at marketing or positioning and stuff. To an extent these are survival instincts, but when the question is just of being optimum and sub-optimum, the instincts of survival are not invoked, coz there is no life at stake. One can be sad and dissatisfied and still spend a whole lifetime.

Therefore the issue is of economics. The fight for a bigger and bigger claim for the available resources and amenities of the world leads one to make compromises in the choices he makes. To begin with, choices are about basic necessities, but then choices are sticky and one can't generally jump in another boat once in the middle of the ocean, coz all boats you crave for are far far away. You can swim across, but the ocean we sail is heavily infested by man-eater sharks. So you go on sailing in your boat, which you hate, but that's your life. You wait to reach the shore, where your boat takes you. You would get off your boat and freely walk into the woods. Perhaps you'd still regret you didn't fight the sharks and reached the other boat that went to the shore you'd have liked better. Or perhaps there is only one shore and all boats lead you there. Or perhaps you'd just laugh at the meaninglessness of it all. Your journey defined by the choices you made. But at that point, it's just some more walk. A walk of regret or a walk of a satisfied life. Yet in the wilderness, into which you walk away, it's only dark and lonely. You wait. As do the sharks that you always dreaded.