Rishabh Kaul's Weblog » Politics and Governance

Gandhi, Modernity, modernization

Rishabh — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 00:59:51 +0000

The 2nd semester at the YIF has a course called Gandhi’s critique of Modernity.

This obviously means that there is tons of reading to be done. I thought of sharing some of the articles on this blog for benefit of others.

“Gandhi After Gandhi After Gandhi” by Ashis Nandy. In the essay, Nandy speaks about how he can distinctly carve out four different Gandhis and how each Gandhi has his followers. While distinguishing them might not always seem the most obvious thing to us, it does however helps us realize that we are always at a risk of oversimplifying this complex man and his ideas. Merely tagging something with the word Gandhian, then, does little to put things into the right context.

http://www.littlemag.com/nandy.htm

Anand Giridhardas in a conversation with Eric Li, a chinese VC and nationalist thinker, discusses about Eric’s views on modernity (which he claims echoes China’s views of the same). The discussion brings to light how according to Eric, Modernity as an idea has evolved from the western civilizations and its main pillars of liberal democracy, capitalism and the individual as a basic unity of society might be debated in other parts of the world. He distinguishes this from modernization, which he refers to the material advancements and desires. (not part of course curriculum)

http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/07/14/step-aside-american-dream-heres-chinas/

Of course no course involving Gandhi can be completed without My Experiments with Truth, which takes us deeper inside them man’s life (till about mid 1930′s). This is coupled with Attenborough’s Gandhi and if time permits, Jinnah.

Before jumping into Gandhi, we spent a considerable time on understanding how history is written and presented to us. For this, the class is advised to read the Introduction to Bernard Cohn’s Colonialism and Its form of Knowledge. This is a really good crash course in understanding the various modalities of history.

The sessions are being taken by Prof Vivek Bhandari.

Rishabh Kaul is Economics & Engineering student at BITS Pilani who is interested in entrepreneurship and social innovation. Check out his profile at Linkedin or buzz him at rishabhkaul[at]gmail[dot]com

3 day business weeks

Rishabh — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 20:20:28 +0000

Globalization can affect local cultures and practices.

Or even universal practices, as is evident by the change in sleep cycles of millions of people who work in the omnipresent BPO units.

An interesting piece in an Arab newspaper informs me that businessmen in Saudi are ticked off by the Thursday-Friday weekend that KSA follows. We lose up to 4 business days as a result of this, they complain. Their plea is to shift to the Friday-Saturday cycle so that the loss can be minimized.

The new millennium saw most of the MENA region shift to a Friday-Saturday weekend. Saudi doesn’t seem to have accepted this norm due to what else? Religious reasons.

Since the beginning of time, it was the exchange of goods and services that made the world go round, slicing 4 days off it makes for terrible economics.

I wonder the impact on India’s trade if the Hindu fundamentalists force our government into making Tuesday a holiday.

Data.gov and digitized government data

Rishabh — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 20:31:57 +0000

The US government recently released a lot of statistical data in developer friendly format over at Data.gov . And almost instantly we have Sun Microsystems and biggies such as O Reilly media having a competition for the best apps that use the information from Data.gov .It’s called Apps for America and its the second time its being held, but this time the main focus is to use the data released by the government.

The winner (which was recently announced) is an app called Datamasher.org. According to the Reuter’s report:

Mashups are displayed on a state-by-state map or in a table format, which enables users to examine state markers and make quick comparisons between states.

I just had a look at Data.gov and I am really thrilled at the prospect of such a resource. Its such a pain going through the government records (atleast in my country). I was recently trying to find some information about the Sarvashiksha Abhiyan (SSA) expenditure and funds allocated to Jhunjhunu district and it took so long to make any sense of any data. Sure, part of it might be attributed to my poor researching skills but I am putting rest of the blame on the badly made PDFs and lack of digitization of data on the govt sites.

The Real deal behind 49-O

Rishabh — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 10:48:00 +0000

When I typed in 49-O in my search browser I simply couldn’t locate the Indian government website, because it was overshadowed by a thousands of blog posts, forum debates, discussing the impact of 49-O on our electoral and democratic system. And they all seemed to say that it was something to do an Act passed on in 1969.

An email has being doing the rounds, even more so after the Mumbai blasts claiming that the citizens can invoke article 49-O through which they can tick “no vote” on the ballot.

But here’s the strange part: there’s nothing about elections in the 1969 Amendment Act. What the masses are referring to is in fact “Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961” document. And here’s what it says: (from the Indian Government’s Website)

49-O. Elector deciding not to vote.-If an elector, after his electoral roll number has been duly entered in the register of voters in Form-17A and has put his signature or thumb impression thereon as required under sub-rule (1) of rule 49L, decided not to record his vote, a remark to this effect shall be made against the said entry in Form 17A by the presiding officer and the signature or thumb impression of the elector shall be obtained against such remark.

DNA also carried a news item a couple of days ago where they gave us the low down on the whole affair. According to the article

Retired high court judge, Hosbet Suresh, says, “We have discussed negative voting a number of times during our meets, and even put forth a proposal for the same, but it’s yet to be put into action.”

This means two things:

1) You have to reveal your identity. Because once you decide not to vote you will have to sign next to your name claiming so. Now this is ok, a lot of us are agitated and wouldn’t mind revealing our identity even if it goes against the spirit of the secret ballot (but in this case it’s a special situation since you aren’t really “casting” a vote, you’re refraining to do so).

However the second thing it also means is that:

2) There will be no re-polls.

The result will remain the same, the guy who gets the highest number of votes wins. Which also means that even if the majority of the nation feels that amongst the candidates standing none of them fits the bill and none would do justice to the nation as the next PM, theres no rule (as of now) which will ensure re-polling.

Apparently this mail has been doing the rounds for the last 2 years urging people to “take the initiative” to “change” the nation.

The guy who drafted the email; and I’m sure his heart is in the right pace, just became the initiator of a hoax and putting this mail in the same league as that of Jessica, the cute little girl who has been suffering from leukemia AND has been 10 ten years old for the last 9 years.

People tend to follow the masses and go with the flow. So as of now, refusing to cast a vote for any of the candidates (meaning voting for none of the above) and not getting out of your bed on the day of voting means the exact same thing.

Or maybe not, maybe if a substantial percentage of the registered voters opt for “none” we can show the nation what the nation really seeks and send a message across. (thanks @Pranav for the last paragraph