A second Masters…finally!
There! It’s done. I have finally finished studying, for the moment at least. When I finished my Grand O this morning, I heaved a huge sigh of relief. Finally! Now, I can take a good few days of well-deserved vacation. It feels amazing not to have anything to study after years of studying. I think I will take time to get used to it though. I am a post-graduate again! Yay!!
Technical problems and randomness
I have done it! And proud of myself. 🙂 My Windows XP installation crashed last evening. I came back from dinner with friends and tried starting my computer and it simply refused to start. After many failed attempts at reviving it, I finally set down to the task of effecting a complete system reinstall, something I have never done before. It is convenient having a technician father who takes complete care of your computer and its maintenance. A week to go before I get back home and my computer had to choose to fail now. It is a cruel twist of fate that all the notes I needed for my Grand O on Saturday were stuck in electronic form on my system. So, here I was undertaking what I once considered a Herculean task, at midnight.
Twenty four hours later, my computer is good as new. All essential software installed, Windows updates installed and all files and folders completely intact. Boy, am I proud of myself! May I pat myself on the back for it. I am not a techie, far from it actually. But, I am gifted with the ability to wriggle out of the most inconvenient situations (ex. my computer crashing) with a lot of effort. So, it is done! And I am so thrilled that I managed to get it up and running without any major mishaps. Maybe I should have been a techie after all. 😉
Religious intolerance and fundamentalism
Recently, I came across a website called Challenging Islam. It was interesting from a purely academic perspective and so I bookmarked it, promising myself I would come back to it when I had the time. True to my promise to myself, I returned last night, and took the time to read the contents of the site. After pages and pages of rambling about Cuba and what-not, I came upon the library link. I clicked on it out of sheer curiosity. Very soon, I discovered that all the ‘articles’ spoke about how bad Islam was, how unjust and how violent. Now, many of these accusations would have held water if the writers did not refer continually to the Bible to show how ‘different’ and just and good it is. I tend to dismiss the authenticity of any claim that refers all the time to the Catholic Church as an example of the good and the just. Before I continue, I must make a disclaimer, so as to avoid accusations of heresy and Christian-baiting. I am not Muslim, nor am I Christian, nor Jew. In other words, I am not a person “of the book”. I will be criticising Islam, Christianity, Hinduism and every other religion in this post. This is not a personal attack against a single religion. Rather, it is an observation that I wish to make regarding the attitude of religion in general towards certain issues.
Now, on with it. The one article that drew my attention was on the position of women in Islam. This particular article talks of the relationship between the veil and rape. It claims that a “rape epidemic” is sweeping Europe and that a direct connection between rape and Islam is irrefutable. It goes on to demonstrate, using the words of Imams and scholars, that Islam exhorts men to rape women if they are unveiled. What the hell? No thinking individual, irrespective of his knowledge is Islam, will believe that claim for a single minute. No religion, however conservative, would call upon pious men to rape women for the sin of exposing their hair. This article is only one among many that claim that Islam is inherently anti-women and that the civilised Christian world must rise in protest against it.
This is where I started raising a series of objections. First, Islam’s interpretations are given by Imams and scholars, most of whom are men. Second, the Koran in itself may have undergone mutations over the centuries (don’t quote me on it, I am only guessing). Third, most of the people who criticise Islamic practices are Christian and tend to continually refer to the Bible as proof. Most people would agree that the Bible was not translated into English and other vernacular languages until the 8th Century. By then, the original Hebrew Bible went through many transformations. It was inaccessible to the lay public for centuries and the Catholic Church had complete control over its interpretation. The position of women in the world’s major religions is far from satisfactory. The Catholic Church still refuses to accept birth control and abortion that can empower women in more ways that one. Hinduism and its offshoots gave way to atrocious practices such as Sati. Women in Hinduism have long been treated as second-class citizens. A widow was forced to shave off her head and wear plain white, no matter how young she was, until the 1960s. The Christian Church, both Catholic and Protestant have been far from egaliatarian in their treatment of women since the Middle Ages. I don’t know much about Judaism and so will not comment on the treatment of women by the Jews. The point is, women have always been treated as second-class citizens by every religion. Most of the time, the fault lies, not with the religion texts themselves, but with the interpretation of these texts by priests and clergymen, most of whom were men.
Why then do we take the moral high-ground while discussing women in Islam and pretend that it is the only religion that treats its women badly? Why do we demonise Islam and denounce it in intellectual conversations while turning a blind eye to the discriminatory practices that exist in our own religion. To me, that is simple hypocrisy. The problem is never with religion. It is with the people who practise the religion and interpret it to suit their personal interests. If we must protest, we must protest against all discriminatory practices in all religions and stop demonising Islam. But then, that’s just my opinion. Maybe it is simply a politically-motivated campaign rather than a serious criticism of the status of women in religion. I do not know. Any answers are welcome.
Language, culture and politics
During one of my philosophical musings earlier in the day, I wondered how important language was to our lives. From language, my thoughts drifted to the anti-Hindi agitation of the 1960s in Tamil Nadu. And from there, it turned inevitably to the massive north-south divide that still exists in India. I had blogged once earlier on how difficult it was to find a south-Indian recipe on the web. I had raved and ranted about how India was automatically equated with the North and with Paneer Butter Masala and Tandoori Roti. Today’s post is, in a certain way, a continuation of the previous. People’s association of India with Delhi and its surroundings makes me uncomfortable. It makes me wonder why exactly the South is so conspicuously absent in popular memory. While I have nothing against the North or Delhi, it makes me upset, sometimes angry that people wonder if I speak Hindi the minute they meet me. I do, but that’s not the point. The point is that I don’t have to speak Hindi because I was born and raised in Chennai. There is no fair reason for me to learn the language as I get by perfectly well in Chennai with Tamil and English. This said, I would like to issue a disclaimer. I know Hindi, I can speak it fairly well, and simply use English words in place of Hindi ones if I am stuck. Therefore, any possible accusations of Hindi-phobia are entirely unfounded.
A friend of mine told me about a friend of hers, who is coming to France from Greece. This friend had a tough time figuring out the meanings of road signs in Athens because all of them were in Greek. Random thought: Maybe this is what people mean when they say “this is all greek to me!” Anyway, that made me think about the situation back home. As far as I have seen, sign boards are largely bilingual in Chennai. I cannot say the same about Bangalore or Bombay. I remember trying to recollect my Hindi numerals, rather desperately might I add, in Bombay because someone told me to take bus number 63 and I could not figure out how the hell the numerals 6 and 3 are written!
Anyway, this is fast becoming a pointless rant because I have been on this post for so long that I forgot what exactly I wanted to say. Not to mention that I am being extremely random today. Maybe it is a product of the euphoria produced because I am going back home!!
Of the Indian economy and human development…
Reading the news, especially news from India, seems to give me plenty of blog material. The latest in the series is this article from Statesman, Calcutta (oops! its Kolkata now!) stating that over 48% of all outbound investment is from the IT and the IT-enabled sector. The point of this post is not to debate the whys and wherefores of outbound direct investment by Indian companies and its mechanisms, but to wonder how far IT and ITeS can lead us as a nation?
I am not an economist and I will not debate the macroeconomic considerations behind calling India an emerging economy. As a student of Security Studies, I am more concerned with the issue of Human Security. And as a student of International Relations, I am more concerned about human development. So, here I am, asking the question I should have asked a few years ago during the BJP’s “India Shining” campaign. How far can IT take us when nearly 30% (maybe more) of India’s population is illiterate? What do IT, computers and Internet mean to the one-half of India that has no access to drinking water? And finally, how does IT ensure the security and well-being of the citizen, thus bringing into focus the issue of human security?
My immediate response to these questions is that it does not, in fact, contribute in any way to improvement of the lives of nearly 400 millions Indians who live below the poverty line. When I say this, I am not condemning IT or ITeS as unnecessary or pointless. I am simply observing that the money brought in by Indian multi-national companies (yes, they do exist) does not contribute effectively to improving the standard of living of the Indian masses. By masses, I do not mean the middle class and the upper middle class. I mean the real masses who live far away from bustling urban centres. It is easy for us, as Indians, to pat ourselves on the back for the rise of Indian multinational companies, not only in IT and ITeS, but also in other areas like steel, telecommunications and aviation. It is easy also to forget that India still ranks an abysmal 126 out of 177 countries, with a human development index of 0.611, according to the 2006 Human Development Report of the UNDP.
It is important to find out where we are going wrong. Indians often pride themselves on the excellent system of higher education that exists in India. We waste no time in reminding everyone that our IITs and IIMs are comparable to MIT and Harvard Business School. However, we tend to forget that the students of these IITs and IIMs are often from elite, private schools that offer world class secondary education. The HDR says that the combined gross enrolment ratio in primary, secondary and tertiary education is merely 63%. That means that nearly 40% or India’s population has never been to school. How does economic development help the nearly 500 million people who have never stepped into an educational institution?
The problem lies here. It lies in the education sector. An emphasis on higher education and the existence of heavily subsidised universities and colleges serves no purpose if 40% of the country’s population cannot afford access to the first 12 years of schooling that will help them get into these universities. The fees my parents had to pay during my school years clearly demonstrates this. When I was in Class 12, the final year of school, my parents paid nearly 10,000 rupees ($250) a year. This changed dramatically once I got to college. As I did history in an aided college, albeit autonomous, I paid something like 3000 rupees ($75) including maintenance fee that WCC charged for the upkeep of the campus. I would have paid about 700 rupees (less than $20) had I studied in a government college. At post-graduate level, my entire year’s expenses, including exam fee, were no more than 2500 rupees ($65) at the University of Madras. How are people supposed to get to the stage where the government pays for everything if they can’t afford the $250 a year for primary school in the first place? Government-run primary schools are so bad that even the lady who works for my mother as domestic help prefers a badly-run private school. In rural centres, the teachers rarely ever show up. In states like Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, schools are used to host local criminals and/or politicians. How will India ever really shine if primary education is so neglected?
I am not saying that economic development is a bad thing. In fact, economic development is essential to facilitate infrastructure building and education. However, the problem arises when higher education is given preferential treatment over primary education because of flawed government policy. The market in India does its job perfectly well: it creates wealth. The redistribution of the wealth thus created by ensuring access to basic public goods is the job of the government. Sadly, nothing seems to change in India. Every year, the Finance Minister offers sops to the IT sector and the services sector. But, no progress seems to be made on basic issues of health, sanitation and primary education. These are the primary issues that must be addressed if India intends to ever get to the position of a developed country.