The intersection of Technology, Leadership and Society that made Aadhar happen.A captivating account

 My review at Amazon, of the book "The Aadhar Effect", written by my friend and inspiration, Ramnath.

Technology work with Indian Government is  hard. Harder still, when private and public institutions have to work together. The hardest part is when it involves each of the 1 billion citizens as an end user. The Aadhar project faced all these levels of hardships. The book, 'The Aadhar Effect' seeks to capture this hard, complicated and multi-faceted journey to consolidate and de-duplicate the Indian digital identity.

Somewhere in the book, the authors mention that the project had many aspects of a thriller with twists and turns, conflicting forces, drama etc. Well, the book itself seems to be that! Particularly the sections on privacy, with RTI activists .vs. Privacy activists, are page turners. The book is beautifully written. At many points, when I was reading a section, I had some thoughts (ex: about fortune at the bottom of the pyramid) and as I progressed, I discovered they were exactly covered in the book. That shows a natural flow that evokes reading interest.

The book goes beyond Aadhar itself and discusses enabling digital platforms and digital services that are or could be built over Aadhar. There is a small amount of noticeable (though well-deserved) Nandan praise for his leadership abilities, his ability to conceive the larger aspects of the project and put a diverse team together. To be fair, in the chapter 'Who's afraid of Aadhar?', the book lists a collection of 50 common problems and objections to Aadhar. Nowhere else can you find such a comprehensive counter-view in one place.

At some places, the authors tend to delve on the 'larger picture', philosophically or strategically, which may be viewed as a stretch. Like, towards the end, they portray Aadhar like it's some foreign relations enabler for its learning potential for implementing large digital projects.

The angle on Aadhar being, an important, but only one of the many Lego blocks is a significant theme of the book. In the same lines, the book dwells upon future possibilities and great potential of Aadhar, rather than on how it has been useful in the development arena, the exceptions being the Direct Bank Transfer scheme and payment systems. It dwells on the architectural beauty of having a unique identity and how it can be a true transformation tool if you want to use it for development and empowerment and how the central payments infrastructure is already making it possible.

The book has a good share of the stories of getting work done. For example, with Nandan's backing by the PMO, his access to PM worried the bureaucrats,. The authors mention it as: 'It's not that he would call. It's that he *could* call'. The book is of full of such super-interesting tidbits and also many anecdotes about the dynamics between Nandan Nilekani, his colleagues and various government departments.

As you write a book review, you realize that you are not writing a review of the book, but a review of the Aadhar project itself! Thats a good thing, it means the book has achieved its goal, of pushing you to think about the project, its impact, potential and ramifications.

If you seriously think about the impact of technology in Samaj and Sarkar, if you tend to have an 'integration' view of all things tech and the power of digital platforms to transform landscapes, this book is a great read. If you have been in situations, where you have to demonstrate extraordinary leadership to bring a diverse team together to push towards a visionary goal, you must pick up this book. You will understand both, how hard it is do good work in India and how hard it isn't, i.e. if you have the commitment, the right team and undaunted persistence.

It may be waiting for you at the airport, at a book fair, at a neighbourhood store, or in Amazon. It might pick you up. Like they say, when it comes to good books, you don't choose them, they choose you.

Teaching Dinosaurs to dance digitally - Part 2

Part 1 of this article was about why PDF India is not #DigitalIndia and some thoughts on access to public data and data submission. 

Now that the rant is over, let me document some of the woes that I came face to face in accessing public data.

A couple of years back, I was consulted by a friend once on having to extract select data fields from hundreds of PDFs from SEBI website, for research work. It involved the extraction of fields such as Offer Price, Negotiated price etc (well, whatever their finance lingo), from Letter of Offer documents submitted by merger/takeover companies to SEBI, over 15 years. Putting together a strategy using open-source/free tools and an eye to automate most of the tedious tasks to the maximum and maintain accuracy, a sequence of steps was devised for automated extraction. In some stages, semi-automated. Some steps required human eye reviews from time to time, about whether the automation ghost, that eerily moved the mouse pointer at midnight, is working properly or is being interrupted by the invalid data ghost.

Here are some of the concerns I came across. 

The SEBI page of Letter of Offer for Takeovers, was treated as the starting point for collection of data fields related to Final Letters of Offer. ​

Original data collection by SEBI is not structured :

The fact that information was collected as PDF and not as structured data gives less scope for meaningful analysis of data. Ideally, the data should have been collected from the companies in more organized formats such as XML, Excel or CSV or by seeking information in a web form, as is the standard practice. This would have allowed the collection of raw data by SEBI in a database-friendly format. Since this was not to be, it led to a situation where the structured data have to be sought by sifting through PDF documents. For ages, we have been looking at standards like IFRS and XBRL from a distance, but nothing moved because SMEs complained of compliance cost.

No options to bulk download :

There were no options to bulk-download documents by querying for multiple companies based on search criteria. One had to traverse the pages a few links at a time to download the documents. This constraint was later overcome partially by a series of semi-automated steps using tools such as FlashGot, TinyTask and the parsing of the pages for file paths.

Inconsistency and non-standard methods in the organising of PDF links in the SEBI website :

The formats in which the document links were organized varied between pre-2005 and post-2005 periods. Links to pre-2005 takeover documents, would lead to a direct download link of the Final Letter of Offer. The file name would be numeric, giving no idea about the company in question. Such as this.  On the other hand, post-2005 takover documents, would lead to another intermediary web page of links for the company (such as this), which in turn would lead to the PDF link. In the later years, the PDF file would be named more meaningfully such as LOF etc (which is a relief), but not consistently. This meant more manual downloading and filtering of necessary documents from unnecessary ones. Some HTML tags filtering using tools such as NotePad++, followed by exporting to a database, were used to partially overcome these constraints.

Unsuitability of PDF format for structured data :

The PDF format doesn't lend itself to efficient parsing to collect data. Moreover, the data fields required (such as Average price), were often presented in a table inside the document. This meant that the PDF documents needed to go through a series of steps before data could be culled out from them. Calibre software and the online service pdfonline.com were used in batch processing to convert PDFs to HTML web pages. The individual code lines from the web pages were exported to an SQL database and parsed for HTML tags to look for tables that contained the required fields.

Lack of uniformity and fixed format for the presence of data in the document :

Inside the PDF document, data was not found consistently in the same location or format. One had to look for references to the section title such as 'Financial Justification' and then look for the data in the table that geographically followed it below. Keywords such as 'Negotiated Price', 'Average Price' and various combinations of such phrases had to be listed to look for data. Even after all this, one wasn't sure whether the data fields would indeed be found or not. 

Inefficiency of using text-based search to identify data fieds :

When found, they may not be found in a consistent form or a phrase. For instance, 'Not Applicable' could be any of NA, N.A., N-A,a hiphen etc. Sometimes, the justification section would be a paragraph that contained none of the keywords. For an automated lookup, references to 'infrequently traded' might often been confused with 'infrequently traded on NSE and frequently traded on BSE'.   These made automated collection inefficient and necessitated a manual study of the PDF documents.

Mismatch between different databases in company name mentions :

While some data fields required for the study were to be found from Letters of Offer, others were extracted from the Prowess database. The takeovers involve an acquiring company and a target company. There were inconsistencies and mixups in both these names between the Prowess and SEBI data sources. SEBI would list the letter of offer against the target company whereas Prowess would list it the other way round. In some cases, where there were multiple takeover instances relating to same company names, requiring the PDFs of multiple years. This meant resolving the mix-up by manually reviewing the PDF and data fields. One had to arrive at a cross-tab of SEBI name, Prowess Name and the correct Letter-of-Offer-Name in the takeover context before one could collect accurate data.

---------------------------

This is not the issue of a single website of one government insitution or a government department. It’s the opposite, of being unable to work as a single website for the whole country. It’s about the isolated approach to.presenting data to the public or seeking data from them, sulking it as an unwanted duty imposed by the Digital India frenzy.

The data.gov.in  sets an excellent precedent with public APIs throwing an ocean of private opportunities open. It is high time that other government institutions join the bandwagon of unified data view architecture both for submission and presentation of data, in truly seamless transactional digitization, keeping in view bulk submission and bulk download options. Data.gov.in has plenty of uncompleted agenda ahead of having to unify the data from the states at a regular timeline and keeping it update and in getting the various uncomplying departments to co-operate.

Some data dinosaurs have to be taught to dance digitally, because evolution is binary. 
You either become distinct or you become extinct. 

Teaching dinosaurs to dance digitally

It ain’t so much of #DigitalIndia yet. It's just PDF India. For those looking for meaningful, processible data, the difference between the two can make a world of difference. For some government institutions, digital means PDF or JPEG image of scanned print reports, including spreadsheets and balance sheets. One might argue that nowadays it's possible to extract data from PDFs using technology. But it's like garbage disposal and recycling. The messup shouldn't be created in the first place. Image processing algorithms were not invented for spreadsheets.

A good example of a bad PDF document is the District Census Handbook of 2011. It will have reams and reams of pages, with one page showing the first half of a horizontal spreadsheet, titled “Industrial Catgory of”, and next page showing the other half, titled “Marginal Workers”. Man, that must be some innovation in bad design .

Switch to the good example of presentation of the same data. data.gov.in presents hundreds of datasets from the Census of 2011 in open formats for public access. You can access the data for the same district in CSV format, loadable into Excel. Did you know you could download the Indian Railways timetable in Excel ?. How sweet!

The salient rule in data collection or presentation must be that, at the raw source, the data must be collected in a format that is processible by automation. It should minimize human eye intervention only for reviews and green/red flags and throwing up exception patterns. Or for discovering insights of wisdom from "rich experience", which a chip can't discern. Days may have come when chips outsmart elders in experiential wisdom as well, LoL.

Companies like HowIndiaLives.com , where my friend Ramnath is involved, address this problem by helping their customers and website visitors make visual sense out of the non-sense data in India's public domain. They also present it in a beautiful and user-friendly ways and help project stakeholders glean useful insights from data. That data shouldn't have been nonsensical in the first place, in its raw open form, is the sad fact. That they converted rants like these into a business opportunity is their ingenuity. While raw data must be disseminated in open processible formats, it should lead to an ecosystem of companies like these, which compete in discovering insights from data and presenting them, without having to spend too much time cleaning it. Not just cleaning it, but having to fight inconsistencies between multiple sources of data for the same item of information, I guess, must be another tedious task.

Taking a leaf out of international open data like data.un.org, the open data platform for India is a big leap in this direction for sharing of public datasets (though they don’t have options to bulk download data). 

On the other hand, some of the transactional websites of the government websites can make life extremely tedious. If you are a high-volume transaction submitter, your life can become miserable, having to submit thousands of records into old-style web forms. Some of them must have been in a cave since AJAX was invented. They can put thousands of person names with option buttons on a single page, expecting the user to scroll down or use the browser's Find, choose one name and then submit. Wwwhaaat!

The format in which data must be submitted to government websites must be pre-defined with digital processing in mind. For a billion-headed Titanosaur like India, it should definitely have scale in mind too. Ideally, it shouldn't even be Windows OS intensive and Windows OS requiring. Kerala, for example, wants to dabble in Linux and it's a good thing. I hope they don't up give up like Munich, the city that wanted to run on Linux. But, that kind of thinking is good. It may lead at least to the adoption of open formats for seeking data, if not an open-source OS.

Not all is a sad story with Digital India. There are a handful of bright spots in good design, that take scale and digital processibility into account. Aadhaar, no doubt, is a beautiful example. The Income Tax website often has some sudden quirky differences between its Java tool and the Excel tool with mysterious conclusions of inability to generate the XML file. But it at least uses XML to upload data. Thats a good thing. Even within the Income Tax Department, you may not find the same kind of good design for other tasks, for instance, for applying for non-deduction of TDS. Another of my favorite examples of handling technology at scale carefully is SBI's transition to core banking and their merger with associate banks. It was not about open data or about government per se. But, at its scale, it's truly a project of teaching elephants to dance, and for their size, they did a mighty good job at it. The GSTN must be the next Aadhaar-like unifier, after the easing out of the initial troubles.


This is the intermission, the end of Part 1. 

In Part 2, I mention some of the woes I faced while extracting data from PDFs from the SEBI website. It has a sad ending that rounds up by saying :

Some data dinosaurs have to be taught to dance digitally, because evolution is binary. 
You either become distinct or you become extinct.  

Lot of technical debris ahead on Part 2. Blissful poets, musicians and other non-tech readers not allowed beyond this point. :-) :-)

-->> Part 2 

The Hunger Strike at Kasi Vinayaga Mess

When I was in Chennai, the Kasi Vinayaga Mess, a bachelors paradise in Triplicane, hiked their meal prices. Some regulars approached me to ask whether I will participate in a hunger strike in protest. We skipped lunch on a Sunday and spent the whole afternoon in the tea shop in front of the mess. The guy lost his revenue, but didnt give up and went on a return fast. Soon the mess-runners association joined him and cancelled dinner. His wife, annoyed that he didnt bring home that day's collections, went on a hunger strike. Her mahila sangam joined treating it as a twin offence of violation of human rights and economic harassment.

As you naturally expect in argumentative hero-worshipping democracies anywhere in the world, more restaurants and mahila sangams joined and there was food (or lack thereof) crisis in Triplicane. Food prices plummeted and was offered free along with the second-hand books sold on Triplicane platforms, but people would only satisfy their intellectual hunger and use it to hold on to their protest with determination. The Parthasarathy Swamy, overlooking the Bay of Bengal, suddenly discovered to His helplessness, that the Madapalli (temple kitchen) was closed without prior notice and his daily dose of Chakkey Pongey and Iyengar Puliyodharai had been withdrawn. The priests, who ran many Braahmanaal Messes as part-time, treated the Divine Temple Kitchen as an extension of their mess, and for all their namams built up with devotion, put a bigger one to the Lord that day. The Madisar Maamis quickly used the opportunity to declare 'mess-closed' for their agrharam kitchens too and happily settled down to watch the Malini Iyer serial, starring Sri Devi as a Tambram bride in a hindi-speaking household, so that they can take a dig at their Mylapore counterparts. As if a Manjula Iyengar would have made a better bride and a better serial. Being without a mess, people realised, became a big mess.

And then hunger struck. I mean, it STRUCK us. In chronological order. First, it struck me, actually. That is real hunger strike, when hunger strikes you. How long can you stand in front of a mess and not have food, particularly, food being a primary component of happiness index for Brahmacharis, what other earthly pleasure did they seek in life, after all ? Are we not the ones who treat the payasam given by the neighbourhood aunty after Satynarayana Pooja with maximum reverence and effortlessly devour it as if it was a glass of buttermilk ? We gave up all the principles that we held dear to our heart since the afternoon and stomached a cardinal teaching that was right in front of our dangling eyes in broad daylight waiting to be acknowledged.

That was this: Right there, somewhere near the Ice House Bus Stand, Swami Vivekananda had declared, after the Darshan of Lord Parthasarathy, Vedanta was definitely not for empty stomachs. No, not for you Madrasees, in particular. I think, he might have actually insisted you have atleast one sambar idly in Ratna Cafe before you picked up Ashtavakra Gita. A session of Ashtavakra Gita can be so strenuous, it can consume a lot more idlies. This part must have been edited by his translators to avoid the ethnic reference to a regional cuisine and to avoid sounding as if he was promoting a particular brand of Idlis. So much intensity there was in the speech to his disciple Azhasinga Perumal that they named the bus stand as Vivekananda House. Not knowing a Kannaki Statue will come up nearby on the beach and there will be nomenclature clashes about Kannaki and Vivekananda. (But why do they still call it Ice House ? I mean neither of them stand to benefit).

'I like Vedanta', I thought, 'I don't want to give up Vedanta', but that would also mean, I shouldn't remain with an empty stomach. Isn't Vedanta the crowning jewel of all the principles in the world, before which all other principles fade into oblivion, my mind and stomach justified, in partnership. That knowledge, when known, you dont need to know anything else. That sambar idli, when eaten, you don't need to eat anything else. Clearly, I was beginning to see the similarities between the ephemeral and the eternal and how to put Vedanta into daily life, sincerely taught by Ashtavakra and sumptuously sponsored by Rathna Cafe. It's amazing, if you deter the metabolism and deny oxygen to the brain for a few hours, how it constructs an equally beautiful, alternate logical structure mixing up gods, swamijis and their disciples, treating letters as speeches and quoting the right sentence from the wrong source, dotting all 'i's in the idlis and dashing all the 't's in Vedanta. And justifies with a simple conclusion, whatever needs to be done, just do it. I was a new man, with new logic, new metabolism and a newly washed old tumbler in my hand.

I entered the mess and force fed the owner first with a 'single tea' and pleaded with him to force feed all of us at the tables.

You know what, the snowballing effect of what would have turned into a public movement led by a Naishtika brahmachari, surpassing the ahimsa movement led by a not-so-naisthika brahmachari, was averted and the cascading reversed. He force fed his wife, who in turn, force fed him back in reciprocation of affection. Ooooooo, it was a sight for all the hungry Gods of Triplicane to see. Both of them started force feeding the mess owners and mahila sangams on either side of the gender divide. They also force fed the second hand book sellers, who were already fed, since they had not yet joined, but were fed up to see the spoilt food causing the books to smell. Though the books had their worn-out paper smell that resembled the fragrance that emanates from the beach sands after a mild shower, the additional ingredient to the odour had sent wrong signals to the intellectually hungry elite and their book sales had been suffering. The F & B industry and the Publishing Industry in India, both got the lesson in a single session: 'Dont mess up with a bachelors mess, they are already a pre-fabricated mess by design, otherwise it will take a messrs of all messes and their mrs-es to clear up the mess'.

The KVM owner still calls me up every Saturday night to assure me the prices are the same. When he called today, however, he sounded worried. It seems the PMK party in Tamil Nadu wants the state to be divided. 'Thambeeee ,', he said, 'will they go on a hunger strike like your folks in Teloongana ?' he enquired with his eye brows already drawn like the borders of bifurcation. He didnt know that I no more lived in such a nice place called Samaikhya Andhra Pradesh, which Bharathiar praised as Sundara Telunginil Paatisaithu, but in a newly carved state called Greater Rayalaseema. The greater name sounds a bit like Navi Mumbai or Burj Dubai. Why don't they just call it Royal Seema or something rhyming and poetic like Rathnalaseema. Why don't I go on a hunger strike on this issue and feel off as if I am some Prakasam Panthulu ?

He insisted that I intervene, lest the Pandya Kingdom south of Dindigul is split off as a separate state. Now that really touched me, it immediately transported me on Rani Mangammal Transport Corporation to the rock fort and 'Aranmanai Kulam' (Palace Pond) of that sleepy tobacco town. If you touch such a sentimental, emotional, territorial chord, how can I refuse ? Further, he extended his imagination richly to surmise that, if I allowed the split to happen, the new territory upto Rameswaram, may, in due course, quit India and float off on Sethu Samudram, to become a state under Sri Lankan sovereignty. Given their recent modus operandi of establishing sovereignty, the word wont mean much anyway, I told him, they might just send them all back as refugees to Triplicane and you would have a roaring business. May be you should start a Kandi Kadhirgaamak Kandhaa Mess.

However, to allay his secession fears, I asked him if there was any tea shop in front of the PMK office. 'Alone-aaa Thambeee ?', he asked, thinking I might borrow a few volunteers from KCR and use it for a similar cause. 'Don't worry Anney', I told him, 'there will be surely some college nearby, that will do for additional troops'. Just provoke some students, and show them how their entire green pastures and futures lie in just foregoing a lunch and crowding at the tea shop and drooling at the girls. Nay, first provoke the teachers, our students respectfully follow the illustrious teachers on all the wrong things precisely, and then they will all do a repeat performance of Kasi Vinayaga Mess. What more do bachelors want to start a hunger strike ? And for what else do you want to use all the youth and passion and intensity ? After all, were we not told, they are clay and they can be moulded. Just use the clay part in their heads. Any volunteers ? I promise you, we'll be back for dinner, we've dunnit before.

Will the Nano click ?

My only concern is: I hope there are no quality issues in an effort to cost-cutting, since the Tatas are under cost-pressure nowadays from all sides. Political decisions, Costly acquisitions, Industry downturn, Expectations from dealers and vendors [and even bankers :) ]. If the first few batches hit the roads and then turn out with some defects, that will be terrible. But if they are able to deliver the quality they promise for that price (which the Tatas have always been good at), then, I think it's going to be a huge hit, both in India and very soon, abroad.

As to going global, they may have a tough time fulfilling local demand, but when they do, their timing might just be right. People would just be emerging from bad times and the need to look for cost-effective products with comparable utility will be one of their top-of-mind concerns. At last, some engineering-based Indian product will arrive in the global scene !! If it clicks, I really hope and expect it to rock !! It would make US and European carmakers sit up and get worried, (if they are still around), although, actually, from their perspective it would be just another, age-old-concept, cheap car, except for the price shock they get. (I can't say the same thing about Japanese, however). It might be no match to the premium range excellence and finesse of the Germans, gadgetry of the Japanese or the lavish feature-kill of the Americans, but, the starting line for the race is not in that segment. Unlike the Chinese electronic goods, it would be a world-class, yet frills-free utility car, at the Indian prices (!) which India has so far been able to deliver in service sectors and some manufacturing sectors like textiles. We should really appreciate Tata's daring to attempt that. I often wish something like that happens for India in the products market in software, unlike the ITES and BPO where all the focus (and the tax sops) seem to be. As to environ and cars-per-road issues, they are industry-wide regulation issues and a single brand can't be isolated to be responsible for the flooding the roads in its sincere and determined attempt to create value for money.

Is Maruti listening ?

Don't die for a Cause, Live for it.....

After my earlier writings on Bhagat Singh, a friend of mine sent in a link to a recent article on Periyar's stance on Bhagat Singh in those days. The article is based on a recently published book on Bhagat Singh. I should have discussed it after reading the book but I think the contents of the article, even when taken alone, has stuff enough for a blog post, particularly since it mentions an essay written by Bhagat Singh "Why I am an atheist".

I wouldn't ask someone to give up his life by engaging in violent action in the cause of something that is dear to his heart, even against an oppressor. Not that I value Life more than the Cause, but because I think it is better to use Life to further that cause, rather than to give it away on a quick-fix route. Don't say "I'll die for this cause", but say, "I'll live to show how to live for this cause". I called Bhagat Singh a martyr in comparison with Nathuram, because Bhagat Singh gave up his life in acting against an external 200-year-old oppressor, not on a skirmish of money transfer. It's how a spouse or a kid who is oppressively abused at his/her home wanting to break away from the family is different from the kid who thinks of running away because his Dad scolded him. But after Bhagat Singh chose to offer his life (which I think is not always the best thing to do), I would always differentiate such an offering as martyrdom given the context, zeal, selflessness, external oppressor and the awareness wave it created , as against other flimsier reasons for murder of oneself or others. This is not to say that such martyrdom should be replicated (as if it's that easy), but the zeal behind, selflessness and singlepointedness should be replicated towards a cause that is as noble and supreme as the ideal was to the martyr.

There are probably a couple of points in the article where I agree, where Periyar laments that nobody, no leader even condoled the hanging of Bhagat Singh and many senior leaders didn't try to take up the matter with the British in any way. That was real bad, how thankless !

I also agree on Bhagat Singh's general exhortation that exploitation of man by man and nation by nation should end.

That said, would I agree with Bhagat Singh's other views or beliefs ? Oh hardly, which is why I put the agreement first. Here are those where I disagree and most of these disagreements are in the outdated utility of his views in the current times, not on their backdated relevance.

Belief in socialism and communism as a panacea for all the evils of the society was a belief wave of those times, not because of their proven intrinsic healing properties, but more because of the frustrations of imperial colonialism. This would soon get proven by time with, if not the crumbling of such institutions, atleast with the wane in the fascination for these schools and increasing disillusionment about their healing properties. They were definitely worth the try, though.

Among the governance schools that mankind has tried out, Democracy seems to be the one that is working out the best in the current phase of civilization and Man's search for happiness in society. While I personally have a fascination of benevolent autocracy at times, I think, democracy, with all its demerits, will hold the fort as Mankind moves towards better and better forms of this school, hopefully plugging its loopholes on the way. So is the case with free markets, with whatever little freedom it might mean in the actual sense of practice, under democratic intervention through regulation.

"Till people live without unequal status, our struggle will continue. It cannot be brought to an end by killing us..." Oh come on, flip this argument around, will inequality come to an end by killing yourself or others ? How do you define inequality ? How do you define a Utopian possibility of a single equal society where everyone is somehow equally endowed and happy ? Or should we endeavour for the equality of opportunity to make choices and rise ? How about people using the same equality of opportunity to make choices and fall ? Or befall others ? Assuming you define equality successfully, is it something you can achieve ? Even if you were to achieve all equality of the material (which by itself, is an infinitely complex problem), Man would still be unhappy about inequalities in his mind. This is not to say we should glorify the absurd inequalities, but we should pursue the endeavour to remove the absurdity acknowledging the fact that such a pursuit can span civilizations and no single hammer can quickly rest the hall to peace forever.

"only Bhagat Singh’s principle is needed in India" ? That's just Periyar's political wand. Just ignore. We are anyway discussing here why it may not be as fascinating. Among others, He justifies the "use of force in terrible necessity" and non-violence as an indispensable policy for mass movements. I think while it might have had some relevance in relation to abuse by an external oppressor, but it might create utter chaos if individual citizens subscribe to this idea and use force depending on their view of terrible necessity. Leave it to the law enforcers, please.

While some responses to the article have praised his humanism, other online responses the article have handled the fallacious comparison between caste system and economics, untouchability and povery, so I won't go into it. I also won't go into the possible "political" reasons for Periyar to vociferously align with Bhagat Singh or even Bhagat Singh to align with atheism. I would rather look at the reasons for their value and not for their motive.

The other reasons of Bhagat Singh to align with atheism are mentioned in his essay, "Why I am an Atheist", referred to in the article in the context of religion being a tool of exploitation. For one, the essay is definitely a great stirring read, but the meat isn't new, it's as old as God, just the dialogues are different. I wanted to discuss this after I read The God Delusion, but let's have a primer.

If you cut out the part where Bhagat Singh explains that vanity, upbringing etc are not among the reasons, the other main reasons are :

1. He studied a lot on the subject and then found his atheism. He doesn't mention what his studies revealed, I think probably the other reasons mentioned here are the ones. Moreover, Bhagat Singh himself admits that he did a detailed study of the "negative" side, that is, how to deconstruct the God concept, he didn't study much on the "positive" side. Oh, thats bad study, but I will credit him for his open admission.

2. Some of the stuff is rhetoric, hey look at this, hey look at that, don't you know this, aren't you looking and so on. So cut that out too, but I should say, even after cutting, he does go on to some core reasons.

3. "Religion is the cause of a lot of evils and therefore, I don't believe in God": The earlier misconceptions about communism would get disproven by time, but this one still persists. What about other things that cause evil, is that a good reason to say their underlying substratum doesn't exist ? Cobwebs are a good reason to clean the house, but is that a good, (apparaently analytical) reason to deny that the house exists or not to have a house anymore ? Why can't we all stop using petrol and go back to stone age because it causes pollution ? Okay, if religion caused inequalities by caste, which religion caused inequalities by colour in some other part of the earth ? What about inequalities in skill sets, in food, in lotteries and a hundred other variants of inequality. Religion is a major force, and oh we have inequality all over, so we think all inequality must have been caused by religion. People wearing yellow t-shirts eat more apples than those wearing blue ones so there is something about yellow.

We shouldn't admit the evil offshoots of religion, and there are many, but thats a reason we should practise better religion if we believe in God, and even if we don't believe in God, we should find out what causes evil/suffering irrespective of whether God existed or not. As to my take on what's the root cause of all evil, I would turn to one religion that studied this as one of its tenets. Turns out, it has nothing much to do with God.

4. "The God concept was created because of human weakness" : Even if this were true, it hardly gives a reason to prove or disprove the existence of God or otherwise. Since you are the one claiming to be on the side of reason, you got to come up with a better one.

5. "Why did God create the world ? " : If this question was discussed at length, it would have been a different angle, but Bhagat Singh seems to focus on the "Suffering" aspect of creation. He asks the creation question in the context of "Why did God create a world that has so much suffering in it ?". The question presupposes that God should keep the world happy, otherwise he is no God. Look around the world, you won't require God to cause suffering, Man himself is more than capable of it. Moreover, you should first prove God caused it in the first place. Or may be find out, who causes any suffering to whom. And after you find out, you can say, so-and-so is causing it. There are some schools that ask the question "Is there suffering ?" from a particular plane, and, to be fair to the study of the subject, you should ask the question too and find the answer. In fact, if you answer that, quite possible you may not have much questions left.

6. "Who created the world ?": The "Ask Darwin" and "Chemical Accident" arguments aren't new. But if you have to use them effectively as a persuasive argument for atheism, these alternatives should first provide a complete explanation of creation. You might go on pointing out that School A is incomplete and foolish, but to get the point across, you should have School B in your hand and say, here it is, this one answers all your questions. It's well known even in scientific circles that the various disciplines delve most on the How of creation and science, as a discipline by itself, will not be able to provide a complete explanation on the why and who, atleast for a lot of time to come. We are still very far away even from asking these questions in our labs, so come up with something concrete and complete, I'll wait.

I liked the part towards the end of the essay, where Bhagat Singh stays an atheist till the end. Tough job. "You have enough fires, you find God..." - Ladder 49. But I have a faint thought : did he stay so just because he didn't want to roll back ? What if, just what if he was wrong, particularly since he had not found complete correct answers to the God questions he was asking. I am just speculating here, I am sure you can speculate about my being wrong too.

Does that make you curious on what are my arguments in favour of theism ? Thats another thread some day. Frankly, I don't know God well enough to qualify to comment on Him. I like Him though :) . I thought atheists are the ones who knew everything !!

Being a part of a rising Nation

Continuing my earlier post on Gandhi, here is more discussion on the same thread : discussing whether Bhagat Singh and Nathuram were the same, and whether Nathuram didn't have any choice, and reply to some feedback on my response:

Bhagat Singh .vs. Nathuram
I think I have already mentioned what I think is the difference and I can't think of anything more to add. As to your saying, that the actions are the same, only the words are different, I would say: Which is why there are different words to refer to different kinds of actions, and the meanings often include the context, motive and the implication it would have on the listener. There are different words to refer to the actions of cutting paper, cutting trees, cutting carrots, cutting goats and cutting necks.

The inappropriateness of comparing murder and martyrdom can be seen, if you try to extend the example under comparison. What if someone had a problem with Nathruam for killing Gandhi and he wanted to finish off Nathuram's family or friends ? Does it appear ridiculous ? One might ask: why bring in family and friends here? I would say it's a valid question. A person arguing from the killer's side would say, from my viewpoint it's a passion for me, i am ready to surrender and how else will I handle the fanaticism of people like Nathuram ? Extend this kind of responses from either side and what we have would be a series of violent retaliations and there wouldn't be discussing any more, there would just be dying.

Nation building was still left...
Moreover, Bhagat Singh and Nathuram didn't operate on same terrains. I'll also use this to answer Surya's question: What alternatives did Nathuram have ? India had its teething problems but it was a free nation. It had plenty of nation-building work to do. Nathuram was just 40 when he killed Gandhi. He had a lot of years left in his life. He could have joined the national mainstream, either in politics or in whichever field of work he thought would contribute to nation-building, even the Hindutva school which he subscribed to. He did have a great passion for his country and age in his favour, he could have used it to,let's say, start his movement, even explicitly against Gandhi and take him headon at his game. Sure, it would have taken a very long time to achieve what he dreamt of as a good nation, but Gandhi himself took plenty of time to build a stature and gather momentum for his movement. Every leader, unless gifted with the hereditary couch, has to build his fort by taking his movement to the people.

Did the trees help those who came later...
For all its demerits, India did turn out to be a great democracy in the 50 years that followed. Anything would be debated, one doesn't have to go by a populist school, one indeed can start a new one. Even the populist leaders did have a couple of other senior leaders to contest their supreme hold. Jayaprakash Narayan, Morarji Desai, Rajaji, Patel all of them had serious differences with Nehru or Indira, but they collectively showed what democracy can do. Amartya Sen compliments this Indian spirit to allow diversity in discussions which India very much allowed, atleast relatively better than all of its neighbours. Nathuram could have been a part of all that, a part of India that was rising, instead of the earlier India that was :) fasting unto death. Okay, he killed Gandhi, did he achieve whatever he thought of, as nation-building dreams ? Okay he died before he achieved, did he atleast give a strong fillip to his brethren or followers to take up the daunting task of building the nation ? Whom did the killing benefit in a long-term nation-building way? This is a difference between Bhagat Singh and Nathuram. What Bhagat Singh did, gave a boost to the people who were to follow soon and take the freedom struggle seriously. It did give a jolt to the British, that we got to take Indians a helluva lot seriously, we can't kill them in a closed garden and get away with it. That there is young blood, stuff out there that takes freedom seriously.

@ the view that the rebuttal was out of context :

I did notice the direction or context the discussion was taking and had read the full thread many times over before formulating my response. May be my response didnt cover the other points raised by other members and was primarily directed at a particular post by Surya, which is why it looks like the primary issue hasnt been handled. Moreover, I would like to think that the rebuttal is as much in context or (as much out of) context as the bashing in the first place. Discussions like this do have a tendency to stray off into lanes and bylanes that might have never been thought of !!

I do have my reservations about Gandhi's life and writings, but I found that those that were mentioned here were not the ones. That's another thread, lest this thread goes out of context !

On the other points mentioned :
Agree that we should attempt to take a 360-degree view, though it's quite possible one has formed one's views, after such an attempt.
Agree that there is nothing wrong in analysing Gandhi, he was one man worth analysing over and over.
Also agree that analysis is better than idolization, particularly in the Indian context.

@ the remark by Surya that it's an Emotional Response :

I agree partially on this, though I would have loved to have heard the phrase "there are certain emotional elements in the response", instead of categorising the entire response as emotional. There are, for example, mentions about institutionalising solutions experimented at the individual level and appropriateness of using political tact in democratic choices, which are purely issue discussions.

Also, I would like to think my responses are as emotional (or as intellectual/objective) as the average of the quality of the posts on this thread, including me and everyone for the averages. On the flip side of my approach, is my tendency to write in the "I and You" style, which often gives the impression that I am "pointing out and outpouring", whereas 'You' refers to the World and 'I' refers to any average thinker (both sometimes looping back to me). I try my best to say "One does this, One does that" and so on, but sometimes, it builds up to too many ones :) . I hope to improve on this. Reading too much of Arundhati Roy is injurious to my writing style.

These two links, from Rang De Basanti, might be interesting in the discussion:
Go Ahead and Transform your Country
Violence is not the solution

Why the world doesn't need Gandhi Bashing....

There was some Gandhi-bashing going on in the one of the Orkut Forums, so I thought I will give a rebuttal from the Gandhigramite point of view......

The bash, first :

gandhiji was no secular human being. and nathuram godse was no fanatic. gandhiji was a spent idea and his time for rest had come. because he never wanted to rest peacefully he was laid to rest in peace for ever. had gandhi been alive for another 5 years, india would have travelled 30 years back. he was gainst industrialization and he was killed for he wanted to donate another some lakhs to pakistan. hindu muslim unity was not feasible at that time for the nation was in war over kashmir. you dont run a nation with gita's quotes. gita is for personal growth. gandhi would have done well to read up arthashastra or the bhishma parva of mahabharata to advise nehru. he was a confused human being. agreed that he had contributed immensely to the national struggle but he overdid it. he indeed played politics when he preffered nehru rather than bose to be the president of INC. gandhi wanted only those who believed in his ideology. i will define him as a "non-violent hitler". he did the damage indirectly. he was not a democrat at all!!

My rebuttal :

People often confuse Gandhiji's personal belief in Hinduism with a wrong understanding of the word Secularism. A Hindu, however pious, ritualistic and religious, can still be secular, by allowing other people to have similarly strong beliefs in their respective religions. This is exactly what Gandhiji often sought to explain. He was among the first to use the word Secularism in the Indian context, to say that, while every person is entitled to his personal belief in X or Y religion, the state has no business to align itself to any one particular religion more or less and people should keep their religious belief as a personal pursuit. He admitted his liking for Hinduism and its traditions as openly as he advocated respect for all religions. He even dissuaded the State from spending government funds to renovate the Somnath Temple.

I wanted to handle this one first. I'll come to whether Nathuram was a fanatic or not, but, he was, imho, definitely a murderer. Just in case, people confuse this with the word martyr. I consider Bhagat Singh and others of his calibre as martyrs and Bose and Bal-Pal-Lal to be brave leaders, but I consider Nathuram a weakling. He didn't know how else to fight Gandhi's ideology, he thought let's just remove him from the face of the earth. What did Nathuram do ? He killed someone for differing with him on what's good for the nation. Thats not reason enough to kill someone. If you differ from someone and if you think he is capable of a widespread influence, you should be able to take on his ideology by attempting to start an influential movement yourself, build it brick by brick out of your personal strength and leadership skills and show people what you think is true. Instead of that, you just settle scores with the gun, I wouldn't think that to be a mature mind. I might give him some points for passion, he didn't do it for a selfish reason, he had the courage to surrender, but if the underlying approach is flawed and lacks maturity, all passion and courage turn out to be grayed with tension and rage.

This is what Gandhi himself demonstrated. No one had even thought of a non-violent approach before. When he stepped into the political scene, the previous wave had entirely been about extremism. The idea of non-violence was not his original idea, but he was the one who institutioinalised it as an idea for the Indian freedom struggle. You might differ on whether or nor it was more efficacious, lot of people believe Bose's approach would have been better. But even if someone doubts its efficacy, you have to credit Gandhi for his capacity to institutionalise an entirely new approach to the question and gather millions of countrymen in support. And the response he got from the public was truly sweeping at the time, though there were always some differing groups in pockets. Even if you disagree with Gandhi's insitutionalising skills, look at what Bose did. He too demonstrated how to differ with someone, in a great healthy way. He differed with Gandhi, he set out to start his movement to tell people about what he thought was right and did succeed in gathering a large momentum against the British. That's a great way to differ with someone. The point I am trying to make here is: Nathuram did NONE of this. He was looking at the teleprinter giving out the news about Gandhi's fast unto death, and he was frustrated, all his pent up hatred flowed and he took up the task. He had his own and only point of view on Hinduism and if someone didn't listen to him a few times nicely... booooom.... He was largely influenced by Savarkar's writings alright, but even Bhagat Singh and Bose were influenced by Savarkar's writings, it's not what one reads that matters but having read, how to apply one's mind and what one sets out to do. There is a difference between fighting the British for the freedom of a nation and killing your countryman for a political question of transferring money. If Nathuram had to take on Gandhi at his game, he had to demonstrate an equal amount of personal strength and leadership, which comes by the thinking of a rich mind and long term application of effort. He couldn't do any of this and just went for a short term finish Now you tell me, need I discuss whether he was a fanatic or not ? In my view, there is no difference between this and naxalite violence.

It might be pertinent to cover here the point regarding transfer of money to Pakistan here, since the event is one of the ascribed motives of Nathuram. For the record, the deal was part of the Partition Agreeement. India didn't want to fulfil it because of events that happened after the partition (rebel occupation of Kashmir by Pakistan). So it was purely a political problem between India and Pakistan that, by design, was a complex one to solve and it remains to this day. Gandhiji had his views on the matter and he expressed it and, typical of him, wanted to fast unto death. Medha Patkar goes on a fast unto death and let's say, the government decides to reduce the height of the dam or appoint a panel to study rehabilitation, and one of the construction partners gets irked by the fast-unto-death strategy working in her favour, can he set out to kill someone for that ? I can understand if the procession becomes a law and order situation and the state intervening to handle it by exercising its powers, but can individuals settle violent scores on a issue under debate ?

India would have travelled back ? Gandhi had his views on industrialization and the models village-centric rural development. I would even agree that his was one of the areas where he did not succeed much in getting support or widespread institutional acceptance. But to say that if he had continued to live, India would have gone back is not true. He was not at the helm of affairs of industrialization anyway. Nehru was incharge, it was well-known even at that time that Nehru and Gandhi had differences on a lot of issues and industrialization was one of them. Nehru had plenty of other friends in the science, engineering and policymaking circles and was also influenced by his study of the economies of other countries like Russia and Japan. Nehru had already firmed up his mind on the industrialization route and Gandhi had let him to differ and work in that route. Gandhi, on the other hand, still believed on a village-centric development working inside out, and thought, after freedom, he would "spend his ideas" working on changing the society at the grassroots level and leave the national policy to Nehru. So Gandhi or not, Nehru's industrialization agenda would have anyway prevailed. There are a section of people who now look back and review whether or not Nehru's approach was okay or not okay, but that's stuff enough for another thread. Gandhi, might have, probably gone on a few more fasts-unto-death to reverse any labour-hostile moves or any other moves by Nehru which affected people in a large way, but, in spite of differences, he believed in Nehru and had handed over the macrodirection of the nation-building to Nehru. Gandhi's model of village-centric development inside out still has its relevance in certain areas where it has been tried on a smaller scale, like in The Gandhigram Rural Institute, where I studied.

Confused man ? Every leader who wants to think deeply about the society in which he lives in, will have contrarian schools of thought conflicting in his mind at one point of time or another. Many of the basic problems that afflict society are easy to think about and solve at the individual level but extremely complex when it comes to institutionalising these solutions as a national policy. Gandhi was a well-read man, he wrote on almost every aspect of the individual and the society, he thought deeply and originally on many issues. The areas where he failed to make an impact, in my view, are those where he tried to institutionalise solutions that worked well at the individual level but may not work as a state policy. I can give a coin to the beggar, I might even give food to the same beggar all through the year, but to magnify those noble motives into a national policy on hunger is a different ball game. There were indeed some areas where he succeeded in doing this, (freedom struggle and untouchability) and some where he did not make such a great impact, like the Charkha and Khadi. He probably had a small set of basic beliefs and thought to resolve all the complex issues by deciding based on those beliefs, which he thought as "first principles". ( I might be wrong on this). Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. Just because a leader of his stature failed in certain areas, to say that he was a "confused human being" is a sweeping over-generalisation. And the good thing about Gandhi, is he laid down, in writing, for public feedback, his conflicts and his own confusions if any, on issues that impacted the society.

Sidelining Bose : I don't think it's possible to run any political organisation, without sidelining someone or the other by political tact. Often, in politics, you have to choose between two equally vibrant minds. You have to choose one, because, both minds, though vibrant, work in totally different directions. Gandhi had approach A and Bose had approach B. It would have torn the Congress apart to have attempted to run one organisation with almost conflicting ideologies. Nehru, with all his differences, was more aligned to Gandhi. And Gandhi did not shoot Bose, like Nathuram did to Gandhi. He just said, if you want me at the helm, you know where I'll throw my hat. It so happened that at that point of time in history, Gandhi had an extremely strong following and backing in the party and in the country and large, and Bose had to move out. In fact, Bose went on to rise much much more in stature after he parted ways with Gandhi. Had he been stuck, he would have had to moderate all his vibrance in the service of something which he never believed and would have caused more frustration to himself and more trouble to the party. That Gandhi chose Nehru instead of Bose, is entirely within democracratic choice. People choose X against Y and align themselves all the time and quite often even part ways and succeed or fail. It so happened in history, that Gandhi's influence was so widespread and had greater following by numbers than the other schools of thought, so whatever Gandhi said, lot of people came on his side. You can't blame someone for his popularity, It's a numbers and ideology game, pitch your tent and count how many people listen to you, if it's more you win, if it's less try again next time. That's how politics works.

non-violent hitler who damaged indirectly ?: The phrase attributes an explicitly sinister motive to Gandhi's decisions. This is not true. Statements made by many current-day politicians make veiled references to taking things in "their own hands" and indirectly predict that they may have no option if the situation goes out of control etc. Gandhi never did any such thing. He announced his strategies against the British from time to time, all his announcements were clearly of the non-violent nature. In incidents like the Chauri Chaura, or in the case of partition violence, much damage might have been caused by how individuals interpreted and impulsively reacted to his declarations, but there was nothing in what Gandhi said that directly or indirectly hinted violence. Damage might have occurred as a cascading effect of various levels of interpretation by other individuals, but you can't place the responsibility for such acts on what strategy he announced, particularly when he openly exhorted all his followers to be strong but non-violent. Hindu Muslim Unity was not feasible at the time, agreed, so if someone espouses, is he wrong?, just because it wasn't feasible?. Producing environ-friendly cars or renewable energy in a cost-effective way was considered infeasible at one time, does it mean people who tried to explain to us were wrong ? In fact, I would like to think that they were forerunners in raising these to the people and telling them that if they wanted a good life, they have to choose their actions differently.

As to the statement that Gandhiji never wanted to rest, so he was laid to rest, I can appreciate only the pun. Let me take some rest now.