28 October 2012

Community


I see the village community as a functional structure which strengthens the possibility for families to be prosperous in a self-reliant way. In that sense, the community is for the family. The family is a functional structure which strengthens the possibility for each person to discover what is right living, in the warmth of relationship. In that sense, the family is for the person.
In this way, the functional order is in favour of each person being free and finding fulfilment. This is the purpose of society; the combined expression of a people is to serve the person so he can understand life and be complete. With this functional purpose, a village community unfolds a structure which strengthens the possibility for each person to grow and flower in a fertile social soil.
Whether such a dispensation, in its completeness, has been achieved, I do not know. But it is certainly true that in India, traditionally, we have had largely self-sufficient village communities which together constituted society. They had come up organically and had been maintained with some diligence. And now, for the last two hundred years or so, the force of modern society has been breaking them apart, first slowly, but now with great speed.
Living in rural Garhwal for the last four years, I see that the village community being dismantled today are only the structural remains; it appears that the functional purpose has been long lost, if at all it was ever fully realised. The structure has continued a while longer as a momentum of habit - so what we see crumbling today may not be tradition per se, but the inertia of tradition. Even so, I am of the view that a good thing is being pulled down, and I would say we ought to question why we are doing this.

22 October 2012

Modern Civilization


What is modernity, or modern civilization? It is not a thing or substance. It is a way of believing, thinking, and acting which is now consuming the whole modern world.
Modernity is based upon western civilizational thought and behaviour. Its main characteristics are:
1. An economic system based on the thoughts and theories of Adam Smith who said that a greedy pursuit of making money by everybody is needed in society.
2. A social system based on the thoughts and theories of Charles Darwin, who said 'only the fittest shall survive', and therefore, life is a constant struggle; each one has to fight others for superiority.
3. A science system based on measurement and quantification; i.e. what can be measured by man exists, what cannot be measured by man does not exist.
Such a way of believing, thinking, and acting is modernity, or modern civilization. We may not be aware of it, but if one looks at one's own environment, we can see that this is evident in all our endeavours. Look at our schools. We send our children to school so that they can be made ready 'for the market', to get money, to fight for success. Values and ethics are not measurable, and therefore ignored - this builds their 'scientific temperament'. The same is true of our office jobs, of our bureaucracy, of business and of the political system itself - all these we have directly copied from English civilization. In each of these, the system is designed to increase insecurity, not lessen it. Greed for reward is used for survival and growth. One fights others so as to get ahead. And the only measurement is of things material - sales, profits and personal gain.
The Indian civilizational way of thinking is different. We hold that:

16 October 2012

Open Letter to Team Anna


Respected Shri Anna Hazare, Shri Arvind Kejriwal and members of Team Anna,
A large section of the nation is supporting your criticism of the present state of affairs in the country and share your concern about the rot in our political system. Corruption in the form of scams is one thing, there is also the serious issue of a corrupted and unethical mind-set among the entire elite, whom the rest of the nation imitate and aspire to be.
You have said that the present democratic system is flawed and needs to be set right. May I ask, sir, most respectfully, if we can do this without also looking at the very basis of the democratic system, which is modern, western civilization? It has economic, social and political objectives based upon its own history and thinking - these are completely at odds with Indian civilizational worldview, and the nation has suffered due to this experiment.
Is it possible, sir, to see and recognise this foundational fault and then re-shape the democratic system - after all, even the modern, western democratic system is its own, it is not at all the way Greek democracy was defined, as the 'power of the people'.
More than a hundred years ago, Mahatma Gandhi wrote 'Hind Swaraj', where he foresaw and addressed this issue. May I quote a brief section from it which is uncanny in its resemblance to today's state of affairs (it is in the form of a dialogue betweeen Gandhiji and a reader):

20 September 2012

Democracy - Who Benefits?

Society is run by a Government; this has been accepted in our system called Democracy. This blog continues its efforts to understand modern Democracy, which can be seen as a bundle of contradictory actions, resulting in incessant conflict. Here, I would like to pursue the question we raised in the previous post, viz: 'who benefits from it'?
Here are some recent news items from newspapers, along with their backgrounds:
  • Indian government petitions supreme court to allow private companies to resume manufacturing the banned pesticide Endosulfan.
Background: The Indian supreme court has in 2011 banned the manufacture and sale of the toxic pesiticide Endosulfan after mounting evidence that it has killed and maimed thousands of children of farming families. The government is now asking for its re-sale.
Mind you, it is not the private toxic chemical manufacturers who are petitioning the court. It is the Indian government which is pleading on their behalf. Why? A little more research revealed another, older news item from last year: that Indian agriculture minister Sharad Pawar had lobbied for continuance of Endosulfan at an international convention in Europe which sought the global ban of this dangerous drug. Most nations were voting to ban it, but Sharad Pawar was seen lobbying on behalf of manufacturers (finally, our government was under tremendous pressure and agreed to 'phase it out' over two years).
Strange, isn't it? Not lets look at another news - this happened a month before the coal scam.

11 September 2012

Democracy, the Equality Problem

We have a democracy problem.
I am not saying we have problems in democracy, or problems about democracy. We have a poverty problem, we have a climate change problem, we have a terrorism problem; likewise, we have a democracy problem.
Democracy is conflict. It may appear that democracy is the management of conflict, but that is not so. Democracy feeds on conflict. The energy of democracy is the energy of friction, it is the energy of opposition. You may have observed that every activity in democracy seems to have an equal and opposite activity.
There are builders and businessmen active in destroying the ecology. There are environmentalists active in trying to save it. There is a ministry for destruction of village communities and building SEZs. There is another ministry for 'rural development' and upliftment of villages.
There is a government department active in giving permits to mow down forests for timber. There is another government department active in trying to plant tree saplings in these very same forests.
Processed food companies are active in producing substandard food with toxic chemicals. NGOs like CSE are active in analysing these products and finding out all the harmful things they contain. People are active in consuming such industrial food and becoming unhealthy. Doctors and pharma companies are active in selling them medicines.