Secularism and Humanism – Any Takers?

Facebook is a social networking site carrying millions of people under its wings. A lot of groups, dealing with anything under the sun are available and people flock to them in droves to take membership in these groups. As long as it is free, why keep away from it, particularly if that group interests you even remotely? One such community is ‘Global Secular Humanist Movement’ and the name itself says it all.

Whatever be the thing about the title, does it cater to the lofty ideals it professes, namely secularism and humanism? One look at the posts indicate that it doesn’t bother much about practicing what they preach. One glance at the page and we come to the conclusion that secular humanism is all about gay rights. The page is littered with exhortations of all kinds to force the society to legalize gay marriage. It is as if you’ve to support the perverted whims of these creatures (hard words, I know, but forgive me) calling themselves gays, in order to be a liberal. Such an attitude is against nature and science (not the two journals, but what they mean!). What evolutionary advantage these people possess? Evolution is all about propagating your genes if they provide you with any advantage to survival. Being a gay confers nothing – it is not conducive to survival and the genes are not going to spread further through offspring. Homosexuality is an evolutionary dead end, a cul-de-sac. Why should liberals support them?

Indians do a lot of irrelevant offerings to numerous deities

Anyway, that’s not what I meant to say. This Global Secular Humanist Movement recently published a country-wise total of their members, and it proves interesting. They have 5563 members from India and 1993 from Pakistan (on 28 March 2013). These numbers assume significance as a percentage of the respective countries’ total populations. As per Census 2011, India has 1241 million and Pakistan has 177 million people. So, if we take the Indian percentage of members to the total population as the representative figure, there should have been only 792 members from Pakistan whereas there are 1993. And, if Pakistani members are taken as the benchmark ratio, there should have been 14000 Indian members while there is only 5563. What is clear is that more Pakistanis join secular humanist group than do Indians. Isn’t it somewhat odd in a constitutionally secular country as against an Islamic republic alleged to be run by mullahs and religious fanatics? Or, do we accede that even though our country is secular in name, most of its citizens don’t share the ideal?

It is not at all odd, if we look into the antecedents of some of the ‘well educated’ and ‘scientifically minded’ people of this country. Take the case of Shri. K Radhakrishnan, the current chief of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). His organization is entrusted with making and launching space vehicles and satellites – a thoroughly scientific job. Yet, what did its Chief do? He visited a renowned temple at Guruvayur, Kerala just around the time when intimation of elevating him as the Chief was about to arrive, so that he could receive the good news in the divine precincts! Also, he regularly visits shrines to pray for the successful launch of satellites. It was only last month that he rushed to Tirupati in connection with the launch of PSLC-C20 which had on board ‘Saral’, an Indo-French satellite. What feeble chance science possesses to get rid of the clutches of religion from people like him? Not only Radhakrishnan, but many of the educated people won’t even think of starting a new venture or inaugurate a shop or production plant without performing a puja on the premises.

So much for secularism and humanism.

Aranmula and Nedumbassery – A Case of Double Standards

Kerala’s mortal aversion to privately funded capital is notorious. I have myself posted some notes in this blog earlier, highlighting issues like Endosulfan – Who is the real culprit in Kerala?, KSFE – State-sponsored daylight robbery, and National pastime - Strikes. So, this is not another attempt to expose this mindset which is sapping the entrepreneurial vitality of the state from within, like a cancer. What caught me as another striking example of this double standard is the recent issue with the proposed airport at Aranmula in Southern Kerala.

KGS Group, a Chennai-based industrial house with infrastructural and engineering expertise has proposed an international airport at Aranmula with state of the art facilities. The three promoters of the group, Shri K Kumaran, Gigi George and P V Shanmugam, whose first letters of their names forms the title of the group are technocracts and a chartered accountant. Reliance ADA Group led by Anil Ambani has a 15% stake in KGS. Out of the 700 acres of land estimated for the project, 240 acres have been acquired by the company until it fell into a quagmire created by some politicians and environmentalists. The 2000-crore rupee project was scheduled to be commissioned by December 2014, but all work is stalled at present. The bone of contention is that most of the earmarked area is agricultural land. Though nobody denies that many of the small plots are not cultivated at all, it doesn’t prevent them from raising a hue and cry about converting paddy fields for industrial use.

Now, go back twenty years in time to 1993, when the idea of a greenfield airport at Kochi first germinated in the mind of a young, talented IAS officer who was also the District Collector of Ernakulam. Shri. V J Kurian, who matches in caliber his namesake Varghese Kurian of Amul, proposed Nedumbassery as the site of a new airport as the existing naval airstrip at Willingdon Island was proving a bottleneck to the city’s growth as a metropolis. He acquired 1300 acres of prime agricultural land at Nedumbassery and within three years built a superb airport, the first in India employing private-public partnership (PPP) model. In a deal finely balancing incentives with coercion, Kurian worked a miracle in Nedumbassery’s fertile brown soil, by resettling 2300 landowners and 872 families amicably by Kerala standards. The government has only 33.36% of the stake, but controls the management and the airport functions effectively as a public sector undertaking (PSU). The project hadn’t had to face such severe opposition as KGS is experiencing at Aranmula precisely because it was a government-controlled entity.

Now, come back to the present again. This time we go to Amballur, near Piravom in Ernakulam district where an Electronics and Hardware Park is envisaged by the state-run KSIDC over 390 acres of agricultural land. Surprisingly, there is no agitation, no protest and no legal tussles over converting agricultural land! In fact, the cabinet has exempted the land from the purview of Kerala Conservation of Paddy Fields and Wet Lands Act, thereby smoothing the way for earthmoving equipment to quickly level the paddy fields for construction work to start.

Why this unashamed double standard? What makes Aranmula different from Nedumbassery or Amballur? Is it because a private company is involved in the project? If the project is not economically viable, let KGS face the consequences as it is their money. When will our stupid brethren realise that private enterprises are also the bread winners of the nation?

Mumtaz and Shah Jehan - Some Facts

Every now and then, some silly comments are seen in Internet. The following is one of them.

This attack on Shah Jehan is false, misleading and maligning the monument which is the pride of India and needs to be countered point by point.

1. Mumtaz was Shah Jehan’s third wife out of very many. Probably the emperor himself couldn’t have kept count. But she was undoubtedly his principal queen and there was genuine love. In fact, she became No. 3 only because the astrologers set a date five years later for the marriage. In the intervening period, he married twice, but even their names are not recorded in history. We should not match the family life of medieval kings against the moral enlightenment of a future era.

2. The second point is totally false. Probably the writer is confused with the case of Nur Jahan and Jahangir where it is alleged that Jahangir plotted the killing of Nur Jahan’s husband. Mumtaz was Nur Jahan’s niece (daughter of Asaf Khan, who was Nur’s brother) and her marriage with Shah Jehan was arranged by their parents.

3. Mumtaz indeed died during her 14^th delivery out of 19 years of living together. What other avenues existed in those days to express love? She accompanied him even in battles and her death after 30 hours of painful labour in a case of post-partum haemorrhage occurred at far away Burhanpur, while Shah Jehan’s Deccan campaign was on. Out of the 14 children, only 7 reached adulthood. All the four male offsprings who fought for the throne - Dara Shukoh, Aurangzeb, Murad Baksh and Shah Shuja - were Mumtaz’s children, emphasizing the point that she was his favourite queen.

4. After Mumtaz’s death, Shah Jehan married but there is no evidence that Mumtaz’s sister was one of them.

Big Fish Slipping Through Mathrubhumi’s Net

Kerala is a small state on the south-western coast of India which can boast of a social awareness incommensurate with its size. It always provided a fertile bed for foreign ideas to be tested. Socialist ideals arrived at the right time during the second quarter of the 20^th century, when Kerala was on the cusp of a great social reformation. Though no one realized it at the time, nor they do it now, socialism painted the collective mind a deep red hue and shifted public opinion to the left. All political parties in Kerala display leftist objectives and at least pay lip service to them. Political observers could laugh their hearts out when they see the captains of Kerala Congress, which is a communal party of rich landlords and industrialists, waxes eloquent on social control of industry through state-owned enterprises. Such a heightened awareness of socio-political issues has resulted in the state having the largest per-capita share of newspapers and other journals. Television was a new entrant with at least six full-time news channels in Malayalam catering to 32 million people. All of them are leftist in nature, and the irony that all of these privately owned channels came into being after the Indian government’s liberalization drive which began in 1991 is lost on society. Where else in the world can you see a private industrialist making a movie on a storyline extolling the virtues of communism and reaped a huge profit out of it? Anyone tending to dispute this may do better watching films like Ningalenne Communistakki, Lal Salaam, or numerous other films.

Unfortunate for the horde of news channels, Kerala is not a ‘happening’ place. Marginalized on the industrial front due to excessive politicization and militant trade unionism, its industrial landscape is stagnant. The media makes a feast out of an occasional political scoop, a gruesome traffic mishap or a sensational sexual escapade. The channels have teething troubles and need an incredible story to get itself established on the imagination of society. Mathrubhumi, a venerable news paper company with nearly a century of exemplary service behind it started a full-time news channel barely a month ago in a bid to ape its main competitor Malayala Manorama. Mathrubhumi’s television incarnation was scouting for something to turn viewers’ heads and make a mark for itself.

Their right moment came on March 5^th. Weaving out a sting operation on the model of Tehelka, they targeted and successfully trapped three middle-ranking officials of the Commercial Taxes department. Accepting the baits of Rs. 10,000 in cash and a liquor bottle, the officials walked into the net, boasting of their powers. All of them were immediately suspended pending enquiry.

So far, so good. There need to be no sympathy to the corrupt officials. But there appears to be a glaring omission in Mathrubhumi’s operation. The journalists were led to other officials based on hints from those already in the net. One such person is seen to comment that anything could be carried through the Finance minister’s office, if the minister’s son and M.P, Shri. Jose K Mani could be made to support their case. The official clearly indicated that corruption prevails at all offices, including the minister’s. We sit back and gaze with incredulity that Mathrubhumi didn’t follow through the lead. If they practiced what they professed, they would’ve carried the sting operation to Jose K Mani’s office too, who stoutly denied the allegations, and in fact praised the channel for exposing the unscrupulous elements in government.

Frankly, we don’t know whether Jose K Mani would or would not have fallen before the camera. If they had the willpower to carry the operation to its logical conclusion, the episode with the minister’s son would’ve created wonders for the channel and a glorious lesson on how a responsible media should respond to corruption.

But, expecting Mathrubhumi to stay the course would be pure naivete. The channel and newspaper is controlled by Shri. M P Veerendra Kumar, who is a prominent leader in the ruling coalition of which Jose K Mani is also a part. What more can we expect from a paper or channel controlled by a politician against another politician who is his own colleague? In the end, the three officials will be charged for corruption, but as it is sure that the channel won’t follow up the case, they’ll most probably be returned to office with full wages for the period under suspension.

When will this country open its eyes?

National Pastime - Strikes

All strike calls get total support in Kerala

Another 2-day extravaganza finally wound down in Kerala. The 48-hour strike called by national labour unions found active support in the state which is notorious for its militant unions and active participation in any agitation proposed by organised interests. The sanctity or relevance of the demands for which the strike is called for is nobody's concern. If a political party or an organization with sufficient muscle power to impose its whims announces a hartal (strike), that is automatically taken to heart by everyone, including the rival parties. Everybody takes rest on the day and quietly enjoy it in their own ways. Those who are working in organized sectors like government/PSU/large private-sector companies usually get their leaves sanctioned, ensuring payment of wages for the day. Those in the unorganized sector, like head-load workers, taxi drivers and traders have no such luxury. If they don't ply their trade, there'll be no income at the end of the day.

Still, it is amazing to note that it is the people working in unorganized areas who are participating in the protest movements without any demur. They don't seem to mind the financial loss caused by such disruptions which may take place 8-10 times a year. On the other hand, such hartals, even if called on a national basis, don't attract such a total response outside Kerala. Not only the calls are much less, but people generally ignore them unless any burning local issue is involved. Why such a huge difference between two peoples separated by only a mountain chain?

It is definitely true that awareness to social issues are more in Kerala where the society has placed itself on the leftist platform. Not only the LDF, the centrist UDF and even the right-wing BJP assume leftist posture on issues on which they might be at variance with their own national leaderships. The wonder and hope imparted by the establishment of a Communist regime in Soviet Union has still not completely worn off even though that regime lost track of its goals and was consequently consigned to the dustbin of history. In this respect, we may conclude that Communism has done more damage to Kerala than it did in the USSR, who could successfully shake off the yoke in 1991. The burden which weigh on the collective mind of Kerala's society still hangs on.

But ideology alone is not sufficient to understand the nature of the problem in its entirety. There is some other factor which prompts Keralites to stay at home without work at the drop of a hat. The real reason, as usual, might be economic. The unorganized-sector workers in Kerala obtain a higher wage for lesser work than anywhere in India. On the other hand, the organized-sector workers get equal wages as compared to other states at rates prevailing all over India. Putting aside all 'socialist' mumbo-jumbo, we may deduce that Malayalis enjoy the highest pay-to-work ratio which I think must be comparable even to developed nations. A worker generally gets double the wage in the Middle-East, but he works longer hours, resulting in the same pay-to-work ratio. As a result, the labourers are financially better off than their fellows in other states and so they can afford to lose income for a few days every year. Ours is a consumerist society thriving on the huge remittances from expatriates. The habit of savings has not percolated down to the lower income group with the conclusion that they are not interested nor bothered about any kind of savings other than a bank deposit. The aversion to share market is palpable and those who invest in equity are looked down with the same contempt meted out to gamblers. This causes the low-income group to handle easy money which is not invested in a fruitful way. Such disposable income contributes to the complacency to work.

Reading all this, one must not mistake this post as a manifesto against labour nor a propaganda item for mindless capitalism. The economic well-being of the working class is an essential milestone on the road to progress. What is noted is the community's failure to invest the surplus money in an effective way rather than making it as a cushion for hartal days.

Force, Acceleration and Physicists Vs Engineers

Isaac Newton - the greatest scientist of all time

Most of us are familiar with Newton’s laws of motion. The three fundamental laws which govern all aspects of movement in the universe, but lay hidden in darkness until god said ‘Let Newton Be’ and all was light (a famous quote by Alexander Pope). Even people who haven’t studied any science is familiar with the third law (for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction), but we are looking into the second law here, which, in Newton’s own words when he published it in the Principia Mathematica in 1687 ran thus – “The alteration of motion is ever proportional to the motive force impress'd; and is made in the direction of the right line in which that force is impress'd”. Or, in modern terms, change to “The acceleration a of a body is parallel and directly proportional to the net force F acting on the body, is in the direction of the net force, and is inversely proportional to the mass m of the body, i.e., F = ma”. Yes, the magic equation jumps out at the end, F = ma.

Every school child knows that the force (F) applied on a body is equal to the product of its mass (m) and the acceleration (a) induced by the force. So much is simple. I was so inured to the formula when Hans C Ohanian, the author of Einstein’s Mistakes shook me to the core with the following pronouncement. “You may have been taught in some high school or college physics course that Newton’s second law is F=ma. If so, you were taught by an engineer, not by a real physicist. Newton himself stated that the acceleration (or what he termed ‘the change of motion’) is proportional to the force, not that the force is proportional to the acceleration. Of course, both statements are true, but they differ in emphasis. For Newton, and for most physicists, the second law expresses how the force causes an acceleration, that is, the force is the known quantity and the acceleration is the unknown quantity. Accordingly, physicists prefer to write ma=F. Engineers prefer the opposite way of writing the second law, F=ma, because for them the force is often the unknown quantity, whereas the acceleration is the known quantity (for instance, an engineer may want to calculate what force will be exerted on the wheels of a car when it is racing around a curve at a known, high speed)”. (p.66 in the 2009 Norton paperback edition). Well, it’s a lengthy tirade against engineers since we know that engineers don’t teach school or college physics. The scale of the attack becomes evident when we see his remarks about a prominent magazine which praised Einstein as the engineer of the universe, in salutation to his General Theory of Relativity which forms the basis of gravitation and the fundamentals of space-time. Ohanian don’t let the comment go scot-free. He immediately states that calling a physicist an engineer is no compliment!

Forgetting about the finer shades of distinction between the two classes of professionals, if we take Ohanian’s suggested equation ma=F for a deeper inspection, we wonder whether his arguments would hold against common sense. To solve an algebraic equation, you need to have the unknown quantity alone on the left-hand-side, which is not true in this case. So, to make it ready for calculations, we have to rephrase it as a=F/m or in a more general form as a=kF where k=1/m, the inverse of mass – which is a meaningless physical quantity.

So what point does Ohanian try to establish by this little trick of erudition?

Divine Duty of Judges

Attended a training program on 'Disciplinary Procedures' by Mr. Benny P Thomas, a leading lawyer practicing at the High Court of Kerala, today. The presentation was somewhat okay, if you factor in considerations like this was not his principal job. True to the custom followed by judges and leading lawyers of the High Court, he came dressed in a three-piece suit and was quite an object to behold behind our simple lectern.

While going on with the program, which was aimed at imparting some knowledge about conducting internal enquiries as part of imposing disciplinary proceedings against delinquent employees of our organisation, Mr. Thomas suddenly turned excited and exhorted the participants to think hard about the divine duty they're going to perform while deciding whether the person was guilty or not. In a tremulous voice he declared that judgment is not an easy matter and he personally knew many judges who couldn't eat or sleep well before pronouncing verdicts in some cases involving murder. We didn't understand what piqued our gentle instructor to suddenly come down so heavily against the hapless trainees. 

While at it, it struck me as odd that whether jurisprudence can indeed be termed divine. Judging (no pun intended) from past experiences, we see many instances where the presiding judges turned out verdicts challenging common sense. A recent one is the decree outlawing application of sun-control films on car windscreens. In a literal interpretation of the relevant law, the court decided the practice which actually saved fuel by reflecting some of the heat back. At the same time, it allowed the use of curtains which would ensure privacy but no fuel efficiency. India, which imports most of the oil it burns in its cars, is the net sufferer in the form of fuel wastage incurred due to the additional load on car air-conditioners. So what did the court gain in banning sun-control film and allowing curtains in its place? So much for divine duty.

If you look at the huge number of verdicts set aside by a higher court on appeal, you'd wonder whether some kind of accountability measures need to be implemented for judges in lower courts. There can be no argument if the higher court tones down or up the sentence a bit. Every judge may be swayed a little by human emotions which is quite understandable. But in many of the cases, even the findings are totally reversed leaving the public doubtful about the prudence of the trial judge. Once again, we doubt whether he has discharged his divine duty in a responsible way.

So, before boasting about the godly duty they have to perform, the judicial officers may think twice about the impact of their pronouncements on the society and common man.