A Professor who inspired

As he walked into our classroom in the first semester of MBA to teach a course titled "Business Environment", he convincingly carried the no-nonsense and intimidating look on his face. I was personally looking forward for his class only because I thought the course was going to be interesting. The course had been designed to help us understand some fundamentals through the assessment of the current business environment. As someone who is too impatient to wait and realise the relevance of any course much later in life, I found it exciting that this course would deal with what was happening around on a daily basis. Little did I know that the professor who walked in was going to be one of the most brilliant teachers I've come across.

Prof V. Ravi Kumar (or "Ravi sir" as we call him) , an alumnus of St Stephen's, worked at various banks for about three decades before switching over to teaching. What's striking about him is his desperation to nudge his students to keep learning. He has often told me that the whole point of higher education is to develop right attitude towards learning and to be more inquisitive of the world. Despite being the placement head of the institute, he has repeatedly lamented over the general attitude of viewing placements as end goals. Also, not many have shown the courage to discuss examinations and marks with him. However, the methods that he has employed to instill in his students the urge to learn, have been a little unconventional, if not controversial.

The popular school of thought is that appreciation and rewards work better than intimidation if you want someone to perform well. Ravi sir cares less about popular opinions. "B School is about raising the bar and getting people out of their comfort zones" he once told me. At the risk of appearing to be belittling us and attracting criticism and anger for being rude, he constantly tells his class that it is a bunch of irresponsible folks who are clueless about a lot of things that they should be aware of. He often mocks his students and is sometimes visibly annoyed at them. While a few criticize him, interestingly, I've also seen folks sympathizing with him for not being able to meet his expectations. Yet, he effortlessly commands respect and the charisma is hard to miss.

Unlike a lot of my friends who've sat through his lectures for multiple courses, I've attended Ravi sir's classes only in the first year, since I didn't pick finance as my specialization subject in the second year. Yet, I've known him personally for these two years through our various conversations. I've repeatedly gone to him to discuss what I've read and he has not only helped me improve my understanding, but has helped me form perspectives. Never have I walked out of his room without learning anything new. These meetings also made me realize how empathetic he is towards his students. Not many know how deeply he admires the efforts that some of his students put in. Technical discussions aside, our conversations have ranged from his corporate life experiences, to higher education systems across the globe, to books, to cycling, running, travelling and nice masala dosa places in Bangalore.

With increasing commodification of higher education, metrics such as pass percentage, placement record, institute's rank and students' approval ratings have taken the center stage for institutions. Students on the other hand, eye on good grades and decent jobs. Although I agree I'm generalizing, I think that these narrowly defined standards for institutions and students have resulted in, among many other things, the gradual erosion of student-teacher relationships, especially at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. A professor can play a much bigger role than just completing the course and evaluating the students and students have a lot to gain from professors apart from mere classroom learning. It is up to the students to find someone who can inspire them, guide them, foster creativity, leadership, critical thinking and so on. I'm happy to have found one, and I'm sure there are many others.

Demonetization: A nice move at the wrong time

The idea of a country going cashless is very exciting, since the best way to get rid of black money is to get rid of cash. One of the most exciting things that's been happening in our country is the coming together of all forces that are needed for a country to go cashless. There are government's financial inclusion programmes complimented by the fact that RBI has been issuing licences to payment banks, small finance banks and financial technology companies like never before, there are mobile wallet companies competing aggressively to attract customers, there's the Unified Payment Interface, authentication has been simplified through Aadhar, more people can afford smartphones now and there are network providers reducing data charges, eyeing higher market share. Recently, as part of an assignment in my MBA course, I roughly predicted that India would become a cashless economy in the next 10 years. Although I'm being over-optimistic about this,  I really think India has what it takes to achieve this.

There are real challenges though. There is the reluctance and in most cases, the inability to embrace the opportunities to go cashless. Debit cards have been around in our cities for a fairly long time now, but over 80% of the times, they are used to draw cash from the ATM machines. We all know people who are still very reluctant to swipe cards instead of paying as cash. We also know folks who don't even use their cards. They go to the bank in the beginning of the month, withdraw cash as much as they want for the month and manage their household expenses. To be fair, the facilities for cashless transactions aren't great either. Most places do not accept cards because those transactions cost them more. In the tier-II towns and in rural areas, the situation is even worse.

Internet penetration in India is around 19% and this is a major hurdle for India to go cashless. The government and the private sector have to work together to swiftly increase internet penetration, and as the penetration improves, incentivising cashless transactions, improving internet banking literacy, continuing to aggressively improve access to banking for everyone and many more programmes can strengthen the eco-system that is already there now, though in its infancy.

The hardships that people have been facing because of the recent demonetization show how dependent we as a country are on cash. Over 80% of the transactions happen via cash. The long queues outside the ATMs are depressing, not just because they show how ill prepared the government and the banks were for such a move, but also because those queues also mean that so much of cash is coming back to the market in the form of new notes. How much ever this government and its ardent fans tell you that this move would curb black money, as long as there's so much cash in the economy, black money in various forms will continue to haunt us. Unless we do everything that it takes to reduce dependency on cash as fast as we can, the recent exercise that has been wrongly and popularly called "demonetization" will not just be proved futile, but will only be remembered as something that caused great inconvenience to honest citizens.

Apparently, it took about a year of planning before the PM announced that the old notes are scrapped. While this thrilled a lot of us for the apparent secrecy, I wonder what the preparation was about. Perhaps the right preparation wouldn't have led to people dying. It wouldn't have risked rural consumption, which is already low. It wouldn't have caused so much of distress to people who had nothing to do with black money. The government has got its timing terribly wrong, but it isn't too late. The new notes for sure will proliferate in the economy and the priority for the government should be to speed up the transition to cashless economy. Next time a PM goes on air to announce that our notes are worthless, we should be able to just shrug our shoulders and say "Who needs cash!"

The Mahatma and the Poet

  Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore, arguably two of the greatest Indians, were friends. Evidences of them saying nice things about each other and recognizing each other's importance for the country are easily available and one may read the book "The Mahatma and the Poet", a compilation of letters and debates between Gandhi and Tagore, to be acquainted with their mutual admiration for each other. But that's not why one should read this book. The friendship between Gandhi and Tagore wasn't just based on mutual admiration. They had serious disagreements about various political, social and economic issues and neither of them hesitated to be vocal about their opinions.

  The arguments and criticisms by Tagore were on very important issues. While a few were on large philosophical issues, a few were on issues of immediate concern for the country. By 1917-18, Gandhi was already a national figure. Gandhi's ability to mobilize hundreds of thousands of Indians for the independence struggle could clearly be seen during the non-cooperation movement of 1920-21. When Gandhi's Satyagraha became popular, Tagore criticized politicians who mindlessly used Satyagraha for politics. Tagore argued that their "minds were corroded by untruth, they cannot understand what an important thing it is that the Mahatma's supreme love should have drawn forth the country's love". Tagore believed that they had converted Gandhi's message into a "mindless mantra". Gandhi's call to boycott government schools when those were the only option available for children was also severely criticized by Tagore. Tagore was also skeptical of the burning of foreign cloth and advocacy of Charkha as the solution to India's problems. Also, Tagore famously criticized Gandhi's tendency to view everything that's western with severest skepticism. In one of the letters, Tagore tries to convince Gandhi to give up his fast for the sake of larger issues and in another letter, Tagore expresses his shock and displeasure over Gandhi describing the Bihar earthquake of 1934 as God's chastisement of upper-caste Hindus for their oppression of Harijans. While most of Tagore's letters to Gandhi on these issues were translated and published in a Calcutta magazine called Modern Review, Gandhi published his responses in Young India, a magazine that he ran from 1919 to 1932. 

  Thanks to Dr Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, former Vice-Chancellor at Visva-Bharati, Shantiniketan, all these exchanges between the two greats are available in this book, with a nice introduction by the editor . I mentioned earlier that this book isn't supposed to be read just to understand and appreciate the mutual admiration between Gandhi and Tagore. In my view, the book needs to be read to understand how one can put forth one's argument or criticize an opponent's views or actions, however strongly one wants to, without being disrespectful or abusive, without dismissing or disregarding the opponent's point of view. Needless to say, twitter trolls, journalists who shout at the top of their voice, and politicians who hurl abuses at each other everyday have a lot to learn from this book. Moreover, the eloquence with which the letters are written by both these men makes "The Mahatma and the Poet", a thoroughly enjoyable book.

An open letter to Arvind Kejriwal

Dear Arvind,

Hope you are doing well. Hope you have had a good start (or restart) in Delhi and hope your government will live upto the expectations of the people of Delhi who have given you and your party, such a massive mandate. Obviously, they expect you to do exceedingly well. As a well-wisher and supporter of AAP, I wish you and your government the very best.

This letter of mine has nothing to do with your government in Delhi. I write this as someone who is not from Delhi, but an admirer and supporter of AAP. When AAP was founded, like any other newly formed party, it had nothing to showcase. It only had some things to offer and a lot of us who believed cleaning up of politics is important, who thought we need leaders who are incorruptible, who thought that there is a need for greater transparency in the functioning of governments, who lamented at the lack of transparency in funding of political parties were impressed by AAP's ideology. I personally believe that until recently, AAP stood up to most of our expectations when it comes to sticking to its ideology. However, unfortunately, during the fight to win Delhi elections, I started noticing a gradual dilution of the principles on which AAP was formed.

There were several allegations. To name a few, there were allegations regarding stocking of liquor by one of your candidates, some reports raised doubts on the background of some of your candidates, there has been an allegation that one of your candidates who is now a minister has a fake law degree and there was also a question of funding from 'shell companies'. Unfortunately, except in the case of allegations regarding funding, where your leaders did give a reasonable explanation, AAP's leaders seemed to be showing strange reluctance to come up with convincing answers to these allegations. Since the focus was more on elections back then and the other parties seemed to be facing bigger problems, these issues and the gradual deviation from the AAP's founding ideology  didn't seem to draw too much attention.

While I was hoping that at least after the elections, you all would ponder over the dilution of principles, you didn't seem to bother. It looked like just because you won handsomely, you believed that there's no need to look back at your mistakes. However, it was slightly relieving to notice that a couple of senior leaders in the party seemed to realize that there is a need to fix certain things. In the letters that came out, there was clearly an admission of loopholes and rightly so, there were concerns raised on the functioning of the party. Unfortunately, this is being projected only as "rift" within the party. Yes, there could be personal ego, political ambitions and insecurity involved which only you all can find solutions for between yourselves. As an AAP supporter, I'm not particularly bothered about the infighting, but I'm definitely bothered about the questions that have been raised by Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan.

Let us assume that these two leaders do have some personal enmity against you as your supporters seem to be suggesting. Let us also assume, though it's hard to believe, that these two worked against your party in the Delhi elections. How does it have anything to do with the concerns they have raised? In the most recent letter whose authenticity isn't being questioned by anyone (here is the letter), the demands of Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan have been quite reasonable. What's alarming is that none of the leaders who are supporting you have been agreeing that these are valid demands. The demands, if met, will try to bring more opinions on board while important decisions are taken in the party and will thus help encouraging internal democracy, will help the party to be more vigilant so that unethical behaviour is prevented and the code of conduct of office bearers is monitored, will help bring in greater transparency in the functioning of the party and will try to bring back the party to its core ideology which the party seems to be deviating from recently.

Shouldn't all these concerns have been your concerns too? You might agree or not agree on the solutions that have been proposed in the letter, but as the national convener of the party, do you agree that the issues raised deserve attention? If you think you should be more worried about governing Delhi now, isn't it your responsibility to instruct or assist others to address these issues? It is shocking that you are trying to stay away from this and the leaders who are unconditionally supporting you and want the dissent voices out of the party have reduced this to a personal fight and are conveniently ignoring the issues that have been raised.

Like I said earlier, as a party, AAP had nothing to showcase as its achievements. Yet, the people trusted you. They believed that your intentions were good. They believed that you would stick to your ideology. They gave you 28 seats in the very first election you contested. Even after you were badly defeated in the general elections and it was so easy to get demotivated, the volunteers stood by you. Now by behaving as if the governance in Delhi is all that matters, you are letting down all those volunteers and supporters who stood with AAP because of the principles it claimed to stick to. Please understand that it is your duty to address the issues that have been raised. You have always claimed that AAP is not like any other party. Unfortunately, now it looks like all that matters to you is the victory in elections.

The issues that have been raised by Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan are the issues that have also been bothering thousands of volunteers who worked for your party. These are not baseless accusitions by a rival group. These are issues that have been raised by AAP's own leaders who have had high credibility so far. Can we please expect you to shed your arrogance and address these issues? If the allegations aren't true, can you please come up with convincing explanations? Would you please stop letting the volunteers down? Will you please speak?

With Regards,

An AAP supporter

The Flaming Feet

   While I was reading Rajmohan Gandhi's "The Good Boatman", I came across a chapter fully dedicated to discuss M K Gandhi's view on the caste system and untouchability, his struggle to "purify" Hindu society, his fast in the Yeravada Jail against granting separate electorates for untouchables - a demand that Dr B.R Ambedkar raised and firmly stood for, the subsequent Poona Pact and so on. As a novice to Gandhi's teachings and based on what we learnt as kids, as far as caste system and untouchability were concerned, the only name that quickly came to mind was Ambedkar's. Whatever I had read about Ambedkar not only made him a hero but it also had a great impact on how I viewed the Hindu society. As a kid, it was appalling to learn about how the "untouchables" had to suffer in the hands of upper-caste Hindus. The "glorious past" of Hinduism claimed by many always appeared to be an attempt to cover-up all those disgusting practices some of which continue to exist (think river Ganga). That one chapter in Rajmohan Gandhi's book made me realize how important an issue was untouchability and oppression to M K Gandhi too. The next step was to find out a book written by a modern writer who digs deeper into the views and struggles of both these great men. As a part of this search, I asked Ramachandra Guha, an eminent historian, on twitter, to suggest a book, barely hoping that I would get a reply. To my astonishment, Guha did reply immediately, asking me to read D.R Nagaraj's "The Flaming Feet".

   Late  D R Nagaraj, who unfortunately passed away at the age of 44, was a well-known Dalit writer, thinker and activist. In this brilliant book, with Gandhi and Ambedkar as the protagonists, he writes about the history of Dalit movement in India, the shape it took eventually, the dos and don'ts of the movement in his view and so on. One point he sticks to throughout the book is that the Dalit movement, while trying to erase the painful past and to break away from the traditional Hindu customs, has been possibly erasing their rich cultural memory. He argues that the Dalits too need a cultural memory of their own. Nagaraj emphasizes on recreating the worlds of Dalits' Gods and Goddesses without giving any room for self-pity. He also reviews the works of writers like  U R Ananthamurthy, Shivarama Karantha, Devanuru Mahadeva, Siddalingaiah who have been stimulative in their own ways to the Dalit movement.

  As someone who started reading this book to study Gandhi and Ambedkar, the chapter I loved the most is the one in which the imagined voices of the protagonists are heard. Nagaraj comes up with two imaginary soliloquies where Gandhi and Ambedkar look at their country from heaven after its 50 years of independence and with their epic clash at the background, acknowledge each other for their respective capabilities and beliefs.

 Being an upper-caste Hindu himself, Gandhi had to deal with the "outsider" tag in his fight against untouchability. Adding to this struggle, was his reluctance to abolish caste system and his theory of varnas. Gandhi believed in the purification of Hindu society. He stressed on the "conversion of  hearts" of upper caste Hindus. While Nagaraj does appreciate this, he argues that in Gandhi's proposed method, the Dalits were mere subjects. Being a Dalit himself, Nagaraj has an understandable urge to be an agent of change rather than living, again, at the mercy of upper-caste Hindus. Nagaraj believes that Ambedkar did address this issue. Ambedkar's approach was to completely break away from the traditional world of oppression and create a separate identity for Dalits by fighting for their rights, to an extent that he even desired separate electorates for Dalits. Clearly, in Ambedkar's world, Dalits were and had to be agents of change. However, interestingly, Nagaraj argues that while Ambedkar's method laid the required foundation for mobilization of Dalits, their participation in Indian democracy and for securing their rights, the Dalits' achievements in this regard are fragile. Nagaraj appears to have realized that the upliftment of Dalits shall attain meaning eventually only through Gandhi's method of "conversion of hearts" of upper-caste Hindus.

  Astonishingly, the reader of this book doesn't have to worry about Nagaraj being a Dalit himself. Like I mentioned earlier, there's no room for self-pity in the book. The fact that Nagaraj was a Dalit activist and a researcher helps the book in more ways than one. For anyone interested in Dalit movement and like me, in understanding Gandhi and Ambedkar in the context of caste system and Dalit upliftment, this book is a treat.

My thoughts on Death Penalty

Mr Arthur Koestler in his essay "Drinkers of Infinity" apparently quotes these lines  - "The murderer has killed. It is wrong to kill. Let's kill the murderer." that sums up the paradox of death penalty. If you ask me, I've always felt that life imprisonment should be preferred to death penalty at every opportunity. Having said that, I do realise that there can be no easy conclusions on this. The judges have been in dilemma on various occasions. "Death or life imprisonment for the murderer?" has been a tough question.

Death penalty is irrevocable and there is no question of rehabilitation of convict. Life imprisonment is revocable and rehabilitation is possible. Death penalty is more often only a symbol of condemnation of the committed crime. Among the theories of punishment - reformative, preventive, retributive, denunciatory and deterrent, only the denunciatory theory seems to be justifying death penalty.  It can be easily pointed out that reformative theory is irrelevant when death is the punishment for the simple reason that death cannot reform a person. As far as preventive theory is concerned, life imprisonment and death penalty do the same job. I do not understand the retributive theory completely. I understand that it focuses on punishing the person for the act simply because he deserves it. While a lot of sources gave me an impression that it means returning of evil for evil, a supreme court judgement that I read and few other sources told me that it "implies imposition of just and not more than just penalty". In a retributive system, a punishment should be such that it "fits" the committed offence. However, this doesn't mean "eye for an eye". It only wants more severe crime to be punished more harshly. While I agree that death penalty shall have deterrent effect on the potential murderers, I doubt if it is more effective as a deterrent force than any other form of punishment. Do we have any supporting evidence to claim that death penalty is more effective in bringing down crime in the society? If not, clearly, deterrent theory doesn't justify death penalty too.When the late Prime Minister Bandarnaike of Sri Lanka suspended the death penalty in 1956, a commission of inquiry on capital punishment was appointed and its report clearly disproved the deterrent effect of death penalty. Ironically after the prime minister was killed, his widow Sirimavo Bandarnaike who became the prime minister reimposed death penalty to punish the assassin who was eventually subjected to life imprisonment.

Like I said earlier, perhaps only the denunciatory theory that holds that punishment should be an expression of condemnation of the offence by the society justifies death penalty to some extent. The society through death penalty, sends a strong message that the act is condemned. However, I'm personally very uncomfortable with human sacrifice being the symbol of a disapproval. The bitter truth is that when you talk of death penalty, you are talking about killing someone. By killing someone you are taking away someone's right to live. Whatever the circumstance is, however remotely it is, if our law itself is justifying this act, it is scary. I also tend to disagree when Supreme court in Bachan Singh v/s State of Punjab states that death penalty is only an exception and should be given in rarest of rare cases. While I appreciate the guidelines set by the court through this case without which death penalty would have just been an alternative to  life imprisonment, I see a lot of ambiguity in the phrase "rarest of rare". I do not know if they have clearly defined this but even if they have done so, I strongly feel that there is still some ambiguity which has always been there in CRPC in general . Due to this ambiguity, if someone is awarded death penalty incorrectly, it completely defeats the idea of a legal system. There are numerous instances where judges themselves have had differences of opinion regarding whether a pronounced judgement was proper. Human beings are complex creatures. All convicts in the world aren't the same. All judges do not think alike. In a society where decision making is not a trivial task, deciding what fits into the "rarest of rare" cases is never easy.

The best a law can do is uphold  human dignity and the right of every individual to live. I'm sure there are a lot of experts around. I'm sure I know nothing that they know but for me, killing each other is wrong. Period.

An open letter to Yeddi

Dear Chief minister,

    I do not know if you have time to go through my letter if I write to you directly. I do not know if you know how to check your E-mails. When the entire country is pointing fingers at you, when the world can clearly see the happenings in our state, I cannot expect from you any special attention to my letter if I write to you. So I give up the idea of writing to you directly. Yet I do not want to give up the idea of bringing my frustration out and I want to make use of my blog for the same. The constitution permits me to do so. If your goons do not like it, I don't care.

  I do not understand politics much sir. I've no idea of how things move within your party or any other party. So I don't want to get into it. I just want to remind my readers of certain things. Unfortunately, public memory is too short. I won't be surprised if you'd be successful in mesmerizing the people and win the next assembly elections too. We lack education, integrity, common sense and you very well know it.

 It's been over two years of your rule in the state and when I look back, even if I do not go deep into certain matters, I feel ashamed that I'm alive in this era. The Mangalore pub attack marked the beginning of an era where we've to be scared of  enjoying our freedom. The video of rowdies mercilessly beating women became the most watched video. I do not care to know what those girls were doing. I do not care to understand what moral policing is. No matter what claims these groups make, we all know their ill intentions and wait,would you permit me and my friends to beat you up because we don't like what you are doing? I remember you openly stating that you were against pub culture. The first thing that was to be assured was that taking law into their hands and displaying dadagiri so openly could not be tolerated. Instead, your government as well as our media were more bothered about why these rowdies did that. I don't understand why you even listened to them. Whatever their purpose was, they had to be screwed for their behavior. Until they did all that they wanted, police could do nothing. Thanks to your government.

 Then came the attack on churches. It took more than 14 cases in different parts of the state to make you realise that the limit was being crossed. Again you came out saying you were against forced conversion. Who cares!? All we need is peace. Let your police put those people behind bars if they are trying to convert people. The continuous attacks not only displayed your support to these groups but also proved that your law and order machinery isn't functioning. This is exactly why people are scared to bring your government to power at the centre. We'd love to see our country develop minister, but for that, we aren't ready to lead such a fearful life. We are fed up with terrorists.

 Your honorable power minister who probably has the most irritating smile in the world, did nothing to meet the power requirements in the state and right from the day I've learnt about electricity, I've never felt so helpless and incapable of using it. We kept watching. We waited for the situation to improve only to see your minister happily resign from the post.

 Your own men dictated you. You literally kept crying and we had to keep all our complaints aside and look at the drama. You danced to the beats of another group of good -for- nothing rowdies and we just had to watch. The Lokayukta's team exposed clearly the illegal mining in the state and was trying to do it's best when your government played filthy politics to suppress them. Everything has been so transparent and yet you all are shameless. The Lokayukta resigned from the post and clearly stated that your government isn't cooperating with them. What he actually meant was that your government wasn't allowing them to do their work. On one side you take the Reddy brothers' side and ask people to 'prove' that they are guilty and on the other side you try to stall the process. Why are you so adamant? Why don't you allow CBI probe if you are so 'clean'?

 This is too much for just two years sir. Your inefficiency is making us pay prices. What shameless politics are we witnessing. I hate to see your faces. I'm not even getting into grievances of farmers and other flaws. When you are busy dealing with all these, development definitely takes backseat. I can't blame you for that!

Regards,
A helpless spectator.