Einstein and Tagore Discussion

Awesome! 

Einstein and Tagore in a discussion on the nature of knowledge and reality. Unsurprisingly perhaps, Einstein takes a realist position and Tagore a completely idealist one. (The terms idealist/realist used in the philosophical sense which is quite different from the sense in which they are generally used in political theory. Basically, the philosophical realists believe that there exists some reality "out there" which is independent of human mind and idealists believe that since everything is known to us through our minds we can not be sure about existence of such an external reality. Every thing we know is somehow shaped by our mind; to what degree we are in no position to determine.)

It's very tempting to relate idealism to some sort of subjectivism. So, I found it particularly interesting how Tagore even while maintaining the idealist stance articulates hows the concept like objective knowledge would still make sense.

Excerpts:

EINSTEIN: I cannot prove scientifically that Truth must be conceived as a Truth that is valid independent of humanity; but I believe it firmly. I believe, for instance, that the Pythagorean theorem in geometry states something that is approximately true, independent of the existence of man. 

[...]

TAGORE: [...] In any case, if there be any Truth absolutely unrelated to humanity then for us it is absolutely non-existing.

It is not difficult to imagine a mind to which the sequence of things happens not in space but only in time like the sequence of notes in music. For such a mind such conception of reality is akin to the musical reality in which Pythagorean geometry can have no meaning. There is the reality of paper, infinitely different from the reality of literature. For the kind of mind possessed by the moth which eats that paper literature is absolutely non-existent, yet for Man’s mind literature has a greater value of Truth than the paper itself. In a similar manner if there be some Truth which has no sensuous or rational relation to the human mind, it will ever remain as nothing so long as we remain human beings.

EINSTEIN: Then I am more religious than you are!

P.S. Does anyone understands the context in which Einstein says the last line? Does he mean that he is more religious because he is a realist and Christianity subscribes to it?

Observations on Kumbh Mela

I wrote the following write-up after a visit to Kumbh earlier this year in February.



Every 12 years, when the stars and planets are aligned just right, the annual Magha mela at the confluence of the Ganga, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati in Allahabad assumes a special significance and attracts an increasingly immense mass of humanity eager to wash away its sins and attain salvation by bathing in the holy waters. This year, during the months of January & February approximately 80-100 million pilgrims visited the Maha Kumbh to take the holy dip at the Sangam (the confluence), making it the largest human gathering ever. 

The humongous size of the mela naturally demands a proportionally huge administrative effort and planning. A temporary city spread over 1,900 hectares - divided into 14 sectors - is build within months on the sandy banks of the Sangam. Civic amenities like hospitals, sewage system, electricity supply lines and the roads etc. are built from scratch just before the commencement of the mela to be dismantled promptly after its conclusion. Around 11,000 police personnel, including the Provincial Armed Constabulary, are deployed for the maintenance of law and order and for crowd control. The thousands of Kalpwasis - the pilgrims and Sadhus who stay for a longer period at the mela - are provided with the daily food and civil supplies through 125 ration shops set up in the mela area. Clearly, the immensity of the whole administrative task cannot be overstated. And yet the Kumbh is regularly organized with relative success; a fact that becomes all the more exceptional given that it is organized by the administrative machinery of Uttar Pradesh - a state which is generally not known for its administrative prowess. A natural question thus arises - what explains the paradox that the same state machinery that routinely fails to provide basic amenities and services in the majority of towns and cities can build a temporary township quite efficiently and organize such a huge festival with relative success?

In the view of the authors, a major part of Kumbh's success can be explained by the coming together of the many favorable conditions, auspicious planetary positions not being one of them.

To begin with, the demographic of the pilgrims at the Kumbh makes it politically very relevant. The typical profile of a Kumbh pilgrim is a rural resident of the Hindi heartland who is religious and socio-economically belongs to the lower middle class. This socio-economic profile derives its political importance not only from its sheer numbers but also from its propensity to be one of the more active participants in the political process. Naturally, any state government wouldn't want to lose a chance to earn their goodwill.  

Not surprisingly, this has been the case almost throughout the history of the Kumbh mela at Allahabad starting from the time of Government of India Act, 1858. During the first half of the 18th century the Government of East India Company was largely indifferent to the religious sentiments of the masses. Some records show that it even levied the exorbitant charge of Re. 1 on the pilgrims coming to the Magh mela at Sangam. This naturally alienated the priestly class which fought British during the revolt of 1857. Subsequently, The GOI Act, 1858 made conscious effort to correct this and give greater freedom and respect for the religious aspirations of the people.

Further, as has been argued elsewhere (OECD, 2000), the two helpful conditions for better urban governance include: solidarity and subsidiarity. And both of these can be seen at work at the Kumbh.

There definitely is solidarity among the pilgrims at Kumbh. There's a commonality of purpose and interest - what the literature on pilgrimage frequently term communitas - unlike in more permanent settings where different sections jostle for limited resources for different and opposing interests. This solidarity obviously limits the scope for politics along the caste/religion/section faultlines and allows for a more coherent and focused approach of administration. Also, it helps that most participants are non-local who come to the site for only few months. This ensures that there are no permanent turfs that are protected through local politics and no privileged sections with in the mela. To be sure, historically there have been fierce turf wars between the Akhaadas and each of them still vie for favorable location in the Kumbh, but their difference are now resolved in during the meetings of Akhara Parishad and the Government officials before the mela. 

Also, the subsidiarity factor (" local autonomy, decentralisation and keeping government close to the people") is also at play at Kumbh to an extent. The mela administration provides the basic infrastructural services i.e. water, electricity, roads and police etc. reasonably well and then leaves it up to the Akharas to micro-manage their own sectors with reasonable autonomy. 

Finally, it must be said that despite its size the space-time framework in which the Kumbh is organized is still relatively quite small. To install new facilities and services is one thing, but the maintain and operate them on a sustainable basis is quite another. It is in the latter that the state generally lacks the capacity in the more permanent setting of Indian cities and villages.

So, even though Kumbh is a spectacular event organized with remarkable efficiency and skill, large part of its success still seems to be linked to the coming together of many different factors that are generally absent in more permanent settings of Indian cities and villages.

Contradictions of Urban Middle Class

I find it contradictory (hypocritical is perhaps a little too strong a word) when a person (mostly with an urban middle class profile in my experience) supports economic laissez-faire but sneers at "vote bank" politics. Apparently, he can clearly see and approves of the "invisible hand" of profit motive in business but fails to see the working of a similar "invisible hand" of power motive in politics. So, while his economic understanding is based on the assumption of human nature as essentially self centered and egoistic, his political understanding inexplicably expect the same human nature to be altruistic.

What gives?

I offer the following thesis: while economically urban middle class starts off from a relatively advantageous position, it is quick to shout "let it be" (laissez-faire, literally) but politically, where its single vote counts just as much as another person's and it can not get its own way, it's equally quick to shout "vote bank politics".

P.S. Personally, I hold both the adversarial systems (capitalism in economics and electoral democracy in politics) in equal regards. To the extent I accept lassiez-faire economics, I am also fine with vote bank politics.

On Philosophy

What is Philosophy?

Before trying to answer this question, let me pose a different one- For what field of study x, does the question "what is x" fall within the realm of x itself? It's not mathematics, for what is mathematics in not a mathematical question. Neither is it science (what is science isn't a properly scientific question that can be decided empirically) nor it's politics or psychology etc. The only candidate for x that fits the above criteria seems to be philosophy. "What is philosophy" is strictly a philosophical question. In fact, all other such "what is x" type questions mentioned above are themselves philosophical questions.

Now how does this relate to the original question? I think this highlights a crucial distinction between philosophy and other specialized field of studies and it is this - for any specialized field of study, the particular aspect in which it studies reality is fixed and this aspect is given to it as if from outside; philosophy, on the other hand, is not constrained by any such boundaries. It is free to choose any and the most generic aspect under which it wants to study reality. And therefore only philosophy seems sufficiently capable of self-consciously looking at itself in a manner in which other sciences, being limited by their own definition, are not.

In fact, it is only when a particular aspect of reality under consideration becomes sufficiently articulated does it become a separate discipline. Thus what was once studied under philosophy as natural science, once it got articulated, became physics as we know it and thence got subdivided further into chemistry and biology and so on.

So, philosophy is simply an "enquiry into the unknown". And the only distinction between it and other specialized studies is a negative one - once everything is accounted for by one specialized field or the other, whatever else is left is philosophy.

The best definition that I came across for Philosophy, and which succinctly sums up my views as well, is due Wilfrid Sellars:

Philosophy is the attempt to understand how things in the most general sense of that word hang together in the most general sense of those words. 

On Identity

To me, the concept of identity seems to consist of a paradox. To define something its particular character must be highlighted but at the same time this particularity must be formulated in general terms that are in no way unique to object being defined. In effect, not only must a definition consist of contrast to something but must also simultaneously consist of similarity to something else.

For instance, let us say someone asks himself "who am I?". The two extreme forms that the answer can possibly take are - 1) I am who I am or 2) I am a being. The first answer lies on the particularist extreme, where the object is considered as something unique, as sui generis; without any common characteristics with anything else. On the other hand, the second answer lies on the generalist extreme, where the object being defined shares its definition with every existent thing. Both are logically true, in fact both are truisms. But both are useless as definitions; they give no new information at all about the object. The first answer puts the object too close to the eye, and the second one puts it too far. In either case, the object being defined is invisible.

A more useful definition will then be the one that lies somewhere in between these two extremities. It must move away from the generalistic extreme by bringing about the unique characteristics of the object ("I am a human being, an Indian and an Engineer") but at the same time these characteristics must have an existence independent of the object and thus necessarily indicate the object's similarity with certain things; the things with which the object shares these characteristics  (my Indian-ness does not owe its existence to me rather I share it with all other Indians). So,while I am distinguishing myself and highlighting my uniqueness, I have to also simultaneously highlight my similarity to certain things and characteristics. And, even though there's a strong tendency to highlight my uniqueness, I can not to go all the way to define myself in absolutely unique terms; in that case, I will come too close to the mind's eye, so to speak, and thus will become incomprehensible.

I think we understand this intuitively and thus rarely think of things or ourselves as completely unique or completely general. When people choose identities (often multiples) between these extremes, the most basic desire governing these choices perhaps is the desire to be seen and understood.

On God

 I am sometimes asked about my views regarding existence of God and invariably, unable to articulate my position vis-a-vis God, I end up saying that I am an agnostic. However, that's more because I am not really sure what it actually means to say that God exists. If what is referred to is some sort of physical existence then definitely I am an atheist (as, I suspect, every one else who will think rationally about it will be) as I haven't yet perceived any physical entity that can be called God nor have I got any reason to suspect its physical existence. However, most people don't talk of God in this physical sense, they talk of Him at a more spiritual and emotional level. They talk about the comfort and the sense of security they derive from the idea of God. Of course, there need not be any objective existence of God for such an emotional connection, a mere idea is sufficient. That placebos work is an established fact. And in so far as humans, almost universally and eternally, have had an idea of God, it's a truism that God (as an idea) exists. So, in this sense I believe that God exists.


But then in this sense the belief in existence of God is not any different than the belief in the existence of a point or a straight line. They are all concepts that reside purely in the ideal realm and are quite necessary and useful in their own way; being helpful approximations and aids to our understanding. And as I see it, God is a term man gave to the concept at which he arrived when he contemplated his limits and strove to see beyond them. When man got afraid of the nature and found it outside his control, he said nature was God. Then when he aspired to an ideal social order and found that human nature was not capable of attaining it, he invented Gods that were compassionate, just, honest and merciful. He saw in God what he desired in himself. (And isn't the same instinct at play when a particularly gifted sportsperson is termed 'God'?) It would not be stretching it too far to say that God is man's own reflection while he aspires to the impossible perfection.

Why Public Policy Matters

I recently applied for this public policy course offered by The Takshashila Institution. For one of its essays on 'Why public policy matters?', I wrote the following. 

At the very basic level, there is usually a rather surprising agreement among the various groups about the end goals to be pursued in a society; be it then eradication of poverty, removal of corruption or the establishment of an egalitarian order. What, however, differs is the means these various groups advocate for achieving these objectives.

Fortunately, since the ends are causally related to the means, these means or policies can be studied and evaluated in a scientific manner and their merits/demerits be discussed objectively. (Same thing can not, however, be said of the ends to be pursued which fall in the realm of desires and aspirations and are hence beyond any objective evaluation.)

Further, in a democratic society like India it is essential that even though the formal responsibility for policy making rests with the elected politicians, the general populace is also sufficiently capable of understanding and discussing various policy options and their nuances. For, ultimately in such societies it is the masses who decide which policy options get preference over the others.

   

Therefore, insofar as public policy provides a vocabulary to discuss and debate various issues of public importance and develops frameworks and models to objectively study and understand these issues, it is important.

Comments welcome.