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Why Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s concept of ‘scientific temper’ is very critical to the future of our children?

The future belongs to science and those who make friends with science.
– Jawaharlal Nehru

Nehru’s birthday, November 14, as we all know, is celebrated as Children’s Day every year in India. On this occasion, it is appropriate to pay tribute to a formative leader of India who illuminated a lot during his lifetime and beyond. Through his intellectual legacy, he continues until this day to guide India on the path of liberal democracy. His vision of India was that of a secular and modern nation. A flamboyant personality and yet a clear thinker, he held his own during much of the freedom struggle.

Nehru led from the front, expressing his positions during the course of various constitutional, political and other debates in the colonial period thereby indelibly stamping free India-to-come with his vision. He became India’s first Prime Minister and held that post for almost 17 years. He has been described severally as architect of modern India, world statesman and great administrator.

In the days that freedom fighters were incarcerated, many of them took to writing. Nehru showed his capacity as a historian of the first order, even though his own first degree at Trinity College, Cambridge, England was in the natural sciences. The strength of his scholarship lingers on in the form of the ‘Discovery of India’, ‘Glimpses of World History’ and ‘An Autobiography.’ It is difficult to condense the thought of such a complex body of work in such a short space. In this post, I choose to focus on the concept of “scientific temper” that was very dear to Nehru. He considered science to be rational, universal and inspired by the eighteenth-century European Enlightenment.

This was not to be mistaken with scientific expertise or building resources in science and technology, the latter having been pursued in different ways. For Nehru, who was an agnostic, science had multiple functions to perform: not only was it an instrument to solve the economic problems of a developing society like ours, it also had to make India a strong and self-reliant country with scientists competent to hold their own in the world scientific community. Part of this policy was the building of top-notch scientific educational and research institutions that Nehru promoted like the IIT’s, CSIR, ICMR, ICAR,  and, aided by business houses, institutions like the IISc and the TIFR.

While many celebrate the fact today that its India’s large pool of managerial and scientific manpower that is winning accolades worldwide and also bringing in the moolah, very few acknowledge that it was Nehru’s educational and scientific policies that made possible such an achievement including the Indian “IT revolution” [R. Guha, p. 1962]. That makes him a great visionary who though much derided for his economic policies could peep into the future and build the foundation for the Knowledge-based Economy (KBE) that we are all busy celebrating as the current and future source of wealth-generation.

What was important to Nehru was not just the change in the mere economic status of his country but also a change in the attitudes or the narrow-mindedness of its citizens. He said, “It is science alone that can solve the problems of hunger and poverty, of insanitation and illiteracy, of superstition and deadening custom and tradition, of vast resources running to waste, of a rich country inhabited by starving people. . . . Who indeed could afford to ignore science today? At every turn we have to seek its aid.”

But what did he mean by scientific temper? Srirupa Roy in her book “Beyond belief: India and the politics of postcolonial nationalism” notes that Nehru’s emphasis on the need for scientific temper predated independence (p.123). The features of scientific temper were mainly two-fold as Roy elaborates:

1. Scientific temper referred to a mentality or an outlook rather than a specialized body of knowledge. It addressed itself to universalist concerns of “values of life” rather than to narrow and specialized questions of scientific research and application (Roy, p.124)

2. Unlike scientific expertise alone, the project of scientific temper was a call for the diffusion of “science mindedness” throughout the population. The growth of scientific temper was measured by the extent to which ordinary people were using the methods of science to life’s problems (Roy, p.125)

Clearly what the above meant was that science would not just play a role in building scientific expertise but also help reject superstition, prejudice and injustice As Prof. Yashpal has noted, “science will also have to come forward in changing our thoughts and eradicating various social evils, including casteism, extremism…”(Times of India, 16th May 2005). India, in Nehru’s vision, could become a great country if the people adopted such a ‘scientific temper.’ Nehru pointed to the contradictions in the lives of scientists themselves who uphold science in the laboratories but discard science in everything else they do in their life.

Beyond Nehru’s lifetime, the propagation of the concept of ‘scientific temper’ was negligible and became reduced to a debate among intellectuals of various hues. As part of the 42nd amendment to the Indian Constitution in 1976, ‘scientific temper’ joined the list of Fundamental Duties of every Indian citizen vide Part IV-A, Article 51-A (h): ‘to develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform.’

A group of intellectuals led by P. N. Haksar released a “Statement on Scientific Temper” in October 1980. It has on and off been noticed at the highest levels of governance as a concept bearing great transformative potential. In his first Independence Day address to the nation from the Red Fort in 2004, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also called for the promotion of scientific temper, which he added must become a “national movement” and not a prisoner of bureaucracy or ideology.

A full and proper assessment of the impact of ‘scientific temper’ in the 62 years since independence is yet to be made. There is countervailing data that superstition, occult, irrationality, prejudice, gender inequality and injustices are very resilient in Indian private and public life, in other words, the idea of ‘scientific temper’ has not sufficiently penetrated Indian society. These days, because of the electronic media, news travels faster and there is greater awareness of these issues. A positive fallout of such media analysis and debates might be greater skepticism of superstitions and their peddlers. A moot point for research could be the ways in which the concept has panned out in the context of urbanization.

In the final analysis, to do justice to Nehru’s vision for India, ‘scientific temper could be a useful concept in ‘deschooling’ our society from received wisdom about obscurantist and superstitious practices that it is led to believe is in its interest. Scientific temper has to be an essential component of the socialization of our populace and needs to be promoted as an integral approach to nation-building. If that succeeds, then there can be no greater tribute to Jawaharlal Nehru and the millions of children who form the destiny of our nation.

References:

1. R. Guha, ‘Verdicts on Nehru’, Economic and Political Weekly, May 7, 2005.
2. Srirupa Roy, “Beyond belief: India and the politics of postcolonial nationalism”(Duke University Press, USA: 2007).

***An important recent contribution to the discussion on scientific temper is Prof. Amartya Sen’s The Argumentative Indian : Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity (Penguin, 2006).
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Maybe a herd but it ain’t Microsoft’s doing

Prolog

John Gruber, in his inimitable style, tore the  PC industry into shreds with his scathing post – Herd Mentality , just a day after the hugely hyped Windows 7 launch. Gruber pinned  the blame squarely on Microsoft.   Somewhat by coincidence, i have been thinking about the state of the PC industry for the past few weeks.  This post from Twilight Fairy [one of the earliest bloggers from India) made me think a lot harder.

My conclusion – Gruber is wrong. Much of  the blame lies elsewhere.  Stay tuned.

My PC

I have been using PCs since 1987 (when they used to run CP/M and MS DOS) However, most of my usage was on PCs belonging to my university or my company. I bought my first personal computer in 1996, a desktop running Windows 95 for US $1,400.  It was a remarkable computer that continued to work flawlessly till 2005.

Because it could not keep up with the demands, i bought another desktop PC in 2001 running Windows 2000 for a similar $1,400 but with a lot more of everything, dual hard disk, TV tuner etc.   Within 2 years, both the hard drives crashed simultaneously. No backups, damn. I took it to a reputed US computer retail store (now out of business) and they advised me  to replace both the hard disks, which i dutifully did. Within a few days both disks crashed again. It turns out there was a problem with the power supply or something like that. I had to junk that computer.

While this was going on the personal front, i changed 2 laptops (running Windows)  on the work front due to some problem or the other – hard disk, battery problem etc.

My Mac

Frustrated by this experience, in 2006, i decided to buy an intel-based Macbook Pro for $2,000. It was almost twice the amount of money then for a comparable Windows-based laptop, but i still took the plunge because i wanted to experience the Mac.  In the past 3.5 years that i have owned it, i have had zero problems with it except for the one time that the Magsafe power adaptor stopped working.

On the work  front, in the same 3.5 years, i have had to change laptops twice due to some part failure, and replace batteries once.

What went wrong?

Just to be sure, the laptops or desktops i mention above are all name-brand computers.  How is it that the desktop computer i bought in 1996 worked flawlessly for so many years, but not the ones that i used later (mine as well as my company’s)?

I think the answer lies in the hardware. In the race to cut the price of the PCs, the hardware makers have driven the prices of the component parts down to the point where quality has been given short shrift. Therefore, PCs are cheaper and you get what you pay for.

Though i paid almost twice for my Macbook Pro, the ROI due to it not breaking down is incalculable.   I have not had to change batteries or make any other changes to the hardware since i bought it. Quite remarkable compared to my PC experience.

Role of the OS

When i think about what role if any the OS played in the scenario i describe – it is Zero. I have had no  major issues with Windows other than the typical irritations like the OS crashing or having to reboot it every now and then.

Given that i don’t do any heavy duty work on my  Macbook Pro other than email, Open Office, iLife kind of work, i haven’t found spectacular benefits of using Mac OS. It is definitely a better OS with many thoughtful touches, but not anything that makes Mac OS  200% better in line with the price premium.

Role of the Looks

Yes, the Macs especially iMacs have eye-catching designs which is significantly better than what the PC industry has to offer. But i wonder for how many people (as a percentage), the sheer look of the computer matters that much. For the majority of the people, IMHO,  what matters in a computer is its ability to function more than anything else.

Conclusion

In my view, it is Apple’s superior hardware design, perhaps using better quality component parts that is the real difference.  Instead of trying to race to the bottom with a lower price, the PC makers should focus on making better quality hardware even if it means charging people a bit more. The lost productivity and frustrations when your PC breaks down is the biggest scourge facing the PC industry.

Epilog

What is your experience with PCs? Do you agree with my conclusion?

Disclaimers

1. Because this post is entirely based on my experience, it suffers from a sample size = 1 problem (not enough data points). However, i have had the opportunity to talk to many PC owners over time and the frustrations are quite similar. Twilightfairy’s experience is a good example as well.

2. A zillion posts have been written about how Macs don’t really cost that much if you add up the value etc.  I don’t agree with any of them. You do pay a significant premium for Macs. My experience says it is worth paying the premium.

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Real World Ahimsa

Ahimsa seems to be cliched word nowadays or seems practically obsolete. But the philosophy of Ahimsa I feel, is relevant.

Ahmisa is the opposite of Himsa which means “Violence” this needs to be interpreted as not just physical violence but mental violence. I consider violence is an act performed to inflict PAIN be it physical or mental. So Ahimsa is the art of not causing pain to others in any form.

In this blog my quick thoughts at Ahmisa in the house and at work.
Himsa at home
* As children we talk back / defy parents.
* As spouses we scold / put down / insult / scorn our partners.
* As parents we do the same to our kids.

Himsa at Work
* Admonish subordinates when they make a mistake.
* Put down support staff.
* Launch verbal/non-verbal attacks on peers when in competition.

Somethings which come to my mind
* Never insult or scold loved ones.
* React in a delayed manner. Hold back instant reactions.
* Consciously make sure you do not hurt anyone with words. Pain caused by words never heal.
* NEVER EVER INSULT people. You can never win by insulting, maybe you can put them down for sometime. It is difference between capturing and winning over.
* Even though people around you don’t meet your standards in ethics/ hard work/ cleanliness/ sincerity whatever THEY STILL HAVE TO RESPECTED AS HUMANS. Having a bad habit is a criteria to treat another person as a lesser mortal ( being a smoker I personally know how this hurts). I guess that is also DISCRIMINATION. Discrimination in any form is bad.

I can hear people saying – “Dude, this is easier said than done , Thanks for the advice.” 🙂

Let me share some tips that I try to practice to achieve the above someday it will become a natural part of me I hope :-). It’s  all about mental conditioning and hard work.

* Never think low of another person just because the other does meet your expectations. He does deserve respect as a human being. For e.g. this could be your 3 year old kid who did not drink milk for the 100th time.
* There is no way you can expect to get respected by someone who you just insulted.
* More often than not the ones who are subdued momentarily look for a chance to rebel. A friend of mine after adjusting to his parents for 30 years refuse to come to India just his parents stay here.

If we make a conscious effort not to inflict pain even unintentionally to people around us , our lives will become better. I guess there is a “Selfish” motive of wanting to do this , that being, I having a peaceful and harmonious life with my surroundings.

Would love to hear from others if I am practical or too theoretical here.

P.S. This a repost from my personal blog.

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What can we celebrate on ‘Gandhi Jayanthi?’

“Generations to come, it may be, will scarce believe that such one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth ! “ – Albert Einstein (referring to Mahatma Gandhi).

Recently the President of the US was asked as to if he preferred any personality dead or alive with whom he would like to have dinner with, whom would it be? Barack Obama unhesitatingly replied, “Mahatma Gandhi,” whom he considered a real hero. The legend lives on beyond the shores of India. He is the ‘Father of the Nation’ here, crucially remembered for having led the freedom movement against colonial rule. Besides that, there have been several facets of the Mahatma’s thinking and practice that have generated debate over the decades.

The front pages of the newspapers over the last few weeks centre around the concern of world leaders over climate change and the alert that has been sounded that there is not much time to redress the natural imbalance. Tsumani (warnings), earthquakes, floods, greenhouse effects have all become the order of the day. Unbridled consumption of energy and continued depletion of nature in various forms is a grim reminder as to the limits as to how much we can exploit natural resources in our march towards industrialization and urbanization.

While Mahatma Gandhi’s economic philosophy and village model might have been difficult to implement, the broad tenets of his advice on moderation in our consumption and patterns seem to be finding more takers today. Suddenly, everybody is busy finding alternate sources of energy (wind, solar etc) and methods like organic farming.

The pace at which post-independence Indian economic planning and implementation probably called for ‘big dam’ methods of development but now there is room to pause and think of how we plan to move ahead. Environmental movements around the country today are a pointer to what Gandhi had said about our way forward at that time itself. We are severely affected by drought in several districts and starvation-deaths among farmers. How can we be at ease until those who work to fill our national granaries are not assured of two square meals a day? Gandhi used to say that God smiles in the face of the poor and until we can address that all-round grim poverty by a combination of methods the nation cannot be at peace. As he is known to have said, ‘there is enough in this world for everybody’s need but not for everybody’s greed.’

Related to technology for economic development is also the major concern about technology for warfare, In one form or the other, whether it is about nuclear treaties or atomic tests or related debates, at a global level the debate around advanced technology for warfare is getting embedded in the popular imagination. It is known to have been said that the third world war would be fought with sticks and stones. The Mahatma abhorred all forms of violence. The sophistication and bedazzlement of the weaponnry used in conflict zones in the world is something to watch with distress but it is also equally sad to see the number of innocent civilian casualties that are the outcome of the use of such weapons. For a strong believer in non-violence like Mahatma Gandhi, the (unfortunate) proliferation and sophistication of any form of weapons would have been an anathema to him. He would have wept at such insensible development of weapons of any kind. Technology is indeed a double-edged sword. If we are indeed true admirers of Mahatma we cannot leave this facet of the new millennium unaddressed.

Mahatma Gandhi was the true champion of a plural society and diversity in India. Wherever there was communal violence, he campaigned hard to stop it and showed the way forward for amity. He was backed by several able leaders of the freedom movement. In this effort as in all his endeavors, he had critics all along but that did not discourage him from pursuing what he did through numerous marches, fasts and speeches to the people. He replied to this critics, ‘An eye for an eye only makes the whole world blind.‘ All in all, he emerged as a powerful symbol of co-existence, tolerance, spirituality, peace and love that shines and is powerful till this day.

Be it on questions of ecology or concerns of technology or national unity, Mahatma Gandhi emerged as a world figure of some importance that numerous later legends claimed inspiration like Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King, Jr., to name a few. Satyagraha or the struggle for truth or non-violent resistance became a global catchword among many fighting for injustice. That the first couple of decades of this non-violent movement were tested in the colonial waters of South Africa, beyond India, gave it even more strength.

Different sections of Indian and global society would continue to draw different messages from Gandhi’s life and message. The core values however when addressed to the changing forms of material and cultural existence of every epoch would still find relevance as for example today it is regarding environmental balance, positive use of  technology and communal harmony. The message to get across to the succeeding generations is that the Mahatma’s life was something beyond just the struggle for freedom. It was about the moral fibre of the individual and the nation in the march towards its destiny. Any attempt to become a superpower would have to take into account that the nation-state is anchored in the moral message of the Mahatma and its other founding fathers.

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Relevance of Saraswati pooja/Vijayadasami.

I am not a religious person.But my family is and I go along with the motions on every festival day so they are happy. I don’t loose anything by playing along.

But as I go through the motions my mind keeps thinking “Is this all a farce or could there be something logical behind it?”.

Some of my hypothesis flowing below.

In olden days I don’t know if there was a concept of weekdays/weekends existed, I doubt it (my historical ignorance exists here). To me a farmer used to work all days to attend to his farm.He needed a rest day to sit back relax.He needed a day off to take care of tools, on a normal workday he never gets that chance ( ala take you time off to sharpen the axes ).

In today’s world I guess we don’t need a Vijaydasami from a practical perspective ( okay I this might start a religious war 🙂 ). But as people around are doing it and we get a day-off.Maybe it is a good time to sit back and thank the tools we use and show our gratitude towards them. Being an IT guy I can think of operating systems,development languages and hardware which are tools to me. I could actually spend time on this to move those 100 unread mails and organize my inbox. I remove those bulky downloads which I had done to be read later but the later never came.Take backups of my data/emails. How many times have we rued the fact that we did not have backups.

Last but not the least , mentally thank all the people/companies which make software, those technical guys who spend hours writing blogs, pod-casts making our life simpler. A day to thank and show gratitude to all who help us provide for ourselves and family. ( Religious folks of course do thanks their favourite deity.)

Happy Vijayadasami.