tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-47388393430731219102024-03-05T14:12:10.149+05:30ChatternamaProfessor Shanker Dutthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08034543244340726254noreply@blogger.comBlogger58125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4738839343073121910.post-77632767758381398962017-04-12T15:06:00.001+05:302017-04-12T15:06:20.965+05:30Thinking Otherwise<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Chai Lit is a carefully crafted space for a
non-hierarchic engagement with thought, creativity and narratives, indeed a
crucible to encourage silences to be overcome in order to transform despair
into hope through affirmative action. Words and silences, each in their own
ways, create inflexibilities and traps as we are often lost in the labyrinth of
influence, repression, fear or self-censorship or at the other end of the
spectrum, the certainties of dogmas and prejudices. The stultification of the
mind often inhibits the full realization of creativity, critical consciousness,
inclusive sensitivities and humane insights.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">On an invitation from Dr. Richa and Dr. Yogesh
Pratap Shekhar, the organizers and co-founders of Chai Lit, I travelled to Gaya
with two young minds I have had the privilege to have taught: Amritendu Ghoshal
and Prabhat Jha. The introduction to the seminar did not follow institutional
patterns: no prayer song, no lighting of the ceremonial lamp, no bouquets, no
formal introduction to the speakers and contributors. The content was more
important than the trappings, the seriousness of the matter was accorded the
highest value, the façade did not exist. The windows were open for the ideas to
flow.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Amritendu spoke of the necessity to develop a rational
critical sense and engage with political issues that invariably affect our
lives. The necessity to oppose injustices comes from being able to identify
them and their operative modes through a developed critical political
consciousness. Later during the interactive session, political activism on
campus with its manipulative strategies and being a seminary for public
political careers were set over and against the understanding of politics and
its expression through debate and dissent. Billed as Knowledge Kitchen, the
seminar became the microcosm of an ideal university campus.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Prabhat had two poems to offer. They were incisively
satirical exposing the cynical quest of power using rhetorical and divisive
strategies acted upon by vigilante groups following thew master’s voice: beef
ban, book ban, film ban, we are inhabitants of Ban de land. Prabhat’s
excellently scripted play Sawaal par Bawaal was read by the playwright himself
and Dr. Richa with a vitality that comes from convictions about an inclusive
idea of India where free speech and comity are threatened with violence into
silence and where participatory democracy is extinguished to facilitate the
birth of demagogues. In a short address that followed. The same points were
reemphasized and the need for organic intellectuals stressed. As interludes
between thought sharing, poems were recited, notably Shilpa’s reading of Kedar
Nath Singh’s poem Vigyan aur Neend.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I spoke in
the defense of the humanities, framing its decline within the growth of later
capitalism and social utility of disciplines whose worth may be quantitatively
measured. I attempted to locate the disquiet in the formation of knowledge in
colonial models both exogenous and endogenous and drew upon the coercive and
divisive implications of Aristotle’s Law of Identity. I tried to show how STEM
disciplines with their accompanying examination patterns have reduced problem
posing cooperative teaching-learning as dialogue to an uncritical junk-food
pedagogy. During the course of the discussions, I pointed out how nothing is
innocently neutral as the tool to construct the world, language, is nearly
always political. Dr. Pranav Kumar spoke of furthering the process of
decolonization drawing upon indigenous resources rather than on western models.
No model however is the exclusive monopoly of a specifically identifiable
community; these may be incorporated, transformed and mediated within
indigenous contents. Gandhi fashioned an indigenous anti-colonial movement
bring together disparate influences as wide as Tolstoy, Ruskin, Edwin Arnold
and Thoreau on the one hand and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Raichandbhai, Gokhale,, Buddha,his mother, wife, maid and scriptural
sources of the east. Exclusionary readings have negative implications because
the totality of insights remain inadequate.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Personal narratives were cited by a number of
participants to indicate the toxic politics of exclusion and the problems of
correcting perceived historical injustices. The nationalism debate, an
inevitable staple of the public sphere was energetically pursued. It seemed on
occasions that many institutions are refurbishing the idea of a university and the
idea of India in a strategic manner in which being a liberal and a free thinker
has little legitimacy. During the course of the debate, Professor Yogesh Pratap
Shekhar defined nationalism as derivative that homogenizes an imagined
community through perceived commonality of aspirations. However, the process of
homogenization may exclude a number of social formations as is the mobilized political
practice today. Who belongs to a nation? A participant suggested that all those
for whom India is the matribhumi <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>which
is commonly understood as homeland. But this notion is problematic and
arbitrary because nations are not fixed entities and one’s nationality may be
at variance with one’s homeland.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The discussions would have continued had time not
been the final arbiter. Knowledge Kitchen had succeeded in creating a possibility
to think otherwise.</span></div>
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Professor Shanker Dutthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08034543244340726254noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4738839343073121910.post-20769423575515520712016-12-22T14:40:00.001+05:302016-12-22T14:40:16.245+05:30 Revisiting ‘For God and Country’<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">On the 17<sup>th</sup>
of December 2016, my school St. Xavier’s Patna conferred upon me the
Distinguished Xaverian Award. With mixed emotions of happiness and humility,
when I went back home carrying the citation, I wondered whether I had truly
lived up to the motto that had been inscribed in my young mind since the very
first day that I walked in awe into the campus: ‘For God and Country’. Over the
years, rationality had become the guiding canon of my life and I thought I
would examine what the motto of my school meant to me. When I looked at the
gathering that evening, I was startled by the outstanding diversity among
individuals: women and men from different cultural, linguistic, religious,
ethnic and professional groups seated with quiet dignity. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On any day when I look outside the classroom
where I teach, I observe different kinds of flowers and trees, different birds
chirping under a blue December sky, different butterflies flitting from flower
to flower. And if I look at the physical map of our country, I see tall,
majestic, snow-clad mountains, wide rivers, gushing streams, fertile plains,
plateaus, lakes, seas and oceans. If we are believers, then we are awed by the
magnificent diversity of creation where the creator has structured our earth
and the universe with the infinite metaphors with which our gratitude may be
expressed. Even if we are non-believers and consider the material world as the
only reality we are grateful to live in a world that has evolved over millions
of years through a process of natural selection which is truly beautiful for
its overwhelming variety. A passage from Samskara, the celebrated novel by U.
R. Anantha Murthy comes to mind: ‘May the mind be like the patterns of light
and shade, the forms the branching trees give naturally to sunshine. Light in
the sky, shadow under the trees, patterns on the ground. If luckily, there’s a
spray of water – rainbows’. The poetic rendering of diversity, the different
beauties of light and shade is a critical reminder that difference can be
appreciated and valued. The presence of sunshine on a winter morning is what we
look forward to as indeed we look for the cool shade of the tree in the summer
heat. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If we are able to
observe and appreciate natural diversity then what happens to us that we are
becoming progressively intolerant toward cultural diversity? Is there something
innately wrong with the way we have constructed culture within the material
conditions of production? This brings us to the understanding of culture which
among a few select words in our lexicon is notoriously difficult to define.
Culture is a complex of representations of who we are in all of what we do. The
essentialist view of culture is often seen as a fixed property or essence that
is universal to a particular category of people giving the impression of a simple
society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To propose that women are good
childcarers because they are women, that black people are good at sports
because they are black or Bengalis are good are arguing because they are
Bengalis carries the notion “they are like that’ which is to engage in
essentialist thinking. The basic principle of stereotyping any cultural group
operates on essentialist lines as it reinforces the prejudices of one group
towards the other. The non-essentialist view of culture suggests a multilayered
complex social force whose characteristics are difficult to reduce into a
simplified understanding. Culture is dynamic and perhaps more than ever with
frames of reference undergoing major changes these changes have been
substantial. Earlier the frames of reference were limited to family, location,
limited social formations, religion, and in an extended sense, province and
country. In an age of migration and globalization rapid changes have been
witnessed in many of these structural formations. We used to belong, now we
over-belong. We inhabit several spaces simultaneously and subscribe to multiple
cultures.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Western episteme has
constructed knowledge in binary pairs. We comprehend the world in terms of
difference: day/ night, black/white, rich/poor, city/ village, upper/lower,
good/bad, men/women. There nothing damaging about this form of pairing as long
as they may be comprehended in terms of difference, for instance women are in
some ways different from men. But in many ways they may be similar too. They
may be similarly educated, they may share a friendship based on equality, they
may share responsibilities at home, they may both be interested in poetry, and
they may even wish to undertake an expedition to the South Pole or climb the
Everest. But the problem arises when gender is seen as oppositional. The idea
of opposition implies the creation of otherisation when a set of
characteristics define one side of the slash with positive values and the other
side of the slash with negatives. It creates a hierarchy of power privileging
one over the other. That is when all the trouble starts.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This
form of partitioning stemmed from the ham-handed experiment by Cyril Radcliff
who hurriedly partitioned the subcontinent and the same form of partitioning
through perceptions of opposition happens daily in muhallas and sitting-rooms,
slotting by politicians and religious leaders in the unhealthy maneuvers in
electoral democracy. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">St. Xavier’s taught me
that homogenization and reduction to a solitary identity is to miniaturize
human beings. Simply put, it means that to be a good citizen, a good human
being and a good member of a religious denomination, one need not demonstrate
it by hating everyone else<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">.</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This needs to be
reinforced in our daily lives by standing up to all forms of perpetuation of
intolerance whether it is the silencing the creativity of of Perumal Murugan, the
dastardly killings of Kalburgi, Panesar and Pansare, the irrational dictates of
Khap Panchayats, the vanldalism at theatres, the mercenary cyberthugs spitting
abuse in the social media, the brutality of ISIS, acts of wanton terror in
India and across the globe, the burning of churches, the killing of Dalits, the
violence against women, political mobilizations to rewrite a shared history and
the manipulation of binaries equating dissent with sedition across university
campuses and public spheres. This was not my country when I went to school. The
rich cultural, linguistic, geographical diversities defined my country and that
is the way to define it today. Diminishing the idea of India is to diminish
India. I re-dedicate myself to the motto of my school ‘For God and Country’ to
redeem the acceptance of the Distinguished Xaverian Award.</span></div>
</div>
Professor Shanker Dutthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08034543244340726254noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4738839343073121910.post-28051149111820254952016-08-27T02:21:00.002+05:302016-08-27T10:07:45.120+05:30Democracy Deficit in the Academia<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The right to academic freedom is not a fundamental
right but a rationally considered academic right. The right to academic freedom
is a right to be free from the interference of the state and governments and
function to build an egalitarian nation. However, every right conferred upon an
individual or an institution carries with it certain social responsibilities.
These responsibilities give universities and institutions a significant
opportunity to contribute to the qualitative development, intellectual,
cultural and political growth, to interrogate inequities and generate forms of
knowledge to shape the society it serves.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">A free spirit of enquiry is mandatory for
intellectual journeys toward discovery and the absence of hierarchic control
reassures the autonomy and dignity of the stakeholders in the process. In over
three and a half <span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">decades</span> of teaching, I have witnessed a widening gap between what
a university is supposed to be and the routine practice. The privileging of the
office over the classroom, of administrators over teachers and researchers
resulting from market utility, so beloved of the post-WTO
education-as-service-industry has alienated higher education from its social
obligations in shaping a just, fair and an equitable social order. It is not by
accident that a hierarchic bureaucratic order has been set in place for the
triumph of market statistics through the exercise of power and control. The
nineteenth century utilitarian Jeremy Bentham proposed the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">panopticon</i> for surveillance whose material manifestation was the
colonial cellular jail in the Andaman Islands. Today many educational centres
including colleges in Patna University are contemplating the use of CCTV
cameras in public areas of institutions and shockingly in classrooms. The use
of cameras in public areas, if used for security purposes rather than
administrative espionage is justifiable, though not entirely desirable. In classrooms
it is a disgrace to the dignity of the teachers and students, participants in
the process of learning and producing knowledge. Teachers are evaluated every
day by students and peer reasearchers and students evaluate teachers once a
semester for official purposes. These official purposes are ill-defined because
in most cases the results are never made public because the system is usually
complicit with ideological and often irrational forms of vested interests. The
deserving might make the undeserving top occupant of the hierarchic order very
uncomfortable although experience teaches that the pachydermatous skills rather
than academic and intellectual attributes are among the preferential virtues.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Transparency in evaluation and authorized recording
of lectures for the benefit of students would be far more effective than this
undignified form of espionage. Again, these covert operations would hardly be
of any relevance if the recruitment were to be fair. Its need critiques itself.
The academia works best when the best traditions of democracy fertilizes teaching
and learning, a true participatory partnership that inspires and motivates the
pursuit of excellence.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">University campuses, its public spaces: libraries
and classrooms; teachers, students and employees constitute the ‘public sphere’,
a term popularized by Jurgen Habermas of the Frankfurt School. In the
dichotomous positioning of the state and civil society, the public sphere constitutes
a site for contested public opinion which functions as moderating agency
against ill-conceived exercise of the state’s authority or the violation of
civil codes. Thus the public sphere is plurally constituted and engenders
diverse views and practices while creating space for dissent against
discrimination, injustices and inequities. The growth of true democratic
traditions is directly proportional to the development of the public sphere. In
India, sadly, its educational systems, unable to produce a ‘critical mass’ because
of the suppression of the public sphere has created what Noam Chomsky calls a ‘democratic
deficit’. It is the ruinous lack on part of the state institutions to sustain
and perpetuate democratic principles. Contrariwise, they obstruct the sharing
of opinion and information and actively discourage dialogue and dissent. While
India continues to uphold the colonial sedition law under Section 124A of the
Indian Penal Code, it fails to appreciate the value of enlightened laws such as
Section 43(1) of the British Education Act of 1986 which states ‘ Every
individual and body or persons concerned in the government of any establishment
to which this section applies shall take such steps as are reasonably
practicable to ensure that freedom of speech within the law is secured for
members, students and employees of the establishment and for visiting
speakers’.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Are we then surprised when intolerance of
diversities and threats to the constitution engender forms of exclusionary
knowledge to which unthinking subscription entitles life and citizenship?</span></div>
</div>
Professor Shanker Dutthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08034543244340726254noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4738839343073121910.post-8648586404214565262014-05-12T23:52:00.001+05:302014-05-13T01:23:05.143+05:30Academia at 42 degrees<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I have often asked myself this uneasy question: how
do I like to invigilate in an afternoon examination at 42 degrees? Most people
will probably think that I am a decadent masochist if I say I relish doing it
or if I were to turn quixotically philosophical and say temperature is an
attitude of the mind. But if I were to be honest, I would look at it from the
perspective of examinees that have to study, memorise, assimilate, prepare and
beat the anxieties of writing a test in a room that is faintly reminiscent of
the barbarous Holocaust. To sit on those bum-hard benches with egotistical
authorities assuming criminal intent and issuing diktats that combine moral
clichés with legal threats is an assault on common human dignity. But as the
axiom goes: what can’t be cured must be endured. That is where an invigilator
is advantaged. An invigilator is privy to a show that can be amusing enough to
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room. He wears a cream shirt with buttoned down flap pockets over which is
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perseverance of an ascetic until the last ten minutes of the test when material
advantage overwhelms the conscience. Two rows behind, a girl with a yellow
kurta and pink dupatta with temple appliqué at the borders, stares at the
ceiling waiting for divinity to intervene while chewing the cap of her
ball-point pen. Providence usually takes its time and in the next fifteen minutes
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with frazzled hair reminiscent of a two-minute-ago electrocution looks left,
then right, sticks his tongue out, scratches his temples, the back of his head
and settles down to challenge the question paper. The girl in a pair of Levis
indigo jeans bought last night with a loose crepe orange cotton top in the
second last row has got into the business of assaulting the paper in real
earnest, drawing lines as margins, writing six lines and underlining three,
erasing a pencil-drawing, scratching her nose and then continuing to write in a
kind of aesthetically pleasing hand that catches my envy through the corner of
my eye. Another in a black kurta who remembers very little of physics from
school wrestles with her writing equipment, grimacing, snorting and smiling
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Tea comes in a plastic cup that could not have been
smaller. Within seconds a serrated layer of cream forms at the top of the
earth-brown liquid that bears the authoritative stamp of institutional hospitality.
A sample of the river water collected next to the cremation bank may have
tasted better. That sounds just a little bit morbid. Shall I erase it? Tea
drained in spite of its violence on the taste-buds, its time to focus on the job
of a conscientious invigilator.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">May I borrow an eraser from her please? - asks a
petite wheat-complexioned boy with a chiseled face. I am surprised at the good
manners of this young man. This culture-plus moment almost demands the
generosity of gratification with something like- Borrow two if you please. I
hated to see this young lad sitting in the forty two degrees on that austere
seat proving to the world that he had the wherewithal to get a masters degree
and embark on a lonely road to success defined by society.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Time for examinees is a haiku, for invigilators an
epic. And the hands on my wristwatch continue its painful circumambulation as
the incinerating heat eases to a bearable close. Five to five, five minutes to
go. That announced, hope renews. A sudden flurry of community consultations
begins. Words, digital signals, snarls, whispers, winks, turns, twists are
cautioned. It stops briefly, starts again. Resilience in an uneven world is an instrument
of survival. End of time, we file out celebrating our freedoms in our own
different ways. We are after all children of different gods.</span></div>
</div>
Professor Shanker Dutthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08034543244340726254noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4738839343073121910.post-40565318546979432142014-05-08T21:27:00.001+05:302014-05-08T21:27:50.123+05:30Understanding the Art of Cinema<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Understanding the Art of Cinema: a Guide for Beginners by R.N. Dash provides an encyclopedic understanding of films written in a language that is comprehensible and intelligible both for the uninitiated and proficient scholars of this discipline. To be able to inform, enlighten and encourage critical thinking and scholarship in such a vast subject is a significant achievement. What has been most baffling is that Mr. Dash with an immaculate record as a civil servant, an avid reader, a reference index in cultural relations has been a reluctant, self-questioning author and despite being a walking-talking encyclopedia on films his quintessential humility required a great deal of persuasion from his friends, admirers and students before he wrote and published the book in the autumn of 2013.
Films constitute a major cultural practice of our times. People see films for various reasons: entertainment, representation of unusual themes, as a narrative and cultural signifier that enables viewers to experience a world different from their own, to experience the practice of the art by the many directors all over the globe and possibly for intellectual and sensory pleasure. Whether one reads a book, watches a theatre performance or views a film, the pleasure is enriched through critical interrogation. It may stem from asking a simple question: why did I like this film? This unobtrusive question has produced a discipline that is commonly known as Film Studies and Understanding the Art of Cinema sets out to explore, inform and analyse the elements that constitute such a scholarship. It begins with the etymology of the word cinema, understanding the constituents of a film, the ambiguity the term ‘movies’ and explains the technology of the cinema in various stages of its development.
R.N. Dash’s book conducts the readers through an exploratory journey in cinema covering areas such as growth of world cinema from the silent era to contemporary practice in various countries, development of Indian cinema and the structure and constituents of this art form. Questions of classifications are enumerated in detail drawing succinct distinctions among long and short films, factual films, advertisement films, promotional films, feature films, ducu-feature and docu-drama. It answers some of the fundamental classificatory queries that often trouble those interested in film studies. With candid humour, he speaks of the category of Art films as a paradox since it implies that other categories are not works of art. The author distinguishes Mainstream, Parallel and Art movies while indicating that nomenclatures may have a certain fluidity of definition. The structural components of the cinema including the normative function of producer, director, executive producer, screenplay and dialogue writers, production designer, cinematographer, actors, composers, choreographer, editor and technicians are delineated in authentic detail with illustrations in various sections.
The subject is indeed vast but Mr. Dash has been able to provide a comprehensive and detailed insight into a discipline that requires serious scholarship. While I expect that Understanding the Art of Cinema will become a signpost in film studies, I wish to see an early reprint adorning shelves in bookstores and libraries. In it I wish to suggest the inclusion of a glossary for quick reference to film terminology as well as an index. Each scholastic discipline constitutes its own special language which can often be unsettling for the uninitiated. This book is different. It uses words in common use and explains discipline- specific terms simply and with clarity. The invitation to read the book could not be more explicit.
</div>
Professor Shanker Dutthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08034543244340726254noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4738839343073121910.post-87016266560517155482012-03-22T19:43:00.003+05:302012-03-24T10:04:46.652+05:30And peace be upon her soulIt is unlike Aslam, my former research student and good Samaritan, to call at 6:15 in the morning. His body-clock is normally geared to schedules that begin to function when the sun is higher up in the sky. So when I saw his name on my mobile display, I was a little puzzled. When he broke the news, a weighty silence descended upon me. A person I had admired, a woman of high scholarship, of integrity, of rare sensitivity had moved on to the realms of the ethereal. The final truth of being and nothingness had arrived.<br />
She had not been well for many months and had been in and out of hospitals ever since her fall and orthopaedic complications a few years ago. The doctors and nursing staff at Kurji Holy Family Hospital had given her the best of attention and the very affable Fr. D’Mello shared books and prayers, encouraging spiritual resilience for a quick recovery. Months after she left hospital and I had been there to visit another colleague, he remembered to ask about her. Through the months other complications had developed and her condition rode the crests and troughs of uncertainty. Through it all, she kept in touch with us and us with her. She was absolutely delighted when our daughter Tara visited her after making it to St. Stephen’s and her blessings have been her strength. She donated a part of her collection of books to the seminar library of the Department of English hoping that her beloved students would be benefited.<br />
Dr. Chhanda Roy, there will never be another such as you. We have lost a wonderful human being, a very sincere professor whose scholarship touched the many who knew her worth and value. Farewell Chhanda di.Professor Shanker Dutthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08034543244340726254noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4738839343073121910.post-51898075327378112732011-12-19T22:23:00.000+05:302011-12-19T22:23:43.560+05:30Recasting the cliched theme of corruption: posted on request of friendsCorruption in our Society and how to come out of it through Participatory Vigilance<br />
Prof. (Dr.) Shanker Dutt<br />
<br />
When I received an invitation from Mr. Vijay Sharma and a telephonic prod from Mr. Ujjwal Choudhary to speak at this seminar it was impossible to decline the offer on two counts: one that both these gentlemen have set examples of impeccable integrity in their profession and possess a deep social sensitivity toward the disadvantaged. Both these issues are inextricably connected with the deliberations today. As I mentally juggled with the issue of corruption, I recalled the lexical precision of the political philosopher and orator Edmund Burke. It is indeed a topic on which it is difficult to speak and impossible to be silent. Burke was delivering his famous address on the impeachment of Warren Hastings, his own countryman who had ‘violated’ the ‘eternal laws of justice’. ‘I impeach him’, Burke said, ‘in the name of the people of India whose laws, rights and liberties he has subverted, whose properties he has destroyed, whose country he has laid waste and desolate’. This was a British public figure condemning an imperial representative of the Empire on grounds of injustice in 1787. I believe corruption violates the eternal laws of justice and hence these concerns need to be addressed. I wondered if there had been voices so articulate and strong on corruption in postcolonial India from Indians. When in the territory of morality, Gandhi is often the inalienable point of reference. Sadly, he is remembered grudgingly on the 2nd of October, though often cursed because it is a dry day, and occasionally on the 30th of January, the day the politics of hate silenced him. This is what Gandhi had to say in May 1939 when he heard of the pervasive corruption in six Congress ministries formed under 1935 Act in 1937, ‘I would go to the length of giving the whole Congress a decent burial, rather than put up with the corruption that is rampant.’ Gandhi’ disciples however, ignored his concern over corruption in post-Independence India. Again in 1947, Gandhi wrote in the Hindu: ‘It is the duty of all leading men, whatever their persuasion or party, to safeguard the dignity of India. That dignity can’t be saved if misgovernment and corruption flourish. Misgovernment and corruption always go together. I have it from very trustworthy sources that corruption is increasing in our country. Is everyone then going to think only of himself, and not of all of India?’<br />
I shall come back to Gandhi later.<br />
I must confess I was a trifle uneasy with the phrase ‘participatory vigilance’ large on account of the contexts of its usage. Participatory vigilance requires members of civil society to be alert about any suspicious, unlawful activity and to convey such information to the relevant authorities of the state. The strategy to enlist the support of civil society is to make civil society partners in preempting unlawful activity. My unease comes from two sources. Teaching Foucault for a number of years makes me share with the great French thinker the priority of freedom. He has been concerned with how people are classified and individuals are administered and controlled by a panoptic state. The structural model of the state, the panopticon was forwarded by the utilitarian Jeremy Bentham to ensure the moral health of society. The model envisaged each person be isolated in a small room where they can be observed at all times by a single person in the central tower. The building would be lit around the perimeter so that each person would be seen by the central observer while the inmates could neither see the central observer nor other inmates. An example of such architecture is the cellular jail in Andamans where a number of Indian nationalists were imprisoned. Secondly, images of the panoptic state manifested in the Orwellian image of the Big Brother, a haunting image for the coordinated surveillance apparatus of the state, continues to disturb me four decades after I first read Orwell’s dystopia 1984. The protagonist Winston Smith lives in abject terror of the omniscient gaze of Big Brother and his fellow citizens, combining fear and suspicion. The idea of participatory vigilance also contains the idea of mutual suspicion, whistle-blowing and the notion of otherisation. However if the observer in the first case and the Big Brother in the second were also to be observed by those being observed, I would be much happier. I must confess I am also substantially unclear about what the mechanics of the Participatory Vigilance is likely to be. So what is the solution? Would I advocate doing nothing on an issue that we had begun by describing as being impossible to be silent?<br />
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<br />
I went back to Gandhi. Just the manner in which Gandhi had sought to find equivalence between capital and labour in his theory of trusteeship, I wonder if it were possible to transpose that idea in the strategy to resist corruption. By the non-violent method, Gandhi sought to invite the capitalist to regard himself as a trustee for workers for the making, the consolidation and the increase of his capital. If the capitalist contributed through the deployment of capital, labor provided work. Interdependent, they were co-sharers of a process for mutual gain. The status of the worker was thus transformed from that of a slave to being a co-sharer. What if we became co-sharers of the development of India? How much of space would the state give to the people and what would be the mechanics of this process?<br />
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For a start, I recapitulated many of the young voices we gainfully heard on the 22nd when the Department of Income Tax had organized an excellent debate. The tools of vigilance are by and large sufficient to control corruption it was claimed although it needed to be accompanied by a moral overhaul. We ought to be the change we wish to see in the world. <br />
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The process begins with the identification of the causes of corruption. There seem to be some good reasons ought to why corrupt practices have flourished hence the necessity to intervene in these areas and work at a sustained overhaul. In a situation where multiple factors are involved there can be no quick-fix solutions, hence sustained efforts at multiple levels are required. Hence I believe that participatory vigilance merely as an administrative partnership will yield limited results whereas long-term participatory social vigilance is likely to be more effective.<br />
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1. The inadequacy of Education, little knowledge of rights. There is a lack of awareness about the effects of corruption. As a result, corruption is not visualized as an injustice. The fight against corruption must begin with education when students have begun to understand how dignity is demeaned by corruption. This is a critical area of partnership.<br />
2. Absence of social security and resultant overcompensations. With inadequate institutional support to cater to core human needs particularly in terms of food, shelter, healthcare and education, there is always the desire to insure against misfortune. Insurance often goes beyond one’s known sources of income. This needs to be addressed with the sincerity of humane policies and good governance. <br />
3. Family attachments : a) School and Institutional demands: capitation fees and parents wanting to live their ambitions through their children (outside village, town or state further enhances corrupt practices) b) Dowry System. Again requiring governmental intervention with social reform.<br />
4. Consumerism and peer pressure to advance cultural value as opposed to use or exchange values.<br />
5. The inversion of moral values where individual worth is measured in material terms supported by the stunning mediocrity of the media that gives precedence to lifestyle and celebrity fluff. Here the media must understand its responsibility and not lend a halo to the unscrupulous. I was appalled to watch a news bite wondering which one of the inmates of Tihar incarcerated for corruption would be the best brand ambassador for the sale of spices packed by prisoners before Diwali.<br />
6. The sheer weight of population that slows down the justice system. Alternative justice systems at the local level could alleviate the problem. Also our system of governance which penalizes a wrongdoing ought to acknowledge an honest citizen and an honest official. Public acknowledgement motivates the good.<br />
7. Dual consciousness: moralizing publicly, practicing the opposite privately. Not walking the talk and the absence of credible role models. <br />
8. Overcoming resigned cynicism and inaction that lets corruption go unchallenged.<br />
9. Among the educated: there is a perceived gap between truthfulness on the part of the government and expedience. Eg. The Planning Commission in its wisdom told the Supreme Court on the 21st of September resulting in a national outcry that the basic requirement for survival is Rs. 32 in urban areas and Rs. 26 in rural areas. It offered Re 1 for healthcare per day insufficient even to cure a simple headache. The reason is obvious. If the truthful figure, closer to Rs 100 were to be acknowledged, many more people would sink below the poverty line and India’s identity as a developing nation will be scrutinized under a glare of suspicion. So if there are covert practices on the part of the government, why should private individuals not fudge a few figures? There is also the belief that the revenue collected from individuals is squandered on wasteful expenses of the privileged and given the tardy implementation, money meant for development schemes hardly achieve their noble objectives. <br />
10. The tendency to refrain from partnering the youth in national objectives. On the contrary there is immense sense in harnessing the energy, idealism and enthusiasm of the youth for positive transformative action. Many a parent will remember that they gave up smoking being prodded by their children. It is for filial love that forms of corruption burgeon and it is for the same reasons that it can be combated effectively.<br />
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<br />
Hence social vigilance should be a combination of a public sharing of responsibility: one that involves prevention and participatory moral transformation: a trusteeship for a common goal.Professor Shanker Dutthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08034543244340726254noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4738839343073121910.post-31545246859461389482011-08-26T12:05:00.005+05:302011-08-26T13:56:59.951+05:30The Lila of CorruptionTwo eleven will be remembered for the boundless frontiers of corrupt practices, the people’s initiative to battle it, the government’s recalcitrance, quasi-Gandhian fasts, arrests, releases, tricolor waving urban candlelight marches, emotional responses and unending media debates over the territory where the battle needs to be fought. <br />
To be honest, like many educated Indians, I have been perplexed at its multilayered complexity. More newsprint, visuals and words have been dedicated to scams than on other pressing issues. Hence, civil society is concerned. But India is a parliamentary democracy where elected representatives are given the people’s mandate to make laws of governance. To overrule this constitutional provision by popular street resistance is to challenge the constitution itself. The moral basis of such a resistance is also untenable if we believe in our post-colonial democratic structure. This may seem like a Gandhian argument but I do believe that means must justify the end and our discontent in the times of crisis is because we have privileged the material over the moral. The lawmakers as we know, whether we approve or not, have been democratically elected. The leaders of the civil disobedience have not. There is no democratic mechanism by which I may convey my mandate to someone as worthy as Justice Santosh Hegde or Arvind Kejriwal to negotiate with the government on the Jan Lokpal Bill. The convincing arguments about the Lokpal being another centre of non-democratic, authoritarian centre has already occupied much space as is the hypothesis of double oligarchy. But then is the parliament superior to the people? If the elected representatives are deaf in one ear and cannot hear with the other, do we have the right to recall them? The way out is therefore to work through democratic processes that may need a scrutiny and legislation of appropriate election laws and their implementation.<br />
While the lawmakers are elected representatives of the people, we are aware how elections are fought in this country. Without affiliated support, which include resources such as money, party, caste, religion, criminals and occasionally popular sentiment, a candidate’s security deposit is likely to be forfeited, however upright the candidate may be. So the first thing to do is to amend the election laws. The great urban heartburn about dynastic political heritage may be overcome by promulgating a simple election law: no candidate can represent the people in parliament or the state legislative assemblies for more than two terms. Democracy is after all about creating opportunities for greater people’s participation in governance. If that is the requisite for the President of India, or the most powerful person in the world, the American President, it can be for the rest of our elected representatives. The practice of corruption is licensed with the confidence that one’s political fiefdom can be perpetuated. <br />
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Professor Shanker Dutthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08034543244340726254noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4738839343073121910.post-36436971674804189092011-06-04T12:51:00.001+05:302011-06-11T17:50:31.935+05:30Goodbye BraveheartI can't remember when I had met Vandana Datta for the first time. But I reckon it must have been to do with scholastic matters. It was after her eminent father's demise that she courageously took on the editorial and publication responsibility for Research, a biannual research journal in Literature, Culture and Creativity. Young as she was in a profession where grey hair is equated with wisdom, she balanced writings by acknowledged scholars with space allocated for young researchers without compromising the quality of the journal.<br />
<br />
She attended UGC refresher courses in the Department of English, Patna University and impressed resource persons and organizers with her rare commitment, scholastic aptitude and sincerity. It is with the same sincerity that she taught and it is with the same commitment that she concluded her lectures while she had temporary reprieves from the effects of chemotherapy.<br />
<br />
A few days ago, one of her dear colleagues who was at the English department on work, had informed us that Vandana was in hospital and not in the best of health. While we wanted to visit her, we were not too sure whether she would have liked us to see her not at her best. As May turned to June, we received the bad news. Vandana after battling cancer with courage and rare dignity was one with the elements of the universe. <br />
<br />
I have often asked this question in a more prosaic manner than in Lear: why do the gods toy with good souls? In a world in which human beings transcribe their hopes and fears into a spiritual script, it must be comforting to know that Vandana is in the space of a painless destination. When I look up at the sky on a clear night, may be I will designate a special star to her memory. But as of now the catharsis must stem from the grief that we feel. She was a very good human- being and the world has been greatly impoverished by her absence.<br />
Goodbye Braveheart.Professor Shanker Dutthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08034543244340726254noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4738839343073121910.post-20812155225162267882010-11-05T15:38:00.002+05:302016-05-07T11:51:48.035+05:30Did anyone buy a book this Dhanteras?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The car manufacturers have smiles that will last a while. So too with the major manufacturers of household utility and recreational goods: refrigerators, washing machines, microwave ovens, OTGs, dishwashers, plasma and 3D television sets, DVD players, music systems, play-stations, laptops, desktops. The list goes on.<br />
Two thousand new cars, leave alone two -wheelers have joined the congestion on the roads and will now compete for space with pedestrians, cattle, hawkers, vendors and garbage. The carbon dioxide emissions will increase and the city’s temperature will rise. Jostling for public space will lead to jangled nerves, outraged emotions and heightened tempers.<br />
Window shopping on Dhanteras late afternoon, I peeped into some bookshops on Ashok Rajpath and Fraser Road to check if buyers included books among the many items they sought to buy. The bookshops wore deserted looks, and I was not surprised. I asked a young student who mouthed a Good Afternoon if he knew the significance of the occasion. The doubtful looks made it amply clear that I ought to swallow my next question. In Bihar, the celebration of Diwali begins two days before the actual day of celebration as Dhanteras. It is celebrated in honour of Dhanvantari, the physician of the gods. He is believed to have risen with a pot of Amrit during the samudra manthan. Connected with this legend, people buy new utensils which are placed in the place of worship. This practice has now grown in variety and has been extended to include the entire consumerist range coveted by the middle class. The pious fast throughout the day and after sunset the fast is broken with sweets, puris and other traditional delicacies. <br />
As the evening drew out, the traffic became a nightmare. Patna was shopping: competitively, feverishly, and furiously. I decided to finish the chores of customary greetings, caught up with friends on the net and then I curled up on the lounge sofa and started to read a book: the short stories of Catherine Lim, the highly acclaimed writer from Singapore. And for the next three hours, I was at peace. It was a kind of peace that a superior engagement with the intangible can provide. Between the Amrit and the Pot as Dhanvantari’s metaphors, I had chosen Amrit.</div>
Professor Shanker Dutthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08034543244340726254noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4738839343073121910.post-78198330044596569012010-10-10T12:25:00.006+05:302010-10-11T07:47:42.661+05:30Magic Realism: how a teacher can make all the difference.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje7mgMbv4fu3p27YmbTkUFCE1HXZMC8W8tmuNtUha1nPbslVFsdfPHMyKJ4iuVyis6OP2TXMDjn2YBotytzfy7AwKoRBpkO_OimOAc0TF6B3_R4VD2gJ_hAtAp0APs99cjc4YEcZUyuaRM/s1600/DSCN0404.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje7mgMbv4fu3p27YmbTkUFCE1HXZMC8W8tmuNtUha1nPbslVFsdfPHMyKJ4iuVyis6OP2TXMDjn2YBotytzfy7AwKoRBpkO_OimOAc0TF6B3_R4VD2gJ_hAtAp0APs99cjc4YEcZUyuaRM/s320/DSCN0404.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg2_Q_T4jgwSvduXHf3mWrrvimbDWoUS9TGPDBNe8WCni5IuOXxhwWCxnVUIhezeBgf0ldsAEYYxii5oGV7WvyrCzbNhr6eh6W6ilGo5eFonzzf6sQpZebk71PW45rI02CjGjitEycK4z3/s1600/DSCN0410.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg2_Q_T4jgwSvduXHf3mWrrvimbDWoUS9TGPDBNe8WCni5IuOXxhwWCxnVUIhezeBgf0ldsAEYYxii5oGV7WvyrCzbNhr6eh6W6ilGo5eFonzzf6sQpZebk71PW45rI02CjGjitEycK4z3/s320/DSCN0410.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>If you were to drive down Jawaharlal Nehru Road, past Raja Bazaar, take a right turn a little ahead of Jagdeo Path, then follow the twists and turns of the street , you will finally arrive at the site of a silent social and educational revolution. <br />
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Two identical-looking buildings house the Soshit Samadan Kendra, a fully free English medium residential school for Musahar children. This community is possibly the state’s most oppressed and disprivileged community of rat-eaters who have been living in conditions of abysmal and degrading poverty. Most work as bonded labourers and live at the edge of villages defined by demeaning social cartography.<br />
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Soshit Seva Sangh is the brainchild of its founder and Chairman, Mr. J.K. Sinha, who after a long and distinguished career in the Indian Police service, returned to Bihar to make a difference to this uneven state. SSS in partnership with Samadhan, a Delhi based NGO established Shoshit Samadhan Kendra that provides students education, boarding, lodging, clothes and healthcare to the two hundred and twenty students. Aside of the school curriculum, there are other activities that define the transformative miracle of this project. <br />
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An economist by training, Mrs. Geetha Prasad volunteered to teach communication skills to a group of students drawn from the sixth to the ninth grade and this is what she has been pursuing with meticulous determination for twenty months. Both Mr. J.K. Sinha and Mrs. Geetha Prasad had invited me to visit the school over some months. Mrs. Prasad wished that I could evaluate the work that her students had done and the progress they had made. On the 6th of October, a day that turned out to be unusually busy for me, I decided to put my conscience to rest and visit the school. Mrs. Prasad very graciously picked me up from home and explained the kind of language exercises that she had devised for the children while we drove to school. On our arrival, I was taken to a room with many computers, an LCD projector, a white laminated board and paste-boards that displayed charts with phonemic symbols. Here I was greeted with choric cheer ‘good-afternoon Sir’. I greeted them in turn and told them by way of an introduction that I taught at the university and that I had come to learn what they had learnt. Once the ice was broken, I was amazed at the confidence with which they spoke during a communications exercise, the kind of vocabulary they used, the logical sequence of thoughts they were able to articulate and their desire to learn.<br />
Many of the university students I know would come a distant second to their skills and we must bear in mind that twenty months ago they knew no English. <br />
<br />
We in India, most ironically, have been gifted with an accessory of colonialism: the English language. For Macaulay, it was an instrument of subordinate recruitment to aid colonial governance. Today it is an instrument of empowerment; of liberation; of global access to knowledge and technology. Sadly our politicians in the name of linguistic chauvinism have equated English with colonialism and sought its ouster because of the fatuous belief that it had compromised national pride. Aijaz Ahmad most appropriately questions the propriety of some of the other things that came along with colonial rule such as the Indian Railways. Should we throw that out as well? I knew that the children of SSK were beneficiaries of a very special gift. However it ought not to silence the cultural traditions of their unique experience. And so I told the children that the next time I came, I would listen to all their folk tales. Time seemed to race by and the session of fun learning came to an end. I shook hands with each of the students and left the room to the choric resonance of ‘thank you Sir’.<br />
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As we sat in the library leafing through books and flip-charts, I said to Mrs. Geetha Prasad, ‘you have worked magic’.Professor Shanker Dutthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08034543244340726254noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4738839343073121910.post-960098162452778932010-10-02T15:08:00.003+05:302010-10-03T18:12:10.183+05:30Sense and SensibilityI had always thought that there are some questions whose answers are likely to be: hey, hey hey. You know questions such as 'Did Adam have a navel?' or 'Was Lord Ram born under the central dome of what was once the Babri Masjid?' Ever since Nietzsche's famous proclamation 'there are no facts only interpretations' it has become increasingly more difficult to come to a single, unalloyed, unambiguous point of view. Law is after all a verbal discipline. <br />
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When the country, paralyzed with bated breath, on the afternoon of the 30th of September, switched channels to catch the first reports of the Ayodhya title suit judgment, I went to play a round of golf. By getting the news at the dot of 4p.m. I could not have altered the course of India's history. And nobody invited me to the television studios for my opinion. I am told that all those who's opinions truly matter in India are located in metros. When I returned home and gathered the different strands that constituted the larger picture, my response was one of disbelief. The setting was Shakespearean with the foregrounding of the numeral three. And out of the cauldron emerged a pronouncement that endorsed a three-way division of the land under dispute. I know little about law although many among my friends and family have attained positions of eminence in that field. But the one thing that I do know is that a decision in a title suit would mean deciding to whom a piece of land under dispute belongs by way of legitimate title, not the parties that may be given the land by a conciliatory verdict. I had always thought that the practice of law depended on the material facts and evidence that is conclusively put forth within the ambit of public legal procedures rather than private spiritual matters. But this judgment seems to have given a new dimension to jurisprudence. <br />
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When the Supreme Court dismissed the petition for deferment of the verdict, it established the superiority of constitutional democracy over contracted populism. Sadly, Thursday's decision partially undid those gains. To live in a modern, resurgent India does not mean to resurrect the ghosts from the past but to bury them and move on. To those that are religious, please build as many places of worship on the places you own directly, but please stay out of the public spaces. These are meant for the vibrant, energetic youth of our country: our hope for the future. History, Baudrillard says is often the source of humankind's problems rather than its site. Let us use history to understand our present and transform our future. And if we must be spiritual, then remember the lines of Harivansh Rai Bacchan and do the needful. That order could also have been passed.Professor Shanker Dutthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08034543244340726254noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4738839343073121910.post-21068131776216524742010-09-30T13:47:00.003+05:302010-09-30T22:05:23.955+05:30The Other Side of MidnightI must confess, many of us, at one moment or another,have been soothsayers of apocalypse. The CWG has generated humour, cynicism and prophesies of doom. Yes there have been genuine debates as to whether a developing country can afford to be lavish in its expenses on a sporting extravaganza when other priorities seem more significant and pressing. As a consequence, it has also be argued, whether, if at all the games were to be held in India, it ought to be held in the capital given the perceived step-motherly treatment toward the rest of the country. The CWG has also been theoretically scrutinized by intellectuals and academics in terms of it being a perpetuation of imperialism. But the fact that these concerns have been voiced is because all of us cherish one core value: we love India.<br />
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It is time that we shed the history of ineptitude and corruption and prove to ourselves that in spite of the many discouragements and adverse representations, we are among the best in the comity of nations. Let us acknowledge and respect much good that has been done and let us restore pride in ourselves. Let us encourage our sports-persons. We have a wonderful national anthem, let's sing it out loud. The school I went to many moons ago had for its motto 'For God and Country'. Lets celebrate India.Professor Shanker Dutthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08034543244340726254noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4738839343073121910.post-80420088087060155612010-09-22T22:01:00.005+05:302010-09-25T07:58:53.687+05:30City of DjinnsIn 1993, William Dalrymple published a book I greatly treasure: The City of Djinns. It was at Feroz Shah Kotla that this Cambridge narrative historian met his first Sufi, the weasel eyed Pir Sadr-ud-Din. The mystic told the author that when the world was new and humans were created out of clay by Allah, he also manufactured another race from fire. These were the djinns, ordinarily invisible but capable of being seen after a substantial period of ascetic abstinence and prayers. Delhi is a city of many secrets, a city resplendent with the brilliance of untold chronicles but a city cursed to repeated catastrophes by the deeds of imperious vanity. From the stretched history of Indraprastha, through the medieval exuberance of magnificence and treachery, the rise and fall of the good, the bad and the ugly both white and dark skinned, Delhi remains an enigma beyond the understanding of historians and scholars, poets and journalists. It may only be revealed by the djinns. After all it is the city of djinns.<br />
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The newspapers this morning carried the headlines of a overhead walk-way collapse, embarrassingly just twelve days before the start of the Commonwealth Games. Earlier there have been other stories, big and small that has made non-thick-skinned India run to opticians for sun glasses. The djinns need to be appeased. Every day for the next twelve days, I propose all those that call themselves lovers of our dear country, find poky corners in the city of Delhi: old monuments, under flyovers, the garbage dumps in non-metropolitan Delhi, slums with dogs but without millionaires and light earthen lamps while whispering a small prayer for India. In an unobtrusive Sufi sort of way. Quietly, in hushed baritones. After all the common citizens of the country can't make televised speeches on Rajpath.Professor Shanker Dutthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08034543244340726254noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4738839343073121910.post-48469229258771158952010-09-20T15:00:00.009+05:302010-09-22T15:08:30.993+05:30Confessions of a challenged Economics studentKeywords:<br />
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Confession= acknowledgment or admission of insufficiency or fault<br />
Challenged= impaired<br />
economics= a discipline involving the study of the administration of material <br />
resources<br />
student= a person who studies.<br />
Maun= willful silence of an ascetic <br />
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Opening apology: I am not a lexicographer, nor an economist.<br />
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When you open your mouth, your foot may be the first in it. Such sayings are normally credited to the ancient Chinese sage called Confucius or to some of his modern day disciples but I can assure you, and I am being very honest, Confucius did not say this. The truth is, I just said it although some American may patent it even before I can say, may be Zandu Balm.(Since it is much in the news as a source of pain rather than being whatever it is supposed to be) <br />
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Monday is the cruellest day, breeding doubts in thinking minds. And so it happened when I tried to mix literature and development into a heady cocktail of uncontrollable exhilaration. Some of my students got into a discussion on development statistics. Figures flew thick and fast. India is growing at around 8%, someone said. There was an all-round feeling of pride despite the apprehensions of droughts and floods and the Commonwealth Games. Then one quiet, bespectacled, last-bench, latecomer spoilt it all by asking this question. If India is growing at around 8%, how is it that Bihar, which has little or no industries, has generated little or no employment, where education is a sigh of despair, where agricultural output has been on the decline, growing at 11+ percent? I was caught out of my crease. I gulped, wiped by eyebrows like a batsman beaten by a wicket-keeper's agility, waiting for the third umpire's verdict to be displayed on the giant LCD screen.<br />
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I decided to be forthright. Look here, I said, I am not a professor of Economics. I shall verify this for you. So I made my way downstairs to the man-who-knows-it- all. Every theory, every piece of data, multiple interpretations of diverse statistics, the entire mechanics of a la carte economics. Tailor-made for the listener. Luckily he spotted me as I tried to catch his eye at the perimeter of his circle of students. I told him of my predicament. Without blinking an eyelid, he said Bihar is growing at 3.7 percent. How do you explain the difference between the official figures and the one that you are giving me? He smiled at my innocence. He said there are more things on heaven and earth Horatio that are known of in your philosophy. I felt slighted. Short of insulting me, he was pointing out the sin of my willingness to believe what the state was representing to it people. That is why, the Knowing One said education is the last of the priorities in a popular democracy. The more popular the democracy, the less popular is education. Education makes you think. Education makes you ask questions. You interrogate and analyse the rhetoric. And when you do that you are not popular any more. You can pick up a zerox of Tagore's Ekla Cholo Re, learn it by heart, sing it if you can and be a lonely Munnabhai minus the celebrity status of a celluloid cut-out.<br />
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I went upstairs and declared it was my moment of maun. Good mauning.Professor Shanker Dutthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08034543244340726254noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4738839343073121910.post-17110949189455715642010-09-14T22:18:00.002+05:302010-09-15T11:30:27.192+05:30Just another brick in the wall.The cultural constituency to which I belong has ensured that I am a polite person. My home, my school, my university and the birds that I flock with have vaccinated me against the kind of conduct that is often seen in places of expected public decorum such as legislative assemblies and offices of governance. You know the kind: a flower-pot tossed here, a mike-head hurled there and someone whacked here and there with the long list of unprintable etcetras. Therefore I shall be polite and courteous instead of screaming my lungs out like a hysterical banshee at the entrance of a wicked mother-in-law's kitchen.<br />
For the last couple of days at an academic conference, attended among others, by the UGC chairman, Professor Suskhdeo Thorat a number of nasty things have been said about the state of higher education in Bihar. The newspapers have been scandalously reporting the comatose state of higher education using pejorative vocabulary contesting the roseate official reports of migration reversal and the large scale manufacture of genius in our institutions. I am truly reminded of the theme of ingratitude so poignantly articulated in King Lear: How much less sharp is a serpent's tooth than a thankless child. This, after the media had been feasted with advertisements. When power is perceived to be on the ebb, the returns are like the Wall Street crash. O the unregenerate peddlers, manufacturers of consent and mechanics of thought control, this was the unkindest cut of all.<br />
My pigeon tells me that academics have been raising fingers at the kind of appointments to superior academic posts. To give the authorities the benefit of ten years of doubt, they may not know the academics of eminence. After all evaluation has the tendency to be subjective. One man's meat is another man's poison unless of course you are a practicing vegetarian and have nothing to do with meat. Now lets be sensible,how can we tell that such and such professor is good? If the argument is provided that s/he is punctual, regular, conscientious, blah, blah and blah plus has written books and has published widely, it may be argued that the person has limited talents. S/he is unsociable, has not networked with politicians, incapable of fund-raising and therefore unsuitable for appointment to a public office of contemporary significance. In today's postmodern world, the slippery indeterminacy of language leaves all arguments open-ended. And so too with higher education. Sukhdeo Thorat will leave droppings that will have been washed clean with the next shower of rain. Many of you may say, its not raining much these days. This thing hope is such a bait/ it covers any hook. Between Volpone and Pink Floyd its just another brick in the wall.Professor Shanker Dutthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08034543244340726254noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4738839343073121910.post-44993012143622605062010-09-11T09:24:00.013+05:302010-09-11T16:59:58.973+05:30Colonial Criminality and lessons from HistoryHasn't Kipling's East is east and West is west/ And ne'er the twain shall meet/ been problematised by egalitarian postcolonial dabblers? Well, just as we were beginning to be complacent about the negotiablity between colonial Britain and colonised India, Madhushree Mukherjee's book Churchill's Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War Two indicts Churchill as one of history's most inhuman colonial practitioners in the denial of food in times of distress. This physicist turned scientific journalist turned researcher on the Bengal famine of 1943 wanted to understand the human aspect of the famine and her archival investigation led to what may be termed as one of history's most significant establishment of culpability by an acclaimed political leader.<br />
The book investigates Churchill's rejection of Viceroy Linlithgow's SOS to send foodgrain to India to avert a disaster. Falsely claiming shortage of ships, he prevented abundant food being accessed from Australia. The truth was that there were numerous ships available with not enough cargo to carry. This criminal callousness resulted in the loss of three million lives which is half the number of Jews and Gypsies sent to the torture chambers of Auschwitz, Belsen and Dachau during the Holocaust. There has been a surfeit of that narrative played out in the books of history because it was about the vanquished, narrated triumphantly by victors. Will the Civilised West acknowledge its own Auschwitz in Bengal at about the same time in human history?<br />
More importantly, have we learnt the lessons from history? Today grains are rotting in the godowns and people continue to starve in many parts of the country. Is post-colonial India a repetitive representation of its colonial past? We would not like to think so but wonder if there is hope at the end of experience.Professor Shanker Dutthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08034543244340726254noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4738839343073121910.post-10905878628167601632010-09-09T05:08:00.010+05:302010-09-09T12:56:45.717+05:30ThanksgivingAll creatures are allowed time off to hibernate. I lay claims to that right as well. The 5th of September ended it with the overwhelming expressions of affection from the many students I have had the privilege to teach and learn from over the years. It began a couple of days earlier with two young ladies interviewing my wife and me for a newspaper column and concluded on the 6th with oversees students trying to match their time with ours and some of my very dear students coming home for a small celebration.<br />Teachers' Day began at 6 in the morning with the mobile phone replacing the proverbial rooster. Those who felt that I ought not to be disturbed sent text messages. And thankfully most were not the time-saving abbreviated ones commonly seen on mobile screens today. I am a bit old fashioned with language usage and prefer words to spell rather than sound. And for the rest of the day greetings poured in from all corners of the globe. <br />On the evening of the 5th, Lions Club organised a felicitation ceremony and I was privileged to be honoured. It was a greater honour to have been introduced by Hon'ble Justice Samarendra Pratap Singh, Judge, Patna High Court, a responsibility for which he had graciously volunteered. I went to school with him and we have worn the blue and white, gold and blue as children. He is a person of impeccable integrity and despite the exalted position that he occupies, he is a wonderfully amiable and an unassuming person. Busy as he is, he still finds time to read Shakespeare and draw upon the wisdom and linguistic virtuosity of the Stratford bard. My sincere gratitude to him for his wonderful gesture that evening. It was also an honour to share the dais with the eminent academic and former Vice-Chancellor Professor L.N. Ram, for whom I have had the highest regard and Professor R.R. Sahay, one of the finest vice-chancellors that the universities of Bihar never had. The programme was held at the Shatabdi Hall of A.N College, an institution that has grown to be one of the finest in contemporary Bihar. I had the privilege of meeting Dr. Haridwar Singh, the dynamic Principal, Professors Ashok Ghosh, Lallal Singh and Kamesh, each of whom have contributed their might to excellence in their respective fields.<br />And finally to the many students, too numerous to name whose greetings have served as the elixir of life, to do my best for another year, till the 5th of September 2011: thank you all. You make life truly worthwhile.Professor Shanker Dutthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08034543244340726254noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4738839343073121910.post-68396831893923428342010-08-08T17:42:00.007+05:302010-08-08T21:35:01.435+05:30Whispers and HowlsAt a function, marked by quiet dignity, a collection of essays entitled Novel and Society was released in the seminar hall of the Department of History, Patna University. It is dedicated to one of the renowned teachers of Patna University and a polymath cultural figure, Dr. Shaileshwar Sati Prasad who headed the Department of English earlier this decade. Several men and women of eminence who spoke on this occasion, referred to the programme as significant because the commemorative volume marked the respect shown to teachers by their students at a time when various agencies have conspired to heap humiliation and indignities upon them in the public space. <br />The event has been covered by the media and there is not much that one can add. But many interesting things were happening at the margins of the programme. An odd comment by students and young scholars, a smirk, a knowing smile; you know those sorts of things. And then there was this thing shared among three fairly intelligent young people who were sipping soft drinks. They were speculating on how Mathematics could be taught in the years to come. And one of them inspirationally drew upon the lyrics of an old film song with some not-so-subtle changes:<br />Thethar ke do aage thethar<br />Thethar ke do picche thethar<br />Aage thethar, picche thethar<br />Bolo kitne thethar?<br />The change in identity of the subject from ornithological innocence to the conscious damning indifference as understood by the vernacular thethar was a critique of educational governance in this state. If such voices are heard from the margins and the voices get louder, it is a wake-up call. This state has been a crucible of dissent. From Buddha to Gandhi and JP, resistance has been articulated very radically to reject the order that felt comfortable in its own arrogance. Today's whispers may become tomorrow's howls.Professor Shanker Dutthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08034543244340726254noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4738839343073121910.post-20502884159572779662010-08-08T13:15:00.004+05:302010-08-13T09:47:44.950+05:30Speaking West: Ayan Hirsi AliThe most challenging philosophical problem for those who have been brought up on staples of liberal humanism is that with language being an eternal network of signifiers, most debates remain open-ended. The rational certainties of the European enlightenment cannot be as passionately defended by its devotees as they could be not so long ago. From Gary Zukav to Derrida and from J.M. Mohanty to academics in the classrooms across India and elsewhere, negotiated flexibility without foundational absolutes is the flavor of polemics. Hence, when Javed Anand views Ayaan Hirsi Ali ( Indian Express: June 5, 2010 : 25) in the stereotypical role of a contemporary Don Quixote in his review of Nomad, I cannot help agreeing with the veracity of his perspective despite her exemplary courage, particularly as a woman, in surviving a civil war, genital mutilation, brutal violence, escape from a forced marriage, cross-cultural dislocation and asylum and writing about her experiences without rancor.<br />Her Manichean opposition to the faith she was born into stems largely from apportioning the world into several mutually nonnegotiable compartments in the manner of Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilisations. It emerges from the Enlightenment’s rational project of putting people into bottles as laboratory specimens with non-transferable labels. This is precisely what Amartya Sen dismantles in Identity and Violence. It is based upon the notion that human beings can be categorized according to singular forms of affiliation based on an overarching system of partitioning and is a corollary to global confrontation. In leading everyday lives as ordinary people, we belong to a number of social formations without contradiction. A solitarist approach is a fundamental threat to understanding our identity in a shared cultural environment. The most glaring illustration of the inadequacy of such a perspective is located in the history of the subcontinent. Even if Ayaan Hirsi Ali is using the homogenizing principle of strategic essentialism (GS) her appeal to the white western superiority is for white men to save brown women from brown men. (Gayatri Spivak). Her resistance extends beyond the faith of the radical Islamists through selective readings of the Holy Book to term Islam a violent way of life. Islam is not only to be located within the spectrum of her experience, undeniably unacceptable in a civilized world, but in many other locations where it is a source of liberation.After all didn't the Prophet say 'the ink of the scholar is more valuable than the blood of the martyr?' While I admire her courage I do have a problem with her perspective.Professor Shanker Dutthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08034543244340726254noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4738839343073121910.post-14595525039928517612010-07-24T13:45:00.016+05:302010-07-24T22:01:01.018+05:30Modest ProposalsThe neighbour's maid's eight year old tomboy daughter who owns a prophetic squirrel told me that she had heard from a man who knows all things that the world as we know it will come to an end in 2012. It sounded complicated as the sentence itself. I tried to verify the prophecy from the rest of the informed neighbourhood. The ironing woman next to the gate, the odds and ends seller across the road, the kindly house help who walks a blind dog every morning, the litti maker and his bootlegging wife: each one said the same thing. The world as we know it will come to an end in 2012. Each one said that Kimli's daughter Simli had heard it from the man who knows all things and that her prophetic squirrel whose chirps she can interpret accurately had also chirped the same thing. In some ways reminiscent of Isabel Allende's fiction. As a sign of the coming khatam shud, Mars would come ominously close to the earth in August this year appearing like a second moon as a dress rehearsal for 2012. Trusting the squirrel more than the man who knows all things, I decided to be smart about my life. I called up all my friends and shared this secret about the future of the world.<br />At this very existential conclave, it was decided that if it was indeed true that the world would come to an end in 2012, we could all recast our lives and have a good time until the end came. We have twenty-four months for Epicurean ecstasy.To live it up. With the sensex touching 18000, we can sell off all our shares, stop paying the insurance premium, skip paying bank loans, better still apply for a huge bank loan and book a one way ticket around the world, stopping at Kerala as the last destination. The logic of course was that if it is God's own country, even if the end comes, we would still be there relishing appams with Prawn Moily and Currimeen Polychathu. With God in his own country.<br /><br />And for letting us know of the future early we could buy train tickets for our neighbourhood Samaritans to travel to Kerala before the apocalypse. After all if destiny had other plans, our neighbourhood soothsayers and collaborators would inform us in advance and we could once again take remedial action.<br /><br />If you believe all that I have had to say, you could take appropriate measures and redefine your lives. And yes, when I shared the news with a colleague in the academia, the Book who Speaks told me to insert this in my piece. Philanthropy guides a blessed destiny to heaven. Raise funds for those who have been deprived, denied and dispossessed. For the Mahadalits of society. At least for two years, for that's how long we have, remember. After all they are called the nation builders every 5th of September. Religiously. At public functions, in institutions, in Government Houses and in Rashtrapati Bhavan. Complete with marigolds and mementos. They are the University teachers and they have not been paid for three months. And the Book who Speaks says the drought will last ten months more. And some people love droughts.<br /><br />Their condition has been manufactured by the dregs at the bottom who have become the scum at the top. Isn't that what a civil rights activist said and what Suketu Mehta quoted in Maximum City? The morphing of dregs to scums?Professor Shanker Dutthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08034543244340726254noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4738839343073121910.post-89675871904753585002010-07-20T10:14:00.000+05:302010-07-21T06:49:44.837+05:30Chronicle of a Death Foretold.It required the media's chronicle of death to make some cosmetic adjustments to the rogue traffic of Patna outside St. Xavier's. One precious life has been lost and no lessons have been learnt. It was not merely a news item. It asked questions to which the state and its citizens have no answers. After all the child was not someone who came to school in an official car with a beacon light as a public marker of importance, escorted by khaki-clad bodyguards: a governmental undertaking with the honest tax-payer's money. She was riding a pink bicycle enabled by the Chief Minister's initiative on the education of the girl child.<br /><br />To call Patna's traffic indisciplined would be an embarrassing understatement. It is wild. With the upwardly mobile social structure jubilating in new found wealth and no sense of social responsibility, many parents give their teenage brats motorcycles to emulate the devilry in the advertisements of those mean machines. And they live up to the peer-pressured demands of adolescent heroism to zed.<br /><br />If that is not bad enough, the rogue bus drivers of the city, road-hogs who are infinitely more efficient as killers than the DTC, are always there to add to the tally of road mortality.<br /><br />This morning's paper said that we shall have a new traffic regime in place in the months to come. It is being worked out in Singapore!!! I blinked once, twice and a third time. Why does the traffic arrangement of Patna have to be worked out in Singapore or Johannesburg or Rio de Janerio? Why not in Patna? Next we will claim that the governance of the state needs to be outsourced to some off-shores agency. Then why did we drive out the colonial British after the great freedom struggle that is touted in all the post-independence history books?<br /><br />This morning outside St. Xavier's, there were traffic separators and two potbellied khaki clad red-capped constables by the local refreshment stall. They are the markers of a response to a tragedy that could have been avoided. Avoided very simply. By putting speed breakers. As indeed there should be speed breakers outside all educational institutions. This does not require international consultancy. Just common sense. But it may not be just as simple as applying common sense. St. Xavier's happens to be on the traffic route of very important people. People of national importance. People far more important than Reema Gupta. When they travel, the state cannot afford two bumps on their backsides. Cheers Gabriel Garcia Marquez. This was a Chronicle of a Death Foretold.Professor Shanker Dutthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08034543244340726254noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4738839343073121910.post-58006933114905430022010-07-11T09:30:00.000+05:302010-07-12T18:30:49.755+05:30Kal Kya Hoga Kisko Pata?Since the earliest of times, human beings have invested quite a bit of time and money on getting to know the future. From the Pythian priestesses at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi on the slopes of Mt. Parnassus, through the warnings of Caesar's soothsayer to the brilliant Paul, fortune-telling has provided its share of joys and sorrows to the world. Except for Paul, the results, if they could be computed would probably be 50:50. But Paul is an exception, the latest icon of anthropocentric deconstruction. He is after all an octopus and his specialisation is football.<br /><br />But spare a thought for Mithu the prophetic parrot that belongs to Purple Trivedi. When he was born Trivedi was given the name Popul. During his growing years, unemployment drove him to this unusual profession under the tutelage of his grand-uncle who was an innovator of rare forms of income. For many years now, Popul can be found either at the roadside in the vicinity of the civil court through most of the year or near the High Court to cater to the litigant clientele at both the courts of justice, as well as to scholastic futures at Patna Women's College. <br /><br />Several years ago when Mithu his capricious parrot pulled out a slip of paper to predict excellent B.A results for a student of this premier college, Popul received Rs 100/- and in front of fifteen of her classmates, he was anointed 'Purple'- the royal colour that now defines this fine professional. Purple, I suspect, earns most of his money from the litigants but derives a great deal of aesthetic pleasure from the opposite location.<br /><br />Once, many moons gone by, I tried to talk Purple into getting educated but he politely spurned my offer saying that he now earned more than what most vocational courses would enable him make. Instead he wondered if I had any questions to ask about the future and said that he would be happy to offer answers at a discount. Being a hard-boiled rational skeptic, I thought it would be a sheer waste of time. But on each of these occasions I would give him some small change for Mithu's bird-feed. <br /><br />This happened until the FIFA World Cup in South Africa, when I actually paid Purple to get predictions from Mithu. I did so because I wanted to prove that the prophetic Indian parrot could be at least as good as a German octopus. Sadly Mithu got most of the answers wrong. Why is it that Paul the Octopus in Germany can get it all right and Mithu in Patna gets them mostly wrong? The injustice was plainly, well ..unjust.<br /><br />Purple, I asked, what's going on? Purple thought for a while and said that Mithu for some reason had been a little out of sorts. Perhaps, he was a little unhappy. I felt bad and gave Purple some more money for Mithu's bird-feed.<br /><br />When I went back to Purple and Mithu the next day, I asked two questions. One, are the university teachers actually going to get the new pay scales? Mithu came out of its barred cage, picked out a fraying slip and Purple read out NAHI. I asked the next question: will the ruling coalition return to power after the autumn elections in Bihar? Mithu walked across to the same fraying slip and pulled it out and once again, Purple read out NAHI. As I was returning home, I was wondering if the law of probabilities would finally catch up with Mithu and Paul. If it were so, I'd head for an Indian version of Canterbury, wait for the events to unfold and perhaps write an unpredictable tale.Professor Shanker Dutthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08034543244340726254noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4738839343073121910.post-36384145669763513442010-07-10T18:27:00.000+05:302010-07-14T09:08:48.073+05:30Wisdom LiteratureBill Gates recently gave a speech at a High School about 11 things they did not and will not learn in school. He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teachings created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept was a recipe for failure in the real world. <br /><br />Rule 1 : Life is not fair - get used to it! <br /><br />Rule 2 : The world doesn't care about your <br />self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself. <br /><br />Rule 3 : You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both. <br /><br />Rule 4 : If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss <br /><br />Rule 5 : Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity. <br /><br />Rule 6 : If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault , so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them. <br /><br />Rule 7 : Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room. <br /><br />Rule 8 : Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life. <br /><br />Rule 9 : Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time. <br /><br />Rule 10 : Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs. <br /><br />Rule 11 : Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one. Or under one. <br /><br /> <br /> <br />If you don't agree stick your head in the sand and take a deep breath! Or anywhere else for that matter.<br />True of the U.S of A., true of elsewhere in the world. Hence true of India. Its not for them, its for us. <br /><br /> <br /><br />If you can read this .. thank a teacher! Is any one listening? or reading?<br /><br />P.S. Thank you Anita.Professor Shanker Dutthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08034543244340726254noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4738839343073121910.post-90856868030865013232010-06-29T11:09:00.001+05:302010-06-29T11:52:49.306+05:30A Species nearing ExtinctionThe old world definition of a gentleman is obsolete. And those that can still lay legitimate claims to squeezing into its lexical band are a quickly diminishing species nearing extinction. To fit into the definition one needs to be Rudyard Kipling's imagined poetic prototype in If with the title skeptical of the possibility of achievement. The characteristics would include being fair, honest, diligent, sensitive, caring, well-mannered, generous and conducting oneself with dignity and equanimity even in adversity. Its a tall ask. Very tall. Almost like asking the subaltern hooch shop vendor to make a Bloody Mary. Pardon my patriarchal slippage. The old world definition for ladies is equally obsolete and its definition includes the same personal and social values.<br />One such person who inhabits the definition is an academic called Professor Ehteshamuddin, who,if this morning's HT report is to be believed, has expressed deep anguish and exasperation at the Kafkaesque situation prevailing in the universities and wishes to say goodbye to his chair as acting Vice-Chancellor of Tilka Manjhi Bhagalpur University. His anxiety to rid himself of the hubris of absurdity is because 'for a self-respecting man, continuing in the post means making compromises'. This brings us to a few more traits of a gentleman: self-respect, being principled to the point that one should not be willing to make well-chosen compromises for the sake of unworthy privilege. If he does indeed leave there will be one less gentleman among academic administrators in Bihar. The loss won't be his. It will be of the state, its university and the academic community.Professor Shanker Dutthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08034543244340726254noreply@blogger.com2