Inconsistencies and Contradictions

             This post is prompted by the Facebook past (about the incidence/anecdote about a conversation between C.D. Deshmukh and Lokamanya Tilak) of Niranjan Rajadhyaksha. I did not write this long response there since I am often terrified to express my opinions about inflammable issues on social media. His Facebookpost started with the question – ‘Did the soldiers who fought in the army of British India or the administrators who served in the colonial bureaucracy in effect betray their country?’ Those two words at the end, ‘in effect’ are very important. The answer hinges on them. The answer to the question is – YES. They did in effect betray their country if they had a notion of ‘my country’ in their conscience and if we think that British rule was actively harming the Indian then.     But we cannot make more direct charge of betrayal because they did not intend, plan, or choose to betray. The same way they never chose to fight...

Case fatality rate or more casually death rate is a prism through which many of us are evaluating the Covid-19 situation. The evaluation resides on a principle where how alarmed we should be is proportional to death rate. Since Omicron seems to have lower death rate than previous waves, we are choosing to be relaxed about it. The principle is essentially seen in personal terms. If death rate is low, chance of I or my dear ones will perish is low. I wonder whether this association between collective measure and individual assessment is correct. What it means for me that death rate is 2%? 2% death rate means out of 100 Covid cases, 2 will die. It does not tell anything about which two. Seen from personal lenses, one can be either among 2 who are succumbing or 98 who will be surviving. Individually, there are only two possibilities that I either die or survive after contacting the virus and becoming ill. One will try to argue that but these possibilities are not equally likely. That i...

The farm laws have been repealed. Government's decision to repeal hints that accusations of agitators about farm laws are intended to end the MSP regime and hurt the big farmers might have been true. And there is no surprise. The farm laws were about easing the fiscal burden government faced due to procurement based on MSP. If government is not planning to ditch this route, then why it was not ready to make a law for using it? - The repeal seems to vindicate the doubt. Government failed to communicate the potential trajectory of changes the laws could have generated. One reason why government would have chosen not to reveal it is because it might have revealed some unpleasant possibilities, like some big businesses benefiting or section of farmers losing out and large section of farmers having no gain – no loss from it. But there is another reason why government chose to not communicate. It did not because it is extremely paternalistic towards Indians. The approach of Modi govern...

 I read today about arrest of Maoist/Naxalite (I will use the terms interchangeably) Prashant Bose. Few days back, Milind Teltumbade died in encounter with police in Gadchiroli.  I admire Naxalites. It takes courage to take up on mighty state, especially when your life on such path is not going to be a cozy one. Whether we agree with path of Naxalites or not, whether we subscribe to ideology on left or right, we must ask - why would one participate in the armed struggle against the national state as mighty as India? The lifelong participation in armed struggle cannot be without a driving force. Influence in youth can drive one towards such path, but then disillusion can set in quickly.  It is easy to criticize or even condemn 'violence'. The kind of life I am living and I am likely to live, I am unlikely to experience a systematic violence due to religion, class, or caste/tribe. I am also unlikely to get exploited or uprooted due to these factors. But is the life of a tri...

 I was listening to this podcast  about 'Model Tenancy Act'. The guests are an academic and a bureaucrat with career in housing policy. The premise is there is something wrong with rental market in India and Model tenancy act is there to fix it, at least part of it. Few thoughts crossed my mind while listening to this podcast. I am just listing them down.  Mumbai had a fairly successful model of rental housing during pre-independence period. Multi-story building, called 'chawl' with several small or medium sized tenements which shared toilet (and water-tap till individual taps were provided) facilities where each tenement was a rental unit. Though there is no evidence proving the causal link, the accepted wisdom is, rent control act, brought during the WWII and later continued in post-independence period killed this rental market.  It is this mass rental housing model with assured tenancy till one keeps on paying the rent and upward rental revisions are well-spaced o...

 4th round of seroprevalence survey by ICMR in June-July 2021 has revealed that nearly 2/3rd of Indian population has antibodies. The presence of antibodies is assumed to indicate prior exposure (though not necessarily manifested with disease symptoms) to Coronavirus. Exposure to virus can be seen as indicative of low probability of Covid-19, at least for the short-term. Very high seropositivity, more than 70%, suggests low probability of occurrence of severe Covid-19 outbreak.  Table 1 After feeling somewhat relived over national estimate, if we look at state-level results, there is a variation of seropositivity levels. (Table 1) Seropositivity is highest in Madhya Pradesh (79%) and least in Kerala (44.4%). It has been noted with hint of surprise that Kerala and Maharashtra do not have very high seropositivity despite bagging the attention for their high Covid-19 numbers for sustained duration.  We must understand that one should read these state level numbers with some ...

 Stan Swamy, 84 years old and an accused in Bhima-Koregaon Violence and alleged and accused Maoist sympathizer died yesterday. He died while being detained without facing trial and with multiple rejections of a bail.  Prime facie, the manner of death is tragic, irrespective of whether accusations are proven or not. I do not presume Swamy's innocence, but I do not think he should be declared 'guilty' since courts have not declared him so.  His pictures on internet, where we see frail old man participating in various meetings and agitations, invoke a certain admiration. It is admirable to fight with the mighty state. But fact that he was in fight with state and admiration invoked by visual clues does not make him innocent. He might have been kind and loving to those around him, but that does not mean he was against violence of any sort. Being political activists is being selective about certain sort of violence. There is no one who is 'human right activist'. I know th...