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Romanticizing 'Aam Aadmi' - Misplaced Democratic Ideals

"The Republic" is one of the most well written documents I have ever come across in my life. Arguably one of the most powerful, popular and widely taught of Plato’s writings, it goes into the depth of some obtuse subjects and concepts, which at the point in civilization were extraordinarily progressive, which stand even today. I came across one of the most brilliant and thoughtful insights I gathered up from the book was that in which Socrates posed a question of meaning, some of which are still relevant in this era. What fascinated me was the essence underlined by Socrates in one the books.

I found the following in one of the summaries given on the book.

“He said that the unexamined life is not worth living. He taught that men claimed to come to wisdom through poetry and argument and music, when it was plain that they did not even know what they were doing. And he also taught that politicians claimed to serve justice and to sit in judgment on their fellow citizens when at the same time those same politicians and “leaders” of the state could not even define justice and might, in fact, be said to be culpable (guilty) of certain injustices perpetrated against their fellow citizens. How, Socrates asked, can any man claim to serve justice when that same man cannot even define justice?”

The essence, being - Every person should carefully determine what he thinks he knows. It has been quite some time that the ‘Aam Aadmi Party’ has taken up most of the space in the news cycle, which I find quite annoying. Time and again (almost on a daily basis about a month ago to weekly basis nowadays) people come up to me and discuss about the AAP, Arvind Kejriwal, his political saga in Delhi and the future of politics and Swaraaj. The emotional turbulence which AAP has brought about in the country for the political scene is something quite I find very unusual, taking into consideration the fact that people today are less perturbed about things, quite oft dismissed as trivial, let alone big things like politics and governance. The wave has caught people’s attention, and captured their imaginations and expectations quite impressively. To what happened in the Assembly polls in Delhi was a revolution, and my heartiest congratulations of the AAP for swinging the bat and throwing bigwigs off their seats and coming to majority ‘like a boss’. My concern is the fundamentals of what is being thrown about, the concept upon which the boss Kejriwal and the AAP is constructing the whole ecosystem upon. The concept of ‘Aam Aadmi’.

If you search the keywords “arvind kejriwal aam aadmi quotes” on google, you will find scores of articles, excerpts from his speeches, the website of the person in context and the party which he founded and represents. All of them have been centered around this word – the ‘Aam Aadmi’. Taking up the Socratic way of dialogue, I posed a question, who is the ‘Aam Aadmi’? The reply to which was not very difficult to get. In one of the speeches, Kejriwal said “Who is an Aam Aadmi? AAP believes that the middle class is part of the Aam Aadmi, anyone who is tired of this corrupt system is Aam Aadmi.” The glorification of the word, bringing in the most significant and ever rising middle class of India, also including people from all strata who are victims and/or frustrated with the corrupt inefficient way of functioning of the government is what brought about the wave of enlightenment, surely did pave the way to the party coming to power and Kejriwal becoming the chief minister. What I gather from another speech which the boss gave

“The politicians of this country challenged the Aam Aadmi to fight elections and come into the legislatures and frame laws. Those leaders forgot that the Aam Aadmi tills the land, netas don’t. Aam Aadmi goes to the moon, netas don’t. Left with no option, Aam Aadmi decided that we will fight elections.”

is that the AAP fought the elections and won, and it was the ‘Aam Aadmi’ that will fight the elections, which in Delhi came power.

I find a huge logical gap in the whole concept upon which the circus is going on. The concept of ‘Aam Aadmi’.

Take it this way. Why Democracy? Why do we vote? Is it necessary to vote? What do we do when we vote? Is our vote important? What happens when we vote? Should we vote? The questions keep piling up as we go about the logical sequence of Democracy. The whole concept of Democracy, crudely putting it through follows the famous like “Of the people, By the people and For the people”. The best part comes when we put the question of why Democracy. Democracy is by far the most popular form of governance, something of a modern virtue we cannot live without, forms a part of our lives everyday, and by far one of the most popular form of ‘decision making’. The majority decides what decision suits best for a particular problem/question for a particular context and environment. In governance, the concept of Democracy has seen and set the rise of huge nations, great civilizations coming into order and peace, people fighting and giving up their lives for, war and equity. If we go down to the roots of how democracy came into being, we find a very strong fundamental framework that puts this form of governance and its effectiveness in the limelight. Not going into the long and much interesting philosophical debate of the whole subject of Democracy, I want to highlight the part of “people”.

People form the most fundamental basis of Democracy. In the beginning, the people settled at the foot of the mountains, and began agriculture. As the settlements grew, they brought with them into the larger society family customs particular to themselves (origin of society – patriarchal). And every man surely likes his own laws best, and the laws of others not so well. Thus we stumble upon the beginnings of legislation. There was a need of a people who would come together, with arbiters, review the laws, and approve the way society is to be functional and bound. Over a period of time, our civilizations have evolved, from Aristocracy to Oligarchy to Tyranny to ‘The Divine Right of Kings’ to Democracy (not in order of appearance in history). The process of collective decision making had to be done, and by far became more acceptable as it brought about equity and fulfilled the desired ambition of equality and justice. Democracy ensured that collective decision making process was carried out. The concept worked perfectly with people gathered in small sizes. Fundamentally, when the size grow’s bigger, and also with the complexity of the issue, the collective decision making process becomes more difficult. Also came the part of knowledge. In legislation of laws in a society, every person did not have knowledge of everything. We can see that people had specific professions, skills and jobs. They might contribute to legislating the part that concerned their domain of knowledge, for the rest, they did not have the capacity to do so. All these factors taken into consideration, people came up with the idea of having representatives, whom they would elect to take decisions on legislations on their behalf. The system worked.

The point I want to make is this. Why romanticize on the ‘Aam Aadmi’? We are not the ‘Aam Aadmi’. I find the word to be obtuse, and at times very critically derogatory too. India has 1.2 billion citizens, and the romanticized ‘Aam Aadmi’ forms a majority of it, I being one of them so to speak. In my opinion, we are not ‘Aam’ in any way. We go to the elections every 5 years, electing representatives to the legislative, in totality pushing forward the world’s largest democracy forming a sixth of the world’s population. If this is ‘Aam’, self depreciation (as much as I love it, especially in humour) has found a new low. I donot seem to find any particular need to keep such a low esteem for ourselves. We elect people, people who represent us at various levels of government, constitute the legislation and contribute to the world’s largest written constitution, none of which is a ‘Aam’ feat. The reason we, the so called ‘Aam Aadmi’ elect people is because we donot know have the complete knowledge about everything. It was never to be that way I suppose. Instead, we elect leaders who know what is to be done, who sit with experts of different fields, gathering information and intelligence on different crucial and critical fields (power, finance, rural development etc etc) and debate on the possible solutions, picking out the best of those solutions and implementing it. We trust these elected representatives with this task because we ourselves cannot do it, and donot have the capacity to, not because we donot want to. Also because we have our own jobs, our professions and other duties. If these elected representatives donot do their jobs properly, it is a failure, our own failure. Nothing more, nothing less. Since power gets the best of people, things go bonkers, as has been the case in our country for years. The chaos is extraordinary.

I donot have the solution, neither do I have all the answers. Things have been this way for decades, and for now nothing much has changed. I donot think the ‘Aam Aadmi Party’ is the answer. Definitely not us being called as ‘Aam Aadmi’ is. To those who romanticize and orchestrate the swinging public sentiments on it, there is something we should pick up from our past. It is we who are responsible, and it is we who choose. Take pride in yourself. The spirit of nationalism is too much to ask for. For those who run the AAP, think about the people who need interventions the most. The ‘Aam Aadmi’ will take care of himself/herself. Should you be sitting for a dharna in the heart of the city seeking action against the five police officers who refused to comply with the law minister of your cabinet because they did not have warrants to carry out raid (please read Immoral Trafficking (Prevention) Act 1956 for details to carry out raids in such situations, where there are provisions for carrying out a raid without warrants, but in the specified context none of them apply) or should you be considering some of the concerns of taking up a stand for improving the pay of these policemen, which many would agree to are overworked and grossly underpaid. I find this dialogue very appealing “The government should be afraid of the people, and not the other way around”. If the people rise, there shall be revolution. Definitely. To bring an order to the existing chaos is difficult. I am not much of an optimist. Not everything is perfect, certainly not what we determine about what we think we know.

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Rahul Gandhi's Interview with Arnab Goswami - Twitter Sentiment Analysis

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Rahul Gandhi's Interview with Arnab - Twitter Sentiment Analysis

As soon as I was informed about plans of watching the interview of Rahul Gandhi with Arnab Goswami on Times Now, I thought it would be the best time to test the sentiment level of people on twitter. So, thats what I did.

A bit of history of how this exactly came about :

It was in the month of April last year that I finally finished up developing a generic Sentiment Analysis algorithm for Twitter. For me, it was a huge milestone. Taking the legacy forward, my best mate-brother-genius Gautam Singh improved the algorithm and took it to newer heights. It now has an improved sentence level sentiment classifier, and a word level graphical representation (AFINN-111. The word level sentiment analysis is much more improved, a few tweaks were made).

To give a small idea about the algorithm I developed, please read the following :

http://pragmaprojects.tumblr.com/post/64139816400/twitter-sentiment-analysis

http://pragmaprojects.tumblr.com/post/64140951538/twitter-sentiment-analysis-real-time-implementation

http://pragmaprojects.tumblr.com/post/64141167970/twitter-sentiment-analysis-real-time   I would like to introduce a brief on Sentiment Analysis to give the context. If you donot want to get into the technicalities, skip the paragraph given below.   "Sentiment Analysis identifies the orientation of opinion in a piece of text. Sentiment analysis or opinion mining refers to the application of natural language processing, computational linguistics, and text analytics to identify and extract subjective information in source materials Sentiment analysis aims to determine the attitude of a speaker or a writer with respect to some topic or the overall contextual polarity of a document. The attitude may be his or her judgment or evaluation, affective state (that is to say, the emotional state of the author when writing), or the intended emotional communication (that is to say, the emotional effect the author wishes to have on the reader).A basic task in sentiment analysis is classifying the polarity of a given text at the document, sentence, or feature/aspect level — whether the expressed opinion in a document, a sentence or an entity feature/aspect is positive, negative, or neutral.

The results pan out to be something like this.   We took a time window of exactly two hours, from 2055 hours to 2255 hours. The sentiment analysis was done on both sentence level and word level. The output of graph is specifically for the word level analysis.

The analysis was done is real time.

Total number of tweets collected : 7590

According to the sentence level sentiment analysis : Total number of tweets positive : 3956 Total number of tweets negative : 3634

The word level graphs come out to be something like this :

The results were excellent.

This is just one small attempt to map the sentiment of people on twitter on real time developments happening in some part of the world, something which I decided to test on the improved algorithm. I am looking forward to applying this to many more diverse situations that come up.

[pragmac-blog]

Exams !! Financial Management and Organization Behaviour to begin with. One hell of a week.

[pragmac-blog]

The Sabbatical

I deliberated upon the title of this long procrastinated post, and the word "Sabbatical" did seem very apt to me. I do like the course I am in. I realized the impact this course had on me, my thought process and behaviour. After the end of the first trimester exam, the next trimester followed without any gap. I was quite messed up. I had so many things on my mind I did not no what to do. Associated with development studies knowingly or unknowingly all these years, it dawned upon me that I had a blend of ideologies, and though I lacked formal experience, I compensated quite some part of it through my varied interactions with people I met in all these years from across the country. I was going nowhere, and worst of all I was stuck on a routine. I needed to re-energize, pick myself up and get clarity in my thoughts, but there was no way I was able to do it. Suddenly, the opportunity knocked on my door, and I managed to grab it. That first step was more than enough, and then there was no looking back.

I was in Mumbai from October 21 to October 24, attending iPolicy, a workshop by the Center For Civil Society, New Delhi. The workshop was on public policy and the “liberal” framework of policy and thought. I had an experience of a lifetime. In 4 days, I bonded with complete strangers, most of them undergrads from St Xaviers and DU, and learnt things, both about me and the course which I definitely would not have in any other way. I had intense discussions (almost close to fights) and disagreements which provided me with the modern context with which things are understood and looked upon. I did surveys, the unofficial ones being the most fun part of it (Along with Parnasi, I managed to roam about the canteen of Xaviers, picking up people left and right, asking them about their views on ‘being a liberal’). It was more of a social learning for me rather than academic. I am not disappointed at all. I managed to learn things which I have been crossing paths with, throughout my life and never stopped to come in terms with.

The trip also included some surprises. I met Bhumika Ladhani at Nariman Point, to my delight I got the news of her new job at KPMG. She, officially being a CA now for a cople of months was humble as ever. We never did much interacted in school, but managed to do so, after years. I felt nice, the feeling of meeting people after a long time, people who are doing really well in life. Another surpise came to me in the form of an unplanned visit to Fountain Sizzlers. The food was awesome, as usual. Doesnot sound special, but for me it was something that never happened to me.For the first time in my life, I had a company in Mumbai. Someone of my age group roaming around the streets, chatting up and discussing. Tanay and Namrata were new to Mumbai, and made an excellent company. That evening was fun.

With a heavy heart, I left Mumbai on the night of October 24 itself. Whilst in the train, I received an email that informed me about the cancellation of the lectures on the next day. This provided me with the opportunity of going to IIM-Ahmedabad to attend Connexion, the annual fest of students of PGP-Executive. Attending the panel discussions was interesting. Missing for days of lectures due to the workshop, I thought of this as an extended vacation. I was back home, at Anand within three days. The diwali break got extended, and we decided to make a trip to Udaipur, via road. I was in udaipur till November 5. I had my share of royalty, the best of it being the dinner at Ambrai Restaurant on Diwali. Situated on the lake shore of Pichola, it provides a breathtaking view of the whole old city at night. Diwali added more vividness to the city of lights. Sitting down to have dinner, the view comprised of the whole old city settled alongside the lake Pichola, the City Palace and the Lake Palace. The food was awesome, I decided to try out a Rajasthani chicken delicacy called ‘Murg Dunger’. The taste was out of the world.

The Edelweiss bakery over there has now been put up on the list of some of the most exquisite foodie-places one has to pit-stop at while in a city. The sandwiches were cheap and filling, the taste was awesome. Nothing special as such, but somehow fell in love with it. Coming back to Udaipur, I was managing chores before leaving home for the hostel, which I finally did on Sunday.

The lectures did continue, beginning with the rude shock of completing some important assignments for Nabarun Sir, followed by the intense and epic 3 day long Fundamentals of Socio-Economic Development presentation in front of our director. It was one hell of an experience. The result had yet not come out. It was bloody frustrating. The director appreciated my presentation, for the first time in my life I had made it short, crisp and precise. Nothing more, nothing less. He did say I did not write my essay properly, and that because my topic was the most difficult of all, I got the opportunity to change it. The weekend that followed (November 16,17) was all about revising the paper and writing it down, again. I was pretty much distracted by my escapades, going down to MICA on both these days, Sunday being the Indian Ocean concert. Once again I am in front of my favourite Indian band, listening and headbanging to some of their best tracks. It was a weekend cherish, I had enjoying the time I had for learning things. Learning, not necessarily restricted to that which we get from the books, but also that which we see, hear, observe, empathize and have a conflict over.

Since the time I had decided to take a break, I had thought of a time frame, a contraint to which I would adhere to, lest I put my toe across the line. One month of my sabbatical was about to come to an end. I met with “The Woman”, on the last day. Mango Shake, Egg sandwiches, Coffee and tweaks made that evening a memorable one. The whole thing had completed a circle, and came to down the place where it all began.

This month long journey took me to places, flirting with radical ideas and broadening my horizons, redefining boundaries and discovering my own self, yet again. I realized that I am not a liberal, and I am very much in disagreement with the whole school of such thinking.  I am more inclined towards the left, it does seem to me now I am more a Socialist than what I thought I was. I was enlightened about reality, and the illusion of it. I came in terms with my shortcomings, some of which I acknowledged and accepted. I decided to become more tolerant, and am working towards it. Loneliness has its own merits, and accepting it was something not quite easy for me. I gained a bit of confidence about my own self, the push which this confidence gave was, and is quite visible. I am balancing work and play in much better terms, and talking about sensitive topics, I tend to be more clear and precise in arguments and statements. I have moved forward. There are things I am not proud of, things I left behind never to look back. It is difficult. The one thing that does make you feel more comfortable is that come what may, atleast you are not confused. The rest, well, you can manage.

With the completion of my Mid-Term exams, I am now trying to channelize my energy properly. Have picked up some work. The progress of which though now is slow, I feel atleast I am doing something. Something with quality. Hoping for the best and praying for the grace of Lord Almighty.

“Trust unto God and he shall direct your path.”

[pragmac-blog]

6 inch heels and double bass. Sure kickarse stuff.

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Dennis Ritchie Sir, your contribution will be eternal. RIP.

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When you teach your son, you teach your son's son. - The Talmud

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Trimester II - Week 1

The whole week was dry, boring and dull. The hostel started filling up steadily, students pouring in on monday evening, though I had reached on time for the placement committee meeting monday morning, the campus was empty. Apart from a lecture in Financial Management, Operations Research and Development Perspective, there was nothing much in the scheduled timetable. The workshop on Socially Responsible Business and Young Business Leaders Programme became the highlight of the week, taking up most of the space in the calender from wednesday till friday. I started reading a couple of things, and pathetically failed in completing any. The class on Development Perspective was the only good thing that happened in terms of academics, Nabarun Sengupta sir doing some heavy arse kicking in the two session thrusday morning, trying to instill anger for the development issues for us to delibrate and think upon with passion, understanding the sector and the current obstacles and scenarios. The cultural "Garba Night" on the 17th was great fun, dancing on Bhangra and the rest of the additives for more than an hour, my classmates in ecstasy, enjoying every moment of it.

I started making plans and completing some due work on friday, for I will be spending most of the next week in Mumbai for the workshop. It pains me to miss Nabarun Sir's classes, four in total. It is this, lectures on development perspectives that I will be looking forward with eager anticipation throughout this trimester, and missing four such brilliant sessions is just too hard to bear.

In this week, two major changes came about in my life, which might possibly affect me for sometime. One, I joined facebook again, after a month and half of abstinence, I am back on it. I now seriously miss the days I was cut off from the world, reasons not withstanding, it was bliss. Sadly, I had to come in terms with the world and its ways, and after awful lot of discussion about the argument of quitting facebook, I took this step. The reasons and arguments deserve another post, probably I shall do it, maybe later. This change was quite abrupt. Well, somethings have to be, and some become that way, unknowingly.

The second major event that brought about change in my life happened about two hours back. I was sitting in my room, updating my calender for the schedule of next week, I realized that I need to concentrate on the field I am in, Development Studies. I am a part of the team that will be going to Connexion 2013, the knowledge summit that is a unique industry-academia annual event at IIM-A, the theme this year being India INCubate. I will be coming back from Mumbai early morning on the 25th, two sessions of Development Perspectives scheduled from 10 in the morning, clashing with the first two lectures of the Connexion at IIM-A. This overlapping of two events in the same time duration took me back to the brief interaction I had with Nabarun sir, after whose class on thursday I explained to him about my predicament of missing four lectures. He reassured me and said that things can be done, and he will take necessary efforts to compensate my loss. He asked me whether I will be coming on the 25th on which his next class is scheduled, to which I positively affirmed. This conversation made me realize that I need to work upon what is in hand, not on what is interesting. I am sure what will be covered in the first 4 hours at IIM-A will be prime, but it definitely doesnot call for my absence in the lecture I need to attend at college, for attending this class will be useful for me in creating the context for the development work I have to indulge in, the rest can wait. I have now decided to go to Connexion from the afternoon session, if they allow me, well and good. If not, back home, working. I received an email from Shalabh sir, on Dr. M. V. d. Bogaert SJ - ICSD – Paper Contest – 2014 to be held during the International Conference on Sustainable Development from 13th – 14thFebruary, 2014 at XIDAS(Department of Social Entrepreneurship and CSR, Xaviers Institute Of Management, Jabalpur). I have decided to write a paper on one of the topics they specified, the date of submission of the abstract being November 1,2013. If my paper doesnot get selected, no problem. I am equipped with enough resources by the institute to be able to send this to development journals, and also might just add up to my credit for writing skills when applying for the summer internship next year. God has his mighty ways of showing things, realization however late is good. I hope to stick to the plan, and see where this takes me to.

I am two weeks into the MOOC on Mobile Apps in the Development Sector by IIT-Kanpur, and I am yet to start. I finished downloading the lecture videos on Game Theory(Coursera) couple of hours back, thinking I would finish off with it. I am yet to start with it, and the backlog in what I have to and need to study by Monday is increasing. It seems I will have to do some pushing and pulling in schedules I had planned out. The damage should be minimum by God's grace. I am looking forward to a great week of learning in Mumbai, starting from Monday.

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Application for Jagriti Yatra 2013

What seemed to be a never ending week, the new age linguistic-figurative terminology of "TGIF" felt apt, necessary and quite relatable. I just finished off with the application for Jagriti Yatra 2013, which was pending at 91% complete for the past two weeks. With the start of the new trimester, I felt it was time to get back on track, start poking around, fingers in all the pies in the sector and give things the desired push. I was informed about the Jagriti Yatra by my course coordinator, who quoted a couple of people, including two of my seniors who went last year. On hearing their experiences, I was quite intrigued into the effort taken and the concept of JY. I decided to browse through wonderland, and found this yatra quite interesting. The more I read about it, my desire to be a part of it increased in multitude. I finally came in terms to my desire and dreams, and I decided to get registered. It was a long and thoughtful journey, asking me about myself, my role model, my entrepreneurship initiatives, personal challenges, etc. Finally after a lot of thoughtful deliberations I managed to complete my application today. It was an experience in itself. I am quite happy with what I have written, and I am sincerely hopeful I get selected to be a part of this magnificent journey across India.

P.S. I filled out the form in full-scholarship mode.

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International Workshop and Young Business Leaders Programme

I am attending a workshop on Entrepreneurship in ‘Socially Responsible Business for Development in Asia and the Pacific Region and Young Business Leaders Programme' from 16-18 October 2013.

It has been organized by Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDI), ESCAP Business Advisory Council (EBAC) and United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN-ESCAP). The inaugral has been scheduled on 16th October(today) at 9.30 a.m. The inauguration of the ‘Young Business Leaders Programme’ is on 17th October at 2 p.m.I am looking forward for 3 days of excellent learning experience.

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I am an engineer and I love philosophy.Yes !!

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All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind. - Karl Marx

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God's Grace - iPolicy Workshop selection

Battling with two epicly boring theory papers in a single day spanning three subjects, I was greeted with a pleasant surprise after the end of my first exam, at about 12:30 in the the afternoon. I received an email from Center For Civil Society, confirming my application and selecting me for their iPolicy for Young Leaders workshop to be held at St. Xaviers College, Mumbai from October 21 to October 24. This is a big thing for me, and I am thankful to God for this wonderful opportunity which has come by, and I shall try making the best out of it.

Ever since I joined the Development Studies course here at EDI, I was trying to find some avenue and/or organization that is into research in this field. Creating the internship profiles, I came across this organization and searched for it on the internet. After reading the website, I had decided this is going to be it. Now CSSIndia is ranked 55 in the world think tank's list. This doesnot come easy, and with such reputation does the difficulty to approach and reach into fall drastically. While browsing through its website, I found this link to the iPolicy workshop. I found the workshop quite interesting and the venue and timings were quite suitable. I decided to register for this. It was not an easy task, answering all the questions, specially those to which I never gave any serious thought, ever in life. It was an experience in itself. I hope to complete all the procedures as soon as possible and confirm my registration. I am very excited and I am eagerly looking forwards to it.

Trust unto God and he shall direct your path.

[pragmac-blog]

moyoist Why did you not show me this picture of yours earlier ? Looking lovely :) :D :D XD XD

It’s 100% true