Signalling

The fear of ostracism is said to be one of the strongest instincts that human beings have. Stage fright is also linked to this - the (involuntary) feeling is that being embarrassed and ridiculed will lead to a lowering of social standing, which is a path towards ostracism. It's why humans generally toe the line, prefer to just do as everyone around us is doing and not stick out. "The nail that sticks out gets hammered." And as a corollary to the fear of ostracism, we like to show that we are part of the group, in-line with everyone else. 

I was writing a "Statement of Purpose" for a job I am applying to and I was making sure to use some keywords that I thought would boost my chances. "Cloud-resolving model". "Radiative-convective equilibrium". 

What the hell are these, you may think? These are some technical terms from the field of weather and climate modelling. And you thinking "what the hell is this?" is exactly the effect I want to produce. Because the important thing isn't the effect I produce on the layman, it is about the effect I want to produce on a bunch of researchers working in exactly this field. They are my audience. What I want is for them to read these keywords and immediately think "Ah, he's one of us!" Speaking the right lingo, using the right words, these are powerful things that we do either consciously or unconsciously because we want to belong. We want to signal that hey, we're not that different. We're kith and kin. 

And I think very often this is what happens in academia, where we have a propensity to use so much jargon - the jargon is pointed at other people who also use that exact same jargon and who will understand it. Using jargon is a way of claiming your place at the inner table. The more obscure and technical, the smaller the target audience, but more closely knit as well. 

The natural reaction of people (including me) is to conclude that the more obscure the jargon, the harder the text is to read, the more intellectual it is. Generally if someone says something we have no clue about with total confidence, we believe it, particularly if the person saying it is someone we trust or the institution from which it is being said is a trusted institution. Like say a reputed academic journal. The words themselves give the hint. "Reputed". "Respected". "Esteemed". "Prestigious". Each of these are words which basically says that a community of people agree that this journal is of high quality. And if your work is published in the journal, everyone will automatically assume it's work of good caliber - this is about pure social standing. 

Well, it's more than social standing. It might be unconsciously so, but if your work is published in an "esteemed" journal, then this increases your prospects of better jobs, better pay, awards, recognition, etc. So there is an intimate link between social standing, "recognition" and actual material benefits. And when you have a social group in which you are well considered, well there is the additional benefit that, say, they will defend you from slander or report any gossip about you back to you. This is of course slightly different from the main aim of group dynamics in the wild, where you want to be in a group or social circle to be safe from prey. The principle is the same though. 

This was my stream of thoughts when I suddenly got reminded of something I had read, seemingly unrelated. Recently a Justice of the Supreme Court DY Chandrachud made a speech, which can be found here.

https://livelaw.in/top-stories/justice-dy-chandrachud-caste-privilege-caste-discrimination-dr-ambedkar-187082

Or a summary here - https://theprint.in/judiciary/castelessness-is-a-privilege-only-upper-caste-can-afford-says-justice-d-y-chandrachud/777777/

And his words infuriated me! Why so, you might ask? At first glance, there is nothing particularly inaccurate or revolutionary in the basic claim. If there is one system in which a group of people have an advantage or a privilege, then we transition to a new system where this privilege doesn't exist anymore, most certainly the group who had privileges in the first system have a head-start over the others. It's like developed nations exploiting resources of the Global south for centuries and at the end when the colonies proved too expensive to maintain, they return back to their shores and say "We're all free and equal nations now." The relationship can never be equal due to the head-start enjoyed by the colonisers. 

The same case could be made say for a set of people who previously weren't allowed into schools on the basis of their caste. Opening the doors of schools to everyone and saying "now we're all equal in terms of education" is a fallacy. Whether such a system existed, how pervasive was the system, who were the beneficiaries, who was left out etc. are questions for sociologists and historians to study and answer. 

Justice Chandrachud takes the argument to the next level and speaks of "Critical Theories" and whether the question of merit itself exists. I personally believe that merit itself exists and not every single difference can be explained away by conditioning and environment. But here too, Chandrachud doesn't say something particularly egregious, merely something debatable. 

So why my annoyance? It's because of who said it. This gentleman is the son of the longest serving Chief Justice of India. He is also in-line to be the Chief Justice of India soon. He is the definition of privilege - he attended posh private schools, then St. Stephens in Delhi followed by Harvard Law School. 

Alright, so being particularly well-connected and educated at elite institutions isn't a crime. What about the institution he is a part of? Research suggests 33% of supreme court justices and a whopping 50% of high court judges are relatives of "members of higher judiciary". [1] Writing in 2018, Sanya Dhingra showed that no Dalit judge has been elevated to the Supreme court for 8 years and there were exactly 0 Dalit chief justices in 24 High Courts as well. [2]

Worse, the Supreme Court works with the "Collegium system", instituted by the (surprise surprise) Supreme Court itself, wherein the Chief Justice of India and 4 senior judges of the Supreme Court simply nominate who should be elevated from High Courts to the Supreme Court, who should be chosen as Chief Justice of high courts, etc. So basically no one can question nor overrule their selection, a system which was mandated by a judgement passed by the supreme court itself! The greatest legal protection available. 

The judiciary is a huge roadblock to justice rather than being an avenue. Case pendency is off the charts. Cases languish in lower courts for decades, innocent people languish in custody for decades for this reason. Cases are simply "allocated" without any order or justification. And when they're put up for hearing depends often on how much media attention the case has got. And when there exists a society with some being more privileged and some being less privileged, most certainly the lesser privileged are disproportionately affected by these inefficiencies.

When I think of Justice Chandrachud spouting gyaan, I think of him in the context of this system. On the occasion of Constitution Day recently, when the Chief Justice had a platform to speak, he asked for protection for judges from "social media attacks". Recently the Supreme Court expressed annoyance that the CBI had not done anything to arrest two people who were accused of "making objectionable comments on judges of judges of the Andhra Pradesh high court over certain verdicts". [3] [4]

So here is the judiciary, unresponsive, creaking under case pendency which will perhaps soon outnumber our population itself. A court is the last place an average citizen of the country wants to step into. And on the other side is a totally unaccountable set of people choosing their own relatives for posts in the top judiciary, concerned not about setting up thousands of additional courts and court benches across the country and making speedy justice accessible, but more concerned about people slandering them on social media and even having people extradited from abroad for the same. And then they make great speeches about the freedom of expression and how merit is meaningless. 

The reason it infuriated me is that it's all signalling. The insiders of a system who hold such views would try to reform that system first if they truly believed what they said. Or at least help to bring about speedy justice and improve the state of the lower courts. The problem is that Chandrachud and his ilk consider their social circle to be the academic community of elite US universities, not average Indian citizens. Hence the judgements running into hundreds of pages written in Shakespearean English which needs a Latin dictionary to be interpreted. Today it is fashionable and "in" to speak of disowning your privilege in those circles, so Chandrachud wants to increase his social standing there. Today critical theories are fashionable, so he will blindly transpose it to a different context and different society. 

Today, in the same milieu that Chandrachud wants his remarks to be broadcast if the fashion was not to speak of disowning privilege but instead it was fashionable to take pride in your family and lineage, you can bet he would be speaking of how his father was a Chief Justice, how he is the cousin of some Maharaja or his great-great-grandfather was the trusted courtier in the late Mughal court or something similar. Anything for a benign smile and validation from elite Anglo-Saxons. If he could cut the signalling and operate as if his audience is the Indian people for whom he can actually do a lot from his position of immense power and influence, that would be great. And yes, "speaking up" isn't doing something, it's just satisfying yourself that you're doing something while doing nothing, again for validation. It is commendable when it's the least you can do, not when you hold the keys to change in your hand. Privilege is being able to hold sermons on privilege while using your privilege to make sure your own privilege endures.

[1] - https://www.hindustantimes.com/india/50-hc-judges-related-to-senior-judicial-members-report/story-S8RP2Ir9cEuIN4NewFnvML.html

[2] - https://theprint.in/opinion/dalit-history-month/no-dalit-judge-country-top-court-passed-order-sc-st-act/46484/

[3] - https://indianexpress.com/article/india/cji-lawyers-assist-judges-protect-institution-motivated-targeted-attacks-7642613/

[4] - https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/trendingtopics/for-judge-slur-cbi-seeks-deportation-of-2-from-us/ar-AAQBmN9

Buses on Fire

I am always fearful and reluctant to write about a place or a set of people, mainly because in general, generalisations are never completely true. For example, it is said that dogs are loyal. Surely, there exist disloyal or downright traitorous dogs.

Once in the aftermath of a natural disaster in a certain country, someone I know had written that he was sure the people of that country would bounce back and rebuild their lives since he had visited the country and he had never met such a resilient people. Of course, in the spirit of saying kind words at a difficult time you do not scoff at such things being said, but surely he couldn't have found this one supposed national character of resilience after one visit where he interacted mainly with people in the service industry! In the face of adversity, resilience is the only choice. You can take any success story of any country and call their people resilient.

At this point though, another question arises - without gross generalisations and the elevation of very specific observations to general principles, whether correctly or not, would there exist a blogosphere? Would op-eds and opinion columns exist? Would anyone ever say anything broad and intelligent? Specificity and accuracy are the enemies of profundity. If you go your whole life only making sure you're standing on firm ground, you might never take a step in any direction.

There's an even better argument to justify spouting grand principles solely on the basis of one's own observations with a limited perspective - everyone else does it. Every other person seems to have a substack or a medium profile. And some archaic folks with not much intelligent to say also have good old blogspot.com pages that they rarely update! And how can a person who has returned to India after a while not spout some gyaan!

With this preamble, let me ramble a bit about my experiences. 

I spent the best part of the last 3 years in Europe, most of it in Rome, Italy. To be precise (and not profound), it was a total of 4.5 months in Germany, 2 months in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, around 3 months visiting India and the rest (excluding vacations) in Rome. A friend from the UK described Rome to be a part of the 1.5th world - not quite first world but not close to third world. 

Although I understand where this remark comes from, for me it was amazing to see how much greater the quality of life can be in a developed country. And this comes not from the society or people, but from the state and institutions. Education and healthcare are essentially free. I had to pay 150 euros annually to have complete state-covered health-care. (Which I hardly used, maybe a total of 3 visits to the doctor. So hey, I actually put money into the system!) And two other aspects I found wonderful - security and clean air. 

By security, firstly I mean physical security. You will hear it said again and again that Rome is a city of thieves and pick-pockets. I am someone who by nature is always acutely aware of my pockets. I have never had a single wallet or phone stolen or lost (touch wood). And the pick-pockets in Rome are those who do it on the sly, not violent muggers. You can safely walk in the dead of the night with no fear.

And while I read about how winter smog at Rome is terrible, I found the air to be perfectly breathable compared to Bengaluru. Maybe the air is even cleaner in other cities of Italy, but I never had any complaints. 

A natural question would be to wonder why I would be happy paying 150 Euros (around 13,000 rupees) a year when if I hadn't paid it, I would have spent say 20 Euros a year on my visits to the doctors? The answer again is security. 

You feel safe, say while playing football or crossing a street, that if something bad happens here, I have some safety net. Some institution to turn to. And I realise that living in India (I've been back here for around 10 days now), this is what is seriously lacking. Security. 

And I don't mean in the sense of the risk of violent crime. Bengaluru is easily one of the safest places to be in the country. There's other types of insecurity. I'm essentially one wrong step or one health-condition away from not only bankrupting myself, but from destroying a good part of whatever wealth my family has created over many generations. 

But that's only one of the bigger issues - healthcare being expensive is a fact of life in most parts of the world, much like education. My parents worked really hard to send me to a good school. Good options for education shouldn't be so rare and so expensive relative to the average income of a place. 

Then there's the little issues of security - I never know when a policeman will catch me while riding my scooter for a random check. Firstly, this is illegal - a policeman can pull you to the side only if he sees a violation of some rule. And secondly, you know that you will be made to pay a bribe because of some obscure rule violation and even if all your documents are in order, you will be lied to about a rule, or be given subjective charges like "rash driving". The truth is, in the internet age, you can take the time to look up every single rule and argue your case with the policeman. But it will be a true hassle, and you need the presence of mind and the time to do it. I personally freeze, and I know most of my friends do as well, because of the power this policeman has over you. Not to harm you bodily, but in general to be a nuisance and a chore. And also the stories you hear about the behaviour of such policemen in general. 

Now with the digitisation of everything, law enforcement has become more "efficient", in that the policeman can extract your entire vehicular history with violations which are recorded by video cameras. Cameras on terrible roads carrying several times their capacity in traffic, poorly organised and not at all policed. So nothing around you works as it is meant to, nothing is built to handle current capacity, but you alone in your infinite wisdom fighting this chaotic traffic, dust and smoke will be fined a fortune for a small violation that some AI camera detects - The robot-ruled dystopia is truly here!

No one respects the law because the law is not worthy of the respect it should be getting. What grinds you the most is the arbitrariness. Today I witnessed the common scene of the police vehicle going out to tow away vehicles parked in no-parking areas. There were a series of vehicles parked in front of a row of shops and the police-workers (they're not even regular cops) picked up the first few vehicles they could find and took them away. We know full well the owners will be called to the police station and harassed unless they quickly take the easy way out and pay the bribe. 

But here's the thing - if indeed it was law "enforcement" that was happening, every single vehicle parked there must have been taken away, not the three nearest vehicles. If there aren't enough police vehicles to tow away all the violating vehicles, then maybe there are too few parking spots and no-parking signs are unnecessarily placed everywhere. Every year tens of thousands of new vehicles are sold in the already very cramped Bengaluru. So either such nice spots near busy market-places and temples shouldn't be classified as no-parking zones just for the heck of it. Or separate spaces for parking should be built. The signs are put-up and the laws are made as if there is a great degree of organisation involved. Once in-place, there is no capacity to implement the law correctly. 

Now imagine if all the vehicles parked there were towed away by the police - do they have the space to keep them until a claimant turns up? Most certainly not - I see all these vehicles kept at the Malleswaram Circle underpass. So actually the vehicles which were innocuously parked at the side of a narrow side-road with lots of pedestrians are now kept by the police on a major, busy road built exclusively for vehicular movement. 

There is a delusion about how the laws "should" be. Maybe there is some principle such as "the sides of narrow roads shouldn't be used as parking spots". But that principle is for well-organised cities with large dedicated parking areas and wide arterial roads that also allow parking. The principles are applied with no care for whether it is locally relevant. So essentially anywhere you park your vehicle is a no-parking zone. And the police will arbitrarily pick-up 3 of those vehicles to harass you and extract the most they can as a bribe because let's face it, there's no way they can actually implement the senseless laws based on a principle that was designed for a different context. Another example of such a law is the outlawing of even the possession of crackers in NCR this year while the whole city happily celebrated Deepavali. In the meanwhile the twitter page of Delhi police posts "success" stories of everyday citizens being apprehended for the crime of doing what almost everybody else is doing.

And in this way there is a constant insecurity when dealing with any organ of the state for an Indian.There's a common phrase expressed in Kannada "ಕೋರ್ಟು ಕಚೇರಿ ಅಂತ ತಿರ್ಗಾಟ", an equivalent of "moving pillar to post". It is the greatest fear to have to go to court. In fact I know of certain people who didn't report a fraud and theft of great amounts of money and valuables because it's considered ill-luck for a policeman to enter your house. I share this attitude as well to a large degree - A life where you never have to deal with the police, the law and the judiciary means a life without any troubles. "The process is the punishment".

Laws and regulations on paper are idealised and equivalent to any high-end, 1.5th world state, implementation is arbitrary and extractive precisely because it is unimplementable due to a lack of capacity. And this eventually overburdens everybody - the judiciary, the police, the citizen. There's so many other issues here. Policemen probably aren't paid anywhere near what is actually a really hard and really important job. I don't know what kind of training they receive. I know I'm probably just scratching at the surface of what has to change. Lot more judges are needed to take-up case pendency which is running in crores, but for that one has to first look at educating so many people in the law. This would be hard because the judiciary and the constitution can probably be understood only after a degree in English grammar studies followed by a degree in law. (I exaggerate, but take the time to read some of the judgements passed by our higher judiciary - not only are they excessively lengthy, you might need a Latin dictionary handy to understand it. I don't understand how a clear account of the case, the charges, the evidence and the verdict together can ever cross more than say, 50 pages.)

But what I saw in my time in Italy I think was very instructive, precisely because of the "1.5th world" nature of that country. I think "first world" is basically a set of working systems with a shiny exterior. Rome often has chaotic streets with wayward driving, garbage piling up, an alarming number of buses catching on fire and other civic issues. The exterior is far from shiny. But the basics, the fundamentals, as far as I could see, are extremely sound. And despite the language barrier, the bureaucracy, the first time living by myself, the different culture, the pandemic and the absolutely stifling bureaucracy, I got the sense that underneath it all is a system that's meant to function in the setting it is located in. And with people who are used to a basic level of function and hence behave in a more civil way, without seeking to extract, both from above and under the table, in every situation. (I'm sure my Italian friends will completely disagree with me here. Sadly, they constantly suffer from comparisons with countries like Netherlands, Germany, Sweden etc. and hence believe that their country is the most wretched with nothing functional. Apart from a few glitches, I see a very very functional, smooth-running country. with a population of warm, friendly people. And I truly appreciate the sense of overall security I felt when I was there.)

When I was younger I had a simpler explanation for what I saw around me in India - the systems are fine, the people manning the systems are corrupt, immoral and beyond redemption. Now I do not share this view - people are people. Given avenues for corruption, people will be corrupt. Given incentive for good behaviour, people will behave well. When I look at Italians, I sense this bursting desire towards disorder, but systems which keep their faith in a measure of order. 

Look at the metro rail systems in India - When the trains are functional, regular, efficient and clean, even I stand in a queue and don't rush in head-first into the crowd. Habits are built slowly.

I don't think what I'm saying here is particularly original or novel, but somehow I see hardly any people talking about these structural things.

Rediscovering the Laughs

I'm not a movie person. I simply cannot do it and I don't know how people do it. I find it difficult to invest my attention for long-ish periods of time when I don't know whether it will be worthwhile. To a degree I do it much better with books, but even that has deteriorated over time. Now I often leave books half-read, something unthinkable 10 years ago. 

I'm not sure why. One thing I know is that I'm very slow at grasping stuff that happens on a screen. I struggle to commit faces to memory, confusing them very easily. There are small cues, somebody flashing some object, making a subtle sign. I miss all such cues. And so when a big reveal happens at some point, something like this person was actually that person in disguise all along, when everyone has their eyes wide open in amazement, I'm still in the stage where I've started to understand who is who and what their roles are in the unfolding drama. 

I've also noticed that I can watch a movie and just skim over large parts of it mentally. When I rewatch it, I wonder which movie I watched the first time. I tend to remember the big details, the larger storyline, vaguely. 

Thus, the movies and TV shows that keep me to the end can be broadly classified into 2 categories. The first are the very simple, funny TV shows. Friends is the epitome of this genre, and while it's not my favourite, it's the perfect example of a show I will follow. The characters are well-defined, the main stuff is very clear at the very outset. One is awkward, one is stupid, one is nerdy and has a major crush on the pretty girl. One is the pretty girl, one is the quirky girl and one is the obsessive girl. Throw them together and you have a bunch of funny stuff that's happening. Seinfeld is even better - it's just 4 idiotic, stupid people with no self-respect and dignity. There's no need to dig deeper. Of course, I also enjoy word-play and puns. 

The other type of movies and TV shows I enjoy are the very intense, happening, action-packed ones. I don't necessarily mean violent or with fighting or war. But again, I guess the word to describe both are simple. I cannot watch long drawn-out dramas, stuff that builds up slowly. Thus, I rarely start watching anything new, preferring instead to endlessly and mindlessly rewatch what I've already watched. But this gets boring quickly as well. 

With humour, as in warfare, the main element is surprise. It doesn't matter how funny something is, if you've already heard it, chances are you won't find it funny. And if you can guess the ending of a joke, it kills the joke. Of course, this is different from funny incidents, because they can still draw out laughs when recounted years later as well. 

Even Modern Family, a highly rewatchable show, strewn with little nuggets of humour, word-play and little expressions that you would have missed, has a limited shelf life when it comes to rewatching. 

Before arriving in Italy for my PhD, I dabbled a bit in learning Italian. I tried duo-lingo, but it was too dry for me. However, I did find a channel named Italiano Autmatico and a playlist for learning Italian with a very interesting concept. The host cited the research of one Stephen Krashen to claim that the key to learning a language is "comprehensible input". 

The channel had videos on various topics in Italian with subtitles in Italian and English. Each video had two versions, one the slow version where the host spoke slowly, and one version where he spoke at a normal pace for a native Italian speaker (or as the rest of the world calls it, rapidly). The host suggested that we would learn really rapidly if we just watched the video multiple times. The first few times to listen while reading the subtitles in English and understanding exactly what is being said. After this, you carefully pay attention to the Italian subtitles so you know the exact words being spoken until you're watching a video in Italian, where you know the exact words being spoken and you understand every word. Comprehensible input!

It was an interesting idea and I'm always happy to put such ideas to the test. I didn't stick with it for long though, but I must say it helped me rapidly improve my fluency of Italian from very very rudimentary to very rudimentary. It was an engaging exercise. I had no knowledge of any of the grammar and other constructs. I knew some 20-30 basic words. I couldn't say "Call me an ambulance" or "How do you do" or even "One coffee to go, please". But I could perfectly say "I will make short videos about some interesting topic. The videos will be at most 3-4 minutes long. I will make one slow, like this one, and another faster video." 

And this is the thing about learning a language. One way to do it is most certainly to start from the bottom up. Learn the vocabulary, understand the grammar. And "comprehensible input", it would seem, is the other way. Keep listening to the language and understand what is being said. Maybe if you learn how to say 100 different, random sentences perfectly, you will automatically be able to construct 1000s of sentences. Of course, for your vocabulary to grow, you will need way more sentences. 

Either way, the idea is appealing, but the implementation is hard. Sticking with something isn't something humans can do very well. Or maybe it's just me. 

So last year, I finally enrolled in Italian classes and finally grew from very rudimentary to rudimentary. Once the course concluded, I didn't want to sign up for the next level of courses because the courses were shifted back online from in-person. I didn't want to lose touch with the language either but I had no non-boring ideas. 

When I returned to Italy from India after a holiday, I logged on to Netflix and found that the language of the audio had been automatically set to Italian. I changed it immediately to English before I had a thought - why not rewatch shows in Italian? Sure, the shows had stopped being funny after so many repetitions, but they were also very familiar. And if this comprehensible input stuff is correct, then it's the perfect exercise. I knew all the contexts and remembered a good portion of the dialogues. 

I've heard of people living in foreign lands learn a language by reading newspapers. I guess the internet generation does things differently, with a lot more panache I might add. 

I was in for a very pleasant surprise as well. You see, when you're fluent in a language, you somehow don't have to process the words. When someone is speaking, you just absorb the meaning. The words have to catch up with your thoughts. When you're not fluent in the language and you miss the meaning of words in the middle though, you need to pay attention and process every word separately. Your thoughts must race to keep up with the words you hear.  

This did something great for me - I was so caught up in trying to understand what was being said and the meaning of some words that when something funny happened, it came as a surprise. And it became funny again. Of course, translation kills so many of those sweet puns and word-play jokes, but this was a worthwhile price to pay! There I was, watching a TV show for the bazillionth time, still finding a good portion of it quite funny. While also learning words in a new language. Talk about a win-win-win