Yes, we need critics, but maybe that needs to be in collaboration with movers. You don’t go around telling random people on the street that they have spinach stuck in their teeth – only those who are your friends or co-workers.

Amit Kulkarni and Ameet Deshpande have asserted that human beings have not evolved or ‘improved’ much from other creatures like bacteria etc. I disagree with this assertion. I believe one of the most fundamental indicators of the state of civilization in a society is the ability of every member of that society to implement the age old saying “vasudhaiva kutumbakam” in his/her daily life. Do I treat an unknown person living in say Papua New Gunea as my family? In a metaphorical sense, yes!! The bacteria is probably not even aware of such a concept. What stage of civilization am I in? Can I rise above my own parochial/petty concerns and think of the betterment of my tribe – village – state – country – world?

When you look at the ‘underdeveloped’ societies of the world you will find some common lines of thought existing there. All the people living in those societies (be it north Africa, parts of North-East India etc…) cannot rise above their tribal concerns. They are too paranoid of outside influences to accept new ideas and ways of living. Same is the case of the bacteria. It has successfully adapted itself to its living conditions, but is unable to empathize with issues beyond its immediate concerns.

Incidentally, Islam tried to implement such a concept called “Ummah”. They called it the universal brotherhood of believers of the faith. Unfortunately, the religion has not adapted itself to the modern age by reinterpreting ALL human beings as being part of its “Ummah”.

Closely related to this is the concept of charity. You will not find charity in a bacteria, would you? What is charity but a manifestation of the concept of universal brotherhood. Of course, universal brotherhood can come about only after basic problems of food, clothing and shelter have been solved. You can’t have people fighting with each other over basic essentials and yet consider each other as brothers and sisters. Therefore, economic prosperity is closely linked to universal brotherhood. Dont forget, it was economic prosperity in the form of agriculture that led to the great ancient civilizations.

1)babus (IAS and its various derivatives) with too much ego but lack a vision for country. Nothing has hurt India in last 58 years more than IAS babus.

2)banal/uneducated politicians appeasing minorities (Mulayam, Sonia, Left).

3)corrupt, underpaid, untrained police unable to provide respectable life to ordinary occupants of India.

4)slow and timid judiciary (bloated and constipated elites).

5)environmental factors, unpredictable mansoons, droughts, floods, lack of technical advancements in agriculture methods.

6)hostile undemocratic anti-hindu neighbours.

7)40% poor, uneducated, unconcerned population (bihar, UP, north-east, orrisa) susceptible to exploitation, conversions, brain-washing by foreign agents with loads of money.

8)self-defeating mindset, demise of self-preservation attitude and ability to strike back due to past 1000 years of slavery, invasions and attacks on Indian peninsula.

9) false sense of pride and security planted due to pseudo-secular education system.

10) extremely heterogeneous population with too many sub-religious-subsects, castes, languages and related in-fighting.

I am sorry to say, Hindus, Bharatdesh won’t last longer than another 200-400 years. Take my word. Take long hard look at the human history, civilisations evolved over last 10000 years. We hindus in India don’t stand a chance of a survival. There is no hope.

The pseudo-seculars think, if we survived last 1000 years we will survive in future and attribute it to hindu-tolerance!! (instead of giving credit to Pruthviraj, Shivaji, Zhashi, Bhakti-movement, Subhaschandra etc). This is in realistic sense most twisted interpretation of our history ever.

A few days ago I had posted a long comment to your education piece titled “Manufactured Shortages and Corruption”. I had asked a question similar to Gulab Singh and wanted to know if you had acted on RISC or education. I also wanted to know if you would consider the new SEZers like Mukesh Ambani to be the ones on whom we can rely for delivering India out of the misery for the majority.

Your current post is a brilliant exposition on the complementary role intellectuals, thinkers, critics and movers play in shaping the future of the world or of a society. It also states where you stand in the pantheon. With this clarification, I think I have a different and more appreciative perspective on what you write. I think you do a swell job as a critic and enligthen us with host of information and analysis.

Almost all your posts have a long trail of comments. I found the current post to be one of the best among such threads. First JP eloborates on your ideas and defends you, then Amit and Ameet launch into a separate discussion to say that human society has not evolved into cooperative one and finally Sriharsha tells us how a person adapts to his/her role among the quartet of intellectuals, thinkers, critics and movers.

Related to SEZ development and India shining is the notion of trickle down theory. I am not sure if you have posted anything in support or against this notion and if it comes from economics.

As a critic you can certainly cover and introduce to us the movers (JP talks of Sandeep). Many of us readers of your blog would be interested in knowing the ‘movers’ side of the evolving scene. Unfortunately, India continues to move further into mess (including nasty version of democracy/politics). Many of us are beyond 40 and do not have the patience or optimism to wait for another 20-30 years. Given the inevitable time gap between ideas and their ground level impact (as Keyne noted), we would like to know that there is some movement on the ground as well.

(Sorry for mis-spelling your name on my previous comment.)

Sharad

First thing they tend to do while identifying their role is to question the existance of roles itself.
Thus they understand the need of a critic. As time passes they tend to understand need of thinkers. A particular instance makes them realise the need of intellectuals.
By then one gets an understanding about these conventions. Thus person makes up his objective and evolves to play a role.

So there is nothing wrong in questioning the roles amidst their way to identify one.

I disagree (vehemently!) with this fallacious argument; I see this one almost all the time. A fairly large percentage of the human population does not have the capacity to think, comprehend, analyze, and solve abstract/complex issues. We are capable of solving our own little problems, but that is no different from any animal: we are worried about food, water, shelter, and spending away our time. Humans have been guided by a few pioneers, whose ideas and inventions are picked up and disseminated such that they come to dominate and brainwash a significant percentage of human population. Different animals have been proven to have every single characteristic we have, but somewhere back in time in (perhaps) multiple places, somebody started organizing us into somewhat cohesive societies. And that is what is making us arrogant (as a species) in thinking we are not animals.

We have subjugated Earth for hardly 5,000 years and already we think of ourselves as Gods?

I think a lot of ills of our society can be traced to our current societal organization. Our whole idea of organization is now flawed because nation states are really big animal packs. Since the last millennium (why in the last century!) we have added lots of animal packs clamoring for a finite amount of resources, and modern transportation has exacerbated this dilemma. I really think that huge population growth has screwed it up, somebody somewhere needs to think of new ideas for organizing people. Religions also can’t cut it; it’s outlived its usefulness as an organization tool. Why the half billion or so bacteria who can organize themselves in a single teaspoon of fertile soil are better than us.. Surely we can learn something from them.

I’ve always felt that that was an excellent observation, even when it is taken out of context. Your classification of critics, thinkers, intellectuals and movers seems to justify the same.

As always, a good post.

“They also serve who stand and wait” brought my school day memories where I had by heart this poem etc

On this post, I pity you had to draw such flak but I am sure you are gusty enough to march on. Seriously, the stupidity is increasing with the rate of increase of population in our country.

A good coach, a good captain and a good player need not (and in most cases, cannot) be the same person.

sorry to digress from the topic, but the farmer’s suicide in vidarbha is still rising on an alarming rate! In the last two weeks or so, even after the PM announced his special package, 44 more ( i am sure the number is more than this reported one of 44) farmers committed suicide. the extent is stupifying.

All this awakening of india and other stuffs in world media hardly takes note of this. Would like to read your thoughts on this in future.

“what have you really done?”

A fallacious argument. What has been done/not done is no indicator of what a person can and will do.

An easy way to refute your argument would be to put the question back to the commentor, “what have you done?” Suppose if you did something, it is easy to trivialize that. But, I’d be using the same fallacious argument.

Having said that, I absolutely agree that there are a lot of armchair intellectuals and we need movers, a LOT of them. But, a lot of people write to make sense of things, the problems of India are of infinite magnitude, before they actually start working on things in their own way, they write to attain clarity of thought and also to find other people interested in the same line of thought. Can’t solve India’s problems individually, they are not trivial.

Using your line of though that one should actually do something before writing, tell people that, look, I’ve spent 20 years, made this village literate and healthy, so now I have the proof that I actually work, let me write and get more people. That is very very unproductive.

It is better to find the people first and target a larger geographic area, we’ll have economy of scale and probably finish off an entire district or a state or the entire country depending on the number of people thinking along similar lines.

Gubal, you would not understand the tremendous impact Atanu’s blog has. Lets say there is a mover and this gives the direction for a mover. As movers are rare, it is imperative that they get the right information, instead of the insidious spin by journalist.

The goal is to bridge the dichotomies of thought, word and deed. Writing erases the first dichotomy. The next step can be done by someone else whose strength is execution .

A mover should not waste time gathering all the information and it should be processed and ready. The world is information fat! And this is the best thing about deeshaa. Nowhere else would anyone find better information than here about India’s development.

Far more importantly than any other website or blog, Atanu demonstrates how to reason, how to be a clear-thinker. Using the fundamental principles of how to reason, how to analyse things, which most people in India are not taught, they get a degree, but not an education.

If I had my way, I would make a book out of deeshaa and make it compulsory for all students. In fact, I am going to do that! Awareness is quintessential!

I think it would be safe to assume that Sandeep Pandey of ASHA is a mover. What is his motivation? He says he decided to work in villages after he read a report by MIT, whose experts found that more than 50 per cent of India’s children never went to school.

If I had access to the information that Atanu writes when I was in my undergrad, I would have most probably made a tremendous impact by now. There are movers, lots of them, but they don’t know exactly what to do in this intricate labryinthe of infinite problems.

I can go on and on, but you get the drift right?

I might not have made a compelling case, but I will at a later point.

Deeshaa – gives you the direction. The onus is on you to follow that direction and bludgeon the task. India’s problems are very very solvable. They are not that difficult as the arm-chair intellectuals assume. They are all related, one has to examine the roots and attack it with tremendous force! The first step, for movers then, is to find all the movers, a rare species.

Warmest Regards,
JP.