Right, Wrong and Correct

Before the deluge of budget news yesterday, all eyes were on the meeting of foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan. Our nation has a certain view and position on issues ranging from the arrest of 26/11 perpetrators to what is the best and lasting solution to the Kashmir problem. It must have been plenty obvious by now that Pakistan doesn't see things the same way as we do. So to expect that Pakistan will be overawed by our gesture to talk and will change its views overnight is sheer insanity. If our ability to persuade was so magical, and if Pakistan was willing to objectively approach matters, then the impasse would have been resolved long ago. As the editor of The Dawn pointed out on Newshour, we are sitting on the opposite sides of the table, for God's sake!

It is now too late to sit in judgement and say who's right and who's wrong. 50 years back maybe that was an option, but not anymore. To even make an attempt to try and get Pak to see our side of the story is a waste of time and resources. The only way forward is to acknowledge the current situation and evaluate options as alternatives to status quo and not the originally stated positions of the two countries. Agreeing to LoC as the international border must not be evaluated against whether Kashmir rightfully belonged to us or Pakistan; rather, it should be compared to the constant firing that currently takes place, and will continue if no resolution is reached. Some concessions have to be made by both sides.

Today's HT has a piece by Gopalkrishna Gandhi on Prez K R Narayanan, who once asked the Mahatma that the struggle often faced by humans is not so much to choose between the right and the wrong, the truth and the untruth, but rather to choose between one right and another right, and one truth and another truth. Apparently, he did not receive a direct answer, even from the Mahatma. It is easy to distinguish the right from the wrong, but the right option is not always the correct one.

Google cant Foundem

A recent lawsuit against Google questions the legitimacy of its blockbuster algorithm that ranks search results, and whether there is any human intervention at all in how results are displayed. There are suggestions that Google has, and uses, a system to penalize or blacklist certain sites, which are then relegated beyond the 3rd or 4th page, thus drying up virtually all traffic. When such sites happen to be search engines themselves, things get murkier. The recent accusation of Foundem may be an isolated incident, but there are certain developments that do appear ominous.

Google's innocuous Universal Search that not only returns websites based on search phrases, but also retrieves relevant images, maps, blogs etc., may have put websites such as labnol or mapquest out of business. When searching for a city or town, I remember Google showing links to Mapquest and yahoo maps, but not anymore. The feature is definitely convenient to the user, in the same manner that bundling Internet Explorer free with Windows was.

Players like Google and Apple have been making noises forever about Microsoft's unfair practices, but some of their own actions are disturbingly similar. I cant recall the last time I typed a URL in my address bar directly. Even when I know the URL, it's easier to google half the website name and click through to the website. Thats laziness, of course, but it also shows my trust in Google - that it will fetch me what I am looking for, and usually as the first result. I doubt if I am alone in reposing complete trust in Google. So when more than three-quarters of the world uses Google to search, the results displayed can potentially influence people's actions, including purchase decisions, which means money. And there's the rub. With iPods having the insane marketshare that they do, and their ability to communicate only with iTunes, what is available for purchase, and prominently displayed, on iTunes can affect purchases. Apple's recent decision to take down inappropriate software from its iPhone app store is another example. Amazon can drive or kill book sales simply by adding or deleting a "keyword" to the book description.

This is not a new phenomenon limited to websites. This is true of large players in other industries, and is akin to what Toyota is going through. In an open economy, you are allowed to make defective and dubious products. Its not a crime; customers will simply dump you and switch for better ones. But once you establish certain quality standards and gain customer trust, you automatically take on the responsibility to maintain that. The GEs, Boeings and Cokes of the world cant make the kind of mistakes that a mom-and-pop business can. It may seem unfair, but as the saying goes, with great power comes great responsibility.

Emotional Accidents

Please do not read this post if you are easily offended.

The death of a 10-day old in a stone pelting incident in Baramulla is definitely disturbing. No doubt, it was an accident, but the media coverage would make one wonder whether the protesters meant to commit a cold-blooded murder. We have all seen and been in situations, where the rush of adrenalin makes us lose our bearings. A great office party with one witty joke after another might suddenly turn sour when someone goes overboard with a risque comment. Or a game of cricket where the batsman tries to hit one too many ball out of the park and gets out. We all get carried away. But there was a cold-blooded murder in the valley recently. Although the matter was as widely publicized, the sympathy appeared muted, even polite, in comparison to the current outrage. I refer to the BSF's killing of a 16-year old schoolboy. If you detach yourself from the emotions, the reaction is devoid of logic.

A youth or a middle-aged person has responsibilities toward parents, spouse and children. Having lived much longer in the world, he is bound to have stronger emotional ties with people around him. The loss of such a life often leaves a humongous void within the family that is often impossible to fill. Sometimes, the family simply crumbles after such an incident. Whereas a 10-day old has hardly spent any time here and is free of any emotional connects. The damage is limited to the parents, and the immediate family to an extent. Every other factor - be it shattered dreams, parental love, loss of innocent life - applies to both cases. Logically, the magnitude of loss has to be much smaller compared to losing a 10-year old child and even smaller compared to losing 20-year child and so on (a bell curve, with the magnitude of loss falling after 50 or 60 I guess). I am not even talking about selling this logic to the young couple who lost their kid. With their expectations and dreams shattered, to them, it might as well be the end of the world. I am only questioning our reaction - people not directly impacted by such incidents.

So why does our emotion run high when infants and kids are robbed of their lives? Why do accidents involving school buses evoke an outrage, but a bus with a marriage party, albeit overloaded, that falls into a ravine doesnt evoke the same sense of shock? I can only conjecture that when we see helpless people hurt or killed, we react much more strongly because we see the situation as completely unfair. When the people involved are grown up adults, we assume they have some control of the situation regardless of how helpless they actually might be. Subconsciously, we patronize the weak and detest the strong.

Say a truck has run over an animal on the highway. Will we feel more sorry if it was a cat than if it were a tiger? I'd say yes.

Tax, Votes and TOI

I religiously hate anything to do with The Times of India, and the group does well to reinforce this feeling by hitting stunning new lows of journalism with amazing frequency, both in print and on TV. I make an exception for the Mumbai Mirror though - it is cheap and sensational and makes no pretense to be anything else. So when I found myself waiting at the reception with time on hand, I noticed with some disappointment that the only newspaper at hand was the TOI. I devoured the Mirror first, and as expected, it contained a healthy dose of daily nonsense. I was still waiting, so I offered a prayer and opened the main paper straight to the editorial page, which I thought that would be the section least prone to rubbish. What a mistake! As I learnt, that is birthplace of trash.

The piece was on income tax rates for women, and going by the title of the section, it appeared a pathetic attempt to simplify economic concepts. The article lauded the effort of the Minister of Child and Women's Development to seek lower income tax rates for women. Apparently, lower tax rates not only empower women but the society at large! What more, it will also encourage more women to start working!! Had it been my own copy, I would have ripped it to shreds. Other than attracting the women vote, which the Minister is clearly after, I dont think lower IT rates for women will make any difference to either women's development or the economy. I mean, if women making enough to pay taxes are considered oppressed, what about the millions that dont even earn enough to afford three square meals a day?

Civilization, non-violence and maoism

Gandhi famously said that ends never justify the means. In the current standoff between the government and Maoists, the maxim applies to both parties. The government may have wronged, but the brutal killing of security personnel and villagers is hardly justifiable. The tribals and Maoists may be creating trouble but the excesses of security forces is equally unpardonable. But when both parties err, the solution is never simple. It requires grace and courage to admit errors, swallow egos and plot a way forward - traits that remain a rarity in the human race. The easier option is to justify and rationalize the action, which only makes it easier to commit a greater error, causing the entire situation to spiral into a full-fledged war, where everything is fair, or so the stupid saying goes.

Despite Gandhi's well-documented success of using reason and dialogue, rather than violence, to prove a point, the approach is incredibly inefficient. It took some 25 years for the British to finally relent, and the decision was no doubt influenced more by their losses in WWII than by their prickly conscience. And not every non-violent protest will gain the momentum of Gandhi's movement. There are so many variables, and in Gandhi's case, they miraculously fell in place to elevate him to a Mahatma so that even the British held him in respect. But despite so many conflicts post-independence, why has no one risen to such prominence as the Mahatma? Is there a dearth of Gandhians in the country? I doubt. It is more that the "timing" and "placement" of these non-violent protests were not as perfect as the Mahatma's. To be clear, I am for non-violent protests. I'd any day prefer that Pak militants swim across the Arabian Sea and organize a satyagraha at the Gateway rather than open indiscriminate fire. And air travel will be vastly comfortable and security checks much less interfering if the Al Qaeda simply chose to protest outside buildings than blow them up.

If civilization is an onion, then non-violence is the outermost layer that has evolved after eons of human life and strife, which also makes it the easiest one to shred because underneath it is a more primal and dominant layer of survival instinct and self-preservation, which is usually subdued, but can get invoked in a jiffy. Shootings in college campuses and churches, driving a plane into the IRS building over a tax dispute, shouting contests and physical abuses on local trains or roads are the handiwork of this instinct. One can debate to no end whether the situation warranted such a primal response, but, unfortunately, life is a matter of perspective and there are no absolutes, whatsoever: The umpire at the bowler's end sees three stumps at the batting crease but the square leg umpire sees only one.

The emperor and Birbal were talking a walk in the palace garden, when Akbar notices a monkey pampering its offspring in the pond. The emperor comments that a mother's love for its child is pure and selfless. Birbal disagrees and when asked to prove, requests the water level in the pond be increased. At first, the mother protects the child from drowning, but when the water rises above its own head, the monkey abandons the offspring and runs for safety. Civilization is our offspring and we will guard it closely until our own existence is at risk, and then, all bets are off. Gandhi also said that an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. But isn't that a better option if non-violence will end up making you the only blind guy walking around?