Viswanathan K's Thoughts

If it’s election time, can accusations of EVM tampering be far behind, wonders Sreemoy Talukdar: “It duly emerges during election time and depending on whether BJP wins or loses, either escalates or vaporises into thin air. For instance, EVMs were alright when Arvind Kejriwal's party swept Delhi in 2015.” Questioning the EVM’s fits into the narrative of certain people that the Modi government is “destabilising institutions”, including the Election Commission (In India, unlike the US, the EC is an independent institution. So of course, the BJP must be all out to destroy it). Selective stats are presented as “evidence”. In two Lok Sabha seats, 20.8 percent and 19.22 percent of all VVPAT machines had to be replaced. Is that a very high number? Absolutely. But during the Punjab assembly elections, the number was 35 percent in one constituency. A state that, in case you forgot, the Congress won. The right question is why is the replacement rate so high at times for the n...

In his best-selling Chinese sci-fi novel (also translated into English), Three Body Problem , Cixin Liu starts with events during the Chinese Revolution. Science got mixed with ideology, as one character in the book laments: “You changed the names of many physical laws and constants: Ohm’s law you called resistance law, Maxwell’s equations you called electromagnetic equations, Planck’s constant you called the quantum constant.” Why the renaming? “All scientific accomplishments resulted from the wisdom of the working masses, and those capitalist academic authorities only stole those fruits and put their names on them.” One might dismiss all this with a Shakespearian “What’s in a name?” shrug. The problem is that such interference rarely stops with name and credit. Even scientific statements could get you into trouble with the political authorities. Like the Church and communist regimes. Scott Alexander wrote about the Kolmogorov option (or should it be “complicity”...

One time my 6 yo (year old) daughter quickly doodled this pic of sea-life: Not satisfied with my complement, she showed her mean streak challenging me to draw a dolphin. I drew this: She dismissed it as a pitiful effort, adding insult to injury by offering to teach me how to draw a dolphin. Deciding to change the terms of engagement from drawings to text, I responded with a speech callout: She responded by drawing another dolphin (she didn’t want to ruin her masterpiece, apparently) and pasting her own callout: To which I responded with: The all caps was for emphasis, something lost on her. She misunderstood it as an escalation to war with font styles, because she wrote this next: Assuming it was an “L” followed by an (unintentionally) inverted “i”, I smugly told her that’s not how the word “Lie” is spelt. I was promptly corrected: “No…. I wrote ‘L’ followed by an exclamation mark. ‘L’ for ‘Loser’”. The statement was accompanied with the universa...

The worst things we see in India almost always happened in the West too. The difference, of course, is that those things have stopped happening in the West by now. Take the VIP treatment of rich or political prisoners, for example. We know the lavishness that the Jayalalithaa’s and Laloo’s have enjoyed during their imprisonment. But guess what? Spanish prisons in the 1580’s were pretty much the same. As Robert Goodwin wrote in Spain: The Centre of the World 1519-1682 , Seville’s Royal Prison had a gate called the Golden Gate: “It was called the Golden Gate because at this stage those who could afford the fees could pay 'no mean quantity of Gold' to 'stay in the sheriff's accommodation'…The accommodation was relatively comfortable, with its own roof terrace, and such inmates were largely free to come and go and many were given leave to sleep at home.” For those couldn’t pay in gold, there was: “The Silver Gate, where for a ducat or two a prisoner could h...

Rights and duties: remember those terms from civics class? Rights are what all citizens are entitled to; and duties are obligations of the citizens to the country. Additionally, rights are enforceable, i.e., a citizen could file a case if deprived of his rights. But duties were just obligations, good to do’s, not mandatory and thus not enforceable. That last aspect is a very important distinction; and Ayn Rand gave a great example of that difference. She said that the framers of the American constitution included the “right to pursuit of happiness”, but not the “right to happiness” itself. Philosopher John Searle made a great point on the topic of rights that had never occurred to me, the sub-categorization of rights as either positive rights or negative rights: “If you look at the logical structure of rights, every right implies an obligation on someone else’s part…(For example) My right to free speech means I have a right to exercise my free speech without being inter...

In recent times, my 6 yo daughter has suddenly become very interested in Hindi movie songs. This was surprising to us because we hardly ever watch Hindi movies. To begin with, she couldn’t even identify the actresses. Since that was around the time of the talk-of-the-town Virat Kohli – Anushka wedding, it was very embarrassing for her to not even be able to recognize Anushka! And so began the binge watching of Hindi song videos. Progress was slow: she complained that Anushka and Katrina look so similar as she got them wrong yet again. In which universe do they look similar, I wondered… (Among the actors, she’s been able to recognize Salman Khan since she was 2. And till date, she has shown no signs of being able to name any other actor). Next her interest expanded from identifying actresses to sing and hum the hit songs. I offered to download the videos of the songs she liked from YouTube thinking it might also help improve her Hindi (I know, I know, parents ruin everything ...

“Murder of democracy”. That’s the phrase going around to describe what’s followed the results of the elections in Karnataka. While it accurately describes the actions of the BJP camp; it also applies to the actions of others. Let’s see why: -          Was the Governor biased in ignoring the joint claim of the Congress and JD(S)? Yes. Was he biased in allowing the BJP a ridiculously large period of 15 days to prove its majority? Absolutely. -          But little of what the Governor did was illegal. Exercising his “discretion” in deciding whom to call first (Largest party first in Karnataka; whoever claims to have the numbers in Goa), while discretionary, is still legal. Which raises the question: Why hasn’t any party at the Center ever framed clear, unambiguous rules on the topic? The Congress never did it, nor did the BJP or the regional parties that were part of various coalitions at the Center....