Many a mickle makes a muckle

                                                   Many a mickle  makes a muckle

 “Many a mickle  makes a muckle ”: The grandiloquence of the  Scottish proverb is  based on elementary mathematics that many small amounts such as 2+2  add to make 4, a big amount. From our early days, we are given this lesson in arithmetic to hammer in the homily on small savings for a big harvest.  But nowhere is this calculation more handy than for election campaigns when the ruling parties resort to counting their every  little achievement to tot up a big picture of outstanding governance. In the same way all the failures of the ruling parties are assiduously added up by the opposition parties to present a large negative picture of  poor governance. The ruling power in return flays the opposition by adding all its past and present misdoings or worse, their sins,  to show them equally  corrupt, inefficient and untrustworthy while the opposition scrounges its kitty to make an addition of its small virtues,  adequate enough  to project itself as an alternative to the ruling party and dethrone it. It is this addition and subtraction of small doings and misdoings that the voters have to calculate before deciding to retain the status quo or return the opposition to power. Elections when reduced to the essentials will test the voters’ arithmetical intelligence to arrive at a well judged decision about who should rule them. This is what democracy is all about- plus or minus, whichever tips the scales.

             But are elections purely arithmetic based?. The modern political pundits have a different take- elections are more about chemistry than about arithmetic. How the voters perceive the claims and counter claims of the political rivals is what finally tilts the scales and not the addition and subtraction of achievements. The single  word substitute for facts and figures is ‘perception’ and it is perception that matters more than any arithmetic calculation. No one today calculates how many ‘ache din’ and how many ‘bure din’ the nation had seen during the five year reign of the party in power. No one works on the number of promises fulfilled as against the number of broken promises. No one recalls the number of assaults, murders, lynchings and fatalities that had taken place during the last four years as public amnesia is notorious. No one has the patience to understand the state of economy at the macro level even when it is becoming increasingly difficult to balance household economy at the micro level. We have an instinctive geometrical wisdom to cut the coat according to the cloth available without attempting to fit a round peg in a square hole and vice versa. We, Indians are known to possess an enormous degree of asinine patience and put up with any amount of inconvenience so long as someone promises a flash of light at the end of a gloomy tunnel. So to make the voters do all the simple arithmetic calculations and arrive at a well formed assessment about whom to vote- the ruler or the pretender- seems more of a fiction than fact.

            But without doubt what clinches the voters’ attention is the charisma or to put it more honestly, the ‘ perceived’ charisma of the leader. It is charisma that carries the day. But the unfortunate truth is today charisma is media built  charisma than a genuine one. In US, the likes of Kennedy and Obama are fast fading and it is the Trumpet Major(better known as  twitter major) who by his outrageous bombast makes people take note of him. The bombast and the bluster, the ranting and the bragging demand a decibel level far higher than any form of civil discourse as was practiced by leaders in the past. In fact people today prefer high pitched shrill cries that appeal to their prejudices and emotions than a restrained, calm, and unemotional speech that appeals to logic and reason.  The comparison favouring the former is best illustrated by the speeches of  our present PM and our ex PM. Similarly the loud cries and guffaws, the unrestrained, intemperate personal attacks on opponents, the lack of decorum in debates that we see on our news channels carry the day and create the perception that cannot stand scrutiny of facts, truths and rationality. Perception is the catalyst that sways the voters and not numerical calculations.

             With 2019 elections in less than a year from today, media channels are  collecting and  analyzing data day by day, week by week, month by month to project the political stock exchange with swing oscillating between high and low for different political parties at different points of time. Such calculations will have no bearing on the outcome which is perception based. Who flogs who best at the crucial moment is the key to spotlight those perceptions.

            For BJP, the ruling party no one exists except the Gandhi parivar to be attacked  as symptomatic of ‘dynastyism’ (don’t look for the meaning in thesaurus as the meaning is percolates through  the word)and it seeks to keep alive the perception that the mother--son duo had been responsible for all the ills that plague the nation.  It has the best and widespread social media handlers who flog the Gandhis in phrases and words that are an insult to any form of decency and civilized behaviour. But the damage has been done and the perception that the son is a pappu and the mother is associated with the corrupt Italian connections of Bofors and Augusta Westland has gone deep into people’s minds.  Intent on adding the minuses of the Congress party and remaining ominously silent on  some of its questionable decisions like the demonetization policy and faulty GST implementation, rise in oil price, soft and studied ignoring of  heinous lynchings and cow vigilantism, the ruling party seeks to gain brownie points that it is a party that never retreats, never retracts and never admits committing any mistake. Its failure of huglopmacy in relation to Pakistan, Nepal, Maldives, China and other  Asian and South East Asian countries or miscalculated adventurism in Kashmir allying with  the undependable PDP  that has resulted in alienation of the Kashmiris and  its fanatic advocacy of  Hindutva ideology have split the country to such an extent that makes it almost an impossibility for the nation to be glued once again as a united, homogenous nation comprising linguistic, cultural and religious plurality. All these issues have got  lost in the party’s  high sounding rhetoric about Vision 2020 that promises a utopian corrupt free, poverty free and terror free India. The new slogan Ajay Bharat, Atal BJP for all its alliteration and rhymed sounds is more to inspire the party workers to ensure a return of the party to power  – not for the next five years but for the next fifty years. But strangely there was no attempt to  project its own achievements  and present a roadmap that would be a guide for future action to steer the country where development is inclusive and not at the expense of environment that would be hazardous to people’s health, shelter and livelihood. Merely marking a statistical data about  welfare schemes and projecting only favourable,  financial health reports  may not necessarily be the true index of the economic state of the nation or listing out achievements such as galvanizing schemes that had been functioning slowly and unobtrusively since the earlier regime only  to create robust perceptions,  will not  ustain unless backed by clear  strategy  to better the well being of every single Indian. The voter is left with no options to do the plus minus calculations as the effort of the ruling party has deviated from the main line to follow the chord line of winning the perception war.

             In this perception war, the ruling party is certainly the winner. But their win is more by default than by real achievement. Even after the Congress had been punished and routed in 2014 on grounds of perceived corruption,  it is flogged day in and day out as a corrupt party which did nothing for seventy years( not even the protection of constitutional democracy). This is a big mistake of the BJP to remain in power through default as the Congress has fallen almost to the point of becoming irrelevant. This rise is not on strong roots but on shaky soil that would collapse if there is the slightest tremor even if it is a manufactured one. Instead of strengthening its own plans to make a new India, it is taking recourse to a victory on TINA factor and seeking to survive on a weak and wobbly opposition. It is like cutting off the lower steps on the ladder, while climbing the top layers.

              As for the Congress, it can be accused of the same mistake – repeatedly attacking the Prime Minister and the ruling party on corruption, in matters relating to Rafael deal and the four runaway fugitives after siphoning crores and crores of Indian rupees. The Congress party has begun to sound  like the broken gramophone record, going through the same allegation in the hope that some mud will stick on the PM and his men and women.  But is this the roadmap the Congress presents as an alternative to the ruling party?  It is a childish logic saying you came to power accusing us of corruption and we will accuse you of greater corruption and bring you down.  The Congress party for the first two years after 2014 was in  comatose and written off but revived  ironically by the ruling party  with its arrogant demonetization policy  and faulty GST implementation and by projecting a seemingly dictatorial phase of governance.  Almost a moribund Congress got oxygenated to stand up albeit wobbly and shakily. But in the absence of any blueprint for an alternative form of governance to attract the voters and by simply attacking PM Modi  and seeking to  defeat him as  its primary and possibly  only  goal, Congress  has shown total bankruptcy of  political vision to contest the powerful Modi government. It is the same with the other opposition parties who are unanimous in shouting anti Modi slogan as though Modi is India and India is Modi and nothing else matters.

The Indian voters are thus left with no opportunity to exercise the left side of their brain that controls the mathematical ability and logical thinking. The dominance of the right brain that is home to emotions has been facilitated by our political masters cutting across parties. . Since  modern science has disproved the right -left brain myth, it is left for us to recognize the need to balance one with the other. Democracy is in danger when people privilege emotions over logic and reasoning. If India has to change into a New India, it needs revitalizing the voters through a synthesis of mind and heart. We had an illustrious example in Mahatma Gandhi who could appeal to the soul of India with reason and leverage reason with emotion, compassion and empathy.

Today we plead helplessness saying there is no Gandhi amidst us nor can we have one in the near future. The political bankruptcy, deliberately as well as thoughtlessly engineered   by all political parties has resulted in leadership vacuum. The only hope is the assurance as per Laws of Science, that when a vacuum arises, air rushes in to fill it. We  need the breeze to blow now - the breeze that integrates the mind and the heart.

I fear to  sound like the broken gramophone record when I repeat that we need good education- not in just  learning the three ‘R’s  but going beyond where we could connect thoughts with emotions. It is the responsibility of teachers and intellectuals to assist young minds to unlearn the wrong idea of bifurcation of the left and the right brain and help them re-learn how to use them together, how to think with the heart and feel with the mind. It is not an impractical ideal as the entire freedom struggle led by Mahatma Gandhi and our illustrious freedom fighters was founded on this synthesis between emotions and thoughts. There has to be an integrated approach to learning that consists of

(a)   Identifying our core values that are deep seated and letting them guide our rational thought.

(b)     Learning to take decisions on the basis of the intrinsic values and harnessing them with rational thought process and

(c)     Making decisions based on a rational understanding of our intuitive values.

       No questioning of the worth of the 2+2 = 4 formula as the centre of all additions. But

       when the mathematical formula is translated into an axiom, such as “many a mickle make

      a muckle”, it takes the rational calculation to intuitive perception of unity as a sum   

      of separate e identities. The balance between mathematics and  intuitive perception is

      important not only for us in India but for the very survival of humanity.  

      The Spanish writer Jose Y Ortega speaks of viewing the garden outside through a glass

      window. If the eye is fixed on the window pane, it cannot see the garden except as a blur

     of colours. If the eye is fixed on the garden, it does not see the pane that facilitates the

     viewing. We need to instill a new sensibility in our young students that has the rational

     understanding of the pane and the garden along with an aesthetic experience of the rich

    colours of the flowers in the lawns.

    Carl Jung had a note of caution when he said : “Until you make the unconscious conscious,

   it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”  Young students have to be taught the

   addition of values and thoughts, the deletion of bias and prejudices and the blending of

  reason and feeling.

   Can we afford to rest content with TINA factor to decide our future or should we try

   TIAA(There is an Alternative)!