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)!
