Detachment and the middle path

Of all the teachings of Buddha, two of the most famous (at least to laypersons) are that desire is the cause of sorrow and one must follow the middle path and live a life of moderation.

The Bhagavad Gita, one of the most important texts of Hindu religion and philosophy, is famous for the shloka karmanyevaadhikaaraste maa pahelshu kadaachanan which translates to saying one only has right over one’s actions, not over the fruits of one’s actions. Do your duty, the Gita urges.

These sayings are so obviously correct and so obviously wrong, so much can be read into them, that it is difficult to understand what exactly to make of them.

At one level, it is so clearly obvious that desire is the cause of sorrow, and that wanting things deeply leads to pain. At another level, though, the message that these teachings seem to convey is that desiring is a weakness, that to desire is to make oneself vulnerable to sorrow, that to seek fruits from one’s action is to make oneself vulnerable to disappointment. Thus, a possible interpretation of these teachings is detachment. Detachment is different from renunciation. Renunciation means leaving the material world in spirit. Detachment means being there, but not quite being there.

Very obvious, very correct, and yet… very wrong.

Very wrong because it is so easy to mis-interpret, it is so easy to just disengage and shut out reality in the name of detachment, it is easy to block oneself from the world in the name of becoming free of it. And yet, this freedom only seeks to numb the effect of problems, it doesn’t solve them.

Very correct because the way the preachers meant it wasn’t so simplistic. What the Buddha meant when he said desire is the cause of sorrow was not: do not desire. The Buddha did not say it is wrong to dream, to strive, to give one’s heart to a cause. The Buddha himself gave his heart to a cause: the cause of spreading his words and ideas to spread his ideas to the masses. He invested a lot in them. He had a desire to bring about a change in the lives of people. He had a deep desire to enjoy his own life and to help others enjoy life.

What, then, was the Buddha’s message?

While I cannot talk authoritatively on what the Buddha intended to convey, here is the message that I get from reading what the Buddha did: he basically said, do not attach your self-worth, your sense of rightness of the universe, your sense of meaning in life, to the events around you. Be replete with self-confidence and with the confidence of your ideals and your values so much so that external events do not create a dent in your self-assessment. With that in your arsenal, go ahead and do what you want to do.

The serene smile on a monk’s face is not a smile achieved through detachment and disengagement, it is a smile attained through active engagement, through a deep heart-felt desire to do things, and a lot of self-love and a desire to maintain one’s equanimity and not let it get affected by events around one.

When the Buddha asked us to enjoy every grain we eat, he did not say that it is wrong to have excess and abundance. Rather, he urged us against mindless craving for things without actually enjoying them. The problem of craving is not a problem of abundance — it is a problem of perceived scarcity and insecurity. The Buddha did not urge us to follow a middle path because of an inherent virtue in having less, he taught us to think big even in moderate circumstances, to see the greatness in small things.

A person who sees the greatness in small things can enjoy the big things even better.

The Buddha did not ask us to shun material possessions, rather he taught us to enjoy them. The Buddha did not ask us to sacrifice our dreams, rather he taught us to live them.

Once, the Buddha and his followers went to a village, and a farmer there said: “We grow food and the food fills people’s stomachs, what purpose do you serve society?” The Buddha replied, “We create food for thought for you people to chew for, and in return we ask for your food”. The Buddha, when going around with his begging bowl, did not think of himself as a beggar; the grains of rice that were bestowed to him were a tribute to him, not alms.

Disengagement and detachment are easy, but incorrect, interpretations of the Buddhist philosophy. An even more dangerous version, though, is to be simply satisfied with following the letter of this philosophy. The Buddha taught us to enjoy breathing. Suppose you learn to enjoy breathing. What next? Is everything over? The Buddha taught us to enjoy every morsel of food. Suppose we start doing that. What next? have we attained nirvana?

The problem with Buddhism is not that it teaches anything wrong but that it is only one half of the journey forward — it teaches us to enjoy the things in life, to banish the fears and insecurities inherent in each one of us, to sport a smile from the heart and the mind. But there is a crucial second part which it does not focus so much attention on. That’s the part where one uses the personal freedom and personal inner wealth obtained to fulfil one’s dreams. To pursue ambitions, to relentlessly set goals and achieve them, that in a past era would have been a source of stress, discomfort and anxiety.

Buddhist philosophies are thus, in reality, a vaccination against many of the perils that lay ahead in the pursuit of one’s dreams. They are a means, not the ultimate goal. Unfortunately, this aspect of these philosophies is not brought out so strongly. A probably reason for this is that a large number of people struggle even to achieve the stage where they have completely imbibed the philosophies strongly enough.

Buddhist philosophy does not encourage mediocrity or a desireless state, it asks one to get rid of the blocks that prevent one from fearlessly desiring.

Actually, most so-called followers of the “middle path” are people who have experienced some kind of hurt or disillusionment following the “extreme” path. Disillusionment could be with a loved one, with a career opportunity, with a cherished goal, or with anything one held dear. A person them learns from such disillusionment that moderation and limitation are the routes to success.

What the person fails to realize is that, with an increased self-confidence and a greater understanding of oneself, he or she can revive the dreams, the passions and the relentless pursuit of goals.

Let’s now look at the Bhagavad Gita, and Krishna’s famous injunction to Arjuna: You only have a right over one’s actions, not over the fruits of those actions. Let’s recall the context in which this injunction was made. A frightened and depressed Arjuna, faltering on the battle lines, afraid of killing his own relatives and kinsmen, sought moral guidance from his charioteer, friend and guide, Krishna. Krishna at that time, had to offer Arjuna a package that would address both his immediate and his long-term confusions and needs. Since at the tiem it was the result of his actions that perturned Arjuna the most, Krishna asked Arjuna to disengage himself from the results and perform the actions he was duty-bound to do.

The question: is this the philosophy that one should follow throughout life? Is this the philosophy to follow when pursuing one’s dreams, when one’s actions are taken precisely because of the results one seeks for them, when one has to constantly seek and change course depending on the outcomes of one’s actions? Is this the philosophy that one can afford to follow when one has a deep personal and emotional investment in the outcomes?

The Gita is written for a world where people worked to serve society, where the actions of individuals were governed by the “role” they fulfilled in society. To interpret it in the modern context wher eeach individual is asked to pursue an individual destiny, we need to reshape its teachings to a modern context where we don’t want to be bound by “roles”.

The basic message of the Gita, then, is to not attach one’s self-worth to the outcomes of one’s actions. To take an example, performance in a critical ceritificate examination or competitive examination, while critical in determining one’s future options, should not be viewed as a way of measuring one’s own self-worth. A single careless mistake in such an examination should not undermine one’s confidence in oneself. The rank should not be a determinant of where one places oneself. Nonetheless, it is important to prepare for such examinations, to give one’s best, and use the results of such examinations for an analysis of where one’s flaws lie. It is also completely natural and acceptable to feel glad or disappointed based on the outcomes of such examinations.

The Gita is important, thus, for goals that have been thrust externally upon one. When it comes to goals one sets internally for oneself, the picture changes. Here, one is deeply involved with the results, the way things shape, and one may use them as crucial determinants of one’s feeling of confidence in oneself. For pursuing these dreams, thus, it is important to have such a store of goodwill with oneself and confidence in oneself that one can handle such setbacks without lowering one’s self-esteem. Which is where the ideals of Buddhism come in.

In short, then, Buddhism and the Gita are not valid reasons to stop dreaming, to give up the pursuit of one’s goals, to stop pursuing excellence. They are not injunctions to follow the middle path. Rather, they help to provide shock-absorbers that make erstwhile difficult terrain easier to negotiate, by eliminating the sorrows fears and insecurities that often come in the way of realizing our dreams.

Anger as a tool for reform

Anger and moral outrage, so-claled righteous anger, just anger, moral anger, moral high grounds, pure anger, have often been touted as great virtues, in yet another paradox to a traditional setup that encourages servility and self-sacrifice.

Hindu mythology is replete with stories of saints who, whne disturbed in their penances, showered curses on the distractors with radiant anger. The Hindu sage (was it Kapil?) got angry at the 60,000 sons of King Sagar who went in search for his Ashwamedha horse. Ahilya’s husband, Gautam, turned her to stone out of anger at her consorting with Indra (who was posing as Gautam). Parashuram was a short-tempered saint.

Not only saints, but even more ordinary individuals had, not only the power to utter curses, but to have their curses implemented. Great kings, gods and warriors like Dashratha, Pandu, Krishna, Karan, and so on have met their fate due to curses by common people.

Anger has been touted in the mythology as a cleansing, a purifying, a protecting and an empowering influence on an individual. The Brahmin, the highest of all, is said to be the best because he (masculine bias intentional) can both summon intense anger and dispel it when needed. The other castes, which feel anger but are unable to modulate it as effectively, are considered somewhat inferior in this respect.

Why do religions (which usually encourage servility) propagate the virtues of righteous anger? The apparent paradox between anger and servility is not really a paradox. An angry, stubborn, disgusted, frustrated individual is much easier to control than a happy, peaceful and self-satisfied individual. A housewive (bias intentional) who is perennially angry and frustrated with her husband and her home is much better a candidate for a spiritual servitude than a lady who has no anger at her husband and family and just deals with them as independent and responsible individuals. Anger, fear, guilt, stress are all tools of control.

Sample the following from Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. After Winston and Julia make “love”, they are discussing the mechanisms by which the Party suppresses them. Winston feels that the Party wants them to be continuously at war so that it can keep depriving them of essential commodities and making demands of them that would not have been valid at peace time. Julia offers a deeper insight. She says that the Party doesn’t allow them to make love and foster genuine love because the Party knows that after one makes love, one is too contented and at peace with the world to care a damn about all the idealistic stuff preached by the Party.

And rightly so. Angry and disgruntled people are always easier to control, always easier to manage, than people who don’t care a damn, who are happy and contented.

Today, people are increasingly rejecting anger as a tool for managing their personal lives. Educators do not flog students to drive points home into them. Physical violence, though still very prevalent, is not viewed as a virtue. Even emotional violence, self-denunciation and anger at other people is not viewed as an effective tool for work. New psychological and philosophical trends de-emphasize anger in personal development.

One of the reasons is the increasing role of mental tasks. While anger debilitates both the mental and the physical, the physical debilitation is not so severe, visible or immediate. So, an angry housewife (bias intentional) had no reason to suspect that anger was harming her. A labourer angry at his (bias intentional) employers had little ground to suspect that his anger was worsening the quality of his life.

Few mathematicians can argue that they are able to prove more theorems when angry; few programmers can argue that they can put in cleaner code when boiling or fuming with rage. A person close to tears and despair finds it a significant handicap when indluging in tasks that extensively use the creative and critical faculties.

Yet, despite the realization that anger plays a negative role in our personal lives, we somehow still believe that anger has a positive effect when it comes to transforming communities. And not just specific anger at specific incidents, but general anger at commmunities and institutions for their evil practices. People are not only taught to feel angry, they are also taught to feel proud of their anger.

Take Malcolm X. In his attempts to fight for racial equality, Malcolm X, a former drug dealer, advocated Black pride and identity politics. While criticizing the whites for feeling pride in their race, he fought for colour-pride of the Blacks, asking them not only to take pride in their colour but also in their bad Negro image. Charles Hamilton and Carmichael publised Black Power where they rejected integration as a subterfuge for the maintenance of white supremacy. Julius Lester (who later changed his views), in his manifesto, glorified black anger by saying: “Psychologically, blacks have always found an outlet for thier revenge whenever planes have gallen, autos have collided, or just every day when white folks die. It is clearly written that the victim must become the executioner”.

Recently, with the burning of the Deccan Queen, newspapers came out with sensationalist statements like “Dalit Rage on the pot-boiler”. The message: Dalits are perfectly within their rights to feel rage; not only that, Dalits are duty-bound to feel rage and anger and to take revenge. If a non-Dalit says that Dalits should not feel rage, the non-Dalit is accused of being an insensitive casteist.

A friend of mine was telling me that people are carrying a 300-year old baggage of anger and resentment, so they can’t be blamed if the anger occasionally shoots overboard. Question: How can a person who has lived for 30-odd years have anger that dates to 300 years ago? Only if his/her parents have passed on the anger to him/her. It is indeed a shame that we applaud the inheritance of anger from parents to children, that we want grudges and resentments to live longer than people, that we value hurt egos and past rebuffs more than our present lives and joys.

Yet another friend, in a discussion, said that if people aren’t angry about their problems, they will not resolve them. Of course, at some level, a bit of anger, disgust and repulsion with one’s present situation serves as an impetus for getting out of it. But “righteous hatred”? This friend argued that only when an oppressed class is “angry” can it wreak havoc on its oppressors. Without anger, people just won’t be bothered. If we aren’t angry about the state of poverty, why will we endeavour to correct it?

Proponents of anger often admit that they use anger as their main recourse because they know there is little logical corroboration for the stands they take. In fact, by resorting to anger, they often even stop trying to reason and look for the many valid rational points that make their stand strong. Anger is basically a way of immunizing oneself against all opposing arguments — but it also immunizes oneself against all supporting arguments.

Anger is interestingly very common among all professions construed as noble. By noble profession, I mean a profession that requires a lot of work, that requires dealing with unpleasant people, and where there are in general very little returns to investment. These are the kind of professions which, inherently very challenging, have been made attractive by being given the title of noble. The title of noble, then, seeks to make a virtue of the hardships, seeks to glorify the self-sacrifice, and seeks to look down upon others. It seeks to look down upon money, precisely so that people can be attracted to the tasks at low pays. These professions include household drudgery, teaching, social work, environmental service, military service, and medicine.

The teacher is taught that he or she is doing a noble task by spreading education, and is told to look down upon others who go there to make big money. The teacher is thus taught to sneer down at and feel frustrated with stupider people making bigger fortunes. Of course, in today’s world, teachers are not falling into this trap, because teaching is being seen more and more as part of the mainstream of professions.

The housewife (bias intentional) is taught that she is doing a noble task by taking care of her kids, serving her husband, cooking, washing dishes and so on. She is taught to feel great about her sacrifices, to glorify them. She is taught to keep to herself her frustrations at making the sacrifices, and to feel good about those little secret angers and grudges that she holds. She is taught that working for money is evil, and that by working for free for the family, she is being non-commercial and good (thus, the often strong disgust that housewives have for traders, maidservants and so on who are making money for work the housewives do for free). Luckily, in the current era, with the gender roles becoming less stringent and with homemakers enjoying stronger links with the outside world, this bias and anger on the part of the housewife (now, homemaker) is reducing.

The social worker (modern equivalent of religious monk) is taught that people are stupid and callous about their social responsibilities and that he/she is the one to show them the correct path. If people don’t follow, they are idiots. The social worker feels proud of his/her disgust at the materialism of the rich, the perpetration of inequality at others, and the callousness of individuals. Many a social worker feels it is within his/her right to shout at, insult, sneer and jeer at others. Hopefully these attitudes are changing.

In summary, anger is a very potent tool for the suppression of those who are angry, for bringing about mob behaviour, for keeping people in check and manipulating them. Anger has been used at the level of nations (by war-mongering leaders), at the level of segments of society (poor against rich, anti-reservationists against reservationists, blacks against whites, Dalits against caste-Hindus), at the level of people against people (women against men, students against teachers, subordinates against bosses). Anger makes people revel in the righteousness and moral security of being the underdog, the one discriminated against, making one’s underdog status simultaneously a point of great personal virtue and of great injustice against oneself.

Five point someone?

Five point someone. For those who didn’t know, this is a book about what not to do at IIT. Talk of a trend of anti-heroes and baddie-goods; Five Point Someone tops them all. Thrilling and gripping, this book is 270 pages of pure fun.

What makes this book sell?

Chetan Bhagat says: “A sweeper would like to get somewhere too… I don’t want to claim high moral ground, but a sweeper with six friends is better than a CEO with none…”

The message: friendship is superior to good grades. People who go after grades sacrifice their friendships for all, and they suffer for it by living a vacuum. On the other hand, people who don’t forsake their friends and suffer along them… well, they suffer, but in the end, they are the ones whose lives are richer.

In Professor Cherian’s own words (as in Hari’s dream): “Sometimes I wish I had had a friend, even if that meant a lower GPA. It must be good to have vodka on top of the institute roof at night.”

Apart from being a glorification of vodka, what else does FPS stand for?

FPS stands for the end of a long literary journey. The literary tradition earlier stood for the values of perfect heroes and evil villains, the black-and-white system where thegood guys (and gals) won against the bad ones. This literary tradition was accused of making people appear too perfect, and of not catering to the flaws in individuals. We then moved to glorifying the villains, the evil spirits, and the destroyers. Today, we have moved full circle, with our heroes being the champions of mediocrity and ordinariness, making blunders and faux pases throughout, and finally managing to scrape through with a few deep moral insights (which should have been obvious right at the start).

The main virtue of FPS, then, is that it is depressingly realistic. Embodying the point-of-view of the self-proclaimed losers.

Sample this:

• The FPS description of toppers: Hari says on Page 65: “I felt disgusted. Nobody in Kumaon talked to Venkat; given a choice he wouldn’t talk to himself. He had a good GPA and everything, but that was hardly human. Venkat woke up at four in the morning to squeeze in four hours of muggins before classes. Every evening he spent three hours in the library before dinner. Then, after dinner, he studied in bed for another couple of hours until he went to sleep. Who on earth would want to be with him?”
• The FPS description of class hierarchy: Sample this: “[Prof Veera] offered chewing gum to the first row students. The front row guys were all mugging nine-pointers, and freaked out at his offer. They declined, and he shrugged and popped a piece in his mouth and turned to the board.”
  Talk of stereotyping!
  Goes further: “Ryan and I were chronic backbenchers; out of sight, this was the most defensive position for the outcaste five-pointers, but Prof Veera did not care”.
  And further: ” “I like that”, Prof Veera said, looking at the nine-pointers who were busy taking frantic notes like trained parrots.”
• The FPS description of the race in IIT: In Ryan’s words “And this IIT system is nothing but a mice race. It is not a rat race, mind you, as rats sound somewhat shrewd and clever. So it is not about that. It is about mindlessly running a race for four years, in every class, every assignment, every test. it is a race where profs judge you every ten steps, with a GPA stamped on you every semester. Profs who have no idea what science and learning are about. Yes, that is what I think of the profs. I mean, what have IITs given to the country. Name one invention in the last three decades”.
• The FPS description of a traditional Indian girl: The narrative goes “The movie was Total Recall, another sci-fi action crap. That’s the thing about English theatres in Delhi. They either show action or adult movies. I don’t mind the latter except that you can’t really take a girl to them. Especially these really nice and good-Indian-traditional girls like Neha. So, you have the choice of a sci-fi action nonsense or a Hindi movie. No self-respecting girl will watch a Hindi movie on a date. Hence,…”

  Or the following touching dialogue from Ryan: “Yes, every man has needs. And pretty girls like you are either not aware fo them or deny them for power games”.

• The FPS description of a good life: The narrative goes: “I don’t know when we first discovered this roof, it must have been soon after we started smoking grass, which must have been soon after we started bodka, which was soon after we started listening to Pink Floyd. Floyd, vodka, grass and the insti roof; finally, we were onto what really mattered in life, the stuff that made IIT life bearable, especially when you were a five-point something”.

FPS touches the heart of the common person. It tells the story the way it really is, from the viewpoint of the underdogs. Underdogs have always been popular, haven’t they?

Insofar as FPS is symptomatic of the loser’s need for acceptance and integration into society, it is acceptable. However, the undercurrent of FPS goes much further — it actually glorifies the loser and puts him/her on a morally superior plane to the better-off, through such insinuations as muggin. FPS in fact is part of the richer tradition where:

• The poor are glorified and the rich condemned, because in poverty there is camaraderie, unity and simplicity, while in wealth there is meanness, arrogance, and isolation.
• The stupid are glorified and the intelligent condemned, because the intelligent are capable of manipulating and exploiting to gain their ends, while the stupid are left.
• The weak are glorified and the strong condemned, because the strong don’t need protection and sympathy, while the weak depend greatly for their well-being on the strong.

People always had excuses to provide for mediocrity, for insincerity, and for laziness. Excuses would range from a we can’t help it to a the good ones did it by cheating and we don’t want to be like them. Till now, however, these excuses were scattered across and spread by word-of-mouth. FPS provides a concise summary of all the excuses, and at the same time comforts people with the fact that they’ll eventually grow up and get out of the mess. FPS gives credence to catch-phrases like friends over grades and get a life. Whether it is Cherian doing an about-face, Neha doing a forgiving act, or Veera sailing the students through, FPS urges people to fearlessly ruin themselves and salvage themselves later.

So let’s look at the question: what is the evil in the grading system that FPS attacks?

True, the IITs have a grading system, and again, true that this grading system is an important determinant of future academic and career options. Since Chetan Bhagat has been to the IITs, let’s take his word that the grading system also determines a person’s social status in the institute, and serves as a near-equivalent
of a past caste system, minus the fact that it is possible to change one’s caste.

Chetan Bhagat offers a neat solution: disregard the caste system of the IITs by fashioning your own religion. Schemes like C2D and Operationa Pendulum indicate a new cult, a new set of core beliefs, that three five-pointers form. Rather than pushing themselves up within the system, these three people try to forge their own system. In short, a new meaning to the term rebellion. (to Bhagat’s credit, the three people do suffer the consequences, but the suffering is just part of the excitement).

The fact is that this kind of solution isn’t feasible. Caste systems, of whatever kind, cannot be fought by reverse caste systems. If the strong discriminate against the weak, the weak can’t become strong by discriminating against the strong. For such discrimination only highlights and entrenches their weakness. If the rich distrust and disparage the poor, the poor can’t become rich by developing contempt for wealth. The only advantage of this reverse caste system is that it converts tears to drinks, covers up a sense of failure with a thin layer of moral superiority, and inhibits all action that could have been taken to remedy the situation.

Stubbornness and pride in one’s weaknesses is the biggest handicap in an individual’s way. Ironically, Ryan, a hero of FPS, illustrates this superbly. Stubborn about not following a flawed grading system that fails to recognize him, Ryan suffers cold shoulders from professors who might otherwise have been a receptive audience for his many creative ideas. Ryan is, of course, not the first person to experience such problems. Shrinivasa Ramanujan, the great Indian mathematician, suffered greatly from lack of self-esteem, and yet he was unable to put in that bare minimum of conformity to his surroundings that would have ensured a longer and more productive mathematical life. Evariste Galois, a very promising mathematician, got caught in a quagmire of politics and girlfriends, thanks to the stubbornness of his political beliefs. Result: he suffered an untimely death in a duel.

Portraits and books often stress on the quirks and emotional failings of individuals, because a person’s failings are often more interesting and realistic than the good points about a person. But these portraits often also convey the wrong message: that it is the failings that took the person so far ahead. That it was one’s inability to conform to a system that made one go beyond it. That stubbornness is an indicator of moral depth.

To summarize, the common person’s and average individual’s concerns need to be addressed by our literature. And of course, we need fun literature. But literature that, in the name of fun, reinforces harmful beliefs, condemnation of the strong, and glorification of weaknesses and failings … well! That’s FPS for you.

Reservations — and the "action-oriented approach"

In this post, I shall talk of the “high ideals” espoused by many a college student and some concrete realities. I shall talk of some facets of the anti-reservation protest that made such news in May 2006, and then I’ll proceed to talk of the appearances versus genuine change paradox that goes deep through the Indian mentality.

I’ll begin with a little discussion of the reactions of “upper class” city college students to the Manmohan Singh government’s decision to introduce 27% reservation for the Other Backward Classes in college admissions. Note that my summary is very crude and almost completely second-hand or even third-hand.

I first started getting requests to sign petitions around the first week of April 2006, and by May, anti-reservation protests were making the national news with AIIMS students organizing a massive dharna at the front gate. The catch-phrases used by the more sophisticated of the protestors was dilution of centers of excellence and there was general criticism of the government for covering up its miserable failures to educate students at the primary and secondary levels.

On the other hand, there were a whole lot of other voices, initially ignored by the media, but gradually coming into the picture, which criticized the anti-reservation protests as a means for upper-caste students to suppress the lower castes and show them their place. For instance, the dharna organized by AIIMS students understandably inconvenienced a number of patients who rely on the services of AIIMS, particularly poor out-station people. Thus, the students protesting were deemed as selfish, insensitive and casteist. Further, it was argued that those on the favourable side of the caste divide can afford to ignore it.

With time, the battle took on a somewhat different flavour with the anti-reservationists clarifying that they were not against reservation per se, but that they were against a political scheme of reservations. Let economically weaker sections get the benefit of reservations, rather than simply giving reservation to a person based on surname. A balancing notion of economically rich and upward people from socially backward castes was dubbed with the name Creamy layer. The progressive view held was that reservations should reach out to the genuinely needy and should not go into the hands of the creamy layer. The Supreme Court thus passed a ruling asking the government to exclude the Creamy layer from the benefits of reservation.

I will now, very cautiously, present my views on the issue and the interesting light it throws on the “high ideals” of college life.

First, note that bandhs, demonstrations and rallies have had a long history in our country. Our freedom struggle, comprising the Non-cooperation movement, the Civil Disobedience Movement, and the Quit India Movement, had demonstrations, hartals, and disruptions of public life at different scales and in different ways. Ambedkar led huge rallies for mass conversions to Buddhism among the Dalits. People have both accomplished and stalled political, social and economic objectives via the techniques of mass arousal.

So what is it that lends power to large numbers of people coming together for a cause on the streets?

There are two factors at play. One, of course, is the extent of the disruption. Going by the thesis that an average person is considered only about his/her personal, individual, immediate problems, mass protests make people who were not adversely affected by the original problem, take notice of it. For instance, the issue of wage determination is a matter between the employer and the employee, and a person outside is not concerned directly with it. If, however, the employee union decides to go on a strike against the wage rate and takes out a demonstration on the roads, the daily commuter suddenly finds the original problem affecting his/her personal life. Thus, the commuter starts feeling the need to resolve the problem.

The second factor is an indication of commitment to the cause. When a person goes on hunger-strike for a cause (say, better food to be served in animal farms) he/she is indicating that this cause means a lot, and demonstrating his/her commitment to it. Even though going on hunger-strike may directly do nothing, it infuses a sense of urgency into other people that compels them to take another look at the matter.

Now, for either of these factors to be operational, the person who decides to participate in the strike, rally, protest or demonstration should be clear as to the following:

• What is the cause for which he/she is fighting? Is the person willing to explain this cause to anybody who comes and questions him/her on it?
• Why is he/she choosing this disruptive means of fighting? Have the other routes been closed for other reasons? Is the person willing to explain his/her choice of mode of protest to anybody?
• What response does the person expect which will lead to the protest being called off?
• Most importantly, is the person indulging in the protest willing to take full responsibility and blame for any injury/damage resulting to him/her during the protest? (Injury could be physical assault, severing of relationships, removal of job) Or will the person blame those he/she is protesting against for such damages?

At one extreme of the spectrum are the people who go ahead with participating in a protest only if they are clear on all these counts. At the other extreme are people who are led by mob hysteria and sob sentimentality and plunge into the protest because it feels the right thing to do.

Where along the spectrum did the anti-reservation protests lie?

This is a question to which I do not have an easy answer, since I did not talk first-hand to any of those leading the protests, nor to any of those very actively involved with it. However, I did get a kind of overall feel from the mails that were sent to me urging me to sign on the Youth For Equality petition, and from the many email exchanges by people supporting the protest cause. The overall feel I got was that although most anti-reservationists had a number of reasons for being anti-reservation, few of them actually bothered to explain those reasons in a rational manner, and instead sought to use emotional planks to justify themselves. They cited that it was obvious that reservations were nonsense, that those opposing reservations were brave like the freedom fighters, and that those supporting reservations were hypocrites who were just covering up their own inefficiency at helping the poor by offering stop-gap measures.

At least two people I know of opposed reservation on the ground of their personal experience: these were people who had come from smaller towns, where awareness was not high, but where caste discrimination was also not high. These people, despite much better academic performance, found it more difficult to get admission compared to others from similar academic backgrounds, but with the backward tag. Such personal experience is a very valid ground on which to feel opposed to reservation. Other persons had seen the effect of reservations in colleges with which they or their friends/relatives had been associated, and what they saw had convinced them that reservation rarely served the purpose of uplifting the poor. In short, there were a lot of diverse personal experiences that explained why some people were anti-reservation.

These are the kind of inputs and experiences that, if shared with others, if well-presented, could have led to a growing and healthy debate on the issue of reservations. However, the leading voices we heard in the mass media were cliches like dilution of centers of excellence and politicization of caste. Many an anti-reservationist often treated discussion as an anathema, as a kind of compromise on high ideals, as an attack on the highest ideals.

Of course, there were a lot of anti-reservationist voices that tried to collect, forward and publicize information regarding how the reservation system has been ineffective and why introduction of further reservations for OBCs may not serve much purpose. What I doubt, though, is whether those most vociferous in protesting tried to understand the angles and perspectives involved in the issue. I also think that they may have wrought more damage to the anti-reservations cause by taking a factual issue to an emotional plane — something where vote-bank-oriented politicians rule the roost! Also, there were a lot of people around me who simply got disgusted with the overt publicity the protestors were being given and the “suppression of the other side”.

Note that in none of these points am I trying to argue that those who were against reservations were doing so out of petty selfish interest. Quite the contrary — sitting for hours at the gate in a hot searing summer, shouting slogans and getting emotionally worked up can hardly be argued to be in one’s petty selfish interest. Of course, those protesting wanted to preserve what they considered the integrity of their institutions, of the systems that had given them so much in terms of value. The selfishness that prompts one to seek the highest and best for oneself and the institutions one is associated with is the most noble kind of selfishness, it is not petty. What I am pointing out, though, is that the protesters did not satisfy the basic criteria for a successful well-reasoned protest. Again, my views in this regard are subject to correction from people who have more direct experience of the anti-reservation protests.

Where does the root of the problem and the conflict lie? Why are people unwilling to discuss and share facts and why are fights often taken to the emotional plane?

I think the root of this lies in a much deeper way the Indian psyche is tuned. The Indian psyche has been tuned to recognize the importance of hardwork and rote. When a young Indian needs to do well in academics, he/she is asked to practise and solve problems again and again. No serious mathematician attributes his/her success to solving multiplication and addition exercises from textbooks. Yet, this is the “educational” approach followed throughout India. The rule of the stick and rote is famous.

Action on the ground has always meant going out and doing things. The homemaker who stays at home and takes care of the kids is looked down upon while the breadwinner who goes out and works is looked up to. The person who toils and sweats is treated with great respect while the person who sits in an air-conditioned office is termed a parasite. Hardwork, struggle and sacrifice are lauded while the ability to plan and manage things is looked down upon.

It is in this context that theorists are frowned upon and people feel compelled to prove their social credentials through ground action. Even the most ineffective ground action (like teaching four poor kids for one hour) makes a person feel more of a genuine social worker than what years of study could have done. Reason, argument and discussion are becoming old-fashioned tools and “direct action” is more sought.

This same action-oriented philosophy has also percolated into social action.
For instance, in the article NSS a must in CBSE schools:

CBSE schools in Bangalore have welcomed the move. “It will kindle a selfless spirit in them,” Shanta Chandra, associate principal of National Public School, Indiranagar, said. “It can be made compulsory even in classes below IX,” Venkat International Public School, Rajajinagar, principal T Balakrishna said.

Over the last 5-7 years, social service and social work has almost developed into its own fad. Just like it is fashionable to be selfless by drinking Pepsi and Coke and smoking cigarettes, it has of late become fashionable to kindle a selfless spirit by standing for long hours in the sun and teaching poor kids. College kids are of late being lauded for socially responsible initiatives. We want the benefits of development to reach the poor and we believe in development with a human face to it, cry out the high ideals within us.

The argument that going out and doing social service is helpful in understanding social issues is probably just as naive as the belief that repeatedly doing addition and multiplication will make one a great mathematician, or that repeatedly laying bricks will make one a great architect. The desire for action without contemplation has made people value the appearances of doing things far more than actual changes.

No wonder, then, that in a similar vein, the anti-reservationists were lauded as people who were brave enough to go out and fight rather than carrying on mere academic debates.

Can this harmful mentality be reversed or changed? Who can change it?

If anybody can change this harmful mentality, it is the people who understand the value of homework, who know what it means to think and contemplate and collect data and not be rash. It is the people who know the perils and mental agonies needed in decision-making who can caution others against acting rashly. It is people who have struggled through effort and initiative who can point the demerits of thoughtless toil.

But people like us who know this feel a little sheepish about doing this because their opponents have already seized the moral high ground. Our opponents have already taken to the streets, to sticks, to loud voices and to great actions. And by giving in to them, by not raising our voices against the shouters, we have let debates sink into mere emotional planks and weapons. We have made debates into showcases, because we, the people who know and could have made a difference, allowed the others to revel in their moral superiority.

It is we people who understand the futility of anger. Yet we fail to stand against people who spearhead a good cause with the use of anger, for fear of being deemed hypocrites and insensitive individuals.

And this needs to be addressed.

I will pick up further from here in an upcoming post on anger as a tool for reform and change.

Looking forward to comments.

Social awareness and prejudice

In my last blog post, I talked about the many traps and fallacies
involved in social service. Here, I want to continue the discussion on a slightly different footing. I want to discuss
the attitudes that make for genuine transformation of society.

I was recently reading Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal by Ayn Rand. It’s a really fascinating and well-written book (of course, that does not necessarily mean I agree with everything in it). There was a particular paragraph there that echoed thoughts deep in my mind:

Apparently, planting rice or digging ditches in Asia, Africa, and South America, constitutes service to the United States, — but preparing oneself for a productive career, does not. Teaching our own illiterates in hillbilly regions or city slums
constitutes service to the United States — but going to college does not. Teaching retarded children constitutes service to the United States — but acquiring a PhD does not.

This is the kind of attitude we see all around us. Social service, service of the poor and the downtrodden is highly valued and esteemed (even by people who have not intentions of doing it) while working to achieve personal ambitions is considered greedy, selfish and materialistic. Why do we see this attitude around us? Why does working for others, particularly
those in need, evoke so much “respect”? And is this really a good thing?

In this blog post, I shall describe the role of social awareness and how/why it differs significantly from social service the way the term is typically used.

First, a look at caste prejudice, a prevalent social evil in India.

Caste prejudice is a belief that a person’s station in life is limited by his/her parentage no matter what kind of talents or personality that person exhibits. While caste prejudice is bad for everybody in society, it is most hurtful to the castes who are condemned to unhygienic tasks (particularly manual scavenging) and
where the children are denied basic educational facilities and access to public facilities.

People exhibit caste prejudice in different ways:

• Overt prejudice: Here, a person openly and shamelessly declares that a person born to this caste has got to have a certain kind of personality. e.g. Vaishyas are by nature unscrupulous businessman, Kshatriyas are by nature brave, Brahmins are by nature academic, Chandalas
  are by nature unclean, and so on… Note the important point of caste prejudice is not the desire to suppress a particular caste, but the actual belief that that caste has certain traits. it is this belief that is the prejudice. Overt prejudice is sustained by open declaration, it is passed on by openly
  ingraining the ideas, by using examples to prove one’s prejudices and
  negating/twisting counterexamples. Most importantly, overt prejudice is
  maintained by ridiculing those who do not have the prejudice and by
  using one’s prejudices as the basic axioms of
  reasoning.
• Covert prejudice: In today’s era where people preach liberty,
  equality and freedom from discrimination, overt prejudice is gradually being replaced by covert prejudice, particularly among educated people. Covert prejudice is clearly far less harmful than overt prejudice, but it still leads to animosity,
  social division, and discrimination. For instance, I might suspect my friend for being money-minded, with his caste being one of the bases for my suspicions. If a person from a caste I dislike happens to be late for a meeting, I might immediately connect it with his/her caste.
• Discomfort: Here, a person does not consciously hold any prejudices against any other caste or section, but may feel a sense of discomfort at the subconscious level while dealing with people of different castes, because he/she is still aware of a caste difference.

It often takes three generations to pass from overt prejudice to no prejudice, even in a democratic equal society. Overly prejudiced parents drill their prejudices in the children so deeply that their children end up having the prejudices, even if other inputs tell them that prejudice should not be there. So the children may cover it up enough to reach the state of covert prejudice. When they have children, those children are told not to be prejudiced, but they sense their parent’s covert prejudices and hence develop a sense of discomfort, despite not having any explicit prejudices. If they recognize that their discomfort is a vestige of prejudice, they can overcome their discomfort sufficiently so as not to make caste
differences a criterion at all for their children.

Question: Can people get rid of their caste prejudices through conscious effort? Can
people make others get rid of caste prejudices? What are the most effective tools to get rid of prejudice?

Answer: It is possible to get rid of one’s own prejudices, but only if one is willing for a whole lot of painful self-introspection; if one is willing to admit that one’s world view is markedly wrong; if one is willing to admit that what one’s parents taught one is profoundly incorrect. How many of us are willing to do this? Why would we take all the pain, particularly if our prejudices are sufficiently covert for us to argue we don’t have any prejudice at all?

It is not possible to get rid of another person’s prejudices; it is only possible to lead that person to a point where he/she decides to get rid of the prejudice. This in turn can only be done by first appealing to that part in each human being that stands
for equality of souls and justice among humans. People can be moved to change themselves only if their confidence in themselves and their innate goodness is asserted.

Now a look at typical ways social activists handle prejudice:

• They proclaim that prejudiced people are idiots and compare prejudiced people with Fascists and Nazis(even Hitler was prejudiced, right?) Not a very effective method. The overtly prejudiced people can just ignore and shout back, the covertly prejudiced people can deny having any prejudice at all.
• They proclaim that prejudiced people are being prejudiced because of their
  petty selfish interests. Again, not completely true. It is true that prejudice often serves the short-term selfish interests of some people, particularly those higher up in the social order, and therefore it does not appear in their interests to get rid of the prejudices. However, prejudice also often incurs additional inconvenience and cost for people, even those who are high up. For
  instance, a person with prejudice against “untouchables” may refuse a job to a competent person because he/she is from an “untouchable” family. People from different castes may not be able to marry. Most importantly, even if prejudice serves people’s selfish interests, few people try to become prejudiced in order to serve their own selfish interests.
• By accusing prejudice-free people of being socially unconcerned. Today, for the first time in India, we have a generation where a large segment of society is completely prejudice-free: people in the cities who have now crossed the three-generation mark of going from . Clearly, this segment of society may not, to begin with, appreciate all the problems of caste prejudice. Yet, social activists treat this ignorance as high-handedness and lack of concern. Guess where this takes the battle against prejudice?

The very important point is that one cannot get rid of caste inequity and caste injustice without attacking caste prejudice. Yet, people, failing to recognize this, often commit two mistakes: overvaluing anger/retaliation and encouraging
self-contradictory alliances.

First, about anger and retaliation. Anger is one of the most destructive of human
emotions; it destroys one’s personal life, it destroys one’s professional life; and yet many people strongly believe in the power of anger and bloodthirsty in bringing about social reform. Few would argue that a person can stitch clothes,
cook meals or write newspaper articles better if he/she is perennially boiling with rage at nameless faceless enemies. Yet, there are many who argue that it is the anger of the people that brings about lasting social change.

There are lots of interesting things about anger. Firstly, anger shifts the focal point away from oneself. When A is angry at B for ruining his life, and revolves all his thoughts around how life would have been different had B not been there, A shifts the focus and responsibility for his fate to B. Admittedly, A may be “justified” in all the points he raises against B, but that still does not make his continued boiling rage productive for him.

Feeling anger for some time and distancing oneself permanently from an evil influence, by acknowledging its evil, are commendable. What is unproductive is to continually focus on the other person, as the source of one’s problems. The whole point is that if a person continually stays in a state of boiling rage, he/she starts identifying the rage with his/her personality and finds it more and more difficult to let go of the rage.

Most importantly, anger absolves one of the responsibility for constructive action, gives one the license to hysteria and histrionics, and makes one feel morally superior even with every bad act one does. If A is angry at B for a
perceived big insult, A may subject B to several small insults, feeling morally superior because he knows that if B complains, A can throw back the big insult.

If individual anger can be so deadly, what about mob rage?

Mob rage gets far worse, particularly because many people who get dragged into the mob are angry about a whole lot of other things. Mob rage is the technique of redirecting people’s frustrations and angers (which they were encouraged to collect) into a single cause (that they may not really feel about) and giving them the “supreme power” to do whatever they want without any accountability. Mob rage is about telling people that they can take revenge for the injustices committed on them by nameless faceless centuries.

Mob rage also blackens the entire cause by giving it an unnecessary confrontational note, while at the same time by tainting those who were not in the mob with the same brush as those in the mob. Sample the recent burning of the <a
href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deccan_Queen”>Deccan Queen by an angry mob in Thane. This was believed to be in “retaliation” to thedescration of an Ambedkar statue in Kanpur. Now look at the way politicians and the media reported the event. “Dalit mobs burn trains”. Does this remove prejudice against Dalits? How would a prejudiced person read this? “Dalits are good-for-nothings, one statue gets destroyed and they go and burn a train”. What did burning the train serve? It served to make out as if Dalits were a bunch of molecules in a simmering boiling pressure cooker that has been on the stove for centures (note, incidentally, that a person’s life is usually less than a century). “Dalit anger” is nowadays being touted as a “phenomenon” like “global warming”. Is this the kind of publicity that we need to move towards a prejudice-free society?

Another interesting aspect of the battle against caste prejudice is the fact that the battle for caste equality is often clubbed with goals such as being “environment-friendly”, promoting “international equity” and promoting “world peace”. All of these may be very important causes, but there is no easy connection
between them. Dalits are not the same as trees. Improving the living standards of the downtrodden does not proceed along the same lines as not using plastic. Yet there is a very large intersection between the champions of these causes — why? Because these both come under the club of being goodey-goodey in a social sense.

Both from my personal experience, and from practically all the autobiographies I have studied, it is clear that the in the modern “technological” era, the selfish interests that were responsible for caste prejudices coming up in the first place, tend to disappear. People from the lower castes, who were treated inhumanly in their native villages, found jobs in the cities. Why? Because the way the economy is structured in a city environment, prejudice simply isn’t of any use. With new enterprises propping up every moment, with people having so many options open to them, it makes no sense to let prejudice come in the way of hiring the most competent person. Hereditary systems just don’t work in an environment where profits and competition are the driving force and where the competing market is sufficiently big.

Yet, it is very rare for those battling against caste prejudice to actually be pro-enterprise and pro-technology, to actually support city life. Instead, they blame the cities for the inhuman crowding of people (many of whom migrated from villages) and further treat entrepreneurs who have made fortunes by giving people what they want, on the same footing as zamindars. After all, the natural allies of people battling for caste equality are people battling for less pollution, and don’t we know that city life has led to increased pollution?

Which brings us back to the question: what do we really need to do to remove prejudice? Spread awareness. Factual awareness, without pointing fingers and without anger. Make people conscious of the impact of prejudice; the way their prejudice is
harming themselves and others around them. The solution does not lie in going and giving money to the discriminated-against people, or improving their living condition. This can only tackle the impact of the prejudice. It is a very important step towards removing social inequality, but it cannot be the only step.

Which is why spreading social awareness is very different from doing social work. One can go and teach poor downtrodden kids and yet not get any idea of how to tackle and eradicate prejudice. On the other hand, one can often do a lot towards eradicating prejudice by spreading awareness in a correct, constructive spirit, without doing any “volunteer work” on the ground.

Social awareness is about understanding the enemies and the right ways to tackle them rather than merely about making moral judgments and condemning the sinners.

Social service

List of important words commonly treated as synonyms: charity, social service, developmental work, self-sacrifice, social commitment, non-materialism, social responsibility, social awareness, contribution to society

Do these words really mean the same thing? Is charity the same as social service? Are people engaged in social service always more socially aware than people who are not? Are socially aware people more socially responsible and are they more committed? Are they the ones who make the maximum contribution to society?

I want to claim that none of these are equivalent. In this and the next couple of posts, I’m going to substantiate these claims by a lot of examples, most of them drawn from personal, day-to-day experience, from things I have seen with my own eyes (with identities blurred sufficiently).

To begin with, what really does constitute social work? What is the common definition people ascribe to social work? And what are the fallacies that many social workers, particularly amateur social workers, operate under?

An important disclaimer. When I use the term social work for most of this, I am typically referring to commonly encountered amateur social workers, and small-scale organizations. There are a whole lot of people who do a great deal of developmental work and social work, who put in a lot of effort and have a lot of experience, and who value the importance of professionality, of competence, and of homework. My “target” in this blog post are the chalo, let’s serve society types.

If we take the literal meaning of social service as “work done for society” then practically all economic activity qualifies as social service, and the more you pay, the more work you end up doing for society. Some of your acts of social service may include:

• Having a meal at a five-star hotel: You pay 500 rupees or more for a meal. But it’s not just for your own stomach, is it? Some of this money will go in the salary of the hotel employees. Some of them would be trying to move upward in life, saving from their salaries to send their children to better schools, to get better living standards for people in their family. Some of this money will go to the hotel management, which may use the saving to make new hotels, and thus employ even more people!
• Taking a trip around the world: Social service here is not just national, it is international, knowing no national bounds. You contrinbute (a little bit) to the economies ofall countries that you choose to visit. Your money may make a profound difference to that little kid who sold you the souvenir near the beach in Phuket. How do you know? You never know.
• Producing a superhit movie: You’ve managed to entertain a huge audience, you’ve managed to channel a lot of revenue to distributors, you have made the economy more vibrant! You have also increased popcorn sales at some of the theatres that did brisk business becase of you. You have given a good kickstart to the careers of the actors, actresses, director, and all that others involved with the movie.

Contributions to society such as the above three do not usually qualify as “social service”. On the other hand, contrast with these activities that would ordinarily qualify as “social service”:

• Giving fifty rupees to a charity organization: Of course, these fifty rupees are getting used in noble tasks like feeding and educating poor people, right. And besides, you are not expecting anything in return (e.g. you are not being bothered about whether that money is really making a change on the ground).
• Volunteering for any kind of work related to or with poor people: Volunteering to teach poor kids (never mind if you know how to teach), volunteering to go and baby-sit a poor child
• Volunteering to do any task considered “menial”: This apparently helps the people supposed to do the menial tasks, and also invokes the right sense of humility in you as a worker. Thus, if I sweep my own floor, I am doing social service. But if I hire another person to sweep my floor, I’m just being commercial, specially if I don’t pay that other person a “decent” amount (incidentally it also makes me exploitative).

The third example is particularly interesting, because it also links to the question of payscales. It has often been argued that a sweeper “should” get the same amount as a businessman, or at least an amount sufficiently close to it. Fair enough. Proponents of equality, however, often go further: they argue that since the sweeper should get this much fraction of what the businessman gets, any businessman who does not pay the sweeper that much is being exploitative. If a bricklayer should get as much as a builder, a builder who does not pay the bricklayer as much as himself/hereself is an evil person.

If we apply the same argument to cooks and waiters, we will easily conclude that the only “socially just” restaurants are five-star restaurants — at least there the waiters and cooks get good salaries. By this logic, then, proponents of equity should always have their meals in five-star hotels.

If we apply the argument to bricklayers, where and how would property prices be impacted? How many of those who urge for social service are willing to pay for a house that is a few lakh rupees more expensive simply because the bricklayers there weer paid executive salaries?

If we apply the argument that farmers should get paid as much as executives, what happens to the prices of foods? Who gets most impacted when the prices of foodstuffs rise? Other poor people.

Does that mean that we can never have a situation where everybody gets around the same amount of money?

May be we can. However, such a situation, if forced in today’s setup, will raise food prices, property prices and force people to always pay five-star restaurant rates for meals. It is anybody’s guess what will happen if all domestic help suddenly becomes as expensive as an IT industry job. People just will not hire domestic help. They will seek other solutions — get more tools to speeden up their domestic work and reduce the need for domestic help. This will also leave the current domestic help unemployed — a somewhat worse situation. But don’t worry — such a situation will not last even in the most rigid of legal frameworks. There are people who want to employ cheap domestic help and there are people willing to provide it. No law can stop them coming together.

Changing the price of a job is useless if one does not change the utility and skill level for the job. So the only way to retain a high price is if people meekly agree to pay the higher price out of their “sense of social duty”.

Clearly, thus, social service does not just mean doing good for society, because if that were the definition, acts condemned as being luxurious indulgences become great acts of social service.

What then is a genuine definition of social service?

A definition that suggests itself is: “work done for society that is not achieved through commercial transactions (apart from donations)”.

Basically, the new definition is forced to exclude any kind of social service done by purchasing goods (unless there is an explicit percentage donated to charity). This is the definition in most peoples’ minds, which is why making money from social service is detested. Making money from social service would remove its defining feature and make it into just another socially useful economic activity.

This leads to a number of interesting corollaries. Firstly, anybody who creates a model of social service that makes him or her very rich is automatically thought of as being exploitative. Why? Because he/she is using the fact that poverty and social inequity exists to make his/her personal fortune. Interestingly, this would make practically all economic activity exploitative. The vegetable seller is exploiting people’s physical need for vegetables and making a persona fortune out of it. The actor is exploiting people’s need for entertainment and relaxation and making crores out of it. In short, anything that one does exploiting the desires and needs of other people is exploitation.

Second, since social service is wrongly equated with charity and giving away without expecting anything in return, imposition of quality standards in social service becomes more difficult. Firstly, the social servant prides him/herself on not working for money, on working without personal gain. Thus, the social servant is also liable to reject expensive exploitative services. For instance, a small social organization may prefer to hire “free teachers” (regardless of whether they are qualified) than hire teachers who know their job but charge the market fee (because those people are being selfish).

This kind of “money management” could be expected of a poor family, who don’t really have the choice of paying the market fee. But is it fair for a social service organization, to, as a matter of principle, subject themselves to the constraints of the same poverty they are trying to alleviate?

Third, people indulging in social service often start undervaluing the importance of time — both their own and of the people they are trying to help. I have seen some social workers feeling that just because they are going and teaching a poor kid how to read and write, the world should be beholden to them. The value of a mother who teachers her own child how to read and write (and a whole lot of other things) seems to pale to the social worker compared to the value of her own going for one hour and sitting with a poor kid with a book. The social worker then bemoans lack of volunteers and blames this on selfishness and social neglect. Any guesses as to why?