W’end Links: Intelligence, Cash Transfers and Poverty Levels

Start the weekend with this fascinating piece on a flawed understanding of intelligence.

Move on to a persuasive piece by Swaminathan S Aiyar on why direct cash transfers may provide better relief  to the drought hit than NREGA.

Next, read Aseem Shukla on why Scotland’s myopic act of mercy in releasing Abdel Megrahi may cost the world dearly.

And finally, read RealityCheck on why  Below Poverty Level is not “Below Poverty Level”.

Enjoy the weekend. Stay Safe and Keep Healthty.

Excerpts from all the above articles below, as always.

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*** Excerpts from Not Every Child Is Secretly a Genius by Christopher J. Ferguson ***

…A number of scholars, including L.L. Thurstone and more recently Robert J. Sternberg, have argued that intelligence has been defined too narrowly. But Gardner, a professor of cognition and education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, who won a prestigious MacArthur Foundation “genius award” in 1981, has had enormous influence, particularly in our schools.

Briefly, he has posited that our intellectual abilities are divided among at least eight abilities: verbal-linguistic, logical-mathematical, visual-spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, naturalistic, musical, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. The appealing elements of the theory are numerous.

It’s “cool,” to start with: The list-like format has great attraction for introductory psychology and education classes. It also seems to jibe well with the common observation that individuals have particular talents. More important, especially for education, it implicitly (although perhaps unintentionally on Gardner’s part) promises that each child has strengths as well as weaknesses. With eight separate intelligences, the odds seem good that every child will be intelligent in one of those realms. After all, it’s not called the theory of multiple stupidities.

Multiple intelligences put every child on an equal footing, granting the hope of identical value in an ostensible meritocracy. The theory fits well with a number of the assumptions that have dominated educational philosophy for years. The movements that took flower in the mid-20th century have argued for the essential sameness of all healthy human beings and for a policy of social justice that treats all people the same. Above all, many educators have adhered to the social construction of reality — the idea that redefining the way we treat children will redefine their abilities and future successes.

…The only problem, with all respect to Gardner: There probably is just a single intelligence or capacity to learn, not multiple ones devoted to independent tasks. To varying degrees, some individuals have this capacity, and others do not.

…Despite some naysayers (think of Richard E. Nisbett’s Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count, published this year by Norton), evidence from behavioral-genetics studies has long shown that environment plays a much smaller role than inheritance in the development of intelligence…Many people like to think that any child, with the proper nurturance, can blossom into some kind of academic oak tree, tall and proud. It’s just not so.

…That is the root of the matter. Too many people have chosen to believe in what they wish to be true rather than in what is true.

…Naturally, we must be careful to avoid the fallacy that some people deserve to live in poverty, or that entire groups of people are inherently inferior in regard to intelligence. In the past, those arguments have been used to support oppression, racism, and slavery, and we must not repeat those mistakes.

Yet the belief that intelligence does not exist as a single, reliable, important, genetically determined construct is an equal fallacy. Unfortunately, some children and adults are just unintelligent. It’s not fair, it’s not politically correct, but reality is under no obligation to be either of those.

…Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences was a great idea and worth investigating. It’s just not panning out. Hanging on to the theory for nostalgic or political value is not science. It’s time that we begin to work with the reality that we have, not the one we wish we had. To do otherwise would be just plain stupid.

*** End of Excerpts ***

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*** Excerpts from Cash transfers better than drought relief works by Swaminathan S Aiyar ***

I became a journalist in 1965, when two successive droughts killed thousands and forced India to beg for US food aid. India’s share of global food aid was so large then that a best-selling book claimed that India was unviable and should be left to starve, conserving food aid for viable countries.

How distant those dark days seem!

…Most people think that the Green Revolution ended mass starvation. Not so. The Green Revolution improved yields, and made India self-sufficient. Yet, it did not raise yields sufficiently to increase foodgrain availability per head. Remarkably, grain consumption per head in later years rarely reached the 1964 level. 

Why, then, did droughts cease to cause mass starvation? Because of better food distribution, not production. In subsequent droughts, enough food got through to the worst hit.

Rural employment was the key to success. Maharashtra first experimented with an Employment Guarantee Scheme when hit by successive droughts in the early 1970s. Simultaneously, countries of the Sahel region in Africa suffered repeated drought. Food aid was rushed to Sahel, while very little came to India or Maharashtra. Yet, there was mass starvation in the Sahel, and none in Maharashtra.

Economists Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze explained the paradox. In Maharashtra, grain availability per head was just half that of the Sahel. But employment schemes enabled hungry Maharashtrians to earn just enough to stave off death. Maharashtra suffered mass hunger, but not mass starvation.

The opposite was true in Sahel. Food aid piled up in ports and godowns, but there was no mechanism to get it to those starving. NGOs, government agencies and free kitchens did not have the necessary reach.

In Maharashtra, the market provided the reach. Once the needy obtained purchasing power through employment schemes, the market drove grain to where the money was. This reached the needy more efficiently and completely than free government kitchens.

…Rural employment schemes plug the financial gaps of small farmers and thwart distress sales. This not only relieves suffering but improves economic efficiency: small landholders are efficient.

How should rural employment be tailored to meet needs in the current drought?

…A radical solution would be for states to stop rural works and simply pay the legal compensation to job-card holders. This will cost less than rural works, since money will not be spent on materials or supervision: it will go entirely to the needy. In effect, cash transfers will replace rural works. Activists like Dreze will demur: they think rural works create durable assets, despite evidence to the contrary. I believe that in a major drought, we should focus on getting cash to the needy, not on building mud roads that vanish in the next monsoon.

*** End of Excerpts ***

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*** Excerpts from Myopic Mercy Cannot Undo Bad Karma ***

…Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi is a mass murderer, that is beyond doubt His release was perfunctory, that is also beyond doubt. A Scottish prison would have, no doubt, facilitated copious amounts of morphine and demerol for a terrorist in the last throes of metastatic prostate cancer. He would have died much more mercifully in jail than the victims of the Pan Am flight he conspired to destroy. While the Scots knew they were gifting a convicted terrorist the comforts of home and family in his last days, they ended up gifting him much more–a heroic welcome and a martyr’s narrative that could only end up inspiring many more generations to come. What a tragic error!

As always, we view this action in the varying contexts of faith and realpolitik. A believer in Indic faiths — Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism or Sikhism — understands that the terrorist has accumulated terrible karmas with his actions. Whether he is meted out punishment or not, eternal empirics dictate that every action has an equal reaction. He must suffer for his maledictory actions, and payback may occur in this lifetime or the next. A horrific act can only but wrap the soul in extra layers that will need to be shed over lifetimes to resume its ultimate destination towards moksha, or nirvana — liberation. Indeed, vindictive punishment by mere mortals can too saddle those inflicting punishment with negative karmas, even if they seem justified. Behold the importance of ahimsa, or non-violence, in the Hindu ethos.

But realpolitik is eternally relevant to those of us that inhabit this world of maya, or illusion. And our governments, military, police–our homeland security–are entrusted to protect and serve their citizens. This is a dharmic trust that cannot be eschewed. When the Indian government released three Pakistani terrorists after an Indian Airlines jet was hijacked, one of the released, Maulana Masood Azhar went on to found the Jaish-e-Mohammed. That Islamist group attacked Indian soil on countless occasions taking scores of lives. Capitulation, even if justified to save lives of the passengers, cost India a decade of terror that still continues. Dharma dictates that a punishment be complete and meaningful.

Scotland’s myopic mercy may pacify a conscience now, but may cost our global community dearly tomorrow

*** End of Excerpts ***

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*** Excerpts from Below Poverty Level is not “Below Poverty Level” by RealityCheck ***

In a fake socialist state like ours, nothing is free.  Within weeks of Amartya Sen holding out his theory that poverty is not just being poor, the Congress government has announced this gem.

Currently, BPL families are identified on the basis of scores (0 to 4) on 13 socio-economic parameters. But an expert committee, formed by the rural development ministry, has recommended additional marks for scheduled castes and tribes (SC/STs), Most Backward Castes, Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and Muslims. If a household has members with tuberculosis, leprosy, disability, mental illness or AIDS, it will also be awarded points. [ link ]

… The Indian state will divide people even for completely secular purposes such as identification of the poor.  The actual benefits that accrue to the BPL families from such divisions are not important.

What is important is to demonstrate :

• the power of the elected to determine your position in society in a completely ad hoc way
• the width of this regime. It is not just about college seats.
• the plight of those who are not covered. (we get nothing, but my neighbour gets shafted, so this must be good for me, let me vote for my group)
• the irrationality of it all (for example : why are christians not given 1 point for being a minority? )

*** End of Excerpt ***