W’end Links: Mumbai, Memories, Poverty and Kak Bhushundi

Start your weekend by reading  how online efforts triggered by the attack on Mumbai last year eventually died down…

Next, a fascinating article on how memories are distorted and invented

…then read Gurcharan Das’s good news about poverty.

and finally, excerpts from the sacred story of Kak Bhushundi.

Excerpts from all the links below, as always…

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*** Excerpts from Mumbai no longer meri jaan ***

…New Delhi: On the Facebook group “Mumbai Terror Attacks: I condemn it” (membership 35,166), a new condolence message was posted on 15 June—mourning not a victim of the attacks last year, but the defeat of the Indian cricket team in a Twenty20 match.

…Until last November, Sathya N., 21, worked at Nirmal building, Nariman Point, near the Trident hotel in Mumbai. After the three-day carnage, when many of her friends were talking about participating in candlelight vigils or meeting groups of people hungry for change, Sathya was busy signing up with online groups forbidden by her parents to participate in the marches.
Sathya joined as many as four Facebook groups.

…(today) These Facebook groups have…turned into platforms for random discussions unlinked to 26/11, its impact on Mumbai, or ideas that can bring about the change they once sought.
…What these groups lacked, according to Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, was a dedicated team to keep the momentum going. “They don’t have intelligently incremental action points that keep their audiences increasingly engaged,”

…It was perhaps the need to sustain momentum that drove some of the offline citizens’ groups into the political sphere. Anil Bahl allied his Let’s Rebuild India with the Professionals Party of India. A group called Jago Mumbai turned into the Jago Party, which fielded a candidate in the Lok Sabha election from north-west Mumbai. (He lost.) “We decided that we couldn’t do anything alone,” says Bhuresh Barot, a working member of the Jago Party. “You need to be in power to do anything.”

…The 26/11 online groups lost their followers, Abraham argues, only because “there was no unified vision of where these groups wanted to go. Properly designed advocacy efforts on the Internet such as that of Michael Geist from Canada, who managed to block anti-consumer changes to the copyright law by using a Facebook group, will and can work”.
That may be true. But it may also just be as Barot says: “People got busy. This is Mumbai. This is a fact of life.”

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*** Excerpts from How Memories are Distorted and Invented ***

One evening in 1975 an unsuspecting Australian psychologist, Donald M. Thomson, walked into a television studio to discuss the psychology of eyewitness testimony. Little did he know that at the very moment he was discussing how people can best remember the faces of criminals, there was someone encoding his own face as a rapist.

The day after the television broadcast Thomson was picked up by local police. He was told that last night a woman was raped and left unconscious in her apartment. She had named Thomson as her attacker.

Thomson was shocked, but had a watertight alibi. He had been on television at the time of the attack and in the presence of the assistant commissioner of police.

It seemed that the victim had been watching Thomson on television just prior to being attacked. She had then confused his face with that of her attacker. That a psychologist talking about identifying the faces of criminals should be the subject of just such a gross memory failure – and at the very moment he was publicly explaining it – is an irony hard to ignore.

Donald Thompson was completely exonerated but many others have not been so lucky.

…Donald Thomson’s ordeal, though, is a perfect example of Harvard psychologist Daniel L. Schacter’s fourth sin of memory (Schacter, 1999). Unlike the first three sins, which all involve being unable to access memories, this is the first sin that involves the creation of memories that are false in some way. When a memory is ‘misattributed’ some original true aspect of a memory becomes distorted through time, space or circumstances.

These sorts of studies on the misattributions of memories can be existentially disturbing. This is because each of us is effectively the accumulation of our experiences, our memories. Who we are is – at least partly – what has happened to us.

…Discovering the scientific evidence for how easily memories become confused, distorted or just plain break through from fantasy to reality is like discovering that part of ourselves is fabricated, false in some way. As psychologist William James points out in the opening quote, memories can be carved from both reality and our dreams.

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*** Excerpts from At last, good news about poverty by Gurcharan Das ***

…Unlike China which has embraced growth enthusiastically, India has a vast industry of ‘poverty-wallas’, who incessantly raise doubts if our growth is pro-poor.

These ‘growth skeptics’ tend to make our reformers defensive, which slows reforms and the nation loses the potential for even higher growth. Earlier they argued that post-reform growth was ‘jobless’ until recent data has proved them wrong. Nowadays, they usually say, ‘growth but…’ While the type of growth does matter, the truth is that growth in itself is virtuous, and we should celebrate that India is experiencing this miracle.

Now, two experts on poverty have come up with new research which shows that India’s high economic growth since 1991 is, indeed, pro- poor and has decisively reduced poverty. Gaurav Datt and Martin Ravallion, both respected economists, employed a new series of consumption-based poverty measures from 1950 to 2006 and 47 rounds of National Sample Surveys, to show that slightly more than one person in two lived below the poverty line in India during the 1950s and ‘60s. By 1990 this had fallen to one person in three. By 2005, it fell again, and only one in five persons now lives below the poverty line.

The authors conclude that ‘the post-reform process of urban economic growth has brought significant gains to the rural poor as well as the urban poor’. (See ‘Has India’s Economic Growth Become More Pro-Poor in the Wake of Economic Reforms?’ http://econ.worldbank.org,Policy Research Working Paper 5103).

The poor in urban and rural areas are now linked through trade, migration, and transfers, which explains why rising standards in India’s towns are helping to reduce poverty in the villages. Even though agricultural growth has been relatively weak since 1991, overall high growth has affected positively the lives of the rural masses.

This is an outcome that the reformers had dreamt of.

…The dampener, alas, is that inequality after 1991 is also increasing. This happy news, however, must be seen in the context of lost opportunities. If only India had reformed agriculture and had functioning schools and health centers, the poor would have gained even more from high growth…

India’s failure in education and health is not a function of money alone, as the Prime Minister suggested this week when he vowed to raise spending on education to 6%. When one in four teachers is absent and one in four is not teaching, we need accountability in delivering services to the poor. Thus, administrative reforms are just as important to the lives of the poor than even economic reforms.

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*** The story of Kak Bhushundi (courtesy Urday.com) ***

Replying to the query of Garuda, Kak Bhushundi said: ” At one time, I was born in Ayodhya. I was a shudra then. Once a famine occurred there, so leaving my birthplace, I migrated to Ujjaini. There,I took Shiva mantra from a Brahman. I had great discrimination then in my mind. Despite being a devotee of Shiva, I used to hate Vishnu and Rama.Though my teacher was a true devotee, but I used to criticize Narayana. My teacher kept on convincing him that Shankar and Vishnu are one. Even Shankar himself takes the name of Rama. To discriminate between Hari and Har and criticize any one of them is a sin. But for my ego,I never paid attention to the words of my teacher.

One day sitting in the temple of Shiva, I was reciting Shiva Mantra when my teacher arrived there.I did not greet him nor stood up in his respect. My teacher a saint in nature did not feel bad. But Lord Shankar in a celestial voice then proclaimed: “You will have to take birth 1000 times in the form of insects and worms.” Hearing that voice, the kind Brahmana felt sorry for me. He prayed to Lord Shiva: ” O Lord, he is an person with no knowledge, pardon him.” Pleased by the kindness of the Brahmana, Lord Shankar announced some relaxation for me. He said: ” He will not be sorry for his birth and death. Whatever form he takes, he will leave that without pain. By my grace, he will remember all these events. During Rama Avataar, he will find salvation.”

Thus by the curse, I wandered in many forms and now have taken birth in Brahmana clan. My parents had passed away in my childhood. Now I have only one desire to have a glimpse of Lord Rama. With this desire I have been wandering from place to place… Thus wandering, I reached the hermitage of the sage Lomash. Finding me a completely detached Brahmana, came to teach me about Brahmagyan(the supreme knowledge). He also preached me about the formless, intangible God and I countered his words by supporting the tangible appearance of God. This infuriated the sage Lomash and he cursed me saying: ” you are so much stubborn on your decision, so go and become a crow.” At once I acquired the body of a crow…To read the rest, follow the link above.

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Have a safe, relaxing weekend. Keep smiling and stay healthy!