India’s response to the ill-effects of a toxic pesticide has been slow and inadequate

Endosulfan, a pesticide, has been poisoning villagers in India over the past two decades. Its use has caused physical and mental ailments among thousands of children and adults and deaths of many hundreds. In 2011 India agreed to ban endosulfan, and, more recently, it offered compensation to its victims. But now it is falling short to keep both those promises.

The pesticide, once commonly used, damages the central nervous system and causes hormonal changes in mothers and babies. It leads to many birth defects including cerebral palsy, a condition that causes physical disability. Worse still, it lingers in the environment without degradation, leading to its accumulation in the food chain and causing lasting ill-effects.

Commitment to ban?

In 2011 at the Stockholm Convention 128 countries, including India, added endosulfan to the list of pollutants that they agree to phase out of use. Following India’s commitment at Stockholm and after years of effort by the Democratic Youth Federation of India, a non-governmental organization, in May 2011 the Supreme Court banned the use of endosulfan in the country but allowed its exports to exhaust remaining stocks. At present India has 2000 tonnes of the pesticide and raw materials enough to make a further 4000 tonnes of it. As international demand for the pesticide has plummeted, the government has been forced to dispose this stash.

In July, because the Indian government was not ready to foot a $40 million bill for the disposal of endosulfan’s raw materials, it asked the Supreme Court to lift the ban on making the pesticide. In November the Supreme Court’s expert committee requested giving in to this demand. Citing that the treaty that Indian signed allows it up to six years to phase out endosulfan, so it could allow endosulfan’s manufacture and use without breaking its commitment. This recommendation was made even though the committee accepts that endosulfan is harmful to human health.

Sadly, endosulfan remains popular among farmers too. Manufacturing of the pesticide, if allowed, will be greeted with strong demand. Before the ban, India was the largest producer and consumer of endosulfan. It is cheap, easily available and curtails a variety of pests. For those unaware of its environmental consequences, there is little reason to not use it.

Studies show ill-effects of endosulfan use across the country. Kerala is the worst affected state. A 2012 state report linked the pesticide to 4000 afflicted and 700 deaths, many of whom suffered the fate because of aerial spraying over nearby cashew plantations. In some villages 50% homes have a child or an adult with severe disabilities.

In May the Kerela government, based on the recommendations of the National Human Rights Commission, agreed to pay compensation to the victims of endosulfan in Kerela. The amount varied from Rupees 300,000 ($5,500) to 500,000 ($9,500) depending on the victim’s suffering. But despite protests in September and December, the government has only paid 101 out of the 2453 victim families.

The request to allow manufacturing of endosulfan exposes the government’s inability to dispose the raw materials. If undisposed, the chemicals lie in poorly maintained warehouses. A task force setup to inspect one such warehouse in Periya, Kerala, after locals complained of foul smell, found endosulfan leaking from rusted steel drums. The warehouse also lacked storekeepers, fire safety equipment and first-aid kits, posing a serious threat to nearby villages and water bodies.

Endosulfan rehabilitation project, setup by Kerala last year to help the afflicted, started an operation to deal with such cases. Their first task was to contain the leaking drums. They are now hoping to get help from the government for disposal and detoxification, said Mohammed Asheel, the project officer.

Far too little, far too late

Pratibha Patil, former President of India, promised to double public spending on health care to 2.5% of the GDP by 2017. Among its first steps is a $5 billion free drugs plan, the implementation of which began in October. Surely then the Indian government can, apart from preserving the ban, also afford to stop poisoning its own people for a mere $40 million and also compensate those already poisoned.

First posted on The Allotrope. Image from here.

Although the title of the talk was ‘Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown’, after the Edgbaston test, it was clear that India would no longer be wearing that crown. On that note, Harsha steered away from cricket and began his talk by talking about the importance of studying at good institutes and how one must make the most of their time.

After completing chemical engineering at Osmania University in Hyderabad, Harsha graduated from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahemdabad (arguably the best management school in India) before starting his career as a sports commentator. Later, when someone asked him about the motivation to make such a drastic career change, he confessed, “Things just happened. It wasn’t planned.”

India’s 64th Indpendence Day brought Harsha to comment on the new buzz word in the Indian management speak – Jugaad.  He believed that  if Jugaad is taken to mean entrepreneurial spirit then it’s ok but if instead it means ‘just get it done somehow’, then there’s definitely lots that is wrong. The commonwealth games were mentioned in the next few words, obviously.

Cricket had to figure at some point and what better moment than when he had only finished talking about India’s ‘Chalta Hai’ attitude, right? A good start to the many issues that Harsha discussed. Following is by no means an exhaustive list of what was discussed (I’ve written it as if those are the words he used but I don’t have an audio recording of the talk to confirm that so please forgive my errors):

• Indian cricket lacks a system. Our Jugaad attitude has caused us many problems.
• There are always two teams playing. One on the field and one off the field. Both teams are critical. The off-field team needs to prepare the on-field team to do its job best. In India, we have an excellent on-field team but a very ordinary off-field team.
• We need to treat our players like corporations treat their brands. We must look at each player as a separate brand and we must understand what we need to do to nurture that brand. That’s the only way we will be able to bring the best out of the players that we have.
• Indian first class cricket is ordinary. Even a country of a billion people cannot have enough players for 27 domestic teams. We need look one level below where we are to know our own strength. Australia has a fantastic first class scene and that is what allowed them to be at the top for so long.
• IPL is a good thing. I am absolutely for it but may be it will hurt us in the long run. You can play for excellence or you can play for money. The player needs to make a choice.
• Can you seriously expect Sehwag to say no I don’t want the $2.5 million, I will get the shoulder surgery done during the IPL and be ready for the test matches in England? Can you expect Delhi Daredevils who have invested over $80 million in the team with Sehwag in the middle of their strategy to walk away?
• The order of things was that you graduated from test cricket into the shorter format of the game. Now the trend is reversing. That in itself may not be a bad thing but problems could arise when a player like Raina who is a star in T20s and ODIs thinks it is too much effort to play a test match and decides not to put in that effort. We may then spiral into not having good enough players for the test team. That could be a serious problem.
• There are many parallels between the EPL and the IPL. For one, both are overrated. Both produce big names but they may not the best in the world.
• BCCI is an earning board not a spending board. Some of the IPL money is getting invested in bettering our cricket infrastructure and it has definitely improved by leaps and bounds but the BCCI still spends a lot of money on unnecessary things like trying to not pay taxes.
• On the Indian fan – We the Indian viewers must ask ourself, do we watch Indian cricket like and Indian soap serial? Today the team has lost three tests to England, so we hate them but tomorrow we will win the ODI series or Sachin will score his 100th 100 at the Oval which will make us forget all about the test series altogether. Do we Indians view cricket as escapism, a daily reminder of our Indianness?
• Are we asking tough enough questions to our sports teams and their administration? Is Harbhajan really injured? I met a doctor who tells me that there is no such thing as an abdominal muscle injury. Can we not decide amongst ourselves that may be it’s not the right time to have Harbhajan around, let’s get someone else? Should Sehwag really be in England at all? Is he fit and ready to play the class of bowlers that England has in it’s team?
• On sports administrators – I’ve long held the view that sportsman don’t make great administrators. How many international games Alex Ferguson played?
• On Duncan Fletcher – The role of the coach is overstated in cricket. It’s the captain who calls the shots. He’s only supported by the coach. A team with a dominant coach is already a failed team. Cricket in that respect is a unique sport. It is the only game in which the captain (by which I mean the man who strategises) is on the field of play. In football, Alex Ferguson is the real captain of the Manchester United team.

He then answered plenty of questions, one that I asked him was with his brilliant insights has he ever been offered to help BCCI in selection or any other matters? He said he was happy he wasn’t involved. He believes that it is better if the people who have been on the front-line are the ones doing that job.

After the talk, he shared few stories from the cricketing world. About how Sachin says ‘Bats talk to me’, how McGrath claims that five of Steve Waugh’s thirty-two centuries actually belong to him (because as the 11th man he stood the ground and allowed Waugh to complete them!), how he has to manage doing quality analysis in a program despite all the commercial aspects (like Epson see beyond the usual moment), how different national cultures affect each countries playing style and many others.

Given the fact that I’ve actually remembered so much of what he spoke today might give you an idea of how much I enjoyed the talk. I am sure many others had an equally good time. I have to admit though that I am not a die-hard fan of cricket and whatever passion I have for the game stems from my love for the Indian cricket team and for the IPL. But I am not the typical fan either. I love them when they win but don’t hate them when they lose. In that regard, if there was one sports commentator in the world I wanted to meet in person then that would’ve been Harsha Bhogle. I’m glad I got that chance today.

PS: It’s a shame I didn’t take a picture to go along with this post. I’ve asked a friend to email me one that he took, when I get it I will upload it here.

I am not one for Shobha De’s cussing school but that does not make me averse to the idea of venting frustration. I also know that to be able to feel satisfied one needs an audience that will react to and alleviate the pain. Both these reasons make facebook the perfect place for putting up whatever the heck comes to your mind, right?

But here’s my problem: What’s the use of voicing your frustration in a private forum? Is the government listening? Are they worried that you are angry about what happened sitting in your plush home in California or your deluxe apartment in Manhattan? Are the people who actually got injured or lost a loved one going to check a social media stream to allay their suffering?

That’s not all. There is another class of people who love spreading rumours.

There are six bombs. Only three have exploded. Don’t leave your house and tell your loved ones to stay indoors.

Unexploded bomb found in Kalba Devi. The media is not allowed to report this story just yet. There may be more out there!?!

Word of mouth is a powerful marketing technique and facebook only enhances its capabilities. When asked for the source of the information being shared, most act like wary citizens who don’t know the source but out of concern shared the information. Duh?!? That is exactly how rumours are constructed to spread.

I am not one to disagree that it can feel a bit helpless when when such news hit our screens. The immediate reaction may be to do exactly that – update your friends about how you feel or tell them about this piece of information (that you have no idea where it came from but) you believe may save their lives.

There is something constructive you can do. Stop people from spreading rumours. Share information with people that can help them get to the right support services. Sign a petition. Write a letter. Go talk to the media. Don’t use mobile phones if you can avoid it. Check on elderly people in your neighbourhood. But most importantly stay calm and remain patient.

Cussing your heart out doesn’t help. Really.

Most of those, whom I know, who make the mistake of quoting Einstein at this juncture to appease themselves, are those who after a certain time of practising science have come to the point where they need to face the reality. The reality that fate is in the hands of us human beings and that we have a huge responsibility for all our actions. That the world is based on causality and is not some puppet show. Or it is those who have always believed in God but in a lab their belief system is contradicting their science. Or those, like me, who have always been agnostic but gone along with the flow of religious rituals because they never needed to question their religious views. (It is not uncommon to not have to face your own religious views when you are surrounded by people of very similar views, which happens a lot in urban India).

Before I state my case, I will make it clear that my main source of reference is Dawkins’ The God Delusion and Einstein’s essays on this topic. And I am aware that this may put off many of those who consider Dawkins to be wrong. I certainly don’t think Dawkins is wrong but I also am not an in-your-face-atheist (or a ‘new atheist’ as people call it these days). I say this because, irrespective of your views of Dawkins, his account of Einsteinian religion is an objective account of Einstein’s beliefs and as such can be considered independent of his views on God. So read the following without prejudices please:

Much unfortunate confusion is caused by failure to distinguish what can be called Einsteinian religion from supernatural religion (a supernatural creator that is appropriate to worship). Einstein sometimes invoked the name of God, inviting misunderstanding by supernaturalists eager to misunderstand and claim so illustrious a thinker as their own.

One of Einstein’s most eagerly quoted remark is ‘Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.’ But Einstein also said, “It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious conviction, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.

Here are more quotations from Einstein to give a flavour of Einsteinian religion:

I am a deeply religious nonbeliever. This is a somewhat new kind of religion.

The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive.

Einstein was repeatedly indignant at the suggestion that he was a theist. He admired Spinoza’s philosophy. He said, “I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings’?”

I’ll end this discussion with Dawkins’ explanation:

There is every reason to think famous Einsteinisms like ‘God is subtle but He is not malicious’ or ‘He does not play dice’ or ‘Did God have a choice in creating the Universe’ are certainly not theistic. ‘God does not play dice’ should be translated as ‘Randomness does not lie at the heart of all things.’ ‘Did God have a choice in creating the Universe?’ means ‘Could the universe have begun in any other way?’ Einstein was using ‘God’ in purely metaphorical, poetic sense.

The UK public values science and is interested in finding out about it, with two-thirds agreeing that knowing about science is important to them personally. The society is more at ease with science than a decade ago and sees science as leading to more benefits than harmful effects.

The UK government has recently released a study titled Public Attitudes to Science 2011. (See summary below). A foreword by the current Science Minister, David Willets, points to the fact this is the fourth in a series. The others were published in 2000, 2005 and 2008. I was glad to see that such initiatives have been taken at a governmental level. I’ll discuss some of the findings.

Many people feel their attitudes to science, both positive and negative, were formed at school.

Most also see careers in science as desirable, although there is less enthusiasm for working in science among 16- to 24-year olds.

The most interesting point in the UK report was the fact that. It makes me wonder how important it is to have a good science teacher given the impact he/she can have on a person’s life. It must make schools worry about how uninterested the youth seem to be about science.

The data suggest that recent media controversies such as “climategate” have had little impact on how much people feel they trust scientists, with a clear majority saying they trust scientists “about the same as they did five years ago”

Most support Government funding of science even for projects that bring no immediate benefits, even in the current context of reduced Government spending generally.

But it was pleasantly surprising to know that people still trust scientists especially after all the climate change skeptics have been rallying around the country to put to shame the scientists involved in the ‘climategate’. That trust is well demonstrated by the fact the public are ready to support blue skies research.

While searching for similar studies done in India, I found that the Indian National Science Academy had published a report back in 2005 which covers a wider a range of topics. The questions asked in both the two surveys have some common points but not many. I really like how well the executive summary of the UK report has been compiled compared to cluttered one in the Indian report.

The Indian Science Report looks at Science Education, Human Resources and Public Attitude towards Science and Technology. For this post I will focus on the findings related to the Public Attitude towards Science and Technology.

India’s attitude to science is hard to understand (probably because the surveyors did not ask the right questions?). I found the executive summary difficult to read. It was more facts thrown out at the reader where as it should have somewhat of a storyline.

Over three-fourths of the public feel S&T is are important for education. The perception is that the benefits of S&T are slightly higher (1.1 times) than its deleterious effects.

Less than 12% of the illiterates feel computers and factory automation create more jobs than they destroy while over half of the graduates and postgraduates feel this way. Just a fourth of all Indians are in favour of mechanisation.

Indians consider science to be an important part of our education but don’t think that it does much good. And, by the way, most Indians seem to be Luddites (!).

Television remains the primary source (57%) of information in the country, and is almost five times as popular as newspapers.
Weather news is the most popular S&T show watched on TV.

Most of the information Indians get about science is from watching TV and the weather report is the most popular science and technology show (!).

The most disappointing bit of the report for me was how little Indians read about science. Of course, it is not just the public to blame but the lack of science in the newspapers and the dearth of science magazines.

95% of graduates feel S&T makes life healthier, easier and more comfortable as compared to 56% of the illiterates. 80% of graduates think S&T will create better opportunities for the next generations as compared to 30% of illiterates.

The blame of the skewed results here also goes to show that the lack of education can make it very hard to understand and appreciate science. But the most annoying thing about the report was that comparisons mentioned were made between graduates and illiterates. What happened to those who are literates but not graduates?

A little over half of those in the lowest income quantile feel that new technology makes work more interesting way as compared to 80% in the top-most income quantile.

The difference in the few of the poor v/s the rich toward science is also expected. Do have a look at the full report for more ‘insights’.

Given that it is India’s first report, there is nothing to compare the current results with. Hopefully, there will be another report published in a few years that will give us more insights in to how the education policies affect India’s attitude to science.

This is not to say that the book should not have picked up on these important beliefs but the (misleading) subtitle led me to think that may be Indian science had really taken the strides to leave the discussion of astrology and homeopathy to only a few pages of a book on science. What was I thinking!?

Indian Science?

Here’s a reality check: I searched for ‘science’ on the Times of India website (It’s built such that I can’t even give you a hyperlink to the results of my search. Sorry!). In the first five pages of results there was not a single news article about a discovery or invention. Instead, I found psuedoscientific terms like astrology and spirituality in many of those results (even one where the Bombay HC ruled: Astrology is a Science, but we’ll get to that some other time).

Same with the Hindustan Times. I searched for ‘science’ (fortunately, this time I can give you a link to the search results here.)  No Indian science being referred to till the 19th result (which says lab at Kalina to test bulletproof jackets) and then there is silence on this topic for many pages of results ahead. Psuedoscience seems to have been kept under tighter lids here (and the HT even published a critical review of that book I was talking about!).

Even the Hindu, whose science coverage is the most respectable amongst all Indian newspaper, did not have more than a couple of stories  about Indian science (see link).

The only place I know where you can go to read about recent research findings from India is the Nature India website. Unfortunately, their articles are not written for a general audience. There is Current Science which is, again, not written for the public although some of the articles can easily be published for a wider audience.

There aren’t many Indian science magazines either. Scientific American India started in August 2005 and stopped in June 2007. Down to Earth is probably the only regular magazine which has survived a significant number of years, and despite what it claims in its about section I haven’t met any Indian who knew about its existence.  The most recent entry is Brainwave which is magazine for school children.

Either there is very little science of value being done in India or the media is just not interested in publishing science. What is surprising though is that when an NRI writes a book with a misleading title about Indian science, it gets rave reviews.

=====Part III=====

Just when it seemed that Saini was finally getting to the plot of how India might become the next ‘scientific superpower’, she stumbles on the piles of pseudoscientific beliefs that Indians subscribe to. The exercise starts when she tries to understand why some research institutes like the Academy of Sanskrit Research still believe that Vaimanika Shastra is a definitive text for the future of aeronautics.

Of course, she then comes across ‘scholars’ telling her how all the science that the west has discovered was already all written down in the Vedas. She finds it difficult to argue with these people even though some of them are well educated. She concludes:

Many of the ideas in these old scientific texts are mixed up with spiritual and religious notions. Genuine theories about the world works are not separate from murkier pseudoscience. That is fine though because the experimental method wasn’t really invented until about 350 years ago. It took this long for science to develop a recognisable structure, using hypothesis and tests.

But the strange thing about some of the books is that even the recent ones have the same bizarre mix of science, religion and pseudoscience.

There is an interesting analysis that follows this passage where she meets up with Sanal Edamaruku of the Indian Rationalist Association and Meera Nanda to understand why is there such wide spread belief in these irrational notions.

Nanda the historian says, ‘Indians have a weird psychology, I think. With respect to the rest of the world, we have an inferiority complex which we hide in a superiority complex. It is very aggressive way of defending your own faith by projecting it as superior.’

Edamaruku says, ‘Indians have two lives. For example, when a scientist consults an astrologer for the appropriate time for the marriage of his daughter, where is the scientific approach there? He’s the scientist, but he does not use his scientific approach or his scientific mind when it comes to his private life.

Edmaruku’s words resonate with something I have harped about before. Unsettling is the fact that it is not just the illiterate who are being pulled by the likes of modern day gurus and rishis into believing the non-sense but it is also the rich and the middle class. The richer section of the population is actually investing money in these quacks to be able to make sense of their beliefs and modern science.

At this point the book is well past the half way mark and there has been nothing that has especially impressed me or informed me but the storyline has kept me interested. Somehow though, the book is just seeming to be the story of someone who spent their time in India discovering the country around the word science.

In the last quarter of the book she spends time with Professor Mukundan who has developed Brain Electrical Oscillations Signature profiling for lie detection and whose data has been accepted by courts in India to support judgements. Here again, from her research Saini finds that there has been no peer review or analysis of how good the technique really is.

She meets up with researchers in Delhi and Chennai who are working and making progress towards finding a cure for tuberculosis. It is something that these researchers have to do because the western pharmaceutical corporations don’t think it is a disease that will have a big enough demand to defend their investment.

She discusses India’s attempts at e-governance and modern projects such as Lavasa. She travels to Trombay to hear all about India’s progress towards building thorium reactor and it could be the way India could some day become energy self-sufficient even with the demand rising much faster than supply.

And lastly, she goes to the Indian National Science Congress in Thiruvananthapuram where she finds that people talking about pseudoscience are given the freedom to present alongside world class researchers. She attends the Prime Minister’s talk where he talks about the importance of science in the progress of the nation.

At this point Saini ends the book leaving the reader in a state to make up their own minds. Probably a good thing.

=====Part II=====

After the depressing start to the book, Angela continues her journey on to Bangalore to understand the IT boom that the country went through and what the industries are doing now to help the nation.

She sees the Infosys Campus, interviews Narayan Murthy and meets engineers from Tata Consultancy Services but gets an impression that what these IT giants are doing is not innovative work but  providing quality resources at a very cheap rate to do a lot number crunching, outsourcing and such menial tasks. She couldn’t see ‘innovation’ as she was hoping to. She quoted the dismal figures of what these big corporations invest in research and development especially compared to the giants like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.

But there was some optimism:

Ananth Krishnan of TCS says, ‘Making existing things cheaper is something India has always been good at, ever since it started carrying out affordable software maintenance in the run up to the millennium bug.

There’s certainly something to be said for this approach to science and engineering. After all, this is how Japan launched its electronics industry in the 1970s. The island nation became a scientific powerhouse by undercutting American manufacturers on imported technologies like auto mobiles, computer hardware and consumer gadgets while maintaining great quality and an educated workforce.

To begin with, Japanese innovations did tend to focus on management practices and how factories were organised, rather than fresh science and new products. But as they got bigger, the Japanese developed their own cadre of inventors. They ended up doing research and making products that the world had never seen.

There were some other innovations too. TringMe was started by two Indians who left their high paying Silicon Valley jobs to start this service in Bangalore. Also, the Spoken Web technology that was conceived and built in the Indian labs of IBM.

Even the IIT Delhi which she had left unimpressed last time had something to offer after all. She writes about a club called Technocracy started by students as ‘they were tired of the theoretical, nose-in-a-book culture developing at the IIT.’ (Interestingly, they organise Science Quest which is aimed at creating and promoting a culture of Science Journalism at IIT Delhi). Finally, it seemed Saini had started to see real progress and innovation but that was not to last for very long as she came across the anti-GM lobbyists next.

To unearth the whole story she travelled to the interiors of Maharashtra and to the National Botanical Research Institute in Lucknow. She concludes at the end that in the anti-GM lobby science and nationalism have gotten jumbled up. In the one hand the lobby lacks any scientific credibility but on the other hand it has found a lot of support because the people fighting seem to develop nationalistic pride in the process. If instead of American manufacturers providing these seeds, Indian research institutes had done it then there would not have been so much support for the movement. The farmers were of a similar opinion.

India: it’s a nation of geeks, swots and nerds..[Skipped statistics of how Indians are taking over the world]..Geek Nation is a journey to meet the inventors, engineers and young scientists helping give birth to the world’s next scientific superpower.

As a sceptic, irrespective of the rave reviews that the book has got, I was going to read it. While I read it, I will share with you what I find to be the interesting bits about the book as well as give you a brief look at the story line.

=====Part – I=====

Saini starts the book by pointing out that India was once the most advanced scientific nation pointing to the likes of Aryabhatta. But the years since it has been ravaged by rulers and colonial powers, and has lost out on all that it once possessed. Yet, according to Saini, this century brings with it the hope that India will become a ‘scientific superpower’ to understand how and why she has decided to tour the country.

Her first stop is the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre where she chats with Prof. U R Rao. He tells her of the story of how the space research program in India began and how it always aimed towards the betterment of the society.

She then meets Dr. Vijay Singh who is the National Co-ordinator for Science Olympiads. Where he tells her about how sports is just not part of Indian culture but science is. He talks about a wunderkid named Nitin Jain and to understand the ‘prototypical Indian nerd’ she goes to meet him next. He has recently written a book called the ‘The story of my success’.

At his Faridabad home, she is unimpressed by the lack of excitement for science shown by Nitin.  But she even quotes him as ‘nothing much to do with the book, my parents wrote most of it’. He studies at IIT Delhi where she is headed next and describes it as ‘a real geek factory’.

At IIT Delhi she interviews a few current students who complain about the ‘filthy’ campus but praise the engineering classes. She compares how the annual budget of all of the IITs (15 in total) is equal to just 8% of MIT’s annual budget. But the most interesting bit of her experience was she attends a humanities course called ‘Macro perspectives on science and technology in humans’.

I’m the only person in the gloomy room at the top of a flight of grey steps for ten minutes. ‘I’m going to start anyways’, Professor Ambuj Sagar announces. Just a few late comers arrive.

The topic of the lecture is fascinating – the social reasons that automobiles went from small invention to mass-market marvel in the twentieth century – but almost all of the students stare at him blankly, uninterested. If it won’t help them pass their engineering exams, they don’t want to know. None of them are willing to ask questions, and even when he picks people to speak to the class, they look uncomfortable.

Returning the latest essay papers, he tells them, ‘I was a little bit disappointed that having harped on about innovation systems, the answers were not that impressive.’

By the end, he seems exasperated, ‘An innovation system is not an object, it’s what is in our minds,’ he implores.

Ambuj an IIT Delhi alumnus, returned after decades as a researcher at MIT and Harvard. ‘Students just don’t care anymore’, he complains. ‘What unfortunately globalisation has done is brought to India globalised opportunities and salaries and that is the incentive that students are looking at.’

Another student Nishant Ranka tells her that the only reason students come here is that when you leave you are likely to earn more than your father. When chatting to the dean of undergraduate studies, he tells her that coaching classes put students under tremendous pressure and their all-round development is affected.

The National Crime Records Bureau reports more than 2000 students committed suicide across India because they failed their exams.

At the end of her week at IIT Delhi she concludes, ‘I had hoped to find a geek’s paradise here but I haven’t. Instead of being the hothouses of intellectual curiosity and innovation that they promised to be when India created these grand institutions fifty years go, the IITs seem to have developed a culture of getting the grades and getting out.’

Our public places such as railway stations and bus-stands come close to looking like garbage dumps and spittoons. Our governmental projects always take double the amount of time and we continue to lose our country’s precious resources to shoddy implementation. But our netas and babus continue to flourish and enrich the coming seven generations! We continue to stink of rampant corruption in our public affairs, when in the ‘India shining’ we should have seen swift and transparent governance. All this and much more are fine for us – in fact, just about anything is fine because of our ‘chalta hai’ attitude.

But what really do we mean by this ‘chalta hai’ attitude? Well, to begin with it is a convenient blanket term to cover all this behaviour that reflects resignation to mediocrity and a lackadaisical approach of Indians in conduct of public life. We all often face injustice and corruption at different points in life – from big to small. From a babu in a government office asking for Rs. 500 to move our files ahead to ignoring sheer wastage of our tax money that the pre – Commonwealth disasters revealed – we just give in by finding exotic lame reasons for doing so: I’d rather give Rs. 500 but not waste my time in rebelling for my right to get this work done without a bribe or I have so much work of my own that how do I even care what happens in a games village or a stadium – we indeed have a stack full of excuses.

These excuses are making us ironically indifferent to the conduct of our own country’s affairs to such an extent that we have comfortably resigned to the status quo of affairs in Indian public life. This is, in turn, robbing us of optimum utilisation of our potential as a nation. However, more than critical question that arises here is that what has really bred this chalta hai attitude to this extent in our country? Is it years of colonial dominance that has now made subjugation and resignation to a dominant state of affairs a key feature of our conduct in our national and public life? Or is it inherent in the caste and other division dominant society where your birth determines your place in society and therefore, essentially, how much you can do about the state of affairs therein? Or are the reasons more socio-economic in nature, where the economically weaker find it futile and beyond their reach to indulge in the supposedly ‘wasteful’ practices of questioning and concepts of change, when they have more immediate and pressing things to attend to like getting two square meals a day?

Assuming all the above reasons are correct, one class of people that does not come (or at least should not) come under their purview is the modern generation – that is US – the young and educated lot that has the power of information. Brought up in a process of reasoning (or at least presumably so) and having exposure to various forms of media volleying ideas of liberal ideas of democracy, equality, freedom and justice upon us, we can definitely not be the ones making arguments of either a colonial relic or caste distinctions as being our shaping influences. Even if they were, the power reasoning and the element of rationality that we are supposed to develop as a part of our ‘modern’ education should supposedly help us analyse that irrespective of caste, economic status or any other division, the chalta hai attitude is a chronic problem of Indian public life, which affects us all.

With this, the obvious question that crops up is how do we deal with this unceasing menace? The solution can possibly be two-fold. First, at an individual level we need to realize that it is chalta hai because we let it be so! The nature of this problem and its various manifestations in public life is such that it thrives because we become a part of it and let it flourish through us. Therefore if, as a matter of conscious discipline and at the cost of possible inconvenience, we begin to question such situations and refuse to give in then probably the first steps in checking it have already been taken. The starting from ourselves we could possibly take it to our micro level organizations, which we are a part of, such as our RWA’s, clubs, societies and Unions and let it transform into the power of a collective attitude.

Secondly, it needs to become a part of our policy and process in conduct of public affairs. The standard of accountability should not only be having the work completed. Rather, it should be having the work completed within the stipulated time (if not the shortest time), delivering the best quality and with the most efficient utilization of the available resources. This system can be stimulated with a reward and punishment approach. Offering incentives to those who match these brand new parameters of good performance and ensuring consequences from holiday cuts to pay cuts for those ‘just let it be’ will probably be a good measure of enforcing accountability. These are just few of the possible approaches that we can take to deal with our ‘chalta-hai’ attitude. But more importantly, the idea of this piece is to get us to think- that there is a looming problem, and if we do not take the responsibility of dealing with it in time, it may just be the start of multi-faced crisis for us as a nation.

Deeksha Sharma is a DPhil student in law at the University of Oxford and blogs at The Silent Noise.