Elaborations...

Warning: Long Post

I gather from the feedback I have received that about my previous article that people have been unable to appreciate a few ideas that I sometimes take for granted. What follows is an elaboration on the ideas from philosophy, economics and other fields that have informed my critique of Saarang. I hope this helps clear the air about my arguments.

The article is divided into several sections, each detailing one specific idea. They are more or less independent of each other. Readers from outside IITM might find the context missing. My apologies.

On why Saarang can’t be about having fun:

People derive amusement from different sources. Fun, in the common sense of the word, is something that gives pleasure without requiring too much brain activity. That everybody deserves his share of fun is obvious. It is less obvious that others, particularly taxpayers, should bear the burden of providing opportunities for having fun to students. Nor is it obvious that a purely recreational activity should be subsidized by affording the organizers the required real estate free of charge.

There are two possibilities here. One is that Saarang be considered an institute activity. If this is to be the case, then it has to have educational value, otherwise there can be no case for spending taxpayers’ money on it (or for giving free facilities). The festival should aim to promote a value system that makes the students better human beings.

My article assumes that it ought to be so, but I am not against the alternative, which is a privately organized festival that leases the institute property at market for the duration of the festival. Privately organized or not, however, it will have to abide by the rules, esp. those regarding solid and noise pollution. I suspect, however, that in order to meet increasing costs, the organizers will have to increase sponsorship, and that they will not be able to juggle conflicting pressures from the institute and the sponsors.

I have no more to say about the possibility of privatizing Saarang. In any case, privatizing Saarang (arguably) leaves open the need for an alternate student organization to provide value education to students. It is this organization that I wish to talk about.

On Recreation vs. Culture:

Many people claim that though Saarang may not pay for the real estate, this does not amount to a subsidy because the institute does not make any other use of the land and students are supposed to have the freedom to use it. That is of course false. The whole estate of IITM, one might argue, is being used for the overall purpose of education. This does include providing some resources for accommodation and recreation to students. However, to characterize the use of these resources as a freedom would be laughable.

How much recreation is required? Aren’t the umpteen facilities provided within the hostels sufficient? Should the institute also subsidize (by giving free facilities) a mega-bash?

It is my belief that while on one hand sufficient recreational facilities exist (especially if we are to compare with the facilities provided to students in other government colleges); on the other hand the recreational aspect of Saarang interferes with the value education component of Saarang. The alleged value-neutrality of the recreational aspects of Saarang and the value-centrality of the core activities don’t, in my opinion, go hand-in-hand – and it is always value-neutrality that wins.

On value systems:

What do I mean by a value system? What are the value systems that make us better human beings? Unfortunately, there are no simple answers to this question, and I don’t think even the institute has a concise list of values that it wants students to imbibe.

By values, I am referring to qualities like honesty, hard work, smartness and so on. No one is expected to posses these qualities all the time – that is what makes a person human. Nor is there any rational explanation to why one set of qualities ought to be preferred over another.

One might ask whether the institute is qualified to make value judgments for all its students, and I will agree that it is in fact a little presumptuous on the part of the institute. If, however, we were to choose to be value-neutral, then the raison d'être for Saarang ceases to exist.

On popular vote vs. decentralization

As a votary of decentralization, I have often thought about this: till what level do we decentralize? At the highest level of decentralization, we could declare all individuals sovereign and we wouldn't need a nation-state. But this sounds ridiculous. And yet, we allow humans sovereignty over their own body (to a large extent).

The answer I can up with is this: when there is some common property, we need some sort of 'leadership'. For example, a lake is the property of the adjoining village. The ownership of the lake should rightly reside in the panchayat of the village.

What is the common resource in the IITM cultural scene? Not the money, for it is just incidental. It belongs to no one inside the hierarchy. The resource is the opportunity to use this money and conduct different events. This resource, I argue, should reside in those who actually take part in this activity.

In the metaphor I used, what would you expect if the state govt. were to control the lake? Typically, the state would hand it over to a company like Coca-Cola so the lake could be sucked dry.

The state govt. is elected, just as our cul-secs are. But because the power distribution does not reflect the ownership structure, we see all kinds of perverse decisions.

Minarchism is decentralization:

If decentralization were such a good thing, why do we see so little of it in our daily lives? Why are Panchayats literally at the mercy of state governments, who are in their turn at the mercy of the central government via the planning commission?

The answer is simple. Power. Men often like to accumulate it, and a number of anarchist philosophers have proposed that governments are always self-serving, i.e. they always hoard power, making government bigger than it needs to be.

Let’s look at a simple example. Soc-secs in our hostels buy crackers for everyone on Diwali using a common fund paid for by students. Is this necessary? Can the task of collecting money for and buying the crackers be delegated to individual wings? What will happen if it is left to the individual?

One might argue that since buying in bulk costs less, it makes economic sense to make it a common activity. But even if we were to leave the matter to the individual, the rational IITian will voluntarily form a group to avail a discount.

Common activities have to be organized with common resources. It is only the arrogance of power that lets a man usurp individual resources and organize in common what ought to be activities of the individual. The idea might seem sound on paper, but in reality a ‘common’ activity always promotes one man over another. Kite flying on Pongal day favors the North Indian over the South Indian. Bursting crackers on Diwali favors the moronic sound-and-pollution-lover over the conscious environmentalist.

More worrisome is the fact that this sort of policy encourages certain activities for no valid reason. For e.g., a person who is more or less indifferent to crackers would think that since he is anyways paying for the crackers and since the crackers are going to be burst in either case, it might as well be he who bursts them. But when many such people turn up to burst the crackers, the activity seems to be more popular than it would normally be – leading to greater budgetary allowance made for crackers the next year, in the end leading to more pollution than we would have otherwise created. The same is the case with the petroleum subsidy offered by the central government; it only ends up promoting consumerism.

This accumulation of power is not due to the evilness of the ‘leader’ alone. It is also because of the desire of the majority to rob the minority. Both are equally culpable.

Those who find this kind of organized looting acceptable tell me that I am somewhat of an anti-social; whereas most men are social beings and hence the policy is right, often tell me. I find it odd that the very person who is robbing me of my money is accusing me of being anti-social. On the other hand, since I have generously contributed for something I never enjoy, I believe I have been really considerate to the others. What I have not been is weak – others in my place would have fallen for the trap that such a policy creates.

How does all this apply to Saarang? The cul-secs act upon two impulses: the desire of the majority to rob the minority of their share in the cultural space, and their own desires to accumulate power in their own hands. The result is a monstrous creation called Saarang that satisfies many of the illegitimate needs of some while leaving others greatly dissatisfied. It establishes a throttling monopoly over the cultural space by claiming to represent the cultural needs of all. The situation is ripe for some decentralization.

On leadership and corporations:

I did mention how our leadership structure resembles that of corporations and why that is a bad thing for our cultural scene. I did not get into the reasons for this resemblance for fear of getting off the track.

I would venture to say that it is the demand for leadership qualities amongst students from corporations that led to the system being like this. Since we have from time immemorial been trying to adapt education to the needs of industry, perhaps the student organization too was modeled based on the needs of industry, rather than the needs of the student body.

Leadership, in my vocabulary, is a dirty word. In the corporate sense, it is about exploiting one’s juniors and squeezing as much work as you can out of them. In the governmental sense, a leader is a person who appeases the majority while looting the minority, in the process accumulating power to him. An evil leader is one who is able to sway the masses against everyone’s interests, so he gets more power, or more money, or both. A good democracy has leaders who do least harm, but they never do any good.

A good leader is no leader at all. He is a mere caretaker of the common resources of his electorate, which he administers in a utilitarian way.

I therefore submit that dropping the posts of cultural secretaries will be a great improvement.

On sponsors’ events:

I have no objection to sponsorship per se, though I have often pointed out that sponsorship is as much about sharing the stage as about sharing the spotlight: sometimes you just don’t want to be sharing the stage with some people, or corporations. Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Chemplast and Dow Chemicals come immediately to my mind as corporations with whom IITM should maintain no relations.

Sponsors’ events are about sharing the spotlight – and we must be concerned about how they use their visibility. For the sponsors’ content is the content of Saarang. When their events are aimed at promoting the exact opposite of the values Saarang is being held to instill amongst students, we obviously have a problem. It’s akin to allowing a competitor to sell his own wares in a sale organized by you. It reduces the efficiency of Saarang in achieving its objectives.

Sponsors encourage students to act mindlessly, exhorting them to make a loud noise, asking them to do silly things on stage and so on. Sometimes they cross the lines of decency by giving these activities a sexual flavor. All these (I assume) are anti-values from the institute’s perspective.

It appears that sponsors do sign MoUs about the sponsors’ events, but there is no enforcement. The organizers can either enforce the norms or do away with sponsors’ events altogether.

On Saarang and the environment:

There are two immediate concerns – waste and noise pollution. The amount of waste collected during each day of Saarang is more than double the waste that the population produces during peacetime. Almost all the waste from Saarang is plastic waste. The catering stalls at Saarang always use plastic or Styrofoam plates, with the honorable exception of the IVil stall. Neither the stalls, nor the consumers segregate the waste. As a result, almost all of it has to go to the dump yard – there being no possibility of recycling.

There are legal compliance issues regarding loudspeaker use in Saarang. A Supreme Court judgment (http://esamskriti.com/rc_noise_poll_2.htm) limits loudspeaker use till 10 pm in public spaces, whereas the Pro-shows as a rule extend till 10-30 pm. The dB levels are a source of concern. In fact, being a protected forest, IIT should be more stringent regarding loudspeaker use than civil regulators.

I am also deeply troubled by the practice of clearing the undergrowth of places classified as forest zones. The undergrowth, as any ecologist will tell you, forms a crucial link in a forest ecosystem. While clearing a few square meters may not seem drastic, when repeated all over the campus, might cause the virtual desertification of a forest.

On the economics of scale:

Even when we are talking about just one product, efficiency when plotted w.r.t output reduces after reaching a maximum. When we are talking of multiple activities, which don’t necessarily go well together, there is no reason to believe pinning all activities together creates synergy.

I talk of synergy at two levels. On one level, the kind of participation depends on the kind of crowd the combination of events attracts.

At a higher level, each activity requires a different ambience, while Saarang provides one standard ambience. This standardization is the flip side of all mergers. Sometimes, this is not for the best.

I do not mean to say that all events can be organized separately. Some clubs would much rather organize their activities in a group along with like-minded clubs rather than going solo. This is a choice that ought to be left open.

Examples of activities going solo and yet being popular are numerous – GF&KR, IITM Bridge Open, The Open Quiz and so on. These are a result of people sitting down and thinking what is best for their activity. I contend that people involved in other activities should do the same, and that the institute should provide the organizational structure that encourages them do so.

On Professionalism:

The trend of people making careers out of sponsorship, PR, hospitality etc. is a most distressing one. At the face of it, it appears that this trend promotes efficiency with which these services are provided and hence is beneficial.

But this reductionism helps in no way to teach the student about organization. The philosophy that could be imbibed is lost on the student when he is told just to follow instructions. This ensures that he or she will never be anything but a perpetrator of status quo.

One of the advantages of having separate societies is that different kind of ‘leaders’ will be elected. I foresee that more people will be elected because they gain the respect of their community, for whatever reason, than because they are good at putting a few things in place. One might also see more group activities that go beyond competitions – this will result in greater churning of ideas.

On the ability of the institute to regulate the clubs:

I share the popular distrust towards professors. As a group, they are a set of arbitrary, illiberal and sadistic people. What will they do if they are given so much power?

Will they distribute resources fairly, or will they indulge in favoritism?

Do they have it in them to propose a value system for the institute to promote and to measure each activity in terms of its efficacy in promoting that value system? Why is it that at the moment, this crucial part is left to the cultural secretary?

But whatever be the case, if they screw this up, it is theirs to screw up. There can be little doubt that the regulatory authority has to be the institute. There the top-down structure is in fact justified.

Some sort of minimalism?

People often ask me, what is my problem is such-and-such thing happens and that hurts nobody. But my mind militates against anything that is purposeless. For more the consumption, more the exploitation of nature. I might come across as someone who frowns upon fun because of some kind of Victorian morality, but in fact it is the unwarranted consumption I frown upon, and it is that consumerism I wish governments and educational institutions will stop incentivizing.

On Indian Culture:

I have totally steered clear of the enforce-Indian-culture argument, and for a good reason. There is no one set of Indian values, as Amartya Sen would point out. Nor is the west devoid of any values.

On the logistics:

I did not write the previous article with the expectation that it will change the mindset immediately. On the ground, change is always gradual. As such, given all the nonsensical things that keep happening in the world (like the Narmada Dam, river interlinking, free television sets by TN Govt., I can think of thousand such things) Saarang is just a drop in the ocean.

If there has to be such a structural change, there has to be support for it. This is the unfortunate truth. I think this support can be built by going through a few intermediate steps. First, we establish clubs, but let Saarang continue as usual. The clubs function independent of the cul-secs. Then we make Saarang a purely recreational festival, leaving all the cultural activities to be conducted by the clubs. As a final step, we may or may not scrap Saarang.

To clarify, I do not see the model I proposed as the only possible model. I can only be certain of the fact that Saarang, as it exists, is not up to the mark. Based on my perception of what the reasons for this failure are, I have tried to propose an alternative model.  Posted by KRC. | Permalink |