Education and logic

All this while the world has been telling that education is what is going to save the world from illogical conclusions. Yes, education has been successful on many accounts. It has been instrumental in telling the people about their past follies. It has been instrumental in making the people to read what is being presented to them. Is education the know-how of reading? Is education the imbibing of logical thought? Is education the know-how of writing a language. Is the result of education to read? What is education. In India there are night classes for the under-privileged and the senior people. The stress is on learning the alphabet, framing words and understand the dictionary meaning of the words. So once they can read a newspaper, they are educated. Now, what after the person can read a newspaper? Is education not bothered about how he should interpret it? Or should education not bother about the interpretation. Should the interpretation be forced on to the reader like in some countries? Should the interpretation be allowed to run free in all directions like in some countries. What is really the purpose of education? Is it to create a more radical consumer of goods/services/information?

Majority of our educational tools rely on "laws". We are told that we are not to question them. If this is not accepted by the child then the future of his education is a mess. Because all the future information he will get will be based on these laws. If the basic premise is not accepted then the kid will have a hard time to come to terms with the present world. If he accepts, it is smooth travel. He will come out a brick in the wall. Now, the thing is if given an option of accepting or not accepting, if the child chooses non-acceptance of the present laws of physics, of moral sciences, of mathematics, of logic, he has to make some of his own and he does make them as he progresses over his journey of life. This will be made based on his experiences, his interactions, his feedback, his successes, his failures,....The resultant human might become a brick in the wall, a special brick in the wall, a hammer which breaks and disturbs the wall, a builder who brings more brick into the wall. So the result can be pro-system and anti-system. Now, again, the meaning of system and anti-system might be different for different people based on their education.

So how should the educational system work? Should the system put only the questions and extract answers for all the questions from the student? Where does the student search for the answers? If he searches it within the present system, he will agree or disagree. If he disagrees will the educational system allow it and allow him to continue to the next question or try to play logic with his answers? Once the kid comes out with his answers how will he be able to cross-check his results? How is he going to cross-reference his conclusion. How is he going to validate his conclusion. Normally conclusions related to politics/society happens immediately. Either you like it or dont or you are not concerned/affected by the conclusions. Drawing a conclusion is one thing but pushing it down the throat of others is another. There are plenty of people in the "not concerned" sphere. These people can be very easily converted to the other side with a slight nudge normally through emotion altering strategies. The happiness of making people agree on your ideals is un-parallelled and this is exactly what is happening with f^&*b*&* and other walled social networks. All these networks are feeding on exactly this aspect of human education. Either they re-inforce the previous education or try to negate it emotionally. All this is again happening for identity. So, is the job of education to give identity, The general syllabus for all the students point to the fact that we want all kids to grow up in the same "particular" way, the same identity.

Will education save the world? Will education give the superpower of reading what is offered and analyze it, fact check it, prove it right or wrong. Will education make all people logicians? Will all the people of the world be logicians? Will logic rule the world and beat out all the ready to eat "isms"?Will.....?

Indian Agriculture and the apathy of the educated class

            We are at another inflection point at looking at India's agrarian problems. The subcontinent, even after 7 decades of independence is still agrarian in its economical and social setup. Let us leave out the politics part. Though people tell me that politicians are different in various countries, for me they all appear the same and do the same. That is, they loot and plunder. Though I have had good education from my parents and I have been a netizen since the year 2000, I am not having any solution in sight for the issues plaguing our agrarian setup. If we see the setup before independence we see that the tillers were bonded to their job by devious methods. Land being a property was known to only a few of the elite. This elite owned all the land. The tillers were laborers and would till the land for being compensated with a very puny portion of what grew out of their efforts. The agrarian scene in India has changed from self sufficiency to a heavily commercialized scene with the advent of the British in India.

           Plethora of laws/rules/regulations have happened since that time. The zamindari system is one of the first attempt at consolidation of land but the system was tyrannic. So plenty of laws/rules/regulations were changed across the presence of british in India to reduce this tyranny and to bring the tiller and the government face to face. This was not a goodwill gesture from the british but more of a corrective action since the zamindaris knew how to hoodwink the government with their payment of taxes. All other actions by the british and later the governments of free India was to reduce the oppression of the tiller. They all thought that the best way is to make the tiller the owner. This resulted in a huge numbers of tillers with tiny pieces of land. Now the tillers will grow what they always wanted to grow. But there is no scientific thought to it. It does not consider what other farmers in India are growing.

          There are numerous examples where majority of the farmers have grown the same vegetable/fruit, leading to a price crash and in course leading to many suicides. Many other reasons for suicides being depended on the monsoons for the water aspect. More recent reasons being threats from Micro-financing companies. Micro-financing which was supposed to be the silver bullet for Indian agriculture has proved to be a golden noose. This also led to more commercialization of agriculture. Because now, the tiller is the owner, the agricultural specialist, the marketeer, the economist, the forecast specialist and what not. This led to a new crop of consolidators called the middle men. These people are what keep the circuitry closed between the tillers and the consumers. Once again, the tiller is face to face with another avatar of consolidators.

             Yes, Yes, You know all about it. What are you going to do about it. All feelgood samaritans take up this topic. What will the farmers do? How will the farmers survive the pandemic? Who is thinking about the farmer? I will answer the question. Every damn fellow is thinking about the farmer. The problem is not in thinking. The problem is nobody has any solutions to the problem. The next agrarian revolution has to happen with an IT backbone with data regarding every acre of land being cultivated. What is being cultivated, When is the probable yield and data like these superimposed with issues that might be facing the cultivators and the crop.

           Yes, it is not easy to visualize. But then if you tell me that India is primarily an agrarian economy and agriculture is the largest industry then you definitely have to think big. You cannot solve the issue by forcing companies to open call centres at district levels. Though that would be an added bonus. This would be an impetus and motivation for education. But you are not doing anything to motivate future educated farmers which we would be having in the next generations. Right now all educated farmer's sons are in towns and districts which is at the consuming end of the agrarian spectrum.

           I hate us educated lot of India, who just feel sorry for the plight of our farmers as though they are in a different planet. If we cant do anything let us stop being sorry for the farmers. They dont deserve our sorry and I dont know how many of us deserve their hard cultivate produce. If you are that kind who thinks nobody is doing anything to improve the farmers plight dont have any conversation with me. I know all about that. If you are that kind who wants to tell me that only you are concerned about their plight, I give you the middle finger.

Should people work to live

There is one common thread in all of the world's religion. Work. Every living being has its purpose. This purpose is nothing but something to be done, work, again. All theologians talk about a super being and all the rules to worship that deity. They just differ in minor ways but the intent is to direct you towards an all encompassing entity. But, religion cannot exist out in thin air. It requires people, alive. How do you keep people alive. How do you provide for this. You make them work. Include passages/writings/rules in the framework which somehow tells this is one way to reach the one. In fact you can afford the path to the one only if you work. It is like a minimum requirement to be part of the religion. In fact work has created rifts among the people over the entire human history and continue to do so. With written knowledge now available to all the human beings, The classification is going to be different in the near future. We are going to have a world wherein everybody will be educated. There will no more be a situation where a select few can read the written knowledge being passed on from previous generations. Suddenly this generation can read all the knowledge generated over all the 20 centuries and is available to everybody with minimum effort. With this it will be difficult to get people to work based on old rules of caste/color/region etc. There have to be other means where you have to create dependency which in turn will force people to work willfully without knowing it. It will be more efficient compared to the older models where you forced them to work.

All the economic theories/political theories are not alien to it. In fact these ideologies talk about work in a direct sense. Working people is the basis of all the present economic/political frameworks. Even Marx's thoery starts and ends with work and workers. In fact it starts to quantify work in the best possible way. Ok...ok, I got it. You are telling me that there have been recent experiments where a minimum amount is paid as a "wage" and the individual is not required to work in the traditional sense. Why are the people in these experiments being paid. This is an ideology wherein the system is expecting contributions from the individual on his own. It is pressurizing the individual to contribute out of commitment by paying advance salary. It is a proven fact that actions/efforts happening unconsciously/willfully takes minimum effort of the brain. This arrangement of work can be utilized to increase the throughput of the effort required to complete a job.

Are we born to work. Should we work to survive. Are we not entitled to live on this planet without doing any work. Is minimum wage the answer for the 1% to keep the 99% working. Should the 99% work.