My Blah

Author: aritra

  • The Rot in Academia – as told Through Two Short Emails

    The Rot in Academia – as told Through Two Short Emails

    They say hindsight is 20/20. Not surprisingly, the mistakes we made seem idiotic in retrospect, and the mistakes made by others that we may have made at that stage of our lives, seem moronic as well. This is not to justify what was done, or even to sympathize more than one would ordinarily do. Rather, this realization that what was done and what is being done is moronic, carries with it an uncomfortable realization that we are part of a system that produces such mistakes. And more uncomfortably, we are perpetuating it.

    Academics call it systemic injustice, or systemic bias, or systemic something. When things get really bad and people go into depression, it’s systemic violence. Then many people use it to shift the blame from themselves onto whatever is the current state of society and state. Individual culpability changes into a more comfortable collective culpability, and like public property, nobody bothers to take the blame for it.

    All of this makes headlines if the issue takes on a violent form. A suicide, a rape or denial of opportunity. We discover that behind a suicide lay an abusive relationship, behind a rape a rape script and toxic masculinity, and behind denied opportunity, cynical caste-class nexuses. But this article is not about these. I have nothing in my past, nor my present (and hope to God, nor in my future) that warrants such Marxist analysis.

    Instead, I want to speak about an article that was rejected, and what followed thereafter. Yes, I wasn’t bluffing when I wrote the previous paragraph – it is really just an article and correspondence between the editor (me) and the author. Before you write me off as an academic dotard residing in his chosen ivory tower, let me add some context.

    It so happens that many moons ago, when I was still a student and an acolyte in the world of academics, I’d taken up content writing as a freelancer. It provided much needed pocket-change to impress my girlfriend, and allowed me to fund some of my geeky passions. But every job, every occupation, no matter how freelance or part-time, comes with its own ideological baggage. Content development had its own fair share of predatory contractors and clients. These guys went the extra mile to drill into you that capitalism of the freelance kind was the ultimate mantra for success. Real research was research done for producing content, because that was what people read and used to make informed decisions. Who reads academic articles in pricey journals anyway ?

    It is not difficult to become enamoured of this ideology. It was amply evident that working for some of these clients would not get me anywhere near where they themselves were. One of them would sign his emails with “Sent from an iPad”. I did some simple math, and realized that it would take years, working 24 hours a day, to make enough to afford even the last generation iPad. But then I would persuade myself that if I did gather that much experience, I would become a contractor myself. Exploited would become exploiter and dream-seller in turn.

    What is safe to say is that all of this created a disdain for academics, and a deep cynicism about the high-brow Marxist and Leftist debates that surrounded me in my university and even outside it. But it also made me wonder if research really was so difficult. After all, research articles are content right ? So if I’m researching for a treadmill review, I can also research for the Palestine crisis and write an article. What difference did it make as long as I maintained quality and adhered to the TAT ?

    I never took this line of thought far enough to actually produce academic articles. But I did write essays, SOPs and question banks, all of which were close enough to the world of academia that the distinction between academics and content writing would get blurred. I was confident that I could quote some of this work when asked about my academic output, even if I had to add a caveat that it was done freelance and not as part of a reputed institution.

    Fast forward to the present, and I have left those pastures behind. I still carry some of that cynicism towards research, especially when I see the same concepts about spread of Christianity in Meghalaya in the colonial period taking up the vast majority of at least half a dozen papers in one of a dozen parallel sessions of the Indian History Congress. Or the latest opinion about how academics would be forever changed in the post-Covid world, which incidentally matches the previous five opinions I’ve cared to listen to.

    But I’ve also realized that research needs to be done not because it brings any specific profit, but because you need truth and facts to make any sort of progress. Ignorance causes us to make the same mistakes again and again, and demagogues promote whatever they like while profiting from the misery that inevitably results. Thus, today when I work on the role of newspapers and the ways in which editors and the powers that be crossed paths, I do so not because I’m going to make loose change in the off chance that some newspaper editor approaches me with the request to write a guest piece, but because these interactions have a direct implication on how free and fair our access to information is, and how our identities, ideas and emotions are shaped.

    But my ideals aren’t what this article is about. To return to the topic at hand, my academic wanderings have resulted in me taking up the editorship of a small journal. It’s not important to note the name, nor is it important to note that I am part of the editorial board and not the Chief Editor. I’m the one who gets the work done, and that’s what matters. Me and another person. But on my blog and in my words, I’ll allow myself some hubris.

    In course of our latest call for papers, we received a paper. The subject or field doesn’t matter – suffice it to say that it was related to my field but outside my area of expertise. I really don’t enjoy reading articles with Sherlock’s looking glass, and used the subject matter as an excuse to send it to the relevant editor.

    Scrutiny and then review proceeded over the course of the next few months. During this time, the author wrote to me multiple times, inquiring about the status of the journal. By me, I mean the official mail of the journal. So she wrote to the official mail of the journal, and the editorial board (aka me and the other person) wrote back that things were being processed.

    It was processed, and thrown out. The review turned out to be unfavourable, and was recommended for rejection. This was duly intimated. Now I’ll be honest – I’m not someone with a lot of experience sending rejection mails. But I did try to be as polite and professional as possible.

    The author wrote back inquiring about reasons for rejection. It is a standard practice that reasons given for rejection are never too specific. No one wants to become the middleman between a reviewer and an author forwarding one’s comments to the other. At a more ideal level, rejections are supposed to be final to maintain the sanctity of the review process itself. Hence, asking for reasons beyond what was provided is an exercise in futility.

    But it wasn’t inherently wrong. What was more problematic, however, was her second query. To quote her –

    “what is the academic grounds (sic) ? Is it regarding my job position factor/qualifications ? As it is saying there are no scope for modifications ?”

    Ehh what ?? How does her job position (about which I gave a rat’s ass anyway) affect her ability to publish in a journal ? Rather surprisingly (or unsurprisingly), this mail was followed by one I received today –

    (see attached image).

    I was dumbfounded by the mail. It was bad enough that she should assume that publishing in a journal was only for those with specific job positions. But what was even more alarming was that she would consider a content development position as eligible! As she clearly mentions, she considers this job to be “academic” in nature!

    To begin with the most obvious problem – she is trying to persuade the editor that her paper deserves a second chance due to changed circumstances. What those circumstances are is secondary, but to believe that she could just ask for the article to be considered again when it has already been rejected points to some deep rot in our academic mindset.

    From a very young age, we are taught that if you can carry enough recommendations and have enough connections (including degrees, certificates and job titles), it will matter more than the actual content you produce (I use “content” on purpose here). This mindset is carried as one gathers more and more baggage rather than improving intrinsic writing and analytical skills. Not surprisingly, when she did ask for a reconsideration, it was not a review due to any possible angles or matter that may have been overlooked or missed, but because she did not have the relevant job position!

    This was followed up by the claim that she was working in content development. I have washed out the name of the company because I am sure it is one of the many exploitative ones that give you anywhere between 30 to 40 cents for every dollar you make for them. But be that as it may, she followed it up with the idiotic claim that it was an academic job.

    This harks back to my own content writing days. As I mentioned earlier, I definitely did consider quoting more than one of my content development positions when applying for academic jobs. But the “ideology” of content development did not permeate deep enough into me for me to forget that the world of academia does not consider these to be academic in nature, whatever be my own opinions. Maybe, just maybe, she was persuaded that her position as a freelance content developer for a random firm would help her academic career.

    She took it, hook, line and sinker, and ran with it to my inbox, claiming that she now had the qualifications for her paper to be considered! This, as would be clear by now, would make her a victim of both the exploitative promises of the world of content writing, and the mindset of adding degrees and positions rather than capacity that is the Indian education system.

    There is, however, one more disturbing possibility. Given that she mentions that she got the job recently, it is possible that she sought a job such as this simply to get her article passed. Assuming she is being honest, this would only make it clearer how much people value the importance of titles and job positions (even if in this case they won’t really matter) than actually reworking and rewriting and re-researching the matter.

    Finally, she displays utter ignorance about the way journals work. This itself is a tragedy, since Indians are taught that journals are only for those who are pretty high up in the academic ladder that starts with a Bachelor’s degree and ends with Ph.D. I remember being told in college that even reading journal articles was not required until you reached your final year, and then only for specific papers where books were scarce or not up to date. This mindset inhibits exploration of journals during the green days of a scholar’s career. Later, when they do need to get publications, they have no idea how these are to be obtained. They then either go for predatory journals, or try to persuade editors using any and all arguments, including ones about job positions.

    In the end, it is obvious that her naïve attempts to persuade me to reconsider her article will be the subject of academic derision at the next editorial board meeting. It is also obvious that she will not make any progress with this – or any – line of persuasion given that the current issue is almost at the printer’s doorstep. But when I ponder on her actions, it becomes clear that she is the product of two systems – one of freelance content writing and the other of academia itself – which make it immensely difficult for a young scholar/freelancer to understand what really matters, and how to go about achieving what is truly important.

    It is not for me to assume what she thinks of this rejection. She had earlier mentioned that this was her first submission. Rejection at the first attempt is always a learning experience, but what would she learn? That she needs to gather more freelancing “academic” experience ? That she can continue to try and persuade editors until snubbed ? Or that her freelance and academic worlds are essentially separate for career purposes, and she should focus on producing quality in both fields without trying to make one stand in for the failings in another.

    One can just hope that she does not take the message that publishing original work (of whatever quality) is a matter of forming connections and getting job titles and it’s too much of a bother. Because then we will end up with someone in her stead who does have the connections and is more confident than her that they can muscle or sweet talk their way through academic scrutiny.

    But whatever happens, it won’t make the headlines. Not until someone decides to quit academia entirely, or commits a truly egregious act of plagiarism in an extremely reputed journal, or publishes fake degrees, or collects money for giving out academic positions, or…..Perhaps she will do no such thing, but actually improve the article and resubmit to our journal, or another one.

    But what really stings – more than all of this – is that sitting comfortably in my own position, I can neither warn nor help her. My reply will be an anodyne one in a specific template meant to be as inoffensive as possible to all concerned. Anything more will result in questions about what an editor should do, or say, and how that itself compromises the impartiality clause. I know that someday I too will receive (another) such anodyne rejection mail. And so regardless of what I write here, the circle continues….

  • In Memoriam of Prof. Hari Shankar Vasudevan (HSV Sir)

    When does a virus become personal? When do numbers become real people, and these people never come back? These questions seem to be straight out of a novel about pandemics. Except this one is still being written, the ink still fresh and the wounds that they leave, still to close. In fact, the wounds are just opening up, telling us that the story to be written will be personal for all of us, whether we like it or not. That when the pontificating and high-brow arguments come to an end, the limelight dims and the facts and figures are studied threadbare, the pain will remain. Perhaps that’s why novels are novels, and not just dry historical commentaries.

    Strangely, the transition from “facts and figures” to the realm of the personal begins with someone who is, or was, a historian. It is true that some historians write dry and purely factual histories, other bring life and blood to the stories they tell. In which category did this man fall ? Or could he be categorized at all ? I can’t tell, because – and I don’t hesitate to admit it – I barely read any of his historical works. Or any that made him the revered scholar that he already was when I first saw him. Nevertheless, his impact upon me and my life has been enough for me to write this. So perhaps history isn’t all there is to the historian.

    Who was this historian ? His name is Dr. Hari Shankar Vasudevan. Dr. Vasudevan, or HSV as we came to call him, was already a well-renowned historian in his field when I had the chance to become his student. His field, as I had heard, was Russia. That in itself was rare, since students of Russia rarely make India their home, and few in India bother to study Russia. I suspected that part of this may have had to do with Communism, but I did not bother to delve further. Russia may be interesting, but it was not the subject that drew me to the man. It was the man who took me towards a better appreciation of Russia, and history itself.

    A proper obituary will probably start with recollections that go back to my earliest days, and these would probably involve a class of the special paper on Russia in M.A. First Year. To be perfectly honest, his classes were not the most remarkable. He came into class, greeted us and promptly began to write. Beginning meticulously on the left side of the board, he would complete a column, then move onto the next column, and then the next. We, the students, would peer over his shoulder and that of those in front of us, to be the first to jot down the next line. I’ll be honest – this was painfully boring work, especially since the notes were themselves just bland summaries. Where was the story in all of this ?

    Once he had written enough (and it was a lot, given that he would oftentimes complete three to four columns, erase the first and continue writing), he would pause and begin explaining. For someone explaining a topic about a country that was as fundamentally different as Russia, the explanations were quite simple. Too simple, since his efforts to reach out to the Bengali speaking students resulted in some oversimplifications that I now appreciate (and indulge in) myself as a teacher.

    His tone was calm and none too hurried. Not for him the strictures of syllabus completion. He spoke with authority of a land and a people whose customs and actions were difficult to understand at first, but eventually made sense. He happily took questions, but smartasses were not tolerated. Too much unasked for theory, too “advanced” an answer, and you would be shown your place fairly quickly. That said, he had ample patience and enough forbearance to never walk out of a class no matter how unruly it was.

    Yet, at the end of the day, his class was hardly the most lively. If anything, it created a gentle stirring of interest in the minds of those willing to listen to his relaxed yet firm narrative, until you found yourself doing your own reading, looking up your own books and asking questions on your own. Perhaps he knew that given what he taught, a faster pace would just create exhaustion and leave the more “note-minded” folks behind. Make no mistake, an uninterested person would soon become lost, but this would be no forced march.

    While he did specialize on Russia, he did teach a lot else. He was the one who taught the topic that would go onto become the cornerstone of my M.Phil. dissertation – planning in India. His teaching – now on a much smaller white board- brought to light the connections between Russia and India in the early days of planning and helped shape the first chapter long before I had actually prepared the proposal. Only when it was finally written and I was perusing through my old notes did his influence become clear.

    But I would be lying if I said that my fondest memories involved his lectures. They were great, they did influence me in ways I did not realize until much later, but all that said, his teaching does not evoke the strong emotions that memories of personal interactions do. Before I go into these interactions, it would be pertinent to mention that the professors of CU are constantly surrounded by students whose one goal in life is to coax out “suggestions” for the end-year (now end-semester) examinations. Most professors don’t enjoy this sort of cynical attention. HSV was definitely one of them, though his questions were none too difficult to guess, but quite difficult to answer in a way that would truly please him.

    Perhaps my earliest queries were not very difficult from the rank-and-file questions about syllabus and what would come in the exams. Having been bred in the CU school of “prepare for the exam” mentality, I instinctively looked out for any hints that may help me narrow down the wide buffet of options laid out by him. Yet as I mentioned, his teaching created interest through gentle nudges and quiet appreciation. Very soon, I found myself going beyond the standard readings on 19th Century Russia and looking into books that would provide a fuller view. Looking back at my 21 year old self, I realize that part of this was to impress him, and boy was it hard to do so without gaining a good understanding yourself.

    I remember one such interaction vividly, if only because it definitely did not go according to plan. The topic being taught was the development of radical ideas in the late 19th Century in the lead-up to the development of the Communist and Social Democratic and Revolutionary parties. I had obtained a book by a scholar called Alexander Polunov and unearthed some new terms. Among them was one called studenty – to refer to students with radical ideas. Or so I understood it. Upon my broaching this term on the landing between the third and fourth floors though, his expression told me quite clearly that he did not appreciate random use of Russianized terms just for the heck of it. I wasn’t told off, but simply asked to go through the standard readings before I went off on my own adventures. Needless to say, studenty was replaced by radical students in my final answer. More than the term though, the interaction taught me how one should handle unnecessary but earnest attempts at going beyond the textbook – with a firm but constructive smile and a suggestion to go back to the basics.

    When he wasn’t in class or dealing with the myriad mysteries of the various Centres associated with the Department, he could be found in his room, one he shared with Prof. Kingshuk Chatterjee during my days as an M.A. and M.Phil. student there. He would sit at a large desk, framed by a large portrait of something in Russian. Waiting for him to finish speaking to someone else, I often tried to decipher the Cyrillic letters. I daresay I had some success, but never could make out the meaning. Never did ask either. One of my regrets now.

    Anyway, as I was saying, he would be found sitting, enjoying the all too generous sunshine that differentiated the professors’ rooms from the eternally tubelit corridor. He would generally be found having a conversation or reading something. In him, more than anyone else, the general social behaviour of a professor came to be epitomized. I don’t recall ever seeing him agitated, or storming about, or getting into an argument. Well, I did once. He was speaking on the phone about some serviceman who simply wouldn’t turn up, and how it was inconveniencing him. But yes, that was the only instance.

    Students of the Department often had the chance to observe their professors conversing with one another. To their credit, these professors were never to self-conscious before us, and as we eased ourselves out of M.A. and into M.Phil., this sense of ease grew. Or so we felt. HSV, even when conversing informally, would maintain perfect language and a perfect tenor. He had a sense of humour, but did not try to force a joke on those who did not get it. And he would not be harried into any conversation.

    This brings me to another memory, which again, did not go according to script. One day I was roaming the corridors of history seeking questions (examination ones specifically). Those who seek such jewels in the sea of historical knowledge rarely ever do so alone, and those who are seen as the most adventurous, the most foolish or the most likely to succeed, almost always obtain an entourage whose sole task is to inspire the leadership to perspire for the worthy cause. I will not claim to have been the leader. Nor will I be so humble as to claim that I was a mere bystander to the eternal quest to figure out the question paper in advance.

    Something between these two extremes led me to HSV’s chamber, and I found him working on the computer. Sir preferred physical copies of essays, articles, etc. but was sufficiently computer savvy to get his work done. At this moment, he calmly looked up from his computer and asked me to what pleasure he should owe my presence. The sailors in the sea of (exam) suggestions are rarely a serene lot, and I admit I was not in that frame of mind either. I began blabbing about how I had studied this, prepared that and what should I focus on now.

    I will never know if he saw through this ill-designed façade. But he did stop me with a “Woah ho, calm down. You’re going too fast young man.” He had clearly been disturbed by my torrent of words, and did not find them particularly enlightening. On slower exposition, it became clear to both of us what my true purposes were, and when he replied, I got the distinct sense that I had gone to ask for something without covering what I already had. Again, however, I wasn’t told off. Rather, he asked me to come again sometime after. I can’t recall what I actually got from him and my comrades-in-arms were disappointed, but I did learn to always compose myself before approaching anyone. A strange lesson from an unexpected source, but once that has served me well.

    But with the harder lessons did come the softer appreciation. I was one of the few students who would regularly get answers checked by the professors. He was known to be one of the more lenient professors who would give as much as 75% marks for a good answer. This was partially why a 60% made me want to work harder, since his comments always told me that he expected more. Of course, satisfying a man of his erudition was not an easy task, but I will be arrogant enough to claim I did manage it once.

    It was in the paper on 20th Century USSR I believe. I had written an answer in the final exam and had promptly forgotten about it. After the results came out, I happened to visit his room for an unrelated matter. To my surprise (and unmitigated happiness) he started the conversation by stating how he was impressed by my answer. He even pointed it out to the other professors, and suggested that I had improved. Unlike his reproach, his appreciation was unreserved and heartfelt, and it made me want to jump for joy. More than the marks themselves, it was this personal appreciation that will remain a fond memory forever.

    But HSV gave to the Department much more than lectures and advice. He practically lent out a good part of his own collection of books to the Seminar Library. The Librarian – who himself passed away sometime back – was especially wary of lending out to us these books. One in particular stands out. It was Alec Nove’s Economic History of the USSR. The book was yellow and worn, and most assumed this was simply because generations of CU students had held it in their tender mercies. The truth was that it was HSV Sir’s personal copy, lent out in perpetuity for students to use because the book was not easily available.

    Ditto for articles. There was (perhaps still is) a venerable old folder full of articles that seemed to have been photocopied during the Soviet era. Some of them definitely dated to a period when I was still in school. The top covers were in Russian, and the ink was faded, telling us of wondrous Russian scholars who must have handled the originals. Again, I never really did try to find out the story behind the xeroxes. But it was amply clear that these were HSV’s own copies which were also lent out to the Seminar Library. In short, he not only taught Russian history with all his heart, but ensured that those few who wanted to study it in detail could do so without burning through a minor fortune.

    Eventually, I would move on from M.A. and into M.Phil. My research topic was fine-tuned in consultation with Prof. Bhaskar Chakrabarti, though I did take ample advice from HSV Sir as well. In hindsight, when I see the bitter egotistical rivalries that plague departments across the globe, the warm relations between professors of the Department of History, Calcutta University, where students were at liberty to consult whom they liked and mix and match ideas without stepping on anyone’s toes, seems like a utopia. Credit is as much due to every professor as to HSV Sir, but this is about him in particular. As a teacher myself, I realize how hard it is to appreciate ideas of other professors while giving one’s own suggestions. Yet when I approached him with ideas of another professor, it never seemed as if he was either trying to impose his own ideas on me, or giving way. A simple synthesis took place, and I came out with better developed concepts and a better approach to my research questions in general.

    Fortune smiled upon me and HSV and BC were made my Co-supervisors for my M.Phil. dissertation. To be perfectly honest, I consulted BC Sir primarily, and HSV only occasionally. But the trend that had begun during the days of topic formulation continued, and my thesis was substantially enriched due to his suggestions.

    By the time I finished my M.Phil., Sir’s “professional” career as a tenured teacher in the Department was in its twilight. There was of course no doubt in anyone’s mind that he would continue to be intellectually and physically active in all his pursuits. Indeed, he positively looked forward to devoting more time and energy once the constraints of the job fell away. We would miss him, and future batches of M.A. and M.Phil. would not be able to get as many lectures as we did. It would be their loss, but HSV Sir would continue to enrich the landscapes of Russian history, foreign policy, and much else.

    And he did. Our meetings became infrequent, partly because he came to the department less and mainly because I visited the Department very rarely. Yet surprisingly, he always remembered what I had worked on, and where I was teaching. On meeting him randomly one day, he told me that he may begin working on an edited volume (or was it a series of articles?) of ideas relating to planning. Would I be ready to contribute something ? By this time my research interests had moved away from planning, but I dared to think that I would be capable of writing something that would pass muster. I said as much. We parted on a hopeful note.

    Time went by and the project never did materialize. Or perhaps it did and I just wasn’t there when it did. I continued meeting Sir on and off in the Department, or at a seminar in the CSSS, or someplace similar. He didn’t seem to age more than he had during my M.A. days, and his energy and devotion to the discipline remained intact. Once in a while, I would come across an article by him on a topic of general interest, and would appreciate his flair for writing history. But that was it.

    The last time I met him was purely by chance. I was getting married and was inviting the professors who had and influenced me to my wedding reception. Almost all the professors had been invited, but I wasn’t sure how I would approach HSV Sir. I had never been one to call professors up, preferring to fix appointments in the Department and meeting them as per their schedule. Neither did I have the courage to take his address from a third party and turn up at his door one fine day.

    In the end, neither was required. I was waiting with my friend Bibek outside KC Sir’s room (we had taken to calling it that since HSV retired) when time seemed to have been dialed back several years. Sitting in the room was HSV Sir, and I suddenly felt like I was back in my M.A. days. Not having any clue as to why he had come or whether it was a good idea to disturb him, we waited for quite some time. Eventually he emerged, preparing to leave. Egged by Bibek, I finally approached him, and with all the composure I had had in my M.A. days, I explained the reason for obstructing his departure from the Department.

    If he was taken aback by the sudden invitation, he did not show it, as I knew he wouldn’t. Instead, he inquired how I was doing, how my research was progressing etc. Then he turned to the question at hand, and told me that he would be travelling and would not be able to make it on either the day of my marriage or my reception. But he would keep my card nonetheless. I was a bit disappointed, but happy that I had managed to invite him at all. I wasn’t sure when I would meet him again, but I was sure I would meet him someday.

    The pandemic is breaking all that seemed so sure. The confidence with which we would wake up, get to work and move on with our lives. The confidence with which we would say that we would meet again, collaborate again, learn again from those who still had so much to teach us. By nature I am not one to inquire about professors’ personal lives, their families and how they live their lives when they aren’t teaching or doing research. Now my social media pages are filled with obituaries that talk of a man about whom I feel I knew very little. This makes me fundamentally unfit to write an obituary, and hence this is not one. It does not extol the man, nor point out his flaws. It is just a memoir, to set in ink what mind’s leaky vessel will not hold forever.

    Perhaps, in his own indomitable but quiet, dignified manner, he would have appreciated this. Perhaps asked that it be made more concise, and a little less verbose. Perhaps the events need to be more structured, a common thread made to bind it together lest it fall apart. Sir, I do not know how to do so, for you have taught so much in your own unassuming manner. For emotions are getting the better of my writing skills. But I know I must not keep rambling on.

    You will always be cherished Sir. Rest in peace.

  • An Emptier Future

    A couple of years ago, when I was still in Tehatta and still travelling back from Krishnagar to Kolkata on the Krishnagar Local, exhaustion provided a rare insight into the condition of humanity. Specifically the number of humans we have around in the world today. As I sat on the “fourth” seat (and basically had a buttock and a half hanging off the edge), what struck me was not my discomfort but the expressions of the people around me. Some were more uncomfortable than I was – being wedged between seats waiting for one or another passenger to get up and leave. Others were jostling with vendors in the narrow aisles that separated the two sides of the train seats. The scenario in the clear area between doors was a different order of hell altogether.

    But some were comfortable, having boarded the train on its way up instead of from the first station (Krishnagar) on the way down. These people, and other enterprising individuals who climbed up from the space between the train tracks because they could avoid the rush on the platform, occupied the much-coveted window seats in the direction the train was moving. Yet all of them – bar the children perhaps – had a look of exhaustion and a forlorn desire to return home.

    No doubt some of this exhaustion came from the work they did. But you could tell from their sweaty bodies and their tired eyes that a good amount of it had to do with the daily trials of heckling and being heckled, jostling and being jostled, elbow-butting and being elbow-butted, in the trains and buses that made up the routes from their homes to their workplaces. They were victims of each other, and none could find a solution to the problem. Or they would have found it a long time back – and implemented it for themselves and their children, relatives, friends and near and dear ones. Which would have promptly led to overcrowding and a return to the previous state of affairs.

    The problem, essentially, was that they were humans and wanted to propagate the human species, this being their primary primordial purpose in life. Every species tries to do so, and bar the pandas, never tires of doing it when the time is right. In case of humans, the time is always right, and having a child – a male child specifically – is always good news.

    Naturally, we, and our parents and grandparents before us, have grown up with an overabundance of people all around us. And with them, advice on how to limit the population so we don’t end up with a ticking time bomb. The more enthusiastic ones – and I count the politicians in this class – claimed that this would also give us a “demographic dividend” i.e. a young population unburdened by too many old or young would focus on working more, earning more, saving more and investing more to spur growth of the country.

    In recent years, all of this has taken a specific shape – that of a comparison with China’s population graph. Critics of the Indian experience say that China’s draconian one-child policy was responsible for their rapid strides, and India should have followed a similar approach, even when it advocated a more moderate two-child policy. Hence, while the Sanjay Gandhian sterilization drives of the Emergency period are decried, more “persuasive” measures such as barring families with too many children from benefits and government jobs (Looking at you Assam), are often supported. Whatever the means, the goal is agreed upon – reduce population growth at any cost.

    We and our parents before us have grown up with this mindset. So firmly is it ingrained in our psyche that we blame everything for overcrowding – poor government spending on infrastructure, poor management, etc. – but don’t bother to tackle the fundamental question. It is a given that the government will ask the people to reduce the number of children they have, and that they will do so, but too slowly and too erratically for that to be of any immediate relief to anyone.

    The government clearly, still believes in harping on this mantra. Our dear Modiji spoke of the population problem and asked people to limit the number of children people have. Yet surprisingly, the government’s own surveys have reported that the Indian population may stabilize faster than anticipated – by around 2050 – and the process may have already begun. An important sign of this was that the number of children being enrolled in the primary classes had already peaked or would peak by 2021. For a country obsessed with having less children, the inflexion point in the growth curve of primary enrolments should have been greeted with a drumroll. In effect, it was all but ignored by all except those working on population and education policy.

    But the stagnation in primary enrolment is only the tip of the iceberg. All over the world, populations are stabilizing faster than had been anticipated at the turn of the century. Not just developed countries like Singapore (0.92 births/per female), South Korea (1.12 births/female) and Japan (1.43 births/female), even developing countries like Thailand (1.44 births/female) are facing the prospect of a stabilizing population. China, the panda in the room, has a fertility rate of 1.8 per female. Even this is disputed by some demographers as spurious since China’s own Department of Statistics found the actual figure around 1.2. Given the size of China’s population, a difference of 0.6 would be huge. Even if the truth is somewhere between the two figures, what is clear is that China will stabilize faster than anticipated.

    The funny thing is, none of this is bringing any cheer to any of these countries. Countries like Thailand, which gave the world Mr. Condom in the 1970s, are far from enthused by the prospect of population growth coming to a halt, and even a decline setting in. The reasons are not far to seek. Firstly, a population that ceases to grow means that the demographic dividend phase is definitely over. The number of old people on assisted living, with pensions and state benefits, is increasing and the number of working age people who can support them – not just personally as sons and daughters but as taxpayers funding the welfare state – is decreasing. At the same time, the number of youth entering the job market is also declining, which means less young people supporting more old people. This puts greater strains on the incomes of the working age population, which in turn means less investment and lowered standard of living. All of this does not bode well for the development of a country still counted as upper middle income by the World Bank and developing by the UN and other major bodies.

    Another problem is related to sex ratio i.e. the number of women per 1000 men. In many countries currently witnessing a rapid decline in fertility rate, such as China, Thailand, Vietnam and even India, there is a strong preference for sons. China’s one child policy produced far more sons than daughters and has left millions of men with no prospect of finding a match. These “left behind” men are not good news for society, mainly because their pent-up social and sexual angst is likely to express itself in anti-social and anti-women behavior, which itself is normalized in the patriarchal societies of South and East Asia.

    Thirdly, there is the problem of infrastructure. Capitalism presumes a basic expansion of the economy. When it doesn’t – as it cyclically does – recession or depression set in. But this phase is temporary because sooner or later, economic conditions and stimuli ensure that expansion continues. In the meantime, population has grown too. This means more investment in trains, buses, subways, highways, ports, etc. etc. All of this provides a major engine of growth to the economy, which in turn brings in investment and creates jobs for the youth. If population stops growing, there are less youth to take up the jobs but more importantly, such expansion of infrastructure is not fundamentally required. Sure, maintenance of ageing infrastructure would require some amount of investment and jobs. But as the US shows, maintenance can be spotty and expansion is not guaranteed even with moderate population expansion. You could argue that the developing countries would reach the US level of infrastructure at a much later date and hence may keep investing in infrastructure with imported labour for the existing citizens. But this begs the question – most of the investment is done by the state, and if the state is unable to generate more and more revenue through taxation because economic activity is slowing as a result of a lower workforce, where would the money come from ?

    The effects of this are visible starkly in many parts of the world, but most starkly in the former Soviet puppets of Eastern Europe and in China. Following the collapse of the Iron Curtain, people fled the economic hardships of these countries to seek a better life in Western Europe or in the Americas. Population growth was severely impacted and in many countries such as Poland, Romania and Hungary, the effects have ensured that these countries will never again reach the pre-1990 levels of fecundity. Here, Soviet era apartment blocks, factories and other infrastructure gradually rust in neglect, no one willing to live there.

    In China, expectations of population growth and continuing economic growth fueled a building boom funded heavily by debt. Many of them now sit empty and lifeless. Buyers don’t exist, and in many cases, the governments have had to cut back on supply of auxiliary services to these building complexes as the economic outlook worsens on the back of demographic stagnation and a trade war with the US.

    If these stories are new, in South Korea and Japan, they are pretty old. Japan has many train stations which have only one train running – often empty – in the day. These used to be bustling suburbs but now are home to elderly people, with caregivers and tourists being the major travelers to and from these areas. In South Korea, schools lie empty as villages no longer have children to send to them. The children that are born are sent to better staffed and better served schools. Many of these schools have been closed down.

    I know what you are thinking – how is all of this possible in India ? Here, the endless refrain is that schools be expanded and education be brought to the doorsteps of disadvantaged and often poorly literate sections. It is rather jarring then to read a government report recommending “consolidation” of government schools in order to accommodate the reality of a stagnating primary enrolment and the very real fact that many rural schools sit empty despite having teachers and infrastructure.

    Yet in a country as large as India, nothing can be generalized so easily. There are regions like Bihar, UP, MP, Rajasthan and Haryana, which have been witnessing still high rates of birth. Bihar leads the country with a fertility rate of 3.3, which is on par only with some of the more backward Central Asian, West Asian and African countries. Virtually the whole of the Americas, Europe and East Asia is better off.

    But look beyond BIMARU, and the picture looks rather different. Sikkim has the lowest fertility rate in the country at around 1.2. West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Punjab also stand in this low category with a range of 1.6 to 2, all of which are below the replacement rate of 2.1 births per female. In other words, while these states have fertility rates approaching or surpassing European and East Asian states, BIMARU and adjoining states have fertility rates approaching the poorest parts of the world. This imbalance has serious implications.

    Firstly, there is a direct correlation between the development level of a state and its fertility rate. It is not surprising that states like Sikkim and Kerala have some of the best development metrics such as child care, literacy level, maternity services, etc. while Bihar is the absolute worst. What this means is that as the years roll by, the more educated and more prosperous people from the advanced provinces will decline in number while those from the less developed and more populous provinces will increase. In a homogenous country, such a transition may have occurred with little social impact. However, India being rich in diversity and even richer in its appetite for controversy around identity, this will have deep social and political repercussions. Already, regions which have historically been open to migrants are becoming more xenophobic, West Bengal being a case in point. Fears of cultural decline associated with decline in numbers, once a bhadralok staple, are now voiced in the open and become poll agendas.

    It also means that we will get more poorly educated and unemployable youth than we get now. Already, surveys by UN bodies warn that Indians will increasingly lack the skills needed to give them employment at a level commensurate with sustenance requirements. This in turn, will lead to demands for regional reservation of jobs, which is already rearing its ugly head in Andhra Pradesh. Further, poorly trained people, as and when they get jobs, will enter the economy at lower levels and not find enough opportunities to skill up and rise on the economic ladder. This will not only stagnate the economy but also build up bitter anger. As movements from the JP movement onwards has shown, the wrath of the youth is something no government has the appetite to face.

    Finally, there is the little matter of the most backward areas being also the most patriarchal. An exact correlation may not exist, but it is no secret that Kerala has the highest sex ratio in the country, with Sikkim not far behind. Punjab may be an outlier, but the situation is still better than in poorer Haryana, UP, MP and Rajasthan. What this means is the number of females available for a certain generation of males will decline. As the customary tendencies to marry of daughters declines and women increasingly choose their own matches or choose to stay single, it will be harder for low-skilled, low-earning men from patriarchal backgrounds (who typically lack sufficient social skills as well), to find brides. The situation will be similar to the Chinese scenario, but immensely complicated by the permissive attitude of the state towards a range of crimes against women, and the cultural differences that stand as deep gulfs between men and women of different castes, communities, regions, etc. etc. Expect a rise in crimes against women, as well as toxic masculinity arising from unfulfilled conjugal expectations.

    And while we are on the topic of society and culture, let’s not forget that these backward states are also the hotbeds of Hindutva and the Hindi movement. With little capacity building for other languages in these states, the youth are almost completely dependent on the success of the Hindi movement to find jobs and maintain social standing in areas outside the core Hindi heartland. This movement can be expected to speed up as the pressure of youth in these backward areas increases even as the numbers of youth in the non-Hindi, better-off areas declines relatively. There is as yet little research on the correlation between the relative changes in demographic balance with the changing social currents and the growing preference for Hindutva among the populace of the country. And any change that takes place will have to be very gradual, since cultural mores are so deep set that percentage shifts in graphs do not immediately alter social proclivities. But the relative demographic dominance of the Hindi and Hindutva heartland is a fact that has to be faced, and states will have to figure out how to limit the impact of these ideologies without giving into regional chauvinism that threatens to weaken the foundations of the Indian Union.

    All said, the future will be emptier. Emptier in terms of the seats in schools, the number of schools bustling with children, the number of offices with young employees and perhaps – and bear with me here – emptier local train compartments. The latter will also have more older people who are forced to work longer because they cannot be supported sufficiently in the old age by their children and/or the state. The compartments will also have more Hindi speaking people, who would have difficulty speaking other languages because of plain arrogance and a social education that never tried to integrate the languages of India beyond Hindi. The compartments will also have more men and less women. More and more of the men will be Hindi speaking with repressed desires. And above all, perhaps there will be lesser local trains, running at greater intervals, with less stoppages and lesser number of platforms. Will a day come when some of the bustling stations of today would have become old age homes, with nary a passenger boarding or alighting from a local that would run only a few times a day? Will we – the Generation X of the late years of the 20th Century – live to see this come about, or will our children, now babes in arms, inherit what seems like a dream today? And will this society be a good one to live in, better than that of today, where the tired and forlorn faces are replaced by something more promising? Those tired and forlorn faces will not have the answer, but it is time they found out what is in store for their children.  

  • Control : The Strangely Satisfied Review

    Control : The Strangely Satisfied Review

    The game community has an unpleasant habit of hyping up the visuals of an upcoming game to the exclusion of almost everything else. So when a game that looks good, all the talk inevitably focuses on the visuals – on the awesome reflections, the hair mechanics, the way the enemies look, etc. etc. While all this may be important, they shouldn’t be the sole determinant when buying a game, because a lot of good-looking games can be actually crappy to play. But tell that to my two-month younger self, who bought into the hype train and pre-purchased the game at full price. As the title suggests though, I’m strangely satisfied, though I can’t exactly say what satisfies the most!

    Graphics –

    Okay, let’s get the graphics out of the way because a. my reviews always start with graphics and b. because that’s supposed to be the USP of the game. Right off the bat, it becomes clear that this game is a massive challenge for even the best of cards. On my decidedly mid-range RTX 2060 paired with a Ryzen 5 2600 and some 2400Mhz RAM, the game began to produce artefacts and a weird trailing halo behind the main character’s head when she moved. Turn on DLSS and the problems are solved. Clearly my graphics card – at less than half a year old – is overwhelmed by the sheer amount and quality of textures and effects being thrown at it.

    Once things were fixed though, the fun began. From the reception desk to the depths of Mold infested caverns, and through the huge halls and cafeterias, the graphics are just – mind-blowingly brilliant. With ray tracing on, the shadows and reflections are always spot-on. By spot-on, I mean they look akin to real life to the extent that I actually spent my non-gaming hours comparing the graphics with actual reflections in the world. And damn are they close enough to be similar. Bar the oil spill in the puddle or the ant struggling for life in another, there is hardly any difference between the real-world reflections and those of the game. Which is kind of scary, because the game actually involves a mirror world in which everything is exactly the same but, well, reversed.

    More than the crisp reflections though, what struck me is the extent to which the reflections changed as I moved, or objects came into view or moved out of view, and effects took place. Just the reflections of explosions on Jesse (the main character’s) gun are enough to make you stop and stare. And get killed by the Hiss (the main antagonist). But that extra death is worth it, because boy are the minutest surfaces capable of reflecting enough – just enough – to persuade you that the gun is real, you are real and the lighting of the world is real.

    Surprisingly, all of this reality takes place in an office environment in which practically everything is technically indoors. Bar the bit of greenery from the huge trees – or the mold – there isn’t anything much that’s biological and plant-like. But every bit of it is so well rendered that I actually contemplated spending some nirvana-gaining moments at the bottom of one big tree in Central Research. The mold too is surprisingly detailed, and you wouldn’t believe that these are just generic textures reproduced all over the walls.

    But I must find a fault if this isn’t to become a eulogy. The fault- or should I more correctly say the comparatively less impressive area – comprises of the facial expressions and facial textures when the characters are talking in third person. This is surprising because when the camera shifts to first person, the expressions and facial textures are a lot more believable. Light reflects off the cheeks properly, the eyes are alive, and the lips look like, well, lips. In third person though, all of this isn’t there and even the lip movements aren’t properly synced. But hey, even AAA games of the level of Assassin’s Creed Origin and Odyssey have very poor facial expressions and mismatched lip sync so I wouldn’t be demanding a refund over this.

    One last word about the overall design of the game. Since it melds large cavernous halls with narrow infested passages, every area feels and looks new. Even if we discount the strange modifications always happening in the Oldest House (where this game takes place), exploring the place is at once challenging and visually fulfilling.

    Oh, and did I mention the poop monster resembles actual poop if you look very closely ? Ultra textures FTW, amirite ?

    Rating – 5/5

    Plot – You enter an organization called Federal Bureau of Control and become its director in a span of less than 10 minutes. And then have to fix the whole organization with the few remaining employees, all of whom suddenly discover a great reverence for you (bar one, who simply sees you as a conduit for fungus control). Beginning with this weird premise, the game asks you to move into each of the various levels to cleanse them of the Hiss. The Hiss is a supernatural entity that has arrived – somehow – and has taken over everyone. Hence, most of the Bureau is now floating high in the air and chanting weird stuff.

    As you progress, it becomes clear that the Hiss inhabit practically every room of the Oldest House, excepting the ones inhabited by the Mold i.e. a weird pseudo-biological organism. All of this exists in the Oldest House because the House itself is a supernatural entity where time and space don’t follow existing rules. Your job, as Director, is to simply cleanse the place and ensure the survival and continuation of the Oldest House, because despite its oddities and problems, it is the only thing that can contain the Hiss, the Mold and the AWE/Objects of power.

    Did I say AWE ? Yeah, Altered World Event aka strange things that don’t really make sense unless you factor in the fact that strange things happen under specific – if unclear – circumstances. Anchors cause ships to rust and sink, fridges blow of buildings unless stared upon relentlessly, telephones allow you to communicate with unknown entities and slide projectors open up new dimensions. Amidst all of these exist the Board, who are in charge of the House and who give the director supernatural abilities.

    So, to summarize, your job is to use those abilities to follow the instructions of the Board and cleanse the house of its current chaos. But there’s more. Apparently, Jesse herself was involved in an AWE in a place called Ordinary during her childhood. Following the event, her brother was taken into FBC custody while she escaped. It is heavily implied that she came back to the FBC to find her brother, though the exact linkages are never made clear.

    So, to summarize again (because every time you try to summarize the Oldest House, it changes shape), you came to the FBC to find your brother but were made the Director instead and now have to clean up, find your brother and……enjoy a cushy salary and a permanent job ? But then you have a strange entity in your head called Polaris which wants you to do specific things that will help you and “her.” Somehow, “she” also helps you de-hiss objects and areas.

    So, to summarize for the final time (you get the drift), you came looking for your brother on the instructions of Polaris (probably ?) and were made the director who has to clean up so her brother can survive, the people of the world can be saved and she can enjoy a nice salary ? What’s the salary of the director anyway ? Is it worth all this hassle ?

    As the above summarizing would suggest, the story unfolds in layers, with the same area or topic being revisited again and again, but with crucial modifications. Previously cleansed areas spawn new enemies, new areas are found that were previously inaccessible and your duties and objectives keep changing. Despite there never being the “backstab” moment that has become so common across games today, the plot holds itself together and manages to keep the gamer interested when – when ­– they are not looking at the awesome graphics.

    That said, it is not a particularly heart-wrenching plot. Sure, not everything goes well. Jesse is not a perfect person, and what happens in the end is not a perfect ending. But neither is it painful enough. This is crucially why the game feels strangely satisfying – the plot keeps you interested without really bringing out any emotions that would power you through. Ergo, you don’t power through the game, instead moving at your own convenient pace and allowing the house and your employees to guide you.

    Rating – 4/5

    Gameplay – The real reason why graphics aren’t everything is because gameplay is something. A whole lot of something important. Remedy (the people behind Control) know this. Hence, the demos showed fast paced action with Jesse deploying a range of mind-control actions like telekinesis, seize, etc along side normal gun combat and some really fast running and hovering.

    In reality, Jesse is too weak for the Devil May Cry meets Quantum Break gameplay. Combat often takes place under cover of pillars or even staircases, and can often become limited to taking shots at an angle from behind the pillar. This is important because even though you can crouch, there really isn’t any good prone positions for shooting.

    But you can’t stay long in one place either, as this makes you an easy target. Don’t take it from me, take it from the game, which literally suggests this on a loading  screen. In other words, you have to keep moving while alternating between firing your gun and using your powers. In later stages, abilities like telekinesis do much more damage than most versions of the gun, but initially, your gun is all you will have. Hence, from early on the in the game, the vital combination of the three will have to be learnt.

    This is all the more important because the ability points needed to beef up these abiliites aren’t exactly easy to obtain. They must be obtained through specific main or subsidiary missions, some of whom are actually more dangerous than the main plotline. Consider for instance that there’s one that involves a bossfight so tough many gamers simply skipped the area. Once you get these ability points though, you can buff your abilities to the extent that killing even named enemies up to level 5 becomes a one-sided show where you hurl and fire at will while the enemy just takes damage and more damage. But as I said, there’s plenty to be done before you can get there.

    You are also helped along by health elements, which heal you, and various materials, which are used to craft upgrades and mods. Whether these are for your gun or for yourself or both, is for you to decide. But this too makes you eager to join combat so you can get more stuff to upgrade with.

    Outside of combat, the game is good without being noteworthy. It is basically a sort of dungeon explorer where you gain new abilities as your progress along the storyline. You have to use specific abilities (levitate for instance) to cross specific areas, and solve some puzzles. One puzzle – that of the mirror – truly had me reading up instructions over and over again. But blame that on my IQ, since there is general consensus that the quizzes aren’t very tough.

    Thus, overall, the combat is refreshingly good, and lets you stay invested enough to consider doing tough missions or a little extra exploration so you can get the next upgrade. But beyond that, the game doesn’t have much to offer. This is perhaps fine, since the game was meant to be such and not a puzzle solving one.

    Rating – 4.5/5

    Characters – The main character, Jesse, is a young woman with a complex past. After fleeing Ordinary, her whereabouts aren’t known, and she eventually took up a number of odd jobs before heading to the Oldest House. Her real intention is to find her brother, and her thoughts – superbly voice acted – make it plain that she cares a lot about him. However, there just isn’t enough substance to her character to make her someone you’d associate yourself with.

    This is true for all the other characters as well. Given that the villains are a bunch of inanimate/resonant/biological problems with no capacity to tell you how much they loath you, the game required a superb set of characters to fill this void. But bar Emily, there really isn’t anyone in the Oldest House you’d want to take out for coffee.

    Honestly, this is surprising since Remedy scattered a huge amount of literature around the house. But very little of it belongs to you or your family or employees. So we learn precious little about the motivations of characters, their relations with each other, and with Jesse. Also, everyone at the end of the day seems to just get along with everyone else. Intrigue, suspicion and confusion are things only the Hiss inspires in the Oldest House, and that is truly a pity.

    Rating – 2.5/5

    Overall Rating – The game features some of the most advanced and beautiful graphics available today, along with some fantastic gameplay and – I forgot to mention this – an amazing score. However, the plot and the characters especially are insipid and fail to inspire. There is no endgame to inspire and no favourite characters whose deaths to mourn. So the best – and satisfying way – is to play the game at your own pace with as much environmental damage as possible. You’ll find the game becomes strangely satisfying to play.

    Overall rating – 4/5

  • Sending Coal to Newcastle to “correct” colonial injustice

    If there has been a major buzzword in the 19th and 20th Centuries, it has been “self-determination”. Roughly, it means that if you are a group of people, then you have the right to figure out and do what is right by your book, on and with everything that you own. Or claim to. This has traditionally been pitted against the old monarchical state systems which did not allow for democratic self-determination. But nowadays, it is far more, shall we say fashionable (?), to talk of self-determination against colonial actions and historic injustices. And here, it’s not enough to get back the country your ancestors gave up (or some of them did anyway), it means you have to take back everything the colonizers took from them too.

    This is in many ways, the logical next step after independence has been won. As long as there were countries actively fighting for decolonization of their countries, very few gave a rat’s ass about their artefacts. Their lands, their resources and their rights were more important. But that stage is largely over. Barring some groups on the extreme right (and even then, the old fashioned imperialist and not the newer neo-fascist right), very few in the formerly imperialist countries make any claims to the countries they once held. France may send some troops to its former colony of Mali and be willing to have special relationships with others, but that’s about as far as any country goes.

    Instead, you find them increasingly leaning to the opposite pole – actively demanding that everything be decolonized. The European willingness to bend over backwards where once they possessed iron spines can partially be explained by the presence of large and vocal minorities. These minorities have traditionally come from the countries which the Europeans had colonized. The development of a diasporic identity rested to a large extent on the development of their respective nationalist movements in their home countries, and as such, was closely linked to them.

    At the same time, these diasporic groups also wanted to find a larger voice, which would give them a space within the country and society in which they lived. Imperial European societies – just like the colonized minority diasporas – could and did copy and paste the same set of prejudices that their colonial counterparts did to the natives of the colonized countries. For instance, an Indian living in late 19th Century London could expect to face the same set of prejudices that an Indian would face in Calcutta. They may be even more extreme since the Englishman in India would always temper his expressions in view of the small minority status of the British in India in social terms. In England on the other hand, there was no such need to hold back one’s feelings. Racism and imperial arrogance lost their nuance when they no longer had to live within the pragmatism of colonialism itself.

    One may even say that the transmission and amplification of prejudices fueled the growth of a search for an identity within and against the metropolitan societies of Europe among the native diasporas originating in Asia and Africa. This was very much within the interests of the nationalist leaders of these countries, since this allowed them to have a vocal group permanently resident in the colonizing country, that would speak for the colonized, even when say, the leaders themselves were sitting in shackles in some hot Bareilly jail.

    With the coming of decolonization however, this logic no longer worked and was no longer necessary. Very few, if any, of the diaspora, wanted to go back to their countries simply because it had become independent. Rather, more and more people from these countries came to the European shores, giving rise to the pithy expression – “The British left India, only to find India at her doorstep.”

    These, along with earlier groups of immigrants, could be transient in that they came for a good education or skills and went back when these had been acquired. They usually took up cushy positions in their home countries, and bolstered them using the contacts and clout they had acquired while living in a London or Paris. Very many, however, came to these countries as poor and middle class labour, who may possess some skills but had not come to hone them. They had come for jobs, and had come to stay.

    As their numbers grew, the nationalist leaders – now ensconced in power – sought to use them to further their national causes. These could be appeals for further aid, or against some group within the former colonial countries themselves, or against foreign aggression (the Palestinians are well known for raising a hue and cry whenever they find Israel up to something, the Jews reciprocate in the same coin and lately, have been finding themselves more successful than their Arab counterparts in European capitals.)

    Yet not every national cause could fire up the diaspora like the old nationalist struggle could. Sure, a cry of la patrie en danger stirred up sufficient emotions to bring out a sizable crowd, but not everything could be a call to defense of the mother/fatherland. Furthermore, with the decline of the actual political conflicts (or at least the colonial element in these conflicts), focus shifted to “soft power” i.e. the ability of the diaspora to influence the culture, society and labour markets of the metropolitan capitals.

    It is to this point that we may trace the question of the repatriation of artefacts looted by the former colonial masters. Heritage of a country forms an important part of the cultural toolset of the nationalist’s call to action, and when part of that heritage is sitting in colonial capitals, far away from the eyes and the hearts of the formerly colonized, it makes sense to end these vestiges of colonial policy and bring the artefacts back to the people who actually produced them. And to whom they belong. Because if the Africans and Asians cannot self-determine where their artefacts and national treasures would go, their sovereignty cannot be called complete. Or so the argument goes.

    Even as the former colonies and their diaspora began to campaign for recognition of the fact that the artefacts sitting in European and American museums were in many cases looted or gifted under duress, the Europeans and Americans themselves were becoming increasingly aware of their duties to their former colonies. This was both a result of the campaigning itself, and of intellectual currents within the European society that acknowledged their use of force in the past and sought to make amends. This dovetailed with the need to appear “woke” to countries that may be vital allies and useful markets/factories for their own societies. Hence, where on one side flowed profuse apologies by European and American leaders of wrongs long rendered irrelevant except in memory, there were active demands for repatriation of artefacts on the other.

    It should be noted here that while an element of force was always involved in colonialism, it did not mean that every colonial artefact brought by some European from some non-European nation was taken at gunpoint. In many cases – including in the case of the famous Koh-i-Noor diamond, the artefacts in question were actually gifted by royals and others who owned them. Many of these royals now live in Europe itself, and even if they don’t, they aren’t particularly interested in getting these treasures back because they are acutely aware of the fact that whatever the context, a gift is a gift.

    In other cases, looting did take place but the ones who were looted – such as the various extinct lineages of Africa or India – can no longer get back what they lost because they no longer exist. Demands for repatriation are made by the respective nations on grounds of national heritage, but it is far from clear what rights a modern nation has on things which can be of a very personal nature.

    But, for the sake of simplicity, let us take cases where there was actual looting of items which had symbolic and ritual significance and were very much public and important. Let’s talk, for instance, of the Benin Bronzes. Without going into the complex history of the scramble for Africa, suffice it to say that during the late 19th Century, a punitive expedition of British soldiers and colonialists went to Benin and stripped its royal palace of anything of value. These items included bronze figurines called the Benin Bronzes, which today can be found in numerous European and American museums of repute. It has been argued that the bronzes were of great ritual significance and would never have been given up except under extreme pressure. Hence, it may well be called a despoliation of the country and the bronzes need to be returned.

    Scholars and curators who concur with this – and there are a great many who do – have a major problem, however. To whom must the bronzes go ? The Royal Palace of Benin and the Nigerian government are separate entities, and whose claim is to be respected for something that was taken in completely different circumstances ?

    But my argument here would be somewhat more fundamental. I would argue that as long as there is someone who is wiling to take up the task of harping on about cultural heritage and colonial despoliation, s/he would manage to persuade some or the other museum or historical society to return such artefacts to that someone or someone else. But should they be returned at all?

    Here, let’s get the question of emptying of colonial museums out of the way. When arguments are being made on grounds of national heritage and shared memory of former injustice, empty museum shelves would scarcely put up a major defense of the status quo. This especially when a new, “woke” generation considers all things colonial to be anathema.

    But more fundamentally, can we ask whether the countries demanding repatriation have any strong grounds for such demands ? Cultural heritage might sound ferocious on paper, but it is a paper tiger. Each country has numerous tangible and intangible artefacts, buildings and memories which can and are mobilized by the leaders as per convenience. Hence, while one group might eulogize Tipu Sultan for being the last fighting bastion against the British in all except parts of Central and North West India, others might ignore or openly attack him and artefacts related to him because he was a Muslim ruler whose father had usurped power from a Hindu ruler and who was supposedly not fair in his attitude towards the Hindus.

    No better example of this can be seen than the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992. While the Masjid itself had never been the epitome of Mughal architecture, it was historically important and worthy of conservation. Instead, it was demolished under the pretext of there being a Ram temple underneath. Under such circumstances, what is the guarantee that a Koh I Noor or a tiger figurine belonging to Tipu won’t be similarly destroyed or at least defaced by those who find something objectionable in the legacy involved ?

    Move outside India and the damage done to archaeological sites such as Palmyra by ISIS or Bamian by the Taliban clearly shows that third-world countries are oftentimes not equipped or do not give enough importance to their heritage to save it from motivated groups of iconoclasts. Heritage itself is charged with social meaning – as it was in the earlier periods when it was linked to the religion to which it belonged, and not considered part of the common heritage of all. As such, every change of government and every crisis runs the risk of another Bamian or Palmyra.

    But let’s say the legacy in question is not disputed and will probably not be disputed such as in case of the Benin bronzes. Even then, countries demanding their return aren’t exactly the best equipped to house and maintain their treasures. It is true that disasters such as the fire in the Brazilian museum and that at Notre Dame show that nature does not discriminate. Yet it is very much true that museums across the poorer parts of the world are badly financed and in worse shape as each year goes by. In many cases, the visitors themselves amuse themselves by damaging the artefacts, as was seen in Hampi earlier this year. Given that Nigeria is no better than India in its record of conservation, what guarantee is there that a repatriated Benin Bronze will not be lying on its size, cracked and rusting, with some lovers’ initials painted on them for sake of a few selfies?

    But there are even more fundamental reasons for not repatriating these cultural treasures. Firstly, treasures aren’t meant to be hoarded in the way the kings of yore did in their palaces. It is not for the enjoyment of a few, but the education of all. Having cultural treasures of a civilization spread all over the world allows young minds access to different civilizations. Even in the age of digital media and 1:1 modeling, the sense of historical gravity felt when viewing the real thing cannot be replicated. Hence, a country should actively try to ensure that its treasures are on display in as many responsible and historically sensible countries as possible, so its citizens may know what the country’s culture looked like.

    Demanding that the treasures be returned flies in the face of this logic. Not many would want to hop across Africa to view the individual museums where they would be housed. Hence, the increase in revenue arising out of such repatriation would not make up for the loss in viewership and study in the countries where the treasures now reside, and which are infinitely easier to reach even if you are not a EU or American citizen.

    Now it has to be submitted that ideally, the countries from whom the artefacts were taken would discuss their retention or repatriation as equal partners. What would be retained would be retained only with the express consent of the original owners. But we have seen the complications that arise when original owners are sought out. Further, the sense of partisan nationalism prevailing in many third world countries would probably lead politicians to demand repatriation regardless of historical justification simply so they can earn brownie points in their respective countries. If such are the facts of the case, it makes sense to consider the actual question of who and how much access the people of the world would have to a certain artefact when discussing the question of repatriation.

    Secondly, it is not as if the proverbial Newcastle-upon-Tyne of Nigeria or India no longer have coal. Much that was excavated by the British in India, in Greece or in Nigeria, remains there to this day. In the Indian case, the British pretty much set up archaeology and told us how to take care of our heritage. We – and other countries – can always add to our collections by funding archaeological efforts and encouraging people to take up archaeology and museology as professions if we want additional eyeballs and additional tourist revenue.

    Countries can pump this revenue into museums and archaeological efforts so they don’t suffer a repeat of the accidental Brazilian brainwash of history in fire. Emptying out the shelves of a museum in London to fill one in Delhi or Kolkata simply doesn’t serve any purpose except to swell the chests of nationalists. And nationalistic jingoism of tomorrow can easily destory what the jingoism of today brought back from Britain or America.

    We can conclude on the note that if colonialism is a historical wrong, then repatriation of artefacts isn’t the means of correcting it. Not only would it lead to endless controversies over what, when and who should receive the greatest attention and ownership, it will also deprive the people of Europe, America and even Asia and Africa from seeing artefacts collected from the world over in a single place. Let such viewers be told what the true provenance of these artefacts are, and how and why they cannot be returned. Let them understand the complex reasons why artefacts need to be preserved for their historical value, and not because they serve the purpose of bringing in additional revenue or add laurels to some nationalist’s hat. Let them understand that heritage of humans – and we mean all humans – is shared and the more dispersed it is, the more we can fight the prejudices and particularities that divide the world up into imaginary compartments. In sum then, let artefacts educate all so that all can take better care of all artefacts and the common heritage of humankind.

  • The Tenacity of Plastics in the Mofussil

    Years ago, when I was just completing my graduation, I was required to submit a survey project on environmental science. Back in those days – and I suspect till today – the modus operandi of such projects used to be a simple copy and paste with some fudging of data. Sadly, I chose the longer path of actually carrying out a survey in my area. The municipal councilor of the area had recently banned the use of single-use plastics (polythenes) and I felt confident that this would be an ideal survey topic. People would be highly discomfited by the withdrawal of polythenes and would say so, thus providing an interesting set of data. Over two weeks and countless questionnaires, though, I realized that most people were in fact, supportive of the ban as long as it was on record. Even off record, i.e. when the questionnaire was complete and the discussion veered into freewheeling territory, their arguments remained firmly anti-plastic. It was surprising to learn how educated many ordinary people were regarding the ill-effects of plastic and how they affect the environment. Many even suggested alternatives which we’d read of in our books – jute bags, paper bags, etc etc.

    My project was complete, the data set providing a textbook example of an educated set of people who were willing to sacrifice their convenience for the environment. I don’t think all this effort brought me more marks than the average copycat, but it did leave in me an impression that environmental education had reached a point where administrative efforts would be supported instead of being ignored as is the norm in India. I also told myself that I was being overoptimistic, and that it was impossible that people would have changed so much. They were probably just wondering where this questionnaire would end up, and therefore were being highly circumspect with their answers. Yet I could not deny that they knew a lot of about the environmental effects of plastic, and support or no support, understood what the ban was for.

    Three years later, I would be sent on my first substantial job to Tehatta (I made a whole series of articles on Tehatta about two years back). First impressions suggested that the people there would be less aware of the ill effects of plastic. After all, plastics were cheaper, and who had the time and energy to source bio-degradable stuff at higher cost when their lives revolved around getting the maximum amount of work done to be able to afford a decent living ?

    Strangely, the NSS activities of the college proved otherwise. As part of the NSS camps, we sent students into the surrounding villages (basically the areas from where they themselves came) and asked them to carry out surveys. Despite the obvious observer bias inherent in this method, we found the students and their respondents were also remarkably well aware of the risks that plastic posed. We received detailed information listing out the various ill effects of plastic, including the accumulation of plastic in the local Jalangi river and other sources of water. The variety of responses told us that the people were acutely aware of the menace of plastic insofar as their daily lives were concerned.

    This was refreshing, because unlike the respondents of my Honours survey, these weren’t textbook answers. Rather, they pointed out specific local problems and suggested specific local remedies. You simply couldn’t find such answers in any textbook, and given the education level of a good number of respondents wasn’t above high school, you knew these people hadn’t simply read or heard of these solutions somewhere. Long story short, my impression about city folk being aware of the risks of plastic was now extended to the people of the villages as well. Sample size of one region notwithstanding, I was informed that environmental awareness was now a general aspect of people’s knowledge.

    The strange thing though, was that this knowledge and awareness didn’t translate into any sort of actual action beyond what was required of them by the questionnaires and regular environmental drives. Sure, they would clean up the campus and surrounding areas. But then they themselves would litter those areas again as they’d been doing since the advent of plastic. When quizzed about this quixotic behaviour, their simply reply was that they’d clean it up again, or that it didn’t matter much.

    The standard explanation under such circumstances from the educated classes (and you get a hell lot of such responses as soon as you broach the topic over a coffee table tete-a-tete) was that these people had been taught only to respect the law and not to imbibe its spirit. They knew the law could punish them, and so they simply obeyed. What they were required to know, they knew, but what they were required to understand and realize, they did not. Further, given that the impetus for such efforts typically came from city-dwelling or city-minded higher administrative corps, it was not really surprising that the top-down approach resulted in a high-handed but superficial application that showed a few results and then disappeared. All of these explanations would end with a sharp critique of the ruling dispensation and how it was not doing enough for the environment.

    After a certain point of time, you realized that these explanations were ones that the city folk needed for their own mental peace, rather than ones that actually brought about change, or explained the lack thereof. This was especially valid since the city folk themselves were often found to be less inclined to litter, or more inclined to not use plastic, than their village counterparts. This was partly due to their financial conditions allowing for the use of alternatives which often cost more than plastics. Further, the city had greater availability of alternatives as opposed to villages.

    But what was happening in the villages ? This question returned to my mind during my recently concluded election duty. I was posted on the outskirts of the city, along a nice stretch of the riverfront. This area could best be described as the suburbs, rather than the city proper or the village. The people who lived there were in close proximity to both the villages and the city itself. Yet their actions and behaviour was more in tune with what their village counterparts thought and did rather than what the city folk would do.

    The point was driven home by the curious use of plastics for packing food. Us city folk are used to bemoaning the multiple layers of plastic packaging surrounding processed foods like biscuits, etc. Yet when foods come in plastic containers, we don’t bat an eyelid. The argument goes that these containers aren’t strictly single-use since they can be used again. Plus, many of them lay claim to being eco-friendly in some respect.

    Not so with the polythenes in which our food came. One plastic bag contained rice, another contained the dal and one more contained the mashed potato (alu vaate) and another the egg curry. Each of these plastics belonged to the much-vilified polythene category i.e. they were simple carry bags which had been tied carefully to ensure the food inside did not come out. Given the excess of water in Bengali cuisine, this was all the more necessary since these carry bags (the colloquial term for polythene bags) were often carried in larger shopping bags for transportation and unceremoniously dumped on the floor at their destination. Anyone who wished to eat would have to pick up the respective bags, pair them with a thermocol (or plastic) plate and head off to a moderately clean and quiet place to eat.

    As someone who’d had such meals (the local term, not my own usage) I wasn’t surprised or discomfited by this overtly rough-and-ready way of providing and consuming food. Many a times the food which came to our college at lunchtime would be similarly packed. If the person for whom it was meant had a plate (stored in his locker), then the plastic plate would simply be taken back by the supplier. Otherwise the plastic plate would be used and thrown away along with the carry bags. Since none of my polling part companions had been minded to bring along steel cutlery with them, the only option was to use those plates. There’s a specific method for having food on these plates, unless you want dal and rice all over yourself and nothing in your stomach. You first held the plate down with a full glass of water, then carefully poured out the rice. Then you made a crater in the centre of the rice to pour out the dal. You then have as much rice as possible with the dal, before opening out the remaining bags and proceeding as before. In the end, you dump the empty packets and glass on the plate and throw them away.

    You may well ask why I bothered to explain the process in detail ? After all, it isn’t exactly rocket science, and is fairly well known by almost everyone outside the core of the city itself. The reason is simple – at each stage, you have to use the properties of plastics to ensure things to flow when they shouldn’t and do flow when they should. Take for example, the fact that you have to transport liquids without spilling them on cycles through bumpy roads and up equally bumpy stairs. Any spillage would spoil the outer bag and also discolour the place where they’re kept before being consumed. Equally importantly, nothing should be able to go in and adulterate the food, since that would create a health hazard.

    Then again, you have to be absolutely sure that the stuff doesn’t leak onto the plate before you want it to flow out. If that happens, you may well end up with dal-ified egg curry or some other frankenstein’s monster, whose taste would be the LCM of the already rather debatable taste of the individual parts. Finally, you want the stuff to flow well, and not get stuck in the bag itself when you’re pouring it out onto the plate. Spoons and other scraping materials are almost never included (unless it’s Chinese, and no one has Chinese for lunch or dinner), and scraping off dal and curry from the inside of the packet is an irritating waste of time.

    Ergo, you need something that needs to be spill proof, water proof but also easily openable and pourable. Plastics alone have all these qualities, and polythene bags tend to be the cheapest of them all. In fact, polythene bags have two additional qualities as well – they are highly stretchable but also tearable. You just know how much force you have to apply to a bag to be able to stretch it to perhaps tie it well, and how much you need to tear a gaping hole in it. Other plastics, especially the denser variants, would need inordinately high force, and even then they may tear suddenly.

    Given these qualities, it is not surprising that plastics are used in a large variety of food-related applications, from carrying meal components to even juice and tea. There was one instance when we got a large poly bag full of steaming tea, and had to pour it out into different plastic cups before we could have it. This tea itself had been poured from a large thermos which the owner could not spare because it was needed in another polling booth.

    This brings us back to the question, where does the ordinary person in the mofussil stand on the question of the ill effects of plastic ? Given what I have seen and heard, it may be said that they are fairly aware of the risks posed, but not cognizant with how these risks translate from their own use of plastics. We are accustomed to seeing huge piles of plastic being recovered from bodies of whales. On the other hand, the actual amounts of plastic in any village or mofussil area would be only a fraction of the kilograms recovered from whales. We know that such small amounts eventually accumulate into the huge amounts but do they realize it ?

    Let’s for a moment assume that they do. At least, let’s assume that the younger generation does. What then ? They have few alternatives, since the most common alternative – the paper bag or the thonga, has far too many problems, leaking being not the least of them. Others, such as jute bags, work only when the products being carried are somewhat costly, eg. Sarees. Plus, they again fail the leaking dal test.

    This isn’t to say that plastics are used everywhere. In fact, the average villager would only use plastics when they’re on the move. Even then, instead of buying meals, they’d prefer to sit down at some hotel and eat from a hard plastic or metal plate. They’d prefer to have tea in the more durable burnt clay bhnar than in a plastic cup. At home, they’d be using durable stuff, which would include stuff made of harder and durable plastic, metal and glass, but almost never the thin polythene stuff.

    Given this, the polythene challenge gets limited to the question of transporting stuff, especially leaky foodstuffs, using the rickety infrastructure that is the norm in mofussil areas. Neither paper, nor jute, nor any of the rather fancy alternatives that people tend to champion from time to time, will work here. Costs, availability and product features (such as non-leakage) will all work against such elite options. Something would need to be found that can transport meals, tea and snacks without making a mess at any point.

    I believe that that something would have to arise from the mofussil areas themselves, or at least their usage would have to. Remember that the usage of polythene bags for transporting food was never a feature of the West, nor is it found in the big cities. Rather, it was how a product was adapted by the mofussil areas. Similarly, an existing or new product would have to be adapted (or even better, discovered) in these areas for it to begin replacing polybags.

    Until then, all the educational drives, the NSS workshops and questionnaires will remain just paper tigers, satisfying the egos of babus and NGO workers but failing to address the basic requirements of those towards whom they are targeted.

  • La bêtise des choix simple

    La bêtise des choix simple

    Dans le semaine dernière, le premier ministre de royaume-uni place son accord avant le Parlement pour le troisième fois. Les membres de Parlement souhaitent que ce accord échouerait. Et ça arrive. Les membres de Parlement et le premier ministre semblent comme le tour de Babel. Un homme ne comprendre pas le mots ou de voeux du reste. Le premier ne peut pas comprendre les instructions simple de L’union Européenne ou sa nation.

    Ce nœud apportons-nous à la question – comment apportons-nous ici ? Un explication simple est que le premier est fou, que sa « lignes rouges » été pas pratique et sa oreilles étaient sourdes à tout suggestions. Mais je pense la maladie est plus de mal, et va plus loin. Si nous revenons a le « référendum » de 2016 an, c’est claire que le choix été plus de simple. Voulez-vous vivrez dans le suffocation de L’union Européenne ou voulez-vous la liberté de choisir votre trajet sans imposition de UE ?

    Un choix simple peut apporte un accord plus de simple. « Brexit » peut etre simple. Alors comment nous apportons ce situation complexe ? Il n’est suffit de dire pas que le premier est un leader mal. Elle devenu le premier ministre après le choix de brexit et sa travail été trouver un accord avec michel barnier. Elle a échoué. Mais le décision pour le referendum de brexit n’etait pas sa decision. Sa échec est dans le execution de brexit. Mais qu’en est-il de referendum et le choix dans ca ?

    Les choix du brexit ete simple, et c’etait la probleme avec ca. Un probleme plus de complex devient un choix binaire et un guerre de propagande arrive. Cette result est que plus de hommes ou femmes fait un choix que ces saisies très peu. Il y a peu de bien en dire que le nation de Royaume-Uni fait un choix mal ou ils ont été mal informés. L’erreur était dans le choix, et n’est pas dans le peuple que fait de choix. Quoi est mal avec un choix simple ?

    Les problèmes de monde moderne sont plus de complexe – c’est clair. Mais un choix ne peut pas complexé, car les peuples exigent un choix simple. Un choix simple permet des hommes propagandistes à offer grand des esperances. Les hommes politiques sont hommes propagandistes, et ils choisissent ce que seront les choix. Si les peuples exigent un choix simple et les politiques profitee d’un tel choix, devons-nous obtenir plus de Brexits et de chaos ces devenaient ?

    Une bonne parallèle avec le partition indienne peut être fait. Du législatifs que ont decidee que quelque etats du pays de indienne peut devenir des parties de Pakistan eu un probleme similaire a Brexit. Les peuples que élu ses representants eu un choix similaire a les peuples britanniques sur Brexit. Jusqu’a 1940 an, le question de partition était une question hypothétique. Mais dans le deuxième guerre de monde, ce question devient réel. Plus de espérances fantastiques ont été offerts, et les peuples musulmans ont ecoute. Quand le temps de voter venu, ces elu les Ligue de Muslim et faitent le partition certain.

    Aurait-il pu être différent ? Oui, si les peuples eu plus de temps à décider ses futures. Les peuples faitent décisions moderees si ces apprendrez encore plus. L’effet de propaganda diminuée plus de temps passé. Si le britannique annonce la décision de partition un décade avant le vote, les peuples pourraient choisir un choix différente.

    Mais plus de temps n’est suffisant de condition. L’information que le peuples reçoivent est important. Il est clair que un vote que n’a pas propaganda est un impossibilite. Mais le gouvernement et le société civile peuvent offrir information precise a les peuples avant le vote. Les officieux britanniques supporte les hommes communales en ses propaganda. Si a la place, ses avait offert clair solutions dans le question de partition avec statistiques officielle, les résultants peuvent étaient plus de différentes.

    Le troisième problème est que les émotions deviennent incontrôlable. Après un certain temps, les statistiques et explications rationnelles deviennent inutile pour les hommes quand ses pensent ses identite est en dangere. Un vote de partition peut devenir un vote de identité musulman et un devoir à la religion islam. Les imams et sufis parlent ca, et les hommes et femmes musulmans faitent représentatifs qu’était musulmans réel. Ces hommes naturellement vote pour le partition.

    Les methodes pour combattre le influence de l’idéologie sont diverse. Un education seculaire est un solution. L’administration peut utiliser des méthodes que diminuee l’influence des imams et créent un milieu secular. Nous peut saisir que les britanniques utilise des catégories religieux et transforme le société indienne. Ces méthodes n’est pas peut appliquer en un ans ou deux, mais demande plusieurs décennies. Je dis notre problemes communales de siècle XXIe commence dans le politiques de la période britannique.

    Ces education peut etre s’appliqué a brexit. Un choix complex devient un choix simple et la nation a peu de temps de décider. Un discussion de longtemps avec statistiques et informations exactes pourrait avoir fournir un choix éclairé. En place deuxieme, les propagandes pour et contre Brexit aurait pu être surveillé. Le gouvernement aurait pu offrir information relatifs à la situation maintenant et le situation attendu le futur. Ce information aurait pu neutre, alors que le peuples aurait pourraient prendre un décision suffisamment éclairée.

    Dans le place dernier, le rôle de ideologie peut etre examinee. Le ideologie – le logic derriere brexit – est un consideration que les île de britannique est especial. Tout liens avec UE peut être un attaque sur la liberté de Royaume-Uni. J’ai discuste que l’idéologie de Brexit existe en vide, detache de la realite. Il est le fruit de plus de deciennes de croyance en le “bien colonialisme” : une colonialisme qui existe car le caractère anglais est unique. Le decolonization sans les guerres sanglantes reinforcee cette notion. Le jeune generation comprendre que le pays de Royaume-Uni besoin de l’europe car ce génération a appris l’histoire réel de decolonization et le position de Royaume-Uni dans le monde de siècle XXIe. Cette generation eu de choix “remain” dans le referendum. Mais le génération de “baby boomers” vie dans le paradis de fou. Il n’est possible a apprender cette generation. Ils peut aider la nation et le monde s’ils meurent rapidement et offrir la décisions à la génération que sait.

    Mais le choix peut etre complex. Il ne devrait pas un choix binaire mais un choix multiple. Ces choix peut reflecter the complexités dans tout de positions de question. Si la question est complexe, le peuple peut penser, et si ces penser ces peut comprender le gravité de situation. Je ne dit pas que ce solution peut rendre les peuples meilleurs citoyens, mais quelque hommes/femmes peut deviennent ca. Et nous pouvons avoir un monde ou le problèmes – même s’il ne sont pas résolus – peut être compris meilleurs.

    Source de image : https://www.debatingeurope.eu/2018/01/09/should-britain-have-a-referendum-on-the-final-brexit-deal/#.XKAFmXdFyUk

  • The War Against Enemies Within


    If there is something that gets the average Indian’s blood boiling, it is the idea of war. There is something uniquely attractive about war – it serves to satiate our sense of nationalism, our sense of the need for quick remedies and of course, the need for violence. Humans are by nature attracted to violence, which both explains the breathtaking amount of mental space we expend on trying not to be violent, and also the number of fuck-ups we end up with for not heeding this ocean of advice we created ourselves. But not all wars are equal, or equally winnable.

    Take China for instance. It was our good fortune to have a retired brigadier speak of India’s foreign relations during a recently concluded course. I asked him why we can’t deal with our bête noire, China, since China seems to have the only combination of anti-India interests and capacity to cause real problems. He answered that China couldn’t be called our annoyer-in-chief, and avoided the remainder of the question. Now he is right about the first part (and the only part he answered), since the average Indian does not consider China to be the principal problem. Ask the man on the street, and you would at most get some vague response such as “stop using Chinese goods”. What else ? Nothing.

    So even if China manages to block India’s attempts across the diplomatic board and strip away allies from South Asia to Africa, Indians as a whole aren’t very concerned. This too without China launching a charm offensive, proof of which can be seen in that while we use Chinese products, we are still extremely racist and xenophobic as far as real Chinese are concerned.

    But the retired soldier did not simply avoid my question, he diverted it to his favourite talking point – the case of Pakistan. We were being given the standard explanation of why Pakistan is a problem. An overtly-tolerant Nehru, a hoodwinked Indira Gandhi, Pakistan’s own weak political establishment, the domination of the Punjabi-army and the need to maintain the raison d’etre of Pakistan in religious jihad. Net result was a number of wars, which had been completely dominated by India, and which led Pakistan to choose its cunning “thousand cuts strategy” to wear out Indian forces. So we needed to deal with Pakistan more than China. Period.

    I won’t go into the solutions proposed, since they too are way too textbookish. What mattered is that he was clear on one thing – war won’t solve the issue by itself. We had fought plenty of wars with Pakistan, and these wars had yielded next to nothing due to the lack of political will. More wars without proper diplomatic follow-up will yield nothing more than losses. Since the Indian army was completely subservient to the civilian establishment, more bloodshed without political machismo would simply bring us back to square one.

    Up to this point, I didn’t have much disagreement with him. It is true that at summits following major wars, the way we returned land and soldiers to the Pakistanis is unconscionable. It is also true that more wars would probably yield even less results because the situation in South Asia continues to leave less and less room for rapid and decisive action. War for the sake of war is something we left behind in the trenches of WWI, and it’s best not to bring those antiquated ideas back.

    But he had one last thing to say. He believed our current dispensation – led by Narendra Modi – was made of a different material. It was at last showing the necessary gumption to walk the talk as far as political will was concerned. Be it a surgical strike or the recent Balakot attack in response to Pulwama, the PM was finally showing strength of an order no one previously had. Our enemies would now learn to fear us, and this itself would act as a deterrent.

    I couldn’t disagree more. Personal political views aside, Modi’s relations with Pakistan have been vacillating at best, shifting from hugs to surgical strikes like the weather changes from sunshine to rain in a matter of moments. But it’s not my intention to look at the whole history of Indo-Pak relations in the NDA-II years. Instead, I’ll simply focus on the most recent events, beginning with the attack on the CRPF convoy in Pulwama.

    This attack was nothing new. For years, nay decades, the Indian forces had been under attack, with notable incidents like Pathankot and Uri coming to mind even before we begin speaking of Pulwama. There can be endless debate on whether we have learnt our lessons or not, but the bigger point for me is how we respond to these attacks.

    Right off the bat, it must be said that the response to Uri was somewhat novel. Even if we discount the romanticized exaggeration of Bollywood, it can be said without doubt that the surgical strikes which followed clearly managed to do significant damage to the terror infrastructure within PoK. It was not so much the action itself, but its scale and efficacy that remain as indelible marks of success for both the military establishment and their political masters.

    Fast forward to Pulwama, and our first target wasn’t so much the Pakistanis, as the Kashmiris. All over India, Kashmiri traders, students and journalists came under attack from their fellow Indians. This was nationalism masquerading as xenophobia, finding enemies within to compensate for attacks from separatists. To make matters worse, people seen defending innocent Kashmiris were hauled up and beaten as well, marking a clear Balkanisation of the Indian psyche which had not existed as recently as 2016.

    The government, for its part, bided its time, arguing that the army had been given complete freedom to choose where and how to attack. One wonders whether this wasn’t the politicians simply insuring themselves against the backlash should anything go wrong. After all, if the army messed up, then the army was to blame. And you couldn’t blame the army without being anti-national. So no one would be blamed.

    Eventually, we did get the tit-for-tat response. Our jets flew into Gilgit-Baltistan (beyond PoK) and bombed a place called Balakot. It was declared that we had attacked and destroyed one of the main staging areas for terror attacks in J&K. Blank spaces remained, but we assumed these would be filled up in due course. In the meantime, everyone who had been rooting for a punitive war against Pakistan celebrated their and their uncle/aunt’s victory over Pakistan. The media outlets waxed eloquent (if screaming at a high volume be eloquence) about the success of India in dealing with Pakistan and how the latter had been taught a lesson. As if we hadn’t already been completing the syllabus every time the truants attacked us in the past.

    All this was expected, but what happened thereafter was not. For one thing, confusion deepened. Information did not come out, and questions raised received questions in return. How many terrorists were killed ? Did we stop to count the number ? Okay, then what about Pakistan saying we bombed a forest ? Did Pakistan pay you to say this ? The questions and the jingoistic counter-questions dominated the media relentlessly, providing TRPs and noise which drowned out the actual achievement of the air force. Questions remained and remained unanswered in the minds of people who took a moment to think about it.

    Before this storm would settle, Pakistan counterattacked. Except we didn’t learn that it had counterattacked until much later. All we learnt was that there was a dogfight in the skies and two of their planes had been shot down. Alright, good for the IAF. But then we learnt that only one plane had been shot down. Another plane that had been shot down was our own, and it had landed in Pakistani territory. Great, so it wasn’t that clean a victory after all. But when did this all happen ? Did we attack again ? Did they attack us ? Counterattack ? Oh, okay. But they were pushed back right. Some nationalist pride was salvaged.

    But then we learnt that Wing Commander Abhinandan had been captured by the Pakistanis. Would we go to war against them ? Musn’t we ? The odd thing here was that the TV channels, which had been celebrating the success of Modi’s warlike strategy, cooled down to argue for a measured approach. Not caution, because caution doesn’t garner TRP, but maybe leave it to the actual leaders to take the call instead of braying for war ? The goal was now to get the man with the big moustache back.

    Before anyone could decide how to get him back, Imran Khan (Pakistani PM) simply said he would be returned. No questions asked, he would be returned as a gesture of humanity. Our political leaders quickly tried to spin this as Pakistan being forced to return the Indian officer. But there appeared little sign of compulsion. Pakistan – after all – had returned Abhinandan on its own, before (and therefore without) any major diplomatic or military sparring. The “bound to” argument had to be stretched to its limits in the case of the POW.

    In the meantime, focus had been shifted to how Abhinandan had been a great officer, who had shot down a F-16 with a MiG-21. Technicalities aside, this was indeed something admirable, since the MiG-21 was far older. But whose job was it to ensure that Abhinandan had a better plane than the flying coffin ? In our euphoria at getting the POW back, this question was conveniently forgotten. We were back to celebrating the army – and by unjustified extension, Modi’s – success against Pakistan.

    But such celebration was muted, not because the leaders didn’t spend enough on news channels or firecrackers (or garlands) but because to many Indians, and the world at large, the spectacle of the latest Indo-Pakistan sparring had left an impression different from the ones earlier. For the first time, India seemed to be more eager than Pakistan to prove the latter was evil. For the first time, the dearth of data and confusing narratives was coming from the Indian side rather than the facetious Pakistanis. Finally, for the first time, it was the Pakitanis who were making a humane gesture instead of India. We may or may not have won the dogfight, but we lost control of, and eventually lost, the narrative through our overexertion to prove our vision of a strong government and a strong nation correct.

    If we suffered a defeat in the domain of public perception, we also suffered in our other actions with Pakistan. We removed Pakistan’s Most Favoured Nation (a trade term) status and warned that we would stop water from our rivers to theirs. But going beyond this, we stopped their shooters from participating in international games being held in India. This earned us a stern warning from the international bodies, the message being that India’s applications to host future international events would be in jeopardy. Given that our sportspersons and sports administrators are no less nationalistic than our soldiers or Modi himself (more so in all likelihood), it seems patently unfair to make them suffer so we can show our vindictive side.

    But it was not just sports that suffered. The biggest sufferers were those who spoke out against this patent mess that occurred. Questions were raised from day one, regarding matters as technical as diverging satellite imagery of Balakot, to the very simple question of why the details were not released completely in an organized manner. These questions were not only brushed aside for being anti-national, but their owners were also punished. Case in point is a professor in Orissa who was dismissed for raising critical questions. In my own city of Kolkata, no less than three people were actually beaten up for casting doubt on the course of events and the veracity of the many claims made by both sides.

    Obviously, none of this affects Pakistan in any way. If the monolithic image of Pakistan be the one we truly subscribe to, it should be assumed that the civil society in Pakistan has no voice, and regardless of what they say or we say, the army would not be moved. They being deceitful, would use everything we say against us without any moral compunctions. So does it really matter what we say ?

    It does, for us. We are a democracy and a country with a vibrant public sphere that even the emergency could not suppress. From nationalistic journalism to sting posts, our press does anything and everything, and we must be proud of that. Our intellectuals – teachers, professors, lawyers, activists and students all included – are respected the world over, and this respect comes not because we like or dislike Pakistan, but because of what we say for ourselves and about the world at large. To question these pillars of free speech would be to take our country backward toward colonial times, since democracy and free speech go hand in hand.

    In fact, the willingness of a section of the populace – both the paid trolls and goons and the silent spectators – to condone hooliganism and enforced silence in the name of nationalism, is a sign of fascism. As is xenophobia. Plurality of language, opinion and religion cut across all “dominant” narratives, and domination can only be secured through violence in the last resort. Once secured however, it creates and perpetuates a sense of self-censorship and further silence that allows this narrative to become hegemonic i.e. to enter the minds of people and control them from within. Support for, and compliance with, the proponents of the narrative becomes a compulsion against which we gradually stop thinking because thinking leads to speaking and speaking is pointless if we only get beaten up and lose our jobs.

    In a sense, then, the call for unity against anything – terrorism, Pakistan or fascism – must not be at the cost of suppressing cross-currents of thought and opinion. Our country does not need the weakness of Pakistan, nor would our opinions weaken India and make Pakistan strong. Instead, we stand to lose our democracy and freedom by relentlessly searching for the “enemies within”. It’s time we held the vigilantes for the war against “enemies within” to account, or prepared to be crushed within our own minds.

  • The Council – The Unhappily Conflicted Review

    The Council – The Unhappily Conflicted Review

    Given my grumpiness towards PUBG (see earlier post), it was perhaps not surprising that the game I took up during the holidays was, in many ways, just the opposite. It neither had guns (okay, maybe one), nor loot drops, nor – and most importantly – multiplayer. Instead, it was what some people call a walking simulator. You walk, talk to people in choreographed sequences and discover things. Sure, there are QTEs, but that is it. If you think this is boring, remember that Life is Strange was a walking simulator by this definition, and I’ve been hooked to them since. In between, I played another called Gone Home. And now, The Council. The Council is the first historical game of this genre that I’ve played, and I was equal parts excited and worried about how this would pan out. All I can say – and I shall justify myself below – that I was right in being equally excited and worried, since this game is both a step forward and backward for the genre.

     

    Graphics

    Given that this game came out in 2018, the graphics were always expected to be top-notch. In a majority of scenarios, this is indeed the case. The game takes place in the late 18th Century (January 1793) and we are treated to the mansion of a rich British aristocrat. The devs pulled out all stops when ensuring that the game looks and feels realistic. Once you are out of the rather dreary (Vampyr like) docks, you are treated to a breathtaking hall with large paintings that somehow aren’t just décor but have actual plot value. Right in front of you is a huge bronze statue sticking out of the wall. The pillars, floors and doors are all rendered in exquisite detail.

    It only gets better from here. As you explore the mansion, you discover large salons with furniture that has been rendered down to the finest etchings, fireplaces that are as realistic as one can expect, and décor that deserves the newest rendering tech namely ray-tracing to reach its full potential. Shadows and reflections are especially notable, since the halls have smoothened and hence reflective floors.

    Move outside, and the gardens are equally beautiful during both day and night. Statues in marble (or some other white stone) bask in the winter sunshine, their shadows carefully rendered and appearing completely natural. Move into the crypt, on the other hand, and the torches and stone walls make for an eerie experience.

    Things only start going downwards when one moves to the character models. It is understood that walking simulators generally don’t have the budget to do live action recording of the people. Hence, unlike Far Cry for instance, the actions are rather woody. More problematic are the facial expressions. While no one expects the facial expressions to be as realistic as the background, it is very weird when the character’s eyes consistently look away when you’re talking to them. Lips move without any relation to the words being spoken, and the skin neither wrinkles nor stretches when the figures change “expressions”. This would have been fine had it been a top down or even third person game, but the dialogues are delivered “over the shoulder”, giving you an effectively first person view of the person you’re speaking to. This, combined with the deadpan expressions and wandering eyes, seriously made me wonder whether the plotline involved a lot of undead people living out the same experiences over and over again.

    Last but not least, let’s not pretend there are no artifacts or glitches. None of them are game-breaking, or plot-breaking at any rate, but they are very much there. The protagonist spends more than a little time standing inside other characters, while their limbs gently disappear into walls. Lighting errors arise from time to time. But these are relatively minor, and never detract from the game so much as the deadpan expressions do.

    Overall, the game could have invested a little more time and effort into the characters. This is especially tragic since the character models are actually quite good. The skin tones are accurate, the wrinkles (static as they are) appear natural and the proportions are just about right. One could argue that they overdid the breasts on the primary love interest (more on this later) but that too is forgivable. If only these characters didn’t look like wooden dolls with crooked eyes, one could earnestly say that this game truly brings the time to life in a way that others (AC Unity for instance) could not.

    Rating – 4/5

     

    Plot

    You are Louis de Richet, son of Sarah de Richet, and member of the Golden Order. Your mother went to attend a secretive meeting on an island with a bunch of rich and important folk hosted by an old aristocrat called Lord Mortimer. Then she disappeared. Now Mortimer wants you to attend and help find her. So you turn up one cold January night of 1793 in search of answers.

    With this premise, you start out your quest to find your mother. Soon you learn that you are meant to basically replace her until she is found, and in doing so, serve the mysterious Golden Order. There are other members of the order – notably Emily Hillsborough, a rich duchess who serves as a confidante of the British Prime Minister,  William Pitt the Younger. For plot purposes, she is the primary love interest (more on her in the next section). Others are all famous figures of the day, including George Washington, Napoleon Bonaparte, Manuel Godoy, and others. Added to them are the mysterious Miss Adams, Mortimer himself and his friend Sir Holm.

    Your task is to basically talk to each of these people and find out what happened prior to your mother’s disappearance. It becomes clear early on that she is still alive and very much on the island. It also becomes clear that she has already made some enemies, who interestingly, don’t consider you on her side. Instead, they actively solicit your help to obtain their own ends, or simply to avoid her.

    All this would have been fine enough, but fine isn’t what this game is about. Instead, it sparkles due to its historical setting. It is implied that Mortimer invites influential people to his place to propose world-changing treaties. These are debated and if approved by unanimous vote by all (Mortimer and Holm abstaining) it soon comes to pass. The current debate occurs on the transfer of Louisiana from Spain to France. Given that this was an actual historical event which preceded the Louisiana purchase from France by the USA, one could expect some historical depth to the whole narrative. Which there definitely is! The game refuses to go for simple us-vs-them situations. Instead, you are required to carefully draw out conclusions and persuade people using actual historical arguments.

    For instance, you can persuade Godoy that Spain actually stands to gain from the transfer. Washington can be told that USA would eventually get the land, and this breaks his resistance to having a colonial (and currently unstable) power next to his own. In turn, characters would seek to persuade you to switch sides from Mortimer to Holm, or Holm to Mortimer. Since Mortimer proposes and Holm opposes, you have to carefully evaluate the validity of your arguments at each step. Making this a little easier are the character traits, which allow you to choose which weaknesses of characters to exploit, and which immunities to avoid. That said, the conversations aren’t fragmented skill exploits, but rather meaningful and add to the historicity of the whole game. One can only imagine how much research went into creating what appears on the surface to be a simple detective story.

    All of this doesn’t imply, however, that you can simply play high politics and not focus on the real issue at hand. Developments across the spectrum of characters leads you to make choices, which in turn have consequences on the rest of the game. With no one cast in black or white, you are forced to eke out your own conclusions and follow them to their logical ending. On the way, you will take both honourable paths such as direct dialogue, and less honourable ones, involving snooping into people’s rooms and eavesdropping, to figure out the whereabouts of your mother and your own role therein.

    If the game had built on this to reach a purely human, rational and historical conclusion to the game, I wouldn’t have been so conflicted (as evident from the title of this review). The problem with the game is that somewhere down the line, the budget began to thin out. All the erudition went out of the window, and in came – daemons. Yes, all the historical nuance and careful character development is thrown out once you find your mother and she (spoiler alert!) declares that Mortimer and Holm are in fact, daemons.

    It would have still been fine if you’d fled at this point according to your mother’s plan. It would make for an awfully short game, but still leave it with some clothes on. Instead, the plot now becomes a daemon fest with everyone turning out to be a daemon. Emily? She’s a daemon and your sister! Mortimer ? Daemon, and your father! Holm ? Mortimer’s brother and your uncle and also a daemon! And you, dear Louis? Daemon-spawn!

    The problem with the game is that it no longer tries to weave in the historical setting with the daemon business. Beyond some biblical bull about daemons always having been there and always having guided men, there is no grounding in the French Revolution, the Louisiana purchase or for that matter, anything else. Suddenly, everyone around you who is not a famous character turns out to be a daemon, and everyone is your relative. Your quest is to find your place in the daemon world now, dealing with some Father figure (who inhabits Miss Adams’ body) and using new daemon skills such as mind control and reading thoughts. All of which detract so wildly with the calm historical storyline hitherto developed that you feel like throwing your keyboard at Mortimer’s face.

    It is to the credit of my patience that I persevered with this warped story, siding with one daemon and then another, and then again with another daemon, to finally kill Mortimer. The finale, if it can be called that, was the utter nadir of the whole affair. Suddenly everyone began throwing their arms as if to fight invisible forces, I limped up to Mortimer and stabbed him. To hell with the story, we need X-Men stuff and we need it now! Meh!

    In the end, you dear reader can understand why I feel so conflicted. It feels almost as if the first part was developed by a sober group of people coming from different walks of life, who put in the effort to create a real historical game that would fit the historical narrative but still offer meaningful choices. The second half was developed by a bunch of dudes high on fentanylated heroin who could neither think straight, nor bother to develop what had already been taken to a high level of finesse. Instead, daemons appeared in their fevered hallucinations, and they wrapped it up with some superhero stuff. They’re probably off doing krokodil with whatever they could eke out of the dying budget.

    Never have I played a game that was so good in half and bad in the other half. A truly Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde affair.

    Rating – 2.5/5

    Characters –

    Thankfully, the characters remain lively and appealing throughout. The most important of them is Mortimer, and while he is introduced a bit later, you are likely to have a ton of conversations with him. The voice acting is superb, and he really does come across as a man of firm convictions who wishes to see change in the world but on his own terms. He chafes against the control of the daemon family and wants unlimited control, yet is not a maniac. He has done terrible things, but only to further goals that one cannot entirely disagree with. His methods are Machiavellian, but they make him all the more difficult to refuse. Not surprising then that I ended up following him up to the very end, only realizing what the game wanted me to do at the very end.

    Next in importance is your love interest and the only fulsome wench (to use 18th century terms) on the island. Having risen from obscure origins, Emily Hillsborough married a declining nobleman and now moves suavely in elite circles. She is here to represent the British crown, having become the secretary to William Pitt the Younger. She is one of the first characters you meet, and from the time she gives you her handkerchief, you know her sole purpose here is to be the female foil to the male protagonist.

    That said, she isn’t there simply to be taken for granted. Play her character dialogues badly, and you could end up losing a valuable ally. She has useful information on most of the characters, is refreshingly honest with you regarding her locus standi and looks to your advice on critical issues. All of this allows you to confide in her and obtain useful reactions, instead of risking the same with the others. That said – and I reiterate – play her wrong and she will mess things up for you.

    Play her right though, and the chemistry develops gradually but surely. This culminates in you being given the option to sleep with her on the second night itself. You could do so, or end up getting drunk with the unstable Miss Adams. It is unclear whether Adams has sex with you, but what is clear is that being with Adams is more important that taking the duchess to bed. This becomes clear when, on the very next night, you get to sleep with her again, regardless of the choices you make in the conversation prior. Given that you can spend two out of four nights in Emily’s warm embrace, it is safe to say that she presents a not very difficult but quite satisfying romantic angle to the whole plotline. When she goes onto kill your mother to avenge her sister (not knowing that she is still alive) the love story takes a tragic but not unexpected turn.

    From here, one could expect the love to wither or blossom, based on how two individuals see each other’s actions in the larger context. Could they rise above their own familial emotions and find warmth in each other’s hearts ? Or would there be more tragedy in the offing ? Sadly, all this is lost on the meth addicts. Emily becomes a daemon and turn out to be your sister, so that even when she is wearing next to nothing in bed, you can’t join her there. Later, she – and her now reanimated sister – who is also your sister, join their brother, which is you, to take down Lord Mortimer, who is the father of all three. Did the sentence make sense ? No ? Don’t do drugs kids!

    Let’s now come to Sarah. She is an ageing femme fatale who knows how to get the work done. She is the leader of the Golden Order and hence commands an important presence. She came to the island looking for the Al Azif, and then went into hiding. She has committed a number of heinous acts, including torturing a young Miss Adams, and killing Emily’s sister Emma. But what are her motivations? Daemons of course! And off you go with her into daemon world, unlocking crypts to find Longinus’ spear and then trying to escape only to be trapped in conversation with Lord Mortimer. By the time you get out (and I think you can get out earlier), you find Emily has shot her.

    This should have been the tragic end of the whole affair. But….. she comes back in a suspended reality sequence where she beseeches you to save her from limbo. Funnily enough (meth!) Louis now addresses her as Sarah without providing any explanation as to why he has suddenly stopped calling her Mother. Even more funnily, Sarah is perfectly fine with this. In the end, all your promises to help her come to nothing and she is – this time finally – never heard of again.

    Beyond these, there are the other characters. Holm is the arch-opponent and also close friend of Mortimer, who shows a distinct coldness towards Louis from the very beginning. He eventually turns out to be Mortimer’s brother and well, a daemon. Mortimer tries and succeeds in killing him, which is your cue to turn upon your father and kill him. Decent voice acting, but not a very important role.

    This leaves us with the truly human, non-daemonic characters. Of these, Cardinal Piaggi comes across as the most convincing with his cracking voice, conservative yet wise opinion and lack of exaggeration. He is a friendly person who can be easily persuaded when needed, and next to Emily, can be a good ally. The others – Napoleon, von Wollner and Godoy, are more difficult, and can oppose you openly on occasion. They are also somewhat shallower, and hence less appealing than the characters mentioned above. Godoy for instance, appears vain without any mitigating qualities, and Napoleon appears ambitious and nothing else.

    Finally, we have the servants. I had expected them to take off their masks and spring a surprise at any moment. Yet they remained faceless servants and never did do anything more than offer up some amber or a book or provide basic directions.

    The verdict, then, must be the same as it was for the plotline. The most interesting characters become interesting because of the deep contours inherent in their psyches, that you must unravel one dialogue option at a time. But then they become boring simply because the meth addicts flatten everything with a rolling pin. Thankfully, the characters are not so much damaged by the heroin rampage as the core story itself, and you can still take away a few positives at the end.

     

    Rating – 4/5

     

    Gameplay –

    Gameplay revolves around moving around and clicking things and people. If it is people, you get dialogue options. Once you choose a dialogue option, the person responds and you move to the next dialogue option. Embedded in these options are special ones that involve use of skills. Skills are social abilities that exploit specific vulnerabilities of the target character to figure out what the right answer would be. These vulnerabilities are discovered through hit and trial, but are also sometimes exposed directly. Either way, using them would allow you to bypass their defences. On the other hand, running up against immunities would trigger hostile reactions and push you back.

    All of this gets much more intense during confrontations. While some truly are confrontations, others are merely forced conversations eg. The one with Miss Adams on the stairs. Either way, failing them has very serious consequences, including cutting off later dialogue options and vital information about the character and others as well. Failing one particular confrontation will even lead to physical injury for Louis, while failing another would kill off an important character. To make matters worse, you only have a limited number of attempts, and exhausting them would lead the confrontation to fail. At best, the character will storm off in a huff. At worst, you or someone else will be seriously injured.

    All the skills are arranged in three trees, based on the character type you choose. The one you choose has all its skills unlocked at level 1, while the others are locked and have to be unlocked manually. Following each segment, you get a specific number of skills points. Add a specific number to unlock a skill, then upgrade to level two and three. Level 2 and 3 aren’t fundamentally different, except that they require lesser and lesser effort points. Based on your own actions and dialogue/confrontation successes, you would also get additional skill points deposited in specific skills. They would also net you more XP which would increase the chance of a level up and hence more skill points. Finally, you can get skills from reading books you pick up around the mansion (or borrow from individuals).

    Beyond this RPG-esque maze, there are also Talents and Traits. Talents are unlocked when specific combinations of skills at specific levels are unlocked. Most of them require at least one skill at level 3,  and hence aren’t the easiest to unlock. Traits on the other hand are given based on how you fare in the conversations and puzzles. Do them well, and you would only get positive traits. Do them poorly, and you would get negative traits. As you’d expect, positive ones reduce costs of certain skills while negative ones add to them. Again, very RPG-esque.

    Like most walking simulators, there isn’t a health bar since there isn’t a real threat to your life. Instead, what you have are a number of effort points. Using skills costs effort points. These can be replenished using Honey/Royal Jelly, which can be found lying all around the place. Using too many will lead to negative effects, which can be cleared with another potion called Carmelite Water. There are two others, which are used to make a single skill use free of effort point cost, and reveal weaknesses for a limited time. In practice, the game only requires use of the first two, and I ended up with far more of the remaining two than I needed.

    I also mentioned that you could click on objects. Such clicking can involve elaborate puzzles. Sometimes, as in the Medusa puzzle, the pieces are physical and therefore easy to piece together. However, there are far too many puzzles involving the bible (which I guess is why the erudite people were thrown out and the methheads brought in). For someone who has not read the bible, it was very difficult to piece together what would probably be simply deduction for Christians. Matters aren’t helped by the fact that the puzzles are nested i.e. there is a puzzle inside a puzzle, and all of them involve flipping through pages (actually book dialogue options). This has rightly been called tiresome by Steam reviewers, since it detracts from the real storyline and the pace of the plotline.

    Finally a word on the daemon skills. There are basically two – mind reading and body control. Mind reading costs daemon skill points, which cannot be replenished by drinking any potions and must be obtained through clever use of dialogue options itself. By this time though, the ordinary skill use system would have become second nature and replenishing these points isn’t such a hassle. Body control, on the other hand, occurs in two strictly choreographed sequences with strictly fixed results if done right. Hence, it is not so much a real skill as a plot device.

    I cannot say I’m dissatisfied with the gameplay. The use of skills and skills alone in conversation is an excellent way to maintain a façade of realism while forcing you to carefully evaluate individuals and information before committing to a course of action. This, like in real life, provides excellent incentive to think before acting, even when you have multiple skill options before you. Skill options are pretty unpredictable, and so investing only in a certain tree is not feasible. Instead, you have to be prepared to remain at level 1 with many skills and then move to level 2 with some. Even then, you would be caught with some skills which you may have but which would require a higher effort cost, forcing you to carefully balance the options. The coke addicts messed it up somewhat with their mind reading daemon skill, but by carefully not using it, I managed to retain the feel of the first part of the game. So if you’re a bit careful, the gameplay can be fun and riveting, barring some puzzles of course!

    Rating – 4.5/5

     

    Conclusion

     

    As would be clear by now, the game suffers from a personality disorder. Half of it is scintillating and promises so much more, while the other half breaks it all up in favour of a clunky, dysfunctional and childish daemon story. This damages the plot more than anything else, but can also have an impact on gameplay and characters. On the other hand, some aspects – such as the puzzles – demand too much erudition and hence go beyond the average non-Christian player. If the game could have avoided these extremes, it could well have heralded a new age in the genre of historical games. Instead, it remains an unfinished masterpiece, where one part is painstakingly drawn out, while the other appears nothing more than childish scribbles.

     

    Overall Rating – 3/5

  • PUBG and Gaming As Ideology

    Let me begin this piece by relating two very different experiences I had, so I can better explain my use of the term “ideology”. First – imagine you’re in a crowded local train compartment in 2016. This is back when Candy Crush and Angry Birds were all that mobile gamers could handle on their phones, and the ordinary traveller was usually playing these or, simply watching a film/listening to a song. Now imagine further that you have a couple of colleagues with you, who have more than the average level of interest in the progress of the fine arts. One of them has noticed that you had put up a post on Facebook a couple of days back claiming that gaming is the future and movies were simply outdated forms of expression of art.

    He strongly disagrees. Being a film connoisseur himself, he cannot fathom how an educated person can claim that what is basically a format for children and young adults can overtake one which has produced such rich expression of human emotion. You explain to him that games are basically more interactive, and unlike movies, get you involved the same way as interactive experiments are better than just reading a book. He asks – “But how many people can afford such devices ? This is basically entertainment for the elite, whereas movies are for the masses.” You don’t have much of an answer to this, since gaming rigs do really cost much more than what the ordinary person would be willing to afford. You point out that gaming rigs are getting cheaper, but you know in your heart that the price differential between a cheap smartphone or TV and a gaming PC (or console) is still substantial.

    Time passes, and eventually, something called PUBG comes out. It’s called PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. Unlike the majority of games, this was actually developed as a collaborative effort by gamers themselves, and the end result is breathtaking. Even when it is not discounted and priced at a somewhat hefty INR 999 on Steam, it sells like hot cakes. Within days, the gaming community is abuzz and the game swamps practically all others, including the likes of GTA V ( highest earning game of all-time, whose total earnings to date dwarf the most successful movies), Counter-Strike (easily the most competitive game in the last decade), Overwatch (the new shiny kid on the block), World of Warcraft (which survives courtesy a somewhat different format) and Destiny (which was already on the decline by this point).

    At this point, one of your many Facebook friends gets a brand new PC. Mind you, he’s not one to go in for nitpicking CPU part numbers and deciding on RAM voltages. He plonks the cash, and gets a sweet-looking rig. All the latest hardware, including a display that blows your 3 year-old one out of the water. You hit him up on Steam, ostensibly to welcome him to the Steam community. He asks what games you are playing. You inform him of some single-player title you’ve been trying out, hoping to find some common interests. His reply is – “dude don’t you play PUBG ?” You take a moment to consider his preferences – he must be a multiplayer-heavy gamer with not much interest for story-rich titles. He must also have little interest in pushing his rig to its limits, since PUBG can hardly be called the most demanding of titles. You politely tell him that you’re not so much into multiplayer. Does he play single-player as well ? Surely he must, otherwise that monster rig would simply be wasted. He replies that he basically just plays PUBG, and he can’t believe that you being a gamer don’t.

    On the face of it, the two experiences have a common thread – the argument of the first one i.e. gamers are rich kids – is substantiated by the second experience. However, there is a more subtle thread here. Note that the novice gamer built a big rig, but took up the game that was most popular. He could have had a more mediocre rig (I honestly doubt he knew the full potential of the stuff he had bought, except that it was value for money), and still would have taken up PUBG. In a way, PUBG had become the calling card of the novice (I don’t use the word noob, since it is derogatory) into the party that is PC gaming. Many more like him, who had never heard of PC gaming, were also installing PUBG on their old and gaming-unworthy hardware simply because of the craze that surrounded the game. These were people who had only gamed on-and-off and could not be counted as part of the dedicated gaming community. Yet they took up gaming with PUBG, and forced their ageing rigs to bear the brunt of this new, fast-paced game.

    So in a way, my argument from the first experience was proving to be partly correct. More people were gaming, but not because rigs were getting cheaper. It was because a product had arrived that people were genuinely prepared to play without first going through the baptism of a gaming parlour, a friend’s gaming rig or YouTube binge-watching professionals game. Naturally, the better you computer is, the better it would handle the requirements of the game. While a really high-end system would not be required, older and weaker PCs would also struggle to maintain the frame rates needed to give gamers the speed they needed in the game. So there was an urge to upgrade, though I doubt it would have had a major impact on the lowest gaming segment, who simply had neither the enthusiasm nor the money to improve their experience. Yet they at least knew that PC gaming was more than the by now grainy CS and CS: GO and something that could be looked forward to.

    But the real reason I’m writing this article, and have included the word ideology in the title, is not because PUBG was a success on PC, but because it was a success on mobile platforms. You see, PC gaming always had a somewhat muted substratum of people who would play older and often free or very cheap multiplayers like Counter Strike once in a while. They may even play it regularly, and never think of upgrading to a different game or a different rig. PUBG opened up new possibilities, and forced them to question their gaming addiction to know whether they had it in them to truly upgrade. Even if we add to these people the new converts (like my dear rich friend), we can still see progress as incremental rather than revolutionary. This is especially true in India, where the pricing ensured that PUBG on PC remained the province of actual dedicated gamers who would spend money on Steam.

    On the mobile platforms however, the barriers were lowered spectacularly. Contrary to how most people see their phones, smartphone SoCs actually have rather decent integrated graphics solutions. Compared to the PC market, wherein an integrated solution would deliver pretty shitty results in any game, mobile SoCs offer much better graphics for the buck. This is partly because the mobile market developed in an integrated rather than modular form from the very beginning. So while a dedicated high end PC owner would definitely have a discrete graphics card, a high end mobile owner would still have an integrated solution. This integration trickled down the price ladder so that even mid-range devices could at least run a good number of games without giving up the ghost.

    Another notable difference was in the pricing models on PC and mobile. Even today, PC games are usually expected to be sold with an upfront price that will cover most of the features. DLCs and in-game perks can be bought separately, but you should be able to access the basics and “complete” the game if you coughed up the digits noted on the price tag. In case of gaming, Freemium became the go-to model since apps started out with such few features that selling them made no sense. Hence, the mobile user became accustomed to getting the very basic product for free, and then spending money to gradually buy features in the game. While many PC devices are approaching the freemium model today, it can still be said that mobile games offer much less for free than PC games do for a price tag.

    In keeping with this tradition, PUBG was made free for all. This, and the lower tech barrier, ensured that when the PC enthusiasm for PUBG filtered into the mobile scene, it became a tsunami. College students, Youtube personalities and next door aunties (to a limited extent), who had never bothered to find out what a GTX 1080 was, were now gaming. This was particularly notable in India, where the earlier gaming revolutions, eg. Pokemon Go, never quite caught on so well. So for many people (including my girlfriend), the shift was from Candy Crush to a full-fledged PC game ported to mobile. Not surprisingly, they were hooked, and this brought still more people to the PUBG party, and today we have practically everyone with a mobile playing this game. Parents are counselling their kids to focus on studies instead of this game,  college hostels are banning the game (really?) and (this may sound sexist) there seems to be a lot more female gamers all of a sudden.

    But how does it all relate to ideology ? You see, as someone who has plonked close to a lakh of rupees (or more) on my current rig and more than thrice that amount over the years on a variety of other gadgets (including three laptops), I pride myself as a gamer. I swelled up with pride when the Regional Manager of a major GPU brand (Zotac I think it was) asked me how often I gamed per week and was impressed by my conservative estimate. I happily flaunt my Nvidia Gamers Connect ID tag and the mousepad I won there. I happily admit that I suck at multiplayer, but claim to be a good gaming critic who analyses games in depth and detail. I may not be one of the fancy band of gaming historians but I can provide a good sociological account of gaming any day.

    And all of this has to do with PC gaming. For long, every gamer, including myself, considered gaming to be either for PC or consoles. When mobile gaming came along, we saw it as a junior wannabe for those who don’t/can’t dump the cash required to get a proper gaming rig. We felt sorry for them, but like elites of yore, we did not consider mobile gamers part of our tribe. Chances are, if you talk to a gamer today, s/he will reiterate this opinion. If you wanted to be a true gamer, you had to save up for a rig (took me a decade to get the upgrade I wanted) and then upgrade incrementally, carrying out research or at least knowing which brands produce the most value-for-money ready to use PCs or gaming laptops. This was our ideology. This was my ideology when I studied games, stocked up my Steam library and generally played games that I knew most people in the world never would.

    [Statutory Disclosure – I consider gamers on gaming laptops to be PC gamers.]

    But PUBG has changed all this. For the first time, we have a game that is played by both the elites and the mobile gamers. It has created a link which neither World of Warcraft, nor the others could forge. Hence, PC gamers today are faced with the very real fact that their tech superiority doesn’t mean anything in at least one test case. So does it mean that they have to consider every PUBG wannabe with a smartphone to be their equal?

    Nope. As galling as this may sound to my egalitarian friends, PUBG is simply one game in a million. Most games which deliver the ground-breaking experiences associated with modern gaming are playable solely on PC. Sure, you could jerry-rig your Android to run some version of Windows and then play in it, but the controls would be atrocious and the graphics lags would simply make you want to tear your eyeballs out. The shift from the passive engagement provided by movies to the active involvement provided by games will not be achieved by multiplayer games like PUBG, no matter how hard they try. It will be achieved by games like Hellblade : Senua’s  Sacrifice, which makes use of efficient Dolby Atmos and other tech, aside from the graphics engine itself, which work best on PC. It will be achieved by games like Far Cry 5 or Shadow of the Tomb Raider, both of which offer graphics (and now Ray-Tracing) which go far beyond the capacity of the best Snapdragon 8xx SoCs. And the messy touchscreen controls would never match up against the precision afforded by the keyboard or even the console controllers.

    So while mobile gamers may have breached a certain barrier on their cheap devices, they still have a long way to go. Most of them will not walk the path, and will continue playing PUBG. In India, where gaming is considered such a luxury that devs like Blizzard don’t even bother to have dedicated servers for South Asia, this trend will ensure a gradual division between true PC gamers who will move onto newer and better titles, and the others, who will continue playing PUBG or similar titles. The twain shall not meet.

    Okay, so now that my bruised ego is patched up, I must also acknowledge what this PUBG business has accomplished. It has, first and foremost, brought more people to gaming in countries like India than ever before. This is both a boon and a bane. It is a boon because the issues relating to gaming-  ping rates, connections, frame rates, hardware, etc. – would be better understood by the multitude because it would directly affect their ability to play the game. While Fraps may remain Geek Greek for some time to come, the basics are increasingly being grasped. This is necessary if we are to build up support for any major India-related changes by major developers. Democracy, after all, finds its strength in numbers.

    Secondly, more and more women are taking up gaming. This is a good sign, because gender bias tends to produce stereotypes which really don’t take any genre forward. If women play more games, they would also be more aware of the inbuilt biases, and would campaign for their removal. Once they have sufficient numbers, this can actually lead to positive change and more inclusive, diverse narratives.

    Thirdly, there is a real chance that the growing numbers of gamers from India would persuade the devs to actually look beyond the clichés associated with India. Every Indian game level doesn’t have to be a picturesque hill station (or a hill country like Nepal/Kyrat). Every character doesn’t have to be called so and so Singh. And we deserve better than to have simply the expletives translated into Hindi. It can be hoped that the diversity of India can be made to reflect in the games, one level or character at a time, as the market for games in India grows. PUBG, with its multiplayer format, isn’t the best start, but we can hope that some people would find other games and then become a focus group for devs who wish to explore new cultural boundaries.

    But there are pitfalls. The biggest one is that a lot of people are playing games who have not played it before. This democratization runs the real risk of half-literate demagogues demanding idiotic actions like censorship of a specific action or element. We have already had our brush with this in Fallout 3, where the two-headed cow named Brahmin led to the game almost being banned in India. Thankfully, the furore has died out with Fallout 4, though the Brahmins continue to graze the post-nuclear wasteland (and yield delicious meat).

    Chances are that someone would find something irresponsible, hurtful, etc. etc. and begin demanding that it be scrapped. If enough people raise such demands, we can find a Gaming Censor Board of India on the lines of the film one. Given how thin the gaming base in India still is, it is highly unlikely that big developers would be willing to make more than cosmetic changes to appease this censor board. The result could be that many games are never formally released in India. This would in turn damage the very necessary move towards legitimate purchase of games in India, and encourage unnecessary piracy (which many Indians still justify on grounds they would find appalling if applied to their own jobs and functions in society).

    But all in all, I believe this is a positive development. The PC master race’s pride is hurt, but not destroyed. At the same time, gradual increase in the number of gamers would increase the possibility of India being a viable market, and lead to more development jobs and studio focus moving towards the country. God knows we need decent-paying jobs which require coding (and designing and voice-acting and….) skills. Further, we can finally have more variety with AAA titles actually offering South Asian servers (I simply can’t stand more Mandarin chats) and variations going beyond the titular “Singh” guy and touristy hill station level. PUBG, while not being the most ideal one, is a start, and we can hope that will a little bit of awareness and some inducement, we can grow our ranks of actual PC gamers (ah my dear sweet ego) without facing the pitfalls that come with having a large and illiterate user base.