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Tag: Arun Maira

Conversations with People not like Us

November 2, 2017May 16, 2019 JeevaNayagiLeave a comment

Madan Padaki, co-founder & CEO of 1Bridge, a last-mile services platform for Rural India was right when he said, “Conversations today are having a different meaning altogether. There is so much of impatience and distrust in conversations these days”. He was in discussion with Arun Maira, Former Member of Planning Commission of India and author of ‘Listening for wellbeing: Conversations with people not like us’. The book talks about how to have conversations with people who are different from us and have a different perspective.

Arun says the trigger to write the book came when his grandson pointed out that he did not answer the woman who was knocking at his car’s window begging for money. Arun had not even realized that someone was knocking. He says it was a shocking self- revelation about how he has been conditioned to not listen. Effective communication is not just about conveying your message across rightly but also about listening to the message being conveyed. Communication is incomplete without listening. Arun says, his friend who was surprised to learn that his brother was an ardent supporter of Trump was probably not listening to the conversations with his brother during family gatherings.

Arun quotes Tagore from Gitanjali,
“Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls”.

He says the consequence of not having a conversation has resulted in the divisions of the world as it is today. The structures of social media are only making the walls tighter every day. People are friends with likeminded people and are not ready to indulge with people who are different.

He quotes from Tagore again,
“Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit”

He talks about how the mind today has been trained to think fast that we have lost the ability to thinking slow. Thinking slow, he says, helps you with empathy and compassion.

Arun remarks that the media houses today are yelling at each in debates and discussion. Everyone yells and it looks like a tribal war. He wonders which one of them is listening.

Dalai Lama who wrote the foreword for Arun’s book observed that listening is first of the two wisdom tools advocated by Buddhism. The other two being contemplation and meditation. The way yoga which is about conscious breathing can help in healing a lot of ailments, something as simple as listening can fix the problems of the world.

Arun leaves his audience with a very profound message about listening. In his own words, the cultivation of skills for deeper listening begins with the listening to the stranger within us. How true can that be!

Aadhaar – Dystopia or Utopia

November 1, 2017November 1, 2017 TheSeer TeamLeave a comment

The title can be simplified to ask if Aadhaar is slavery or not but this is not how our moderator Charles Assisi decided to put the topic into discussion, he said that when Henry Ford created a motorcar, the pertinent question was ‘do you create a motorcar first or do you create roads first?’.

Mr.Jairam Ramesh, former Minister of Rural Development, answered directly and said that he was part of the team which initially conceptualised Aadhaar. It was basically used to establish one’s identity. This meant Aadhaar’s work was limited to only tell you who you were and not to tell you what benefits you were entitled to. It was a technological tool to help government cut out duplication but everything changed after 2014 (when BJP came into power) to which the moderator questioned his pro-aadhaar stand in 2009 and Jairam Ramesh explained it as a beginning and not as a solution to solve exclusion errors of government schemes. To quote him “I believed in a different Aadhaar which was Aadhaar 1.0’’.

Commenting on the technology behind Aadhaar, Mr.Arun Maira who was closely linked with the issue, initially said that Aadhaar is a fine technology and like any other technology, this too had its own loopholes and if one looks at the global picture everyone is facing the backlashes of technology. Privacy of data needs to be given its due importance and all the countries are suffering and trying to come up with regulations for it. Jairam Ramesh responded to this saying that in 2010, a bill came in the parliament which asked to govern the use of Aadhaar but it was rejected lock, stock, and barrel. Had this bill been into the picture then, much of the atrocities which are happening currently could have been avoided. Sanjay Jain, who was the Director of this program said about the  technology that it was very flexible when it was implemented. This meant any old person was exempted and given Aadhaar card if the person’s fingerprints are not identifiable. But as in India things get lost in translation from source to beneficiaries, this same happened for Aadhaar. Thus, this issue is not a conflict of purpose but of execution of multiple complex data.

Jairam Ramesh ended by presenting two oppositions to Aadhaar, the first was the larger exclusion done by Aadhaar and secondly the expansion of Aadhaar to large number of areas without consent. His advice then to those in power is to not oversell Aadhaar but rather try to take a precautionary approach to the matter. One can identify sitting in a minister’s session if there are theatrical bits involved. In this session, Ramesh tried to bring consensus against Aadhaar by voting through raising of hands.

About the Author – Kalpita is a Bachelor in English Literature. Her ultimate goal is to fulfill the romantic notion of changing the world for better and she is pursuing MA in Development from Azim Premji University, Bangalore. She currently writes for Bookstalkist.

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