Civic sense, moral responsibility and liberalisation of agriculture
Making Sense with Karan Patil
Welcome to Making sense, a new offshoot from Duologue. This is where we try to delve deep on a topic and make sense of it with our guest.
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On this first edition of “Making Sense”, we got talking with Karan Patil (KP) whose hometown is in Nanded, MH but he currently resides in Germany. Karan happens to be a close friend but our friendship is not of years. We met few years back through his father who also happens to be a mentor and friend of yours truly.
Karan is one of those bright young souls who can talk passionately about complex topics and peel its layers using pop reference and Bollywood film dialogues without much trouble.
So, when we decided to start a series of this sort where we interview a person and try to make sense of a topic of their interest and expertise, there was no one else than to kick this off with Karan.
We have a cracker of a post in store for you which took us 4 weeks of back and forth. The interview is presented as is without any edits. Do share your feedback and reach out to Karan to chat further on any of the topics discussed over here. He can be reached at karanpatil.resurreptors@gmail.com.
Vivek: When I reached out to you and asked is there anything specific topic you would like to talk about, you immediately went for civic sense and moral responsibility in youth? Why these two are the first off the top of your head?
Karan Patil: It is very rightly quoted in some Marathi movies, when there is a situation of people creating ruckus over some silly issues the actor/actress says "The problem is, civics was only mere 5-10 marks during school".
If we look around today, the youth get influenced by the agenda / news / social media going around them and immediately make their opinion. This is very wrong and hazardous for society.
Rather than giving little thought about what we ourselves think about the topic, we suddenly bias the opinion - for or against. But why don't we think that there can be multiple possibilities and angles to the topic? And this angle gets the roots in our mind, only when we think with civic sense and moral basic responsibilities.
Having healthy debates with each other is merely impossible today. It is the need of the hour that we need to learn the concept of "agree to disagree". But bashing each other over topic doesn't affect us, and won't affect in a million years and on the other hand we don't have the guarantee about when the water supply may cut off and when the electricity may cut off.
We need to ask questions. Questions to the system, local leaders, members of governing bodies, bureaucrats and all the authorities we live with in our society. This gets inculcated having basic civic sense. And this should not be done for anyone else but oneself.
We use comments section on the social media platforms for bashing anything and everything. Why not use that same rage and question the system in a positive way, and work together towards the utopia? Isn't it our moral responsibility?
Why have we accepted "Nothing will change, no matter what anyone does". But I want to ask these naysayers, have they tried atleast once? Rather than saying "no matter what anyone does", have they themselves given an attempt to it? And no need to challenge the biggest authority, start from your own home, school, college and discuss what needs/can be done to make it a better place.
I remember during my engineering days, there was a rule that for contesting for the General Secretary of the college, you ought to be a sports secretary in the previous year. For me, this was an injustice towards any other secretary who has led different teams, and I thought he/she had an equal right to contest for the college General Secretary election. I took this matter with the college management, put my point with valid reasoning. The management duly respected my opinion and changed the rule.
The point I wish to make is, taking the step matters. Outcome comes later, that we cannot predict. Now how does this example relate to moral responsibility and civic sense? If i had considered this a hardcore rule that didn't change for past 50 years, will my step make a difference? The change wouldn't have been possible. But i thought, the person who will be the general secretary, the decision taken by that person will be affecting me also. So why not giving each and every domain fair opportunity make sense?
All i want to say is, having our own opinion which is given a thought with proper civic sense is the moral responsibility of each and every individual today and is the need of the hour.. and biasing oneself is very fatal.
Maybe that is why that topic came to my mind : )
V: Thank you for the length you went to explain. This is the reason i thought it would be interesting to talk with you.
You are talking about agency, self reflection and moral compass. How do kids growing up these days or back in your childhood learn about such things? Where did you start?
KP: Growing up, my parents always gave an example to me. There are two plates kept in front of you. One plate contains Chavanprash, with all the healthy nutrients, the other plate contains buffalo dung (not using other dung reference because that might be again controversial, pun intended). The buffalo dung has a cherry on the top. The two plates are kept in front of you, there is even the name tag in front of the plates naming the contents of the specific dish. Now, the choice is yours. If the cherry is what matters to you, then you are the owner of your deeds.
Today, there is YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney + and what not. Every platform has a variety of content that is easily accessible. Now the choice is ours. Bringing censorship, banning content isn't going to stop people/youth/kids from watching it. It is one's moral compass that will help in pointing in the correct direction.
We have friends around us. There used to be a story about how one bad apple affects other bad apples and rottens all. But also keep in mind, if the apple has strong growth with proper insecticides and pesticides, the rotten apple would never affect a healthy apple. It is the development of the apple, how it was nurtured, in what way it was taken care of, how much it accepted the little pain of the insecticides and pesticides on oneself, is what matters.
The insecticides, pesticides, the nurturing are the teachings from our parents, our teachers that develop our inner strength and moral compass. It is not "Personality Development" special class that will help you develop this. These are the basic things. Keeping our eyes open and always trying to grasp and adapt what is best for ourselves will help us understand our moral responsibility and also give us the strength to work towards the betterment of the society! : )
V: Right!! Fair point on the nurturing. But in a changing world, “How can youth adapt and not be called out for breaking tradition.”? And the second part of the question would be “what civic causes do you want more of the youth to focus towards?”
KP: Do not hesitate to ask doubts/questions, and try to understand the essence about things around them. And if they think that something is going on wrong, or they think there should be / is a better way of doing things, give it a thought and propose it to their parents, teachers, or just start with friends. Discuss about system and society we live in. At first, there is a fair chance of being called out a weirdo and this is not the age to think about it. But then there is no certain defined age almost anything. Being a rebel with thoughts is completely fine, as long as keeping in mind the limits and sentiments of people. Best is, start in school. If you don't understand something in class, raise your hand, tell, you didn't understand. People will laugh around you, but also remember when you raise the hand, you are not only getting the doubt resolved for yourself, but 4-5 others too who were just shy as you were. But that gives courage to couple more of them.
In a TV series called The West Wing, written by Aaron Sorkin, in the Season 2, episode 9, Galileo:
The scenario is, the President of the United States and some NASA scientists , have a live TV Q&A session scheduled with school children about the satellite named "Galileo", they have recently launched. The satellite suddenly stops responding and some of the staff says that the Q&A should be cancelled, as it shows our failure and it would be a bad PR. But then CJ Cregg, the White House Press secretary says the following:
We have at our disposal a captive audience of schoolchildren. Some of them don't go to the blackboard or raise their hand 'cause they think they're going to be wrong. I think you should say to these kids, "You think you get it wrong sometimes, you should come down here and see how the big boys do it." I think you should tell them you haven't given up hope and that it may turn up, but, in the meantime, you want NASA to put its best people in a room and you want them to start building Galileo 6. Some of them will laugh and most of them won't care but for some, they might honestly see that it's about going to the blackboard and raising your hand. And that's the broader theme.
Shifting to some of the causes the youth should focus on, KP goes on to say:
KP: To begin with, best would be to start with Article 19, of Constitution of India, and really give it a thought and brainstorm!
V: CJ happens to be my favourite character from the show as well. She has this knack for understanding people and their emotions much better than anyone else of the fictional staff.
Responsibility, critical thought and freedom come innate to you. Some credit of this can be shared with your parents, i presume. This brings me to my next question.
Farmers are in the news again and the current reforms have been touted as revolutionary by the party in power and draconian by few in the opposition. Policy hawks are assessing the merits and drawbacks of the law as if it has no implementation hurdles. But to be blunt, this is not new. Our mutual idol person has been saying this way before even our economy even liberalised. How are you looking at this? What are you preliminary thoughts? Things are counter intuitive that you could shed some light on?
KP: Looking at the current scenario, opening the markets for agriculture is really beneficial. But the main credit of this decision goes to Covid-19 rather than anything else. Because, when the economy was sinking, and there was nothing left that could help, the rule makers thought of agriculture and they didn't do it because they thought it was right thing to do, but they did it because there was no option left to them. This may be seen as very strong opposing statement and may be taken as a negative connotation, but let me be clear, that i really appreciate the decision. But I also hope these kind of strong and good decisions should be taken every time without thinking just about the vote bank.
I used the word vote bank. Let me explain you why. So, when elections approach, we often see the party manifestos and news headlines, saying, and i am saying all the parties do this "If our party comes into power, we will give 1Rs kg rice, and 2Rs kg. sugar" and what not. Now this is done just to attract the votes. Now see the darker side. When you are manufacturing a product. If the manufacturing price of your product (Including labor, material cost, other expenses) is 90Rs, so by basic rule of business, the manufacturer thinks of getting at least (I quote again, at least) 91 Rs.
But suddenly, the government declares, when we come to power, we will provide this product for 20Rs a piece. Now tell me, will you have any enthusiasm to manufacture the product??
Same happens with farmers. They put their blood and sweat, and just expect to get some profit out of what was put in. But the kind of "free goodies" announcements during elections, take out the whole enthusiasm out of farmers minds.
The rural population does not get the media coverage. What problems they are going through, what issues they have had since ages. It was explained by Sir Sharad Joshi in one of his interviews, that the media coverage that humoungous number of suicides of farmers taken place in rural area is very very negligible as compared to a death taken place in urban area. The message intended here is that there is a valley in understanding the essence of basic root cause of the farmer issue. Sharad Joshi coined the term India vs Bharat. There are two countries residing in the same country.
Coming back to the question, what does this explanation to do with the farmer policy. The way this very first step is taken, similarly more and more decisions should be taken in similar way. Majority of the population of the country is currently working in agriculture. Why not make the country strong with what we are good at. Make it a business model. Farmers don't need the teaching of "use more technology and productivity will increase". This is where we as in urban population go wrong. See, a college going student, doesn't need the teachings about what brand shoes he/she needs to buy, what brand clothes he/she needs to wear, what brand laptop is best for his/her studies. They only need a good internship that will provide them good stipend. Then they themselves will take the decision about what to wear and what to use. Once they know that their hardwork will be paid off by the handsome stipen they are going to receive, they need not to be instructed about how to dress, how to behave. They just need to be told, get this task done, and viola they submit it.
Same goes with farmers and rural population. You don't need to teach don't defecate in open by running national programs about it (this has been done by all the party governments that existed, so i am not picking on anyone specific). Nobody enjoys defecating in open. That much common sense anyone and everyone has. You just make the people capable to earn, and let them decide which brand water tank, which brand taps and other things they wish to install for the bathrooms and toilets.
If you see today, people are discussing more about the US elections results, without even knowing who is the mayor / sarpanch / Zila parishad president of their own constituency. I am not against their keen interest on this topic. But let's see it in a different way. Why is everyone so keen on US elections results? To answer this, i would like to quote one of Sharad Joshi's examples. He has written and quoted this multiple times in his conversations. When he was working with United Nations, during his early days, he met some French delegates. Those french delegates were only speaking in French and ready to switch to the common tongue. As Sharad Joshi was residing in Switzerland, he had learned French and started conversing with them in French. After few years, the same French delegation met Sharad Joshi, and at that time, that delegation spoke English. Sharad Joshi was really surprised to see this change of behavior, and he couldn't resist asking ,why the change, what is the reason you are speaking in English?
To which, one of the French delegate replied, "We are not speaking English, we are speaking Americanish. Today, in order to have a good economy for the country, we need to have a good business attitude and relations with America. And for that we need to speak their language. Hence Americanish and not English".
The point I want to make is, when you grow the strong foothold in an area where you become a master of it, people will run coming to you to work with you. You don't need to rely on "We are the world's biggest democracy, we have already researched everything in the past, look at our archives". We have large amount of population relying on agriculture, food is our ace game, why not make it our ace that will triumph over the world. We cannot compete with Apple for manufacturing world class phones (getting a Apple factory / call center / IT tech center doesn't mean we are good at it. To tell the harsh truth, all the menial work is always transferred to tech centers in India. I might get bashed on this, but this is the truth.) I am no saying these ventures don't help or contribute towards the economy. Of course they do. But improving and acing what we are best at, shouldn't be a bad thing.
This policy of opening market for farmers is first step towards Making the Indian dream a reality (using the American Dream analogy here).
And using the majority in government for these kind of policy approvals of making a liberal economy for the betterment of the citizen, increasing his/her per capita income is the first step towards getting out of the "Developing country" banner or sarcastically termed as HRRC in Yes Minister, which means "Human Resource Rich Country" - and moving towards actual development developement of the country.
V: That was clearly a nuanced way of responding to the issue at hand. From what I see, it provides an opportunity to people who want to enter this space and make it better. And for some, who are already part of it, fearing a change from the status Quo.
So, I want to close this interview on the topic we started with, Civic sense. What would your advice be to people entering this space with regards to handling their engagement with farmers? How should they approach interpersonal relations in the marketplace?
KP : If we interact very closely with rural population, we come to know that people are still very much behind as compared to cities, leave aside comparison with other developed countries. As you asked, how should the interpersonal relations be handled at marketplace or farmers, I would suggest having more economic transactions with farmers. Money is the source for every motivation and progress. Once you get money, no one needs to teach you what kind of lifestyle one needs to lead. For new people entering this field, try to understand what the current scenario is, and how it can benefit both the parties i.e. producer and buyer. And being fair with farmers, not taking advantage of them if they don't know the current market. Fair trade practices is beneficial for everyone. There's a saying my father uses in his speeches, never take anything from anyone for free and never give anything to anyone for free. Fair trade practice is the one step of evolution. In olden days, when barter system started, that's how people evolved by give and take. Same goes with current scenario for farmers. Consider agriculture as business, and the farmers produce as the product, rest will automatically fall in place. The mindset that farmer is getting stuff for free, he/she is just putting some hardwork, but rest is all nature's magic, this mindset has to be eradicated. If only some hardwork would have gained loads of profit, the 3 Idiots movie's trailer opening scene would have the lines "मेरा बेटा farmer बनेगा", instead of "मेरा बेटा engineer बनेगा".
I would like to say, the progress of the country is defined by how your country's citizen with least access to facilities survives.
It's all economics. India has large population dependent on agriculture, make it as a shining shield and sword and enter the world market with confidence, let the startups like subjimandi.app enter the agricultural market for business, and see the increasing graph of India's GDP.
Now how does civic sense come into play here? For civic sense, we should have our all senses wide open, and stop being blind followers of any political party / propoganda.
Thinking in a way, how "I" can contribute towards the betterment of the family /society / educational institute / industry / corporate / etc. is the inception towards building civic sense. Anything huge need not be done. A smaller step withing family also is a big step towards a progressed civilisation. And think with common sense without any bias, that will create wonders. If everyone will stop thinking "how will my smaller step help, so better not do it" and start thinking "everyone's smaller step will surely make a big change" this change in basic thought itself is the half battle won towards inculcating a good civic sense in the society!!
Prost!!
I would like to thank Karan for taking the time and answering all the questions I had on the topics discussed. Let us know what you think about this interview and format by replying to the email. We look forward to hearing from you.
Regards,
Vivek
The Duologue is an effort by Vivek and Bheem to have a dialogue about varying topics.
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