The Joy and Pain of Numbers

Have you ever wondered why social scientists argue over theories like kids argue over candies? Why can’t they reach agreement? To me, it’s because they’re dealing with highly abstract concepts. If you observe your peers in India, you might conclude that “white is beautiful” based on popular media, where gori (fair-skin) is often synonymous with beauty. But in places like Europe or America, this view changes; beauty is evaluated differently, with some even preferring a tanned complexion. Beauty is an abstract concept, hard to reduce to something as precise and universally comparable as a number.

Consider an example to clarify. Would you doubt that a 6 ft Ram is taller than a 5 ft Hari? Of course not. Once the concept of "height" is expressed by numbers, comparison becomes straightforward. Similarly, while judging students’ academic merits is complex. Some excel at problem-solving, others at comprehension. A fixed question paper allows us to rank them by scores. The student with the highest marks is, by definition, considered the best, even if he or she may not be so in other ways. Meanwhile, a student scoring only 30% might struggle to capture your attention, even if he or she shows signs of understanding. The key challenge with abstract concepts, like beauty or academic potential, is that they resist simple numerical representation.

Numbers can further be combined into powerful analytical tools: equations. For instance, consider the impact of Einstein’s $E = mc^2$ on our understanding of subatomic particles. While physical phenomena can be understood intuitively, communicating these ideas requires transforming intuition into equations. This is where social scientists struggle: without equations, their insights often remain personal opinions, hard to convey and hard to evaluate.

Equations can bring profound satisfaction to a scientist. They can be manipulated to create elegant new equations. Sometimes this joy has a downside. Equations can obscure the main subject if overused. In academic writings, the objective is often to have elegant equations that can hide the lack of understanding of the subject. Of course, once in a while, we realize that the elegance of equations is not a great measure of their true value, just as the color of skin is not a great measure of a person's beauty.

Bak's Sand-Pile and Human Society

Science has not progressed uniformly across spatial scales. For example, We can reliably predict motion of stars and electrons, but we do not yet have a reliable mathematical model to predict climatic variables, even though climatic scale is situated in between astronomical and atomic scale. It is not like astronomers and atomic scientists are more smart and intelligent than climate scientists, rather the fact is that climatic system is too chaotic. By saying chaotic, I mean things are unpredictable. For example, you can calculate how much force is required to throw a ball to a certain height, but you can not predict when a cyclone will occur and where. There is a famous saying that a butterfly flapping its wing can cause a tornado! (link)

Interestingly, many chaotic systems tend to follow a simple pattern: more intense events occur less often, and vice versa. Big wars occur less often. Less people are more rich. More intense earthquakes occur less often. Big fluctuations occur in a stock markets less often. Talking in mathematical terms, these phenomenon can be explained through a power law equation.

Origin of such behavior is not yet known. Bak and his co-authors, however, offer a little but wonderful insight through a simple model: the sand-pile model. Sand-grains are dropped one by one randomly on a table. Avalanches of different sizes occur. This simple model also follow the same pattern. Big avalanches occur less often than small avalanches. Also, it follows the same power law equation that other natural phenomenon exhibit.

Sand grains have friction. They can accumulate stress by supporting one over another. Once the pile reaches a critical state, dropping of a single sand grain will cause an avalanche; sand grain of same size can trigger avalanche of different sizes. The size of an avalanche will depend up on the configuration of the sand-pile prior to the avalanche. Bigger avalanches mean more stress release. It can be guessed that more time is required to accumulate more stress, therefore, bigger avalanches will occur less frequently.

This is unlike the case of friction-less matters. For example, if you have a bucket full of water and you add one drop of water, one drop of water will spill out of the bucket. You add two drops, two drops will spill out. And so on.

Classical economists treated economic systems as water buckets. Big fluctuations in markets were considered as results of big disturbances. More funnily, extraordinary market fluctuations were considered as unusual and thrown out of the analysis.

In reality, economic systems are like sand-piles, where individuals act like sand grains. They affect behavior of one another. Due to this inter-dependency, stress can be accumulated in the system, and when the system reaches a critical state, a little disturbance can cause even an extra-ordinary avalanche, or in economic terminology, a market crash.

Wars/conflicts do not occur because we are intolerant, but because of our ability to tolerate. We tolerate till a certain extent, and when our patience breaks we react. In larger social contexts, they are manifested in terms of wars/conflicts.

Bak call this phenomenon as 'self organized criticality'. A system organizes itself, and avalanches occur when it reaches a critical state, in order to release stress. Thus social disasters like wars and market crashes are inevitable; they occur due to our daily life activities. Any attempt to avoid such disasters is like operating a society at critical state, which is practicably impossible. And a slight disturbance somewhere in the system due to mistake (remember the proverb: to err is human) can lead to a super avalanche. This probably explains why societies fail due to too much of government control.

Nationalism and Scientific Progress

Nationalism can be justified as a collective response against external aggression. External threats unite people. The most convenient example that comes to my mind right now is India-Pakistan relationship. Indians can unite against any Pakistani threat, despite of their regional and cultural differences. I would not be wrong in saying that British occupation gave birth to the modern Indian nationalism. Nationalism can be aggressive also. For example, Nazis tried to dominate the whole world, waged numerous wars. Wars, either offensive or defensive, are perhaps synonymous to nationalism.

I, however, want to discuss here about scientific/cultural progress during nationalistic surges. Greeks got united and became a big imperial force because of the Persian threat. Much of the progress Greeks achieved was during their imperialistic expansions. Romans also had the same story. Arabs had their hey days in science and technology during their colonial expansions. Scientific progresses in 19th and 20th century Europe coincides with nationalistic wars.

Bengal and Tamilnadu are the two places where British started their rule in India. No surprise, most of the early nationalists are from those two places. And, most of the prominent scientists and cultural figures of 19th and 20th century India hail from those two places.

Strong correlation between scientific progress and nationalism can not be ignored. People in India usually blame funding problems for the slow scientific progress. I think this is fundamentally flawed. Many of the scientists of 19th and 20th century Europe had struggled with financial problems. So I think all that India needs is a nationalistic movement.

Poverty and British rule

Many people in India belive that people fought against Bristish empire mainly because British rule made them poor. I came across this wiki link some days ago. At first glace, I indeed thought that British rule made Indians poor. See the ratio of India's GDP (PPP) to world GDP. Until 18th century it is nearly 30%, then decreasing rapidly to 4.2 % in 1950 (end of British rule).

But if you look at only GDP, it does not make some other sense.

Indian GDP in 1st cenrury AD : 33 750 m$ (32.9 %of world GDP)
in 1000AD : 33 750 m$ (28.9%)
in 1500AD : 60 500 m$ (24.5%)
in 1600AD : 74 250 m$ (22.2%)
in 1700AD : 90 750 m$ (24.4%)
in 1870AD (begining of British rule): 134 882 m$ (12.2%)
in 1913 AD : 204 241 m$ (7.6%)
in 1950 AD (end of British rule) : 222 222 m$ (4.2%)

Clearly, British rule did not make India poor. But economy of European countries grew much more rapidly (due to industrial revoluton) after 18th century (for eg, share of British economy rose from 1.8% of world GDP in 1600AD to 6.5% of world GDPin 1950). So I think the rising economic gap (between Britons and Indians) made Indians feel that they were getting poor. Nevertheless, by saying this I did not mean that Indians fought against British rule pointlessly. Racial discrimination, economic policies unfavorable to poor (for eg, after British occupation of Odisha, heavy tax was imposed on farmers, which immediatly resulted a large scale revolt) and many other factors can be stated to support the freedom struggle.

British took raw materials from India for their industries at home. India was treated like a consumer market. But I do not think there was a particularly evil design by British government to keep India poor. How did indigenous companies like TATA and Birla came into existence during British raj? Indians should have adopted technologies from West during that time. But, instead, freedom fighters, particularly Gandhians advised people to run Charkha. For them modern technology=unemployment. British industries had surely created unemployment in India by killing native industries. But that was inevitable. And I think it was not a local phenomenon rather global. Initial waves of industrialization had created large amount unemployment in Europe as well. Have a view of 19th century Britain

Also, colonization as such does not explain the existing poverty in the third world countries. It should be also noted that some of the most developed countries of today were once British colonies. For e. g., Hong Kong, Singapore, Ireland and Israel.

Prominent anti-globalization activists/social workers believe foreign rule = poverty and then equate foreign company with exploitation. I had worked with some social service/human rights organizations during my college times, so this is my personal experience. They oppose globalization, foreign investment or anything related to foreign (west to be particular). This not just history I wanted to discuss about. But also the present. There was surely many evils in British rule, but we should also differentiate facts from fiction.

Rights: Humans' and Animals'

Have you ever wondered why don’t you find baby curry, human soup or something like that in the menu of your favorite restaurant? It’s so simple, we have some government laws that prohibit human killing. Why then this government is so keen on protecting human lives not lives of chickens or goats? Oh wait, there some laws to protect tigers, lions and many other animals. Anyways, I am not trying to argue that if there was no law protecting human life, then people would have been killing each other to eat. Certainly not. In fact, most of the animals do not eat meat of their own species of animals.

Basically, I am trying to say that there are definitely some reasons behind these kind of laws dealing with rights of humans and animals. A nice example is religious/social sanction against cow killing in India. It is not so long that Indians have been worshiping cows. Even some people believe that Vedic people were eating cows (ref). May be, after the advent of agricultural techniques, and after finding vast amount of arable land people in Indian subcontinent reduced meat consumption. Cow became more useful alive than killed for meat. And not to forget that bullocks were used to plough agricultural field (still used widely in present days). I am not saying that people stopped eating cows only because cows offered them material incentives. Surely they could have eaten old and unproductive cows. It can be argued that the cultural consiousness, of being compassionate towards life in general, played a key role in protecting cows in India. But, no one ever talked about protecting rabbits or cocroaches, except few crazy animal rights activists .

Roughly before a century, tiger killers were being rewarded, but now tigers have got too many rights. Even, in some sense, more than what humans have. Only because tigers in jungle make lots of money in terms of tourism.

Human rights also evolved in the same way. Europeans killed native Americans for their gold. But when they needed people in agricultural land and industries, they started importing people from Africa as slaves. And when they realised that free people can be more useful than slaves, America became the land of freedom. It also took same amount of time for the European nations to realise that free countries can bring more prosperity to them than occupied colonies.

I am here trying to say that our rights are a result of interaction between complex social processes and materialism, not because we have some divine consciousness.

Distribution of Wealth: is not always bad

There are two things to be distributed among people: a radio manufacturing plant and land (agriculture).

Lets first talk about the radio factory. It will be foolish to break the radio factory into pieces and give each equal amount of scrap metal. And if the factory is given to the workers only then the concept of equality is not satisfied (I mean not everybody is getting share). So there is only one possible option left with us, i.e., to give the ownership of the factory to a democratic authority which will be responsible to distribute the profit among all(generated by the radio factory).

Here comes the real problem. How will the workers or the authority be interested to run the factory, if, by taking no interest, they are not going to lose their share? neither they are getting any extra share by taking interest (because the final objective of the society is to guarantee equality).

In simple words, distribution of a radio factory is not going to help the society as a whole.

Now consider the case of land. If land is distributed equally (assuming that land everywhere is equally productive) everybody would be owner of equal amount of land. here the land is different from radio factory in the sense that the individual owners are able to use it to produce (grains and vegetables). Since everybody gets benefit from keeping the production level high thus overall production is not going to decrease (though I am not claiming here that the gross production will increase).

What is the difference we saw in between two cases above? The first one (the radio factory) needs a central authority but the second one needs no such authority.

There are many examples of successful land distribution programs. In Denmark, common people were greatly benefited from cooperative farming (link). In West Bengal, India land reform program in early 80s considerably reduced rural poverty (link).

Development and anti-Development people

The background story

Needless to say, most of the people who had participated in the freedom struggle were rural poor. They had expected that when the British would leave all the evils would go with them Then the British transferred power to feudalistic Nehru and his colleagues. Under the newly formed government, the new elites like native industrialists and middle class bureaucracy started to grow. Corruption and other form of social evils started to grow along with. Initially, Nehru convinced people that in order to develop the country, some people have to sacrifice. The poor who were already waiting, tried to convince themselves.

After a few decades, people realized that there is no hope in expecting something from government. The social divide (rich and poor) became distinct.

After liberalization

The sick economic model of Nehru reached its stagnant stage, when the system became totally corrupted. Our leaders then submitted national independence to international mafias like IMF and world bank. Many foreign corporates came to save Indian economy. The banner under which this process was carried out (still going on) was "development". Vajpayee added a more fashionable slogan to it; "India shinning!".

India started to shine indeed, but for some. To some, India even looked darker. Their land is forcefully grabbed and they are forcefully thrown into destitute (ref.). What they will do then? If they tried to resist, they become "anti-development" people!

The battle between "development" people and "anti-development" people

Now it is quite distinct that the urban middle class, mainly educated mass are supporter of development, as they are directly or indirectly benefiting from it. How is the scope for those "anti-development" people to survive? Their live hood is forcefully grabbed (a nice example being the recent event in Nandigram, West Bengal). How they will resist? Can they compete with the "development" people formally(note: I am talking about electoral politics)? surely they are the loosers. But they have to resist. How they will do? Now come to see the Gandhian way of struggle (nonviolent).

Arundhati Roy gives a very nice sataric comment: They have watched the great Gandhian people's movements being reduced and humiliated, floundering in the quagmire of court cases, hunger strikes and counter-hunger strikes. Perhaps these many million Constraining Ghosts of the Past wonder what advice Gandhi would have given the Indians of the Americas, the slaves of Africa, the Tasmanians, the Herero, the Hottentots, the Armenians, the Jews of Germany, the Muslims of Gujarat. Perhaps they wonder how they can go on hunger strike when they're already starving. How they can boycott foreign goods when they have no money to buy any goods. How they can refuse to pay taxes when they have no earnings. (click)

So there is an obvious answer left to those people: Take arm and resist.