Friday 29 June 2012

Look before you leap (Published in 'The Statesman' on 27/06/12)

Some days back there was a news report about a vaastu shastra expert in Guwahati making a startling claim that bad vaastu of the rupee symbol caused its fall. The vaastu consultant shockingly declared that the lower horizontal line of the symbol has ‘slit the throat’ of the Indian rupee leading to its slide, thus greatly enhancing the image of India in the global arena. Other nations beset with problems of their own looked on helplessly with newfound respect for India as the country seemed to have unearthed ingenious solutions to tackle seemingly insurmountable economic problems. Back home, many Indians felt like their throat was being slit when they came across this news item. The news was received with reactions ranging from disbelief to disgust, sarcasm to condemnation, repugnance to helplessness.

“There was one reaction to the news article, the absence of which greatly disappointed me ~ empathy,” said Mr Subodh Joshi, a well-known psychiatrist. “It is not exactly appropriate to chastise and ridicule people like vaastu shastra experts and numerologists. We should try and make an effort to understand what exactly pushed them to this mental condition. In my opinion, instead of hurling abuses at numerologists and vaastu experts, we should provide them with psychological assistance. With proper upbringing they could have been electrical engineers working in Infosys or Wipro or TCS like many other Indians. Had they got the love, care and affection they deserved during their childhood, they could have even been engineers from IIT working in completely unrelated industries like investment banking or private equity after completing their MBA from IIM Ahmedabad or Bangalore or Calcutta. Definitely, numerologists and vaastu consultants are not entirely to blame for their current state. Unfortunately, they are victims of a turbulent childhood for which they deserve sympathy,” Mr Joshi said.

Mr Anirban Sengupta, another prominent psychiatrist, concurred with Mr Joshi. This is what he had to say: “The next time a numerologist recommends to the RBI Governor that the repo rate or cash reserve ratio be increased by 50 basis points and not 25 basis points, let us not subject him to revilement. Let us give him the love he must have sorely missed in his childhood. When a vaastu expert suggests that the kitchen of 10 Janpath has to be at Rashtrapati Bhavan according to vaastu, let us not heap scorn on him. When someone else declares that the office of a certain political party has to be shifted elsewhere from 11, Ashoka Road to quell infighting, let us not frown. When someone asserts that the external affairs minister should not meet his counterpart from a neighbouring country during an inauspicious time to prevent relations from worsening, let us view his views with empathy. When a numerologist urges India to reduce its dependence on Iran for oil imports not because of pressure from the USA but because of incompatibility between the names of the two countries, let us not overreact. When some person suggests that the Planning Commission should disregard norms like 2,400 calories for rural areas and 2,100 calories for urban areas while defining the poverty line and flatly fix it at Rs 4 per person per day for rural areas and Rs 6 per person per day for urban areas, let us not be embarrassed (though the Planning Commission might conveniently concur with him on the suggestion). When a person recommends that the finance minister has to wear 11 different rings with several stones on his 10 fingers to catapult India to 9 per cent GDP growth, let us not pelt him with stones. When some numerologist urges the government to reduce the healthcare spending as a percentage of GDP to less than 1 per cent from the current level of around 1.3 per cent instead of raising it to 2.5 per cent as planned in the 12th Five Year Plan (2012-17), let us try to imagine the trauma the person must have gone through in his childhood.”

Based on the discussion with experts, Jest Kidding is of the view that the government should swiftly take measures to rehabilitate all vaastu experts and numerologists so that they can be integrated into the mainstream. Policies should be enacted to provide emotional and psychological assistance to all the numerologists and vaastu experts and equip them with necessary life skills so that they can lead normal lives with dignity.

Nothing is impossible. Let us dream of a day when India is free of vaastu experts and numerologists. On that day we would have traversed some distance in our pursuit of development of scientific temper that our constitution espouses and India can aspire to be a superpower.

Link: http://www.thestatesman.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=414737&catid=39

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