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Akshay Alladi

@akshayalladi

28 Aug

Musing: If you model sections of the academia and media - what is called the “intellectual ecosystem”, not as a free market, but as a closed oligopoly, actually not even that because there is no market test, then one can see why bad ideas perpetuate. (1/n)

In the “real world” that many of us inhabit, large companies that are not innovative, get disrupted by more agile startups or attackers. That’s not as easy in the “intellectual ecosystem” because there is no currency such as actual consumer purchases, that acts as a test (2/n)

Anyway, as an outsider who is a consumer so to speak of intellectual outputs, I watch out for the heterodox ideas, because those are the “startups”- the ideas that actually merit greater consumption, as they bring fresh novel insight, but get killed in their infancy..::: (3/n)

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Akshay Alladi

@akshayalladi

27 Aug

Some policy analysts confidently saying India should take in lots of refugees from Afghanistan. See what happened in Kabul. People who operate in the real world know that many decisions have to be taken with incomplete information, and that malign actors want to harm us.

“bUt tHe OrDiNaRy AfGhAn lOvEs iNdIa”- yes they do, and this is a tragedy. Tell me how you have the deep perception to know, *without prior information*, who is an ordinary Afghan versus an ISI trained terrorist to wreak havoc in India?

The only people we can help are the Hindus, Sikhs and the known friends of India- that is those whom we have adequate background checks or information on, or have actively collaborated with us. Lamentations that the ordinary Afghan will start disliking us are silly

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Akshay Alladi

@akshayalladi

25 Aug

General musings in this thread: Going back to a great book again- psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s book on Moral Foundations theory, since there is a lot of debate on moral universalism versus differences between societies. I was intrigued by the origin story of the theory….(1/n)

..he first saw it when he spent time as a researcher in Odisha! Until then he was a hardcore liberal, but when he spent time with people here and found them to be friendly, but also deeply moral he saw that it was a different moral “matrix” (2/n)

…And he even introduced this notion of different moral matrices by asking the overwhelmingly liberal audiences in his talks whether they are willing to take the “red pill” (he used this term!) and see past their own moral matrix (3/n)

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Akshay Alladi

@akshayalladi

26 May

Thread: On the Lakshadweep controversy, some observations at different levels. First, at an institutional level, we should debate whether all UTs should also have legislatures. That’s a good way to channel democratic opinion institutionally. (1/n)

In any case a consultative approach is better, but institutional mechanisms for the same are always a more robust way to achieve that, else you’re at the mercy of the conduct of particular post holders. Of course the powers of a UT govt may be different from that of a state (2/n)

On the cow slaughter issue: I think the right balance here is to leave it to states/ UTs. I am neither a believer in absolute individual freedom nor in cultural uniformity. In the case of Lakshadweep cow slaughter should NOT be banned, but it should be in most states (3/n)

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Akshay Alladi

@akshayalladi

3 May

Short thread: One very intellectually dishonest argument being advanced, that too by some academics, that multi-phase election in Bengal, as opposed to Tamil Nadu, is only to suit the BJP. At least there should be intellectual integrity to acknowledge the facts....(1/n)

1. Bengal elections have always had way more phases than Tamil Nadu including 8 phases (7, with 6th phase called 6A and 6B) last election when BJP was a non-entity, and that was the case for 2 decades now 2. The reason for that is simple - Bengal has violence in politics...(2/n)

...and we can literally see that the day of the results with visuals of BJP offices and workers homes being attacked and burnt - a common feature in that state which is why Mamta herself had sought multiple phases when she was in Opposition and Communist gundagardi....(3/n)

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Akshay Alladi

@akshayalladi

5 Dec 20

General musings in this thread: The Rajni Kothari approach of influencing policies and ideas/ ideology with movements and an ecosystem linked to factions *within* political parties is highly underrated. (1/n)

@rahul_tverma

India is not non-ideological. But India does have a different ideology space (well described in the book Ideology and Identity by Chibber and @rahul_tverma )- with the classic left- right, liberal- conservative kind of binaries being inapplicable. (2/n)

Also, both ideology AND identity matter (as they do in most heterogenous societies). So the key point is - for most ideologies (other than those defined by India’s unique ideological axes), the fact is people are neither in favour, nor opposed - they are just ...indifferent.(3/n)

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