Malls without memories- a postmodern crisis

Yes, space does speak often the unspoken languages. The late-capital shopping destinations are supposedly the space to bring happiness. Kaleidoscope like many others have watched and liked the Bollywood brilliance 'pyaar ka side effects'. It was still the time when people used to feel down with the breakups. Yes the breakup song was still miles away. No one could even think of an item number with mere saiyan ji se aaj maine breakup kar liya!

As kaleidoscope slowly grew in a rapidly liberalised market economy he learned the joy in shopping. However, such joy could never stay for long. No joyfulness stays for long. Not even those which one attains after a long wait including 'buying' your dream car or 'making' your partner to fall in love with you. It is one of the evolutionary keys to success of kaleidoscope's species.

While joys like these never lasts for long, kaleidoscope finds young people creating memories in the built-in spaces like the shopping malls. If past is what we call memories then creating memories in shopping malls instead of black and white chequered  floored cinema halls remains the same. One ultimately has to go back to reconcile one's own biography in spaces.

Shopping malls however haunts you and attempts to push you away or change you when you have no memory there whatsoever. Until you have created some memories at a specific space you are finding it to be the same like just another mall you have had visited thousands of miles away. May be in a different continent.

Meanwhile a quick visit to one of those endless successions of images in the whole simulcra shows

Faceless desired bodies wearing desired clothes alone.

Joytoys hanging like lifeless bodies in suicide missions

Playcorner without space and children

Then kaleidoscope finds the everchanging sky outside... limited by the curtailed horizons.

The masculine admissions and Chaos in West Bengal

Kaleidoscope has a blogger friend, Medusa. Both of them happened to work in the same college in the port city. Medusa in 2011 wrote a brilliant blogpost: "the taking of a college" (click here) describing how through a violent means political change took place in their college's students' unit bypassing election. It was 2011, the only word that shook the world of everyone including Medusa and Kaleidoscope was the paribartan, the change, the change from CPIM to TMC in the state which had just ended the longest continuous communist democratic regime. Fortunately or unfortunately Medusa then got transferred to one of the elite colleges carrying a colonial legacy and Kaleidoscope to a completely new underprepared college in the heart of a built-in city of New Town, Kolkata. The place Kaleidoscope as noted earlier represents a challenge in teaching. The space for kaleidoscope is a perfect example of spatial liminality, see: "Challenges in teaching at a juxtaposed space" (click here).

Apart from the depthlessness in comparison to Medusa's present college, there is another difference here. Kaleidoscope's college happens to have a student's union and Medusa's college is famous for not having one. How does the paribartan behave in a different set up than the port city college? This college has a glassy architecture, a shopping plaza in front and is surrounded by posh apartments where people are super rich compared to the students who come to educate themselves. Kaleidoscope finds three forms of occupations prevailing: a) IT sector 'professionals' who are upwardly mobile upper middleclass to newly reached upper-class people residing at the apartments, b) Shopping-mall workers, security guards, and c) people engaged in informal economy. There lies a underground roaring black economy of those who can run syndicate of building material supply. The formally outside of the visible economic spheres, these people are also often super-rich, have a huge control over the decisions related to much of the everydayness of the informal sector workers, they are well connected with the local goons and party line.

At a distant and often localised hue, lies a transitional space, a meeting point between formal and informal spheres of economy where the students union etches out their positions. This has been a case for quite some time now, may be a little less during the CPIM era, but increasingly more after the paribartan. The crowd has grown, nurtured in the hotbed of colleges- no matter how newly built they are. Now that there is no election/selection in the student's union sine 2016, there are many faces of the union. It is not that there were not many at other times, but now, everyone has a say in most of the places. The activities as widely covered by a variety of news agencies range from collecting extorted money from even the valid candidates to beating up them, quarrelling with professors, so as to compel the Government to issue an order asking college authorities to stop calling up aspiring applicants to the college compound for physical verification of their merit points.

What makes the young crowd of West Bengal to assume this sort of political culture in most of the colleges:

First of all, there happens to be a good number of guardians ready with money. Its not that they are all helpless, it is that they do not want any conflict and if money can solve that they will assume the easiest option by giving it away. Anyways, still they are paying lakhs less than what they have to if they had to get their sons or daughters admitted to some private colleges. Kaleidoscope's EPW article on "Everyday politics and corruption is West Bengal" seems to have been working smoothly (click here). Yes, of course, there is a fear factor working, but fear is infused among those who were actually ready to pay in cash.

Secondly, doing students' union is quite a "Macho", masculine thing in the first place. You get to satisfy your adrenaline and testosterone but assuming power in the formation. You attract a lot of clout around you and you embody a larger than life image. Hence, 'helping' newcomers to get admitted is a win-win combination. You earn money, you become macho and you become a known face to the new crowd of the institution which you are not ready to leave even when you have completed your course.

While the union occupy an undefined position within the juxtaposed space between the formal-informal interface, the role players remain victims of the demands from the party line and administrative measures being taken. No matter how money they earn, seriously, kaleidoscope feels the amount has no upper limit, neither the amount has any lower limit. At places like that of the college where Kaleidoscope teaches, the newly built up one, has a paucity of students. However, the masculinity prevails.

PS. You know what, Medusa's college doesn't have a student's union, how can they have one, it is a girls' college of repute with colonial continuation.

Pic: GIF from the movie "fight club". taken from https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36236124-fight-club

Making of a dictator

We all love democracy or do we really love democracy at all? The question often has no interesting answer. Kaleidoscope knows that he lives in a society which says that it loves democracy but deep inside many of them would love to become a dictator. Yes dictatorship is good when I am the dictator. He wishes to explore the making of a dictator. How does a dictator constructed? Does s/he born one fine morning with certain qualities to become a dictator? Or does s/he go through a series of constructs to become a dictator.

Bingo! Kaleidoscope has been able to discover the second order construct that clearly takes a constructivist perspective to dictatorship. To put simple 'dictators are constructed' they are constructed in such a way that after a point in their timeline they start believing in themselves as supreme devine authority. As kaleidoscope like others know Hitlar too had constructed 'good' reasons of saving human kind's superior species for species's continuation.

Kaleidoscope has found out certain background constructs that create a dictator.

1. The supreme assistants

Usually the supreme assistants are those who continuously harps the fact that the soon to be dictator has a supreme power. Usually the power rests in Weberian sense of a mix of charismatic and bureaucratic - legal power.
They assist the to be dictator in different ways and curbes out space in the public sphere to become specialist actors.
On every occasion when these assistants feel that there is a slightest chance of the ruler to fall back they re-emphasise the rulers authority and agency. This loop continues in so far as the assistant's position remain second most important after the dictator.

2. The circle of unreasoned followers

While the supreme ruler began to accumulate power with the help of supereme assistants a loosely connected interest groups are formed. They are the yes-men to the ruler and are usually afraid of the supereme assistant. The circle initially remains pervasive through subtle mechanisms of mutual exchange of both material and non material entities. However, when the ruler and assistant attempt to consolidate their support base they usually take no time to align themselves as per the polarised politics.

3. The hypocrites
While there is a section of unreasoned followers develop, a number of actors not being able to align themselves with supreme rulers attempt to access the benefits of the power by playing a balancing act. These are the third layers of support base for the to be dictator who ensures an interesting loose supprt base for which the dictator does not have to make any effort. These are the people usually speak against the dictator in personal sphere however, remain silent at the time of an interface. They Mostly,act in align with the purpose of the dictator or ensure their personal interests getting satisfied.

4. The whisleblowers

Whenever there is a dictator there are whisleblowers available. They happen to be the only source of space where the dictator is truly contested. However, in a polarised and hypocrite filled space whisleblowers are first ignored, then ridiculed, and eliminated, or does they?

There are times when the entire network of dictator gets challenged. The space itself transforms and the dictator has to comeback to the roots.

Whisleblowers can be killed, eliminated physically. Hypocrites and the supreme assistants can find an alternative dictator, but the dictator himself/herself has to pay for the entite system s/he has built. Nothing disappears.

Neither the silence of unreasoned followers and hypocrites  nor the whisleblowers can remain constant for ever.

There seems to be a loop kaleidoscope finds interesting to follow until he is eliminated for being one of the whisleblowers.

Increasing religiousity and the world with information

How information age and increasing religiosity connects?

Information happens to be the mechanism having potentials to reduce uncertainties. It  underlies the very nature of information age of our times. We are happy to be under surveillance because a) we have an urge to show how better we are than others b) we like to see others and participate in an unconscious competition of being happy/fulfilled/rich/intelligent  and so on c) we like to get appreciation through 'likes' comments and 'loves'.

We are supposedly living in an era of late capital technology driven world of impersonal, purposive and contractual bonds. We are supposed to be rational and calculative in every sphere of our lives. We are having increasingly greater control over what happens to us and how does it happen?

Technology seems to answer most of our existential uncertain questions. For example through tests now we know that its the influenaza that is causing fever and not some supernatural forces being applied to us causing the body to raise its temperature. Similarly you know with a certain degree of certainty about your future possibilities.

Well technology seems to occupy the same cognitive plane where religion dwells. Almost through the entire humanity humans invented Gods/ supernatural powers, being, forces to reduce the uncertainty within our insanely uncertain existence. All major religions of the world at one point or the other have legitimized ethnic cleansing and conversion, cultivated hatred, and most of them at present have multiple organizations in different social fronts to subtly promote such polarisation and hatred.

There is a polarisation in technological knowledge base as well. For example a close affinity with technological knowhow works as the 'cultural capital' in a knowledge base hierarchy of habitus.

The age of reason, followed by positivism, in their grand narrative supported by cliche 'enlightenment' claiming the dark age behind promised a future of logic and reason. Centuries after we hardly find any significant change in human beings' dealing with uncertainty.

The age of information instead of giving you access to the supposedly stable world of orders pushing you further towards an exposure of uncertainty.

Uncertainties are manifold now. Even after getting educated with highly demanding field your potential openings can be withered away by the inventions in artificial intelligence  and automation. You are never sure about your position in your relationships neither you have any control over your body. Moreover, even those seemingly controllable spheres like your spending habits, reading habits, learning capabilities, knowledge base, network with interested others are out of your control at present.

Hence, what we are left with is a gigantic world of information that instead of giving us a sense of security creating alternative spheres of uncertainty, desire and helplessness. What is termed as VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous)helps proving the expectations of the proposers of enlightement. Religion and science seem to work perfectly in compatible with each other. Science is creating deep dimensions of VUCA and people keep on embracing religious belief systems.

This is precisely the fertile ground for organized religion to flourish. It is expected that we will experience even greater role of organised religion and perhaps increasingly stronger effects of the same.

Pic. A palmist inside a shopping mall in 2017 Kolkata. 

Lawns as food to the Past - juxtaposed New Town, Rajarhat

Kaleidoscope finds it interesting to teach in the heart of the built in city of New Town Kolkata. There are all sorts of juxtaposed realities co-existing here and there. The 'useless' green lusty lawns as a public space (click here), a cup of coffee in a simulacra (click here) and finally the challenges of teaching in a juxtaposed space (click here).

Today, Kaleidoscope could find something amazing. He noticed not too distant past not only haunting the present but actually, literally eating away a significant part of its aristocracy.

The photo Kaleidoscope could manage to take is this.

"A great civilisation is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within." - Ariel Durant. If you think Rajarhat is not a great civilisation go, see what is happening in Bhangar. 

For those who are interested:

Lionel S Smith & Mark D E Fellowes 2013. Towards a Lawn without Grass: The journey of the imperfect lawn and its analogues. Studies in History of Gardens & Designed Landscape 33: 3,158-159

Challenges in teaching at a juxtaposed space: Pupil and their performances

I have taught in a college in the heart of the industrial land within a port city to find some of the finest (in my experience) students having a rainbow of capabilities. I have seen students being absent for long to harvest their crops and then again resuming classes. With a few extra aids many of them have excelled in academic career. One of them went to join IIT to do a Phd.

When i had joined my first College at the port city some of my colleagues from upwardly mobile classes having high-end educational background were already demotivated with a bunch of 'underclass' first generation learners.

The ranting of same words to describe students in the teacher's hostel were enough to make any new comer feel hopeless and cynical. Meanwhile I also encountered my fellow colleagues who have given their best to 'come down' to a certain level and make them shine. Yes, i can proudly say there are students from the first generation learners pursuing PhD, working in multinational companies or have become small entrepreneurs.

Then came a day when I had to pack my bag and come to the newly built city of New Town kolkata to serve at  'A-Zone' college. The glassy building surrounded by three shopping malls and high-end apartments this college represents a potential to become one of the best in the town.

However, there are equally frustrated teachers with first generation learners coming from a little distant villages surrounding the built-in city of New Town. A major difference that I find here is the lack of interest to learn among a large section of the students. While in the port city college there were students lacking ability to comprehend things here there are students who has the ability to comprehend but are disinterested. I have used movie clips, told them stories, gave links to movies and my blogs to make them feel interested. None of these could hold interest for long. Whatever spur created lasted for the class time only. Then most of them went back to the juxtaposed space to be lost. I have seen students changing how they embody their selves rapidly after they started coming to the college. Many of them keep on taking selfies infront of the glassy staircase of the college building overlooking the baclyard of a shopping mall. Many of them I am sure somehow lost in the space. The juxtaposed space.


What makes this difference possible? Of course there is a role of unlimited high-speed internet revolution which is taking away a considerable amount of time of the students. But that is not the sole reason. Let me explain how a juxtaposed space might be playing a role.

Below are some of the photos of the road conditions that one of my students from the department of sociology has to avail to reach college everyday.

Road conditions near Bhangar (PC. Sahajahan Mollah)

Now see the glassy building of the college positioned at the heart of the built in city of new town kolkata surrounded by three shopping malls, well maintained metalled roads and all amenities that most of students can see from a distance but can rarely have access to.

One of the shopping malls adjacent to the college

The glassy architecture of the college building

The roads in front of the college

 At one side of the college property lies high-end apartments.

Neighbourhood of the college

People here only travel in their own air conditioned cars buy foods and vegetables from supermarkets. The entire space represents a late capital postmodern reality. Even plants on the boulevard are unfamiliar ones. Moreover, many of our students have heard stories of land acquisition and related violence that many of their parents relatives and neighbours have suffered from.  The space, therefore, tells the stories of violence and does symbolic violence over the common psyche with a) portraying  massive class difference, b) alienating the marginalised 'others' (students )through process of everyday encounter of significant others (including the space and also the actors).

Teachers, they similarly misrecognise to belong to the space that takes a small moment to isolate them. No matter how hard many of them try many of the students remain at the margins as they see teachers in the same spatial context, embodying same cultural capital which is attractive but 'impossible' to reach.

The pathway to reach there is not visible or are yet to become visible. Meanwhile, the exchange of knowledge continues with a dream 'imagine all the people sharing all the world equally!'

Acknowledgements: I am indebted to Dr. Sreejith K and Pranabesh Bhattacharyya for lively discussion on these issues over drinks.

See also: Interpretations and Experimentation on Knowledge Transfusions by following this: http://sumanparole.blogspot.in/2012/09/interpretations-and-experimentation-on.html

Toothukudi to Bhangar - competitions in a neo-liberal India

It is about eight years now that neoliberal loot in mining sector was quite clear as it was evident in Vedanta in Niyamgiri hills under the Congress led UPA Government (see http://sumanparole.blogspot.in/2010/07/ and http://sumanparole.blogspot.in/2010/06/sacred-mountain-corporates-and-mao-case.html). Well the neo-liberal states were in a hurry to attract private investors in every sphere. The Left Front (LF) led by CPIM was no different than others with the aggressive go-ahead of Special Economic Zone (SEZ) pollicy. In due course we have witnessed Nandigram killing, eventual loss of credibility of the LF to become completely irrelevant in the state and national politics.

Hopeless submission of state machinery:

The crucial question remains does it stop there? Does the change in the political party leading the state curb out the aggressiveness of the neo-liberal competitive market economy every sphere of our late capital self, life and governanc? Perhaps it doesnt.

While West Bengal has seen a prolonged dilemma with the industrial growth leading to substantive investment in the farming sector - like a revert back and often justifiably so for a state which has all the potential to perform well in the farming sector (see http://www.anandabazar.com/editorial/potato-farming-and-government-policy-1.784373?ref=hm-sec-new-stry-editorial for a recent state initiative that has benefited the farmers). However, there is also a parallel rise to Bhangar power grid movement and state's brutal response to it.

The killing of Toothukudi is one of the latest examples of the helplessness of the state and their submission to the corporate players which required undermining people's call, urge and questions. The state machinery opened fire without any warning, neither rubber bullet nor water cannons were used. Plain and simple firing from automatic rifles. Yes, a hundred days of agitation was enough for the state to go for an extreme measure like taking away lives of its own people. 

There will be reasons for such act as 'uncontrolled mobs', 'attack on police', 'declaration of curfew and subsequent intrusion' and perhaps the theory of 'maost link' will somehow join the show shortly. 

Be it copper factory or power grid - capital flows over flesh and bloodline of people. Its been quite some time now and people will enjoy their democratic rights CPIM to TMC to something else. AIADMK to something else. 


PS. Don't forget to include North East into the trail - you can easily map a neo-liberal horse trader clearing pathway for capital inflow.



http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/bhangar-kolkata-land-violence-pgcil-road-blockade-bengal-government-4511146/

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/mamata-bats-for-power-grid-at-bhangar/article18968007.ece


Photograph: the person in plain cloth responsible for shooting. PicCredit https://newsxind.com/national/sterlite-violence-policemen-caught-on-camera-targeting-and-shooting-protesters