Ganesha on the Dashboard

V Raghunathan

Description

Take the way we go about buying a new car. We identify an auspicious date and time, then proceed to break a coconut, plonk a plastic deity of Ganesha on the dashboard, and zoom off at great speed, refusing to wear our seatbelts. Supposedly educated, smart and tech-savvy, Indians can be surprisingly unscientific in their daily lives. Think of the crores spent every year remodelling homes according to vaastu, in the hope of changing luck; and the continued horrors of female infanticide, because it is only the son who can help the father s journey to heaven This unsparingly critical, scathingly analytical book points out the shocking lack of scientific temper among the vast majority of Indians, and how this holds us up as a nation in the twenty-first century.

Sujets

• India
• Sociologie, société et politique

Informations

• Publié par: Penguin Books Ltd
• Date de parution: 01 février 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9788184756180
• Langue: English

Extrait

V. RAGHUNATHAN M.A. ESWARAN
Ganesha on the Dashboard
PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
About the Author
Dedication
Preface
Proof Can t Shake My Belief
Science, Scientific Method and Scientific Temper
Scientific Methods in Social Sciences
From Astronomy to Astrology
Science Explains a Lot about the Universe, but
A World of Reason and a World of Faith
Religion, God and the Hereafter
The Limitations of Science and Religion
A Scientific Religion
Notes
Appendices
Copyright Page
PENGUIN BOOKS
GANESHA ON THE DASHBOARD
V. R AGHUNATHAN has been an author, banker, columnist and corporate executive. He taught finance and accounting for nearly two decades, from 1982 to 2001, at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad. For the last two decades he has been an adjunct professor at the University of Bocconi, Milan, where he teaches behavioural finance. His books include Corruption Conundrum , Don t Sprint the Marathon , Games Indians Play , and Stock Exchanges, Investments & Derivatives . He writes a column for the Economic Times , contributes to several other dailies and magazines from time to time, and blogs for the Times of India . He has authored nearly 500 papers and articles. He was president of ING Vysya Bank from 2001 to 2004 and has been heading a large foundation for a major infrastructure group from 2005. Raghunathan sits on various corporate boards and lectures extensively in India and abroad. He has probably the largest collection of old and ancient padlocks in India. He has also cartooned for the Financial Express and played chess competitively at the national level. His website is www.vraghunathan.com .
M.A. Eswaran was a nuclear physicist who spent nearly all of his career at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), before retiring as the head of the nuclear physics division in 1996. During the course of his career, he worked with various accelerators at Trombay, Mumbai, India; Chalk River, Ontario, Canada; University of Rochester, New York, USA; and Kolkata (Department of Atomic Energy), India. He has published more than 100 scientific papers in the most reputed national and international peer-reviewed journals. He guided several doctoral candidates at BARC and was on the technical committees of various accelerators in the Department of Atomic Energy at Mumbai and Kolkata. He has also served as an external member of the senate of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay for three years (1994-96). In 1995 he was elected a member to the New York Academy of Sciences. He passed away in November 2011.
To my maternal grandmother, who was an inspiration to three generations.
V. Raghunathan
To the physics teachers, who taught me half a century ago at St Joseph s College, Trichi, Tamil Nadu.
M.A. Eswaran
Preface
We just have to look around us to see the lack of scientific temper in whatever we do. At least that is the take of the authors on us (Indians) as a people, and that is the hypothesis this book builds on. No, we are not referring to a lack of science-certainly not to a lack of technology or applied science-but to the lack of a questioning spirit in most aspects of our lives. There are any number of things we do unquestioningly simply because that is how they have been done for thousands of years, irrespective of whether these practices are relevant to the world we live in today.
Ours is a country of great diversity. It is also a country with great potential. If we are to realize this potential to its fullest, we will need to systematically improve our quality of life as well as our productivity in virtually all spheres of our lives. This, in turn, would be possible only if we could bring a greater scientific temper to our way of life. Between faith and reason, we swing too far towards faith, to the point of fatalism. The objective of this book is to attempt some balance between the two, so that we count in the world citizenry as a people with scientific temper.
Writing this book has not been easy. The subject itself is tricky and its treatment trickier. The topic is not something that lends itself to what you would call bedside reading. In short, we had before us the challenge of writing a readable book! In the process, we have had to discard draft after draft of the manuscript, before we thought we had it more or less right.
In the process, as is usual, a lot of people have helped us significantly. First and foremost, Meena-Raghunathan s best friend and wife-has spent hours and hours repeatedly going through the many versions of the manuscripts critically. It has not been easy at all to satisfy her. Manish Sabharwal (of TeamLease), Dr Shweta Parikh (of IIM, Ahmedabad) and Suki Iyer (of MetaMorph Learning)-among Raghunathan s best-read friends-plodded through a very badly written and equally badly structured draft of the manuscript, and gave some insightful, encouraging and candid comments, as only the best of friends can. We received not only comments on the manuscript, but references and books as well!
In the course of writing this book, we had asked Eswaran s daughter, Dr Nalini Rajaram, a molecular biologist, to help us with certain sections on biology, which she did with her usual enthusiastic and meticulous thoroughness. Unfortunately, as we coursed through many manuscripts, we decided to cut out virtually three chapters relating to the history of science, and her splendid contribution fell victim to this large-scale purge, though some of her conclusions are reflected in some of the observations made in the book.
Uma, Eswaran s wife and Raghunathan s sister, has supported the project significantly during various stages of preparing the manuscript. Also, H. Ramamurthy, Eswaran s friend, gave us two important references on Hindu scriptures.
We are both extremely grateful to all these people, for all their gracious help and effort, though the usual qualification of all the defects of the book being our own applies.
We are also thankful for all the help we have received from various websites like Wikipedia and others that have been a rich source of reference material for the book.
V. Raghunathan M.A. Eswaran
1
Proof Can t Shake My Belief
By denying scientific principles, one may maintain any paradox.
-Galileo Galilei
The Shipwreck
A shipwrecked believer is adrift mid-ocean.
God, save me, he prays earnestly.
Soon a large cruise ship passes by and the captain throws him a lifeline. Hop on board! the captain shouts.
That s okay, carry on, the man replies. God will save me. I have faith.
The captain shrugs and the ship continues on its course.
Then, a small fishing trawler comes along, and the fisherman throws a lifeline to the man, with exhortations to come on board.
That s okay, the man says again. God will save me. I have faith.
The fisherman shrugs and sails off.
Next, a helicopter comes along. The men on the helicopter lower an expert to help the man.
That s okay, the man says, steadfastly turning down the offer of help. God will save me. I have faith.
The helicopter leaves.
The man drowns and finally walks into heaven. He comes face-to-face with God, sitting on his divine throne before him.
God, why didn t you save me? I pinned all my faith on you! I sent you a cruise ship, a fishing trawler and a helicopter. What more did you expect? 1
Helmets and Seat Belts
We routinely see an entire Indian family astride a scooter or a motorcycle, with daddy wearing a helmet because the local law requires it, while mommy (with a babe in arms) and two other kids-one stuffed strategically between the couple and the other in front of daddy-are all without helmets. The scene is so commonplace that we have even stopped smiling to ourselves at the sight.
Less than 20 per cent of Indian motorcyclists wear helmets when not under legal compulsion. Even this minority does not bother with helmets for the pillion riders or those seated on the petrol tank of the motorcycle, or standing on the front curve of the scooter. We, along with some of our neighbours in the subcontinent, are possibly the most helmet-averse people in the world. Every time a court of law makes the wearing of helmets mandatory, we resist the move en masse. We challenge the legal order in every conceivable manner. We file writ petitions. We file public interest litigations against the local government enforcing the helmet rule. We apply for stay orders against the enforcement of the rule, which an understanding court routinely grants. We resort to bandhs or simply defy the law in a collective and spontaneous show of civil disobedience in an effort to reverse the law. We leave no stone unturned in impromptu and united displays of solidarity against the government s call for the wearing of helmets, to undermine it. Faced with such resolute and concerted opposition, the law is withdrawn. As the death tolls on the roads begin to swell once again and hospitals refuse to take in accident patients who are in no position to assure the payment of their emergency care, and in any case in no shape to fill up the required forms, some sensible official somewhere manages to revive the law. The law holds its own precariously for a while, before the protests gather strength all over again and, respectful of mass protest as always, the law is withdrawn. Thus the law on helmets goes on and off, like a toggle switch.
No amount of statistics proving why wearing helmets is useful can convince us that wearing helmets could help save our lives. Few organizations mandate that their employees wear helmets, law or no law. This when, worldwide, most civilized countries, with much better traffic conditions and road quality, have helmet laws, not only for motorcycles, but also for bicycles, and not only for the riders, but for the pillion riders as well. Virtually everyone follows the requirement without much fuss, and much to their benefit-but not us.
Amidst our wild and unruly driving habits, the non