Time to bid adieu to disruptive politics

Being not only self-defeating and counterproductive but fraught with disastrous consequences too, disruptive politics wherever practiced need to be substituted by constructive politics in the emerging post-COVID world order

Since the dawn of human civilization, history has witnessed countless rulers and iconic leaders all across the world. While some like George Washington, Franklin Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Akbar the Great are remembered, adored and admired for their progressive outlook, constructive mindset, positive attitude and above all pro-humanistic statesmanship, at the same time many others like Nero Claudius, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Mao Zedong are abhorred, shunned and despised for their cruel and barbaric behavior, divisive politics, destructive mindset, anti-human policies and eccentric mental attitudes. While the former are accepted, followed and presented to the world as role models, beacon lights and torch bearers of progress and development, at the same time latter are rejected, disliked and presented to the world as instances of barbarity, meanness, stupidity and fickle-mindedness. Therefore the succinct take-home message is do good and become immortal in the golden books of history or do evil and be remembered as a retard for all generations to come. US President Roosevelt in his famous speech made before the US Congress on January 6, 1941 proclaimed four freedoms that are essential to a flourishing democracy including freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear that remain valid even today. He served three presidential terms and was elected for a fourth term, but died shortly afterwards.

Most valued, remarkable and cherished strengths of any nation are its atmosphere of peace, tranquility, amity, brotherhood, harmony, stability, safety, security, equity, justice, law and order. An ambience where the citizens are not only at peace with themselves but also at peace with all others across the sectarian and religious divides bears paramount significance for the growth and productivity of any nation. However peace here refers to real peace of heart, mind and soul not merely the peace of a graveyard enforced through the barrel of a gun or through the writ of a baton. It implies a country where people earn their livelihood, nurture their culture and identity, practice their religion freely, feel happy and spend time with their families and friends, enjoy equitable access to education and healthcare, visit places, play sports and have fun together without any fear of losing their jobs, suffering losses in businesses, getting evicted from their roots, getting lynched, killed, maimed, molested or raped by unruly mobs, losing their home and hearth in communal riots or facing discrimination at their native or work places. A leader who resolves long-pending conflicts amicably and succeeds in achieving these goals in his country alone can be termed as a successful, iconic and towering leader worthy of veneration. One who takes everyone along and leaves no one behind in his march towards this kind of success is the real leader.

As they say big people make big mistakes that are fraught with devastating consequences on a huge section of the human population. Their ill-devised policies and uncalled for actions wreak havoc to a vast section of the society. Leaders like Hitler suffering from unwanted personality traits like narcissistic, histrionic, paranoid or shizotypal cult features turn out to be a curse for their entire nation bringing nothing but misery, anarchy, chaos, suffering, poverty, hunger and pain to their own people whereas well-meaning and level-headed leaders like Abraham Lincoln become a blessing for their subjects bringing peace, progress, stability, prosperity, development and amity back to their nation. On the contrary, practice of disruptive and divisive politics inspired by communal, caste, creed or colour-based fascist ideologies is destined to bear disastrous consequences by causing pervading instability,  widening poor-rich divide, simmering tensions and sometimes even group clashes and riots among castes, sects and religious communities. This brand of politics breeds dictatorship, lack of trust, transparency and  accountability, dishonesty, nepotism, discrimination, corruption and a whole lot of other vices in the society.

Humanity has just stepped into the third decade of twenty first century that is witnessing an unprecedented resonance in the advent of science and use of technology in areas like artificial intelligence, robotics, big data analytics, block chain revolution, unmanned surface and air vehicles, advanced tech-savy healthcare, digital boom, space technology etc. Under these fast changing circumstances countries that will keep pace and quickly adopt to these changing trends and technologies will emerge victorious in a goal-based sustainable development framework whereas countries that will continue to remain entrapped in morbid, archaic and moribund divisive and disruptive politics based on caste, creed, colour and religion will be destined to be doomed and pushed behind by centuries. That is because when you discriminate, dehumanize, marginalize and derogate a sizeable chunk of your own population making them feel like aliens in their own country you are already setting the stage for instability, insecurity, uncertainty, fear, apprehensions and depression. This finally impedes the advancement and emergence of any nation as a progressive and developed world leader.

A successful leader of a nation is the one whose public appearance instills confidence, builds trust and security among all his fellow-countrymen irrespective of their religious or political beliefs. In times of disaster and devastation such leaders boost morale and inspire resilience and resurgence from the crippling damages. However a disruptive leader unwittingly injects feelings of apprehension, fear and trepidation among his citizens as a result of his regressive announcements and destabilizing declarations that sometimes seek to levy heavy taxes upon the people and sometimes seek to make a vast section of the population homeless, jobless, foodless and penniless in their own country besides imposing unnecessary restrictions on civil liberties, undeclared curbs on democratic institutions or suspending constitutional guarantees like freedom of thought, expression, peaceful democratic dissent and practice of religion. This brand of politics based on hatred, hostility and alienation ultimately causes a large chunk of the population to get marginalized, suffer from stress, depression and anxiety as a result of which they become unproductive and do not find themselves in a position to contribute positively towards the growth, progress and development of their nation. This finally marks the beginning of a long haul of regression, instability and uncertainty in the country and conditions like these can never be conducive for foreign as well as indigenous investment, industrialization, growth and job creation leading to a drastic drop in GDP, decline in happiness and development index, economic slowdown and increasing poverty, hunger, unemployment and disharmony.

New age world leaders have to sharply deviate from the conventional and run-of-the-mill behaviour and act more like hard-working and efficient managers rather than grandiose emperors of their countries. They have to shun their age old, larger than life portraits and come down to earth facing the hard realities on ground. They have to act and behave like average citizens and show concern on each and every predicament and suffering of their people. New age leadership can best be exemplified by the model of constructive politics presented recently by countries like Canada and New Zealand during the coronavirus pandemic. Jacinda Ardern and Justin Trudeau emerged as the most accessible and successful leaders by leading from the front, interacting on daily basis with their people, revealing their plan of action, instilling confidence, showing direction, exhibiting full control over the emerging situation besides ensuring public participation, transparency and accountability in their decisions, while at the same time ensuring that none of their citizens or even migrants suffer for want of food, shelter, medicines, healthcare, transportation, advice, consular services or even on account of loneliness while staying in their home quarantines. They even showed enough concern for their pets and domestic animals. Hallmark of their success was their honesty, sincerity and transparency in all their dealings, decisions and actions. No facts or figures were hidden or distorted by them to suit their convenience during their press briefings. These are the desirable traits of new age world leaders that count the most since no leader can ever fool all the people all the time. A time comes when people can very well sense the real intent, level of sincerity, honesty of purpose behind the actions and decisions of their rulers. Thereafter disruptive politics will not only prove to be short-lived but self-defeating and counterproductive too and hence need to be shunned and substituted by constructive politics in the changing post-COVID geo-political world order.

Fact of the matter is that liberal thought process gets completely vanished and annihilated by the fascist and communal regimes worldwide. Rhyme, reason, logic and objectivity die their own death in such countries and get replaced by noise, bullying, muscle-flexing and fundamentalism. Idea of oneness marked by unity and integrity in diversity, composite culture and multi-religious, multi-linguist, multi-ethnic society gets defaced and marred beyond recognition by mono-religious driven culture and ideology. Silence on grave issues like mob lynching, child rape, molestation, islamophobia, usurping of religious rights of minorities etc is no more considered unethical let alone criminal under such regimes thus marking a new low in the value system. Use of disruptive, divisive and dictatorial brand of politics may yield satisfactory and beneficial results for such political parties in the short term and sway the emotional tide in their favour but in the long run this brand of politics that shows no regard to the civil liberties, democratic norms and constitutional traditions will prove to be fatal to the polity, ethos and culture of any society. This way such countries will emerge as neo-fascist, theocratic, autocratic, majoritarian, communal states marred by religious bigotry and anarchy. This can have serious implications on the peace and order of the country in the long term owing to lingering insecurity, fear and uncertainty among the minority communities.

Therefore it is high time for all political leaders of the world to show compassion, be kind, heal the broken hearts, apply some soothing balm on the soaring wounds, resolve conflicts, end discrimination of all sorts, bridge the divides, promote harmony, love and trust among sects and communities, shun all kinds of hypocrisy, hatred and bigotry, liberate democractic institutions of all undue curbs, restrictions and controls and above all be honest and true to themselves. They need to stop fooling people through petty politicking and misleading gimmicks. Their success in politics should be judged by their achievements on various indices of inclusive growth, peace, progress, development, happiness, lack of pollution, corruption, discrimination rather than their political rhetoric, hollow sloganeering, false promises, deceptive packages, public posturing, emotional outbursts, sentimental exploitation and religious bigotry. New age leaders should have a first-hand feel of the pulse of their nation besides an eye on the emerging geo-political and international scenario. They must keep pace with fast changing global trends and steer their nation on that very path. Then only they can emerge as successful world leaders whose glorious contributions will be remembered for all times to come.

Exploring interface between natural, applied and social sciences

Curricular integration between diverse disciplines of humanities, natural, applied and social sciences supplemented by multi-disciplinary approaches in research can pave way for lasting resolution of a whole lot of problems and challenges faced by the mankind

One of the most unpleasant facts of our times is that we as academics have been strictly working within our own tight compartments leaving little room for other streams even within our own disciplines let alone fostering interdisciplinary approaches. Within the domain of sciences there is very little plausible interaction and meaningful collaboration between natural and material sciences, between natural and applied sciences or between biological sciences and technology. It is only after breaking these barriers of academic quarantines that we can think of curricular integration across disciplines between sciences and social sciences, sciences and humanities, sciences and behavioural sciences, sciences and management studies, so on and so forth. There is need to ‘undiscipline’ our knowledge and education and churn out ‘undisciplinarian’ graduates and post-graduates from our colleges and universities since working strictly within our own compartments and quarantines limits not only the contours of our thinking, knowledge and imagination but also results into lack of appreciation of the magnificence and splendour of other disciplines and streams of knowledge.

We direly need to decompartmentalize our education and start working across these artificially created confines and quarantines whereas in essence knowledge is unified and knows no boundaries. It is like a vast ocean that has no limits. That will however become possible only when appropriate and sufficient curricular innovation and upgradation allows the same. Our education has at present been fenced within the constraints of curricular framework and is held tightly by the noose of our evaluation and examination system. Any deviation from the prescribed curriculum within a particular stream will tighten the noose of examination leading to strangulation and failure of the learner. This noose needs to be loosened and made more flexible allowing deviations from the set curricular framework in order for any multidisciplinary approaches to take shape and bear fruit. Learning outcomes have to be made broad-based incorporating interdisciplinary learning and acquisition of knowledge.

Our research activities in particular need to be liberated from the shackles of mono-disciplinary restrictions paving way for greater autonomy of trans-disciplinary thinking and investigation. Mode of investigation in research should to a reasonable extent include induction through observation, deduction through experimentation as well as innovation through intervention, to whichever extent possible. Problems faced by the human kind, more often than not have manifold non-scientific dimensions apart from the intrinsic scientific and technological facets. Therefore there is need to explore and inquire into some if not all of these dimensions while working on a scientific problem. Subsequently every compilation of a thesis work whether in natural or material sciences, applied or engineering sciences must shed some light upon the legal, socio-cultural, political, economic, behavioural, ecological, environmental, demographic, ethnic or humanistic impact and implications of the research work because unless some of these implications of the research work are not outlined, the work cannot be said to be complete and impactful in real sense of these terms, even though it might eventually find space in some high impact journal.

Corona virus outbreak has doubly emphasized upon the hard lesson of integration of academic disciplines since this pandemic is not only fraught with disastrous implications upon health and well-being of the human population but also has serious repercussions on the economic, political, social, cultural, ethnic, humanistic and geographical aspects of the human life. Consequently crisis unfolded by COVID-19 needs multi-disciplinary approaches worldwide since scientists or doctors alone cannot be of much help in overcoming the multi-dimensional deleterious consequences of this pandemic. Therefore it is high time that we take some cues from the measures taken to counter COVID crisis and integrate our academic disciplines and curricula for the benefit of humanity. That alone can pave way for proper management of such extreme and unprecedented crisis situations in future since our young learners will be better equipped with encompassing and comprehensive knowledge about all the disciplines required to manage such conditions.

Disciplines like humanities, sciences and social sciences are so intricately embedded and interconnected that they can hardly be segregated when viewed holistically and humanistically through the wider prism of global challenges. For instance while scientists in different parts of the world are working overnight to develop a vaccine for coronavirus infection and rid the humanity of this scourge, social scientists are discussing ways and means by which it could be made accessible and affordable to the entire seven and a half billion population of the world. Unless basic, applied and social scientists work in tandem benefits of scientific inquiry cannot be reaped by a vast majority of the human population. Similarly unless multi-disciplinary experts sit across and work shoulder to shoulder with doctors, engineers, natural and applied scientists, remedies to a wide spectrum of implications of COVID-19 pandemic cannot be found for a quick return to the pre-COVID era, moreso in the face of pronouncement made by the World Health Organization officials that we may need to learn to live with coronavirus firstly because this virus may become yet another endemic virus in our communities and never go away just like HIV and secondly because it is hard to know when a safe and effective treatment or vaccine will become available. 

Effective resolution of contemporary besetting problems like coronavirus pandemic calls for an active engagement of a wide range of sciences that in turn largely depends upon a sharp deviation from the general notion that the social science bears an end-of-pipe role in relation to scientific and technological advancements. While inventing a new gadget, machine or device engineers and scientists pay little attention towards its social implications leaving it to the social scientists to either resolve or ignore the same. Philip Lowe et al (2013) have argued that the social scientists have over a period of time been forced into an auxiliary role of supporting and interpreting developments in natural science and technology. Such a belief also arises from the assumption about “the underlying permanence of the natural world and the impermanence of the social world that has put the social sciences on seemingly shakier foundations”. However, twenty-first century concerns about the instability of the natural world pose different epistemological assumptions, as a result of which they have proposed that “there is need for a more upfront engagement of social sciences in their relation to science and technology and the need to consider the various potential roles that social scientists may play within socio-technical innovations and inventions”. This will ultimately pave way for a meaningful cross-disciplinary engagement of the social and natural sciences.

Nevertheless, historically social science has not always been cast in such a subsidiary role in relation to science and technology. The nineteenth century founders of social science that included engineers, social reformers and philanthropists saw it as an essential counterpart to natural science and engineering, helping to steer the enormous technical possibilities they generated and to guide the potential they unleashed for a substantial change. Being himself a Physicist, Auguste Comte, who coined the terms sociology, positivism and altruism first used the term social physics to describe sociology, reflecting his vision of social science as the essential guide and counterpoint to the technical sciences. The sociology of science involves the study of science as a social activity, especially dealing with the social conditions and effects of science, and with the social structures and processes of scientific activity. Comte is often regarded as the first philosopher of science to have laid the foundations for interdisciplinarity between sciences and social sciences. Harvey J. Graff, an eminent scholar in Literacy Studies, Professor of English and History at the Ohio State University is the author of a book titled, “Undisciplining Knowledge: Interdisciplinarity in the Twentieth Century” in 2015 in which he has described interdisciplinarity as the interrelationships among distinct fields, disciplines, or branches of knowledge in pursuit of new answers to pressing problems of the humanity.

Over the years a common perception has developed both among scientists and social scientists wherein they blame each other for not doing enough to relieve the human kind of its problems arising out of fast changing lifestyles, materialism, consumerism, globalization, automation, increasing social, communal and racial discord, discontent within families and inefficiency of governments. All this is in spite of the immense progress made on the healthcare front evolving effective treatments to a large number of hitherto untreatable diseases like cancer, AIDS, polio, smallpox, tuberculosis etc. Fact of the matter is that both of them are partly responsible for most of the unresolved miseries and sufferings of the mankind. Had they worked in tandem adopting interdisciplinary approaches, life would surely have been much simpler with little discord and discontent among families, races, castes and communities. Their style of functioning within their own isolated compartments is largely responsible for the simmering clashes in the utility of their research outcomes. A new discipline of community sciences is gaining pace to build healthy, just and equitable communities where social solidarity, social security and social justice reigns supreme. Interdisciplinarity is not only required in teaching and learning but also in research, extension, consultancy work. We need to identify and explore the interface and common ground between multiple disciplines and utilize them to resolve actual problems as well as potential challenges faced by the mankind.