Amartya Sen, R.K. Pachauri and Nandan Nilenkani at one go.
I had mentioned that I had got an opportunity to go to a talk by Amartya Sen through Arghyam. This was at a conference being organized by TERI in Bangalore. I went for it today. I didn't find Sen's talk too stimulating, but I kinda expected that from reading his books which are pretty dense, and which I find I am unable to absorb very well. However his warmth and sense of humour showed and I was quite happy to have the opportunity to hear him talk.
R.K.Pachauri is the head of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), which is a very hi-profile org in the NGO sector. The chap is also very hi-profile, and was named to an India Today list of most powerful people in India. However I got a sense from someone whose judgement I respect, that TERI has become 'too successful' kind of thing -- it now hobnobs a lot with the government, does all this policy and conference stuff and perhaps is not as passionate or honest as it might have been.
Nandan Nilekani (the CEO of Infosys) was at the talk with his wife Rohini. He looks exactly as he does in his photos. He didn't talk, was in the audience.
At a panel discussion that I squeezed into prior to Sen's talk, there was 'Kentaro Toyama', 'Group leader for Technologies for Emerging Markets, Microsoft India'. Quite intriguing to see a Japanese in a MSFT India role and at a development conference. I missed the earlier part of the discussion, but he talked briefly towards the end. Kinda exactly the personality I would expect from a Microsoftie, with both good and bad points. Lot of energy and drive and freshness and well turned out. However not much substance. Not that I think MSFTies have no substance, but I would expect that at a development conference they would not have anything of value to say, and that's what I found :-)
I went to the conference with some scepticism, as I've developed a degree of cynicism about business-as-usual development work. By which I mean the NGO scene is so huge in India and the funding is so vast that it has become a sector by itself, not requiring any special commitment, but more like a career option. And there is an immorality in all the 5-star conferences and flying around by development workers. Anyway, the conference didn't make a strong impression either way. The people there (from the very superficial observation) did not strike me as particularly interesting or serious people, but I didn't see anything particularly bad either.
Didn't take a camera so didn't get pics, but anyway was quite difficult to get good pics.
3 comments:
Regarding your cynicism about social work "not requiring any special committment and becoming more of a career option."
To me, thats great news. Career tracks are societys ways of incetivizing paths of actions that are desirable to members of the society. A society that newly offers public service as a career choice has insitutionalized a corrective measure. Thats a fantastic development and not a depressing one.
Here's whats bothering you. You impose some aesthetic constraints on how people should behave - they should have selfless motives to the cause of social service. I find it hard to justify why such aesthetic constraints are either necessary or beneficial. In your case, your motive is a selfish one by the way - you derive some satisfaction out of it, I doubt you would do it other wise. For some reason, you legitimize this selfish motive of getting satisfaction but illegitimize the motive of using social work as a way to provide resources for ones family (career path.) Secondly, I would rather have ngo and charity work carried out by a bunch of efficient folk who may have selfish motives, than be carried out is a sloppy way by people with good motives but inefficient delivery mechanisms.
Arvind
The 'unselfishness is actually selfishness' argument is very old and the response is as old. There is a difference between someone who gets satisfaction from helping others and someone who gets satisfaction from helping himself. That's the difference between selfishness and unselfishness.
I don't want to judge good motives against efficiency. A person with selflessness and clarity should very quickly see the immorality of doing things inefficiently in social work, all the more since any failures in this area have drastic life-affecting consequences.
Overall, I see your point, but what would you say to this: social work is a unique area where (I am perhaps talking about a particular category of social work here) you are working with people who are less priviledged than you and perhaps with people in very bad conditions. Is is fundamentally impossible to work with them successfully unless you are selfless ? For example if you are being paid a lot of money to do it, is the process morally corrupt ? This was the reason why Gandhi chose to live such an austere life ("Gandhi has no idea how much money it costs the country to keep him in poverty" complained one bureaucrat) and he was the most effective social worker.
-- Vijay
>> I don't want to judge good motives against efficiency. A person with selflessness and clarity should very quickly see the immorality of doing things inefficiently in social work, all the more since any failures in this area have drastic life-affecting consequences.
I am afraid you have to weigh one against the other in order to develop any broad based sustainable scheme for development. People will fall in one of four groups (good motive, efficient), (good motive, inefficient), (selfish motive, efficient) and (selfish motive, in efficient). Of course the more people in group 1 above the better but thats a very limited set. The next useful set to me is (selfish motive, efficient) because one can much easier align societal welfare with selfish motives through incentive structures (the career option that you mention) than try to get something good out of a well intentioned but inefficient person.
Arvind
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