POLITICAL FAMILIES AND FAMILY POLITICS

South Asia, which had a feudal history and was once under British occupation, is now free politically but despite three generational changes, the feudal subjugation, the societal inequality and the fascination for validation from our erstwhile occupiers simply refuses to go. This is predominantly because the power was handed over by the ‘gora sahibs’ to the ‘bhura sahibs’, some anglophile families, who were simply not in touch with the sensibilities of the hinterland. These families were rich and influential and considered ruling their respective countries as their birth right, even though all these countries claimed to be democracies! Thus, we had the Bhuttos and the Sharifs in Pakistan, the Bandernayekes, Premadasas, Jayavardhanes  and the Rajapaksas in Sri Lanka and a plethora of family parties led by the Congress in India. Even the newly formed Bangladesh has two opposing family parties of Bangobandhu Shekh Mujib and Genl. Zia ul Haq.

Family parties set narratives and develop eco systems

The political families are elites, educated, however little, in English medium schools, and considered crème-de-la-crème of their societies. They hog disproportionate limelight and have disproportionately dominated the social discourse in their respective countries thus setting the narratives. The fascination for them simply refuses to die among their cadre and can only be matched by the hatred for the opposing leader and his/her cadre. They claim to have a copyright on everything that is good, proper and ethical in their land and the cause of all the progress made by their respective countries whether it is land, sea, air or outer space. They have maintained cozy relations with their erstwhile occupiers by erasing the latter’s horror tales of torture and subjugation by stories of ‘colonial charm’ in our history books. They are of the opinion that their countries simply did not exist before their independence from British rule. They have all but whitewashed our glorious history of more than 2000 years and presented their respective countries as backward, underdeveloped, caste-ridden, scantily clad, poorly fed land of rope tricks and snake-charmers.

In India the Congress party, the party of Nehru and Indira Gandhi and their descendents owns the copyright of ‘the essence of India’. So, when they are not in power, as it sometimes happens in vibrant democracies, India as a nation stops existing and democracy dies. It metamorphoses into an alien land, very much unlike the India of their dreams where a ruling family, with a halo around them, has been deprived of the right to rule and loot. Corruption cases against them are invariably politically motivated, and if members of the royal family abuse a democratically elected prime minister or his party, caste and community, they wonder how the law of the land dare can hold them guilty! Even in a democracy they demand privilege status, and routinely get it from their dedicated and cultivated courtiers. They have developed an eco system around them while in power for 65 years, a system comprising of politicians, bureaucrats, authors, journalists, news anchors, jurists and shady arms dealers and dalals who feed them with necessary resources to keep their halo shining. Such is their clout with the left and left of centre intelligentsia of the world that whenever they are not in power India slips below Palestine in happiness index, below Afghanistan in democracy index, below Ethiopia in hunger index and below Somalia in safety index. 

Omnipresence of family parties

As if one Congress was not enough, this longest ruling party of India has set a very bad example for our next generation of political parties. A look at the political map of India will show you that almost all the states now have influential political families, which have ruled these states from time to time. Thus we have the Abdullas and the Muftis in Jammu & Kashmir, the Badals in Punjab, Mulayam Sing and Mayawati families in Uttar Pradesh, Laloo and Paswan families in Bihar, Soren family in Jharkhand, Mamta family in Bengal, Gogoi family in Assam, Thakrey and Pawar families in Maharashtra, KCR and Owasi family in Telengana, Deve Gauda family in Karnataka, Karunanidhi family in Tamilnadu, and the list goes on and on and on. These families have entrenched themselves in their respective states and rule them as their personal fiefdom.

Political families often did not start as political parties. Akali Dal was founded in 1920 as a keeper of the Sikh faith but transformed under Prakash Singh Badal into a strong political outfit in 1920s.

The common thread that binds all these families together is that they want to play with democracy in such a way that the can seamlessly hand over power to the next generation, as the Congress has been so successfully doing in the centre. Another common feature in them, just like the Congress, is that they are all corrupt to the core, and these families are filthy rich. They resent the fact that their ill-gotten wealth is now being investigated by the law enforcement agencies and they are being sent behind bars one by one. A vulgar display of their stock-pile of cash is often on display in our television screen and despite obvious proof of involvement they claim they are being made victims of political vendetta. They have looted the state coffers to run their political parties and feed their eco-system and their states are neck deep in debt.

The present stresses

These family run political parties are now under severe stress. They are finding it extremely difficult to grow, not so much because of their public image, but because of their internal structure, or more precisely, lack of it. The hierarchy in these parties is such that genuine talent in them feels suffocated and trapped. They know, right from the beginning that even if they rise in the hierarchy to become the party president, chief minister or prime minister, the family chieftain will remain their boss. This subservience to the unelected has not gone down well with both their cadre and their electorate. An octogenarian prime minister swallowing the humiliation of seeing a bill approved by his parliament shredded by a rising star of the ruling family, half his age, particularly when the star has failed to rise in more than two decades, did not make a pretty picture on television.

Hemorrhaging talent

The cadre has now realized that there is a glass ceiling up there which they have no hope of breaking. They stay in the party till their pride can bow down and their egos allow, and then they leave for greener pastures. Thus the Congress party has lost Mamta, Hemanta, Jyotiraditya, Gulam Nabi, Sunil Jakhar, R.P.N. Singh, Ashwini Kumar, Kapil Sibal and Sushmita Deb and is hemorrhaging talent like bleeding piles. The electorate in the last nine years has realized that a real prime minister, genuinely elected by the people of India and not by a party high command, is far more confident, assertive and efficient than a puppet prime minister, whose invisible strings are in the hands  of a family of puppeteers.

Brawls within ruling families

To compound their discomfort, the family parties have been inflicted by the virus of family brawl and discontent. This interesting development also started in Congress party after the untimely demise of Sanjay Gandhi, the heir apparent of Mrs. Indira Gandhi. Sensing that Maneka, Sanjay’s widow, who was already in politics, could pose a challenge to the smooth passage of the crown from Indira to the reluctant son Rajive Gandhi, a political novice, Mrs. Indira Gandhi unceremoniously threw out Maneka and her baby Varun from her prime ministerial residence. As the press then was a part of the Congress eco system, this was done virtually noiselessly.

Today these family feuds are found dime a dozen. Thus, Pawar vs. Pawar, Thakrey vs. Thakrey, Paswan vs. Paswan, Akhilesh vs. Shivpal brawls have broken out because no one likes to give up a lion’s share of the family hunt. Most contentious issues crop up when time comes to pass on the mantle to the next generation.  As elections to choose the next leader is unknown in family parties members of the ruling party fight it out. Such complexities are not there if the hierarchy in the family is decided, like Nehru to Indira to Rajiv to Soniya to Rahul, or Bal Thakrey to Uddhav to Aditya,  or H.D. Deva Gauda to H.D. Kumaraswami, or K.C.R to K.T.R. But if the line of succession is not defined then there is trouble. Bal Thakrey could not keep his charismatic nephew in the fold of Shiv Sena and Mulayam could not keep his brother satisfied in Samajwadi Party. We don’t know which Paswan will get the mantle of L.J.P from Ram Vilas Paswan and Sharad Pawar is finding it hard to choose between daughter Supriya and nephew Ajit. Unmarried aunts have been very generous in passing on their political mantle to their nephews. Mamta is grooming Abhishekh and Mayawati  is coaching Akash Anand for the job. So, these parties are not electing their next leader, but a leader from the ruling family is being imposed upon the cadre. Once a succession trouble erupts governance suffers and the state skids out of control. Political opponents, as eager vultures, now swoop in and have a field day.

In a highly competitive electoral scenario a family can be a source of strategic weakness as the Congress is experiencing today. They are today a party of sycophants busy in polishing the family’s halo rather than planning a political revival. The victory in Karnataka should have taught them the importance of non family regional satraps. In the centre however, they continue to go to a third successive election with a leader who is God’s greatest gift to Narendra Modi.

Not a South Asian phenomenon

Before I end I must tell you that political families do not exist in South Asia only. At least two members of the Kennedy, Bush, Roosevelt, and Clinton families of the U.S, Trudeau family of Canada, Arslan and Hariri families of Lebanon, Hatoyama family of Japan, Aliyev family of Azerbaijan, Sukarno family of Indonesia, Ramgoolam family of Mauritius, Aquino family of Philippines, Lee Kuan Yew family of Singapore, Park Chung Hee family of South Korea, Kallas family of Estonia, Papandreou family of Greece, Le Pen family of France, have all occupied the top position in their country’s government and these are all democracies. The fact that autocracies like Kim family of North Korea and Castro family in Cuba too have ruled their respective countries for generations is certainly no surprise.

MARKS, GRADES AND RANKINGS – FOSSILS IN 21st. CENTURY EDUCATION

 

Marks, grades and rankings have been traditionally used as currencies in the world of knowledge and education. The higher they are, the better is the performance of the student. But, can you put your hand on your heart and say that the higher they are, the more knowledgeable the student is? 

 

Now, this gets further confusing when you are marking the students on a variety of subjects and then adding them up to come up with overall rankings. Surely now this grand total is a grand aggregate of the student's over-all academic prowess and it certainly must mean something substantial, like how successful will the student be in his future endeavor and what heights will he/she achieve in life! 

 

Had that been the rule then all batch toppers would have been the best achievers. In the real world however, this rarely happens. Conversely, history is littered with examples where college dropouts have gone ahead to become world beaters, no not in pole vault and boxing but in technology, entrepreneurship and entertainment. Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobbs, Steven Speilberg, Oprah Winfry, Ellen De Generes and Lady GAGA are all college dropouts. They showed no interest in the prevailing education system and neither was the system kind to them. But that did not stop them from becoming super successful!

 

Marks and grades are something which we get on the basis of our recalling. If we can recall more in examination, we end up getting good marks. Marks only identify the memory power of students more specifically talking how much he can cram. It often fails to reflect how well the students can think, analyze and deduce. Why do we need these marks and grades then? You will undoubtedly say to motivate the learners, to give them a feedback of their learning and to document their success in a scale which can be of use to higher educational institutions and perhaps future employers. But, that is exactly the problem; this scale does not convey the knowledge quotient. It simply marks out the students who have the skill of passing examinations and have the ability to memorize details that can be regurgitated in an examination and then forget conveniently, as the examination is done and dusted. 

 

Education is something that stays with you after you have forgotten every lesson that you were taught in school. Marks can grade students but not their learning, and certainly not their education. Skillful students don't waste time on anything they won't be tested. I will give you an example from my medical field; bedside manners are not tested in medicos and so it is not uncommon to find an academically brilliant M.D doctor with a poor medical practice. The grading game skews the incentives - passing examinations is considered more important than satisfying patients. So students who game and cheat the system pass with flying colours but are not always successful in the real world of medical practice.

 

I have a feeling that marks sharpen inequalities. Affluent parents can provide more support - online classes, private tuitions, you name it. These inequalities came to the forefront during Covid times when all classes were online. The poor found it difficult to arrange for a decent mobile phone for their children and suffered enormous learning deficits. Our schools and colleges are supposed to be the great equalizers of social opportunities, but alas they have miserably failed in becoming so.

 

Our High School and SSC examinations are actually a snapshot of the academic ability of our students and they risk becoming lasting portraits of inequalities. What are these tests actually measuring - biological intelligence or social opportunities or, even worse, plain and simple luck! Grades truly are only short-term snapshots of how much a student has learned in a given period of time. This only partially reflects the actual performance of students and does not take sufficient account their individual development. Efforts, attitude, skills, participation in group activities, teamwork, leadership nothing is tested. And one must not forget that even this grading may also reflect the bias of the instructor thereby reinforcing systematic bias. Colouring out of the pre-drawn parameter in an art book may be considered ‘dirty’ by the system, but may actually be representative of the student’s innovation!

How to you grade this A or F?

 

Poor grades over a longer period of time would give students the impression that they would learn very little or nothing, which jeopardizes their innate intrinsic motivation to learn. Low marks and poor grades represent destructive feedback for students, since they do not provide any constructive assistance for them to improve. Now, those who have already lost their desire to learn and only study for their grades have no reason to continue learning after they have achieved the best possible grade. So, far from stimulating the process of learning the marks and grades are actually acting as disincentives of continuing the learning process. With marks and grades as destination and not road signals the journey of education and learning is cut short. So, the grading system comes from a psychologically and pedagogically uninformed era and does not belong in the 21st century, the century of unlimited possibilities and infinite opportunities.

 

College admissions are perhaps the best example of misuse of marks and grades. A fancy college of Delhi University declares a cut off mark of 99.9% thus perpetuating the inequalities. The SSC examinations then become the educational destiny of the students. No one has ever stopped to think whether the student with 98%, or for that matter 88% can be even better given a chance! Perhaps that is why German educational innovator Margret Rasfeld criticizes the system of grades and the resulting competitive thinking in schools as unhelpful. "School is there to organize success and not to document failure” she says.

 

Unfortunately our regular examinations do not test across a wide range of skills, and some students do not demonstrate their best abilities in the context of such examinations. So sadly our examinations are often a gateway to opportunities without testing our true skills and abilities. At this juncture let’s not forget that the pressure on schools for students to do well is so great that most forms of course work and controlled assessment lead to blatant cheating in many cases, so that the grades reflect more on the extent to which the teacher was prepared to bend the rules than the ability of the students.

 

True potential of a student is in any case a somewhat nebulous quality, for example there are people who have a great logical brain, but do not have the ability or the desire to follow tasks to completion, but instead get easily distracted and never complete any one thing. How would you judge their potential against someone who has to work harder to grasp concepts but enjoys working things out to the bitter end? There are so many personality strands, which are also often contextual that I think it is a great mistake to believe that you can somehow assign a value to someone’s potential and then say either, ‘you have reached your potential’ or ‘you have fallen short’.

 

The predicament of marking and testing is a wicked problem. Singapore has flattened the marking system as the rightly concluded that it was giving rise to unhealthy competition. New Zealand has a simple pass fail system and not grades. We need to go beyond marks and grades and find out which student is good at what. This is called 'aptitude' and we seem to be completely oblivious of it. After all a tortoise will never run like a hare, a horse will not climb trees and an elephant won't fly, so why should they all take the same test? Every student is bound to be good at something, and the real challenge in front of our education system is to find out that illusive thing. Marks, grades and rankings will not help.

NOW NO MORE FAKE JHAKKAAS AND DHAI KILO KA HATH

 

Whenever you hear Jhakkaas, you are reminded of Anil Kapoor in his 1985 film ‘Yudh’. His name, his voice, his signature dialogue and his image all combine together to constitute his personality rights, his intellectual property. Innumerable mimicry artists have tried to mimic his dialogues to make a living. That was understandable and perfectly legal and acceptable. After all when a radio jockey or a satirist copies a celebrity’s oratory skills, body language, and style the listener / audience knows he is a copy and not the original. The problem arises when this is being done by Artificial Intelligence (AI). Now Anil Kapoor can be seen promoting anything without his knowledge, may it be a paan masala or a gambling site or even a porn site!

 

Similarly Rajesh Khanna’s “Pushpa, I hate tears”, Sunny Deol’s “Dhai kilo ka hath”, Sharukh Khan’s “K K K K Kiran”, Shatrughan Sinha’s “Jali ko Aag kete hain”, Raj Kumar’s “Jani, ham tumhe marenge, zaroor marenge” have all been fodder for mimicry artists and R.Js and the cine-artists have never objected to this or ever claimed royalty. Politicians too have routinely been copied by satirists, whether Laloo Prasad Yadav or Atal Bihari Vajpai or Narendra Modi and they all seem to enjoy and encourage the artists. But, with the entry of AI in the equation the things have taken an ugly turn. Now these popular images and voices are being monetized and misused to harm the reputation of the artist or politician and deliberately harm the fans and confuse the electorate. Imagine what will happen if an AI operator, sitting in China, morphs the image of a politician and shows him in a light that is physically, ideologically or intellectually compromising? It is very easy to make such images viral before the elections, and your entire election process is compromised by well planned foreign intervention!

 

Realizing this malady the Delhi High Court, in a landmark judgment, not only protected the ‘personality rights’ of Anil Kapoor, but also recognized the misuse of AI tools to create deepfakes or even pornographic materials of celebrities and even common citizens. There are unauthorized money lending agencies, mostly Chinese, which lend money online after gaining access to the identification documents and phonebook of the user and if they fail to pay in time then harass them by morphing their image and posting them to their contacts in phonebook. Gullible users, instead of reporting to the police, have even committed suicides after seeing their morphed pornographic images online!

 

Celebrities have iconic attributes like looks, style, voice, singing abilities and mannerisms which are being both misused and monetized by AI. Amitabh Bacchan has always lent his voice and image for important social and national causes like polio eradication, COVID cautions, Swachata Abhiyan, Gujarat Tourism and he instills trust in the mind of listeners and viewers. Now, if this trust is misused by AI by faking his image and his voice to promote a dodgy mobile app, or an illegal lottery then his reputation gets ruined and his gullible fans get cheated!

 

Even the dead celebrities are not spared. AI programmers routinely use late Robin William’s voice for cartoon characters and perhaps some copyright remuneration goes to his family or their chosen charity. But, if his voice is being used without seeking the permission of his family, as Zelda Williams, his daughter fears, then this is again an AI created scam. U.S based software engineer Amarjeet Singh, who goes by the name of DJ MRA has created some AI generated new songs of Sidhu Moosewala and K.K and released them on social media. Both these artists are no more with us and the former’s family was not at all happy. Eventually his videos had to be removed from all platforms. Now this has given rise to a dilemma; is this really a bad idea to recreate the image and voice of a departed singer, if the artist’s family agrees to do so? If the artist passes on his/her celebrity rights to their family or their production house then his voice and image can live forever with his fans and his family too will get some monitory support.   

 

There are today all sorts of apps and websites where the celebrity of choice can wish you ‘Happy Birthday’ or sing a song for you, in exchange of money. Things may not remain all that benign but user may be trapped by using fake celebrity voices into scams. The celebrity certainly does not know about this misuse of his/her personality trait, but the scamster has harmed both the celebrity and his/her fans. Now when time comes to hold someone accountable for the scam, who should be blamed? Is it the AI programme developer or the person who posted it on the social media, or the media platform which hosted it?

 

AI, IP and Copyright

Let me very briefly familiarize you with three terms which you will be hearing a lot in the days to come – AI, IP, and Copyright.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a field of computer science that includes machine learning, natural language processing, speech processing, expert systems, robotics and machine vision. AI tools automate decision making using programming rules and, in some cases, training data sets. AI is a very hot topic right now and raises interesting legal and regulatory issues, many of them relating to Intellectual Property (IP) rights. AI has both the potential to be a threat and an ally to intellectual property rights. While there are concerns about the ability of AI to create content that infringes on IP rights, like a cloned Anil Kapoor or Amitabh Bacchan, there are also opportunities to use AI to monitor and detect potential infringement and improve IP management. Thus AI can also be used to identify potential copyright infringement and track the use of copyrighted material online.

 

Intellectual Property (IP) relates to intangible assets, including inventions, brands, new technologies, source code and artistic works. More specifically, IP pertains to patents, trademarks, copyright and industrial design. For the first time the Indian judiciary has included ‘personality traits’ in this category, thus protecting the artists, and in an extended way, the popular politicians.

 

Copyright relates to new original artistic, literary, dramatic or musical works. This includes computer programme code, compilations of data and graphics. Copyright provides the exclusive legal right to produce, reproduce, publish or perform an original literary, artistic, dramatic or musical work.

 

AI systems involve large data sets which can be protected by copyright as compilations of data. The data can be also audio or audiovisual. These data sets and underlying algorithms are important IP assets for the company. Contractual terms with end users and third parties should clearly specify permitted use. Our courts are rightly trying to make a distinction between the intentions of the end-users, whether a genuine satirist or a conman and fraudster.

A SPANISH MONK WHO IS BUILDING A CATHEDRAL

 

In one of my previous blogs I have told you about the beauty of Sagrada Família, which has become an unmistakable landmark of the Spanish city of Barcelona and which formed the formidable backdrop of the diving events of the 1992 Summer Olympics. Architect Antoni Gaudí’s masterpiece project was promoted by the people for the people and has always been funded through the donations and contributions of thousands of anonymous individuals over the years. Today, more than 135 years after the laying of the cornerstone, construction continues on the Basilica and is expected to be completed in 2026. I invite you to read about it by clicking: https://surajitbrainwaves.blogspot.com/2019/09/sagrada-familia-and-antoni-gaudi-gods.html

 

Today I will tell you about another Spanish masterpiece. About 40 minutes’ drive from the center of Madrid you reach the small town of Mejorada del Campo. It is not a highly recommended tourist place but if you come here you will feel blessed. You will meet a 90 years old man who has become an embodiment of great devotion, diligence, care and faith. He is, since 1961, building a superb Spanish ‘cathedral’ all by himself! The cathedral is utterly unique in ecclesiastical history since it has been built entirely out of discarded trash. Such an architectural feat could only have been the brainchild of a true eccentric, and the nonagenarian Spanish ex-monk, Justo Gallego Martínez is just that.

 

Born in 1925, Don Justo was raised by a pious Catholic mother and grew up to be a lowly peasant farmer. In his early years, Don Justo suffered many setbacks that helped make him stronger. His schooling was interrupted by the devastating Spanish Civil War, therefore he missed out on the kind of education most of us take for granted. He actually witnessed the communists shooting priests and desecrating his local church. These atrocities turned him off politics, and the world of violence he saw around him.

 

His ambition was to be a holy monk, set apart from the ways of man to learn the will of God. So he joined the Trappists. Yet, alas, he contracted tuberculosis after eight years and was forced to leave the monastery, ending his dream. However, this man of faith was not perturbed by the turn of fate.  Instead, he pondered how best he could dedicate himself and serve the Lord. So he decided, without any training or experience, to build his own cathedral.

 

Don Justo started work in 1961 on the feast day, Our Lady of the Pillar, with only a vision and no plans. So for the next 55 years right up to the present day, Don, with only his unique personality and certain faith driving him, would begin to work from 6 am, always doing 10 hours of labor per day (except on the Lord's day).  For most of the time, unbelievably, Justo worked solo, without any crane, only using whatever trash or donations he could get his hands on for building material. Yet lately he has had help from a local man and also some of his nephews. Occasionally volunteers from far afield (as far as Germany) come to help out and learn at the feet of this untrained master, so taken are they by the wonderful virtue of the great but humble man.

 

In 2014, Don Justo predicted that the church, christened by him Nuestra Señora del Pilar (Our Lady of the Pillar), would be completed soon. Hopefully, this will be the case, as it would be so beautiful for Gallego to be able to sit back and enjoy his finished work. The church has no official status of any kind, neither does he have planning for permission in near future, nor does the Catholic Church recognize his ‘cathedral’. The building has become a major tourist attraction in the small town of Mejorada del Campo, situated near the capital, Madrid. 

 

I think the cathedral is so beautiful, and a wonderful tribute to God from a lovely, simple and honest man with a great passion. However, sad to say, some people do carp at Don Justo, calling him crazy. So, when an interviewer recently asked him: "How do you respond to people who call you loco?" He simply replied with a glint in his eye and a smile on his face: "Loco por Cristo." Mad for Christ.

 

You can also watch him in this YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQGAsikORI4

THE THIRD PLACE

 

 

We all love to visit and live in Rome or Paris, Lisbon or Barcelona, Prague or Krakow. What do you think makes them so attractive and livable?  Why are Melbourne and Vienna repeatedly chosen as the most livable cities in the world? There can be a host of reasons - safety, education, hygiene, health care, culture, environment, recreation, political-economic stability, public transport and access to goods and services. But the thing that stands out most for me is the abundance of ‘the third places’ these cities have.

 

A third place is a term coined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg and refers to places where people spend time between home ('first' place) and work ('second' place). We have a “first place”, which is where we live; we have a “second place”, which is where we work; and then there’s a third place, somewhere for the community where we like to spend our leisure time, somewhere public, somewhere relaxed, somewhere that binds a city and gives it character, as well as plays host to its characters. You may not be familiar with that term, but you will definitely be familiar with the concept.

 

A third place is a piazza or plaza, a city square. It could be a park. It could be a cafe, a bar, a church, a football field, even a mall. Now picture a European city, your favourite European city, and tell me what you love about it. You probably love the history in this city of yours, and maybe the natural beauty. You love the architecture, the mix of styles that has appeared over the centuries. You love the culture, the people, the food, the drink. And I can almost guarantee that, without even knowing it, you love the “third places”. After all, when you don’t live or work in a city, these are the venues you most often find yourself in.

Barcelona 

 

By Oldenburg’s definition, these third places need to be egalitarian, places a person of any socio-economic status could visit and feel comfortable. They need to be spaces that encourage conversations and social mixing; that have regular visitors who set their tone, while still being available to one-time drop-ins (like tourists); they need to be subtle, wholesome, playful, and comfortable. A place where you can pop in and out with little or no money; as a result, social hierarchy is left at the door, and all are equal, allowing for unexpected but delightful professional mingling— a CEO and a street performer can be seen chatting over drinks, while a fashion designer and a mechanic share a laugh at the bar.

To me, these third places define the true character of a city like San Sebastian in Spain, with its pintxos bars that sit below apartment blocks, where drinkers and diners of all generations gather to socialize. Or maybe it’s like Rome with its cafe-lined piazzas, natural meeting places for people from all walks of life. Or perhaps you’re thinking of the marketplaces of Scandinavia, where shoppers chat and eat and buy all the things they need. Or, it can be the Hyde Park of London!

 

Having lived in Melbourne I know I love it because of its ‘third places’. It has markets like South Melbourne and Prahran, natural meeting points for residents, natural places to spend time outside work and home life. Melbourne has restaurants and bars dotted throughout its residential suburbs too – Fitzroy, Brunswick, Collingwood, Footscray each with a flavour of its own, and a culture of visiting those third places to socialize. Melbourne also has Australia’s best pubs and four major sports stadiums basically within the CBD, which duplicate as actual live music venues.

 

It always seems like everyone in Europe lives and works within an easy stroll of third places; everyday life is designed around these areas, these gathering points for citizens and tourists and everyone else. It is not uncommon to find old men sitting around playing chess, groups of kids hanging out on steps, families in parks enjoying picnic and friends getting together for aperitivo or ‘hora de vermut’.

 

And now, think about the cities in India. Where are our third places? What are they? The older cities like Bombay and Calcutta had them in abundance but growing population, mindless development and greed have encroached upon them and destroyed the ‘old world charm’. Only recently when the municipal corporation of Mumbai planned to get rid of the famous Hanging Gardens atop the Malabar Hills in the name of redevelopment, I felt a sharp pain in my heart. Yet another ‘third place’ is being sacrificed at the altar of mindless commercialization.

Hanging Garden, Mumbai

 

Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, and I’m sure you’ll be able to come back at me with examples. But by and large, India, and much of the “developing world”, has failed to incorporate third places into our cities and towns. Planned cities like Chandigarh and isolated exceptions like Goa and Puducherry may stand out as a revolting minority, but how long their revolt will last is a scary thought.

 

Think about the layout of most Indian towns and cities. You have your central business district, where there’s a main street with all the shops, a few eateries, a shopping mall nearby with a Smart Bazaar or Spencers. And then, in a totally separate area, you have the places people live, sprawling residential suburbs that often have no shops or cafes in them at all, sometimes not even a playground, just house after house, building after building, high-rise flats arranged like Lego pieces. Squeezing between them are slums where the workforce which works in our households live, much to the annoyance of the aristocracy.

 

Then there is the great Indian dream, a quarter-acre farm-house; it’s not walking-distance access to tea stalls, corner stores and barbers, eateries and parks. Our homes are our castles. There’s far more focus here on privacy and getting home life right. We keep on building such castles that will isolate us from people  instead of building community spaces that will bring us all together. Our first place, equipped with security cameras and tall boundary walls, is keeping us away from the rest of the world and turning us into self centered cynics, distrusting everybody else. Our celebrations inside these first places are for muted and for a select few of our tribe only. We wear the same clothes, eat the same food, drink the same drink, discuss the same topics, adhere to the same set of views and have succeeded in creating an echo chamber cocoon for ourselves with no scope of entry for fresh air and no hope for fresh ideas.

 

Our narrow domestic walls guarding our ‘first places’ has broken our small world into fragments and our only hope now is to invest in our ‘third places’ so that our minds can get a breath of fresh air, a whiff of fresh ideas that can lead us forward into a better quality of life for all. The idea that only we, a select few, with expensive castle like ‘first place’ working in a state of the art ‘second’ place’ can thrive as islands of happiness in an ocean unhappiness, struggle and misery, is simply a figment of our imagination.

 

Loneliness has become a significant concern in modern society, with many individuals feeling alienated and separated from others. We have enormous screens with streaming movies, and we can deliver to our homes at any moment using our cell phones. Devoid of third place in our cities, we have a large population of virtual friends in WhatsApp but very few real flesh and blood friends. Short-term sleep issues, drug usage issues, and difficulties with depression are more prevalent among lonely persons. An increased chance of heart attack, stroke, and cancer are among the more negative health effects. Even more intriguing is that the most significant reported rates of loneliness are among Generation Z and Millennials.

 

A lack of “third places” to socialize has caused dissatisfaction among many people. By giving individuals a space to congregate, form relationships with others, and foster a feeling of belonging and community, third places have significantly contributed to the fight against loneliness and the promotion of mental and physical well-being.

 

Third place transforms a drab and boring city into a vibrant and living city. Third places are like the glue that hold communities together, but as they fade away, the people who  are loyal to their place and return regularly to unwind and socialize are losing friends and getting left out and lonely and the society we live in is getting segregated.

Hyde Park, London