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The Pyramid of Corruption
We are led to believe that corruption is nothing more than the ‘abuse of public power for private gain’ by government officials—a minister here, a bureaucrat there—in an otherwise perfectly clean system. But what if the system itself is founded on a deep, fundamental and dangerous form of corruption? This book introduces the concept of primitive corruption, contrasts it with operational corruption, and explains its relationship with nationalism and diversity. Page by page, the book rejects the idea of an incorruptible, ancient and divine Indian nation, paints a realistic picture of the history of its creation and the role of corruption in it, and shows how India’s primitive corruption threatens to destroy the nation.
Using the metaphor of an Aryan Pyramid of Corruption, the book shows that the pattern of thought ingrained in Indians by the country’s ancient system of corruption, viz., the caste-system, has corrupted the very idea of the Indian nation in a way not recognized till now. The corruption of this Pyramid, which has made the mishandling of diversity the norm in India; and the corruption the British, who built the nation in the first place; together constitute India’s primitive corruption. How did this corruption accumulate over the centuries? What are its salient features? What is the danger due to it? How can it be averted? These are the questions answered in this book.
Using the metaphor of an Aryan Pyramid of Corruption, the book shows that the pattern of thought ingrained in Indians by the country’s ancient system of corruption, viz., the caste-system, has corrupted the very idea of the Indian nation in a way not recognized till now. The corruption of this Pyramid, which has made the mishandling of diversity the norm in India; and the corruption the British, who built the nation in the first place; together constitute India’s primitive corruption. How did this corruption accumulate over the centuries? What are its salient features? What is the danger due to it? How can it be averted? These are the questions answered in this book.
274 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 6, 2014
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April 3, 2015
Essential reading for anybody open for an enlightening new perspective on the real state of 'civics' in India. make an effort and get through the obtuse beginning to discover the truth!
"Our concept of human nature is certainly limited; it's partially socially conditioned, constrained by our own character defects and the limitations of the intellectual culture in which we exist. Yet at the same time it is of critical importance that we know what impossible goals we're trying to achieve, if we hope to achieve some of the possible goals. And that means that we have to be bold enough to speculate and create social theories on the basis of partial knowledge, while remaining very open to the strong possibility, and in fact overwhelming probability, that at least in some respects we're very far off the mark."
That is Noam Chomsky in a discussion titled Human Nature: Justice versus Power with Michel Foucault.
That for me summarizes the book in question.
I must confess that I almost gave up on reading the book after reading first few sections and flipping through some pages in the middle, thinking that I have read such books. But fortunately as it turns out I did complete reading it, and found how the book creates a ‘useful’ picture of the world around us today. Useful in a way to give meaning to our lives and our actions in our spacetime and possibly hinting about where we are headed. It is very easy to get used to established ways of thinking, and ignore a book which isn’t scared to take a polemic sounding voice to bring forth a novel narrative of socio-politico-economic situation of India today. And I wonder if anybody talking honest can come out with anything other than a polemic!
The book does have the ambitious goal of creating a theory of everything in that topic it addresses. And it does take on the challenge with the required boldness. For example,
- why British wouldn’t collaborate with the other European colonizers, however they would have no problem whatsoever considering India, with all its diversity as one entity (and why it all should matter to us today after so many years since they left India) and how that is connected to the uniquely Indian system of caste oppression and how these things played out (and are still playing) in political, social and economic arenas to create a skewed system with huge advantages to few and major disadvantages for many called modern India -
is all strung together using one conceptual thread called the "diversity distance" (Is this a concept researches in this field use already?)
The concept of "propensity for corruption of a race" again maybe formulated here for the first time goes further in describing the power balance among the various actors of Indian society.
Surprisingly the coverage of the topic at hand in terms of the factual information and depth of analysis are at the level suitable for the reading pleasure of a lay reader interested in the topic at the same time not sacrificing the required intellectual rigour!
The book does a great job of bringing forth the need for self-governance as a human right, and syndicated federations as the desirable form of states to rid our system of corruption. The problems with the current Indian state system, which by its corrupt nature, denies the people it claims to represent, their fundamental rights, is well etched out. But what I think, more coverage is needed of is the “case for” linguistic domains as the ideal units of federation. I think, there are two main bones of contentions which have to be dealt with thoroughly in order to answer this - (1) How a linguistic unit based federation can deal with the well entrenched caste system in a better way? And (2) The problem of - how large a unit of federation can be for it to not crumble on its own weight and how small can it be before it lacks something to bind it together? Maybe it is for another book to address these questions.
There was a passing mentions about the Dravidian way of cohabitation as a better model, but being a Dravidian myself, I fail to see what it is. Maybe that merits another book all together I guess.
Again - this book is essential reading for anybody open for an enlightening new perspective on the real state of 'civics' in India. make an effort and get through the obtuse beginning to discover the truth :)
"Our concept of human nature is certainly limited; it's partially socially conditioned, constrained by our own character defects and the limitations of the intellectual culture in which we exist. Yet at the same time it is of critical importance that we know what impossible goals we're trying to achieve, if we hope to achieve some of the possible goals. And that means that we have to be bold enough to speculate and create social theories on the basis of partial knowledge, while remaining very open to the strong possibility, and in fact overwhelming probability, that at least in some respects we're very far off the mark."
That is Noam Chomsky in a discussion titled Human Nature: Justice versus Power with Michel Foucault.
That for me summarizes the book in question.
I must confess that I almost gave up on reading the book after reading first few sections and flipping through some pages in the middle, thinking that I have read such books. But fortunately as it turns out I did complete reading it, and found how the book creates a ‘useful’ picture of the world around us today. Useful in a way to give meaning to our lives and our actions in our spacetime and possibly hinting about where we are headed. It is very easy to get used to established ways of thinking, and ignore a book which isn’t scared to take a polemic sounding voice to bring forth a novel narrative of socio-politico-economic situation of India today. And I wonder if anybody talking honest can come out with anything other than a polemic!
The book does have the ambitious goal of creating a theory of everything in that topic it addresses. And it does take on the challenge with the required boldness. For example,
- why British wouldn’t collaborate with the other European colonizers, however they would have no problem whatsoever considering India, with all its diversity as one entity (and why it all should matter to us today after so many years since they left India) and how that is connected to the uniquely Indian system of caste oppression and how these things played out (and are still playing) in political, social and economic arenas to create a skewed system with huge advantages to few and major disadvantages for many called modern India -
is all strung together using one conceptual thread called the "diversity distance" (Is this a concept researches in this field use already?)
The concept of "propensity for corruption of a race" again maybe formulated here for the first time goes further in describing the power balance among the various actors of Indian society.
Surprisingly the coverage of the topic at hand in terms of the factual information and depth of analysis are at the level suitable for the reading pleasure of a lay reader interested in the topic at the same time not sacrificing the required intellectual rigour!
The book does a great job of bringing forth the need for self-governance as a human right, and syndicated federations as the desirable form of states to rid our system of corruption. The problems with the current Indian state system, which by its corrupt nature, denies the people it claims to represent, their fundamental rights, is well etched out. But what I think, more coverage is needed of is the “case for” linguistic domains as the ideal units of federation. I think, there are two main bones of contentions which have to be dealt with thoroughly in order to answer this - (1) How a linguistic unit based federation can deal with the well entrenched caste system in a better way? And (2) The problem of - how large a unit of federation can be for it to not crumble on its own weight and how small can it be before it lacks something to bind it together? Maybe it is for another book to address these questions.
There was a passing mentions about the Dravidian way of cohabitation as a better model, but being a Dravidian myself, I fail to see what it is. Maybe that merits another book all together I guess.
Again - this book is essential reading for anybody open for an enlightening new perspective on the real state of 'civics' in India. make an effort and get through the obtuse beginning to discover the truth :)
Displaying 1 of 1 review