Commentary
Of Causation and Voodoo's claim to be Fundamental Science
“Confront these painful truths about communalism” ; thus roared the piece written by Rajdeep Sardesai on 1st November 2013, to our collective conscience from the pages (or URLs as the case may be) of Hindustan Times.
The apostle for “truth“, as we all know through the article, urged us to “confront” an esoteric and a much maligned subject as “communalism”. This also came with an upfront statutory warning to gullible readers of certain “pain“… the article thus aptly titled “confront these painful truths about communalism“.
As I read the article, I found it to be a wonderful piece of statistical jigry pokry. In my engineering and business school days, statistics as a subject for the mango men, never really stood out for its glamour quotient. It was a dreary subject which promised to deliver “predictability”, “certainty”, “verifiability” etc all of which collectively spoil any element of fun in a subject.
I also wished how Rajdeep should have come up with this piece of statistical sophistry when I was sleeping through my statistics classes all those years ago. This could have made a marvellous class room case to understand the great statistical concept of “causation”.
As I write further let me also be a smart alec and point out how I have managed to drag you through 200+ words already without saying anything meaningful. This is what the article by Rajdeep does too. After making a grand claim of introducing us to the world of “painful truths” about “communalism” in a rather sadistic way of inducing “pain”, he leaves us primarily with 2 constructs. One of victim hood from Hindutva army as he calls it and an explanation of the principles of causation through examples of 1984, 1992 and 2002.
Let’s try to look at his article closely.
- Rajdeep craftily uses Dilip Vengsarkar to introduce us to this game of “confrontation with the truth”. Vengsarkar, for some reason successfully competes with Rip Van Winkle and woke up after 26 good years to say some sensational things about the Big D baddy.
For a channel which pioneered “citizen journalism” in India, I am surprised that Rajdeep missed this point. An occasional representative action by a citizen journalist, who is crusading for a cause and in the process helps CNN-IBN and Ms Anubha Bhosle, in driving home a good message, does not turn into a full time journalist with unfettered right to sit in Rajdeep’s 9 PM panel to discuss apple pie and sun dried tomatoes.
No sir, citizen journalist is an outlier to the journalistic profession. May be an interesting and possibly important outlier to indulge in but an outlier neverthless. You can’t plan your business around them.
This made me come to the conclusion that this so called “army” lives in the fertile imagination of Rajdeep’s lala land. I do hope Rajdeep does not take it otherwise, if I suggest to him that instead of spending 60% of his article couching his victimhood, it would have been cooler for him to say “hey guys, I was trying to highlight the inadequacy of Babasaheb’s definition of Patriotism
and here is my definition of patriotism“. Did it really need such a convoluted analytics, which runs the risk of missing the dense grey matter that ordinary mortals like me are blessed with?
Whatever it may be, I am tempted to pick that fascinating example from Chaos Theory propounded by Edward Lorenz, “if a butterfly flaps its tiny wings in Mexico, a hurricane develops in Bay of Bengal several weeks later” (Mexico and Bay of Bengal are my attributions and not of Lorentz, added for good measure) that’s equally applicable to explain causation too.
Really, what was Operation Blue Star? What was Operation Wood rose? Never mind, I hope you got the drift. Operation Blue Star was not a walk down the park in a spring evening by a Gazal singer. It was because there was an “effect” which made Indira Gandhi decide to remove the “cause”. I am not claiming here to know if she got her cause and effect right? That is for Rajdeep and his band of friends to decide.
The rest of article to me is a serious attempt to preach to all parties of different hues and do as best a job as possible in some serious tight rope walking.
To give the credit where it is due Rajdeep does come across as neutral by preaching to all. Akhilesh, Abdullah, Modi, Rahul, each one gets his share of preaching from Baba Sardesai. Only guys who miss out are Mr Gogoi, Mr Gehlot, Mr Nitish Kumar and some girls, particularly from the eastern metropolis too.
But hey that’s fine. I am not a professional nitpicker and don’t intend to be one. I do acknowledge with a large heart that Rajdeep’s is a well written case study meant to teach.elementary statistics, it teaches “what is not statistics and how to no misuse it”
(Views are personal and with the intent to further the debate and no other motive).
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