Shiv Viswanathan
Kafka wrote about India - it is about a sacrifice. A group of villagers near a forest decide to hold a sacrifice. They decide to sacrifice a lot of fruits and vegetables to the full moon. Just as it is full moon, a tiger comes and eats the high priest. The religious were stunned but being faithful people they decided to hold another sacrifice. And at that also the tiger came and ate the priest again. At this time, there developed a situation of, what my ex colleagues would call, a crisis. They did not know what to do so they called a panchayat meeting. At the panchayat meeting the village idiot who I think was the first policy scientist came up with the suggestion, he said “Why not make the tiger eating the priest a part of the ritual?

And I think to certain an extent statements of policy reflect the same kind of banalisation. What I am trying to say is that we need a cognitive indifference to policy in certain domains of our life, if we want to start a policy discussion because policy in a narrative sense is a banalization of politics. We use terms without any idea of their genealogy or any idea of their genocidal consequences.

Let me take one term, which everyone has used in a very friendly way - ‘people friendly’. There is one whole book to show that this is the most genocidal terms in history. You use the word ‘people' for those who don't have a nation or a state.

Policy is a creation between science, nation and state for citizens. 'People' are citizen less people therefore they can be eliminated like gypsies. You can't extend rights to refugees once they have crossed the borders of their nation state. Once they become state less people they have no human rights. We are using the word people, which is one of the most genocidal terms in history in an amiable- happy way in our discourses. I am afraid such innocence is not possible. Any kind of friendliness to people's friendliness is something I object to.

It is not just a critique of science that we want. I think we are using a whole set of category and terms without knowing their genealogy, any sense of its politics and any sense of consequences it may lead to.
 
The second point that I want to make is very simple. This is a point, which Shastri raised in a subversive sense and also Harish made in an equally subversive sense. They made cognitive threats to the framework that we are operating in.   Let me give an example, if you sit back and listen to all the people who spoke, their politics came through their choice of metaphors.  All those who mimicked the state used visual metaphors - scrutiny, surveillance and watch. All those who used more critical attributes of the state used the language of hearing and listening. I think one of the first thing that we should do is to look at the way we use metaphors to determine the structure of our politics. Because when you start to use visual metaphors and you tend to use the politics of surveillance, the politics of the panoptica, in a way you mimic the politics of the panoptica by reversing the terms of the state. You mirror the state. You mimic the state. You don't eliminate the state. In fact, the civil society becomes a perpetuation of the state by other means. I think this is what we are clear about, especially when the state is running away from its stateliness.

 I think the most exciting part of the seminar was the kind of metaphors that we brought to the table. If you remove the visual metaphors, focus on the auditory metaphors what will lead to a certain kind of linguistic or communication model.
 
Once we look at the language of the state, a deeper more frightening kind of politics is born. What we call the politics of oxymoron or the politics of methodological protocols where to a certain extent you send a message and by the time it reaches, it is already standardized into something else. I think the interesting thing is not the standardization of technology it's the standardization of language, which is impervious to anything beyond it, which does not allow for translation. Let me list it out.

One is the politics of standardization. That is for a certain extent to say that everyone speaking a dialect has to speak the dominant language. The minute you do that you lose the power of the epistemologies. I remember talking to World Bank officials who kept saying: Why do you use the word epistemology? The World Bank President does not like it. I said because epistemology does not indicate access to knowledge. It is access to a way of life, a way of living, a choice of livelihood, lifestyle.

What happens here is we always tend to go for standardization, homogeneity and uniformity. Why scientists should be standardized?  Why should there not be some possibility of translation, some possibility of incommensurability in the sciences. Why do we have to have this subconscious, unconscious boat - for a universal, homogenous standardized space for science?
 
The next point is about up scaling. I think everyone here is very apologetic about having to up scale themselves. If it is the truth - upscale it. The tragedy of the twenty first century has been the tragedy of electricity and the tragedy of oil. Why do you want to repeat it in a biomass society by up scaling it? Up scaling -- I can't think of a more genocidal term. So what I am trying to say is that in a friendly way we have absorbed a series of genocidal terms in our discourses. And I think one hopes for some unfashionable academics here, some kind of don't use me dictionary-   people friendly, eco-friendly, up scaling.  I think this is what Harish was saying, about the politics of oxymorons. In fact we should reverse the politics of oxymorons and ask why sustainable development.

What I really worry about is this process of civil society actually deskilling democracy because the democracy of electricity or the democracy of oil can't be the democracy of a biomass society. Citizenship in electricity or citizenship of oil is based on standardized time and one of the first things that we need is you cannot think of rights which is a standardized term for multiple times. Bio -mass has multiple time. Modern industrial time is too standardized too homogenous for the type of democracy that we are thinking about. Up scaling would be the most horrific thing I can think of. I am game to solving the paradigm crisis - we have just drawn a happy epicycle and I think we have created a new paradigm. And epicycles can be pretty deadly.

The final thing that I want to point out is that we are still stuck between the standard discourses of economics. We are still stuck within the poverty discourses which give a certain notion of entitlement but it fails to fit. It does not consider the fact that today the genocidal state has gone beyond poverty.

I think maybe we should go back and look at what we are saying and what we are doing - how we are looking at the genealogy of terms. Looking at the choice of metaphors because the choice of metaphors can be life giving or life denying.   And we have to look at it in logical terms which may not be so obvious. Otherwise you can use friendly terms like democracy but you can use democracy, citizenship, science, and people to actually deskill our people. And I am afraid in a very quiet way we are contributing to that process. There are exceptions. They should not be dissenting terms in this paradigm but they should be the new paradigm in a different sense. And if there can be new paradigm and small stories then I don't think we have to worry about up scaling. An obsession of the policy is the ruining our politics. But if policy is our politics, then?