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<v Vishesh Kumar> So how would you introduce yourself and work in a general way to start off?

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> Okay.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> So I am academically sort of trained in mathematics, so I did my PhD in algebraic geometry.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> And so then I, kind of, sort of took up a position at University of Hyderabad, Mathematics Department, where I taught for around, I think, six years or so.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> I was teaching mainly master students and PhD students.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, while teaching mathematics courses, of course, you run into several sort of questions, fundamental kind of questions around education itself, around the act of teaching or learning itself.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> But for me, it was also...

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, I was kind of not very unhappy with my experience within the classroom.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> In fact, one of the most happy times I spent in the university where when I was in the classroom and [inaudible]

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> .
<v Tathagata Sengupta>  But what bothered me was, kind of, the idea of the university in general.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> So overall, what was going on in the university, and generally speaking, the university system.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> And also what was going on in the mathematics department.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> And these were not necessarily technically speaking issues to deal directly with learning mathematics, but things like how...

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, there are several anecdotal things I can maybe cite.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> But just take one example.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> For instance, there was this one Muslim student in one of my classes and Muslim students are in a way not...

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> You don't find enough Muslim students [inaudible] mathematics education, for various reasons.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> And so whenever you have a Muslim student in a mathematic MSc program, it would be kind of seen by the faculty, I mean by the department as a whole, as some kind of a funny thing.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> And they would sort of, when you sit in faculty meetings no one would say anything on the face, but like, you can make it.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> When they talk about this particular student, there'll be a smirk or someone will cough and that kind of stuff.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> This is just one example, but you see similar things happening with women students, you see similar things happen with non-binary students and so on.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> And then there are like endless stories of how particular kind of students...

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> Another student I had was from Tamil Nadu.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> He was a first-generation learner and his parents were daily wage workers and the kind of harassment that that person had to go to through in the department, including things like Brahmin faculty members sort of telling him on his face that, "You are in the wrong place," and, "Maybe you should go and work with your parents," and those kinds of things.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> What started bothering me from almost day one, I would say, in that space is, what kind of impact do these kinds of things have on those same students when they are actually sitting inside the classroom?

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> Can we actually separate the classroom from the faculty offices, or the department itself, or the canteen, or the university campus in general, or what's happening in the university?

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> These are the kinds of things that kind of kept bothering many of us, not just me.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> Meanwhile, you probably know one of the Dalit students in the University of Hyderabad, Rohith Vemula.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> He was basically pushed to kill himself, and this became a huge issue.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, that was a kind of watershed and there was quite an intense movement around it when this happened.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> But one of the things that this movement ended up being was, for many of us, it was kind of a watershed moment of actually taking on some of these questions head-on.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> It kind of felt like you can't really brush off these things.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> You can't sit and assume that things will get better over time and so on and so forth.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> [inaudible] some tweaks here and there that we do and we keep doing those things and things will go right.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> The whole situation then was such that it didn't really allow you to, sort of, [inaudible] along those lines.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> It felt extremely urgent to take on some of these longstanding issues in a guided head-on sense.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> So all of this, I think, kind of threw me off my track in a way, like doing this formal mathematics research and so on, because it's just difficult to do it.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> It's just difficult to sit and do mathematics research when you know that most people are actually structurally precluded from doing the same kind of research, and maybe even much better research than many of us.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> So that is, kind of, what drove me to working on trying to think formally on the question of education, particularly mathematics education.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> So that's, kind of, a brief background.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> That's when I, kind of, decided to formally shift disciplines of sorts and I moved into mathematics education and that's when I shifted to HBCSE.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> This was around 2018.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> And so from then on I've been trying to sort of work on these questions of mathematics education.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> I do want to get back to mathematics research at some point [inaudible] , in mathematics.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, hopefully that can happen in some time, in a less sort of violently contradicted sense with the questions of mathematics education, because that's kind of fun.

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<v Vishesh Kumar> Yeah.

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<v Vishesh Kumar> That's fascinating.

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<v Vishesh Kumar> You're free to steer this in a bunch of different directions, but the direction that we had thought through was, do you want to build on this thinking with talking through a relatively specific project or set of projects that you've been doing, especially in the context of education over the last few years.

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<v Vishesh Kumar> And, feel free to describe it as a theoretical, as an academic construct, or just the process.

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<v Vishesh Kumar> Like, what are the goals that you're focusing on, there in terms of context, with respect to the people, the place that you're doing some education project.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> Okay.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, I can...

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, maybe like one of the things I can try to do is, I can try to sort of talk a little bit about one of the projects that I was involved in, which did not work.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> And sort of talk a little bit about why it did not work.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> And then maybe from there, we can go on to what we are trying to do now, kind of.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> In way, we hope to be informed by the [inaudible]

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> .

<v Vishesh Kumar> Absolutely.

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<v Vishesh Kumar> Yeah.

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<v Vishesh Kumar> That sounds interesting.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, this particular project, I mentioned is, kind of...

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, I mean like, when I started, what [inaudible] , like I said.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, having concerns, well, exactly kind of opening them up, [inaudible] . So, questions of, sort of, social relations, economic relations, gender relations, colonial relations, and so on.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> And how these kinds of relations...

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> What kind of impact do they have on education.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> So that was kind of...

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> That was where I, anyway, sort of started from.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> And what that meant in particular...

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> And like I said, one of the things that I saw in one of my main difficult points that I started from was kind of questioning this idea of classroom education.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> Because I know [inaudible] classroom education became kind of...

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> Then kind of the way we...

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> And this is like, I mean, it was always not just the individual, I must say, all of these have been, kind of, like I work with many other people, and did include many of our students and colleagues and [inaudible] , and so on.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> But all of us, kind of, collectively, in a way, had a common vantage point.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, our common thought process that, if we are trying to look beyond classroom education, then, how do we go about it?

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> What is one of the ways in which people, sort of, approach this?

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> And so, one of the things that we kind of thought of understanding is that, how do people who don't subscribe to this kind of, what many have described as sedentary kind of life.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, like a settled society.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, let's say, we can think of like the [inaudible] of the settled rural society, or the settled urban society, and the school system and classrooms, and where kids are supposed to sit in one room, inside one room, for like five or six hours of their day, and go through lessons.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, this is a particular idea of education.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> And there is no real reason why everyone on this planet should think of education along those same lines.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, we kind of started, began with trying to understand, like, what could be some of the other ways in which people have approached the question of learning and so on.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> And one of the...

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> Naturally, we were trying to understand people who generally, let's say, don't subscribe to that kind of sedentary ways of life.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, which particularly meant that trying to talk to and discuss these things with, let's say, people from nomadic communities, or people from generally sort of forest dwelling communities, let's say, Adivasi communities.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, that's where we started from.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> I'm saying this because, typically, when we hear most people, including many so-called critical educators, when they talk about working with Adivasi students, or let's say, nomadic students, they go with some kind of developmentalist kind of attitude.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, that's not what we are trying to do.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> That's not what we were trying to do.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> So our goal was not to teach these people necessarily, no, but the way we teach calculus and so on.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> But to really understand, on the other hand, what should be our way of teaching something like calculus, which in a way is not in violent disagreement, with their world views.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> Or their way of looking at practices of education or knowledge, generally, or relations between the teacher and the student, and those kind of things.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> So that's where we kind of began from.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, the main place where we were kind of trying to try out these kinds of meetings and workshops, et cetera, was in Purulia in this district of West Bengal.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> And these were sort of meetings with [Sabar] community people.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> So there is this community of people called Sabars who are traditionally forest dwelling communities, and they have this kind of violent history and impact in many ways, of fully violent present, of like being declared as criminal tribes.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> So these are, like, from the Brahmanical colonial days.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, they have been kind of listed as these born-criminals for that.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> So a large part of their political struggle has, of course, been against colonial practices, but particularly has been on the question of the legalism of, what does it mean?

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> What does crime even mean?

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> But then, what happened was when we went to sit and sort of in the conduct meetings with the people, with the elders, let's say, and also with the students, and particularly the women students, is we found that we didn't have...

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> So West Bengal, one of the things I should mention, perhaps, is that West Bengal is heavily NGOs.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> So wherever you go in these kinds of places, you'll always have like some kind of NGOs who have made it into these spaces, who have taken up this development, this agenda of educating people and all that.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, all the usual stuff.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> And, what's remarkable is how all of these NGOs...

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, almost none of these NGOs are actually led by the people with who they claim to be working.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, for instance, in this particular place that I'm mentioning, the NGO that works there is led by Bengal [inaudible] , who have this kind of inner sense, what we could call it, evangelist kind of [inaudible] . And in a sense, I mean, it won't...

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> Like, when you talk to these people, it won't like come up.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> They won't typically come across as evangelist in the first glance, unless you are someone who knows [inaudible] looks really well.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean like, either as an insider to that kind of culture, or as sort of an outsider subject of that kind of culture, who face the brutalities of these kinds of cultural hegemonies.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> But anyway, this NGO, for instance, they have this progressive facade.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> And, in a sense, like in a typical Bengali [inaudible] sense, they have the most progressive facade you can possibly imagine.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> So for instance, their main USP is that someone like Mahasweta Devi was part of the inception of that NGO, for all practical purposes also.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> And Mahasweta Devi, you may have read her works, is one of these really well known Bengali upper caste authors who has actually done significant work in trying to tell the stories of such people who have historically faced this kind of violence, particularly in Bengal.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> So that's about as progressive views can and possibly get.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> And by "progressive", I always have the speech in quotes.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> But that's basically as progressive as you can possibly imagine, while confining yourself within, sort of, the paradigms of [inaudible] . Right?

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> So in a way, so to speak, this is one of the better NGOs we could be proud of.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> But even there, I mean, so what we found is like, after that point, it just became very difficult to sort of continue this kind of work because you have, basically...

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> Like, the engagement start getting intensely mediated, through these kinds of bureaucracies, and these kinds of things, your hierarchies and stuff.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> And these don't often take...

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, what we typically mean by good NGOs, for instance, is that these are basically NGOs, these are basically groups or organizations that won't make this very exclusive.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, on the face of it, they will quote Babasaheb Ambedkar, they will quote all right.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> They will quote all the correct kinds of people.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> So they have this progressivism here, but then...

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, you have to sort of spend time with them on a mundane basis, to realize what's going on.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> So for instance, questions of the sanctity of the classroom, for instance, how should people sit in a classroom, that kind of stuff.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, this will be done in the name of like, utilities.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> Like, it’s kind of utilitarian that logic, Right?

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, this kind of disciplining is often...

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, there's no morality behind this.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> And this is just sort of, isn't this just the commonsensical way of making the classroom business easy, that kind of stuff.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> But then you see what's going on through this, you see sort of the world views of people getting erased, and all the views of the entire people getting erased through this kind of thing.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, that's kind of where we got stuck, in a sense.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> And we didn't want to continue this work further in a sense, because we thought that...

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> And now if you look at it from the Sabar students.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, people like us...

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, so we are not the only people who are going to sort of meet these kind of agendas through that NGO.

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

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<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean like, every other day they have people coming from Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta, et cetera.

00:20:41.007 --> 00:20:41.140
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Like, everyone who has a project will go and sort of try to test it out on these people.

00:20:41.140 --> 00:20:41.147
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

00:20:41.147 --> 00:20:44.390
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, they are kind of used to this kind of phenomenon that people from outside, urban people, people from the metropolis are coming with their wisdom and sort of salvage us.

00:20:44.390 --> 00:20:48.820
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, we didn't want to sort of get into that kind of...

00:20:49.580 --> 00:20:51.265
<v Tathagata Sengupta> We didn't want to be seen by these people in the same sense, because we don't subscribe to those ideas.

00:20:51.265 --> 00:20:52.050
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But then we also realized that as long as we keep going through the same NGO architecture, we can't help it.

00:20:52.050 --> 00:20:53.324
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, that's exactly how they will perceive us no matter what we say or what we are doing.

00:20:53.324 --> 00:21:18.199
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So at some level we kind of felt that this is not going anywhere.

00:21:18.199 --> 00:21:20.080
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And I mean, this is not really the way to do things.

00:21:20.740 --> 00:21:20.780
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

00:21:20.820 --> 00:21:28.889
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So this is kind of the failure wala, I should mention.

00:21:30.020 --> 00:21:35.199
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But then once we stopped doing that, then kind of, it became again another second round of crisis for us.

00:21:35.199 --> 00:21:35.208
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

00:21:35.208 --> 00:21:35.218
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Okay.

00:21:35.218 --> 00:21:35.302
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So then how do we really go about it?

00:21:35.302 --> 00:21:40.909
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Because this is not a singular case.

00:21:40.939 --> 00:21:41.060
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

00:21:41.060 --> 00:21:41.580
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, this is kind...

00:21:41.580 --> 00:21:44.260
<v Tathagata Sengupta> We all know that this is kind of the situation almost everywhere.

00:21:44.820 --> 00:21:44.850
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

00:21:44.879 --> 00:21:49.919
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So what then could be a possible way to go around this things?

00:21:49.919 --> 00:21:53.370
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So that kind of marked our phase change for us in this kind of work.

00:21:53.800 --> 00:22:00.560
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And so we halted all these projects that we were doing and sort of went back into some kind of soul searching, almost, of sorts.

00:22:01.350 --> 00:22:05.340
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So that has kind of characterized this last couple of years of work for me in a way, I mean.

00:22:05.340 --> 00:22:07.577
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So last couple of years, I haven't been actually conducting that way.

00:22:07.577 --> 00:22:13.379
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Like, when I say projects, I don't mean of workshops and so on in that, like organized sense.

00:22:13.600 --> 00:22:17.221
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But mainly what we've been doing is trying to sort of conduct various kinds of...

00:22:17.221 --> 00:22:27.130
<v Tathagata Sengupta> In a way, amorphous kind of consultations, but with various different kinds of people, dealing with various different kinds of social realities.

00:22:28.160 --> 00:22:29.324
<v Tathagata Sengupta> One of these, in a way, which is what I wanted to...

00:22:29.324 --> 00:22:29.809
<v Tathagata Sengupta> One of the examples I could take into account, like how did we try to sort of...

00:22:29.859 --> 00:22:34.746
<v Tathagata Sengupta> What did this mean for us?

00:22:34.900 --> 00:22:40.270
<v Tathagata Sengupta> What kind of new directions could this have opened for us, in a sense.

00:22:41.680 --> 00:22:50.929
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So to take one example of that, so for instance, while this was going on, some of us were also part of other works.

00:22:51.000 --> 00:22:51.199
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

00:22:51.199 --> 00:23:01.790
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So we were working on one of the things that we are still actually continuing to work on is on the question of money lending, on the question of microfinance and debt traps that working people are getting underwritten.

00:23:01.790 --> 00:23:10.380
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And this actually got extremely exacerbated during the COVID period, to mainly these online money lending apps and those kinds of things.

00:23:12.230 --> 00:23:14.960
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And as people are getting thrown out of their jobs, and as they're...

00:23:15.400 --> 00:23:18.649
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, what we would call social security measures.

00:23:18.649 --> 00:23:18.706
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

00:23:18.706 --> 00:23:37.820
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Like, health, education, et cetera, as these things are getting more and more privatized and becoming more and more expensive, et cetera, people are getting into these kind of almost non-negotiable debt traps.

00:23:37.820 --> 00:23:39.010
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Like, the kind of debt traps that...

00:23:39.010 --> 00:23:43.111
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Well, no one really expects, I think, anymore that in their generations they can get out of it.

00:23:43.111 --> 00:23:43.272
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So that's the direness of the situation.

00:23:43.272 --> 00:23:46.250
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, we were conducting surveys and interviews with these people and trying to understand what's happening and so on.

00:23:46.250 --> 00:23:47.690
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And through that, we kind of...

00:23:55.219 --> 00:24:00.530
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So mathematics in a way, the concerns around mathematics also started emerging from that, for obvious reasons.

00:24:01.500 --> 00:24:01.530
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

00:24:01.639 --> 00:24:11.920
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Like, this kind of quantitative mathematics and what is the kind of quantitative paradigm of these kind of mathematical rationalities that undergird our entire economic rationalities in a sense.

00:24:11.950 --> 00:24:13.810
<v Tathagata Sengupta> What does that do to people's lives, and so on?

00:24:14.240 --> 00:24:17.460
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And what role does mathematics play in this?

00:24:17.460 --> 00:24:17.490
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

00:24:17.490 --> 00:24:20.659
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So this kind of, anyway, emerged organically as a simple question for us.

00:24:21.179 --> 00:24:31.220
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Do you know how mathematics, it quite literally seems to have become the modern god, of sorts.

00:24:32.450 --> 00:24:32.490
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

00:24:32.490 --> 00:24:32.988
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, it kind of...

00:24:32.988 --> 00:24:34.299
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Like, moralities are in a way dominated by mathematical rationalities.

00:24:34.579 --> 00:24:34.739
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

00:24:34.739 --> 00:24:37.269
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So for instance, the question of compound interest rates.

00:24:37.649 --> 00:24:37.679
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

00:24:37.910 --> 00:24:48.230
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So if you've taken a loan, like, some guy has computed the interest levels for you, and written it down in some policy document and so on.

00:24:48.230 --> 00:24:55.060
<v Tathagata Sengupta> It has almost become like a divine covenant of sorts.

00:24:55.110 --> 00:24:55.209
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

00:24:55.209 --> 00:24:55.352
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean that, of course, you have to pay this tax.

00:24:55.352 --> 00:24:55.364
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

00:24:55.364 --> 00:24:55.416
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Otherwise you are guilty.

00:24:55.416 --> 00:24:55.429
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

00:24:55.429 --> 00:24:55.494
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Otherwise, you are a sinner.

00:24:55.494 --> 00:24:55.942
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And that's actually how most of our founders who are in these kinds of debt traps think about themselves.

00:24:55.942 --> 00:25:04.290
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And most of these, we should remember, when we are talking about money, like microfinance and cell health groups, et cetera.

00:25:05.630 --> 00:25:17.160
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Most of these debtors that we are talking about are not just any working class people, but mostly women, mostly working women.

00:25:17.310 --> 00:25:33.500
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And so the way these women end up on this road of like self guilt, or self doubt, and these kinds of things, they literally start thinking of themselves as immoral people, Right?

00:25:33.500 --> 00:25:34.600
<v Tathagata Sengupta> As sinners, and so on.

00:25:34.600 --> 00:25:37.810
<v Tathagata Sengupta> That, "I have taken a loan from this bank and I've not been able to pay it back."

00:25:38.439 --> 00:25:41.230
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And then we kind of started asking ourselves, "Hold on a second."

00:25:41.230 --> 00:25:41.231
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

00:25:41.231 --> 00:25:41.236
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, where is this morality really coming from?

00:25:41.236 --> 00:25:41.237
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

00:25:41.237 --> 00:25:41.446
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Our religious scriptures don't really talk about it, so where is this moral power coming from?

00:25:41.446 --> 00:25:41.539
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Why do the people...

00:25:41.539 --> 00:25:41.796
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, people literally use this word that, "I'm a sinner."

00:25:41.820 --> 00:25:41.850
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

00:25:52.510 --> 00:25:53.899
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And when they use words like that, like saying guilt, et cetera, you are bound to think in religious systems, because we are religious.

00:25:53.899 --> 00:25:54.306
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So then we were like, "Where is religion coming in all this?"

00:25:54.306 --> 00:25:54.816
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And then it turns out that, okay, this is kind of a mathematical [inaudible] . Right?

00:25:54.816 --> 00:25:55.353
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So that kind of threw up the question of mathematics from a very different kind of vantage point.

00:25:55.353 --> 00:25:55.353
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

00:25:55.353 --> 00:25:55.360
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, that point that has occupied our work since then.

00:25:55.360 --> 00:25:56.872
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So one of the upshots of this, for instance, is that now when I think about mathematics, like school curriculum.

00:25:56.872 --> 00:25:56.972
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

00:25:56.972 --> 00:26:06.849
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I began to notice how we are told these kinds of mythical stories of how mathematics is the queen of natural sciences, and that you will not understand natural sciences unless you know mathematics.

00:26:08.179 --> 00:26:22.869
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So all these kinds of things.

00:26:22.869 --> 00:26:23.182
<v Tathagata Sengupta> We keep hearing everywhere.

00:26:23.279 --> 00:26:23.409
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

00:26:38.189 --> 00:26:39.029
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Including critical educators.

00:26:40.260 --> 00:26:48.580
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But if you take up the NCERT textbook on mathematics, it has got absolutely nothing to do with natural sciences.

00:26:48.580 --> 00:26:50.000
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, you don't find anything.

00:26:50.000 --> 00:26:50.377
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, there's no physics, there's no chemistry, there's no life sciences, nothing.

00:26:50.377 --> 00:26:50.402
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

00:26:50.402 --> 00:26:50.578
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Like, all you really have is economics.

00:26:50.578 --> 00:26:57.020
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, look at the word problems, or look at the kind of...

00:26:58.010 --> 00:26:59.479
<v Tathagata Sengupta> It's basically an economic mathematics.

00:26:59.479 --> 00:26:59.669
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

00:26:59.669 --> 00:27:01.623
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So the kind of mathematics that we are...

00:27:01.623 --> 00:27:06.784
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And that's why we [inaudible] had some kind of advanced, theoretical mathematics education.

00:27:06.900 --> 00:27:08.270
<v Tathagata Sengupta> All of us kind of go through this experience of...

00:27:08.270 --> 00:27:22.960
<v Tathagata Sengupta> What we thought was mathematics during our school days doesn't seem to hold up anymore anywhere when you get into undergraduate mathematics education, or even much more so when you get started with a PhD program in mathematics.

00:27:22.960 --> 00:27:23.060
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

00:27:23.060 --> 00:27:29.100
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, you almost start kind of questioning that, "Okay.

00:27:29.100 --> 00:27:33.930
<v Tathagata Sengupta> If this was mathematics, then what you were taught, for those 12 years, wouldn't have been mathematics."

00:27:33.950 --> 00:27:35.050
<v Tathagata Sengupta> These two can't be the same thing.

00:27:35.050 --> 00:27:35.360
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

00:27:35.670 --> 00:27:45.850
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, we have that sense, but I think in this sense, I think we can try to begin to make sense of this, why we feel that kind of a jump.

00:27:45.850 --> 00:27:47.609
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Because these literally aren't the same kind of mathematics.

00:27:47.609 --> 00:27:47.769
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, they are...

00:27:47.809 --> 00:27:58.350
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Just because you use the same numbers or the similar looking symbols and similar looking alphabets, and variables and those kinds of things, it doesn't make two disciplines the same.

00:27:58.350 --> 00:28:00.279
<v Tathagata Sengupta> These are basically two different disciplines.

00:28:00.289 --> 00:28:00.320
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

00:28:00.330 --> 00:28:03.320
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So the school curriculum is basically economic mathematics.

00:28:04.310 --> 00:28:13.279
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So once we notice that, then our question about, what does it mean to teach and learn mathematics at the school level?

00:28:13.279 --> 00:28:22.620
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Let's say, became a drastically different question, because then it becomes like inseparable from economic rationalities, and economic moralities, and those things.

00:28:22.620 --> 00:28:22.650
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

00:28:22.830 --> 00:28:33.455
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So that is something that we are currently working on, in consultation with people who are dealing with these kind of debt traps and other kind of economic catastrophic situations.

00:28:33.455 --> 00:28:35.669
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So that was one direction.

00:28:35.670 --> 00:28:42.749
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And then, meanwhile, COVID happened, and that kind of brought into question, the question of health in a central sense.

00:28:43.159 --> 00:28:43.229
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

00:28:43.279 --> 00:28:47.610
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So what does health and rationalities and moralities around health have to do with mathematics?

00:28:48.380 --> 00:28:48.510
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

00:28:48.510 --> 00:29:01.919
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So we've seen the use of mathematical models repeated throughout these last couple of years years, in terms of trying to negotiate, trying to negotiate it with the realities of the pandemic.

00:29:01.959 --> 00:29:10.740
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, a kind of similar question we are trying to investigate, it's kind of analogous to the economic question that I mentioned.

00:29:10.750 --> 00:29:28.850
<v Tathagata Sengupta> That, what role does mathematical morality have in shaping our moralities around health and all of those kinds of [inaudible] . If we, sort of, stop for a while and say that, "Okay.

00:29:30.410 --> 00:29:31.930
<v Tathagata Sengupta> What happens if, instead of centering..."

00:29:32.270 --> 00:29:37.200
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Like, my agenda is still, how to teach and learn mathematics, that agenda hasn't changed.

00:29:37.599 --> 00:29:56.519
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But what really, I think, has changed is this following question that, what happens if in the name of mathematics educations we don't center this formal abstract mathematics to begin with, but we actually center, let's say, the question of health, and wellbeing, and freedom, and autonomy, and these kinds of things.

00:29:56.579 --> 00:30:02.490
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And, we center those questions, and then we look at the role of mathematics vis-a-vis all of these.

00:30:02.790 --> 00:30:02.830
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

00:30:03.380 --> 00:30:09.820
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, how would that, sort of, change how we look at mathematics?

00:30:09.890 --> 00:30:12.110
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Or what does it mean to learn mathematics?

00:30:12.480 --> 00:30:21.139
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, sorry for going on such a long [inaudible] , but that's briefly in a very summarized sense.

00:30:22.880 --> 00:30:25.720
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, I don't know if that addresses some of [inaudible]

00:30:26.070 --> 00:30:26.490
<v Tathagata Sengupta> .

<v Vishesh Kumar> That's...

00:30:26.679 --> 00:30:30.793
<v Vishesh Kumar> I don't think we need to worry too much about having contained answers.

00:30:31.000 --> 00:30:36.269
<v Vishesh Kumar> I think it does definitely cover the crux and it goes beyond, and it was very interesting to hear.

00:30:38.519 --> 00:30:52.779
<v Vishesh Kumar> This almost feels like a small slice of this work, our next question, but thinking of the logistics on also your radical journey you've had, as you've been doing this work, what has surprised or intrigued you?

00:30:54.170 --> 00:30:56.570
<v Vishesh Kumar> And this can also be just logistical challenges.

00:30:56.580 --> 00:31:02.826
<v Vishesh Kumar> Like, some of the things that you mentioned with respect to how they're suspicious when you have to work through NGOs.

00:31:02.826 --> 00:31:04.310
<v Vishesh Kumar> But what are other aspects?

00:31:04.840 --> 00:31:08.639
<v Vishesh Kumar> But also, just any other, challenges or surprises.

00:31:10.579 --> 00:31:11.929
<v Tathagata Sengupta> That's a really interesting question.

00:31:12.769 --> 00:31:12.839
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Okay.

00:31:12.839 --> 00:31:12.909
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, there are lots of things that really surprised me, that I wasn't really expecting, and all of them have been actually quite chilling surprises.

00:31:12.909 --> 00:31:12.917
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mentioned one.

00:31:12.917 --> 00:31:12.955
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, one of the main things, like I mentioned religion just a while back.

00:31:12.955 --> 00:31:12.957
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

00:31:12.957 --> 00:31:12.971
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, one of the things...

00:31:12.971 --> 00:31:17.870
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Like, this kind of the religiosity around debt and all that.

00:31:17.870 --> 00:31:18.020
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

00:31:18.020 --> 00:31:18.578
<v Tathagata Sengupta> On the one hand I said, this kind of tour was on an investigation into the role of mathematics in all this.

00:31:18.578 --> 00:31:45.879
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But parallely what it also did was kind of, for me personally, I'm still trying to sort of convince my comrades to do the same.

00:31:46.119 --> 00:31:57.070
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, sort of take up some of this, but I still have to work on it [inaudible] . But for me personally, one of the other trajectories, sort of, was to study religion.

00:31:57.190 --> 00:31:57.320
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right?

00:31:57.320 --> 00:31:58.649
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, to read up the history of religion.

00:31:59.479 --> 00:32:01.965
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And in a way, this..

00:32:01.965 --> 00:32:03.590
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And in a way this...

00:32:03.590 --> 00:32:07.820
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So one of the things that really, when I started reading about religion...

00:32:07.820 --> 00:32:10.639
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And this is something that I've been doing for the last six months or so.

00:32:11.169 --> 00:32:19.520
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So one of the things that kind of amazed me was, we keep saying things like, we've noticed this modern...

00:32:20.049 --> 00:32:21.635
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So to speak, I don't want to use the word modern.

00:32:21.635 --> 00:32:25.929
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, what we really mean by modernity is capitalism.

00:32:25.930 --> 00:32:28.376
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, I'm actually more comfortable with talking about capitalism.

00:32:28.610 --> 00:32:35.496
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Because modernity almost is a chronological category and I don't think it really makes sense to think of timing that linear fashion.

00:32:35.530 --> 00:32:38.189
<v Tathagata Sengupta> As if everyone in today's world is modern in the same sense.

00:32:38.839 --> 00:32:42.665
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, I don't want to use the word modern, but let me use the word capitalism instead.

00:32:42.665 --> 00:33:03.450
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So capitalism and therefore capitalist college systems and education systems have relentlessly tried to convince us that science and religions are opposite categories and they're locked into this mortal conflict [inaudible] . And a lot of our science education and mathematics education is rationalized using this.

00:33:03.450 --> 00:33:13.550
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, and this is a long history and this is a colonial history.

00:33:13.550 --> 00:33:14.430
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And several people have...

00:33:14.929 --> 00:33:21.880
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, many of us have heard this repeatedly that, okay, I mean, this was not how people sort of thought about these things all the time.

00:33:21.880 --> 00:33:26.899
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, like the separation between religion and science is a new thing and it was not always the case.

00:33:26.899 --> 00:33:28.100
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And if you go way back...

00:33:28.100 --> 00:33:38.520
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, if you go into the pre-capitalist history of the world, you won't see people making that kind of quality distinction between what's religious and what's scientific.

00:33:39.740 --> 00:33:46.039
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Now we heard this kind of things, but at least for me personally, I never stopped to think that, okay, what does this really mean?

00:33:46.660 --> 00:33:55.950
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, what does it do to our notions of science or our notions of religion, if we are to not make a distinction?

00:33:56.720 --> 00:34:02.680
<v Tathagata Sengupta> How did people in those times, how were they making sense of the world?

00:34:02.720 --> 00:34:09.219
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So that was one of the questions I always had in mind when I sort of went back to look into the history of religion.

00:34:11.629 --> 00:34:14.659
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But what I was still expecting is that...

00:34:19.429 --> 00:34:21.039
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Well, I don't know what I was expecting.

00:34:21.040 --> 00:34:30.510
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But I mean, I guess one of the things that I was kind of, I guess it's fair to say I was expecting is that, okay, I mean, you don't have separate disciplines in a sense.

00:34:32.380 --> 00:34:33.580
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So you have the same guy.

00:34:33.690 --> 00:34:40.949
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, so let's say, let's talk of the men, I mean, same guy who is a religious guy.

00:34:40.949 --> 00:34:43.240
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So we have heard about, let's say...

00:34:43.240 --> 00:34:46.109
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, it's good to take examples.

00:34:46.350 --> 00:34:49.770
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So let's say Isaac Newton.

00:34:50.110 --> 00:34:57.769
<v Tathagata Sengupta> We know that Isaac Newton, while he was doing his research on sort of mechanics, at the same time he was also an alchemist.

00:34:57.790 --> 00:34:59.029
<v Tathagata Sengupta> He was also doing alchemical research.

00:34:59.900 --> 00:35:04.180
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And in fact, most of his publications are in alchemy.

00:35:04.180 --> 00:35:18.840
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, if you just do a pure what counts, I think someone sort of estimated this, it seems if you take a what count of Newton's alchemical publications, the total what count goes beyond a million.

00:35:21.450 --> 00:35:23.410
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So it's a huge bulk of work that he did.

00:35:23.469 --> 00:35:27.089
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And so, I knew this, and this was not new information for me.

00:35:27.090 --> 00:35:41.504
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But then every time I thought about this, like the way I kind of made peace with this practice, I guess that, okay, during half of the week, Newton was being sort of a physicist and then the rest of the half of the week was being an alchemist.

00:35:41.859 --> 00:35:45.622
<v Tathagata Sengupta> As if these two things have nothing to do with each other.

00:35:45.622 --> 00:35:50.651
<v Tathagata Sengupta> As if, within his head, these people would make these compartmentalization.

00:35:50.651 --> 00:36:08.186
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, this wouldn't probably expressed the separate disciplines, but surely when they do the scientific [inaudible] , they should try not to make something like alchemy with something like cosmology or something, that kind of stuff.

00:36:08.186 --> 00:36:09.563
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, all the astronomy and stuff.

00:36:09.760 --> 00:36:24.740
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And then, so what surprised me is that, not only is this not true, not only is it the case that Newton's alchemical notions were central to his physical notions and vice versa.

00:36:25.150 --> 00:36:28.526
<v Tathagata Sengupta> That is, notions around mechanics were central to his notions about alchemy, but also particularly on that said then...

00:36:28.526 --> 00:36:37.619
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, so let's say we see this in Newton and then you sort of start asking, "Okay, was Newton the only guy who was doing this?

00:36:37.810 --> 00:36:38.790
<v Tathagata Sengupta> What about the others then?"

00:36:39.160 --> 00:36:43.734
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So then you sort of start revisiting everyone you thought you had known before.

00:36:44.070 --> 00:36:55.169
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And then once I started doing that, one of the things that I found quite shocking in fact, and happily, I was shocked, I must say that, most of what we today mean by mathematics...

00:36:56.380 --> 00:37:00.720
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Actually not just from not even religion so to speak, but in fact were cult practices.

00:37:03.040 --> 00:37:11.100
<v Tathagata Sengupta> The kind of practices that today much for science people would describe as superstition and cult and unscientific.

00:37:11.260 --> 00:37:11.581
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Well, that's where platonic mathematics really emerges from.

00:37:11.581 --> 00:37:11.690
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, like Pythagoreanism was basically a cult.

00:37:11.690 --> 00:37:11.772
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And you need to be part...

00:37:11.772 --> 00:37:12.582
<v Tathagata Sengupta> It's kind of understandable if you think about it in those terms.

00:37:12.582 --> 00:37:30.369
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, you really need to be a part of a cult if you are to really believe that the world is made out of numbers.

00:37:30.690 --> 00:37:33.970
<v Tathagata Sengupta> That who really thinks like that?

00:37:35.020 --> 00:37:37.600
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Or if you take like Descartes' skepticism.

00:37:37.780 --> 00:37:43.009
<v Tathagata Sengupta> The level to which Descartes is said to have taken his skepticism too.

00:37:43.400 --> 00:37:47.120
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, if you read this guy's writings.

00:37:47.300 --> 00:37:50.049
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, the kind of doubts, what he means by doubt.

00:37:50.330 --> 00:37:53.620
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, is this chair really there or so on?

00:37:53.620 --> 00:37:59.480
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, like that guy who is walking on the street is that a real human being or a ghost or an automaton?

00:38:00.550 --> 00:38:02.770
<v Tathagata Sengupta> These are the kinds of questions that Descartes begins with.

00:38:03.250 --> 00:38:11.140
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Which is why he gets into this enormous moral and emotional crisis of not knowing who to trust anymore, not knowing what to believe anymore.

00:38:11.180 --> 00:38:21.550
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Everything has to be sort of, like doubt becoming sort of the, in a sense, the main epistemological tool of what doing science even means.

00:38:22.949 --> 00:38:27.020
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And Descartes almost gives the impression that he's the first person who invented the notion of doubt.

00:38:27.060 --> 00:38:29.930
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And nothing could be further from the reality.

00:38:29.930 --> 00:38:31.300
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, like people have always dealt with doubts.

00:38:31.300 --> 00:38:49.990
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, if you look at the entire Islamic canons, of Islamic science and theology, stretching over like a thousand years, let's say, people have been obsessing over questions between doubt and belief and so on.

00:38:49.990 --> 00:38:52.906
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So Descartes was surely not the first guy to do this.

00:38:53.010 --> 00:38:58.020
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But he was the first guy to sort of take it to that kind of incredible levels.

00:38:58.029 --> 00:39:14.489
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And if any of our friends were doing this, I mean, any of the people we hang out with had locked them up in a room for a couple of months and going into this kind of emotional crisis, we would be very worried.

00:39:19.050 --> 00:39:32.969
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And then it sure enough turns out that Descartes himself was quite active in sort of the cult practices around those things and [inaudible] . So we can go into much more details on these things.

00:39:34.459 --> 00:39:37.290
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And these are not the circumstantial evidence, this is literally what they're writing.

00:39:38.160 --> 00:39:39.160
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Because occulting those...

00:39:40.870 --> 00:39:49.074
<v Tathagata Sengupta> We need to remember that, what we today mean by occult is not what these people meant by occult when they were talking about occult.

00:39:49.110 --> 00:39:51.699
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, that is something that was quite surprising.

00:39:51.700 --> 00:39:56.589
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And right now, that's one of the things I'm trying to work on, the occult origins of mathematics.

00:39:56.589 --> 00:40:02.990
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I'm trying to sort of piss off people who want to equate mathematics with natural science.

00:40:03.220 --> 00:40:04.969
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, for the longest period of human existence, mathematics had nothing to do with it.

00:40:10.549 --> 00:40:11.209
<v Vishesh Kumar> Fascinating.

00:40:11.209 --> 00:40:42.210
<v Vishesh Kumar> So do you think that in this result, reconstructing this connection, do you think it would help the people who are dealing with the discord that's happening in their experience, like when they're dealing with the violence of mathematical undergirding of systems and then making it like a religious sin upon themselves, would it help them parse it or what?

00:40:43.299 --> 00:40:43.699
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Yeah.

00:40:44.750 --> 00:40:45.880
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, I can't be sure.

00:40:45.970 --> 00:40:52.136
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And these are things we can speculate about.

00:40:52.136 --> 00:40:55.996
<v Tathagata Sengupta> We'll only know when we discuss this with people and maybe try out certain things and see if it works.

00:40:55.996 --> 00:40:56.709
<v Tathagata Sengupta> It cannot work...

00:40:56.929 --> 00:41:15.129
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But I mean, one of the things that I do know, however, why I think it's important to do this work is that, so here is what typically happens and this kind of takes us back to Purulia in a way.

00:41:15.389 --> 00:41:33.075
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, so the moral power relations that exist between sort of, let's say, the urban sort of metropolitan rationalist scientists or mathematicians, vis a vis let's say, those women students in Purulia.

00:41:33.230 --> 00:41:35.540
<v Tathagata Sengupta> There is a moral hierarchy and it's a power relation.

00:41:35.540 --> 00:41:42.370
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And the power relation basically is like, I mean, to put in very few terms, the power relation sign sounds something like this.

00:41:44.020 --> 00:41:58.119
<v Tathagata Sengupta> It's kind of, like on the one hand, the knowledge system that we kind of describe as science or mathematics or any of these things are supposed to be rational, that's the first assumption, and whatever that term even means.

00:41:58.519 --> 00:42:07.250
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And the opposite side of it is obviously that, okay, I mean, those other guys are not as rational then.

00:42:07.850 --> 00:42:12.220
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Because obviously, they haven't read Descartes or Newton or any of these people that we have read.

00:42:12.640 --> 00:42:14.439
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, they can't be really rational.

00:42:14.439 --> 00:42:19.449
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, they need to be taught what being rational even means.

00:42:19.640 --> 00:42:29.030
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, that's what kind of creates this kind of, the other facade of this, which is certain kind of moral superiority.

00:42:29.890 --> 00:42:36.633
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And that moral superiority can be sort of couched in like really progressive terms and really benevolent terms and developmentalist terms.

00:42:37.030 --> 00:42:44.759
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Often they are even described in sort of liberatory principles, that rationality has liberation and those kinds of things.

00:42:45.270 --> 00:42:47.260
<v Tathagata Sengupta> That we're going there to sort of liberate these guys and stuff.

00:42:47.300 --> 00:42:56.680
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But like Sartre said, "You don't have good colonizers or bad colonizers, you have colonizers and that's it".

00:42:56.680 --> 00:43:00.800
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, so that's the relation.

00:43:01.060 --> 00:43:02.850
<v Tathagata Sengupta> That's what colonial relations are.

00:43:02.850 --> 00:43:07.079
<v Tathagata Sengupta> It's not really about good science or bad science there, it's not a question of good mathematics versus bad mathematics.

00:43:07.079 --> 00:43:13.240
<v Tathagata Sengupta> It's not a question of good colonizer versus bad colonizer, it's about colonizer and that's it.

00:43:13.240 --> 00:43:22.160
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, that's kind of the power relation that we also experience in Purulia.

00:43:22.179 --> 00:43:22.604
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Which is why I kind of pulled out of that.

00:43:22.604 --> 00:43:22.829
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I didn't want to sort of participate in that.

00:43:22.829 --> 00:43:27.890
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And the least I thought I should do is not to participate.

00:43:27.890 --> 00:43:42.875
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But coming back to what we were discussing earlier, I mean, like [inaudible] is that, there have been people, of course, who have pointed this out and who have sort of disputed this and tried to correct it.

00:43:42.875 --> 00:43:47.484
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But typically if you notice, the main...

00:43:47.609 --> 00:44:04.490
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And I'm talking right now about like the critical educators, people who are kind of seen as the progressive [inaudible] . I won't generalize, I mean, of course, there are people who've not subscribed to this, which is where I'm also coming from.

00:44:04.490 --> 00:44:08.516
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And these are the people I'm [inaudible] that's why I'm not the first guy who is saying all this.

00:44:09.080 --> 00:44:15.630
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But, most of the people, the track they to choose is to sort of either to hold on...

00:44:15.660 --> 00:44:22.540
<v Tathagata Sengupta> When you say that these people are irrational, that's where you are wrong, these people are also rational.

00:44:22.589 --> 00:44:23.482
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And this is how they're rational.

00:44:23.660 --> 00:44:42.279
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So they will go into studying those other people, let's say the Sabars in Purulia, and they will try to sort of, they'll use various kinds of methods to establish, to prove almost that, what the Calcutta rationalist calls as superstition or irrational is actually rational, if you look at it in a particular way.

00:44:42.279 --> 00:44:44.590
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, that rationalizing exercise you do.

00:44:44.650 --> 00:44:53.730
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, that's what bulk of the progressives are engaged with as far as I can tell.

00:44:54.540 --> 00:44:58.040
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But the approach I'm trying to take is actually, the exact opposite approach of this.

00:44:58.410 --> 00:45:08.120
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Like my main concern right now is to actually poke holes into this premise that, the Calcutta rationalist is actually very irrational.

00:45:10.050 --> 00:45:27.070
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Because that's, I think in my understanding, trying to go into sort of people's cultural processes or cultural practices or worldviews or metaphysics or however you might want to describe it, and trying to sort of rationalize those things in our terms of what rational even means.

00:45:27.099 --> 00:45:36.579
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I think I find that as an arrogant attitude, because it kind of begins with this assumption that everything can be rationalized.

00:45:36.859 --> 00:45:45.450
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And it also kind of assumes that we have already rationalized everything about our own lives and our own existence and now we are there to rationalize everyone else's experience.

00:45:46.779 --> 00:45:50.290
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, that I feel is an extremely arrogant approach to take.

00:45:50.490 --> 00:45:56.312
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And so, therefore I want to take the exactly opposite attitude.

00:45:56.312 --> 00:45:59.330
<v Tathagata Sengupta> That, maybe we should rethink about, when we say that we are really rational.

00:45:59.560 --> 00:46:01.350
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And so that's kind of where I'm coming from.

00:46:01.350 --> 00:46:07.275
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And I'm trying to say that, trying to trace the occult origins of mathematics.

00:46:07.275 --> 00:46:19.370
<v Tathagata Sengupta> One of the purposes I have in mind is to be able to then kind of basically raise this question that, okay, one of your main tools of today's modern capitalist rationalism seems to be born out of occult practices.

00:46:19.630 --> 00:46:20.939
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So how do you explain that?

00:46:25.710 --> 00:46:48.730
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So now, I don't know if this helps in that broader question of education itself, but the hope is that at least this should help in, I think, if you do it sincerely, if enough people do it, particularly let's say, Indian context, it should open up the space, I think.

00:46:48.730 --> 00:46:57.390
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, in a way it becomes, in my understanding, a kind of equalizing effect on these different sets of people.

00:46:57.859 --> 00:47:02.870
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, the simple fact that rationality is no one's private property.

00:47:03.240 --> 00:47:06.770
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, everyone is in certain ways rational and in certain ways extremely irrational.

00:47:09.400 --> 00:47:16.885
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And that happens as much with the colonizers, in fact, I would say much more so with the colonizers than with the colonized.

00:47:17.200 --> 00:47:20.280
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So in my understanding, one of the things this should...

00:47:20.450 --> 00:47:25.910
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, at least one of the goals I have in my mind is to sort of, in a way, flatten the world a bit.

00:47:26.890 --> 00:47:41.740
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And then I think the question of knowledge and the clash of knowledge and the conflict of knowledge and the role of education in that world of conflicting knowledge systems, I think that, that debate can be had in its own terms.

00:47:41.980 --> 00:47:45.890
<v Tathagata Sengupta> That debate, or that discussion can happen in the terms that it deserves.

00:47:45.920 --> 00:47:50.840
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Because right now, the kind of terms that we use to sort of have those discussions, I think don't work.

00:47:50.970 --> 00:47:53.120
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And so, that's kind of [inaudible]

00:47:57.320 --> 00:47:58.050
<v Tathagata Sengupta> .

<v Vishesh Kumar> Fascinating.

00:47:58.790 --> 00:48:06.120
<v Vishesh Kumar> Finally, the next question that we had, I think we've mostly covered the crux of it, which is, what you think are the most critical issues.

00:48:07.700 --> 00:48:18.239
<v Vishesh Kumar> And especially when I framed it, when I read three to four of your pieces, it was interesting that I did not see the common true line that this is how you were thinking.

00:48:19.080 --> 00:48:27.090
<v Vishesh Kumar> I saw that as you were thinking about science education, as you are thinking about mythology or these things and sense making.

00:48:27.090 --> 00:48:39.960
<v Vishesh Kumar> But it is interesting that you're trying to think at a more general level of, I don't know if it's right, is it trying to argue against what it is normalized through these colonial histories and structures and thinking

00:48:40.680 --> 00:48:43.410
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, I think I do have a jigsaw puzzle in my mind.

00:48:43.410 --> 00:48:47.390
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And some of those pieces you mentioned are kind of separate pieces of the puzzle.

00:48:47.390 --> 00:48:47.823
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And like-

00:48:48.040 --> 00:48:48.430
<v Vishesh Kumar> I see.

00:48:48.440 --> 00:48:55.089
<v ... Tathagata Sengupta> right now, I can't say that I have a complete picture of the puzzle in my mind, but the hope is that there is a puzzle somewhere.

00:48:56.099 --> 00:49:01.152
<v ... Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, we can get to it only if we try to sort of have some handle on the multiple pieces of that puzzle.

00:49:01.152 --> 00:49:07.150
<v ... Tathagata Sengupta> And then we can sort of see if this, whatever I said just now, a lot of it is just pure speculation.

00:49:07.770 --> 00:49:10.949
<v ... Tathagata Sengupta> But some of these pieces need to be worked out to be able to test out some of issues.

00:49:12.430 --> 00:49:12.990
<v Vishesh Kumar> Interesting.

00:49:13.890 --> 00:49:32.460
<v Vishesh Kumar> That feels like it fits into exactly the second half of that question, which is, which of these things do you feel are most actionable, which do you think can actually convert to recommendations for policy or something as a material change, if you're thinking those terms at all?

00:49:34.250 --> 00:49:34.660
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right.

00:49:34.700 --> 00:49:35.146
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, so we are trying to find, so what are some of the things that...

00:49:35.146 --> 00:49:35.149
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Some of the projects, example the women debtors.

00:49:35.149 --> 00:49:35.151
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, that's an ongoing work.

00:49:35.151 --> 00:49:35.155
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So there are multiple aspects of that work.

00:49:35.155 --> 00:49:35.164
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So like for instance, surveys and interviews, and...

00:49:35.164 --> 00:50:06.739
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, I'm part of quite a big group of really young people, many of them whom are from those areas who are working on this.

00:50:07.160 --> 00:50:11.680
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, we have like, I mean, different people amongst us are working on different aspects of this.

00:50:12.290 --> 00:50:17.100
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But that's one of the sort of concrete works that we have right now.

00:50:17.100 --> 00:50:20.069
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And we do hope that some kind of actionable things might emerge out of that.

00:50:20.480 --> 00:50:24.463
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So one of the actionable things that we do have in mind is of course, curriculum and pedagogy works.

00:50:24.463 --> 00:50:33.409
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But like Sarangapani writes, that pedagogy or curricular works are basically...

00:50:33.559 --> 00:50:34.959
<v Tathagata Sengupta> They're emergent processes.

00:50:35.409 --> 00:50:40.000
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Actually, I don't think in design terms, I think.

00:50:40.199 --> 00:50:49.680
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So for me, the question of curriculum and pedagogy is not a design problem, but it's more a problem of cultural emergence.

00:50:49.810 --> 00:51:09.900
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, that's one of the things that we are trying to find out, whether we can set up, let's say, a space, where different kinds of people can get together and work on pedagogic concerns, work on generating pedagogic materials, that makes reasonable sense to, let's say, everyone involved.

00:51:09.910 --> 00:51:18.306
<v Tathagata Sengupta> An everyone should include necessarily, in this case, for instance, to get a specific example, it should include necessarily some of the women debtor themselves.

00:51:18.306 --> 00:51:35.164
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And actually, like more so, like some of the women debtors who are, in a way, politically agitated, who think that political action.

00:51:35.379 --> 00:51:39.520
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, when we say action, one of the main aspects of action that I have in mind is political action.

00:51:39.560 --> 00:51:42.407
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, I think, yeah.

00:51:42.407 --> 00:51:42.598
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So in that sense, yes, we are trying to work with people who are invested in some kind of political actions on some of these issues.

00:51:42.598 --> 00:51:42.744
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And trying to see what kind of pedagogy and curricular directions can emerge out of doing such kind of engagements.

00:51:42.744 --> 00:51:42.781
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But coming back to policies.

00:51:42.781 --> 00:51:42.970
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, so policies in a way I'm not...

00:51:42.970 --> 00:51:43.230
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Yeah.

00:51:43.230 --> 00:52:10.420
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So I'm kind of...

00:52:10.449 --> 00:52:17.660
<v Tathagata Sengupta> You might have guessed by now, I'm kind of an outsider in a sense, to this learning sciences and so on.

00:52:17.660 --> 00:52:19.839
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, for instance, I don't think there can be a science of learning.

00:52:20.620 --> 00:52:22.129
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I don't even understand learning sciences.

00:52:23.270 --> 00:52:33.450
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And that's one of the kind of points I'm trying to make in my research works also to sort of actually completely argue why we can't have anything called the learning sciences.

00:52:34.590 --> 00:52:44.719
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But I mean, definitely not to say that we don't have scientific questions on the question of learning, but it's kind of saying...

00:52:45.509 --> 00:52:57.643
<v Tathagata Sengupta> It's kind of like how, the science or engineering of making medicines can't be the overarching framework of the question of health.

00:52:57.870 --> 00:53:00.390
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Because health is not equal to medicines.

00:53:00.970 --> 00:53:03.520
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Health is a lot of other things, one of which is medicine.

00:53:04.210 --> 00:53:08.290
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So in that sense, learning is a huge thing.

00:53:08.700 --> 00:53:13.482
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And one of the issues there is the science around, like let's say, it’s a cognitive question.

00:53:13.540 --> 00:53:19.420
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But I don't see how everything can be converted into a science, the way that way we understand that.

00:53:19.969 --> 00:53:29.399
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So anyway, so I just wanted to mention that, I mean, so in a sense, I think in a lot of different ways I'm not exact...

00:53:29.860 --> 00:53:40.461
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I'm kind of an outsider to this kind of institution of the discipline of education.

00:53:40.461 --> 00:53:45.294
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And, in a similar sense, I'm also an outsider to sort of governmental concerns.

00:53:45.294 --> 00:53:47.250
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So in that sense, coming back to the question of policies.

00:53:47.259 --> 00:53:49.089
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So policies are like the government's headaches.

00:53:49.710 --> 00:53:53.329
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And the state and the market, it's their concern.

00:53:53.329 --> 00:54:02.019
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And I basically think that, like this capital state market system is, to begin with, illegitimate.

00:54:02.059 --> 00:54:07.580
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So their concerns to a large extent are also quite illegitimate.

00:54:08.679 --> 00:54:11.232
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So yeah, I actually have this thing of like, I have an anti policy...

00:54:11.232 --> 00:54:11.391
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, I have kind of an, I guess, anarchist communist policy.

00:54:11.391 --> 00:54:11.640
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, I should kind of clarify who I am.

00:54:18.180 --> 00:54:20.000
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So a lot of this is coming from an anarchist communist kind of...

00:54:20.000 --> 00:54:20.025
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Yeah.

00:54:20.025 --> 00:54:39.379
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And I think their policies and bureaucracies and rules and rulemaking, et cetera, to me, they actually are like apparatus of colonization and apparatus of exploitation of people's wealth and their freedom and all of that.

00:54:39.390 --> 00:54:42.890
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So I'm not saying that like...

00:54:42.940 --> 00:54:50.554
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, the rules are important and in a sense, if you notice, people have always evolved.

00:54:50.554 --> 00:54:51.419
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Societies and cultures have of always evolved their own rules of functioning.

00:54:51.450 --> 00:55:24.479
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, I mean, this is not point against rules per se, but when it comes to rule makings and policy makings that are sort of orchestrated or engineered by the concerns of the capitalist state market system, their idea of rules and policies are basically in my understanding kind of textual codifications of relations of violence.

00:55:24.719 --> 00:55:32.750
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Relations of violence that are perpetrated at the end of the day by the use of guns.

00:55:33.040 --> 00:55:39.970
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Because I mean, just imagine what would happen if for a week, the Indian state withdrew all its police forces.

00:55:40.420 --> 00:55:49.093
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, if there were no police or no armed forces, I don't think anyone, for instance, I don't think anyone would turn up to schools.

00:55:49.093 --> 00:55:50.660
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, I don't think people would go to schools.

00:55:50.669 --> 00:55:53.504
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So a lot of these things are kind of...

00:55:53.504 --> 00:55:53.956
<v Tathagata Sengupta> There is the structures of discipline, basically.

00:55:53.956 --> 00:55:55.943
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And historically, I mean, it requires historical analysis.

00:55:55.943 --> 00:56:03.345
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And if you look into history, I mean, it's quite clear how this happens.

00:56:03.345 --> 00:56:09.077
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So the first phase of violence, I mean, if you take the example of slavery, conditioned labor or chartered slavery, or the genesis of capitalism, so to speak.

00:56:09.077 --> 00:56:27.049
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, like if you go back to fifteenth sixteenth century Europe, or if you look at sort of patriarchal gender relations and like the rise of the patriarchal state and so on.

00:56:27.220 --> 00:56:29.134
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, this happens all the time, right.

00:56:29.240 --> 00:56:35.590
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So first of all, you'll have a phase of brutal violence, horrific episodes of violence.

00:56:36.320 --> 00:56:53.309
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But then of course, because you also want to conduct business in an economic sense, you want market systems to operate and so on and so forth, you realize that, conducting your day to day activities by using the barrel of gun is not actually a physical thing to do, because that's not how anything really works.

00:56:53.329 --> 00:57:01.399
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, I mean, as a state, you can't actually afford to sort of continue that phase of horrific violence on people at large.

00:57:01.810 --> 00:57:03.820
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So then you have to sort of...

00:57:03.980 --> 00:57:12.932
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But by that time, through the use of this kind of sheer brute force, you have already established relations of exploitation, relations to violence and so on.

00:57:13.190 --> 00:57:23.620
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And then after a while, you kind of graduate into a new phase where you say that, okay, okay, violence is bad and no one should be violent and so on and so on.

00:57:23.630 --> 00:57:28.257
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Let's have rules, let's sit down and legislate laws and so that, this doesn’t happen again, et cetera, et cetera.

00:57:28.320 --> 00:57:38.740
<v Tathagata Sengupta> The same guys who were in charge of that violence episode, they would typically be the ones or their shadow organizations would be the ones who would come and say that, "oh, let's sort of sort this out.

00:57:38.740 --> 00:57:40.370
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Let's have more civilized processes."

00:57:41.270 --> 00:58:00.160
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But if you then dig into those rules, you'll see that those rules do nothing to sort of turn around the relations of violence that were already created through that first phase of actually on the [inaudible] . So in that sense, written rules and policy documents, in my understanding, historically speaking, have been basically textual codifications of relations of actual physical violence.

00:58:00.160 --> 00:58:13.490
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So one of the things for instance, this means for us that, so that's how we think of the question of policy and rules and bureaucracies.

00:58:13.860 --> 00:58:17.073
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But what this also means for us that, it doesn't make sense to...

00:58:17.073 --> 00:58:25.670
<v Tathagata Sengupta> We can't talk about education without also having to say significantly, something about the question of physical violence.

00:58:25.700 --> 00:58:37.919
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And what kind of really amazes me in most of our institutional education literature is how, if you go through the bulk of that literature...

00:58:37.919 --> 00:58:41.590
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Again, there are exceptions, not everyone is doing this, but the majority of them.

00:58:43.860 --> 00:58:54.170
<v Tathagata Sengupta> You wouldn't get a sense that we are talking about a society which is in perpetual [inaudible] . That we are talking about a society which is basically run on the barrel of the gun.

00:58:55.120 --> 00:58:58.684
<v Tathagata Sengupta> You don't see any mention of physical violence in any education literature.

00:58:58.880 --> 00:59:01.710
<v Tathagata Sengupta> As if education or learning has nothing to do with it, which is absurd.

00:59:03.110 --> 00:59:04.620
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So anyway, so that's kind of...

00:59:04.860 --> 00:59:09.090
<v Tathagata Sengupta> That's where we are trying to...

00:59:09.090 --> 00:59:09.109
<v Vishesh Kumar> Yeah.

00:59:09.110 --> 00:59:11.710
<v Vishesh Kumar> Those are, I feel like, provocative important points.

00:59:12.190 --> 00:59:12.570
<v Vishesh Kumar> Thank you.

00:59:12.570 --> 00:59:16.420
<v Vishesh Kumar> And especially when you also mention...

00:59:16.610 --> 00:59:19.180
<v Vishesh Kumar> I feel like this also feeds directly into the next question.

00:59:19.190 --> 00:59:24.600
<v Vishesh Kumar> The parts where you point out, that you feel like an outsider, that you want to question the bounds...

00:59:24.800 --> 00:59:31.400
<v Vishesh Kumar> Or even at the attempts of setting bounds of this practice.

00:59:31.400 --> 00:59:38.490
<v Vishesh Kumar> And that question was, what works, role models, thinkers, theories, or schools of thought would you highlight as key influencers for your work and thinking?

00:59:39.780 --> 00:59:41.910
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So I already get like a part of it away.

00:59:41.910 --> 00:59:46.770
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, schools of thought [inaudible] . I mean, but like in terms of people, right.

00:59:46.770 --> 00:59:47.020
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean-

00:59:47.459 --> 00:59:47.799
<v Vishesh Kumar> People, yes.

00:59:47.819 --> 00:59:47.850
<v Vishesh Kumar> Sure.

00:59:47.859 --> 00:59:50.120
<v ... Tathagata Sengupta> Well, I mean, it's an endless list of people actually.

00:59:50.600 --> 01:00:09.409
<v ... Tathagata Sengupta> So some of the people who I already quoted, people like Sartre and so on, but also Frantz Fanon, [inaudible] . And I mean, in a sense Frantz Fanon and not Paulo Freire, I must mention that.

01:00:09.409 --> 01:00:09.539
<v Vishesh Kumar> Interesting.

01:00:09.670 --> 01:00:09.690
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Yeah.

01:00:14.520 --> 01:00:15.935
<v Tathagata Sengupta> We can get to that later.

01:00:15.935 --> 01:00:32.029
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So Frantz Fanon is one and then David Graeber, I should mention, a lot of what I said about rules and bureaucracies and so on is basically based on the work of [inaudible] David Graeber who passed away last year from COVID.

01:00:32.889 --> 01:00:35.719
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And I mean, in my understanding he's one of my favorite scholars.

01:00:38.339 --> 01:00:44.370
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And then of course, like other usual suspects, like Babasaheb Ambedkar, Jyotiba Phule.

01:00:44.480 --> 01:00:49.919
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, I mean, so for instance, relation between sort of registering students, whatever I'm saying that phase, I have Phule in mind.

01:00:53.559 --> 01:00:54.520
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Because Phule's understanding of...

01:00:54.520 --> 01:01:01.080
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Because, if you look at Phule's main sort of pedagogy [inaudible] , he's repeatedly talking about Guru-Shishya relations.

01:01:01.319 --> 01:01:14.250
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Which is to say that, I mean, like for Phule, the relations between the teacher and the student is of central importance, much more than pedagogic concerns or curricular concerns.

01:01:14.250 --> 01:01:24.063
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And in fact way, what anti-caste reformers have been suggesting, or arguing is that, why won't you have good pedagogy and curricular?

01:01:24.320 --> 01:01:26.750
<v Tathagata Sengupta> It's not very difficult, it's not rocket science to sort of come up with good curriculum and good pedagogy [inaudible] . And so there is no reason why you wouldn't have emergence of good literature, if you ensure that the social relations are conducive for that.

01:01:26.750 --> 01:01:26.861
<v Tathagata Sengupta> If you ensure that the relations within the classroom, the relations between not just the teacher and the students, but between the students themselves.

01:01:26.861 --> 01:01:28.092
<v Tathagata Sengupta> If you can think of a classroom, where for instance, a mathematics classroom, where people don't feel that it's normal to say that mathematics is not for women.

01:01:28.092 --> 01:01:29.566
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, now we can take this in terms of ethics.And we can say that, okay.

01:01:29.566 --> 01:02:01.240
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And we can form a set of rules that, okay, these are ethically wrong things to me, these are ethically wrong things to say.

01:02:01.240 --> 01:02:09.030
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And no one in this class will say this to any woman in the class [inaudible]

01:02:09.030 --> 01:02:20.617
<v Tathagata Sengupta> .
<v Tathagata Sengupta>  So, in a sense, if I understand Phule correctly, in a sense, what some people actually are arguing is not a new set of rules or a new set of extra rules.

01:02:20.617 --> 01:02:28.300
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Though they are talking about ethics, but what they really mean, I think is a new morality.

01:02:28.300 --> 01:02:37.069
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, what they mean is a new common sense.

01:02:37.069 --> 01:02:39.224
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Where is that new common sense [inaudible] . Because all of us operate by a certain kind of common sense.

01:02:39.224 --> 01:02:39.678
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And we kind of...

01:02:39.678 --> 01:02:41.833
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Since we are so embedded in that common sense, we think that this must be the universal common sense.

01:02:41.833 --> 01:02:50.120
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And now, I should also point out that there are a lot of different actors who say this kind of thing in particular.

01:02:50.120 --> 01:02:54.060
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, like use a very defined category.

01:02:55.620 --> 01:03:04.460
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I could mention like postmodern scholars who say these kind of things [inaudible] . But that's also something that maybe we can go into later if that's relevant you think.

01:03:04.460 --> 01:03:13.540
<v Tathagata Sengupta> That like when I'm saying that, my common sense, I don't see why that has to be shared by anyone else as their common sense, I'm actually not coming from a postmodern kind of thing.

01:03:13.540 --> 01:03:13.841
<v Tathagata Sengupta> In fact, if anything, this is actually in various ways, radically opposite to...

01:03:13.841 --> 01:03:13.856
<v Tathagata Sengupta> In radical rejection of postmodernist kind of ideas.

01:03:13.856 --> 01:03:13.866
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But anyway, that's a separate view.

01:03:13.866 --> 01:03:13.959
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But coming back to the people I'm quoting, yeah, so the Jyotiba Phule, Savitribai Phule, Rokeya Sakhawat and her ideas about feminist science and then sort of people like [Kim Dolware] ... And anthologists like [Kim Dolware] and what they have been arguing about sort of science and education and so on.

01:03:13.959 --> 01:03:16.450
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And then, basically, I mean, I could say, certain sections of decolonial scholars.

01:03:17.380 --> 01:03:51.110
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, not everyone.

01:03:53.549 --> 01:04:16.406
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean basically, the decolonial authors, I think we should take seriously, are the ones who make sure to find out that decolonization is not a metaphorical act.

01:04:17.610 --> 01:04:25.294
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Decolonization is quite a literal activity, to say that one plus one equals two is a colonial act, is going to do nothing to change regulations for colonial.

01:04:25.294 --> 01:04:29.510
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, that's intracta move to metaphorize really serious issues of colonization.

01:04:31.160 --> 01:04:32.600
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But there are, not everyone is doing that.

01:04:32.600 --> 01:04:37.605
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And these are some of the people have in mind [inaudible] . They make sure that they point this out, that it's not a metaphorical thing.

01:04:37.605 --> 01:04:45.410
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And these are also people which is why in just explaining [inaudible] I guess in a way, brings us back to [inaudible]

01:04:45.740 --> 01:04:51.169
<v Tathagata Sengupta> .
<v Tathagata Sengupta>  So these are also the people, therefore who say that I mean, and this includes trans [inaudible] so that decolonization.

01:04:51.169 --> 01:04:52.217
<v Tathagata Sengupta> If you're really serious about it, first of all, we should come to terms with the fact that decolonization is going to be messy.

01:04:52.217 --> 01:04:59.939
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right, it's going to be violent for all we know, it's going to be quite bloody.

01:04:59.940 --> 01:05:01.000
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And we may not like it.

01:05:01.010 --> 01:05:03.461
<v Tathagata Sengupta> We may say, I mean, like decolonization etc might be the vogue thing to do to talk about today.

01:05:03.461 --> 01:05:13.180
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But like when such things really had happened or whenever people have tried to actually do such things, most of these, most of the people who have argued for decolonization haven't really liked it.

01:05:13.290 --> 01:05:16.760
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, they kind of, they were the first people to sort of reject those things.

01:05:16.760 --> 01:05:20.899
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And in a way, so one of the things that these people talk about for instance is colonial futurity, right.

01:05:20.900 --> 01:05:33.999
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, so this understanding of like, when colonialists, when like current colonialists talk about progressive colonialists, such as the critical theorists, right I mean, who are part of the colonial establishment, but are critical of it.

01:05:43.560 --> 01:05:45.004
<v Tathagata Sengupta> When they talk about decolonization and a lot of them do talk about decolonization.

01:05:45.004 --> 01:05:45.117
<v Tathagata Sengupta> What, I mean, Freire is an example of this.

01:05:45.130 --> 01:05:58.270
<v Tathagata Sengupta> When, they talk about a decolonized world, somehow their decolonized world they're in, they seem to be keeping a space for the erstwhile colonizers.

01:05:58.290 --> 01:06:03.760
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Like there can be a change of hearts of the colonizers and then they can also exist.

01:06:03.760 --> 01:06:06.299
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean we want a society where everyone can exist, right.

01:06:06.590 --> 01:06:12.939
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, there is a certain kind of colonial anxiety, like we need to sort of theorize decolonization in such a way that does not preclude us from a decolonized future, right.

01:06:12.939 --> 01:06:12.944
<v Tathagata Sengupta> We should be also protected to some extent, right.

01:06:12.944 --> 01:06:13.943
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So for instance, you can see this happening in Freire's writings whenever he talks about sort of the role of the colonizer, the critical colonizer, right, I mean, the role of the term Freire uses, the role of the oppressor, the role of the enlightened oppressor, right.

01:06:13.943 --> 01:06:14.463
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, Freire has this notion of enlightened oppressor, right.

01:06:14.463 --> 01:06:14.787
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean that you are an oppressor, but you can reach a state of enlightenment where you are no longer the oppressor, right and then you are fine and so on.

01:06:14.787 --> 01:06:16.224
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Which is why it's not, I don't find it surprising that, so in a place like India, all these kinds of upper caste organizations and I include upper caste communist organizations.

01:06:16.224 --> 01:06:18.910
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mainly actually talking about upper caste communist organizations, who for a long time have been working on questions of education and so on.

01:07:15.310 --> 01:07:26.050
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And these are the same people who have by various means prevented non-upper caste people from becoming political members, from becoming leaders of their parties.

01:07:26.690 --> 01:07:29.000
<v Tathagata Sengupta> They've prevented women from becoming leaders of their parties.

01:07:29.080 --> 01:07:35.580
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But at the same time, if you look at their education, ideas of education etc, all of them come out, seem to begin from Paulo Freire.

01:07:38.000 --> 01:07:38.900
<v Tathagata Sengupta> They are all Freirians.

01:07:38.900 --> 01:07:43.609
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean everyone like critical pedagogy like seventies, eighties, nineties, if you look at the history of critical pedagogy work in India.

01:07:43.609 --> 01:07:55.360
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Everyone is a Paulo Freire right, I mean banking model, everyone knows the banking model and everyone has set up like these reading, adult education movements and study circles and these kinds of things based on Paulo Freire's ideas.

01:07:56.400 --> 01:07:58.129
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, it's quite amazing, right.

01:07:58.130 --> 01:08:15.810
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, it's quite amazing that why not Frantz Fanon, I mean why is Fanon so difficult to sort of like practice as opposed to Freire and I think the reason is if you read Freire carefully, it's basically because Freire gives the colonialists the kind of space that Fanon refuses to give.

01:08:15.880 --> 01:08:24.543
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Fanon says that if you are serious about the violence of colonization across centuries, you should give up at least temporarily speaking as a colonizer, you should give up any hope of futurity.

01:08:24.543 --> 01:08:32.149
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right, you should wake up to that fact of life that if seriously decolonization politics happens, no one will really care.

01:08:32.540 --> 01:08:38.630
<v Tathagata Sengupta> When a mob comes and sets fire to your urban metropolitan city centers, they will not care who a good colonial is and who is a bad colonial is.

01:08:39.069 --> 01:08:39.789
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right, they'll not do that.

01:08:39.949 --> 01:08:43.120
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, we can't expect that to happen.

01:08:43.390 --> 01:08:45.598
<v Tathagata Sengupta> It's actually outright dishonest academic practice to sort of ignore that and begin from that kind of a hidden assumption that there are good colonialists and bad colonialists.

01:08:45.598 --> 01:08:51.800
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So anyway, these are some of the people I have in mind.

01:08:51.800 --> 01:09:15.945
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, there are many others, like I said [inaudible] , so there are people like Sylvia Federici, there are lots of historians that I'm borrowing from, there are lots of anthologists I'm borrowing from, there are lots of sociologists I'm borrowing from.

01:09:15.945 --> 01:09:15.993
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And there are mathematicians also that I'm borrowing from.

01:09:15.993 --> 01:09:16.483
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, people like Sabina Hossenfelder, she's a theoretical physicist who has been raging this really difficult battle to sort of basically, she calls it 'gobbledygook'.

01:09:16.483 --> 01:09:17.249
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I guess what I'm calling occult, Hossenfelder calls it 'gobbledygook', when she talks about [inaudible] where she talks about how this intense mathematization has converted physics into gobbledygook, right.

01:09:17.249 --> 01:09:17.262
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Which is why we are kind of stuck.

01:09:17.262 --> 01:09:17.282
<v Tathagata Sengupta> If you think about advanced cutting edge physics research, we are stuck beyond.

01:09:17.282 --> 01:09:17.294
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, post-Einstein, we are basically stuck.

01:09:17.294 --> 01:09:17.328
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Which is for like 50, 60 years and this has now evolved into a huge crisis within actually the professional physics community.

01:09:17.328 --> 01:10:20.309
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And people like Hossenfelder are not coming from the kind of political positions that I'm coming from, but their diagnosis when it comes to sort of what's happening with physics, I think matches quite strikingly with the diagnosis of a lot of these other people that are [inaudible] who are not necessarily talking about what's happening in the physics department so to speak, but when they talking about the what's happening on the streets.

01:10:20.309 --> 01:10:29.989
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So what's happening on the streets is not different from what's happening within the physics department, within the large [inaudible] . So, it kind of spans across a large number of [inaudible]

01:10:29.989 --> 01:10:54.790
<v Tathagata Sengupta> .

<v Vishesh Kumar> Yeah, there's even in, especially in the US learning sciences, so there is an interesting move of trying to figure out the relevance of Freire and even that it seems canonically within the science part of the learning science, the cognitive psych history or so on.

01:10:55.460 --> 01:11:00.609
<v Vishesh Kumar> I think even Freire is considered somewhat and underutilized radical perspective.

01:11:00.910 --> 01:11:02.309
<v Vishesh Kumar> So it is fascinating to hear.

01:11:03.290 --> 01:11:03.460
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Yeah.

01:11:03.910 --> 01:11:04.899
<v Vishesh Kumar> You're framing and

01:11:05.090 --> 01:11:14.095
<v Tathagata Sengupta> These days, by doing this work, the point we have reached now is now even Freire is kind of too much to sort of even Freire has become too radical.

01:11:14.095 --> 01:11:14.763
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, look where we have come to.

01:11:14.763 --> 01:11:25.289
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, we are talking, when compared to sixties where even like a typical sort of, let's say a socialist Congressi type, would also talk about Paulo Freire right.

01:11:28.180 --> 01:11:44.050
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And from there, we have come today at a place where even Freire is kind of untouchable.

01:11:44.050 --> 01:11:44.086
<v Vishesh Kumar> Interesting.

01:11:44.086 --> 01:11:45.330
<v Vishesh Kumar> This, a bit moving our conversation side base.

01:11:45.330 --> 01:11:58.280
<v Vishesh Kumar> But I think there is a continuation, the next question where you've so far, especially the pieces I saw you were, you've been utilizing this variety of nontraditional channels and forms of writing.

01:11:59.070 --> 01:12:08.250
<v Vishesh Kumar> What has been the thinking behind these writing choices and what are your thoughts on the affordances of different media and forms?

01:12:08.370 --> 01:12:10.500
<v Vishesh Kumar> What audiences do you think are more reachable?

01:12:13.510 --> 01:12:13.800
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Yeah.

01:12:13.800 --> 01:12:13.891
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I think so.

01:12:13.891 --> 01:12:13.897
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Yeah.

01:12:13.897 --> 01:12:13.908
<v Tathagata Sengupta> That's right.

01:12:13.908 --> 01:12:13.971
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, so that was a kind of a conscious decision.

01:12:13.971 --> 01:12:17.827
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, I do want to experiment around forms and styles and in a sense, it kind of comes from a larger general hypothesis in a way and I mean [inaudible] borrowing from a long tradition of people that, I mean forms are central forms and media are central to forms of expression and media of expression are quite central to sort of knowledge in general, right.

01:12:17.827 --> 01:12:57.114
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, knowledge, the fact that something like mathematics, I mean if you think about it, right there is something like mathematics that's any of these disciplines, so to speak, they don't like exist on their own.

01:12:57.114 --> 01:12:57.236
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right.

01:12:57.236 --> 01:13:00.270
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, you don't have anything called mathematics really.

01:13:00.280 --> 01:13:02.210
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right, I mean, all what you really have are mathematicians.

01:13:02.220 --> 01:13:03.460
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right, and mathematics is basically what they do.

01:13:03.460 --> 01:13:05.349
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right, so you basically have people doing stuff, right.

01:13:05.349 --> 01:13:08.749
<v Tathagata Sengupta> That's basically what you have.

01:13:08.789 --> 01:13:08.899
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right.

01:13:08.899 --> 01:13:11.429
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, you don't have a standalone.

01:13:11.429 --> 01:13:29.989
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Now, if you're to take that seriously and quite literally, then the sheer fact that not everyone adopts the same kinds of, same forms of expression and not everyone adopts the same media, should have something to do with how people do mathematics.

01:13:30.270 --> 01:13:31.480
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right, or what does it mean to do mathematics.

01:13:32.740 --> 01:13:39.789
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, that is kind of one of the reasons why I want to experiment a bit with these different forms.

01:13:39.879 --> 01:13:42.220
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, question of media, yes, absolutely.

01:13:42.220 --> 01:13:57.720
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean today, when we talk about digital media, for instance, I mean, I think it, I always find it really like really an interesting exercise to sort of go back and sort of, kind of tally what people are saying today with what people were saying when let's say printing press came out.

01:13:58.160 --> 01:14:14.440
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, so we know people today, so that was also a similarly radical technological media, technological sheet paradigm, which kind of had huge, unforeseen impacts on what people meant by science, what people meant by mathematics and all that, right.

01:14:15.380 --> 01:14:34.840
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Something quite similar is happening obviously today with like digital media and [inaudible] . And the comparisons in a way, like the point of going back to history is to sort of also try to see, because otherwise a lot of these things that we are embedded in, in the present feel a lot of times, these things feel as if these things are happening for the first time.

01:14:35.580 --> 01:14:37.047
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And as if the kinds of concerns and anxieties that we are all trying to grapple with as if we're the first people to sort of [inaudible] like that's obviously not true, right.

01:14:37.047 --> 01:14:37.056
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, we get a sense of that when we actually go back into history and try to investigate what people discussing around those similar kinds of episodes.

01:14:37.056 --> 01:14:37.059
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, for instance, just to take an example of those, right.

01:14:37.059 --> 01:14:37.065
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So we all today know how this WhatsApp culture is kind of destroying knowledge and data etc, right.

01:14:37.065 --> 01:14:37.068
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Spreading misinformation and spreading violence.

01:14:37.068 --> 01:14:37.440
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And amazingly, some of these people are at the same time, there are also people who think that printing press was a necessarily positive thing to have happened, right.

01:14:37.440 --> 01:14:37.494
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Printing press, oh printing press led to like an explosion of really good knowledge.

01:14:37.494 --> 01:14:38.101
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But, this internet WhatsApp is killing all that progress we made, right.

01:14:38.101 --> 01:14:45.620
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, that's kind of the sense we get, right.

01:14:45.620 --> 01:15:32.920
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But if you look at the first things, I would say one of the main impacts of printing press culture when it came up, is Witch-hunts, right.

01:15:34.020 --> 01:15:45.894
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean if you look at the history of Witch-hunts in Europe, spanning across three centuries, the role that printing press played in that is quite unbelievable, it's very, it's exactly similar to the kind of roles, the role that WhatsApp groups are playing today.

01:15:45.894 --> 01:15:59.000
<v Tathagata Sengupta> In terms of agitating people about what, who are the witches and how to hunt them down, how to look at your neighbor, how to investigate that your neighbor is, I mean what does it mean to be a witch.

01:15:59.000 --> 01:16:11.290
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And those kinds of blue books would be circulated and they would be printed and distributed feeling and lynch mobs would be sort of mobs would come up and all that, right.

01:16:11.290 --> 01:16:18.185
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So it's like, but somehow we have erased the last part of that history at least from common popular discourse, right.

01:16:18.185 --> 01:16:22.300
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean we, don't, when we think of printing press, the last thing we think about easily, right.

01:16:23.220 --> 01:16:27.640
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, that's kind of, in that sense, I think the questions about media are extremely important.

01:16:27.640 --> 01:16:46.710
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And I think I don't have one thing to say about it, but for specific cases type [inaudible] but yeah, in general, of course I think media and forms of expression are quite, I would say quite central to production.

01:16:49.010 --> 01:16:49.180
<v Vishesh Kumar> Yeah.

01:16:49.180 --> 01:17:02.530
<v Vishesh Kumar> But they build on the general thoughts of yes, the medium as the message and also the people you'd talk to, the people you'd do things with, whatever is recognized.

01:17:04.119 --> 01:17:10.250
<v Vishesh Kumar> And how I'm seeing also participates in the, participating in the delineation of these things.

01:17:11.420 --> 01:17:17.970
<v Vishesh Kumar> What counts as math versus what counts as numerology or something are connections that are coming in my head.

01:17:17.970 --> 01:17:25.620
<v Vishesh Kumar> But I'm also interested to see here if you've, I think you mentioned that you've not been doing this for too long.

01:17:25.630 --> 01:17:32.759
<v Vishesh Kumar> But one also, do you want to share, what are some of the different things that you have experimented with and what have you found through them?

01:17:32.770 --> 01:17:36.520
<v Vishesh Kumar> Like, what are the conversations they spark, what did you hear back?

01:17:37.049 --> 01:17:44.390
<v Vishesh Kumar> What do you feel like were the affordances of writing a play dialogue sort of thing versus,

01:17:44.570 --> 01:17:45.250
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Absolutely nothing.

01:17:45.250 --> 01:17:46.113
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I had no feedback from anyone.

01:17:46.220 --> 01:17:47.760
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I don't think many people read also.

01:17:47.760 --> 01:17:48.290
<v Vishesh Kumar> I see.

01:17:48.290 --> 01:17:50.145
<v Tathagata Sengupta> You are of the very few people.

01:17:50.410 --> 01:17:57.577
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I also didn't send it around too much, because a lot of these things I want to, I don't know I'm generally very self doubting.

01:17:57.630 --> 01:18:00.930
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I am probably right now, not coming across as very self doubting, but I really am.

01:18:00.930 --> 01:18:21.030
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, which is actually why I have also avoided going for really formal publications and so on, because which is why I also requested you, if you could sort of postpone this meeting for a month because some of the things I told I was talking about, like on occult etc, those are some of the things I was studying then when you, so, I wanted to be careful with what I said.

01:18:21.030 --> 01:18:29.377
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I wanted to sort of check out a little more few things, I didn't want to say things that wouldn't be correct, right.

01:18:29.460 --> 01:18:36.240
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But the reason I kind of wrote those pieces that I wrote and kind of at least put them up in some places in public domain is to get feedback, right.

01:18:36.510 --> 01:18:38.250
<v Tathagata Sengupta> That's basically why one should write, right.

01:18:38.620 --> 01:18:41.560
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Because otherwise, how do you get feedback from?

01:18:41.560 --> 01:18:48.889
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So in that sense, I have got feedback from people but these are still people who I kind of send those links, people I know basically, right.

01:18:48.889 --> 01:18:51.960
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean kind of based on some kind of personal network connections and so on, and

01:18:51.970 --> 01:18:52.350
<v Vishesh Kumar> Yeah.

01:18:52.920 --> 01:18:55.990
<v Tathagata Sengupta> You send something you wrote to one of your friends and ask for feedback.

01:18:55.990 --> 01:18:59.040
<v Tathagata Sengupta> That kind of feedback I got, but general public feedback, I didn't get.

01:18:59.590 --> 01:19:14.870
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And in a sense, I think that's fine because I like this particular phase because it also gives someone like me, sort of some peaceful few years to sort of work out some of the details before really having to face the music of,

01:19:14.980 --> 01:19:15.540
<v Vishesh Kumar> Having yeah.

01:19:15.850 --> 01:19:16.240
<v Tathagata Sengupta> That you're,

01:19:16.280 --> 01:19:17.099
<v Vishesh Kumar> Public scrutiny.

01:19:17.110 --> 01:19:19.954
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So I want to be a little bit more prepared before I get there.

01:19:20.059 --> 01:19:20.349
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So,

01:19:22.170 --> 01:19:22.480
<v Vishesh Kumar> Nice.

01:19:23.059 --> 01:19:25.699
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I don't, I don't think I answered your question though.

01:19:25.740 --> 01:19:25.979
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean,

01:19:26.009 --> 01:19:26.389
<v Vishesh Kumar> I think

01:19:27.799 --> 01:19:28.170
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Affordances, yes.

01:19:28.190 --> 01:19:31.809
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, on the question of affordances, I think, some of the little bit feedback I did get.

01:19:32.580 --> 01:19:32.769
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Yeah.

01:19:32.769 --> 01:19:35.549
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, I think those people were quite interested in response.

01:19:35.550 --> 01:19:43.469
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And this includes people, some of my friends with whom I have differences, it's not like I agree with everything that they do.

01:19:43.480 --> 01:19:52.519
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But some of my friends in friends and colleagues in education research, who I send those pieces to, and who sort of work on these kinds of questions of science education and media and forms and this kind of things.

01:19:53.679 --> 01:20:19.620
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And the feedback I got from them is largely [inaudible] but beyond that, since we haven't really tried it out in sort of a public sense, for instance, I don't really, I can't tell you how sort of a young student would go through this and they would make out.

01:20:19.620 --> 01:20:20.820
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And so that's something,

01:20:20.830 --> 01:20:21.230
<v Vishesh Kumar> I see.

01:20:22.629 --> 01:20:24.389
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Hopefully I'll have an answer to,

01:20:24.599 --> 01:20:31.550
<v Vishesh Kumar> Do you have any thoughts on its features affordances in for your own thinking or expression?

01:20:32.990 --> 01:20:33.250
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Yeah.

01:20:33.250 --> 01:20:33.849
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Oh, okay.

01:20:33.849 --> 01:20:38.020
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Yeah, so one of the, I mean again and I guess it's best to sort of cite examples, right.

01:20:38.020 --> 01:20:48.990
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, one of the things, again, this came up through studying the history of religion and science, particularly the history of Alchemy right.

01:20:48.990 --> 01:20:52.559
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right now, I'm actually quite, really, I find it, I don't know.

01:20:52.580 --> 01:20:57.470
<v Tathagata Sengupta> You should also try.

01:20:57.969 --> 01:21:00.900
<v Tathagata Sengupta> One of the things is, for instance, that what we mean by Chemistry today, right.

01:21:00.900 --> 01:21:03.740
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, it kind of goes back.

01:21:04.380 --> 01:21:08.137
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, basically obviously, I mean, Alchemy is the precursor of what we mean by Chemistry.

01:21:08.137 --> 01:21:10.940
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But what's quite amazing is one thing that the kind of continuity, right.

01:21:11.250 --> 01:21:13.676
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So for instance, most of the standard, at least like school, the school laboratory kind of or even the kind of the large sections of even some of the industrial laboratory setup kind of, the process of distillations or the kinds of instruments that we, or the kind of vessels that we used, etc.

01:21:13.676 --> 01:21:13.803
<v Tathagata Sengupta> These are directly inherited from thousands of years of our Alchemical practice.

01:21:13.803 --> 01:21:13.814
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right.

01:21:13.814 --> 01:21:14.482
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, we owe a lot to the history of Alchemical practice.

01:21:14.482 --> 01:21:14.544
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But, one thing that really I found quite fascinating is how, so basically what I mean to say is the idea of laboratory, right.

01:21:14.544 --> 01:21:14.585
<v Tathagata Sengupta> The idea of laboratory is not due to Charles Boyle or any of those guys, right.

01:21:14.585 --> 01:21:14.631
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean you had a notion of laboratories for thousands of years, right where people were doing that.

01:21:14.631 --> 01:21:14.923
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And, by thousands of years, I actually mean, let's say as far back as Pharaonic Egypt, right.

01:21:14.923 --> 01:21:15.675
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean Pharaonic Egypt is actually one of the main centers of Alchemical research.

01:21:15.675 --> 01:21:16.523
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Alexandria and [inaudible] . Two of the first known or documented sort of writers or documented Alchemists so to speak, who sort of taught Alchemy and who gave lectures on Alchemy, both are women.

01:21:16.523 --> 01:21:16.551
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And, the person I want to mention is called Cleopatra.

01:21:16.551 --> 01:21:16.582
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, this is the, this is not the same Cleopatra.

01:21:16.582 --> 01:21:16.602
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, this is Cleopatra, the Alchemist.

01:21:16.602 --> 01:21:16.647
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And, so she was one of the first recorded Alchemist and the trend setter of sorts.

01:21:16.647 --> 01:21:16.698
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean she was to Alchemy to what today Newton, Isaac Newton is to sort of [inaudible] right.

01:21:16.698 --> 01:21:16.726
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean even her teacher, her instructor was another woman.

01:21:16.726 --> 01:21:16.743
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, these are two women.

01:21:16.743 --> 01:21:16.774
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So her teacher was named Miriam, Jewish, a Hebrew-speaking Jewish woman.

01:21:16.774 --> 01:21:16.824
<v Tathagata Sengupta> The point I was trying to get at is, if you look at how Cleopatra describes a laboratory.

01:21:16.824 --> 01:21:28.851
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Or something like how she's writing about sort of this act of hermetically-sealed vessels in which you are conducting your chemical experiments on a burner and so on, on fire and something.

01:21:28.851 --> 01:21:28.956
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Cleopatra describes that vessel, that hermetically-sealed vessel as metaphorically and as analogous to the mother's womb.

01:21:28.956 --> 01:21:28.960
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right.

01:21:28.960 --> 01:21:29.021
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And she constantly talks, I mean, that's the language she uses to talk about chemical research.

01:21:29.021 --> 01:21:29.085
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean for her, the language of chemical research is basically a feminist language in that sense.

01:21:29.085 --> 01:21:29.135
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean it's about like how, producing, like child-rearing kind of thing, right.

01:21:29.135 --> 01:21:29.169
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, then she's talking about like biological world.

01:21:29.169 --> 01:21:29.226
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, so she places her chemistry laboratory in an inseparable world of lives, right.

01:21:29.226 --> 01:21:29.340
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Now, if you compare that to today's pharmaceutical companies laboratory, I mean, centering something on that kind of biological lives, is the last thing you expect to happen there, right.

01:21:29.340 --> 01:21:29.401
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, the kind of industrial, when you think of the typical modern, industrial chemical level.

01:21:29.401 --> 01:21:29.580
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Now this is the point why I'm raising this because, and that's where we need to get into some of the details of what they're then doing with all that and how the science is developing in a sense is, what kind of impact does it have?

01:21:29.580 --> 01:21:29.679
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Like, I mean, so on the face of it, it may not sort of mean much, on the face of it may not sound very significant.

01:21:29.679 --> 01:21:29.701
<v Tathagata Sengupta> It might just sound as, okay.

01:21:29.701 --> 01:21:30.034
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Just another metaphorical device to think about basically the same thing, right.

01:21:30.034 --> 01:21:30.608
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But, it's actually quite telling how, that's not the case.

01:21:30.608 --> 01:21:37.791
<v Tathagata Sengupta> It's actually quite telling how the form or the kind of metaphysical, what do you call it, like the metaphysical background or the metaphysical language or the world that you choose to sort of talk about something like a chemical experiment, the kind of impact that has on the science of Chemistry itself, on the kind of experiments that you do, right.

01:21:37.791 --> 01:21:37.792
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean how you connect it with everything else that you do.

01:21:37.792 --> 01:21:37.792
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right.

01:21:37.792 --> 01:21:37.794
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, so for instance, there, you won't have, so for instance, today, I mean, what has happened today on the other hand, right.

01:21:37.794 --> 01:21:37.798
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So one of my friends, we are working on this also, that's another project that I told you initially, that kind of getting split into like five different projects.

01:21:37.798 --> 01:21:37.811
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And I hope that somewhere that all come together, but so one of those project that I'm kind of currently engaged in is, with another friend, on the relations between chemistry and mathematics.

01:21:37.811 --> 01:21:38.701
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And that kind of centering these things on the question of health.

01:21:38.701 --> 01:21:38.916
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So there we were discussing how, we are trying to sort of discuss how.

01:21:38.916 --> 01:21:39.222
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So if you look at sort of, modern medicines, right, if you have to take the example of modern medicines.

01:21:39.222 --> 01:21:39.420
<v Tathagata Sengupta> If you go to Patancheru right, I mean, and, and we did this.

01:21:39.420 --> 01:21:39.711
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean in the sense, Patancheru is this town near Hyderabad and it's right next to University of Hyderabad.

01:21:39.711 --> 01:21:40.017
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Right, so when I was there and this friend I'm saying he was also a chemistry department master student there.

01:21:40.017 --> 01:21:40.231
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, we would, we were part of various kinds of groups that went into.

01:21:40.231 --> 01:21:40.476
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, Patancheru is that area that is kind of right next to the University of Hyderabad.

01:21:40.476 --> 01:21:40.706
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And Patancheru is sort of the, you could call it the pharmaceutical hub of India.

01:21:40.706 --> 01:21:40.859
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean the whole town is basically a pharmaceutical town.

01:21:40.859 --> 01:21:41.348
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So all medicines, genetic drug industries that you can think of, American industries, Japanese industries, companies, American companies, all, and also Indian companies, all of them have production units in that area.

01:21:41.348 --> 01:21:41.563
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And Patancheru on the, so that's where our modern medicines are coming from, right.

01:21:41.563 --> 01:21:42.870
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, so when, during this kind of pandemic times, as we would really hope that we have that whole Patancheru town should be as active, producing as many medicines as you possibly can and that kind of the, that's how important that town is, that industry is for our modern, our current notion of being healthy.

01:21:42.870 --> 01:28:05.129
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But at the same time, Patancheru, not surprisingly is also the third most polluted town in the whole country.

01:28:05.949 --> 01:28:12.480
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And so to the extent that the entire water system in that region has been completely messed up.

01:28:12.480 --> 01:28:16.760
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And if you go to sort of, so these are the, this is Telangana, right.

01:28:16.950 --> 01:28:31.492
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, this was kind of, this was 'Nizam Ka Area', right.

01:28:31.492 --> 01:28:40.480
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And one of the things that the Nizams were like fantastic built I would say is, tank irrigation systems, right.

01:28:40.740 --> 01:28:40.923
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, if you look at Telangana irrigation systems, they are like quite amazing the kind of irrigation systems that were in place.

01:28:40.923 --> 01:28:40.924
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, so Patancheru is no exception.

01:28:40.924 --> 01:28:40.936
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So you go to that place, you'll find this really strategically developed reservoirs that would hold contained water, because you have to understand that this is plateau region, right.

01:28:40.936 --> 01:28:41.440
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So water is, it's not as watery as let's say Bengal or Gangetic Plains.

01:28:41.450 --> 01:28:46.952
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, these are serious irrigation business, right.

01:28:46.952 --> 01:29:08.443
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And so they have this huge tanks on which essentially the entire locality depends for everything, right.

01:29:08.690 --> 01:29:14.420
<v Tathagata Sengupta> For drinking water, for grazing their animals, for everything basically, right.

01:29:14.420 --> 01:29:20.059
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And when now, if you go to that area, you'll find those stands it's quite, that site itself is quite chilling.

01:29:20.059 --> 01:29:20.279
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Okay.

01:29:20.279 --> 01:29:26.780
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, so you'll find like skeletons of cows and buffaloes, cattle, scattered all around those stands.

01:29:26.910 --> 01:29:32.799
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, these are cattle who have drank that water and poisoned, been poisoned to death because the water has become so poisonous.

01:29:34.320 --> 01:29:37.450
The point I'm trying to make is the following:

01:29:37.480 --> 01:29:56.260
<v Tathagata Sengupta> That somehow, I mean, in our infinite wisdom, we have created a science where, so let's say, when you say health, health of the human body and health of nature have become too completely different things.

01:29:56.600 --> 01:29:56.987
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And in fact, they seem to be in, at loggerheads with each other, right.

01:29:56.987 --> 01:29:57.723
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, so you have this antibiotic industry, the pharmaceutical industry, and the side effect of that pharmaceutical industry is this environmental catastrophe, which in fact has turned the entire region into what has been in several reports described as a petri dish of micro bugs.

01:29:57.723 --> 01:29:59.089
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, it's not, I mean how much more irony could it get that.

01:29:59.089 --> 01:30:01.695
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, this Patancheru it's not just the source of main bulk source of medicines, it's simultaneously also the main bulk source of Superbugs, right.

01:30:01.695 --> 01:30:50.019
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Now, the thing is now, if you go and talk about, try to talk about this to sort of the scientists who are working in the pharmaceutical company, they will say that, oh, you are really looking for either the policy makers or you're looking to, you should talk to the politicians, or you should talk to the regulatory authorities, or you should go talk to the environmentalists.

01:30:50.470 --> 01:30:52.460
<v Tathagata Sengupta> We are chemists, this is not exactly our concept.

01:30:53.760 --> 01:30:55.159
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Now going back to Cleopatra, right.

01:30:55.230 --> 01:31:03.579
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Why Cleopatra's world is so different is that this kind of a question, like Cleopatra couldn't, people like her couldn't have said this, right.

01:31:03.579 --> 01:31:09.509
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, they couldn't have said that, "Your concern, I'm just a chemist and your chemical concerns, your environmental concerns, these are the chemistry, it has got nothing to do with me.

01:31:11.919 --> 01:31:16.290
<v Tathagata Sengupta> You should go talk to some ecologist."

01:31:16.750 --> 01:31:19.390
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, that would be unimaginable, right.

01:31:19.630 --> 01:31:20.329
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, that's what I mean.

01:31:20.330 --> 01:31:28.629
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So would that be the same science or what would it have been like in a sense, of course there would be overlaps and we would have lots of common ideas.

01:31:28.900 --> 01:31:33.387
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I'm pretty sure that we still have about what Chemistry is as a science.

01:31:33.440 --> 01:31:41.620
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But, I would think that it would not be fundamentally the same kind of science.

01:31:41.620 --> 01:31:43.500
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And we wouldn't even mean the same thing.

01:31:43.500 --> 01:32:02.749
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I think anyway, that's a long-winded, this thing of basically coming back to saying that, in my own experience, this has been one of the ways in which forms and how you think about something like laboratory for instance, has got a lot to do with what scientific output comes out of that level.

01:32:02.749 --> 01:32:10.630
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, these two things are in my understanding inseparable.

01:32:11.660 --> 01:32:11.836
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Sorry, I don't know, that is somewhat,

01:32:11.836 --> 01:32:16.170
<v Vishesh Kumar> No, that was completely relevant and insightful.

01:32:18.849 --> 01:32:19.379
<v Vishesh Kumar> Thank you.

01:32:20.700 --> 01:32:30.040
<v Vishesh Kumar> Think as we get close to, this is basically the last formal question, but yeah, if you feel like you like talk about it, how has Covid'19 shaped?

01:32:30.040 --> 01:32:35.960
<v Vishesh Kumar> How you, the nature of your work, how you orient to your work now?

01:32:37.130 --> 01:32:38.840
<v Vishesh Kumar> What you think should be doing, what has foregrounded, etc?

01:32:38.840 --> 01:32:38.841
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Yeah.

01:32:38.841 --> 01:32:44.424
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, so Covid'19 did a couple of things for me, I could say.

01:32:44.424 --> 01:32:55.699
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean one thing, I mean, I'll not go and take up your time to sort of describe any way, what all of our collective experience has been both.

01:32:56.059 --> 01:33:00.709
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Both you and I, and everyone might be listening to this would know that.

01:33:00.809 --> 01:33:04.040
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But I would just take again, maybe a couple of...

01:33:04.540 --> 01:33:29.120
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, the first thing for me personally, that one of the things that kind of Covid'19 did was that some of these questions that I was already kind of grappling with, or some of the crisis in a sense, that I was already grappling with on some of these questions, just got intensified in, in scale and in seriousness.

01:33:29.140 --> 01:33:49.850
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Even for myself, because of Covid'19, because we, because of seeing what was going on and, and a lot of these questions were those, the kinds of questions that might have been, let's say, vaguely speaking, like sort of theoretical or abstract in my head actually became like really concrete from the Covid'19 experience, right.

01:33:49.880 --> 01:34:04.980
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So in a sense, the Covid'19 experience and the entire, everything, I'm trying to find the appropriate word, but you know what, you understand, right.

01:34:05.110 --> 01:34:12.050
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, what it did was it kind of made those questions really urgent for me.

01:34:12.090 --> 01:34:16.270
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And for many of us, that's one thing that it did.

01:34:18.870 --> 01:34:24.059
<v Tathagata Sengupta> The other thing that it did is yeah again, maybe I should cite concrete example to point out.

01:34:25.219 --> 01:34:30.160
<v Tathagata Sengupta> So, you remember, I mean, there was, there was this, this was I think when the second wave was going on, I was in Delhi then.

01:34:30.190 --> 01:34:38.910
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And this was when basically, every day you wake up and you hear people you know dying.

01:34:39.640 --> 01:34:44.469
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, entire families you know are getting wiped out, people basically dying like flies.

01:34:44.469 --> 01:34:53.430
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And I was in Delhi and for days, right, you would hear ambulances.

01:34:53.430 --> 01:34:57.830
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean constantly, like nonstop ambulances, like going back and forth.

01:34:58.059 --> 01:35:04.269
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And it's just like, I have never, none of us have ever sort of felt that.

01:35:04.299 --> 01:35:14.240
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, what it means, you sort of live in that, people have lived in war zones etc, they have been dealing with such things for ages.

01:35:14.290 --> 01:35:19.219
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But not people like us who had basically sheltered lives, right.

01:35:19.219 --> 01:35:27.143
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean so, around this time, this guy, right I mean that, what's his name, this Adar Poonawalla, right.

01:35:27.143 --> 01:35:58.580
<v Tathagata Sengupta> The Serum Institute, that Pune guy, he kind of gives out this statement that okay, the only way we can sort of vaccinate everyone in this country is if I am given $30,000, know what was, not $30,000, what was the amount, something like, these are like two big orders of magnitude for me, right.

01:35:58.580 --> 01:35:59.246
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I mean, like something 3000.

01:35:59.246 --> 01:36:06.160
<v Tathagata Sengupta> What was the...

01:36:06.160 --> 01:36:10.465
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I don't know, some $3 million, or $300 million, something like that.

01:36:10.740 --> 01:36:16.375
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Some huge, enormous amount of money he said we need to spend to be able to provide vaccines to everyone.

01:36:16.750 --> 01:36:21.469
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Now, already that was, I think, quite obnoxious enough.

01:36:22.550 --> 01:36:30.370
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But what really pissed me off, or threw me off let's say, was not even that guy's statement, but in fact how people started reacting to it.

01:36:30.730 --> 01:36:33.556
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Most of the reactions, if you notice, are basically of two types.

01:36:33.780 --> 01:36:35.379
<v Tathagata Sengupta> One is, is this figure correct?

01:36:35.629 --> 01:36:44.936
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Is this a blown up figure, or should there be a more reasonable estimate of how much it should cost to provide vaccines to everyone?

01:36:44.936 --> 01:36:58.450
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And the second kind of criticism that came up was, or the second kind of debate that happened to an extent is where should this money come from?

01:36:58.450 --> 01:37:04.242
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Should it be private companies, or private banks, let's say financing this?

01:37:04.242 --> 01:37:10.034
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Or, should it be funded by the government or something like that?

01:37:10.034 --> 01:37:19.269
<v Tathagata Sengupta> What threw me off was how in a sense, everyone seemed to have bought into this thing that health is just another budget header in an Excel sheet.

01:37:23.480 --> 01:37:24.882
<v Tathagata Sengupta> You have your wallet, and you have 100 rupees in that, and then you want to spend things.

01:37:24.882 --> 01:37:25.120
<v Tathagata Sengupta> You want to allocate to your monthly household expenses of how to manage your household.

01:37:25.120 --> 01:37:25.121
<v Tathagata Sengupta> That's when we do budgeting, right?

01:37:25.121 --> 01:37:25.122
<v Tathagata Sengupta> That's basically what budgeting means.

01:37:25.122 --> 01:37:25.129
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Now, let's say if we go to a place, let's say if I'm switching houses, and I'm house hunting.

01:37:25.129 --> 01:37:36.929
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And I go to a house in a place like Patancheru, where, let's say, breathing is difficult.

01:37:36.929 --> 01:37:46.079
<v Tathagata Sengupta> It is literally the case.

01:37:46.079 --> 01:38:08.400
<v Tathagata Sengupta> You go to that area, and the fumes often would come all the way to the university.

01:38:08.400 --> 01:38:08.500
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And you can't breathe in that air, it's dense, right?

01:38:08.500 --> 01:38:08.560
<v Tathagata Sengupta> The oxygen levels, et cetera, are...

01:38:08.560 --> 01:38:08.630
<v Tathagata Sengupta> these are being measured by these environmental...

01:38:08.630 --> 01:38:08.690
<v Tathagata Sengupta> It's documented, there's documented, everything's there.

01:38:08.690 --> 01:38:08.750
<v Tathagata Sengupta> It's actually difficult to breathe there.

01:38:08.750 --> 01:38:20.908
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Now, what if someone were to come and tell me that, "Okay, you can take a house here, but notice that you won't be able to breathe as much, breathe in and breathe out as many times as you would have elsewhere."

01:38:20.908 --> 01:38:23.901
<v Tathagata Sengupta> You will have to budget how many times you inhale air.

01:38:23.901 --> 01:38:40.410
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Because if you inhale too much air, you will further deplete the oxygen that is available to you, and that can be really bad for you in the long run.

01:38:46.410 --> 01:38:49.440
<v Tathagata Sengupta> What if breathing becomes a budgeting kind of a question?

01:38:49.440 --> 01:38:51.710
<v Tathagata Sengupta> It sounds really absurd, right?

01:38:52.050 --> 01:39:03.865
<v Tathagata Sengupta> That's how absurd it sounded to me when people bought into that logic of you have this purse, you have this wallet, and you have health concern.

01:39:03.960 --> 01:39:08.112
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And therefore you need to sort out how much you'll breathe, who will breathe, how many people get to breathe.

01:39:08.112 --> 01:39:11.900
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Literally, that's really people literally die from not being able to breathe.

01:39:11.900 --> 01:39:12.110
<v Tathagata Sengupta> [inaudible]

01:39:12.110 --> 01:39:16.290
<v Tathagata Sengupta> .
<v Tathagata Sengupta>  This is not even metaphoric, it's quite literal.

01:39:16.590 --> 01:39:17.407
<v Tathagata Sengupta> How much people are allowed to breathe, essentially, is being determined by your financial budget.

01:39:17.407 --> 01:39:17.434
<v Tathagata Sengupta> That's crazy, right?

01:39:17.434 --> 01:39:18.788
<v Tathagata Sengupta> In a sense, it should have been completely the other way around.

01:39:18.930 --> 01:39:19.378
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Any reasonable society would've taken the exact opposite approach.

01:39:19.378 --> 01:39:42.425
<v Tathagata Sengupta> That in any case, I think this is actually this should be the center of economic rationality.

01:39:42.425 --> 01:39:42.551
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Economic rationality and health.

01:39:42.551 --> 01:39:42.896
<v Tathagata Sengupta> First thing you take care of a society is everyone's health.

01:39:42.896 --> 01:39:43.022
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Everyone should be healthy.

01:39:43.022 --> 01:39:43.900
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And education, everyone should be emotionally healthy or mentally healthy, and intellectually healthy, and physically, biologically healthy and so on.

01:39:43.900 --> 01:39:46.262
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Health, right?

01:39:46.262 --> 01:39:47.443
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Healthcare.

01:39:47.443 --> 01:39:52.168
<v Tathagata Sengupta> These are sort of...

01:39:52.168 --> 01:40:03.981
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And then you define your monetary system based on this.

01:40:03.981 --> 01:40:13.089
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Because the fact is that we actually do that.

01:40:13.179 --> 01:40:15.120
<v Tathagata Sengupta> We actually define money into existence.

01:40:16.780 --> 01:40:17.969
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Because what is money otherwise?

01:40:21.240 --> 01:40:24.750
<v Tathagata Sengupta> We literally print money, and these days we type in money.

01:40:26.200 --> 01:40:30.629
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And all these economic historians, several people have been known the entire modern monetary theory is based on this.

01:40:31.730 --> 01:40:38.170
<v Tathagata Sengupta> That you can basically, the way you bring money into existence is by giving out loans.

01:40:38.500 --> 01:40:42.100
<v Tathagata Sengupta> That two people, that's how money itself gets generated to begin with.

01:40:42.370 --> 01:40:44.219
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Otherwise you don't begin with money, you don't have...

01:40:44.420 --> 01:40:45.580
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Money is not a fact of nature.

01:40:46.230 --> 01:40:51.480
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But the way these arguments are conducted is as you would think that money is a fact of nature.

01:40:54.600 --> 01:41:07.099
<v Tathagata Sengupta> That's one of the things that pushed us into actually starting off this, the first thing that I started off with this relation between economic rationality and mathematical rationality and health.

01:41:07.129 --> 01:41:14.040
<v Tathagata Sengupta> That COVID episode was, in a way, some of those questions were poking around in our minds in a vague sense.

01:41:14.510 --> 01:41:18.420
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But that Adar Poonawala made it really concrete for us.

01:41:21.469 --> 01:41:26.545
<v Tathagata Sengupta> These are the kinds of ways in which...

01:41:26.545 --> 01:41:29.770
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Oh, you are on mute.

01:41:33.139 --> 01:41:36.180
<v Vishesh Kumar> Those are all the on paper were questions we had.

01:41:37.000 --> 01:41:38.479
<v Vishesh Kumar> We are mostly at the end of our time.

01:41:38.480 --> 01:41:44.879
<v Vishesh Kumar> But are there any general other angles, thoughts, that you wanted to remind me?

01:41:44.879 --> 01:41:51.129
<v Vishesh Kumar> This feels like the most important idea for any viewer, or someone to take away?

01:41:52.620 --> 01:42:04.923
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Well, if I have to pick one thing, I think what I'm trying to at the end of the day get at is, or suggest, is that we need to...

01:42:05.490 --> 01:42:11.460
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I think we are living in really remarkable times.

01:42:12.429 --> 01:42:16.759
<v Tathagata Sengupta> A lot of times I feel like we are actually living in a Galilean kind of times.

01:42:16.839 --> 01:42:18.990
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And when we think of Galilean times, we typically think of the telescope and heliocentrism and geocentrism and those kinds of things.

01:42:23.780 --> 01:42:28.420
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But we forget the fact that that was not the whole of the Galilean crisis.

01:42:28.570 --> 01:42:33.910
<v Tathagata Sengupta> The Galilean crisis, when it was happening, it spanned over every sphere of human existence.

01:42:34.840 --> 01:42:49.430
<v Tathagata Sengupta> It was as much about physics as it was about questions of health, as it was about questions of morality and religion, as it was about questions of economic relations and the idea of money and debt, debtor and creditor relations, and all of those kinds of things.

01:42:49.960 --> 01:43:04.190
<v Tathagata Sengupta> That entire thing, and labor relations, all, that entire transgender relations, we mentioned witch hunt, this is the same thing that's part of the Galilean crisis.

01:43:04.190 --> 01:43:08.207
<v Tathagata Sengupta> In a way, I think today we are living in a similar, something that I think is quite comparable..

01:43:08.207 --> 01:43:08.491
<v Tathagata Sengupta> That look all around.

01:43:08.491 --> 01:43:12.642
<v Tathagata Sengupta> For instance, the kind of environmental crisis that we are faced with, the kind of health crisis we are now faced with, this crisis of science.

01:43:12.642 --> 01:43:31.354
<v Tathagata Sengupta> This, for me, this example that I was talking about Patancheru and this separation between the health of nature and the health of people, for me is a fundamental scientific crisis.

01:43:31.354 --> 01:43:32.525
<v Tathagata Sengupta> It's a question of science.

01:43:32.760 --> 01:43:36.120
<v Tathagata Sengupta> If we have built a model of science where this is the rationality, then clearly we are reaching the limits of that kind of a rationality, and it's not working out.

01:43:47.700 --> 01:43:49.579
<v Tathagata Sengupta> We are getting stuck in various fronts.

01:43:49.630 --> 01:43:53.110
<v Tathagata Sengupta> We are faced obviously with an economic crisis across the world.

01:43:54.780 --> 01:44:07.024
<v Tathagata Sengupta> In fact, this Afghanistan crisis, or also and now people have even started saying how what used to be the mainstay of capitalism, the not authentic militarism, not authentic military colonialism.

01:44:07.024 --> 01:44:07.340
<v Tathagata Sengupta> The failure of the American war efforts in West Asia and in Afghanistan and so on.

01:44:08.090 --> 01:44:27.279
<v Tathagata Sengupta> A lot of people have now started talking about this.

01:44:27.479 --> 01:44:29.221
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Very serious people have started talking about this.

01:44:29.221 --> 01:44:31.239
<v Tathagata Sengupta> This is, we've not seen this ever.

01:44:31.690 --> 01:44:35.320
<v Tathagata Sengupta> It looks like something is getting stuck there also.

01:44:35.700 --> 01:44:43.610
<v Tathagata Sengupta> In a sense, that model doesn't seem to be really working out really well commercially speaking, for even America.

01:44:43.620 --> 01:44:49.769
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Which is why, if it was in the business interests of the American empire, let's not kid ourselves, they would never leave Afghanistan.

01:44:49.769 --> 01:44:55.470
<v Tathagata Sengupta> The only reason why they had to leave Afghanistan is because the war had become economically unviable.

01:44:55.480 --> 01:44:58.450
<v Tathagata Sengupta> The war had become commercially unprofitable.

01:44:58.660 --> 01:45:04.420
<v Tathagata Sengupta> The crisis is that how come wars are no longer commercially unviable or unprofitable?

01:45:04.570 --> 01:45:06.830
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Because that's been the story of capitalism.

01:45:07.270 --> 01:45:14.730
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Capitalism wouldn't continue for one day if you don't have military warfare.

01:45:15.730 --> 01:45:21.643
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And then another example that I mentioned also was physics, what's happening with advanced physics, the particle physics and so on.

01:45:21.643 --> 01:45:28.049
<v Tathagata Sengupta> We are, actually in that sense, I do think we are in a Galilean kind of times.

01:45:28.670 --> 01:45:38.759
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And these require really serious introspections, and really serious dialogues across society.

01:45:39.600 --> 01:45:44.010
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And my worry is that, in that context, I wanted to phrase the question of education.

01:45:44.020 --> 01:45:50.649
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And my worry is how much of these concerns around education and learning have been completely subsumed into the concerns of the market and the state and so on.

01:45:52.719 --> 01:45:59.830
<v Tathagata Sengupta> This whole, this constant way of thing of economic survival, et cetera, et cetera.

01:45:59.830 --> 01:46:01.019
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And so this thing of people need to learn mathematics, why?

01:46:01.070 --> 01:46:04.309
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Because otherwise they wouldn't get employment.

01:46:04.309 --> 01:46:10.900
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Well, we are reaching a limit of that project because it's not as if people who are learning mathematics are getting employed.

01:46:11.260 --> 01:46:12.588
<v Tathagata Sengupta> How long can you keep doing this?

01:46:12.588 --> 01:46:12.739
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Sooner or later people will stop taking mathematics classes, because there's absolutely no reason to do this.

01:46:12.739 --> 01:46:12.863
<v Tathagata Sengupta> We are living in a time when, in this country for instance, a B.

01:46:12.863 --> 01:46:29.682
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Tech graduate from a place like IIT Mumbai also doesn't have a guaranteed jobs.

01:46:29.682 --> 01:46:31.215
<v Tathagata Sengupta> There are B.

01:46:31.215 --> 01:46:34.590
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Tech graduates from IITs who are unemployed right now.

01:46:34.590 --> 01:46:37.820
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And well, we are converting it into the go start your own startup, get your own money, et cetera, et cetera.

01:46:37.820 --> 01:46:38.824
<v Tathagata Sengupta> But like Pakoda-seller type.

01:46:38.824 --> 01:46:42.152
<v Tathagata Sengupta> This is not going to work.

01:46:42.152 --> 01:46:46.035
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Everyone knows this is going to crumble.

01:46:46.590 --> 01:47:06.489
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I wanted to end with one thing that I would want to really almost plead to everyone is that it's really crucial that I think we start questioning our Holy Grail assumptions about what learning is, what science is, what common sense is, what education is, and so on so forth.

01:47:06.530 --> 01:47:10.780
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And, yeah.

01:47:13.810 --> 01:47:23.459
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Do it in the sense that we would do anything else.

01:47:23.459 --> 01:47:27.950
<v Tathagata Sengupta> For instance, if we have...

01:47:32.610 --> 01:47:42.870
<v Tathagata Sengupta> [inaudible] . It's funny, whenever you talk about in [inaudible] and those kind of places, whenever you talk about you know that superstition, it's not going to work, and this religion is a mess and so on.

01:47:46.640 --> 01:47:47.440
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And we need science.

01:47:47.500 --> 01:47:50.540
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I don't know if you've noticed this.

01:47:50.550 --> 01:47:59.129
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I've noticed a lot of times this bridge building engineers is somehow the go-to example for these people.

01:47:59.369 --> 01:48:06.030
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And somehow they will say that, oh, if you didn't have precise science, if you didn't have precise engineering, how would you build bridges?

01:48:06.260 --> 01:48:08.470
<v Tathagata Sengupta> You need the bridge to work.

01:48:08.470 --> 01:48:10.280
<v Tathagata Sengupta> Obviously, of course you need mathematics, of course you need precise physics.

01:48:11.440 --> 01:48:12.760
<v Tathagata Sengupta> They will always go to the bridge.

01:48:13.160 --> 01:48:18.064
<v Tathagata Sengupta> I also wanted to [inaudible] in a different sense.

01:48:18.119 --> 01:48:23.080
<v Tathagata Sengupta> If we had an engineer who was building a bridge which is typically breaking down, we would've fired that engineer.

01:48:23.269 --> 01:48:28.810
<v Tathagata Sengupta> That is the sense in which I think we should approach questions of education.

01:48:29.090 --> 01:48:41.080
<v Tathagata Sengupta> If, as educators, we are failing to do something repeatedly year after year, ticket after ticket, then maybe it's time we raise fundamental questions about what it means to be an educator, the kind of questions that people like Jyotiba Phule and Savitribai Phule are raising.

01:48:41.790 --> 01:48:42.683
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And maybe we have to start raising questions about what could be a way to fire all of these?

01:48:42.683 --> 01:48:56.216
<v Tathagata Sengupta> And we could start things from fresh slate, in the way which the current times [inaudible]

01:48:56.216 --> 01:48:57.241
<v Tathagata Sengupta> .

<v Vishesh Kumar> Yeah.

01:48:57.241 --> 01:49:05.445
<v Vishesh Kumar> Thank you for, once again, a provocative note.

01:49:05.445 --> 01:49:15.330
<v Vishesh Kumar> I think that's a valuable, powerful summarization to end with, especially.