These 2 weeks have been a lesson in the necessity for the rigour of planning. I do not enjoy the stress of delayed work, especially delays that I find hard to control.

The soil around the Srishti Manipal campus is getting held tighter. By the occasional rain and the ocassional tilling and the ocassional building.
  • I have started as a Creative Peer at Srishti. I am going to spend a few months teaching and working on the Observer. Planning and designing courses is a good way to jiggle life around, it puts me in a different space.
This course, title “A Critical History of your Constituency”, is planned to initiate enquiry into the everyday functioning and constituting of the country from the closest possible place. Your MLA and your assembly constituency. What is happening in your neighbourhood? How are they affected by the many acts of governance? This is a list of questions learners are expected to answer through maps of their neighbourhoods

  • I have come up with a definition of vibe coding for myself, so that I do not engage in it in the future. I am tired of it.

    Vibe coding is the unplanned activity of giving into ‘vibes’ or ad-hoc wants. It is the ignorance of design and planning because the labour of the coder (AI) is cheap (at the time of me writing this).

    A statement to myself: Functionality and intent need not be vibed.

  • I gifted myself some physical working time. I worked on making a table-top. A friend, S, an industrial designer who posses the skill of whispering the right way to the lumber yard, helped me buy some Pine Wood. We sanded and lacquered it. “French Polishing” I learnt.

    You have to understand that planks come in defined lengths. At this lumber yard, the measurements we went with did not help. You have to talk in thickness with generous tolerances. Your dimensions can also be simplified. Cut a plank into 3, arrange it like a square. Done!

  • While preparing for the course, I learnt of Dr Ambedkar’s opposition to an amendment to the preamble of the Constitution: The amendment on 15Nov 1948 wanted “India shall be a Secular, Federal, Socialist Union of States.” Dr. Ambedkar opposed it then. It is presently: “WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens: […]”

    In the first place the Constitution, as I stated in my opening speech in support of the motion I made before the House, is merely a mechanism for the purpose of regulating the work of the various organs of the State. It is not a mechanism where by particular members or particular parties are installed in office. What should be the policy of the State, how the Society should be organised in its social and economic side are matters which must be decided by the people themselves according to time and circumstances. It cannot be laid down in the Constitution itself, because that is destroying democracy altogether. If you state in the Constitution that the social organisation of the State shall take a particular form, you are, in my judgment, taking away the liberty of the people to decide what should be the social organisation in which they wish to live. It is perfectly possible today, for the majority people to hold that the socialist organisation of society is better than the capitalist organisation of society. But it would be perfectly possible for thinking people to devise some other form of social organisation which might be better than the socialist organisation of today or of tomorrow. I do not see therefore why the Constitution should tie down the people to live in a particular form and not leave it to the people themselves to decide it for themselves. This is one reason why the amendment should be opposed. 1

    SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC, a print from Freedom Park on 26th July.

    I did not know that the current preamble is a remnant of the Emergency. The 42nd Amendment, in 1976, introduced this and the fundamental duties into the constitution along with a slew of undemocratic additions and changes. I feel the language that entered the Constitution has a direct cause and effect relationship in the politics of our time. 2

    The creation of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties was a direct result of this. Jayaprakash Narayanan during the founding moment of PUCL says:

    The Union is coming up at a time when the Civil enshrined in the Constitution, are completely denied to the people. The proposed omnibus amendments to the Constitution are destroying the very basic structure of our democratic Constitution. On this back- ground, the most important activity is to organise, agitate for restoration of Civil Liberties and to create among the people of India, irrespective of caste and creed, democratic awareness and capacity to defend the liberties, when they are attacked.

    I am sure, the Union you are forming will help in restarting democratic processes in the country, which have been blocked at present. I wish the Convention all success. 3

  1. https://www.constitutionofindia.net/debates/15-nov-1948/↩︎

  2. https://www.constitutionofindia.net/articles/article-51a-fundamental-duties/↩︎

  3. https://pucl.org/manage-writings/foundational-declaration-of-pucl-and-a-message-by-jayprakash-narayan/↩︎