Originary Concepts of Classical Indian Art Part I

Originary Concepts of Classical Indian Art Part I: Rupartha –Form and Content

A. Srinivas Rao

30^th May 2012

“Rupam rupam pratirupam bhavati” Rig Veda 6.47.18

“Every form is an image of an original form”.

Head of Buddha, 4th -5th CE Gandhara

Most writing on Indian art tends to gloss over the substantial conceptual basis to its aesthetic foundation, which though not systematic is yet insightful. However Indian aesthetic ideas often spill from literary to performing to plastic art forms and gives rise to what maybe considered synesthetic of a mixture of media and having what some have called an oneiric or dreamlike quality. It is a story that needs to be told with care as it is sometimes dismissed as less intellectually robust than “Western” art. Aesthetics takes as its subject matter beauty and is studied by non artists (as humorously suggested) and as the gag goes “Aesthetics is to artists what ornithology is to birds”. Aesthetics, the content of this subject in India takes its roots from grammar, dramaturgy and literature spilling over into sculpture, architecture and painting and finally into music and dance. Its axial conception is the spectator centric aesthetic experience also called “Rasa” whose translation is loosely “sapience”.  We shall in this essay explore the elements of “Form and Content” or “Rupa-artha”, and reserve the complex idea of “Rasa” for another essay.

Conflict of Interest and Professionalism in the American Corporation

A Srinivas Rao

I cannot but contain the quiet indignation and outrage while watching the film “Inside Job” (2010) by Charles Ferguson. The film is an intelligent critique on the financial crisis of 2008 pieced together with good research into the “Fall of the Wall” of our present times i.e. Wall Street. This film while a critique on the disastrous consequences of deregulation in the financial services industry in the US, throws into the foreground the underbelly of corporate cupidity and caprice and more so the hollow posturing of professionalism. That the US Federal Reserve is influenced, not merely by lobbying by, but staffed by Wall Street at its highest levels of policy making (Rubin, Paulson, Geithner-almost as though Goldman Sachs and Citigroup ran the Treasury) to stymie any regulation of the industry shows how thin the Government line is, in being a custodian of a public trust and espoused values. That, the champions of deregulation included several professors and economists from the best Business Schools and Economics faculty (Summers, Bernanke, Hubbard, Mishkin) makes it sound almost hopelessly corrupt. While some have pointed out that it was the Democrat led Clinton Administration that not only repealed the Glass Steagall Act in 1999 but initiated wholesale deregulation, purportedly against the campaign contributions by professional services firms, it is a partisan view.  In this entire tale what gets overlooked is the fact that the genesis of this lay in dissolving the sentinel like vigil for over seven decades, the regulation to avoid conflict of interests and monopoly power instituted by the New Deal of the depression years of 1930s and in it lay the foundations of the institutional infrastructure of the American Corporation; the prototype for all corporations worldwide. 

Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) in India - “May their tribe increase”: Some reflections

 A. Srinivas Rao

A few days back an old student called up to inform me that he was starting an NGO and I wasn’t sure whether to commend him or dissuade him. NGOs are complex and fragile ecosystems, with a fascinating and combustible mix of ideas, ideals, and great people and sometimes a hubris born of virtue & self sacrifice. I have often found among their ranks a strange mix of people who are inspiring and humbling as well as those profoundly sensitive and profoundly delusional. It is this often contradictory and protean image that makes them so difficult an organisational species to understand and grasp with any certainty.

India had 3.3 million NGOs in 2009 reported the Indian Express July 7^th 2010 quoting a Government commissioned study, that gives us a questionable distinction of having the largest number of NGOs in the world. In other words, India had according to this study one NGO for every 400 people in the country; a fertile breeding ground in more ways than one. That is more than what we can count for in access to schools and health centres. The figures provoke wonder and to some derision, like the recent census data that India has more mobiles than toilets (and according to World Bank poor sanitation costing the exchequer 54 billion USD or 6% of its GDP mainly through pre-mature death Hindustan Times Dec 21^st 2010). However India hasn’t followed Bangladesh where the NGOs have taken up most economic activity unlike a healthy private sector and created huge NGO corporations like the BRAC, Grameen etc; which contests the very idea of an NGO as a space within civil society that stands independent of government and the market as the third sector. The large numbers ironically are testimony to a democratic political functioning of the society, despite their many failings and that the number is driven by the size and ethnic, cultural and religious diversity of the country.