Give our culture a break
Published by Yazad Jal June 2nd, 2005 in Culture and SocietyWe don’t need taxpayers money to prop up our culture. In a brief piece, Sruthijith explains why
The justification for a state-run organisation to promote the ‘ancient cultural heritage of India’ came from two basic assumptions. That the state is the “organised manifestation of people’s will” and hence it must undertake the “maintenance and development (of arts) as one of (its) first responsibilities”.Both these assumptions are invalid. The first more than the second and today, as the nation revels in the prosperity made possible by a philosophy that is the precise antithesis of the one that is pronounced in these lines, more so than ever before. Any and all justification for state patronage for the arts is nothing but an attempt to protect what is an inexhaustible mine of much sought after doles to comrades in crimes, political pimps and party foot soldiers.
Read the whole article.
I’m still trying to figure out why the second assumption is invalid. India’s rich Cultural heritage in addition to good economic growth and development should be primary responsibilities of the State.
Making the state respoonsible for cultural heritage will basically mean the ICHR and other allied departments are the private domain of whichever party is in power, or more particularly which ideology holds sway at the centre. It will lead to Marxist historians dominating the ICHR and impose such nonsense as the detoxification drive. Leave history to historians (anyone can be a historian if he/she puts time into it) and get the state out of the writing history.Nothing good comes of that.
In the days of yore, of kings and vazirs, was it not the patronage of the king, of the nobles which allowed art to prosper. Art as well as science actually.
The common man of yore was not so interested in beauteous paintings, nor in beauteous physics equations.
To require progress in arts and science to be dictated by what the market wants is a recipe for stagnation.
But state patronage does lead to the ills mentioned in the article. Is there a solution? Yes there is.
But before that, let me come back to the basic fallacy in your position, which is that of applying the free-market concept, which requires monetizability of goods as an axiom, to inherently non-monetizable goods.
Euler’s results in Number Theory are useful to cryptography now, but could we monetize it then? You do realize that all the prosperity that allows you the leisure to so speculate upon things, is due to the inherently non-monetizable products of geniuses of yore?
Sorry for the jumbled rantish comment, I I’ll make a more coherent post on this shortly.
oh goody, I found an earlier post of mine on this — clicky.
In the US, most musuems are private nonprofit organizations funded and run by private entities. There are plenty of private foundations that patronize art and support artists. Private universities, which is where most of the basic research takes place, again are largely funded by donations fromn lay people. So, state patronage is hardly necessary.
What you say about art in medieval times is not entirely true. In north India, music and dance was indeed patronized by kings. But in the south, music flourished mostly in temples. (That is also one reason why Carnatic has a plebian and therefore greater following than Hindustani.) Thyagaraja could have had royal patrons if he wanted, but he chose not to. Tulsidas had no royal patron.
There is market for philanthropy and the the promotion of arts and sciences. It is a mistake to assume that market means profit.
Regards
I agree. The State has other things to do; and the management of culture is better done by the community itself. In which case artists should stop seeking State patronage, too. For example, Jitish Kallat’s call in this week’s Mumbai Mirror for state support to contemporary art. I think contemporary art is doing pretty well on its own.
tea: the non-profit organizations and private universities require funds and grants to operate. I’ll give you one guess about who is the biggest dispenser of these grants.
The US has an excellent system with its National Science Foundation, etc. for disbursal of grants where researchers, artists or their organizations thereof compete in the “marketplace” for said grants. The head of such org. are themselves veteran researchers/artists.
This creates a healthy incentive based system as opposed to the problems of state institutions alluded to in the article. That is what I meant in my earlier comment when I said that there is a “solution” — of state sponsorship of research w/o the stink of state interventions.
US senators have little control over NSF, etc. other than setting the budget limits.
Research and Art should not be at the mercy of philanthropy. For that would be a misunderstanding of their purpose as needless past-times of affluence. They are not — in fact I’d argue they are the prime purpose of humanity in the first place.
They are not the effect of affluence, they are the cause!
Excellent comments by #42. I always felt the same as he did, which is that the role of the Indian state should be disburse money and get away from administration. Much like PBS/NPR, National Science Foundation in the US. They serve very important purposes - some of which cannot be determined, as 42 stated, for many years to come.
Seven,
You are way off the mark about the importance of NSF. The total annual NSF budget is about $5 billion. Contrast that with $16 billion that the household sector gives away annually to nonprofit research foundations in the US. We are not including how much universities would fund out of their own corpus (largely collected from alumni donations) and from private-corporate-funded research.
In addition household donate about $10 billion to musuems and libraries.
Regards
Quizman, Pradeep (aka 7*6)
And where is the government going to get the money to pay for your fine ideas? I suppose taxation or deficit financing (fancy term for printing more money and causing inflation). I’d rather avoid.
Uma, I agree. Artists who put out begging bowls in front of the government repulse me. Come on, there must be a priority list for goverment and I think support for arts and culture should be way way down (ideally not there at all).
As a film director, this topic is one I’ve discussed to death, mostly with members of the film fraternity. On more than one occasion, I have been thrown out of the house of a very famous person whom I won’t name( for the obvious reason that I’m a part of the fraternity & hope to remain so). However, let me give you a piece of my mind.
1. Research != Arts. To bring in Euler’s theory of crypto is utterly clueless & idiotic. I don’t know if you are from the science community. The hierarchy is roughly this :
Pure Math -> Physics -> Applied Math -> Applied Science -> Enggr.
ie. puremath walas think physicists are worth shit. Physicists know that, but think applied mathwalas are shit. The applied math guys are atleast doing math, so they thumb down at the applied sci. And ofxcourse, we all know who the pond scum is - Engg/IT, ie. the Infosys/Wipro losers.
Now, ALL of pure math is non-monetizable. If you take stuff like determining an algo for optimum zeros in adjacency matrix that will then determine if the inverse of some other matrix sums to unity…this has ZERO benefit to anybody on planet earth, INCLUDING the researcher himself.
Furthermore, you can postulate infinite problems in this vein. Just change unity to 2, then 3, then 4 & so on.
When I was in my 20s, getting a Comp Sci degree in theoretical shit, this was the norm. People doing their PhDs will get NSF funding by just reworking some age-old problem. Let me give you an actual incident in my own lab - my Prof applied for funding from the US DoD, to solve the switching problem.
Essentially, it boils down to placing n switches in a grid & finding an algo to flip the switches to a desired state in shortest possible number of moves. basically its a game, a trick.
Give 5 coins to a child, some heads & rest tails. Now ask him to flip the coins such that all coins become heads. The catch is that if he flips a coin, he must flip the neighbouring coin.
So he follows this “rule”, if you will, of flipping the neighbour for every flip, & count the flips & get all heads.
Now, this will keep the 10 year old busily engaged for an hour or so ( its not an easy problem, btw ).
Then once he figures out the least number of moves, increase the coins from 5 to 6!
This Professor GOT the DEPT Of DEFENCE to FUND this stupid coin problem to the tune of 20 MILLION dollars! I kid you not. He simply wrote up this child’s problem in suifficiently technical detail, replacing coin with switch, placing switches in a grid ( keep coins in a circle, or hexagon or whatever shape so the “rule” will change since definition of neighbour changes ). He then postulated that this is somehow useful to the DoD & they bought it.
Now, I ask you, where is this 20 mil coming from ? From MY & EVERY US Citizen’s pocket, ofcourse. So that this Prof & his 2 RAs can take 5 years & publish a few papers & travel to some exotic Algo conference in Spain, all at taxpayer expense.
btw, I’m not describing a one-off. This is routine. Any acad dept in sciences not doing applied shit survives this way. In fact, the inventor of Unix actually wrote a paper bemoaning this very fact. Thompson said the PhDs since 70s don’t do any real work, they pursue “amusing trivialities”. Ofcourse, he left out the kicker, “at taxpayer expense”.
This is the state of research in US univs. Now, as a filmmaker in my 30s here in India, I find the exact same theme repeated all over again.
Why should I & the rest of Indian citizenry fund a Girish Kasaravalli for some “Dweepa” that wins “State best film” award but will not run in any karnatake theatre for more than a week, because nobody wants to see it ( other than the khadi clad Page3 junta from film society who use it as a photo-op ) ?
What right does a fucker like Oxford educated Karnad have when he says “India must fund my Kannada films”, when there are atleast million Kannadigas without proper food, water, primary medical care, roads, electricity ? Who the fuck cares about your kannada film Sir ? Please release it to YOUR OWN KANNADIGA AUDIENCE. I guarantee they won’t watch it for more than a week in a commercial theatre. And YOU KNOW THAT. That is the only reason you go to Delhi with a fucking begging bowl every year. That is the only fucking reason for your Outlook article saying “Arts has always had governmwent patronage & must continue to do so”. So you can sit in Sahitya Academy & churn out unwatchable art about some child who turns into a tree, and us poor ignoramus junta must either figure out some deep environmental metaphor in your work, or else be forced to pay for it anyway thru taxes. Why Mister Oxford? Why don’t you fucking use tyour fucking Oxford degree to make some MONEY ? Oh that fucking M word ?! How dare I utter that ? UI must be a capitaliast bastard. Yes I forgot. India is a haven only for commie socialist highpriests of art. Us lesser figures, us capitalist denizens, should clear out of here. For we make ends meet by thriving on what the audience wants, so we must be evil. Because we are “pandering” to the audience. Whereas, you, Sir, have a “refined sensibility”. And hence, we must fund you whether we like it or not.
Just last week, there was a documentary festival here in Trivandrum. 7 days of some 50 odd docus. totally unwatchable except for 2-3 of them. Yet, all of this is funded at taxpayer expense. WHY THE FUCK SHOULD SOME IDIOT GET MY TAX MONEY TO FILM HIS FUCKING GRANDMOTHER TALK ABOUT KATHAKALLI IN THE 1920s ? Who the fuck is interested ? How is it any different from flipping coins ?
Btw, that Professor told me to my face that he came up with the coin problem when he saw his little nephew’s toy.
Thats arts for you.
I have no beef with you Mister Kasaravali, Mister Karnad, Mr Adoor, whoever…just make your OWN money & spend it however you like. Piss on it. Or pay it to prostitute. Or make your art flick about a rupee note becoming a hammer and sickle. Or a coke bottle jumping out of Aamir Khan’s hand & sucking all the Pachimda groundwater dry. Or…oh I forget, these were the exact docus screened last week. AT TAXPAYER EXPENSE. Hail communism.
Anon#11, you make three points in your post. Two of them have been addressed in prev. comments. Why arts and research are being spoken in the same breath (non-monetizable benefits in a section of these) and Why theoretical “shit” is important (what seems like shit to a monkey throwing it around does not shit make)
The third point, implicit in your comment and Yazad’s, is what are some of these non-monetizable benefits of arts?
Take Britney Spears. She is popular, she makes a lot of money; with her music she brings a lot more happiness, and utility to people, as compared to some classical musicians.
Would you want all art to be like that? You might, for all I know, mr. “I cant bring myself to understand how ’simple’ switching games are abstractions of imp. problems in communication and compression, and so they are obviously useless” guy, but to come back to the comment;
The purpose of art is not merely entertainment. The sceneries of Monet or the strains of Beethoven do not derive their worth from what the common man in their ages thought of them, or the amount of pleasure he derived from them.
The purpose is a valuation, an incentivization of that sole quality which sets us apart from animals — the ability to create. To create that which is sublime, to be precise.
A creative ferment — that is what such art gives to society. Any society without such ferment loses vital qualities such as innovation, etc. that is required for the health of society.
Secondly, ever wondered why some arts are called “refined”? Because they refine the senses that’s why. We obtain insights into things, and can appreciate things on a more nuanced i.e. refined level.
For e.g., Poetry without meter might seem mere obfuscation to most, but what makes poetry is the condensed insight that actually refines our perceptions.
After such refinment, things might start to seem more entertaining, but the “benefit” is in the refinement, not mere entertainment.
There is a lot more to it and perhaps I’ll cohere it into a post sometime, but I’ll just add this;
Talking of purveyors of creativity as “begging from society with begging bowls” reflects more on the society than on the creators.
I do agree with one thing though and that is that there should be a system of incentives and sticks in place e.g. peer reviewed rep., grants, etc. in academia.
Seven,
If you read “The Glass Bead Game” by Hesse you will not have such a high opinion of “refined” arts.
What is refined and what is not refined itself is a matter of opinion and debate. But the “refined’ people need to coerce (read tax) the unwahsed masses into supporting their refined lifestyle. I find it obnoxious.
If one were truly pursuing the refined for the sake of the refined, then one would need no patronage. Enjoyment of the process would itself be rewarding. As i said before, a Haridas (Tansen’s guru) or a Thyagaraja or a Bhaskara did not care for patronage. To them the fulfilment from music or math was the end and the reward. If you dont have that, then perhaps your art/science is not good enough.
The call for patronage comes from shallow intellectuals who want to have a good life and yet not be beholden to anybody.
Regards
The call for patronage comes from shallow intellectuals who want to have a good life and yet not be beholden to anybody.
I agree with your sentiments, I consider myself a capitalist too, but here’s the nub:
We, in India, see an obese handout-ridden situation, for e.g. the stuff alluded to in the article, and confuse and mix together two disparate notions: accountability and patronage.
Accountability is a necessity no matter how “refined” the task one is pursuing.
I couldn’t agree more.
But that doesn’t mean that many refined works are completely monetizable and don’t need patronage. Even the word patronage is pejorative, it is actually payment (far less than deserved) towards services rendered.
The reason why there can’t be decentralized payments is because of something called — tragedy of the commons. When the benefits are widespread and accrue to the entire society, who would fit the bill?
This is a complicated matter, and deserves a more thoughtful approach than throwing refined arts to the dogs.
Lest we get a stagnated culturally starved society like Pakistan and some such.
The mistaken assumption ppl make is that fostering creativity should be an effect of affluence; I’d aver it is a cause rather than effect of affluence.
People should be incentivized to take up creative activities; to generate that creative ferment thing I talked about. That is the only way a society can stay in the lead and make progress. I know talking about super-structures like “society” is almost taboo amongst capitalists and anarchists, but there you have it.
See this post for my take on this. Here are the excerpts:
What is this business with non-monetizable vs monetizable things? Trade involves exchange between two parties. Who said one of things exchanged has to be money? I can exchange one painting with another. A good painter can sell his painting for a good book from its author. What’s the problem?
Oh, I see! Painter needs to sell his painting and get food and the grocer may not appreciate his painting (You mean the painter values food above his painting! Where is his refined taste for the fine art?). So, the painter can sell his painting for gold coins and then use the gold coins to purchase food from the grocer. Again, where’s the problem?
….
“People should be incentivized to take up creative activities;”
Pardon me! To whom are you addressing this to? Non-people? If you are addressing this to the people, your statement would look like:
People should incentivize themselves to take up creative activities.
How does one incentivize his/herself?
Ashish: I’m sorry but your doubts/comments were a bit inane, and unbecoming given your prev. comments/posts ?!
Your first “doubt”: money is a trading/exchange instrument. So a good being monetizable basically entails being able to value it and exchange/trade it thereof. Think tangible.
Second: When I say people should be incentivized… I obviously mean by some
societal system.
As in one might say “people should be given freedom”. Do you think it means people giving their own selves freedom?
Mr 42,
I don’t think you’ve gotten my point(#11) at all. I completely endorse the purpose of “refined arts”, whether you mean Monet or Beethoven or a pornoguy like Larry Flynt. It is all art anyway. The point really is, at whose expense ? I see a girl begging outside my hotel. She has been doing that for about a month now. Gradually, she withers away, as noncharitable people like myself avert our glance. Karnad will say, give me 15 lakhs, I will make a film on begging in India. I will then release it in Cannes, get a Humanitarian award, give the money to an NGO & they will inturn help the beggar out. In the process, art has been created & incentivized.
I just find it perverted, utterly repulsive & at best a roundabout way to solve the problem. Why not the govt just distribute the 15 lakh directly to the beggars ? Or come up with an employment scheme ? Anything to stop them begging & earn a living like the rest of us. Why should every socialist filmmaker take a cut for every social evil in this country ?
Aamir Khan gets paid for doing a Coke ad. That’s his incentive. Coke sucks out groundwater. So sue Coke. Why take government money to show Coke bottle jump out of Aamir’s hand & suck the water dry ? This is refined art ? At best, its a trick. Allright, you like tricks. So does Shakuntala Devi. She publishes her tricks in a book & makes money by selling said book. She doesn’t beg the government for money.
What exact difference can you see between Karnad & this beggar girl ? I can only see 2 beggars. One begs outside my hotel, directly, starving, in a torn dress, under the hot sun. The other fucker is a rich Oxford beggar. He begs sitting in his Bangalore multistorey apartment, via the indirect medium of “Open letters to Prime Minister” & such shenanigans. Both are beggars. If you think my saying so reflects on my cultural breeding, so be it.
“So a good being monetizable basically entails being able to value it and exchange/trade it thereof. Think tangible.”
So are you saying that art cannot be valued by individuals? Why? And if you can value it (from the individual point of view) then what prevents you from trading it? I just don’t understand it.
There are plenty of things that are intangible that are traded on the market.
“When I say people should be incentivized… I obviously mean by some
societal system.
As in one might say “people should be given freedom”. Do you think it means people giving their own selves freedom? ”
There is no societal system apart from the people composing it.
The statement “people should be given freedom” can mean that those people have taken away freedom of others should stop doing it. Or that people should recognize boundaries. Like when neighbors put up a fence and recognize limits of their influence. People can recognize and accept each others’ freedom. Freedom is special and without it people cannot function as a moral and independent agents.
But your statement that “people should be incentivized to take up creative activities” has no meaning at all. What is creative is a matter of individual opinion. Freedom is not!
And you don’t understand valuation at all. Valuation is purely individual and cannot be objective. That’s why I gave an example of a painter who wants to sell his painting for food. The painter is valuing food higher than the painting, while the person selling food is valuing the painting higher than the food. Exchange happens when individual tastes and valuations are different for a pair of things. But when a government decides to patronize artists it assumes consensus on the valuation.
Responding to the concerns raised by Seven-times-six:
The argument is not whether the value of art is monetizable or not. If it is not, then a committee of experts is no better placed to decide how much money to donate to the arts than is the market. I am not convinced that government funding is necessary to ensure the creation of great works of art. Markets ensure that a great variety of tastes are satisfied and niche markets served: Britney Spears albums are sold alongside hundreds of thousands of other titles most of which you or I have never even heard of.
Second, I disagree that arts lead to the refinement of the senses. Good genes (not being color blind or tone deaf, for instance) along with a good education help one to appreciate “refined” art more. These, especially the latter, yield the benefits you mention, not the mere exposure to art or culture.
Finally, the notion that the benefits of culture reach all of society strikes me as simply wrong. The consumers of high culture tend to be wealthy and well-educated. In India, where the illiteracy rate is still shockingly high, a government that sees the need to devote public funds to subsidize high culture has its priorities all wrong.
I would urge Mr. 42 & the like to please go to any docu film festival, sit down with Mr. Karnad & the like & have a serious chat. Ask them upfront what they think of “refined arts”.
I have had that discussion, & that is why I have gotten thrown out.
In the absence of actual data, you can only argue in the vacuum.
Go talk to an NFDC official. Ask him what purpose does NFDC serve. He will say “To make Good Fillim”. Ok, so what is that ? Oh, our committee will decide it after you submit 6 copies of your script. Ok, but how does your comittie know what is good & what is bad ? Oh, because they had got film education from Oxford. Achcha, so how come their own films don’t do well in theatre ? Oh, that’s because Indians are uncouth, unsophisticated creatures. They cannot understand true art. Ok, so if an Indian wants to see Kareena Kapoor jhatka matka instead of a 90 year old granny talking for 2 hours on Kathakali, then the Indian is stupid.
Oh, how you can you say such things about Kathakali, it is a cultural heritage issue!
Pardon me mister bereaucrat, what is culture ? Isn’t it a product of what people want to engage in ? If people watched Kathakali in the past & watch item numbers today, it just means culture has changed. Should we give government funding to make silent mythologicals like Raja Harischandra because that was also culture once upon a time ?
You uncouth brute, get out of here! Aaajkal ke ye chokre, koi tradition ka gyan nahi!
So that is what you will get to hear.
Talk to the FTII people. Ask them just 1 question - why don’t we privatize FTII ? The film archives, all this cultural heritage will then be available for purchase by the masses.
They will say it is utter blasphemy. They will also inforem you they plan to “release the FTII films digitally on web!”
Ok, so when ?
Oh, first we will get tender quotation & then look at bids & …
Its more than 5 years since I’ve had that discussion - nothing has changed.
A private company will just make a million DVDs of all those films & put up a website with a shopping cart, in 2 months flat. By month 3, it would be profitable & earning its investors valuable equity while promoting culture by selling the DVDs to whoever is interested, villager or refined chap. Who knows, maybe a bunch of villagers will actually pool their money & buy a 2 hour Kathakali DVD for 100 rupees & actually watch it, na ?
But no, we must lock up our cultural heritage under the auspices of 1 institution. Then we must forcibly ram it down people’s throat by releasing it as afternoon films on DD, so villages where DD is the only channel available will be forced to sit thru Kathakali.
After all, tradition ka sawal hai.