Understanding Expectations and Fulfillment Gap Dynamics of School Education: A Psycho-Socio-Economic & Technological Perspective

-->Paper presented at International Conference on Enhancing Human Potential, Punjab University, Chandigarh :- 

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The process of dissemination of education has been systematically undertaken by central and state governments and a lot of programmes and policies have been implemented to achieve the goal of universalization of primary education to all and providing a quality education that can equip our citizen’s becoming a potential human resource.  It is not the purpose of this presentation to look into historical and political processes involved in education policies rather the focus of this paper will limit itself in highlighting some of the important facets of psycho-social-economic and technological importance that can throw light on better or at least diverse understanding of this subject.  Education like health, is often seen as an unproblematic social good to which everyone is entitled as a fundamental right.  However there is a difference between education and schooling.  Education is defined as a social institution, which enables and promotes the acquisition of skills, knowledge and extension of our qualities in a more enriched and meaningful way.  Schools on the other hand refers to formal process through which certain types of knowledge and skills are delivered normally through predesigned curriculum in specialized settings.  How far schools are playing the role of best educators it is creating obstacles in useful learning needs serious introspection?

            Psychological aspects which needs attention is that of values, growth of actual competence, curriculum, modes of teaching and recreational and reflective activities, raising emotional and ecological aspects, opportunities for teacher for self-growth in terms of independence from authority and research activity.  The other psychological aspects include role of assessment techniques, growth of individualistic/collectivistic orientation and vicarious reinforcement merits attention.  Values, attitudes and beliefs are important predictors of human action at any given point of time.  Values are a relative concept and it is fashionable to ignore all values other than narrowly self-interested reasons.  It is clearly discernible among majority of young-generation a strong preference for material well-being ignoring the hardships of their parents generation.  It is important to notice that can a child sensibly value other than his/her own well-being.  The opportunity aspect what a child gets can’t divorced from the valuing of different responsibilities.  This narrow view of intelligent pursuit of self-interest dissociates child’s behavior from values and ethics.  The presence of evolutionary survival does not indicate the absence of ethnically reasoned selection of behavior and values.  Broader social goals orientation collaborative altruism behavior pattern are diminishing the breadth of our values to claim individualistic, exciting ubiquitous selfishness.

            There may exist interpretational and contextual variations regarding methods adopted in an educational institution and individual choice may be in conflict with the parents-principle.  The cornerstone of welfare economics which insists that unanimous individual preference rankings must be reflected in social decisions but there can’t be a debate that we want accrual of fundamental competence in our children.  We may have the freedom of closing the different aspects and sub-aspects for ability improvement but we should not allow a singular track which lacks critical components of personality improvement.

            There should be enough freedom be granted to each child to develop ability to achieve in their area of interest and process through which things are imposed upon the child should be minimal.  I don’t wish to rule out the existence of overlaps between the two aspects.  The diversity of choice which is not a bad thing is strongly opposed by educators in the garb of parametric variation.  It is no strange fact that there is little room for freedom to children instead linking all other external considerations while deciding their preferences.  The goal of expanding “the range of human choice” is considered as prime objective of development of child’s potential hence in examining and deciding the choice for our children attention must be paid to children’s interest.

            Curriculum: Over dosage of politics and social education curriculum is strongly correlated in Indian context.

            To Foucault, power and knowledge are closely tied together and serve to reinforce one another.  The claims to knowledge of a doctor, for example, are also claims to power as they are put into practice in an institutional context, such as hospital.  Sociologist Stephen Lukes view is pertinent to mention here that ‘ideological’ exercise of power is not explicitly observable or measurable, but can be inferred when people act in ways that against their own interests.  Even desires of our children is being shaped by capitalist’s exercise of power to secure the compliance by controlling thoughts and desires.  The age old traditional wisdom principles are being relegated to the background and role learning, alien language with least connectivity with reality of lives of children are being imposed.  The result that few of our young children leave school thinking, our school children have to continuously fight for adjustments rather than working it from an alien norms that they find great difficulty in relating and connecting.  There is a need to bring into focus more empirical studies as to our children studying a language and culture which is remotely connected to their nativistic perceptions.  John Taylor Gatto (2002) a retired school teacher with 30 years of experience concluded that the hidden curriculum in USA teachers seven basic lessions.  This includes information confusion, teacher children to accept status quo, teaches indifference-rule of class bell at the start and end of lessons, emotionally and intellectually dependent on authority figures, provisional self-esteem based on report cards and under constant surveillance.  Austrian anarchist and philosopher, Ivan Illich (1926-2002) gradually deskilling the population as they come to rely on products of industry and less and less on their own creativity and knowledge.  It is no surprise this over enthusiasm has propelled our school educator to have a mail-Id of even five year old child.  This uncritical acceptance of status quo and the connection between development of education and requirements of capitalist economy has reached a custodial symbol that even merely six years old daughter of nine a student of DPS spends more time on internet than me.  I don’t intend to prescribe doing away with schooling but to accept this as inevitable and submitting to a curriculum mostly alien to our cultural norms needs a serious relook.  I wish to submit that Buddha, Gandhi, Lord Mahavir, Vivekanand, Guru Nanak Dev have not been and certainly can’t be a product of such type of regimented system.  Why Vedic mathematics, meditation, yoga and other traditional resources are being sacrificed and our education system is forcing our children to adjust their attitudes and aspirations dependent on lofty material circumstances of success and failure.  Best of our mythological creations like Bhagvad Gita, Vedas and Ramayan are product of oral constructions and reconstructions.  But our story-telling acts have been replaced by mechanical CDS and pen-drives and it is no wonder that teacher’s take extra-pride having adopted to this mode.  Again I do not want to generalize only demerits in it but at the same time giving importance to story telling by children can be a good account of their narrative comprehension.  It is always better to enhance children’s scientific skills in a field situation rather than laboratories.  Children’s instant promoting descriptions can be a far better method to gauge the child’s ability to understand their own and others perspective than to encouraging them to work on preset options.

            We shall attempt to improve the quality of our school teachers and utilise their experience in more meaningful way.  Most of our teachers are engaged in keeping exhaustive track records of tests administered on the basis of rigid framework.  From the very beginning the children begin to develop a growing sense of distrust and constraint leaving less room for the accomplishment of natural growth.  Right from, school bags, to heavy dosage of home-works and class-tests the children find interest item missing which further demotivates them.  Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligence has clearly demonstrated that a single IQ score can’t describe intelligence of the child.  According to Goleman ‘The brightest among US can founder on schools of unbridled passion and unruly impulses: people with high IQs can be stunningly poor Pilot’s of their priest lives (1996: 34).  One of my neighbourhood child Prasoon Mishra (age-5-a student of Nursery) narrated man tortures emphasing role learning (Maam ratwate-ratwate Dum nikal Desi hain).  There seems to less motivational interconnectedness to share the individuality of each child at school level and school teachers are mostly involved in the improvement of grades.  Teacher’s are rarely encouraged to engage in research activity and willingness to do something innovative is discouraged and they enter a stage of paralysis of will that it is hopeless to try new at this not be appreciated.  Pictorial representations are highly influential source of learning is still being ignored in our class-rooms.  The regular curriculum does not provide enough time for sports to our school children.  The over academic burden in schools often leads to demotivation of spontaneous attraction for games.  Vicarious reinforcement occurs when child witnesses someone else experience reinforcing consequences for a behavior, and that child anticipates similar consequences if he or she produces the same behavior.  Bandura (1962, 1977b, 1986) proposed that a fundamental way human’s acquire skills and behaviours is by observing the behavior of others which is governed by attention, retention production and motivation.  There is a distinction even between acquisition and performance because people do not enact everything they learn.  Performance of observed behavior is influenced by three kinds of incentives: direct, vicarious and self-administered.  Personal influences, environmental forces and behavior itself function as interdependent determinants of behavior.

Gender and School Education

            Now a days school education does not distinguishes between boys and girls in any systematic way however such differences persists.  Although rules are gradually loosening but hidden practices, rituals and even teacher’s expectations compel girls to behave in gender specific way.  Even parents committed to raising their children in a non-sexist way find existing patterns of gender stereotyping difficult to combat.  Gender identities emerge, in relation to perceived sex differences in society and in turn help to shape those differences.  Gender relations are the product of everyday interactions and practices and teacher’s need to be cautious and sensitive while addressing issues of stereotyped social arrangements.

Technology and Children’s Education

            The spread of information technology is already influencing education in schools in a number of different ways.  Will the digital media increasingly replace the school book? Are children listening more to computers than listening to a teacher? Can computer or desktop virtual reality replace our traditional methods of teaching or they need to supplement the process of education.  The flexibility and convenience of internet-based learning can’t be denied but is that good and enough for our young minds for the development of abstract reasoning.  Can this formal education escape the face to face learning which is truly interactive may lead to emergence of computer underclass devoid of any emotional component.  Television is an early window.  That it allows children to see the world well before they are capable of competently interacting with it.  Joshua Meyrowitz explained, television “escorts children across the globe even before they have permission to cross the street” (1985, p. 238).  What happens to children’s social development when television treats them as “little adults”.  The widespread use of television and internet is equivalent to a broad social decision to allow young children to be present at wars and funerals, courtship and seductions, criminal plots and cocktail parties.

            The other important factor of multinational corporations reaching every corner of our country.  Our intra-individual and inter-personnel communication is isolating us from social cohesion.  Necessary characteristics of education are being altered in the name of elite education which is hampering the growth of well-equipped potential in our children.  Children should not be understood as social robots acting and reacting in a mechanistic manner instead they should be allowed to become autonomous, active seekers of meaning, capable of pursuing creativity not merely pursuing narrowly constrained goals.  It is essential to make our school learning system more contextual, more realistic that can optimize the abilities and skills for critical thinking.  The education system should also gear up to link our aesthetic social and ethical values codes and conventions that can help inculcate better modes of negotiation and a concept of expanded literacy which can enable and enrich children as unique and valued citizen’s of this country.  An education content that provides role of catlayzer to stimulate the cognitive, emotional, aesthetic moral and interpretational domain of our children.  The role of social education should be to widen the perspectives of young children and cultivation of enhanced enjoyment in learning.

Ecological Intelligence

            Ecological refers to an understanding of organisms and their ecosystems and intelligence connotes the capacity to learn from experience and deal effectively with our environment.  Ecological intelligence allows our sensibility to see inter-connectedness between our actions and their impacts on the planet, our health and our social systems children should be taught collective intelligence, one that they learn and master as individuals, and that resides in a distributed fashion among far-flung networks of people.  Radical transformation of attitude can change each child becoming a far more effective agent of amelioration.  Once it gets started, it can become self-perpetuating because of intrinsic pleasures of mindfulness.

 

THE ABC OF MANAGING ORGANIZATIONS BY ETHICS & VALUES

Paper Presented National Seminar, University of Delhi

The central purpose of this presentation is to highlight and stimulate the discussion on isolated aspect of Indian corporate values.  There is no use of dogmatising the very premises of my discussion.  But at the same time I have borrowed heavily to nurture my analysis from Indian mythological sources to understand ethics and values.  It is possible for us to interpret and speculate conception of corporate values.  Breaking up values into corporate, social, cultural and so on to my mind is something like if we drop the subject, the object vanishes.  But the subject does not vanish even though the object disappears.

            Every system of thought embodies and reflects the tendencies of the time, and cannot be understood unless we realise the point of view from which it looked at the world, and the habit of thought which made it possible.  The exuberant fancy of management theorists propagating a congeries of conflicting theories, accepted by some and denied by others.  There is no admitted fact or principle that is recognized by Indian corporate only dissolving views and intuitions become the success saga of Indian corporate.  In India there is so much of diversification that gods and ghosts with powers to injure and annoy, as well as to bless and glorify, govern the life of the peoples.  Many good men do devils work in the belief that it has divine sanction.  It is difficult to overestimate the amount of evil which has resulted from a confusion of morality and religion.  Our tendency is to generalize small empirical contingency to a large set of people and this results in creation of a reality which is partly or completely unreal.  Every time we try to maintain that the preceding thing is the cause of succeeding thing or that the latter is the effect of the former.  In order to understand the dynamics of corporate ethics it would be apt to highlight some of the profound views by various thinkers.  Aristotle takes the view that virtues are means to an end, namely happiness.  Friendship is only possible between the good and it is impossible to be friends with many people.  Does our ethical propositions are consonant to our existing socio-cultural reality.  Like Bentham, Locke, was a man filled with kindly feelings, who yet held that everybody (including) himself must always be moved, in action, solely by desire for his own happiness or pleasure.  If pleasure is our sole motive and if we avoid rationality it is bound to create dissatisfaction if not in present them in distant future.

            Turning to the ethics of Rgveda, we find the conception of Rta is of great significance.  Rta denotes the order of the world.  It is anticipation of the law of karma, one of the distinguishing characteristics of Indian thought.  The good are those who follow the path of Rta, the true and the ordered.  Kindness to all is enjoined, hospitality is reckoned a great virtue.  The riches of one who gives do not diminish.  According to the principles of karma there is nothing uncertain or capricious in the moral world.  We reap that we sow.  The good seed brings a harvest of good, the evil of evil.  The attempt to overlap the law of karma, is as futile as attempt to leap over one’s shadow.  Upanisads hold that we can be free from karma only by social service.  So long as we perform selfish work we are subject to the law of bondage.  When we perform disinterested work we reach freedom.  What binds us to the chain of birth and death is not action as such but selfish action.  What looms over us is no dark fate but our own past.  If law is all, then there is no real freedom possible.  Man’s life is not the working of merely mechanical relations.  There are different levels, the mechanical, vital, the sentient, the intellectual and the spiritual – these currents cross and recross and interpenetrate each opener.  The infinite in man helps him to transcend the limitations of finite.  Life is something bigger than mere succession of mechanically determined states.  This distinction of spirit and karma oscillates us between freedom and necessity but the danger lies in falling trap to greeds.  We have a tendency to forget large part of our sincere efforts to attain meagre goals of success.  Snobbery, exclusiveness have replaced humility and inclusiveness still we hope to innovate for better.  The sexual acts create the conditions in which a new life is defined by the development of a cell but it is not true for the birth of consciousness.  If our realization grows strong we should feel that joy and suffering are there for the progressive education of character.  As long as we identify ourselves with definite centre generated by the accidents of time and space we can’t acquire a centre as well as circumference that is within and that is without.

            According to Jainism ethics the apparatus of morality is necessary to bring about reformation in man’s conduct and an attitude of neutrality without aversion to other realities in the world is right conduct.

            Innocence, charity, honourable conduct, chastity and renunciation has been emphasized as virtues in the fivefold conduct of a person.  Nowadays progress is considered as dissociational development that comes into bits and pieces.  But Lord Krsna when asked about particular method to be adopted says that different pathways are distinct but not ultimately distinct but in the end they are all converging and correlating to the same road and same goal.  In Bhagvadgita three methods have been suggested jnanamarg or wisdom, Bhaktimarg or the path of devotion and karma marg through divine service or karma we can reach the highest level.  Antagonisms of isolated wisdom and the passion of selfishness hinders the real truth.  We are moving towards incompleteness as long as we are not assimilating the viewpoints emanating from various academic as well as social and cultural disciplines.  In order to progress intellectually we are trying create distinctions of narrow standpoints that has led to distorted understanding of comprehensive truth.  We have also indulged into the habit of adoration, praise and periodical reinforcements from external sources that has led to erosion of originality and innovativeness in each one of us.  In the process we are loosing the fire and experience of self-certifying in character or swayam pramanam.  The moment we bring here and there variations in right conduct we start getting drawn in an attitude of false claim and justify our wrong view with that of others.  Withdrawal tendencies restricts us from engaging ourselves trying best.  Doing work in a spirit of detachment has became significantly low as passion imprisons our spiritual nature.

            Egoism and preference for special forms of work-culture are loaded with subtle shades of selfishness which may bring temporary applause but may not survive in the long-run.  Corporate values can’t be conceived in isolation with existing reality and the moment we start dissecting such imaginary values-problems, emerges.  The constitution of the social order is said to be divine.  The emergence of a corporate group with massive displacement of tribals can’t go together.  Water is the common substance of ice and steam.  The phases are momentary, but the substratum is permanent.  The social realities have an existence independent of our perception although they may cease to exist for a brief duration.  Similarly corporate culture can’t be isolated from core social-cultural values and it may be termed as hyposatiated imaginary phenomenal manifestation of the underlying reality.  There seems to me and I may be wrong a larger inconsistency emanating from advocates of corporate culture and values that is somehow and in some ways not addressing to the core realities.  Had it not been the case why number of central universities, number of business schools, number of media channels, activists from various walks have not been able to advance our overall moral well-being.  If this not be the case why our corporates have not moved to villages of India.  Although they are manifesting a duality of profit and corporate social responsibility but still they are far from the real welfare which contained differential practices.  Corporates are trying to project a picture of dual reality but reality can be only one.  This dual reality is based upon differential treatment of its citizens.  Huge population of unorganized sector who work very hard far construction of roads and buildings do not have any medical cover.  Their children do not have any place for education.  Contractual labourers daily wages appointments are on the rise so as to avoid any responsibility of compensation in case of any mishappening with the workers.  Thousands of labourers become victims of working under hazardous situations which largely goes unreported.  Corporate of India have brought of luxurious five-star hotels, luxury cars and owner’s of such car’s don’t hesitate to kill people on the pavement’s who do not have any shelter to sleep.  Why is it the case that a number of corporates joining politics.  If you minutely care for the people being nominated in the Rajya-Sabha you will be surprised that distinguished categories people are mostly corporate people.  What social good or values they are serving can be best answered by them.  If we need to get a true picture of corporate Indian values we will have to try straight instead of approaching it in hypocrite manner.  How many people have become millionaire in last one or two decades.  What is the contribution of such people in larger welfare of the society.  Best of our talents in the IIT’s and IIM’s are compelled to go abroad in search of a good job.  The most important sporting extravaganza of common wealth is in the hands of people whose credibility is being questioned not by me but by whole of media fraternity and the government itself and last but not least it was criticized by one of the corporate wizard Azim Premji in his interview with TOI 26^th Aug. 2010.  Personally I am also in support of organizing such events provided it gives a boost to our image as brand India not to denigrate it.  Why is that common man tax payment is misused in the name of IPL matches any such event which has hardly anything to do with welfare.

            Malignant spirit playing the predominant role among the corporates and instead of awaking our masses it is further isolating them from reality.  There is no necessity and urgency to dispose the good that may have accrued due to corporate world contribution in the Indian context but the larger good is yet to be realized.  As long as we consciously break-up values in corporate, rural, urban, feminine, masculine we can only confuse the matter from better to worse.  Endless variety of ideas, feelings, creativity can be found among the inhabitants of Uttranchal, Jharkhand and Northeast.  The moment we keep discussing all lofty ideals in the seminar rooms and FICCI auditoriums the social reality will continue to be deprived of independence and reduced to a mere dance of ideas or thought relations.  The seeming and telling reality of a common man where even an ordinary life is a struggle and reality of a world in which thousands of crore are vanished without much murmur amounts to talk of a naive realism that can’t coexist for a long.  The empirical accounts produce a rosy picture of corporate India marching in terms of GDP rate but the distinction between the imaginary and real growth is also widening at an alarmist pace.  It is open to us to debate as to why who are real builders of new India are still fighting for their bread and it will be a Himalayan blunder to mistake rope for a snake instead of recognizing rope as a rope.

            Necessity of corporate values demands thought for reality not to further betray and weaken its integral masses by its frequent denial of rights which they deserve to receive. 

            It is difficult to imagine to provide a complete liberation from all fetters to our dwelling masses but giving a thought in this direction may also give rise to a virtue of relationship that the two co-exist.

            Management by values can overcome obstacles and minimise the deficiencies our organizations are facing.  The impediments yet to be overcome are material pleasures and ignorance of true nature of inter-connectedness among different socio-cultural systems.  Conquest over narrow path of knowledge, wealth, power and craving for individual success needs to be replaced by sublimated selfishness and compassion for the suffering of others.  To say and prescribe a thinking of organization citizen behavior and values is preaching of a half truth.  The conditions of virtue makes little difference whether you are CEO or peasant and sincere efforts be made to achieve uniting consciousness that may lead to development of attainment of unity across all sections.  Corporate culture and values have added to the darkening influence of passion and impulse as a prime possession of merit.  But the corporate value is not something to be packed away as exclusive property of the corporate giants instead it should have over-mastering power of freedom of expansion into the common-mass.  Corporate values are truths at second-hand on the authority of some people but do not become part of the lives of many others.  Desire builds the house of existence.  I don’t wish to suggest corporate rights to flee endlessly and restlessly from all that it has.  I don’t intend to prescribe the suppression of emotion and desire but at the same time this glowing emotion of corporate must take into account good or bad effects on the well-being of our masses.  Simply singing the tune of glory of the corporate would amount to mystic contemplation without practical goodness.  There is a good deal of misconception that is intentionally or unintentionally spread to glorify corporate values that can lead to well-being.  We have corporate life-style not only in academics, business but also its adherents are growing significantly among spiritual preachers.  Corporate values should give voice to the inarticulate forces which are neglected.  Corporate of India is gradually maturing in accumulation of wealth but its social implications aspect is being neglected.  That is the reason that corporates like Satyam Computers become giants within very short span of time and looses its very existence.

            The idea of freedom to engage in business and profit maximization is governing the corporates independent of strong preference for values.  But rationality of ethics demands that diversity of social context must be sensible enough to motivate choice among different sections of the people.  It is important here to distinguish between culmination outcome and comprehensive outcome.  It is not only important to gain success and maximize profit but it is more important this process is not antithetical to the progress of our common mass.  What we are observing today is mostly self-centred welfare without any sympathy or antipathy towards others.  Although in many cases sympathy is shown by our corporates but what is lacking is the commitment.  Commitment involves violation of self-centred welfare which involve recognition of other people’s goals.  Therefore there is enough room to scrutinise goals of the corporate exclusively reduced to one’s own welfare and ignoring the goals of others living in the society can’t lead to a sustainable future.  Alleged grounds are propagated that government of the day is not doing enough amounts to gloss the reality.  I don’t intend to be biased in appreciating some of the good efforts and high standard of values shown by some of the corporates.  But a closer look at the mushrooming growth of corporates in health sector, banking, education, entertainment, infrastructure poses more questions of a credo of welfare of the masses.  If we observe consumers and customers in various walks of the corporates one can easily notice these institutions distancing itself from the common mass.  Examples are many and naming them will amount to reflecting my bias and it is for all of us to introspect and throw light on this subject.

            The ABC of corporate values is nothing but common sense which aims at interconnectedness. The question whether corporate Indian values succeeds in gathering up different sections of society in a truly Indian outlook remains to be answered in future course of time.

Reciprocal Altruism and Psychological Sources of Will and its Impact on Soldiers Preparedness

Paper presented at ICAMP - 2011

Altruistic behavior is that behavior which benefits other organism.  If a person jumps into water at some danger to himself to save another distantly related human being from drowning it may be considered as an act of altruistic behavior.  But if a person leaps into water to save his own child, the behavior would not be considered as an instance of “altruism” because the person is contributing to the survival of his own gemes invested in the child.  There are several factors that favors the exchange of altruistic behaviors.  Long-lifetime of individuals of a species maximizes the chance that any two individuals will encounter many altruistic situations and instances of reciprocal altruism in long-lived species.  All other things being equal interdependence of members of a species increases the possibility to keep individuals near each other and encounter of altruistic situations also increases.  Aid in combat in which a dominance oriented species is aided in aggressive encounters with other individuals by help from a less dominant individual.  The relationship between two individuals repeatedly exposed to symmetrical reciprocal situations is analogous to what game theorists call the prisoner’s dilemma (Luce and Raiffa, 1957, Rapoport and Chammah, 1965) which is characterized by payoff.

            Reciprocal altruism can also be viewed as a symbiosis each partner helping the other while he helps himself.  Reciprocal altruism is a common behavior that takes place across cultures and contexts.  Any act that means small cost to the giver and greater benefit to the taker may be called as an act of altruism and its list may contain following types of behavior:

(i)                Helping in times of danger (e.g. accidents, predation, aggression)

(ii)             Sharing food

(iii)           Helping the sick, the wounded or the very young and old

(iv)            Sharing implements and knowledge

Anthropologists have recognized the importance of reciprocity in human behavior, but when they have done so in terms of group benefits, reciprocity cementing group relations and encouraging group survival.  The individual sacrifices so that group may benefit.  The term reciprocity refers to giving and taking without the use of money: it ranges from pure gift giving to equalized barter and to self-interested cheating.  In other words, reciprocity may take three forms generalized reciprocity, balanced reciprocity and negative reciprocity.  Generalized reciprocity is gift giving without any immediate returns or conscious thought of return.  Each thing in nature provides something without expecting an equal or immediate return.  In balanced reciprocity, the exchange is usually motivated by desire or need for certain objects.  Negative reciprocity is an attempt to take advantage of another for one’s own self-interest.  The human altruistic system is a sensitive and unstable one: Individuals will differ not in being altruists and cheaters but in the degree of altruism they show and in the conditions under which they will cheat.  Sawyer (1966) has shown that all groups in all experimental situations tested showed more altruistic behavior toward friends than toward neutral individuals.  Much of human aggression has moral overtones.  Injustice, unfairness and lack of reciprocity often motivate human aggression and indignation.  A behavior is to said to be altruistic in the evolutionary sense of that term if it involves a fitness cost to the donor and centers a fitness benefit on the recipient.  Evolutionary altruism describes the fitness effects of a behavior not the thoughts or feelings, if any, that prompt individuals to produce those behaviors.  In contrast psychological altruism concerns the motives that cause a behavior, not its actual effects.  In the Descent of Man Darwin (1871) discusses the behavior of courageous men who risk their lives to defend their tribes when a war occurs.  George C. William (1966) in his book Adaptation and National Selection proposed that traits evolve because they promote the replication of genes.  W.D. Hamilton published a paper in 1964, which explains that the classical notion of Darwinian fitness – an organisms prospects of reproductive success – can explain virtually none of the helping behavior we see in nature.  It can explain parental care, but when individuals help individuals who are not their offspring, a new concept of fitness is needed to explain why.  This led Hamilton to introduce the mathematical concept of inclusive fitness.  The point of this concept was to show how keeping a relative and helping one’s offspring can be brought under the same theoretical umbrella: both evolve because they enhance the donor’s inclusive fitness.  Many biologists conclude that helping behavior directed at relatives is therefore an instance of selfishness not altruism.  Helping offspring and helping kin are both in one’s genetic self-interest, because both allow copies of one’s genes to make their way into the next generation.  Motivational pluralism involved in acts of self-sacrifice when a soldier throws himself on a grenade to save the lives of their comrades or citizen’s can be explained on the basis of a systematic understanding.  Batson’s (1991) empathy-altruism hypothesis asserts that empathy causes people to have altruistic ultimate desires.  Phenomena that require discussion and research on altruism is generated by acts of apathy and acts of dramatic altruists.  Biblatane and John Darley, among others, attempted to bring this phenomenon into laboratory to determine the varieties that affect the likelihood of intervention.  There are instances of charity actions, people helping more in small towns than big cities and sometimes people’s apathy when a person is beaten and dozen’s of neighbor’s look on from their apartments.  Altruism is still the predominant mode in most of the societies.  In the contemporary context where attitude of individualism is on the ascendant, psychological egoism is on the rise when most our activities are self-directed it becomes all the more necessary to identity the common grounds that connect us with a feeling of belongingness with our follow citizens.  There are individual differences in the acts of altruism.  Human parents vary, some take better care of their children than others, and some even abuse and kill their offspring.  Given this multitude of possibilities, how might one predict how altruism will evolve? Three principles are relevant-availability, reliability and efficiency.  Natural selection acts only on the range of variation that exists ancestrally.  Helping, comforting, sharing and co-operating occur among acquaintances and strangers but how this devotion to the interest of others is affected needs a closer scrutiny.  One variable that is positively related to altruism and other forms of pro-social behavior is self-esteem.  If one is sure of oneself, it seems easier to extend oneself to others.  However there are exceptions to this generalization.  People with an extremely high opinion of themselves may feel no need to be connected to others and people with a low opinion of themselves may be helpful just to garner social support.  In political domain, there is some evidence that liberals score higher than conservatives on tests of moral reasoning.  Daniel Batson and colleagues distinguished among religious people those who see religion as a means to extrinsic ends, those who see it as an end in itself and those who see it us a quest.  Only among people in the latter group was helping positively related to religiosity.  Altruistic acts are also affected by group identification in which people are more inclined to help those who are perceived as similar to themselves than those who are perceived as different.  The assumption of troika factors of individualism, atomism and egoism plays a great deal in the development of altruism.  In an influential account of development of altruism Martin Hoffman suggests that altruism has two requirements one affective and cognitive.  Genuine altruism requires empathy (affective) and perspective taking (cognitive).  Although home and family is the central domain for socialization in childhood but much socialization occurs outside home-setting.  Cooperative learning and play-settings in the class-room seem to enhance the children’s perspective taking abilities.  Conversely, explicitly competitive class-room situations seem to reduce prosocial effects.  There are also some evidences that in addition to providing opportunities for cooperation and schools can facilitate altruism by putting children into mixed age groups.  According to Amartya Sen to act out of commitment is to do what one thinks is right, what will promote public welfare, quite part from whether it promotes one’s own.  It is to act out of a sense of responsibility as a citizen.  This include doing one’s job to the best of one’s ability – going beyond the terms of the contract even if no one is watching and there is nothing to be gained from it.

It is pertinent to note that how our soldier’s derive their will-power to act in difficult circumstances of physical, social and geographical adversities.  In the social attributional realm, too, consistency is evident in the inclination perceivers have to attribute causality for behaviors to people whose personalities are seen as consistent with the behaviors (Jones & Davis, 1965).  The principle of consistency in the experience of will draws on the observation that the thoughts that serve as potential causes of action typically have semantic associations with the actions.  A thought that is perceived to cause an act is after the name of the act or an image of its stimulus execution or consequence (Wallabher & Wegner, 19855).

A basic principle of causal inference is what we tend to discount the causal influence of one potential cause if there are other available (Kelly, 1972, McClure, 1998).  The causes that complete with thoughts are of two kinds – internal and external.  The plausible internal causes for an action might include one’s emotions, habits, traits or other unconscious action tendencies.  Plausible external causes for an action might include other people or external forces that impinge on us even when we are thinking of action in advance.  The extensive contemporary literature on causal attribution in social situations (e.g. Gilbert, 1995) has suggested the presence of others and of situational forces provides an intricate causal context that could influence the individual’s experience of will in a variety of ways.  The experience of will can be an indication that mind is causing action, if the person is a good self-interpreter.  Believing that our conscious thoughts cause our action may not be always true and research suggest a fundamental role for automatic processes in everyday behavior (Bargh, 1997).  In fact, the mental systems, that introduces thoughts of action to mind and keeps them coordinated with the actions is itself an intriguing mechanism.

The processes underlying factors altruism and conscious experience of will power are far more important attributes that can give rise to actions necessary for soldiers preparedness.  Self-attention may indeed be associated with perceived control or responsibility for action (Gibbons, 1990) but this effect is a general feature of a specific process.  This specific process is the perception of a causal link between one’s own thought and action.  It makes sense that we tend to see ourselves as the authors of an act primarily when we had experienced relevant thoughts about the act at an appropriate interval in advance, and so could infer that our own mental processes had set the act in motion.  Actions we perform that are not presaged in our minds, in turn, would appear not to be caused by our minds, in essence, then this view suggests a connection between what Michotte (1963) identified as the two forms of conscious evidence we have for the causality of self in action.  The first is our ability to foresee the result before it actually takes place, the second the presence of a feeling of activity.  There is a need to focus such behavior aspects which is not at the center of traditional approaches of military psychology.  There is much more important reason to diversify our research in military psychology to explore inclinations of altruism and psychological forces of experience of will power that may go a long way to go beyond our traditional attempts to understand military psychology.  In human cultural life, however, there is sometimes a trade off between short-term and long-term goals, and much of the success of the human species is based on our ability to sacrifice short-term goals for the long-term ones, as in delay of gratification (Mischel & Ayduk, 2004).  Psychological experience of will power may be most useful in fostering the pursuit of enlightened self-interest.  Psychologists can explore and elucidate the factors that underlie the processes of altruism and psychological experience of will power that may have enormous significance to better and more conducive behavior patterns among the military personnels.

 

UNDERSTANDING PSYCHO-BEHAVIORAL DYNAMICS OF ENVIRONMENT AND BEHAVIOUR

A new area developed within the field of psychology at the end of 1950’s and during 1960’s which was termed as Environmental Psychology in the United States.  Ittelson introduced the term “environmental psychology” for the first time in New York in 1964 at the Conference of American Hospital Association on hospital planning.  In 1970 Proshansky Ittelson and Rivlin published the title “Environmental Psychology: Man and His Physical Settings.”

            Relationship between physical, biological, technological and social behaviour patterns emerged as a challenge and creating an optimal environment for human activities led to further research in the field of environment psychology.  Some of the conceptualizations of important theorists need a mention to understand the environment-behaviour dynamics even in Indian social context.  The problem’s related to road-rage, problem of stress due to noise pollution, lack of sharing interpersonal problems due to overcrowding, lack of recreational space for children and growing incident’s of juvenile acts are some of the manifestations of environmental aspect of behaviour of Indian context.  Man-made noise of modern civilization is creating more and more noise from industry and transport.  Mention must be made about ‘stratle reaction’ one of the direct responses to noise.  The sudden and high intensity sound produces stratle reaction and has its effects on the nervous system and may effect psycho-motor performance.  It is no wonder that our optical system becomes prey to noise pollution.  Noise also causes irritation and affect sleep and work performance.

            According to Wohlwill and Heft (1987) environmental variable’s affect through a filter or mediator (e.g. cognition, adaptation level).  It is also important to understand that physical and social environments are emeded in each-other and environment-behaviour relationship is reciprocal and dynamic.

            Brofenbrenner (1979) has considered environment in terms of a nested hierarchy of micro, meso-exo and macro-systemic contexts.  These different subsystems influence each other in an interactive fashion.  Stokols (1983) has proposed an approach which includes spatial, temporal and sociocultural contexts of the phenomena being studied.

            Role of architecture and psychology also gained prominence gradually.

            Canter and Lee (1974) attempted to pinpoint the basic information psychology can provide for designing the environment.  This was identified in reference to following categories:

(i)        People’s activity

            What types of activities are carried out, where and how are they carried and how do they change.

(ii)      Differentiated Appraisal’s

            The behaviour-environment relationship not only to know people’s reaction to architectural variable’s but also to discover the reasons for these relationships in an interactive perspective.

            In this context, the contribution of psychology to the process of architectural design is seen as differentiated in relation to the various design stages.

(a)       Ideation

            When several general findings can be employed originating from psychological research concerning architectural characteristic and behaviors.

(b)       Specification

            When specific influences can be singled out from physical characteristics of the environment as well as equally specific psychological aspects.

            For example relationship between environmental luminosity and insomnia or between environmental noise and work output.

(c)       Appraisal

            When an analysis is made of the existing, also considering the resulting psychological effects to identity inadequacies or positive directions form improvement.

Behavioral Geography

            American geographer wright proposed geosophia as a new field of study for geography.  Geographer’s tend to speak of the foundation of a new branch of geographical studies termed “behavioral geography” (Gold, 1980, 1985) or more often perceptional geography (Dowris & Myer, 1978).

            Behavioral geographer realizes that man shapes and at the same time responds to the environment and that man and environment are dynamically correlated.

            Three primary dimensions of spatial, temporal and environmental perception characterize every human use system.

Spatio physical environment in the tradition of psychology of perception

            New look theories in perception.  Kaffka made the distinction between geographical environment existing in reality and behavioral environment’s represented by the environment experienced by the person.

            Gibson’s ecological theory considered the perceptual phenomenon as a result of ecological characteristics of environment stimuli.  Perception is the process by which a particular person from his particular behavior center, attributes significance to his immediate environmental situation (Ittelson).

            Kurt Lewin also highlighted that human behavior is a result of interaction between personality and environmental factors.

Set of Affordances

            According to Gibson (1982) environment provides opportunities and resources which are functionally relevant.  The meaning of functional possibilities of environmental features are very important.  The affordance are considered to have relational character.

            Even Helft (1988) has described the functional taxonomy of environment is psychologically more relevant than mere description of environmental stimuli.

            According to behaviour restraint theory there are certain factors in the environment that restrains our potential functioning.  When an individual starts realizing that he/she is loosing control over environmental events they start feeling inhibited in their functioning which is also called psychological rectance.  Behaviour restraint theory has three important stages:

(i)        loss of perceived control

(ii)       psychological rectance

(iii)     learned helplessness

            Environment stress also emerges due to factors like work pressures, transfer of job from one place to another, metropolitan over crowding creates stressful situations in life.  When an individual experiences stress it undergoes three stages as proposed by Selye which is called General Adaptation Syndrome.

(a)       Alarm reaction

(b)       Stage of resistance and

(c)       Stage of exhaustion

            Some of the stressors it well adapted it may help in improved performance but when the amount of environmental stressors increases manifold the individual losses ability to cope with this.

            Excessive heat conditions may lead to aggressive behavior patterns and excessive cold may lead to depression.

            Catacylsmic event’s like flood, earthquake, cyclones, nuclear accident’s and the terrorist activities have far-reaching devastating consequences upon the behavior of individuals.  In such type of incident’s individual’s loose their recovery strategy as they have no prior planning to deal with such exigencies.  Even conflict prone areas like Jammu Kashmir and North East states people undergo severe psychological frustration due to prolonged strife-situation.

            It is also a fact despite stressful situations the response of individual’s vary according to their adaptability skills.

            Anxiety, withdrawal symptoms, numbness, depression, stress related psychological disorders, unfocussed anger, regression nightmares are some of the important behavioral deviations that occur due to environmental factors.

            Rural-urban changes is changing the complexion of new places but norm’s and values don’t change overnight.  Sudden transformation of rural to urban centers create a crisis of adjustment with new set of values superimposed upon them.  Hence a new class of alien’s is growing in areas which has seen sudden transformation from rural to urban set ups and this problem can be witnessed in areas of NCR of Delhi and many villages around Delhi.

            Stokols (1975) advanced a comprehensive developmental theory of alienation with an explanation of its persistence.  In the field of psycho-analysis Meissner (1974) interpreted alienation in the conventional terms of his field as an outcome of the devaluation of the father and his social world.  The depression, narcissim and aggression which are derivatives of disillusionment, turn into the roots of undesirable development’s of alienation in society.

            In last few decades many efforts have been made in the direction of environment protection and sustainable development.  Advanced techniques of architecture and well-being measures are being adopted in construction of new buildings.  The anthropocentric bias and demands of post-Industrial socio-economic structures increases consumerism and moral considerations are frequently ignored.

            Theoretical and practical explorations of this environment-behavior dynamics can analyze specific behavioral impacts of environmental factors and debates in this direction may provide meaningful assumptions to this construct.

A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL JUSTICE COLLECTIVE IDENTITY, PREJUDICE AND STEREOTYPE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE OF THE WORKS OF DR. B.R. AMBEDKAR

Presented in National Seminar B.R. Ambedkar College (26^th Sept. 2008)

History does nothing, it "possesses no Immense wealth" it "wages no battles". It is man real living man that does all that, that possesses and fights. Thus spoke Marx and it is important to understand all work of thought and imagination whether they are explicitly advanced, scientific, empirical, universal or conjectural, hypothetical and heuristic their true significance is ethical.

We live in a great no man's land of the complexity of negotiations, consultations, discussions and for all we understand it is integral to our existence. And on Friday night everyone tells everyone it is weekend and spends the evening by the individual method of recovering their own personalities - children; money-savings, seminar the garden and so on.  Dualism of social -experience in which on one hand we try to assert our creativity, our internal control over external intrusions and on the other hand our most of our resistances are small, private subterranean residing only in half-hidden cracks in the institutional colossus dominating most of our lives but there are exceptions to this also.

Various types of inequalities have existed in different social-historical contexts and still we are far away from the situation where everybody will be rewarded according to his/her merits. The very genetic lottery creates differences of highest magnitude followed by factors like prevailing socio-economics cultural conditions. Certain social practices are reinforced creating-privileges for some and hardship of severe magnitude for the rest of the majority.

In this process dominant class successfully claim a disproportionate share of rewards by attaching socio-cultural notions of different kinds, pure coercion had existed in pre-Independent India when a person used to be treated like thing rather than as a cultural creature. It consisted of treating a person of weaker section by the laws of physics rather than laws of sociality. There are numerous instances in the history of pre-Independent and in same cases post-Independent India where people of weaker sections namely Scheduled Castes have undergone discriminatory treatments using brute violence and inhuman practices that needs a thorough discussion to understand this dynamics of differences that have existed in the past and even hi the present scenario in which we are pondering over this subject with reference, to great' philanthropist Dr. Ambedkar the situation is far dismal than is ought to be.

It is no wonder that individual born and socialized into different social groupings experiences life as beautiful and miserable both at different place and timings. And this difference of plenty is not only in terms of material conditions but more intriguing is the social conditions that tries to attach a prejudiced status to the under privileged.

Since inequality exists at the outset, there are two positive orientations: one that would tend to obliterate the natural inequality ^through social effort [John Rawls] and another that on the contrary would tend to reward everyone on the basis of his unequal qualities (Robert Nozick 1974, Milton Friedman 1962, Ayn Rand 1964).

Until now all psychology has remained fastened to moral prejudices and inhibitions: it has never dared to explore the depths. The power of moral prejudice has punctured deeply in Indian. social context and it goes without saying, has functioned there in a harmful, inhibiting, blinding, twisting fashion. History teaches us that one section of the population maintained itself as best and its members shared a vital public spirit, owing to the binding influence of their traditional irreversible principles. Countless men and women of weaker sections challenging this traditional superiority had to undergo variety of torture, bloodshed and sacrifice to bridge this chasm of man and man, caste and caste to maintain this distance of pathos. The .older form of cruelties has became more; refined in. the form of cultural colonization. No words are sufficient to. express my loathing of the despicable interest politics pursued by modern Indian elites which tries to give doles to the marginals plays the game of setting them against one another.

To try to understand these complexities of social differences among various groups it would be proper to incorporate certain social psychological concepts.

Cognitive aspects of prejudice

The psychological aspects of intergroup relations include the study of behaviour in intergroup situations, of behaviour related to these situations and of beliefs and attitudes concerning on individual's own group and various other groups which are relevant to him. It is hardly startling to say that the best way to predict whether a person will harbour hostile or aggressive attitudes towards a particular group and what will be the content of these attitudes is to find out how he understands the intergroup situation. They lose the adaptive capability and soberness as soon as they confront human groups other than their own and in these situations alone that most of their so-called traits of attitude, simplicity, modes of thinking are no more than powerless and pale projections of instinctive or unconscious drives.

According to Klineberg (1968) the English term prejudice and its equivalent in many other European languages refer primarily to a prejudgement or a preconcept reached before the relevant information has been collected or examined and therefore leased on inadequate or even imaginary evidence.

The etiology of intergroup relations can't be understood without having the idea of their cognitive aspects and it also requires understanding of motivational and instinctive aspect of behaviour. We all live in a social environment that is in a state of flux. Much of what impact's us is related to the activities of groups to which we do or do not belong and changing equation of relations between these groups requires our understanding of what happens and constant causal attributions about the why and how of the changing conditions of our life. These attributions are mainly based on three processes of categorization assimilation and search for coherence.

Categorisation

In each relevant situation we try to achieve as much stereotyped simplification as we can without doing unnecessary violence to the facts. There is ample amount of evidence that even when facts do turn against us, we still find ways to preseive the general content of our categories. First order of categorisation can be done on mere physical characteristics. Second order categorisation can be done with support of cultural experience and tradition discussions such as all Ambedkar College student's intelligent but lazy. If we have less knowledge of the individual, we tend to ascribe him the characteristics which we derive from our knowledge of his class membership, be it a class of trade unionists, undergraduates and soon.

There are two inferences that results from this kind of situation. One is that in many social situations which present notorious ambiguities of interpretation, it is easier to find supporting evidence from assumed class characteristics of an individual than to find contradictory evidence.

Secondly when we are confronted with the need to interpret the behaviour enmasse of the members of a particular group, there is bound to be very little clear negative feedback following the ascription of this behaviour to the assumed class characteristics.

The third order of categorisation represents to two consequences of the tendency to simplify hi order to cope.  If a man is prejudiced, he has an emotional investment in preserving the differentiation between his own group and that of others.  Preservation of these judgements is self-rewarding and this is particularly so when prejudiced judgments are made in a social context strongly supportive of hostile attitudes towards a particular group, we are also confronted with spiral effect in which existence of prejudice manifests itself in form of rewarding the hostile judgement's and thereby removing the possibility of cross-checking reality for these judgement's giving rise to creation of social myths.  Same is the true for creation of powerful social myths in the organizations we work with.

Assimilation

Assimilation of social information and transmission of' social identity and image to the individual member's of society is guided by factor of autonomy of cognitive functioning in attitudes towards other groups through preferences and balance that occurs early in life.

Search for coherence

An individual should try to understand the causal attributions to adjust himself to the process of social change. An individual can he a member of so many social groups at the same time and important among them are intragroup and intergroup affiliations.   The effects of social change of intrgroup or intergroup type can either increase the intensity of affiliation with the group or it may decrease. But in both cases causal attribution is necessary and the determinants of social change may be attributed either to actions of individuals or actions of his own or other groups. It is well assumed psychological phenomena that unless situational explanations are available actions of others are explained in terms of permanent characteristics causal attributions to group characteristics are often made on non-psychological characteristics of a group such as historical superiority in terms of caste, creed, economic wealth, skin colour and so on.

The questions of untouchability of the depressed classes was one of the major issues highlighted by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar in which they were being treated as aliens despite the fact that in order to qualify as a common group or community there should be broader similarities hi aims, beliefs/attitudes, customs and rituals.

This differeritial categorisation of the depressed classes was riot only limited to community or group status of untouchabilities and Hindus but it was also there in terms of political and civil rights of citizen's having far-reaching consequences on the growth of personality.

How prejudice and stereotype enlarged the differences between depressed classes and Hindu's can be understood with the help of Dr. Ambedkar's remark's at his initial level intervention in first Round Table Conference in 1930's "we feel that no body can remove our grievances as well as we can and we can't remove them unless we get political power in our own hands. No share of political power can evidently came to us so long as the British government remained as it is only in Swaraj Constitution that we stand any chance of getting power Into our own hands, without which we cannot bring salvation to our people.

Depressed by the government, suppressed by the Hindu and disregarded by the Muslim, we are left in a most intolerable position of utter helplessness to which I am sure there is no parallel to which I was bound to call attention (Baws 1982, Vol. 2: 506-7).

These ideas of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar clearly speaks high of his understanding of social psychological processes of prejudice, stereotype, differential categorisation, ingroup-outgroup differentiation, discrimination which became major topics- of social science research at a much later date.

The stereotype- that.existed in the past and that continue to exist in the present Indian social milieu was well articulated by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar by his becoming of chairman of Drafting Committee of constituent assembly on 23 December 1947 in which he had highlighted the provisions for safeguarding the interest of SC's in particular and other marginalized sections.

It would be appropriate to highlight the concept of stereotype "which is an over simplified mental image of (usually) some category of person, institution or event which is shared in essential features by large numbers of people. The categories may be broad (jews, white men, black men) or narrow. Stereotypes are commonly but not necessarily accompanied by prejudice i.e. by a favourable or unfavourable predisposition towards any member of the category in question (Oliver Stallybrass, Co-editor, The Fantana Dictionary of Modern Thought, 1977).

It is noteworthy to mention mat analysis of individual's behaviour he they cognitive or motivational is essential for understanding social behaviour. In case of social stereotypes, social context refers that stereotypes held by large number of people are derived through relations between social groups. Value differentials associated with social categorisation played a crucial role in creating stereotyped image of different caste categories of Indian social context. Value-loaded classifications continued to describe people of schedule caste's in particular and other backward classes to some extent leading to exaggerated erroneous images of these classes was manufactured owing to such psychological processes.

This strong value differential got reinforcements from social, religious, cultural and most irripdrtantly from the" government machinery as we'll.

Identification in ambiguous conditions of members of disliked social categories Bruner et al. (1956, Chapter 7) presented that individuals will commit errors of over inclusion or over-exclusion in their labelling of ambiguous items into one of two categories which are available for labelling. The first of these errors consists of including into a category a label on some specific ground which does not belong to it and excluding a label which does belong.

The enormity of differences in assigning negativity to a category for the protection of existing value system has continued in Indian social system and the functioning of social stereotypes percolated the similar attitude in the legislature of this country. This differential attitude and value resulted in prejudiced notions towards the people of Schedule Castes and mass-hatred extrapolated from individual displacement or re-direction of aggression to targe scale instances of social aggression or violence being reported all over this country and Khairlanji is a case in news in past few days.

The social psychological research can try to (i) diagnose the contents of caste prejudice and social stereotypes (ii) try to understand the large-scale stressful and planned aggressions against this socially marginalised groups of Scheduled Castes and class (iii) Try to understand the cognitive aspects of individual's of various social groups adopting discriminatory practices (iv) Understanding this artificial divide of humans based on social psychological processes of attribution . and try to, discover the forces behind mamtaining these negative group images with support of religious, cultural, social and political practices.

Reflections from these researches can be applied to find out the congruence perceived as common to all caste groups in terms of beliefs, attitude, and behaviour. Some faithful reflections are urgently required to restrict this divide which is being nurtured by raw materials of individuals and the social context in which we live today.

Legislations alone can't be a panacea to these problems that threaten Indian society at large and a strong positive correlation of behaviour can be expected in true psycho-social researches are carried out to diagnose the bluntness of our discriminatory collective and individual thought processes.

Future research in social psychology may ponder over questions of group functions of social causality justification and differentiation to the individual functions of cognitive structuring and value orientation. The efforts may also be made to identify group rigidity boundary turning to cohesive and flexible aspects of inter-group living.

As a student of psychology I clearly hold the view that enough of legislation and government action has failed to achieve to remove this discrimination in our society and more psychological based interventions programmes' at the community level be encouraged to achieve our goal of egalitarian society. Healthy realities of intergroup relation can be discovered with our sincere understanding of the subject. Inter-individuality of all as an Indian needs to be understood in an all encompassing manner. Hazy blueprint for future will not solve our problems and study of tough realities of our social context is the need of the time.

This will be a real tribute to the works of Baba Saheb Bhim Rao Ambedkar and my effort is merely the tip of Iceberg of this magnamatic crusader and the torch hearer of India's progress as a nation-state.