Silapatikaram is a pre-eminent Tamil kavya that gives a detailed account of life in South India some 1,800 to 2,000 years before present (ybp). Many times have been written since the rediscovery of this then lost work by U Ve Swaminatha Aiyer.
It is highly important to note that it was him, again, who rediscovered the other two available Tamil kavyas, Manimekhalai and Jeevaka-chintamani. Another two of the five known Tamil kavyas are yet to be discovered.
Sadly, despite its relatively simple and unambiguous Tamil, many scholars of Dravidian movement have somewhat successfully tried to twist the interpretation of the work.
This is one of those rare works which is so heavy in content and import that each chapter needs to be reviewed separately. This book review is thus a grossly inadequate attempt to try to capture the gravity of the entire publication in such a short piece. Even the preface on its own is a scholarly piece shedding pearls of facts and wisdom. For example, the editor, Dr Gupt aptly points out how the South Indians “are fond of music and dance more than any other people in the country” as observed even by Bharata in his work Natyashastra.
Again, in the preface, Dr Nagaswamy points out various facts as follows:
- the author of the work Ilango-Adigal stating within the work that this is a dance drama, and
- that the work follows exactly the classifications and schemes enumerated in Bharata’s Natyashastra.
Beautifully interwoven are the presentation of various points even at the stage of the preface, such as the connection between this great kavya, architecture in Cambodia and Natyashastra, as described in the epigraphy found at Bantai Srei temple.
The Vedic wedding
We can see how the wedding of the lead characters of the story are conducted in accordance with the Vedic rites, followed even to this day by most Hindus. Importantly, neither of the parents – the bride’s or the bridegroom’s – appear to be Vedic by faith.
They belonged to the Jainas, Ajivika sect or Buddhists. Yet, their wedding rituals and religious festivals are of Vedic Hinduism. This reflects the secularism inherent in the Dharmic cultures, sects and philosophies of Hindustan.
Manimekhalai, the daughter of Kovalan and Madhavi, is named after the family deity (kula devata) of Kovalan.
The kavya explains how the Chera King who took upon a military expedition to the Himalayas prayed to Bhagawan Shiva, and got charms (garlands and such) from Bhagawan Vishnu’s temple before his expedition. The military expedition included artiste and musicians, which attests to the highly civilised nature of warfare in ancient Bharat.
The chief gods of Tamils, as per this great kavya, were Krishna, Murugan, Shiva, Durga, Indra, Balarama, Varuna, etc. It is not only the presence of these gods, but the stories and myths associated with them were the same as found in the Puranas and the Vedas. For example, the very common Devi worship (till date) also included the belief that she was the destroyer of Mahishasura. The kavyaitself concludes with the Chera king conducting a Rajasuya Yagna, an undisputed Vedic ritual prescribed for the kings.
Pre-Pallava temples
Temples are a salient feature of architectural and cultural description in this kavya. This refutes the common claim that temples are of Pallava origin and later. In fact, we find mentions of Chidambaram temple, Sri Rangam temple, Thirupathi temple and so on.
The Varna equality
Similarly, castes and varna are squarely refuted in the kavya which explains how all the four Varnas were placed equally in the viewing arena and how all their respective Varna Bhutas were worshipped at the start of a concert. In fact, the bamboo pillars holding up the stage for performance were labelled with the names of all four Varnas putting all people on an equal ranking and respect. This also symbolised the importance of all groups of people for a smooth functioning of the society.
Geographical spread of the Chera territory
The territory of Cheran Senguttuvan appears to include the present-day north-west India (land of the Yavanas) and the northern plains, up to the Himalayas. This is attested by his title Imayavaramban, the one who has the Himalayas as his borders. In fact, the military expedition to the Himalayas appears to have been also to ascertain his suzerainty over the territories. The rule of the Chera was in no way autocratic. He is advised by an expansive council of ministers representing different classes and communities, and in which the queen is an equal participant. Many of the leaders and leader-like characters of the kavya are women. Thus, ancient India, before the alien invasions, was an egalitarian society and culture with a high degree of women empowerment.
The exalted dancing classes
Interestingly, the dancing girls were considered of a class of divine origin and of one of the highest births. Silapatikaram and Natyashastra share the same respect and status of divinity for the dancing classes. In fact, all the different dances derive from the Gods themselves. In fact, Natyashastra is considered the fifth Veda.
Thus, the later degradation of the Devadasi system of dancing girls seems to be problematic. There is also evidence for entire Vedic Brahmin villages becoming dance/art classes (communities) and dedicating themselves to the arts of divine expression. Some such communities and villages are still in existence in Kerala. They follow Natyashastra to the last dot even in today’s performance.
Make in India by Sangam Tamils
The Chola king’s simhasana was made by various artists from all over Bharat: Tamil artists along with carpenters from Northwest India, blacksmiths from Avanti (western Madhya Pradesh), smiths from Maharashtra, stonecutters from Magadha (Bihar, Jarkhand, Bengal and Orrisa).
The Chera king’s hall was adorned with gifts such as the royal canopy from Vajra King, pattimandapa by the Magada king, torana by Avanti king. Cf. Perunkatai.
Clearly, Bharatiya society was integrated from the north, northwest, northeast to the tip of the southern coast. India may not be a political expression at that point of time, but it was certainly a cultural expression since time immemorial.
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Petrol in India is cheaper than in countries like Hong Kong, Germany and the UK but costlier than in China, Brazil, Japan, the US, Russia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, a Bank of Baroda Economics Research report showed.
Rising fuel prices in India have led to considerable debate on which government, state or central, should be lowering their taxes to keep prices under control.
The rise in fuel prices is mainly due to the global price of crude oil (raw material for making petrol and diesel) going up. Further, a stronger dollar has added to the cost of crude oil.
Amongst comparable countries (per capita wise), prices in India are higher than those in Vietnam, Kenya, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Venezuela. Countries that are major oil producers have much lower prices.
In the report, the Philippines has a comparable petrol price but has a per capita income higher than India by over 50 per cent.
Countries which have a lower per capita income like Kenya, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Venezuela have much lower prices of petrol and hence are impacted less than India.
“Therefore there is still a strong case for the government to consider lowering the taxes on fuel to protect the interest of the people,” the report argued.
India is the world’s third-biggest oil consuming and importing nation. It imports 85 per cent of its oil needs and so prices retail fuel at import parity rates.
With the global surge in energy prices, the cost of producing petrol, diesel and other petroleum products also went up for oil companies in India.
They raised petrol and diesel prices by Rs 10 a litre in just over a fortnight beginning March 22 but hit a pause button soon after as the move faced criticism and the opposition parties asked the government to cut taxes instead.
India imports most of its oil from a group of countries called the ‘OPEC +’ (i.e, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Russia, etc), which produces 40% of the world’s crude oil.
As they have the power to dictate fuel supply and prices, their decision of limiting the global supply reduces supply in India, thus raising prices
The government charges about 167% tax (excise) on petrol and 129% on diesel as compared to US (20%), UK (62%), Italy and Germany (65%).
The abominable excise duty is 2/3rd of the cost, and the base price, dealer commission and freight form the rest.
Here is an approximate break-up (in Rs):
a)Base Price | 39 |
b)Freight | 0.34 |
c) Price Charged to Dealers = (a+b) | 39.34 |
d) Excise Duty | 40.17 |
e) Dealer Commission | 4.68 |
f) VAT | 25.35 |
g) Retail Selling Price | 109.54 |
Looked closely, much of the cost of petrol and diesel is due to higher tax rate by govt, specifically excise duty.
So the question is why government is not reducing the prices ?
India, being a developing country, it does require gigantic amount of funding for its infrastructure projects as well as welfare schemes.
However, we as a society is yet to be tax-compliant. Many people evade the direct tax and that’s the reason why govt’s hands are tied. Govt. needs the money to fund various programs and at the same time it is not generating enough revenue from direct taxes.
That’s the reason why, govt is bumping up its revenue through higher indirect taxes such as GST or excise duty as in the case of petrol and diesel.
Direct taxes are progressive as it taxes according to an individuals’ income however indirect tax such as excise duty or GST are regressive in the sense that the poorest of the poor and richest of the rich have to pay the same amount.
Does not matter, if you are an auto-driver or owner of a Mercedes, end of the day both pay the same price for petrol/diesel-that’s why it is regressive in nature.
But unlike direct tax where tax evasion is rampant, indirect tax can not be evaded due to their very nature and as long as huge no of Indians keep evading direct taxes, indirect tax such as excise duty will be difficult for the govt to reduce, because it may reduce the revenue and hamper may programs of the govt.
Globally, around 80% of wastewater flows back into the ecosystem without being treated or reused, according to the United Nations.
This can pose a significant environmental and health threat.
In the absence of cost-effective, sustainable, disruptive water management solutions, about 70% of sewage is discharged untreated into India’s water bodies.
A staggering 21% of diseases are caused by contaminated water in India, according to the World Bank, and one in five children die before their fifth birthday because of poor sanitation and hygiene conditions, according to Startup India.
As we confront these public health challenges emerging out of environmental concerns, expanding the scope of public health/environmental engineering science becomes pivotal.
For India to achieve its sustainable development goals of clean water and sanitation and to address the growing demands for water consumption and preservation of both surface water bodies and groundwater resources, it is essential to find and implement innovative ways of treating wastewater.
It is in this context why the specialised cadre of public health engineers, also known as sanitation engineers or environmental engineers, is best suited to provide the growing urban and rural water supply and to manage solid waste and wastewater.
Traditionally, engineering and public health have been understood as different fields.
Currently in India, civil engineering incorporates a course or two on environmental engineering for students to learn about wastewater management as a part of their pre-service and in-service training.
Most often, civil engineers do not have adequate skills to address public health problems. And public health professionals do not have adequate engineering skills.
India aims to supply 55 litres of water per person per day by 2024 under its Jal Jeevan Mission to install functional household tap connections.
The goal of reaching every rural household with functional tap water can be achieved in a sustainable and resilient manner only if the cadre of public health engineers is expanded and strengthened.
In India, public health engineering is executed by the Public Works Department or by health officials.
This differs from international trends. To manage a wastewater treatment plant in Europe, for example, a candidate must specialise in wastewater engineering.
Furthermore, public health engineering should be developed as an interdisciplinary field. Engineers can significantly contribute to public health in defining what is possible, identifying limitations, and shaping workable solutions with a problem-solving approach.
Similarly, public health professionals can contribute to engineering through well-researched understanding of health issues, measured risks and how course correction can be initiated.
Once both meet, a public health engineer can identify a health risk, work on developing concrete solutions such as new health and safety practices or specialised equipment, in order to correct the safety concern..
There is no doubt that the majority of diseases are water-related, transmitted through consumption of contaminated water, vectors breeding in stagnated water, or lack of adequate quantity of good quality water for proper personal hygiene.
Diseases cannot be contained unless we provide good quality and adequate quantity of water. Most of the world’s diseases can be prevented by considering this.
Training our young minds towards creating sustainable water management systems would be the first step.
Currently, institutions like the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M) are considering initiating public health engineering as a separate discipline.
To leverage this opportunity even further, India needs to scale up in the same direction.
Consider this hypothetical situation: Rajalakshmi, from a remote Karnataka village spots a business opportunity.
She knows that flowers, discarded in the thousands by temples can be handcrafted into incense sticks.
She wants to find a market for the product and hopefully, employ some people to help her. Soon enough though, she discovers that starting a business is a herculean task for a person like her.
There is a laborious process of rules and regulations to go through, bribes to pay on the way and no actual means to transport her product to its market.
After making her first batch of agarbathis and taking it to Bengaluru by bus, she decides the venture is not easy and gives up.
On the flipside of this is a young entrepreneur in Bengaluru. Let’s call him Deepak. He wants to start an internet-based business selling sustainably made agarbathis.
He has no trouble getting investors and to mobilise supply chains. His paperwork is over in a matter of days and his business is set up quickly and ready to grow.
Never mind that the business is built on aggregation of small sellers who will not see half the profit .
Is this scenario really all that hypothetical or emblematic of how we think about entrepreneurship in India?
Between our national obsession with unicorns on one side and glorifying the person running a pakora stall for survival as an example of viable entrepreneurship on the other, is the middle ground in entrepreneurship—a space that should have seen millions of thriving small and medium businesses, but remains so sparsely occupied that you could almost miss it.
If we are to achieve meaningful economic growth in our country, we need to incorporate, in our national conversation on entrepreneurship, ways of addressing the missing middle.
Spread out across India’s small towns and cities, this is a class of entrepreneurs that have been hit by a triple wave over the last five years, buffeted first by the inadvertent fallout of demonetization, being unprepared for GST, and then by the endless pain of the covid-19 pandemic.
As we finally appear to be reaching some level of normality, now is the opportune time to identify the kind of industries that make up this layer, the opportunities they should be afforded, and the best ways to scale up their functioning in the shortest time frame.
But, why pay so much attention to these industries when we should be celebrating, as we do, our booming startup space?
It is indeed true that India has the third largest number of unicorns in the world now, adding 42 in 2021 alone. Braving all the disruptions of the pandemic, it was a year in which Indian startups raised $24.1 billion in equity investments, according to a NASSCOM-Zinnov report last year.
However, this is a story of lopsided growth.
The cities of Bengaluru, Delhi/NCR, and Mumbai together claim three-fourths of these startup deals while emerging hubs like Ahmedabad, Coimbatore, and Jaipur account for the rest.
This leap in the startup space has created 6.6 lakh direct jobs and a few million indirect jobs. Is that good enough for a country that sends 12 million fresh graduates to its workforce every year?
It doesn’t even make a dent on arguably our biggest unemployment in recent history—in April 2020 when the country shutdown to battle covid-19.
Technology-intensive start-ups are constrained in their ability to create jobs—and hybrid work models and artificial intelligence (AI) have further accelerated unemployment.
What we need to focus on, therefore, is the labour-intensive micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME). Here, we begin to get to a definitional notion of what we called the mundane middle and the problems it currently faces.
India has an estimated 63 million enterprises. But, out of 100 companies, 95 are micro enterprises—employing less than five people, four are small to medium and barely one is large.
The questions to ask are: why are Indian MSMEs failing to grow from micro to small and medium and then be spurred on to make the leap into large companies?
At the Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship (GAME), we have advocated for a National Mission for Mass Entrepreneurship, the need for which is more pronounced now than ever before.
Whenever India has worked to achieve a significant economic milestone in a limited span of time, it has worked best in mission mode. Think of the Green Revolution or Operation Flood.
From across various states, there are enough examples of approaches that work to catalyse mass entrepreneurship.
The introduction of entrepreneurship mindset curriculum (EMC) in schools through alliance mode of working by a number of agencies has shown significant improvement in academic and life outcomes.
Through creative teaching methods, students are encouraged to inculcate 21st century skills like creativity, problem solving, critical thinking and leadership which are not only foundational for entrepreneurship but essential to thrive in our complex world.
Udhyam Learning Foundation has been involved with the Government of Delhi since 2018 to help young people across over 1,000 schools to develop an entrepreneurial mindset.
One pilot programme introduced the concept of ‘seed money’ and saw 41 students turn their ideas into profit-making ventures. Other programmes teach qualities like grit and resourcefulness.
If you think these are isolated examples, consider some larger data trends.
The Observer Research Foundation and The World Economic Forum released the Young India and Work: A Survey of Youth Aspirations in 2018.
When asked which type of work arrangement they prefer, 49% of the youth surveyed said they prefer a job in the public sector.
However, 38% selected self-employment as an entrepreneur as their ideal type of job. The spirit of entrepreneurship is latent and waiting to be unleashed.
The same can be said for building networks of successful women entrepreneurs—so crucial when the participation of women in the Indian economy has declined to an abysmal 20%.
The majority of India’s 63 million firms are informal —fewer than 20% are registered for GST.
Research shows that companies that start out as formal enterprises become two-three times more productive than a similar informal business.
So why do firms prefer to be informal? In most cases, it’s because of the sheer cost and difficulty of complying with the different regulations.
We have academia and non-profits working as ecosystem enablers providing insights and evidence-based models for growth. We have large private corporations and philanthropic and funding agencies ready to invest.
It should be in the scope of a National Mass Entrepreneurship Mission to bring all of them together to work in mission mode so that the gap between thought leadership and action can finally be bridged.