A review of "Urban Syndromes"

Sanket, at Argumentation Crisis, has a thoughtful post on how the needs and necessities of the common man in rural places and villages are wrongly perceived. Not just that. He also details how the perception of the rural setting itself is skewed in the minds of "urban entities." The post, titled "Urban Syndromes - 2: We know what you want," is the second in a series on "Urban Syndromes." The first post in this series can be found here.

In the first article of the series, titled "Urban Syndromes - 1: We are the world," Sanket describes how we, as members of closed-communities or "small worlds" like IT professionals or beer lovers or anything else that your imagination might fancy, tend to forget the big picture. We tend to forget that the world is in fact not "small," but much bigger than we consider it to be. The "small worlds" are just a part of, and encompassed by, the larger world. These small worlds are in fact not independent entities as we perceive them to be, but functionally interconnected. The way I see it, the good point that I can draw out from this article is that one should not trivialize the effect of some "small world" action on the rest of the world as insignificant or non-existent. What is required of us is an attitude to be open minded and willing to look at the bigger picture, rather than just be a koopa-mandooka.

This article also came in for a bit of criticism for supposedly "questioning the all-knowing capabilities of few." However, as a dispassionate critic of the article, I must say that it was not understood properly by people who criticised it as such. Of course, the tone of the article does seem to suggest that it questions certain popular lines of thoughts. However, when I read the article objectively and dispassionately, and tried to understand what the author wanted to convey, I had to change my opinion. In fact, the article made very good sense to me on this second reading.

In the second article in this series, Sanket talks about the "know-all" attitudes of "urban entities." Again, here when he says "urban," I don't see it as merely urban. I see it as entities outside the rural context (which need not necessarily be urban). The point is that it is not merely a rural vs urban contest. For example, as Sanket points out, here, the term "urban" could refer to a big multinational corporation as much as a group of PhD students. In this article, Sanket begins by quoting a line from Gabo's No One Writes to the Colonel: "To Europe, Latin America is a man with a moustache, a gun, and a guitar." This symbolizes the European perception of Latin America. I just loved the tone of this article. It begins with a flourish and ends even better.

In this article, Sanket articulates how the "urban" entities assume that they know exactly how to make a difference to life in rural areas. There is nothing wrong with assuming that they can make a difference, but it wouldn't be appropriate to assume that they know just how to make a difference. Sanket puts this very well, and clearly.

Sanket regards this kind of an attitude/perception to be an act of "solution-probleming." Solution-Probleming is the act of discovering a problem merely in order to use a solution that has been successfully implemented in some context before. True. I would agree with what he says. However, in my view, it is not just about solution-probleming. The way I see it, this article is also very coherent with the first article in the series. The attitude of "urban" entities to assume that they know just how to make a difference in rural areas translates to refusal to look beyond their own "small worlds!" It surfaces as the refusal to consider the larger world, the bigger picture.

The "Urban Syndromes" series seems to be coming up really well. The first two articles have impressed me very much. There actually seems to be a link between successive articles, which I think, in a way, thematizes the entire series. I am looking forward to reading more articles in this series in future. To anybody who would read this review (although, it is not very probable that anybody would!), the first two articles in the "Urban Syndromes" series are strongly recommended. They present beautiful arguments, and compel the reader to scratch her head and do a little thinking herself.