Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
Wednesday, 19 June 2024
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Saturday, 27 January 2024
Saturday, 6 January 2024
Monday, 22 May 2023
Sunday, 12 February 2023
The Red Flags of Romantic Chemistry
David Robson in The Guardian
For centuries, our romantic fates were thought to be written in the stars. Wealthy families would even pay fortunes to have a matchmaker foretell the success or failure of a potential marriage.
Despite the lack of any good evidence for its accuracy, astrology still thrives in many lifestyle magazines, while the more sceptical among us might hope to be guided by the algorithms of websites and dating apps.
But are these programs any more rigorous than the signs of the zodiac? Or should we put our faith in love languages and attachment theory? (That’s to name just two fashions in pop psychology.)
The world of matchmaking is riddled with myths and misunderstandings that recent science is just starting to unravel. From the inevitably messy data, a few clear conclusions are emerging that can help guide us in our search for love.
If you are looking for the secrets of romantic success, the most obvious place to start would seem to be the science of personality. If you are an outgoing party animal, you might hope to find someone with a similar level of extraversion; if you are organised and conscientious, you might expect to feel a stronger connection with someone who enjoys keeping a rigid schedule.
The scientific research does offer some support for the intuitive notion that “like attracts like”, but in the grand scheme of things, the similarity of personality profiles is relatively unimportant.
“Yes, it is true that people are more likely to experience chemistry with someone who is similar to them in certain ways,” explains Prof Harry Reis at the University of Rochester, New York. “But if I brought you in a room with 20 people who are similar to you in various ways, the odds that you’re going to have chemistry with more than one of them are not very good.” It is only the extreme differences, Reis says, that will matter in your first meetings. “It’s not likely that you would have chemistry with somebody who is very dissimilar to you.”
The rest is just noise. The same goes for shared interests. “The effects are so tiny,” says Prof Paul Eastwick at the University of California, Davis.
Eastwick found similarly disappointing results when he looked at people’s “romantic ideals” – our preconceived notions of the particular qualities we would want in our dream partner. I might say that I value kindness above all other qualities, for instance, and you might say you are looking for someone who is adventurous and free-spirited.
You’d think we’d know what we want – but the research suggests otherwise. While it’s true that certain qualities, such as kindness or adventurousness, are generally considered to be attractive, experiments on speed-daters suggest that people’s particular preferences tend to matter very little in their face-to-face interactions. Someone who stated that they were looking for kindness, for example, would be just as likely to click with someone who scored high on adventurousness – and vice versa. Despite our preconceptions, we seem open to a wide variety of people showing generally positive attributes.
“We can’t find evidence that some people really weigh some traits over others,” Eastwick says. He compares it to going out to a restaurant, ordering a specific dinner, then swapping food with the table next to yours. You’re just as likely to enjoy the random dish as the one you’d originally ordered.
Given this growing body of research, Eastwick is generally very sceptical that computer algorithms can accurately match people for chemistry or compatibility. Working with Prof Samantha Joel at Western University in Canada, he has used a machine learning program to identify any combinations of traits that would predict mutual attraction.
Each participant completed a 30-minute survey, with detailed questions about their personality traits, their physical attractiveness, their political and social values and their dating preferences (whether they were looking for a fling or a long-term relationship). “It was very much a ‘kitchen-sink’ approach,” says Eastwick. The researchers then put the participants on blind dates and questioned them about whether they were likely to hook up afterwards.
For centuries, our romantic fates were thought to be written in the stars. Wealthy families would even pay fortunes to have a matchmaker foretell the success or failure of a potential marriage.
Despite the lack of any good evidence for its accuracy, astrology still thrives in many lifestyle magazines, while the more sceptical among us might hope to be guided by the algorithms of websites and dating apps.
But are these programs any more rigorous than the signs of the zodiac? Or should we put our faith in love languages and attachment theory? (That’s to name just two fashions in pop psychology.)
The world of matchmaking is riddled with myths and misunderstandings that recent science is just starting to unravel. From the inevitably messy data, a few clear conclusions are emerging that can help guide us in our search for love.
If you are looking for the secrets of romantic success, the most obvious place to start would seem to be the science of personality. If you are an outgoing party animal, you might hope to find someone with a similar level of extraversion; if you are organised and conscientious, you might expect to feel a stronger connection with someone who enjoys keeping a rigid schedule.
The scientific research does offer some support for the intuitive notion that “like attracts like”, but in the grand scheme of things, the similarity of personality profiles is relatively unimportant.
“Yes, it is true that people are more likely to experience chemistry with someone who is similar to them in certain ways,” explains Prof Harry Reis at the University of Rochester, New York. “But if I brought you in a room with 20 people who are similar to you in various ways, the odds that you’re going to have chemistry with more than one of them are not very good.” It is only the extreme differences, Reis says, that will matter in your first meetings. “It’s not likely that you would have chemistry with somebody who is very dissimilar to you.”
The rest is just noise. The same goes for shared interests. “The effects are so tiny,” says Prof Paul Eastwick at the University of California, Davis.
Eastwick found similarly disappointing results when he looked at people’s “romantic ideals” – our preconceived notions of the particular qualities we would want in our dream partner. I might say that I value kindness above all other qualities, for instance, and you might say you are looking for someone who is adventurous and free-spirited.
You’d think we’d know what we want – but the research suggests otherwise. While it’s true that certain qualities, such as kindness or adventurousness, are generally considered to be attractive, experiments on speed-daters suggest that people’s particular preferences tend to matter very little in their face-to-face interactions. Someone who stated that they were looking for kindness, for example, would be just as likely to click with someone who scored high on adventurousness – and vice versa. Despite our preconceptions, we seem open to a wide variety of people showing generally positive attributes.
“We can’t find evidence that some people really weigh some traits over others,” Eastwick says. He compares it to going out to a restaurant, ordering a specific dinner, then swapping food with the table next to yours. You’re just as likely to enjoy the random dish as the one you’d originally ordered.
Given this growing body of research, Eastwick is generally very sceptical that computer algorithms can accurately match people for chemistry or compatibility. Working with Prof Samantha Joel at Western University in Canada, he has used a machine learning program to identify any combinations of traits that would predict mutual attraction.
Each participant completed a 30-minute survey, with detailed questions about their personality traits, their physical attractiveness, their political and social values and their dating preferences (whether they were looking for a fling or a long-term relationship). “It was very much a ‘kitchen-sink’ approach,” says Eastwick. The researchers then put the participants on blind dates and questioned them about whether they were likely to hook up afterwards.
Pubgoers at a speed-dating event in 2021. Experts find that we bin our romantic ideals at such gatherings. Photograph: Alberto Pezzali/AP
Surprise, surprise? The algorithm could accurately pick out the participants who were generally considered to be more attractive to a larger number of people. And it could pick out those who were generally less picky and more open to second dates with a larger number of people. On predicting the particular level of attraction between two specific people, however, it performed no better than chance. There was no magic formula that could ensure a sizzling first date.
Most dating apps and websites keep the details of their algorithms secret, but Eastwick thinks it is unlikely that these companies have stumbled upon some secret that is missing from the psychological literature. Indeed, he suspects that romantic attraction may be an inherently “chaotic” process that inherently defies accurate prediction.
Reis is similarly downbeat about the chances of algorithms correctly predicting the prick of Cupid’s arrow. “The evidence that they have is very, very low-quality work.” In his opinion, these apps may rule out the people with the most extreme differences in personality and interest – but beyond that, it’s largely chance.
According to psychological research, we are much more likely to be swayed by the flow of the conversation and people’s nonverbal cues. “It’s whether the other person is smiling at the right moments, whether they’re really listening and showing that they understand what you’re saying,” says Reis. That’s impossible to gauge before the encounter from data gathered in a survey.
An additional problem is that the questions on a survey are necessarily rather abstract; they can’t capture the tiny details of someone’s life that might promote bonding. You might not bond over a general love of travel, but your mutual love of a particular location that you just happen to mention in your conversation. You might even start out with differences, but then change your mind on a certain topic as your date persuades you to see things their way – a process of reaching a joint understanding could provide the point of connection. “No algorithm is going to be able to tell us that’s going to happen ahead of time,” says Eastwick.
Even after couples have started dating, it can be tricky to work out which relationships will last in the long term. Analysing data from more than 11,000, Eastwick and Joel found that someone’s perception of their partner’s commitment was far more important than particular personality traits in determining their satisfaction in the relationship.
If you are au fait with self-help literature, you might have come to believe that “attachment styles” might explain your relationship woes. These are supposed to describe different ways of forming relationships with others, based on someone’s childhood experiences with their caregivers. The terms are fairly self-explanatory – you can have “secure”, “avoidant” or “anxious” attachment styles. You will find articles arguing that someone who has an anxious attachment style may find that an avoidant partner only exacerbates their insecurities.
Eastwick and Joel’s data suggest that attachment styles do play some role in people’s relationship quality. Even so, we must be careful not to overexaggerate their influence on our romantic fates. Prof Pascal Vrtička, a social scientist at the University of Essex, points out that our attachment styles can change with time. With the right partner, someone might move from anxious to secure, for instance. “It might take some time to lose some of your insecurity, but it is possible.” Once again, our attachment styles are one factor in a dynamic process, rather than determining the health of our relationships from the very beginning.
Surprise, surprise? The algorithm could accurately pick out the participants who were generally considered to be more attractive to a larger number of people. And it could pick out those who were generally less picky and more open to second dates with a larger number of people. On predicting the particular level of attraction between two specific people, however, it performed no better than chance. There was no magic formula that could ensure a sizzling first date.
Most dating apps and websites keep the details of their algorithms secret, but Eastwick thinks it is unlikely that these companies have stumbled upon some secret that is missing from the psychological literature. Indeed, he suspects that romantic attraction may be an inherently “chaotic” process that inherently defies accurate prediction.
Reis is similarly downbeat about the chances of algorithms correctly predicting the prick of Cupid’s arrow. “The evidence that they have is very, very low-quality work.” In his opinion, these apps may rule out the people with the most extreme differences in personality and interest – but beyond that, it’s largely chance.
According to psychological research, we are much more likely to be swayed by the flow of the conversation and people’s nonverbal cues. “It’s whether the other person is smiling at the right moments, whether they’re really listening and showing that they understand what you’re saying,” says Reis. That’s impossible to gauge before the encounter from data gathered in a survey.
An additional problem is that the questions on a survey are necessarily rather abstract; they can’t capture the tiny details of someone’s life that might promote bonding. You might not bond over a general love of travel, but your mutual love of a particular location that you just happen to mention in your conversation. You might even start out with differences, but then change your mind on a certain topic as your date persuades you to see things their way – a process of reaching a joint understanding could provide the point of connection. “No algorithm is going to be able to tell us that’s going to happen ahead of time,” says Eastwick.
Even after couples have started dating, it can be tricky to work out which relationships will last in the long term. Analysing data from more than 11,000, Eastwick and Joel found that someone’s perception of their partner’s commitment was far more important than particular personality traits in determining their satisfaction in the relationship.
If you are au fait with self-help literature, you might have come to believe that “attachment styles” might explain your relationship woes. These are supposed to describe different ways of forming relationships with others, based on someone’s childhood experiences with their caregivers. The terms are fairly self-explanatory – you can have “secure”, “avoidant” or “anxious” attachment styles. You will find articles arguing that someone who has an anxious attachment style may find that an avoidant partner only exacerbates their insecurities.
Eastwick and Joel’s data suggest that attachment styles do play some role in people’s relationship quality. Even so, we must be careful not to overexaggerate their influence on our romantic fates. Prof Pascal Vrtička, a social scientist at the University of Essex, points out that our attachment styles can change with time. With the right partner, someone might move from anxious to secure, for instance. “It might take some time to lose some of your insecurity, but it is possible.” Once again, our attachment styles are one factor in a dynamic process, rather than determining the health of our relationships from the very beginning.
Evidence suggests that dating app algorithms produce rudimentary matches. Photograph: Koshiro K/Alamy
The same can be said of “love languages”. While people’s style of expressing affection and appreciation for their partner – whether we prefer praise, or gifts, or hugs and kisses to show our affection – can influence a couple’s initial compatibility, it is possible to adapt and change over time.
Ultimately, our beliefs about relationships and the ways they ought to progress may be just as important as the initial compatibility of any two people. Our love lives, like so many areas of health and wellbeing, are the subject of expectation effects.
To get a flavour of this research, consider the following statements:
Potential relationship partners are either compatible or they are not
Relationships that do not start off well inevitably fail
And
The ideal relationship develops gradually over time
A successful relationship evolves through hard work and the resolution of incompatibilities
People who endorse the first two statements are said to have a “romantic destiny” mindset, while those who endorse the last two statements are said to have a “romantic growth” mindset. (Some people will fall in between – they might believe that relationships need to start out well, but that they can also develop over time.)
In general, people with the romantic destiny mindset will place more importance on the initial chemistry of the first encounter and if that goes well, they may be quick to fall in love. But they do not cope well with disagreements and may lose interest as potential incompatibilities come to light and may even engage in toxic behaviours to extricate themselves. Recent research suggests that people with the destiny mindset are more likely to “ghost” partners, for example. Those with the romantic growth mindset, on the other hand, tend to work harder to cope with the challenges, rather than looking to start again whenever differences come to light.
That’s the romantic side. Prof Jessica Maxwell, a social psychologist at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, and colleagues have found similar patterns of behaviour in the bedroom. People with a “sexual destiny mindset” endorse statements such as:
If sexual partners are meant to be together, sex will be easy and wonderful
It is clear right from the start how satisfying a couple’s sex life will be over the course of their relationship
Maxwell’s studies show that people with these kinds of beliefs can fare very well, but they tend to be fatalistic if issues emerge. People with a sexual growth mindset, however, are more proactive about navigating their disappointments and looking for ways to improve their own and their partner’s satisfaction.
The same can be said of “love languages”. While people’s style of expressing affection and appreciation for their partner – whether we prefer praise, or gifts, or hugs and kisses to show our affection – can influence a couple’s initial compatibility, it is possible to adapt and change over time.
Ultimately, our beliefs about relationships and the ways they ought to progress may be just as important as the initial compatibility of any two people. Our love lives, like so many areas of health and wellbeing, are the subject of expectation effects.
To get a flavour of this research, consider the following statements:
Potential relationship partners are either compatible or they are not
Relationships that do not start off well inevitably fail
And
The ideal relationship develops gradually over time
A successful relationship evolves through hard work and the resolution of incompatibilities
People who endorse the first two statements are said to have a “romantic destiny” mindset, while those who endorse the last two statements are said to have a “romantic growth” mindset. (Some people will fall in between – they might believe that relationships need to start out well, but that they can also develop over time.)
In general, people with the romantic destiny mindset will place more importance on the initial chemistry of the first encounter and if that goes well, they may be quick to fall in love. But they do not cope well with disagreements and may lose interest as potential incompatibilities come to light and may even engage in toxic behaviours to extricate themselves. Recent research suggests that people with the destiny mindset are more likely to “ghost” partners, for example. Those with the romantic growth mindset, on the other hand, tend to work harder to cope with the challenges, rather than looking to start again whenever differences come to light.
That’s the romantic side. Prof Jessica Maxwell, a social psychologist at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, and colleagues have found similar patterns of behaviour in the bedroom. People with a “sexual destiny mindset” endorse statements such as:
If sexual partners are meant to be together, sex will be easy and wonderful
It is clear right from the start how satisfying a couple’s sex life will be over the course of their relationship
Maxwell’s studies show that people with these kinds of beliefs can fare very well, but they tend to be fatalistic if issues emerge. People with a sexual growth mindset, however, are more proactive about navigating their disappointments and looking for ways to improve their own and their partner’s satisfaction.
Research shows that shared interests only give a minor boost to romantic chemistry. Photograph: Dmytro Sidelnikov/Alamy
Some relationships, however, are best left on the scrapheap; even those with a growth mindset need to acknowledge when things simply aren’t going to work out. And if there is no chemistry on a first date, there is no need to put yourself through another excruciating encounter.
But we should also be wary of having too many fixed preconceptions. Whether you are focused on finding someone with a particular profession, personality profile or planetary alignment, overly rigid ideas can blind you to the potential in the people around you.
If the science tells us anything, it is that love is inherently unpredictable. In matters of the heart, we should always be prepared to be surprised.
Some relationships, however, are best left on the scrapheap; even those with a growth mindset need to acknowledge when things simply aren’t going to work out. And if there is no chemistry on a first date, there is no need to put yourself through another excruciating encounter.
But we should also be wary of having too many fixed preconceptions. Whether you are focused on finding someone with a particular profession, personality profile or planetary alignment, overly rigid ideas can blind you to the potential in the people around you.
If the science tells us anything, it is that love is inherently unpredictable. In matters of the heart, we should always be prepared to be surprised.
Saturday, 10 December 2022
Wednesday, 16 November 2022
Monday, 27 June 2022
Don’t date anybody if you only want positive results! Life is poker not chess
Abridged and adapted from Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke
Suppose someone says, “I flipped a coin and it landed heads four times in a row. How likely is that to occur?”
It feels that should be a pretty easy question to answer. Once we do the maths on the probability of heads on four consecutive 50-50 flips, we can determine that would happen 6.25% of the time (0.5 x 0.5 x 0.5 x 0,.5).
The problem is that we came to this answer without knowing anything about the coin or the person flipping it. Is it a two-sided coin or three-sided or four? If it is two-sided, is it a two-headed coin? Even if the coin is two sided, is the coin weighted to land on heads more often than tails? Is the coin flipper a magician who is capable of influencing how the coin lands? This information is all incomplete, yet we answered the question as if we had examined the coin and knew everything about it.
Now if that person flipped the coin 10,000 times, giving us a sufficiently large sample size, we could figure out, with some certainty, whether the coin is fair. Four flips simply isn’t enough to determine much about the coin
We make this same mistake when we look for lessons in life’s results. Our lives are too short to collect enough data from our own experience to make it easy to dig down into decision quality from the small set of results we experience. If we buy a house, fix it up a little, and sell it three years later for 50% more than we paid. Does that mean we are smart at buying and selling property, or at fixing up houses? It could, but it could also mean there was a big upward trend in the market and buying almost any piece of property would have made just as much money. Bitcoin buyers may now wonder about the wisdom of their decisions.
The hazards of resulting
Take a moment to imagine your best decision or your worst decision. I’m willing to bet that your best decision preceded a good result and the worst decision preceded a bad result. This is a safe bet for me because we deduce an overly tight relationship between our decisions and the consequent results.
There is an imperfect relationship between results and decision quality. I never seem to come across anyone who identifies a bad decision when they got lucky with the result, or a well reasoned decision that didn’t work out. We are uncomfortable with the idea that luck plays a significant role in our lives. We assume causation when there is only a correlation and tend to cherry-pick data to confirm the narrative we prefer.
Poker and decisions
Poker is a game that mimics human decision making. Every poker hand requires making at least one decision (to fold or to stay) and some hands can require up to twenty decisions. During a poker game players get in about thirty hands per hour. This means a poker player makes hundreds of decisions at breakneck speed with every hand having immediate financial consequences.
It is a game of decision making with incomplete information. Valuable information remains hidden. There is also an element of luck in any outcome. You could make the best possible decision at every point and still lose the hand, because you don’t know what new cards will be dealt and revealed.
In addition, once the game is over, poker players must learn from that jumbled mass of decisions and outcomes, separating the luck from the skill, and guarding against using results to justify/criticise decisions made,
The quality of our lives is the sum of decision quality plus luck. Poker is a mirror to life and helps us recognise the mistakes we never spot because we win the hand anyway or the leeway to do everything right, still lose, and treat the losing result as proof that we made a mistake,
Decisions are bets on the future
Decisions aren’t ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ based on whether they turn out well on any particular iteration. An unwanted result doesn’t make our decision wrong if we had thought about the alternatives and probabilities in advance and made our decisions accordingly.
Our world is structured to give us lots of opportunities to feel bad about being wrong if we want to measure ourselves by outcomes. Don’t fall in love or even date anybody if you want only positive results.
Friday, 29 April 2022
Tuesday, 19 April 2022
Tuesday, 12 April 2022
Saturday, 22 January 2022
Sunday, 2 January 2022
Wednesday, 22 December 2021
Karnataka bill seeks to declare interfaith marriages involving conversion ‘null & void’
The bill defines ‘promise of marriage' as ‘allurement’, makes 30-day notice to magistrate mandatory, spells out quantum of punishment. Opposition leaders tear up copies writes ANUSHA RAVI SOOD in The Print
File photo of the Karnataka Assembly in Bengaluru. | PTI
If passed by the Assembly in its current form, Karnataka’s anti-conversion bill will empower the state to deem interfaith marriages involving conversion “null & void”.
Karnataka Home Minister Araga Jnanendra Tuesday introduced a bill to regulate and penalise religious conversions in the state.
The Karnataka Protection of Right to Freedom of Religion Bill, 2021, known simply as the ‘anti-conversion bill’, has categorised as “allurements” the promise of marriage, free education, free medical treatment and jobs, and hence terms them unlawful reasons for religious conversion.
According to the bill, the term “religious convertor” will be applicable to anyone in the post of “Father, Priest, Purohit, Pandit, Moulvi or Mulla”.
Under the bill, a person planning to convert or a ‘convertor’ has to give a 30-day prior notice to the district magistrate about the conversion. A declaration is to be given even after conversion.
Those found guilty of converting others unlawfully can attract a punishment of three to five years in jail and a fine of Rs 25,000, the bill says. The punishment is higher if the converted person is a minor, a woman, person belonging to the Scheduled Castes or Scheduled Tribes or “of unsound mind”.
Persons organising “mass conversions” are also liable to be punished.
Conversion to previous religion exempt
“The bill seeks to prohibit religious conversion by misrepresentation, force, undue influence, coercion, allurement or by any fraudulent means,” Karnataka Home Minister Jnanendra said while introducing the bill.
The bill also prohibits conversion for the purpose of marriage and seeks to deem such marriages void.
“Any marriage which has happened with the sole purpose of unlawful conversion or vice-versa by the man of one religion with the woman of another religion, either by converting himself before or after marriage or by converting the woman before or after marriage, shall be declared as null and void,” the bill states.
While the bill seeks to punish those involved and aiding “unlawful” religious conversion, it has been careful to exempt people reconverting to their “immediate previous religion”. People reconverting to their previous religion, in fact, won’t even be considered as ‘conversion’ under this law.
Free hand to raise objections, file complaint
The anti-conversion bill also frames voluntary religious conversion within a series of registration, notification, calls for objection and multiple rounds of enquiry.
The bill calls for all offences under the law to be non-bailable and cognisable, and defines “mass conversion” as an event where even two or more people are converted.
It gives anyone a free hand to raise objections and file complaints of suspected conversion.
“Any converted person, his parents, brother, sister or any other person who is related to him by blood, marriage or adoption or in any form associated or colleague may lodge a complaint of such conversion,” the bill reads.
While the bill doesn’t blanket-ban religious conversion, it makes the process to convert tedious, with options for anybody to file objections to an individual’s decision to convert.
Declaration before magistrate & after conversion
Any person wanting to convert to another religion or any convertor who wants to conduct a conversion should mandatorily make a declaration 30 days in advance to the district magistrate. Separate forms have been designed for this purpose.
The declaration is then notified on the notice board for public scrutiny, so that anybody might object. If any objection is received, an inquiry will be conducted through the revenue or social welfare department to ascertain the intention, purpose and cause of the proposed conversion, the bill says.
If the district magistrate concludes that the conversion is “unlawful”, police action will be initiated.
The bill also demands declaration after the fact of religious conversion.
Once again, a person who has converted will have to declare it before the magistrate within 30 days and it will be posted for public scrutiny on notice boards for anyone to object.
“The District Magistrate shall notify religious conversion on the notice board of the office of the District Magistrate and in the office of the Tahsildar and will call for objections in such cases where no objections were called earlier,” the bill says.
The declaration must contain personal details of the converted person — date of birth, permanent address, present place of residence, father’s/husband’s name, the religion to which the converted person originally belonged and the religion to which he has converted, the date and place of conversion and the nature of the conversion process, along with copies of ID cards or Aadhaar card.
The converted person will then have to appear before the magistrate in person. If objections are received the same enquiry procedure is followed to approve the conversion or deem it void.
If the enquiry concludes the conversion to be “lawful”, the person’s records are reclassified, which may affect his entitlement to grants and benefits under government schemes.
Quantum of punishment
The Bill puts women, minors and “persons of unsound mind” in the same category.
Under the bill, individuals converting others via “unlawful” means will attract punishment of three to five years in jail and a fine of Rs 25,000.
If the converted person is a minor, woman, a person belonging to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes or “of unsound mind”, the punishment will be three to 10 years in prison, with a fine of Rs 50,000.
Those organising mass conversions “unlawfully” face three to 10 years in jail, with fine of Rs 1 lakh.
The bill demands that the ‘accused’ pay Rs 5 lakh compensation to the victim of a forced conversion, excluding the fine imposed by the courts. Repeat offences will attract a sentence of five years in jail and a fine of Rs 2 lakh.
The bill also proposes to stop all government aid and grants to institutions involved in “unlawful conversions”, apart from punishing the heads of such institutions.
The burden of proof of innocence will lie with the accused under the law, instead of the prosecution having to prove the offence.
Furthermore, the bill seeks to make anyone who has aided or abetted an offence under the law as “parties to the offence”, whether or not they themselves carried it out.
‘Unconstitutional’, says Opposition
The bill was met with severe opposition from the Congress and Janata Dal (Secular) (JD-S), who accused the government of trying to introduce the bill “on the sly”.
Karnataka Congress president D.K. Shivakumar even tore up copies of the bill, deeming it “unconstitutional” and accusing the government of sneaking the bill into the House without discussing it in the Business Advisory Committee or listing it as business of the House for Tuesday.
The bill was made part of the supplementary business for the afternoon session on Tuesday, right before the House reconvened.
“We oppose even the introduction of this bill that violates constitutional rights of citizens,” said Siddaramaiah of the Congress, leader of the Opposition.
Speaker of the Assembly Vishweshwara Hegde Kageri said the bill will be taken up for discussion Wednesday.
File photo of the Karnataka Assembly in Bengaluru. | PTIIf passed by the Assembly in its current form, Karnataka’s anti-conversion bill will empower the state to deem interfaith marriages involving conversion “null & void”.
Karnataka Home Minister Araga Jnanendra Tuesday introduced a bill to regulate and penalise religious conversions in the state.
The Karnataka Protection of Right to Freedom of Religion Bill, 2021, known simply as the ‘anti-conversion bill’, has categorised as “allurements” the promise of marriage, free education, free medical treatment and jobs, and hence terms them unlawful reasons for religious conversion.
According to the bill, the term “religious convertor” will be applicable to anyone in the post of “Father, Priest, Purohit, Pandit, Moulvi or Mulla”.
Under the bill, a person planning to convert or a ‘convertor’ has to give a 30-day prior notice to the district magistrate about the conversion. A declaration is to be given even after conversion.
Those found guilty of converting others unlawfully can attract a punishment of three to five years in jail and a fine of Rs 25,000, the bill says. The punishment is higher if the converted person is a minor, a woman, person belonging to the Scheduled Castes or Scheduled Tribes or “of unsound mind”.
Persons organising “mass conversions” are also liable to be punished.
Conversion to previous religion exempt
“The bill seeks to prohibit religious conversion by misrepresentation, force, undue influence, coercion, allurement or by any fraudulent means,” Karnataka Home Minister Jnanendra said while introducing the bill.
The bill also prohibits conversion for the purpose of marriage and seeks to deem such marriages void.
“Any marriage which has happened with the sole purpose of unlawful conversion or vice-versa by the man of one religion with the woman of another religion, either by converting himself before or after marriage or by converting the woman before or after marriage, shall be declared as null and void,” the bill states.
While the bill seeks to punish those involved and aiding “unlawful” religious conversion, it has been careful to exempt people reconverting to their “immediate previous religion”. People reconverting to their previous religion, in fact, won’t even be considered as ‘conversion’ under this law.
Free hand to raise objections, file complaint
The anti-conversion bill also frames voluntary religious conversion within a series of registration, notification, calls for objection and multiple rounds of enquiry.
The bill calls for all offences under the law to be non-bailable and cognisable, and defines “mass conversion” as an event where even two or more people are converted.
It gives anyone a free hand to raise objections and file complaints of suspected conversion.
“Any converted person, his parents, brother, sister or any other person who is related to him by blood, marriage or adoption or in any form associated or colleague may lodge a complaint of such conversion,” the bill reads.
While the bill doesn’t blanket-ban religious conversion, it makes the process to convert tedious, with options for anybody to file objections to an individual’s decision to convert.
Declaration before magistrate & after conversion
Any person wanting to convert to another religion or any convertor who wants to conduct a conversion should mandatorily make a declaration 30 days in advance to the district magistrate. Separate forms have been designed for this purpose.
The declaration is then notified on the notice board for public scrutiny, so that anybody might object. If any objection is received, an inquiry will be conducted through the revenue or social welfare department to ascertain the intention, purpose and cause of the proposed conversion, the bill says.
If the district magistrate concludes that the conversion is “unlawful”, police action will be initiated.
The bill also demands declaration after the fact of religious conversion.
Once again, a person who has converted will have to declare it before the magistrate within 30 days and it will be posted for public scrutiny on notice boards for anyone to object.
“The District Magistrate shall notify religious conversion on the notice board of the office of the District Magistrate and in the office of the Tahsildar and will call for objections in such cases where no objections were called earlier,” the bill says.
The declaration must contain personal details of the converted person — date of birth, permanent address, present place of residence, father’s/husband’s name, the religion to which the converted person originally belonged and the religion to which he has converted, the date and place of conversion and the nature of the conversion process, along with copies of ID cards or Aadhaar card.
The converted person will then have to appear before the magistrate in person. If objections are received the same enquiry procedure is followed to approve the conversion or deem it void.
If the enquiry concludes the conversion to be “lawful”, the person’s records are reclassified, which may affect his entitlement to grants and benefits under government schemes.
Quantum of punishment
The Bill puts women, minors and “persons of unsound mind” in the same category.
Under the bill, individuals converting others via “unlawful” means will attract punishment of three to five years in jail and a fine of Rs 25,000.
If the converted person is a minor, woman, a person belonging to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes or “of unsound mind”, the punishment will be three to 10 years in prison, with a fine of Rs 50,000.
Those organising mass conversions “unlawfully” face three to 10 years in jail, with fine of Rs 1 lakh.
The bill demands that the ‘accused’ pay Rs 5 lakh compensation to the victim of a forced conversion, excluding the fine imposed by the courts. Repeat offences will attract a sentence of five years in jail and a fine of Rs 2 lakh.
The bill also proposes to stop all government aid and grants to institutions involved in “unlawful conversions”, apart from punishing the heads of such institutions.
The burden of proof of innocence will lie with the accused under the law, instead of the prosecution having to prove the offence.
Furthermore, the bill seeks to make anyone who has aided or abetted an offence under the law as “parties to the offence”, whether or not they themselves carried it out.
‘Unconstitutional’, says Opposition
The bill was met with severe opposition from the Congress and Janata Dal (Secular) (JD-S), who accused the government of trying to introduce the bill “on the sly”.
Karnataka Congress president D.K. Shivakumar even tore up copies of the bill, deeming it “unconstitutional” and accusing the government of sneaking the bill into the House without discussing it in the Business Advisory Committee or listing it as business of the House for Tuesday.
The bill was made part of the supplementary business for the afternoon session on Tuesday, right before the House reconvened.
“We oppose even the introduction of this bill that violates constitutional rights of citizens,” said Siddaramaiah of the Congress, leader of the Opposition.
Speaker of the Assembly Vishweshwara Hegde Kageri said the bill will be taken up for discussion Wednesday.
Monday, 13 September 2021
Friday, 13 August 2021
Tuesday, 18 May 2021
Monday, 25 January 2021
Why you should ditch ‘follow your passion’ careers advice
Emma Jacobs in The FT
“Work is supposed to bring us fulfilment, pleasure, meaning, even joy,” writes Sarah Jaffe in her book, Work Won’t Love You Back. “The admonishment of a thousand inspirational social media posts to ‘do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life’ has become folk wisdom,” she continues.
Such platitudes suggest an essential truth “stretching back to our caveperson ancestors”. But these fallacies create “stress, anxiety and loneliness”. In short, the “labour of love . . . is a con”. This is the starting point of Ms Jaffe’s book, which goes on to show how the myth permeates diverse jobs and sectors.
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The book serves as a timely reminder of the importance of re-evaluating that relationship. “The global pandemic made the brutality of the workplace more visible,” the author tells me over the phone from Brooklyn, New York. Ms Jaffe, who is a freelance journalist specialising in work, points out that the past year of job losses, anxiety about redundancy, and excessive workloads has demonstrated to workers the truth: their job does not love them.
Work is under scrutiny. The economic fallout of the pandemic has made a great many people desperate for paid work, disillusioned with their jobs or burnt out — and sometimes all three. It has illuminated the stark differences between those who can work from the safety of their homes and those who cannot, including shop workers, carers and medical professionals, who have to put themselves in potentially hazardous situations, often for meagre pay. The idea of self-sacrifice, and that you should put your clients, your patients or your students before yourself, Ms Jaffe says, “gets laid on very thick [with] teachers or nurses”.
Yet there are those in another category — artists and precarious academics — for whom work has always been deemed intrinsically rewarding and a form of self-expression. They are said to be lucky to have such jobs, because plenty of others are clamouring to take their place. Even here, the pandemic has changed perceptions. Social restrictions have curbed some of the aspects of white-collar work that made it rewarding, such as travel and meeting interesting people, that perhaps masked the repetition of daily tasks, the insecurity or poor conditions.
Meanwhile, Ms Jaffe says, a small number of workers, such as those who have been furloughed on full pay, have been given the time to think: what do I do with the time I used to devote to work? “It’s so beaten into us that we have to be productive,” says Ms Jaffe. “I've seen so many memes that are like, ‘if you haven’t written a novel in lockdown, [you’re] doing it wrong’.”
Among the affluent, work used to be something done by others, yet there have long been philosophical debates about whether it could be enjoyable. In the 1800s, Ms Jaffe points out in her book, the British designer and social campaigner William Morris pitched “three hopes” about work: “hope of rest, hope of product, hope of pleasure in the work itself”.
The decline of industrial jobs in the west, and the rise of the service economy, emphasised working for love. Nursing, food service and home healthcare, “draw on skills presumed to come naturally to women; they are seen as extensions of the caring work they are expected to do for their families”, Ms Jaffe writes. Among white-collar workers, the fetishisation of long hours in the late 1980s and 90s was accompanied by an individualistic capitalism. For many industries — notably, media — the idea of work as a form of self-actualisation intensified as security decreased.
Ms Jaffe says that there are overlapping experiences shared by those in the service sector who sit behind desks and those who stand on their feet all day. For example, the notion of the workplace as a family is a refrain in offices but it is most explicit for nannies. In the book, she tells the story of Seally, a nanny in New York who decided to live with her employers between Mondays and Fridays when the pandemic struck — leaving her own kids at home.
Seally told Ms Jaffe that she was worried about her own kids, whether they were doing their schoolwork properly: “At least I call and say, ‘Make sure you do your work’.” But she appreciates the importance of her job. “I love my work,” she said, “because my work is the silk thread that holds society together, making all other work possible”. The pandemic has reinforced the idea that the home is also a workplace and the author wants professionals who hire domestic workers and nannies to understand that and compensate accordingly for the critical role they play in facilitating their ability to do their jobs.
Perhaps the posterchild of insecure white-collar workers are interns, who have traditionally been unpaid. (In the UK, interns are eligible for pay if they are classed as a worker.) Too often, the book argues, interns have been given meaningless work with the prospect of a contract dangled in front of them, to no avail. Working conditions can also be poor — although few are as horrifying as the North Carolina zoo intern Ms Jaffe cites in the book who was killed by an escaped lion, “whose family told reporters she died ‘following her passion’ on her fourth unpaid internship”. The conditions for interns may be set back by the pandemic as so many graduates — and older workers hoping to switch industries — fight for jobs.
Ms Jaffe steers clear of advice. This is not a book that will guide readers on finding a job worthy of their devotion, though she knows that some glib tips would boost sales. “You’re told that you should love your job. Then if you don’t love your job, there’s something wrong with you,” she says. “[The problem] won’t be solved by quitting and finding a job you like better, or a different career, or deciding to just take a job that you don’t like.”
What she hopes is that people who have a nagging sense that their “job kind of sucks, they don't love it” will realise they are not alone. But they can do something about it, for instance joining a union or pushing for fewer hours. This needs to be supported by “a societal reckoning with jobs”. Do people need, for example, 24-hour access to McDonald’s and supermarkets, she asks?
Ms Jaffe wants people to imagine a society which is not organised “emotionally and temporally” around work. As she writes in the book: “What I believe, and want you to believe, too, is that love is too big and beautiful and grand and messy and human a thing to be wasted on a temporary fact of life like work.”
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