In Britain’s boardrooms, Brexit is already here. And the warning is stark

For Westminster, leaving Europe is months away: for business, it’s the present. And our prospects are already dwindling writes Aditya Chakrabortty in The Guardian 

 

Part-built private housing development project on the outskirts of Llanelli, Wales, which was abandoned after the developer went bust. Photograph: Alamy


On the one hand, you have the self-inflating chaos at Westminster, the fever dreams of Jacob Rees-Mogg’s gang and the rehearsed rage of the Democratic Unionists. And on the other, you have the truth nailed by Philip K Dick. “Reality,” he wrote, “is that which, when you stop believing it, doesn’t go away.” So let’s remind ourselves of some reality.

While Tory MPs jostled over a replacement for Theresa May the head of the Confederation of British Industry, Carolyn Fairbairn, warned that millions of pounds were “flooding out” of business investment and into preparing for Britain crashing out of Europe with no deal. Food warehouses said they were running out of space. And auto-parts manufacturer Schaeffler announced that it would shut factories in Plymouth and Llanelli, leaving more than 600 workers facing the dole.


An entire rotten political-corporate regime is crumbling away – and its replacement threatens to be even worse

Even as politicians and the press fantasise about how Britain will leave Europe, big business is already at the departure gate. For Westminster, Brexit is months in the future; for boardrooms making plans, it is the present. Big carmakers have this year halved their investment in new models and factory machinery. The consultancy EY records a 31% slump in the number of foreign businesses setting up headquarters in Britain. Boris Johnson certainly makes good copy – but money talks much louder.

“The banks and insurers are moving, the big pharmaceutical firms are investing abroad,” says Paul Drechsler, who was CBI president until June and now chairs London First. “These trains are leaving the station, and when they leave, they won’t come back.” The country he describes is already shrinking, its job opportunities dwindling, its reputation abroad in eclipse.

This is the real national emergency. An entire rotten political-corporate regime is crumbling away – and its replacement threatens to be even worse. It will be worse, specifically, for those parts of the country, like Llanelli and Plymouth, that voted leave as the ultimate kick against the pricks of a hollow economy and a deaf government.

The succinct definition of our current model comes from the head of the Bank of England. The UK relies, said Mark Carney in 2016, on the “kindness of strangers”. The willingness of overseas investors to keep ploughing in their cash keeps us in the style to which we’ve grown accustomed. Out of all the 28 members of the European Union, the UK is second only to Ireland in its dependence on investment from abroad. Margaret Thatcher’s eagerness to sell off whatever she could get her hands on and her mandarins’ carelessness over ownership has turned us into one of the biggest foreign-capital junkies in the developed world. 

Those investors don’t come here out of charity. Our government competes with others around the world to lure in cash from overseas. But look what inducements we offer. Just weeks before the Brexit referendum, David Cameron’s government published its Invest in the UK brochure, promising “the most competitive” labour costs in western Europe, and “the least strict regulation in the EU.”. Why buy euros when you can have Poundland?

No other country does this. Analysis by Kevin Farnsworth at York University shows that, while all states assure investors they’re competitive locations, Sweden boasts of its “anti-corruption” and “good industrial relations”, while Germany highlights its “efficiency” and “training”. The UK, he writes, “uniquely competes for international capital by offering a package of a low-tax, low-cost, low regulatory business environment”.

Here, whether Conservative or Labour, successive governments have marketed us as the open-all-hours, bargain-basement landing strip off mainland Europe. Until, that is, Britons vote in a referendum to kick away two of the three legs of the post-Thatcherite economic model, namely openness and closeness to the continent. What’s left then is our cheapness – in taxes, in wages and in regulation.

This is Britain in 2018, paying the price for decades of underinvestment and cutprice competition. We have a highly skilled workforce, with almost half of Britain’s young people holding a university degree. And yet in 2014, Charlie Mayfield, former boss of John Lewis and then head of the UK Commission on Employment and Skills, pointed out that over one in five British jobs required only primary-school education. We have a world-class car-manufacturing industry, yet over half of the components in the cars that roll off the lines in Sunderland or Ellesmere Port come from abroad.

This is the point at which the kindness of strangers starts to get rather strained. In a survey this spring, well before the chaos of the past few weeks, EY found that 30% of foreign investors now expect to move money out of the UK after Brexit. The current value of foreign direct investment in the UK is estimated by the government to be over £1 trillion. If even a quarter of that were to move abroad, then £75 billion of assets are already at risk. No wonder the Welsh government is offering sweeteners to Ford to stay at Bridgend. No wonder when Nissan made noises about scaling back at Sunderland, May immediately opened the door of No 10 and offered some kind of deal – although precisely what, the voting public was never told.

You can expect a lot more of this over coming months and years: panicky politicians paying your tax money to grumpy-looking corporate executives. You can expect other countries to try to poach our businesses, just as after the 2016 vote Paris began advertising itself as the ideal post-Brexit corporate headquarters. Their posters read: “Tired of fog? Try the frogs”

You can also expect this government to press even harder the case that Britain is the low-tax, low-wage capital of the rich world. But ministers will get a disappointing response from businesses, believes EY’s chief economist in the UK, Mark Gregory. He thinks multinationals will shift away from using Britain as a stepping stone into Europe and the rest of the world – which is logical, given that any new trading arrangements will take years to settle and will almost certainly not be as smooth as the regime Britain currently has. Instead of building factories to make things to sell to the world, big businesses will instead put their money into storage and showrooms to sell things to Britons. The UK will become, Gregory says, “a warehouse economy: low skills, low productivity and low growth”.

That projection was already a reality for lots of people I met who plumped for Brexit in 2016. They were on minimum wage and had minimum rights and minimum prospects. If Brexit is to be radically changed now, it is those voters – the disenfranchised Labourites, the sod-them-all brigade – whose support is needed. A second referendum, in which well-meaning metropolitans offer those in the Rhondda the status quo, probably deserves to fail. Instead, any remain option will have to come with a worked-out argument about rebalancing power in this country. And that means reshaping the relationship between capital and the rest of us.

How to Criticize with Kindness: Philosopher Daniel Dennett on the Four Steps to Arguing Intelligently

Maria Popova in Brainpickings


“In disputes upon moral or scientific points,” Arthur Martine counseled in his magnificent 1866 guide to the art of conversation, “let your aim be to come at truth, not to conquer your opponent. So you never shall be at a loss in losing the argument, and gaining a new discovery.” Of course, this isn’t what happens most of the time when we argue, both online and off, but especially when we deploy the artillery of our righteousness from behind the comfortable shield of the keyboard. That form of “criticism” — which is really a menace of reacting rather than responding — is worthy of Mark Twain’s memorable remark that “the critic’s symbol should be the tumble-bug: he deposits his egg in somebody else’s dung, otherwise he could not hatch it.” But it needn’t be this way — there are ways to be critical while remaining charitable, of aiming not to “conquer” but to “come at truth,” not to be right at all costs but to understand and advance the collective understanding.

In Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking (public library) — the same fantastic volume that gave us Daniel Dennett on the dignity and art-science of making mistakes — Dennett offers what he calls “the best antidote [for the] tendency to caricature one’s opponent”: a list of rules formulated decades ago by the legendary social psychologist and game theorist Anatol Rapoport, best-known for originating the famous tit-for-tat strategy of game theory. Dennett synthesizes the steps:


How to compose a successful critical commentary:

You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.

You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).

You should mention anything you have learned from your target.

Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.

If only the same code of conduct could be applied to critical commentary online, particularly to the indelible inferno of comments.

But rather than a naively utopian, Pollyannaish approach to debate, Dennett points out this is actually a sound psychological strategy that accomplishes one key thing: It transforms your opponent into a more receptive audience for your criticism or dissent, which in turn helps advance the discussion.

Compare and contrast with Susan Sontag’s three steps to refuting any argument.

Where Cruelty Is Kindness

Those who promoted laissez-faire economics required an explanation when the magic of the markets failed to deliver their promised utopia. Malthus gave them the answer they needed.

GEORGE MONBIOT in Outlook India

Kindness is cruelty; cruelty is kindness: this is the core belief of compassionate conservatism. If the state makes excessive provision for the poor, it traps them in a culture of dependency, destroying their self-respect, locking them into unemployment. Cuts and coercion are a moral duty, to be pursued with the holy fervour of Inquisitors overseeing an auto da fé.

This belief persists despite reams of countervailing evidence, showing that severity does nothing to cure the structural causes of unemployment. In Britain it is used to justify a £12 billion reduction of a social security system already so harsh that it drives some recipients to suicide. The belief arises from a deep and dearly-held fallacy, that has persisted for over 200 years.

Poverty was once widely understood as a social condition: it described the fate of those who did not possess property. England's Old Poor Law, introduced in 1597 and 1601, had its own cruelties, some of which were extreme. But as the US academics Fred Block and Margaret Somers explain in their fascinating book The Power of Market Fundamentalism, those who implemented it seemed to recognise that occasional unemployment was an intrinsic feature of working life.

But in 1786, as economic crises threw rising numbers onto the mercy of their parishes, the clergyman Joseph Townsend sought to recast poverty as a moral or even biological condition. "The poor know little of the motives which stimulate the higher ranks to action — pride, honour, and ambition", he argued in his Dissertation on the Poor Laws. "In general it is only hunger which can spur and goad them onto labour; yet our laws have said, they shall never hunger."

Thomas Malthus expands on this theme in his Essay on the Principle of Population, published in 1798. Poor relief, he maintained, causes poverty. It destroys the work ethic, reducing productivity. It also creates an incentive to reproduce, as payments rise with every family member. The higher the population, the hungrier the poor became: kindness resulted in cruelty.

Poverty, he argued, should be tackled through shame ("dependent poverty ought to be held disgraceful") and the withdrawal of assistance from all able-bodied workers. Nature should be allowed to take its course: if people were left to starve to death, the balance between population and food supply would be restored. Malthus ignored the means by which people limit their reproduction or increase their food supply, characterising the poor, in effect, as unthinking beasts.

His argument was highly controversial, but support grew rapidly among the propertied classes. In 1832, the franchise was extended to include more property owners: in other words, those who paid the poor rate. The poor, of course, were not entitled to vote. In the same year, the government launched a Royal Commission into the Operation of the Poor Laws.

Like Malthus, the commissioners blamed the problems of the rural poor not on structural factors but on immorality, improvidence and low productivity, all caused by the system of poor relief, which had "educated a new generation in idleness, ignorance and dishonesty". It called for the abolition of "outdoor relief" for able-bodied people. Help should be offered only in circumstances so shameful, degrading and punitive that anyone would seek to avoid them: namely the workhouse. The government responded with the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act, which instituted, for the sake of the poor, a regime of the utmost cruelty. Destitute families were broken up and, in effect, imprisoned.

The commission was a fraud. It began with fixed conclusions and sought evidence to support them. Its interviews were conducted with like-minded members of the propertied classes, who were helped towards the right replies with leading questions. Anecdote took the place of data.

In reality, poverty in the countryside had risen as a result of structural forces over which the poor had no control. After the Napoleonic wars, the price of wheat slumped, triggering the collapse of rural banks and a severe credit crunch. Swayed by the arguments of David Ricardo, the government re-established the gold standard, that locked in austerity and aggravated hardship, much as George Osborne's legal enforcement of a permanent budget surplus will do. Threshing machines reduced the need for labour in the autumn and winter, when employment was most precarious. Cottage industries were undercut by urban factories, while enclosure prevented the poor from producing their own food.

Far from undermining employment, poor relief sustained rural workers during the winter months, ensuring that they remained available for hire when they were needed by farms in the spring and summer. By contrast to the loss of agricultural productivity that Malthus predicted and the commission reported, between 1790 and 1834 wheat production more than doubled.

As Block and Somers point out, the rise in unemployment and extreme poverty in the 1820s and 1830s represented the first great failure of Ricardian, laissez-faire economics. But Malthus's doctrines allowed this failure to be imputed to something quite different: the turpitude of the poor. Macroeconomic policy mistakes were blamed on the victims. Does that sound familiar?

This helps to explain the persistence of the fallacy. Those who promoted laissez-faire economics required an explanation when the magic of the markets failed to deliver their promised utopia. Malthus gave them the answer they needed.

And still does. People are poor and unemployed, George Osborne and Iain Duncan Smith claimed in this week's Sunday Times, because of "the damaging culture of welfare dependency". Earlier this month, Duncan Smith, in a burst of Malthusiasm, sought to restrict child benefit to two children per family, to discourage the poor from reproducing. A new analysis by the Wellcome Trust suggests that the government, which is about to place 350 psychologists in job centres, now treats unemployment as a mental health disorder.

The media's campaign of vilification associates social security with disgrace, and proposes even more humiliation, exhortation, intrusion, bullying and sanctions. This Thursday, the new household income figures are likely to show a sharp rise in child poverty, after sustained reductions under the Labour government. Doubtless the poor will be blamed for improvidence and feckless procreation, and urged to overcome their moral failings through aspiration.

For 230 years, this convenient myth has resisted all falsification. Expect that to persist.

The work of a great teacher is for life

Michael Henderson in The Telegraph

Teachers, as John Osborne observed, are underpaid as child-minders, and overpaid as educators. DH Lawrence, who, like many writers, was a teacher, knew even more keenly the difficulty of imparting knowledge both to young people who are not particularly interested and to those who are. Education is a significant feature of his twinned novels, The Rainbow and Women in Love.

The wisest teachers understand that the best work they do may not be apparent for many years – decades, even. From the sunlit meadows of middle age, it is possible to recall those who taught us in our youth, and recognise the debt we owe them. But it would be a very precocious teenager who could say as much.

Getting good grades is important, but it is not the only important thing, and ultimately it is not the most important thing. Our lives are shaped by other forces, and so it is only with the passing of the years that we acknowledge the value of those teachers who opened doors, though we did not at the time recognise their many acts of kindness.

Last month, our school held a memorial service for an English teacher who opened doors aplenty, not least in the summer months when he captained a cricket team, the Vagabonds, that wandered around the villages of Derbyshire. Michael Charlesworth was a liberal, tolerant man who knew that our language was our greatest gift. He was also a superb director of plays, and a bit of a mummer himself.

Although he retired a quarter of a century ago, the chapel was full of people who had travelled from far and wide to celebrate his life. There were proper hymns, well sung, and Shakespeare made his customary appearance before Sir Christopher Frayling, one of Mike’s old boys, presented an address on behalf of us all. Then we recessed to the organ voluntary – the theme tune from Match of the Day!

Most people, one hopes, had a teacher like that. A Mr Chips figure – appropriate in this case, as the great Robert Donat film of 1939 was shot at our school. The horrible modern word is “inspirational” but if your life has been touched in some way, you feel it in your blood.

Sir Chris Woodhead, who died this week, admired Lawrence. He, too, understood the difficulties of “drawing out” (from the Latin verb “educare”), but he spent most of his life trying to do just that, first in the classroom and then as head of Ofsted. That he had to put up with years of abuse from bigoted, incompetent teachers was a tribute of sorts. He told them what they needed to hear but feared to be told.

^{Christopher Woodhead visiting Davenant Foundation School in Essex in 1998}

If anybody required a reminder of just how ghastly some of these teachers were – and are – the evidence could be found on websites after Woodhead passed away. “May you rot in hell,” screamed one delightful scribbler. Consider those words, and imagine, if you can, the person who wrote them: an adult with responsibility for educating children.

Belatedly, there is recognition, even from his opponents, that Woodhead was on to something. Just as many teachers, the ones not brainwashed by the “holistic problematised pedagogies” that Woodhead liked to mock, realise that Michael Gove’s reforms are beginning to bear fruit.

Although, like every generation before, today’s pupils may have to wait years to find out how and why.

A fast bowler and the slow life: Great article on Munaf Patel

By Sriram Veera in The Indian Express

What lies ahead for a cricketer past his best? If you are Munaf Patel, the pacer from Gujarat undazzled by fame and riches, all you need is a village, and the art of chilling

In a room, somewhere in West Indies, Sachin Tendulkar approaches Munaf Patel. It’s 2007, India has been evicted from the World Cup but they can’t go home yet. The Bermuda versus Bangladesh game is yet to be played and the players wait for a miracle. Back home, things have turned. Sachin Tendulkar’s and Sourav Ganguly’s restaurants have been attacked, Zaheer Khan’s house stoned, a wall of MS Dhoni’s house broken. Patel recalls the players downloading the public outrage from the internet. Tendulkar asks Patel: “Something or other is happening at everyone’s house. What’s on at your home, Munna?” “Paaji, jahan main rahta hoon na, udhar aath hazaar log hai and 8,000 mera security hai! (There are 8,000 people where I stay, and those are my security.)” Tendulkar laughs, “We might all have to come to your home from here.”

Couple of us journalists are at his home in his village Ikhar in the Bharuch district of Gujarat. Seven years down the line, Patel’s fortunes have swung the whole arc. He has been a part of a team that lifted the World Cup in 2011, and now, as the team heads for another World Cup, his name doesn’t even figure in the list of probables. But the 31-year-old remains a hero at Ikhar — and remarkably, for someone who has seen both fame and riches come and go, at peace with himself, in this village from where he started his dream run.

Hailed by India’s then bowling coach Eric Simons as the “unsung hero of the 2011 World Cup win”, Patel had ended the tournament as India’s third-highest wicket-taker, behind Zaheer Khan and Yuvraj Singh, with 11 wickets. He could have been the fastest Indian bowler ever but a shoulder injury in 2004 forced him to forsake pace. He played just 13 Tests but starred in 70 ODIs, picking up 86 wickets, and was indispensable to the team between 2009 and 2011. These days, when he is not playing Ranji Trophy for Baroda, he is at Ikhar, probably leaning against a well in a kheth (field) with his friends or lolling at the swing in his home.

It’s a fairly big house. A kilometre or two past a railway gate, beyond the cotton fields, it is caressed by a gentle breeze on a warm but pleasant day. A bike approaches from behind and Patel gets down. Dressed in track pants and a T-shirt, he welcomes us with an earthy smile: “I was chatting in the field.” We walk down the pathway, lined by trees and shrubs, to a small six-pillared portico with a swing. Patel understands and can speak English but we mostly converse in Hindi. Often philosophical, and with an ever-present smile even when talking about struggle, the man who says he just likes to have fun — “Masti chahiye bas” — opens up on his journey.

It’s the 1990s and Patel is in the ninth standard at the village school. He is already the fastest bowler but doesn’t want to play cricket anymore. Guilt is in the air. His father works on someone else’s farm, there isn’t much food at home. The children get new clothes on Id, but only in a good year. For the last couple of years, during vacations, young Munaf has been at a tile factory choosing the best “export-quality” tiles, packing them in boxes and going home with Rs 35 for an eight-hour shift. “Dukh hi dukh tha lekin jhelne ki aadat ho gayi thi. Kisi ko sunaon toh lagega kya din tha but when you are used to it, and there is no other option, then you feel kya yaar, yeh to roz ka kaam hai. Paisey nahi hai to kya kar sakte hain? Father akela kaam raha hai and we were in school. (It was a hard life, but it had become a habit. There wasn’t enough money, but what could we do? Father was the only one earning, and we were in school),” he says. A friend urges a teacher to intervene: “What’s your age? You can work once you get out of school. Now just play.”

A few years on, Patel receives his first ehsaan (favour), a constant theme in our chat. He requests a well-connected person in the village, Yusuf Bhai, to take him to Baroda to get his cricket career going. Yusuf even buys a pair of shoes for Patel, who used to play in chappals till then. “He bought me Rs 400-worth shoes, and introduced me to a cricket club. Ehsaan rahega zindagi bhar.” (Even today, whenever Yusuf comes down from UK, Munaf hops over to his house. “Kuch bhi kaam hai toh bata dena, bhai.”)

Meanwhile, his father isn’t happy. Every day, at dinner, young Munaf is asked to quit playing cricket and join him at work. And eventually go to Africa. “I would just stay silent; my mother would tell him to let me play.” For Ikhar, a village of poor cotton farmers, Africa was the passport out of poverty. Every year, a youngster or two would land up at a friend, relative or acquaintance’s house in Zambia, Mozambique, South Africa or Zimbabwe to find work in a factory or a shop. Patel had an uncle in Zambia and so his future seemed set in stone. “You can’t blame my father. No one here really knew that cricket had this kind of scope. That I can even earn money from this.”

But the doors kept opening, through the kindness of strangers who spotted talent in the gangly youth. Former India wicketkeeper Kiran More, “who hasn’t taken a single paisa from me and even bought me my first branded cricket shoes (Gunn & Moore)”, trained him at his academy in Baroda, also sent him to the MRF pace school in Chennai. A city where “they never spoke Hindi” and “auto drivers matlab fight” but a place close to his heart. He recounts a tale that captures his personality then. An English batsman, along with Sajid Mahmood and Simon Jones, had come down to the school. Patel can’t remember his name. “Gora tha (He was white), left-handed and the pitches were fast then. I bowled four-five bouncers; one hit his shoulder, one his helmet and other his gloves. He started to come towards me, saying something in English. Mujhe toh English aati nahi tab. But I see that he is angry. So I slip away quickly and dive into the swimming pool. I thought he will complain to Sir, who will throw me out of the academy!”

Patel started to learn the ways of the world at MRF. “I lived there for five-six months. I learnt how to wear good clothes, how to speak, kuch bhi nahi aata tha. Dennis Lillee (Australia’s legendary fast bowler who coached at MRF) would say something and I used to look at someone else’s face! Kya bol raha hai? Lillee Sir always used to laugh, and ask someone to translate.”

Around this time, Australian cricketer Steve Waugh dropped by the academy, saw Patel in action and was impressed. He told as much to Tendulkar, who convinced Patel to join the Mumbai Ranji team. “I learnt a lot about cricket but not its lifestyle,” he says. The Mumbai cricketers would invite him to parties but Patel wasn’t ready. Only later, on a foreign tour, did he go to a club. “I thought I had to drink if I go there. Only after Gautam Gambhir (Patel’s closest cricketing friend) told me that there is no need to drink, and that even he doesn’t drink, did I go. I still don’t drink to this day.”

Patel with friends in his village, no one with a request is turned away from his house

Early on in his life, Patel had learnt to live with an unshakeable sense of right. Principled, unwilling to bend, quick on temper and willing to take seemingly rash decisions. Like in South Africa in 2009, when he shut the door on his captain Shane Warne and threatened to quit. Piqued at not being given any over in an IPL game, which the Rajasthan Royals eventually lost, he stormed to his hotel room and asked team owner Manoj Badale for his passport back. Soon, a knock on the door. Patel peeped through the eyehole to see Warne. “Please open the door”. ‘Shane Sir, I won’t’. “Let me explain.” “I don’t want to hear a thing. Bye.” Of course, he had admiration for Warne’s captaincy. “He was magic. He had the ability to get the best performances from everyone.”

Always frank, he once fobbed off a national selector because of perceived mockery. A day before a game after he was already selected, the selector asked him, “Are you fit?” Patel lost it. “How did you select me then? Tu khila raha hai toh cricket hi nahi khelna mujhe (If you think you are a doing a favour to me by selecting, then I don’t want to play).” The selector disappeared into the lift. “Tu yeda hai kya?” (Are you mad?) said Wasim Jaffer, who was with him then.

Patel was a man often criticised, at times even for his sartorial choices. A furore broke once about him not tucking in his shirt on the field with former players criticizing him on air. The dressing room too reflected the difference in personalities. Rahul Dravid, the captain, suggested he tuck in his shirt to end the controversy. “Voh ekdum sincere, padhe-likhe type (educated man) “ On the other side, Sehwag, Harbhajan, Yuvraj said, ‘Chodna yaar, hum bhi tuck in nahin karenge kal sey! ( We also won’t tuck our shirts in)’. I was not doing it on purpose. I hadn’t come from a school where kids wear white shoes, and tuck in their shirts!”

It set him off from the others, the straight talk, the no-nonsense attitude that anchored his feet to the ground. It would make him tick off young boys who would let fame get to their head— “Stop acting silly. Cricket hai bhai, anything can happen. Ek injury and sab khatam, finish. Then what will you do?” And it allowed him to look at the transformation of diffident young boys into celebrities with detachment. “See it’s the atmosphere you grow up. If you live in a city, are well-off, and more importantly, play for the country, your group will change. Where is an ordinary man, a poor man, going to be in that group?”

Here, in Ikhar, away from the adrenaline rush of victory and fame, the bright lights of the city and its lures, he knows that playing for India is many worlds away. “After the 2011 World Cup, I was injured for five-six months and by then, the selection approach had changed. They wanted to look beyond me and Nehra and give youngsters a chance. Which is fine. I will probably play for Baroda for two more years. Let’s see how long the body holds,” he says. But he also knows he is free of the favours and the ehsaan that has powered his run. “Bahut logon ka ehsaan mujh pey chada. I used to wonder how I shall pay them back. In between I thought I will even quit. Jitne logon ka ehsaan chadta hai, aap utne neeche jaate ho (The more people oblige you, the lower you slip).”

He has found a way now. The Patels never turn away a man who comes to their house, looking for help. It could be a request for Rs 50,000 for a wedding or money for hospital expenses. People come in, ask for the keys and take his cars for a ride. His father encourages him to do more. “If I ask any question to anyone who comes to home, my father will say, ‘Why are you asking questions? That won’t feed him. Just give him the money’.” The village has a trust which helps people in need. “We all know each other in the village. People always take care of each other.” And that’s why Patel doesn’t see himself leaving Ikhar. “Shaanti hai idhar, peaceful. Why will I go anywhere else?” 

Six of the best: the traits your child needs to succeed

Hilary Wilce in The Independent

What makes a child do well in school? When I ask parents that question, they always have lots of great answers: a high IQ, a terrific school, well-run lessons, skilled teachers, a creative curriculum, high expectations.

Although all these things help, the real secret of great learning lies elsewhere – inside children themselves. Increasingly, researchers are discovering that what children bring to the classroom matters every bit – and in many ways more – than what the classroom can offer them.

Children with the attitude and disposition that encourage good learning will flourish even in a mediocre school, while those who come with a mindset that hampers learning won't be able to make much of even the best educational opportunities.

Numerous studies in the US and elsewhere show that test scores leap, often by more than 10 per cent, when children are encouraged to develop good attitudes towards themselves and their learning. As a result, schools around the world are starting to offer programmes to help their students develop key character strengths.

A recent "positive education" conference at Wellington College in Berkshire drew participants from America, Singapore and Australia to discuss how teachers can help students "grow" their inner cores.

But parents have been left out of this learning loop, and often don't realise that there is far more to securing a good education for their children than simply bagging a place at the best school in the neighbourhood – schools and teachers can only turn children into terrific learners if those children's parents are laying down the foundations at home that will encourage pupils to step up to the challenges of the classroom.

There is growing evidence that character traits such as resilience, persistence, optimism and courage actively contribute to improved academic grades. And there are six key qualities that parents can foster in their children that will help them do their very best in school. These are:

1. Joie de vivre

The ability to love and appreciate life might sound wishy-washy in the hard world of exam results, but love and security feed a host of qualities that great learners need. These include the ability to be open and receptive, to be willing and to feel connected.

Meanwhile, cultivating an attitude of appreciation means being able to enjoy the journey of learning, wonder at nature, relish a good story, feel good about achievements, and enjoy the companionship of the classroom. All of which, in turn, feed confidence, excitement and curiosity back into the learning loop.

2. Resilience

For years, resilience has been known to be essential for great learning. Martin Seligman, the US psychology professor who has studied this extensively, has shown that it helps children think more flexibly and realistically, be more creative and ward off depression and anxiety.

Resilient children give things a try. They understand that learning has plenty of setbacks and that they can overcome them. Resilient children talk to themselves differently from non- resilient ones, and don't turn mistakes into catastrophes ("I've failed my maths test, it's a disaster. I'll never get maths!"). Instead, they look at a wider, more positive picture ("Ugh, that was a horrible test, and I screwed up, but I didn't do enough work. Next time I'll do more revision, and it'll probably be a better paper as well").

3. Self-discipline

There are many famous pieces of research that show that children's ability to control their impulses appears to lead to better health, wealth and mental happiness in later life. In school, self-discipline is central.

Great learners need to listen, absorb and think. They need to keep going through difficult patches, stick at hard tasks, manage their time well and keep mental focus. Children who bounce about the classroom shouting the first answer that comes into their heads will never be great learners.

Of course, a joyless, overly controlled child will never be one either. Balance matters. All children need to develop a functioning "internal locus of control".

4. Honesty

Honesty matters for great learning because its opposites – deception and self-deception – hinder progress. Great learners don't say "I'm brilliant at science" but, "I'm OK on photosynthesis, but not sure I've nailed atomic structure yet." And this needs to start early.

The pre-schooler who speaks up and asks what a word means in a story, rather than pretending to know, is already on the way to being a skilful learner. Honesty allows children to build good links with teachers and mentors. It grows confidence, attracts goodwill, and gives children an infallible compass with which to steer their learning.

5. Courage

Learning anything – piano, physics, tennis – is about approaching the unknown, and stepping up to new challenges. Great learners are just as frightened of this as others, but can overcome their fear and find focus.

They are able to try, fail, and try again. They can also navigate school life skilfully. Children need moral courage to turn away from distractions and to be willing to be seen as "a geek" if they want to study, while developing courage also helps them to stand their ground through the temptations of the teenage years.

6. Kindness

Great learners are kind to themselves. They understand that learning is sometimes hard, and not always possible to get right, but keep a "good" voice going in their heads to encourage themselves on.

A kind disposition also draws other people to them and bolsters their learning through the help and support of others, as well as allowing them to work productively in teams and groups. A kind disposition also feeds listening and empathy, which in turn foster deeper, more complex learning.

All these character qualities are great for learning – and also for life. Research shows that they help people build more confidence, face challenges better, earn more money, have more satisfying careers, build stronger relationships, and keep depression and anxiety at bay. Yet, sadly, figures also show that increasing numbers of children are growing up with less ability to control their moods, direct their actions, or show empathy and self-mastery, while many mental health problems, including eating disorders and self-harm, are on the rise.

Our children badly need us to help them develop stronger, more flexible backbones, and all the qualities that contribute to a strong inner core can be actively fostered and encouraged by parents (parents and schools working together is even better). Just as muscles grow stronger with regular exercise, so character traits are strengthened by thoughtful encouragement and reinforcement.

Hilary Wilce is an education writer, consultant and parent coach. Her new book, 'Backbone: How to Build the Character Your Child Needs to Succeed' (Endeavour Press, £2.99) is now available