A Pleasurable Act of Enjoying a Psychopath in The Other: Animal, Kabir Singh, Bhakshak, Dahad, Mirzapur, Darlings, and many more in the infinite order…………….

 The society of India has been worshipping the act of enjoying a Psychopath in the Other. The trends and patterns of the success achieved by some of the recent films indicate such a paradigm. Society today worships and enjoys the act of seeing a Psychopath in the other. When such a Psychopath takes a larger-than-life measurable form in the shape of a character in the films – “Animal”, “Kabir Singh”, the bonhomie reaches a new pinnacle.

The booming box office numbers, whistling in various cinematic frames, and clapping, and jeering crowds within the cinema halls are a testimony to this worshipping of the Psychopath in the other. The most disturbing and astonishing element of this worship lies in the following statement – “While the family members of the Psychopath are disturbed and struggling to deal with the Psychopath in the film, the audience is cheering fully to the phenomenon and clapping to the Psychopath”.

This was a statement by Konkana Sen Sharma in the latest interview. Then why does the audience clap and whistle and create a box office hit while the family of the Psychopath in the cinematic frame struggles in a film called – “Animal”. This is because, in a way, the audience is celebrating the psychopath in the other on the visual frame by escaping his/her/their internal psychopath lying within the psychoanalytic zone. As a society, we tend not to do our Psychoanalysis and identify the innate one while we celebrate the same when we see the Psychopath in the other.

The other in the characters of various films, and web series in recent periods has only strengthened this hypothesis of – “Society Celebrating the Psychopath” in the “Other” while escaping the own inner one. This is also happening in most of the celebratory content of all the audio-visual medium web series on the Web. The society also in a way has started to believe that to come out of the inner ills of psychopathy within individuals and in society a larger Psychopath might be needed.  When that Psychopath and the Psychopathy are visually projected on screen, the mass escapes from their psychopathic self; and celebrates the rescue of a psychopathic society by a psychopath while the actual character in the film or the audiovisual medium struggles or troubles the characters around him/her/they in the communication medium. The infinite chain of such a psychopathic order has been already established and it will continue in the infinite loop in the future.

Heat Stress and Energy Consumption - An Act of Jouissance?

 The word jouissance was coined by Lacan which means “satisfaction of a drive and not as the satisfaction of a need”. The French term means – “Pleasure- In – Pain”. Lacan associates the word with a repetitive act or a compulsive act which we do over and over again even though in the end it causes us pain. The act of human-induced climate change coupled with our unbridled growth and energy consumption drive can be seen as a “Jouissance”. The perpetual satisfaction of greed and drive to chase money and orient an economy and demand system of chasing money forces an unsustainable energy consumption behaviour and economic growth. It creates a demand for fossil fuel consumption and leads to human-induced climate change from GHG emissions arising from such economic activities and unbridled energy consumption.  

The human-induced climate change then causes heat waves, climate disasters, heat stresses, and urban heat islands which causes pain to the urban civilization who was the cause to the creation of such a pain. In the perpetual need to sustain an urban civilizational behavior of energy consumption through energy-efficient or inefficient AC in urban heat islands, the pain and pleasure continue for eternity for urban heat islands of modern civilization. 

Therefore, pleasure stays in the form of larger energy-efficient AC consumption at a higher rate, while pain in the form of increasing heatwaves in cities and urban heat islands also prospers. The continuation happens to an extent where cities like Delhi of North India which are more prone to heatwaves and already have created heat islands have to be more worried to be prepared for a daily peak load demand of around more than 8 GW in the summer season of 2024. 

Given the international net zero commitment of India in 2070, a city like Delhi which is a victim as well as the creator of urban heat islands and heat effects from human-induced climate change is forced to think of procuring power from renewable energy sources to address the forecasted peak demand of 8 GW in the summer season of 2024. 

The onus of supplying electricity by procuring from renewable energy sources therefore falls upon the loss-making DISCOM sector of India. Delhi is also not an exception. Hence, in Delhi, distribution companies like Tata Power DDL, BSES Rajdhani Power, BSES Yamuna Power have to make arrangements for sourcing renewable energy based electricity to meet the rising electricity demand. Tata Power DDL has a consumer base of 19 lakh whereas BSES has 2 crore 50 lakh residents in South, West, East, and Central Delhi. In each of these zones, wherever the peak demand goes up due to say higher AC consumption during summer, it creates a higher propensity of urban heat effect while the summer heatwaves also continue in a homogenous way across all zones of Delhi. Hence the act of pleasure and pain continues simultaneously in the urban, civilizational landscape of Delhi. 

In the meantime, for the Jouissance to continue complemented by renewable energy sources, the loss-making DISCOMs get into long-term power purchase and banking arrangements with other neighboring states to supply power to Delhi amid the heat waves of summer. Through a power banking arrangement, DISCOMs of Delhi ensure to get 670 MW. Around 2100 MW of green power is sourced from solar, wind, and waste-to-energy sources to sustain the pain and pleasure game of heat effects and energy consumption behaviour of Delhi residents. Out of the 2100 MW of green power, 888 MW comes from solar power, 500 MW arises from wind power and 40 MW is generated from Waste-to Energy, and 160 MW of roof-top solar power is installed on roof-tops which will also be utilized to mitigate the peak load demand of the summer months. 

The question is are these sources enough to reduce the fossil fuel-based electricity consumption of Delhi which can thereby reduce the human-induced impacts of climate change and also reduce the heat effects, and heat stresses caused by human behavior while the heat waves of Delhi summer months continue. Clearly, the answer is NO! Rising energy consumption behaviour needs to be checked by Battery Energy  Storage Systems (BESS) but that also adds to the cost of supplying power and electricity and might not always be viable for ailing DISCOMs and cost friendly for the consumers. However, the good news is that Delhi already has its Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) at Rohini and Rani Bagh and it promises to support in providing continuous and reliable power to key customers during any exigency in summers. 

However, the cost economics of BESS driven power supply by DISCOMs across various cities of India still needs to be worked out. According to many, pumped storage works out better than BESS. However, some successful BESS-driven Power Purchase Contracts are operational where concessional loans were given to set up the BESS by DISCOMs. However, there is no definite answer to this aspect. Heat effects in the peaking summers of Delhi can cause eventualities for which mobile distribution transformers, additional staff, dedicated round-the-clock teams, and supply restoration infrastructure for sub-transmission systems have to be created. All of these would mean additional costs and investments which can be a challenge for loss making DISCOMs. 

Hence, a radical push need to come in to implement all the above measures to take the entire system out of this Jouissance. Apart from regulatory, policy, and financial measures and incentives to take out the system from this Jouissance of Heat Effect and Energy Consumption, a complete shift in the social and economic system is required. In the long term, a city life structure like Delhi is not sustainable if heat waves, and climate disasters increase. With the rise of such climate events, Delhi as a city cannot afford to continue its behavior of raising heat islands through rising AC loads. New forms of city lifestyles, value systems, social nudges for reduced energy conservation and nature conservation behavior by preserving trees, and lakes have to be worked out. Cars in the city have to be reduced by pushing a degrowth-centric city lifestyle which incentivizes community-based lifestyles facilitating energy and nature conservation by incentivizing it for the citizens on a larger scale. Incentivization can be thought through in the form of a complementary money or currency system where citizens who help in reducing heat effects , heat islands or energy consumption are allowed to transact in alternative or complementary forms of currencies for the exchange of goods and services and are allowed to create a society which has an optimal amount of heat effects or heat islands. Even though it sounds like Fiction, An Act of Jouissance needs a fictional reality to secure the city civilization from future heat effects. Covid did rescue nature from us for sometime in the recent past through such a fictional reality. 

Can Constitutionalisation of Climate Justice Create Social Tipping?

 Few days back a verdict of the Supreme Court has recognised Climate Justice as a part of the Constitutional Rights. Adverse effects of human induced climate change which pose a threat to human life can now be considered as unconstitutional. Hence, Supreme Court has given a ruling that climate crisis impairs the constitutional rights to life. What does this ruling mean in terms of a social nudge to reorient the behaviour of society which is more environment friendly?

This ruling gives a citizen the legal power to question any human action or economic activity which can create adverse impacts of human induced climate change through global warming. So if a community near a thermal power plant feels that the smoke, pollution from the thermal power plant can create a climate crisis and impact their lives, they can go to court and challenge the operation of the thermal power plant?

But does that mean, the thermal power plant will stop operating given that coal driven electricity is still less costly to reach households in comparison to decentralised solar panel based or solar thermal power plant based electricity?

Will this mean that coal based thermal power plants can afford to close down and lead to unemployment of millions of people whose lives are dependent on the value chain of coal based electricity production from thermal power plants? These transitions can only happen if it is economical to produce electricity from renewable than from coal. They can only happen if there are systems in place to absorb the communities who loose jobs from shut down of thermal power plants triggered by a legal appeal of one community to close down thermal power plants as their lives are threatened due to climate crisis from coal based thermal power plants.

An appeal by a community at the backdrop of the violation of rights to life from climate crisis arising from thermal power plants might not be enough to close those plants. The economic system has to degrow, go through a structural shift to stabilize the accelerating growth of economy which demands more of coal based electricity in the absence of comparable economic sources of electricity from renewable, clean sources.

However, if more communities start going to court and appeal for changes in the production system of electricity, goods, services in an economy, a social tipping can set in creating a pressure on the energy supply systems and economic systems. A social tipping point if achieved on the demand side can create a pressure on the supply side systems to transit to cleaner goods, services and electricity production systems. However it might not necessarily induce a shift on the supply side immediately. For the shift to happen nudges in the form of economic , behavioural incentives have to be given to energy supply and supply side of economic goods and services systems which can help them to attain short and long term economic gains. If the supply side systems change towards cleaner energy systems with larger profit, benefits arising from such cleaner systems then the potential chance of climate friendly supply side systems will evolve in a society. 

All of these together needs to happen to sustain the success of the declaration of the Supreme Court which has the potential to set a social change but might not be enough to create a social tipping. A social tipping towards addressing the adverse effects of climate change from human induced actions of fossil fuel based economic activities needs to be necessarily be complemented by nudges and economic incentives on the supply side.

Once, all of these happen together, A Green Day will arrive when climate crisis will not impact the constitutional rights of a healthy human life within India any more!

মোবাইল মেঘ

  মোবাইল পিওন নিয়ে এল

  মেঘের চিঠির গর্জন

  হাত বাড়িয়ে চোখ বলল

  বসন্ত উৎসব অর্জন

   চোখের জলে পা ডুবিয়ে 

   কুড়িয়ে নিলাম বাড়ি

   জানলা দিয়ে বাইরে তাকিয়ে

    হঠাৎ সেই ছাড়াছাড়ি

    মোবাইল চিঠির জলের রেশে

    হয়ে উঠল বাগান

    সব শেষে এক নিমিষে

    বাগান গাছের ঐকতান।

The Psycho-Analysis of People Centric Energy Transition

 Since the time, I have started working on rural energy transition from 2003, one question that bothered and disturbed me was  my inability to find out a psychological structure behind rural energy definition.

 Over the last twenty years of struggle, every work that I have been doing related to energy transition or rural energy transition had its core being based on people. If it was, is or has been based on people, then ideally, a real, symbolic, imaginary definitional space of rural energy transition should also be there. I struggled to find it out for 20 years. Then, I came across the new nomenclatures of just, people centric energy transition and a close reading of Lacan helped me to find out finally a broad structure to my last twenty years of work on energy transition. The broad structure of the last twenty years of my work on "Energy Transition"  or if I may call it as "People Centric Energy Transition" can be largely seen through the below structural flow shown in the exhibit below :

Once, I framed or superimposed this structure to my twenty years of work and reading on energy transition and juxtaposed Lacan into it, the spaces between Real, Imaginary (The Gap Between Real and Symbolic), Symbolic opened. 

It is over here, I finally got an answer to the struggle led education of the past. Yes, the last twenty years of my work or many work that I read was always having a human being and a Freudian pyschoanalytic construct of that being within. In that pyschoanalytic construct of the Real Lens of People Centric Energy Transition, the being was like a Real Ego. The Symbolic Lens of People Centric Energy Transition was like a Ego Real and the Gap or The Imaginary Lens of People Centric Energy Transition was  like the Super Ego. The Real Lens of People Centric Energy Transition is like the Idealised Real Version of the Psychological Self whereas the Ego Real (Symbolic Lens of People Centric Energy Transition) is the Self which wants to mould itself the way the Other wants to see it. It is over here the Ego Real or The Symbolic Self of People Centric Energy Transition uses algebra, arithmetic, modelling to do projections, scenario buildings to create and project a self that has to be seen by someone else or the other in the society within its various actors.

However, the Gap between the Real and Symbolic Lens of People Centric Energy Transition is the Super Ego which is always having an ethical or moral clash in its definitional lens through its varied forms of evolutionary frameworks.

Finally, after twenty years of struggle, I could discover the Psychoanalytic Self imbibed within the definitional frame of Energy Transition or People Centric Energy Transition. The idea emerged on the New Day of New Year 2024.

On a year when a Green Day is coming, the new day told me to be more grounded in research to find out the psychoanalytic self of People Centric Energy Transition more and more!

Why Dunki will stand by the test of time?

 In today's time, there is a normalcy of excess pleasure, desire to consume pleasure again and again. There is a pressure within the society to consume pleasure more and more. Mass scale cinema with spectre, big budget, high promotion, story, characters, plotline often are consciously playing to this psyche of excess consumption. This excess consumption through the aesthetics of cinema often leads to a harassement. In such a harassement process of cinema, the excess and the passion of excess in a cinema hurts the object. Knowingly and unknowingly the cinema watchers can become such an object of a 1000 crore hit or a flop film. So, often a great film can create such a hurtful object of passion or might not. A hit, flop, average, mediocre film can create such hurtful objects unknowingly even through best crafts in a cinema. Hence cinema can create passion which then hurts and leads to harassement even for a fan of a certain cinema or for a one time watcher of the same cinema. Even before the art and craft of cinema comes in, the excess of pleasure, passion can create hurtful harassement. 

The society as it evolves often demands such passion led hurtful objects. In many developed societies, such hurtful excesses are reduced through human right declaration and definition for necrophaliacs. Such right spaces reduces excess of consumption, pleasure, harassment of objectified passion. 

It is over here, even before technical craft of a cinema comes, the characters, stories of characters, plots of a film can win over the excess in a society of excess. Hence characters, story plots of Dunki characters of the latest SRK film does this and wins over Pathan, Jawan and Animal even before the art, craft of cinema sets in. 

Within a society of excess, Dunki regulates our excess through the characters, stories, plots and makes us more human within the passion of an Animal, Jawan, Pathan. Dunki slowly and steadily inspite of its stretched cinematic art, craft, wins our excesses by making us laugh and cry at the same time. In hindsight, the cinema of the camera of Dunki turns out to be the watch tower of a pleasured society and questions its trajectory in the long term. 

A Travelogue of "Yuhi Sath Sath Chalte" - From Shimla to Kolkata via Lacan

 The last two consecutive weeks were quite active and refurbishing in terms of memory revival. As a part of the Yuhi Sath Sath Chalte production shows on two back-to-back Saturdays and Sundays, I was in Shimla and Kolkata. The first show of Yuhi Sath Sath Chalte happened at the famous, historical Gaiety Theatre of Shimla. 

The second show happened at Bharatiya Sanskriti Samsad within the heart of Chowronghee at Kolkata. The team performance evolved, peaked, and attained brilliance in the course of the journey. However, my memories of travel from Shimla to Kolkata only strengthened the belief that truth is always partial. I realized the traumatic truth of unconscious memories of city spaces with which a human being has to live and that is both an absolute and partial truth. This was almost a practical demonstration of Lacan and his psychoanalytical lens where the unconscious is dominated by language and grammar or Hegelian dialectics of recognition. The irrational unconscious has its own grammar and language which is also often Heideggerian, Kantian, and Platonic. If that irrational unconscious has to be unraveled, and deciphered through the metaphors of text, and language then it is often Saussurean as the language of that irrational unconscious space is very linguistic in nature and not defined by psychoanalysis. Within the dying corpse of psychoanalysis, the shows of Yuhi  Sath Sath Chalte opened up more of the irrational unconscious within me. I imagined the triad of Lacan (real, reality, imaginary) not through practice but through a linguistic system of texts coupled with music. 

Lacan when he returned to Freud, reimagined Freud and made him alive by separating him from the dying remnants of Psychoanalysis. Yuhi Sath Sath Chalte script, texts, words, and linguistics made me return to Freud, not through the popular, mainstream space of ego, libidinal suppression, dream, and projections of clinical on the nonclinical realities. It made me see the triad of Lacan of real, reality, and imaginary through the grammar and language of texts and the system of interpreting and reading those texts coupled with music, track, rhythm, travel language and grammar.

The travel of "Yuhi Sath Sath Chalte" made me return to my memories of Shimla, Kolkata through Gaiety Theatre, Mall Road, Chowronghee through a linguistic and textual practice of Lacan. I understood how to read Lacan through "Yuhi Sath Sath Chalte" even though Zizek also had done the same thing. He pushed us to read texts, the system of texts through the lens of Lacan and his works.

The travel of Yuhi Sath Sath Chalte helped me to practice it more and I understood what Lacan made and how he saved Freud through the poststructuralism of 50s when brain science, medicine, pills and hedonism took the space of psychoanalysis.

I am sure, the next shows of Yuhi Sath Sath Chalte will help me understand Lacan a little more.