Data analytics of Rahul Gandhi seemed to have reversed entropy. Entropy is the increase of disorder with time. It is the second law of thermodynamics. But the data being used for public good in the manner in which Mr. Gandhi did turned the table and is at the service of the public. Public good is also an empty signifier ( Ernesto Laclau) . What counts as public good can become questionable. Maybe we can measure public good by its effects or consequences and look for it in the way it is received by the people.
Bernard Stiegler talks about schroedinger’s negentropy. Schroedinger’s cat in a box ( a thought experiment) depends on discontinues radiation of a radioactive material to explain the duality of quantum physics. Negentropy is opposite of entropy. It is a sudden ( Discontinues) rupture the transforms everything. Stiegler likens it the sunbeam that suddenly enables us to see the explosion of colors of spring—the fertility of everything that is renewed in the light and heat that we have forgotten for some time.
Maybe we in India are experiencing negentropy through the data analysis placed before us by Mr. Gandhi . Hence, this mode of data analytics has begun to trigger our thinking. We are challenged to delve into the negentropology of this mode of data analytics and be the torch bearers of its negentropic promise. We perhaps have to seek these negentropic potentials to drive or ride a wave of change for the good of all Indians. Such a wave can re-invent life for us.
But this future is always at a distance. It is always in the coming. The beauty of it is that we are enabled to dream again. We can once again hope for a better India. In a Derridean sense, we may describe this future as negentropological differance . But it has to begin with Foucault’s Parrhesia, courage to speak truth to power which exudes in Mr. Gandhi. Data therefore, has to serve to shape a new form of public power. The manner in which Mr. Gandhi brought it into the public sphere has sent the engine on the tracks for the development of such a public power. This public power begins to develop when we see the other in ourselves. The fact of vote chori seems to have achieved this. We have begun to feel united with the victims of vote chori and those that were dividing us on several pretext have already begun to appear villains in chiefs.
Our facticity is that we have the other in us and the other has us in them. Self in the other and the other in the self is true India. It is our unity in diversity. Hence, coming to embrace our given-ness or facticity is true patriotism. It enables us to find each of us in the We. We need a data analytics that will enable us to see each of us in a larger We . It is a plane of consistency in Deleuzean sense on which India has always built its unity in diversity. We cannot really build a nation on the exorcism or expulsion of very own. It in the embrace of the other in the We that we can find ourselves. Hence, it is important that we learn to tap into the positive negentropy released into our society and lead it to build an united and a strong India.
There is always a danger of the return of the hallocinations of a sense of feeling strong in divided We. We cannot allow it to disturb the plane of consistency of our country. Otherwise the deterritorializing exclusionary fragmented broken We of majoritarianism will be reterritorialized. Vote chori is breaking the united We . Hence, we have the challenge to be alert to let the negentropy go to its logical end. We have the challenge to let negentrophical differance be on the horizon. It will keep the energy of renewal in the making.
India has to be saved from the nihilism of the new barbarians in sense of Horkheimer and Adorno that is controlling us for now. We cannot allow algorithms and the Big Business that has unleashed Big Politics dissolve the soul of our country. We cannot turn back the clock of algorithms. They are here to stay but we can use public power to see that they are pro people. Placed outside the law that protects the interest of the people (citizens) the data economy will only be barbaric and will be run by the engine of competition for profit, speed and so-called efficiency. Hence, against this entropy, we have to cherish the irruption of negentropy in through the data analytics of Mr. Gandhi.
To let this new energy grow we need to have a new social contract and load our reality with negenthropic possibilities to come. This negentropic future is differrant( Derrida) from the entropy/ disorder that divides us and set us up against each other. This entropy favors the Big Business and Big Politics. This is barbaric and can go to any levels to get its ends. It hacks public power. Maybe we can see the attempt of vote chori as a hacking of public power. Thanks to Mr. Gandhi this hacking is exposed. But it is not the end of the road. We have still to harness the negenthropy. Negenthropy opens us a future that will always remain in the coming. It will keep our democracy in the coming. We do not reach an end point of history. Like Robert Frost , we say, ‘we have miles to go until we finally sleep’ .
