The Hindu Business Line : <I>Gullibility unlimited </I>

Mumbai city is in the grip of yet another wild rumour, this time that the sea water in some parts of the city has turned less saline, thanks to the magical powers of a saint. So gullibility and mass hysteria strikes once again! A few years ago, suddenly Ganesha idols all over the city began reportedly drinking milk placed in front of them. Soon reports came in from other cities too. For a few days, it became a national pastime to report yet another incident. Eventually, sense and reason prevailed, somebody came up with a scientific explanation for this apparent phenomenon; and some mention was made of surface tension and other things one recalled from high school Physics.

A temporary occurrence

Today similar plausible scientific explanations have already been offered. The water has a lower sodium chloride level apparently mainly a huge inflow of rainwater at high pressure and speed, which has driven away the heavier saline water — but only temporarily. The sort of question a scientifically trained citizen should ask is why this did not occur lat year when there was a heavier rainfall and presumably more churning of the top layers? That would be systematic application of thought to facts. However, one feels that soon water will find its own level — of salt — and things should return to normal.

Why scientific explanations that fit the facts fail to register with thousands of people is bad enough to cause concern. But if they insist on consuming the water, which is known so well to be polluted by unspeakable amounts of industrial effluent and sewage, it is a far worse worry.

A little bit of spice

Here is the issue educators, journalists and the educated public must ponder over. Despite such widespread availability of media and access to scientific data, the scientific temper is still so thinly spread and often deserts us when we need it. India is still a land of easy gullibility. Where it comes to natural phenomena, we welcome supernatural explanations almost in preference to the more rational and scientific. We seem to hanker after something out of the ordinary, to supply perhaps a little bit of spice to the otherwise drab lives. Anything like milk-drinking Ganesha or sweet sea water is just the ticket. Could it be that there is so much inexplicable misery in the average person's life that an inexplicable mystery makes him feel comforted? Or, perhaps an act of God such as a cyclone. In my view, the impartiality and classlessness of such disaster is a good reason for the continuing appeal of the miraculous. Interestingly, the tendency to blind faith and unquestioning acceptance cuts across all strata of society. Well-off businessmen and traders, maybe because they are used to sharp fluctuations and crashes, are if anything more liable to subscribe to `irrational' explanations.

The truth

Sadly though, this does not explain why the people would drink such poisonous water. Try to walk across the waterfront in Mumbai at low tide or over the Mahim Creek bridge, you will choke with the nauseous stench,proof enough that it is an open sewer. To want to drink the sea water a few yards downstream from there must really seem like madness — at least enough to pause and think. Yet the reluctance to do so suggests that our education has failed to train us yet to sift the evidence, ask questions and see if there are alternative explanations. Sherlock Holmes said, when all other possibilities have been eliminated, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth — yes, but only after other possibilities have been eliminated, not before!

S. Ramachander

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