Books

Real intelligence

Emotional Intelligence — Why it can matter more than IQ by Daniel Goleman; Bantam Books; Price: Rs.220; 413 pp

Not a few knowledgeable social scientists among others have often remarked that India’s global reputation for spirituality and piety is not entirely deserved, and that beyond this facade the subcontinent has always been a cruel and violent arena with a huge deficit in manners and especially empathy. As with all social infirmities, this deficit too can be traced back to lacunae in the education system. In particular, to widespread ignorance within academic and parental communities of the importance of developing the emotional intelligence of children.

Although some of the more avant-garde schools have lately begun to acknowledge the importance of ‘life skills education’, this awareness has yet to spread to the great majority of the nation’s institutions of education — primary, secondary or tertiary. There is little awareness within the teacher or parent communities that developing the emotional quotient (EQ) of students is as important as developing their intelligence quotient (IQ). Indeed school syllabuses and curriculums — heavily focused upon developing language, science and math skills — almost entirely ignore the vital EQ or emotional intelligence of children.

The neglect of emotional education — a global phenomenon — is surprising because one would have thought the importance of EQ is self-evident. Or else what’s the explanation for the large number of class geniuses with high IQs and pass percentages who we can all recall from our school days, failing to fulfill their great promise in adulthood? According to Daniel Goleman, a Harvard psychology graduate and New York Times journalist, the explanation is rooted in the often less developed emotional intelligence of high academic performers. On the other hand the highly developed emotional intelligence of the academically less distinguished, more than compensates for their low IQs and transforms them into high achievers.

This is the thrust of Emotional Intelligence — Why it can matter more than IQ, the worldwide bestseller which, although it was first published almost a decade ago, has received scant attention in this country.

Contemporary India’s daily deluge of horror stories highlighted by the media — gender oppression, child abuse, student riots, caste atrocities, corruption, road rage incidents and casual official and societal tolerance of poverty, injustice and despair — indicates a huge, and perhaps growing emotional intelligence deficit of nationwide proportions. Emotional Intelligence offers numerous solutions to address this damaging shortcoming.

"There is growing evidence that fundamental ethical stances in life stem from underlying emotional capacities. For one, impulse is the medium of emotion; the seed of all impulse is feeling bursting to express itself into action. Those who are at the mercy of impulse — who lack self control — suffer a moral deficiency: the ability to control impulse is the base of will and character. By the same token, the root of altruism lies in empathy, the ability to read emotions in others; lacking a sense of another’s need or despair, there is no caring. And if there are any two moral stances that our times call for, they are precisely these, self-restraint and compassion," writes Goleman, explaining why he researched this subject, the outcome of which is this valuable book.

Starting with a quotation from the Greek philosopher Aristotle ("anyone can become angry — that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way — that is not easy"), this seminal volume is divided into five major sections. The first details the mountain of research in American academia into the neurobiological structure of the human brain and the centres of emotion within it. Part two entitled the ‘The nature of emotional intelligence’ is the largest section of the book (109 pages) and the heart of this enlightening compendium. The six chapters in this section (‘When smart is dumb’; ‘Know thyself’; ‘Passion’s slaves’; ‘The master aptitude’; ‘The roots of empathy’; ‘The social arts’) advance the argument that emotions play a powerful role in the history of all men’s lives and can often be a destructive force, especially when the brain is "hijacked" to signal hair-trigger response. The importance of evaluating primordial signals to the brain and responding intelligently, i.e controlling emotional response, is what this book is all about. It makes the case that while academic systems focus on developing the neo-cortex (the seat of logic in the brain), in real life a combination of head and heart decision-making is the prerequisite of success.

Usually rubbished by teachers and academics, emotional responses aren’t as valueless as commonly believed. After all the noblest human actions — care, compassion, empathy, altruism — flow from the emotional centres of the brain. The challenge before society is to employ the collective neo-cortex to build caring communities driven by noble emotions. This is the factor which distinguishes the functional welfare societies of the West from those of the developing nations of the third world. In the latter, the broad and raging currents of spirituality and compassion run awry because academic syllabuses and curriculums have not been sufficiently developed to transform the human brain into the servant of noble emotions.

However this isn’t a viewpoint shared by Goleman who believes that the rich nations of the West are also confronted with social crises because of a collective failure to sufficiently develop emotional intelligence. He despairs about the growing incidences of campus shootings, alcoholism, drug abuse and the divorce epidemic which characterise western society, and attributes these phenomena to the selfish individualism of these societies. Yet quoting the 15th century philosopher Erasmus to the effect that "the main hope of a nation lies in the proper education of its youth", towards the end Goleman highlights the ‘self science’ curriculum of the privately-promoted Nueva School "that offers what may be a model course in emotional intelligence".

There’s all this and much else in this marvellously illuminating volume which has won the endorsement of Howard Gardner, the renowned progenitor of the theory of multiple intelligences. It is highly recommended not only to educationists but to all intent upon building just societies, driven by the optimal combination of head and heart.

Self-motivation saga

Touch Play — The Prakash Padukone Story by Dev S. Sukumar; Badminton Inc; Price: Rs.300; 295 pp

Excessive adulation bestowed upon the men in blue, i.e India’s cricket stars, explains why sportspersons who have attained pinnacles of glory in other global sports, are relatively unsung and unchronicled. Despite huge public expenditure — mainly on administration and administrators — post-independence India has produced few world champions, undisputed masters of their game, even if for a brief period. Michael Ferreira was crowned world billiards champion on several occasions. So was Bangalore-based Prakash Padukone, the world’s # 1 badminton star of the 1980s. But who remembers them? Certainly not the hagiographers who churn out cricketers’ biographies with tedious regularity.

Yet the shy, self-effacing Padukone who hoisted Indian badminton on the global map when he won the All England Badminton Championship in 1980, is one of the very few global # 1 players India has produced. That he attained the very summit of this lightning fast, quick reflexes game which requires reservoirs of stamina and supreme physical fitness, dispelled the pervasive belief that ‘lazy, unfit’ Indians can never reign supreme in one-on-one gladiatorial racquet games such as tennis, badminton, table tennis and squash. To this list add field athletics. Padukone’s major contribution to Indian sport is that he exploded this myth and it did wonders for national self confidence.

Therefore former New Indian Express sports correspondent Dev S. Sukumar has rendered an overdue tribute and valuable public service by painstakingly penning Touch Play, an authorised biography of this ace shuttler. The second son of an ITI employee, Padukone self-propelled himself from the stone-slab badminton courts of Bangalore’s Canara Union to the winner’s podium in Stockholm, Copenhagen and London. In 1980 Padukone became the first badminton player ever to win the badminton Grand Slam, i.e the Swedish, the Danish and the All England titles in one year. He also won the London Masters Open the same year and in a game where shelf lives are low, was ranked among the world’s top-ten for almost a decade upto 1989. Indeed Padukone was perhaps the last player to staunch the floodtide of Chinese and Indonesian shuttlers, who currently dominate the world’s competitive badminton arenas.

Touch Play traces Padukone’s meteoric rise from a wedding hall-cum-badminton court in suburban Bangalore to the high-pressure arenas of Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, and Wembley stadium. In 1972 when he was a mere 17, he stroked his way into the national spotlight by winning both the junior and senior titles and the Arjuna award in the same year. From 1972-1979 he reigned as the all-conquering national champion.

In a society in which training and infrastructure support for players is sub-standard if not non-existent, Padukone’s race to the top of world badminton was propelled by extraordinary self-motivation. A typical day entailed rising at 5 a.m, exercise and play for three hours, followed by six successive 400 metre runs, two 30-minute skipping sessions and bench presses with 60-70 kg weights. In the afternoons, court practice would start at 3.30 p.m and continue until 8.30 p.m.

After a successful decade (1979-88) in international badminton, Padukone continued to contribute to the development of the game. Following a brief stint as chairman of the Badminton Association of India during which he was prevented from improving conditions and facilities for players, in 1994 he promoted the Prakash Padukone Badminton Academy (PPBA) in Bangalore, sponsored by the electronics corporate BPL. Some of the country’s best shuttlers inclu-ding eight-time women’s national champion Aparna Popat, reigning men’s national champions Anup Sridhar and Deepankar Bhattacharjee among others, have been nurtured by PPBA. To date Padukone continues to head the academy.

On the positive side Touch Play highlights Sukumar’s enthusiasm for the game which drove him to travel around the country and abroad to interview Padukone’s contemporaries and rivals. However on the flipside, unlike a typical biography Touch Play does not follow a strict chronology and shuttles back and forth in time. Moreover the book lacks a subject index, which makes it difficult to navigate this generous biography.