Is Miniya Chatterji's new book utterly worthless?

The Penguin website has this to say-

Miniya Chatterji is a prominent intellectual and speaker, writer and businesswoman. She is the CEO of Sustain Labs Paris. She has also worked at the World Economic Forum in Geneva, Goldman Sachs in London and in the office of the President of France in Paris. Her book, Indian Instincts: Essays on Freedom and Equality in India, presents an accessible yet brilliant intellectual treatise about issues that affect Indians the most. It is a must-read for anyone who wants to know what makes an Indian.

Let’s read an excerpt from this book.
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The reasons for Indians living abroad are not too different from those of our domestic migrants who leave their homes.

So, economic migrants are economic migrants are economic migrants. Everybody knows this already. Why is Penguin highlighting this sentence? Are they saying that Chatterji's book states nothing but the obvious? 

Was there not a more striking or more sensible sentence in the whole book for Penguin to choose to advertise this highly regarded author?

 Many have migrated abroad for jobs. Approximately half of the total migrants are women who have followed such men after marriage, which is often arranged with a boy of the parents’ choice, just like mine nearly was.

So, this book is aimed at people who have no knowledge of India. They don't know about arranged marriage. But, in that case, they also may not know that Pocahnotas is not a typical Indian name.

 Indian migrants have moved to high-income countries, and, as of 2015, they are concentrated the most in the UAE, which is inhabited by around 3.5 million Indians, and in the US, where around two million Indians live. Overall, it is in search of a better life—emotionally, socially, financially—that we leave. The fact that India produces the largest number of migrants in the world, but hosts only about 5.2 million international migrants is an indicator of where migrants perceive the environment is conducive for a better life. 

So, India is poor and overpopulated.  Does anyone not know this?

The Middle East has offered migrants jobs, the United States has beckoned to them with its universities, and they’ve been attracted to the quality of life in Europe, Singapore and Hong Kong.

Hong Kong has high quality of life, for China, but it ranks low internationally. No Indian ever said, 'I'm moving to Hong Kong because it's such a great place to live.' Canada, Australia, New Zealand have great quality of life. Hong Kong has business opportunities.

 But in the future, a change of political or economic scenarios in these countries could alter the factors that attract migrants to them. We are witnessing this already in Indian migration to the US, where President Donald Trump’s anti-immigration policies have resulted in Indian migrants hesitating to go to the United States since January 2017, and a larger number of Indians now seeming more likely to choose to live in Europe.

Indian migration to the US has always shown a high degree of rationality and economic calculation. It has become less desirable than Canada because of good knowledge and understanding of the costs and benefits of long term paths to settlement. However, this has little to do with 'political scenarios'. It is based on a purely rational calculus.

 In the medium to long term, the overall number of Indians moving out of India will not drastically reduce if the environment offered by the destination country is no longer attractive; they will find another destination.
In that case, there is no 'destination country' as such. Indians leave India because of push factors or pull factors wholly unconnected with any given country's economic or political situation. 

 It will reduce only if the living conditions for Indians in India improve. 

So push factors predominate.

Unless the fundamental reasons and situations— often exacerbated by economic and social inequality—that drive us out of India change, we will continue to find new destinations to move to. 

Is the author mad? Does she really think 'economic and social inequality' is what drives Indian migration overseas? Poor people can't get a passport and visa or afford an air line ticket. Is she asking us to believe that people like her were pushed out of India by economic exploitation and social ostracism?

Also, a more equitable society for the boys and the girls of this land, and the rich and the poor, irrespective of caste and ethnicity, will offer a meritocratic platform for us to strengthen our roots here in India.

Why is Chatterji writing so badly? She is Bengali. She went to the right sort of schools and Colleges and Universities. Why write this sort of cloth eared bureaucratese?

An equitable society would not be meritocratic so long as education and training have an opportunity cost and increase productivity. 

Suppose India were a 'meritocratic country' where the son of an industrialist or a Judge or IAS officer has to compete on a level playing field. Will such a person remain in India? No. They will buy their way to a country with higher per capita Social Capital and Natural and other Resource endowments.


 The strength of our roots will determine our commitment and attachment to being an important stakeholder in India’s future. 
Nonsense! If 'strength of roots matter in determining commitment and attachment to the country in which one lives and whose citizenship one holds, then all countries should pass laws forbidding first generation, or even second generation, immigrants from holding public office.
Furthermore, certain groups- 'rootless cosmopolitans'- should be discriminated against and disintermediated from the process of Public Reason. This is Orban's thesis. Why is Chatterji writing such evil shite?
It will not matter then whether we leave or stay, because strong roots do not mean that the tree cannot have branches that reach out to the sky.
WTF? Is Chatterji channeling Rahul Baba? Trees don't 'reach out to the sky'. If you climb a big tree you can't jump on to the Moon. This is puerile gibberish.
Quite the contrary. Exploration and attachment are related, and in fact, the latter is a prerequisite for the former.
Perhaps for little babies- but not for adults. If you are attached to your spouse, you do not explore other sexual possibilities with strangers. 

About five decades ago, researchers observed fifty infants in a situation that was new and not too frightening. In some cases, the infant’s mother was present, in others, she had left, and in yet others, she was replaced by a stranger. They found that exploration was greatest when the mother was present. 

So what? This has nothing to do with Attachment and everything to do with Security. Obviously, you can take more risks if someone is present whom you can completely rely upon to prevent any harm befalling you. 

Suppose I was asked to jump out of a plane. Even if my Mummy was holding my hand I would not do it. However, if a sky diving instructor who has logged 10,000 accident free hours takes me, I will feel secure and go ahead. This does not mean I will become attached to the sky diving instructor.

Observation of young apes and monkeys and other studies of human infants in similar experiments since then have all supported the view that successful exploration takes place, ironically, when there is secure attachment. 

This is only because attachment is directly correlated to security. 

The establishment of attachment is an instinctual priority. When it is absent, the need for attachment is dominant and we engage in attachment-searching behaviour similar to that of a baby, who is likely to cry or seek its mother. 

No we don't. When I worry about my retirement I don't start crying or seeking for a Sugar Daddy. I don't sidle up to Theresa May and say 'Please be my Mummy'. Instead I go on line and find a good pension scheme. I don't become 'attached' to my Insurance company or Pension provider. I don't go to their offices and start kissing and hugging the Managers. 

Why?

No 'instinct' is involved. The search for Security is purely rational. It is not based on any Psychic attachment whatsoever.

When we are attached to our city or country of origin, attachment can be taken for granted.

Wow! What an amazing discovery. When we are attached, attachment can be taken for granted. When we shit ourselves, being smelly can be taken for granted. Chatterji has found a wonderful algortithm for producing tautlologies.

 In this case, just as an infant would feel free to move out of its crib knowing the mother is always present, we feel more secure in leaving our home base to explore the new and often frightening world.

Babies have to be lifted out of their cribs. Otherwise the crib serves no purpose. They won't explore anything which frightens them. Chatterji has a baby. Has she ever actually witnessed any such behaviour?

 Exploring other lands clearly does not just mean physically living elsewhere.

Residing in a place does not mean exploring that place. No one has ever suggested otherwise. I don't say 'I explore Fulham', I say 'I live in Fulham'. 

 It means being curious about and getting emotionally involved in those places.

Not necessarily. A geologist may have no curiosity or emotional involvement with a place to which he has been sent for some professional purpose.

By contrast, a person with a lot of curiosity and emotional involvement with a place may still not be able to explore it because of physical disability or financial or other constraints.

 Strong roots in our home base liberate us to explore or engage more meaningfully with the world. 

There is absolutely no evidence of this at all. Wilfred Thesiger was a great explorer. His roots in his 'home base' in England weren't particularly strong. Aurel Stein, too, was a great explorer. He had no home base at all.

Weak roots and attachments are strongly correlated with successful exploration. 'Meaningfully engaging with the world' can be done just by looking after one's family and helping one's neighbours. It has nothing to do with exploration or travel for the sake of travel.

Lacking this, we will move in large numbers but spend less time exploring, instead seeking the missing mother (land) anxiously in a place where she does not exist.

Nonsense. We will skype Mom regularly and book our ticket for our annual holiday 'back home'. We won't go to Mexico, in the belief that Mum may be hiding there. Nor will we climb the Eiffel tower in the belief that Granny lives in a barsati up there.

Chatterji is clearly a smart and successful woman. She should have insisted on getting a good editor for her book. She has done her own 'brand' a disservice. Penguin have been highly irresponsible in highlighting a particularly stupid passage from her book.

Edit-

It has been pointed out to me that Chatterji may be addressing the book to a select elite.

To quote a reviewer-  beneath all our troubles, from parenting to communal violence to nearly institutionalised corruption, lies one fact: “…that we are willingly entrapped in the institutions of our own making, having abandoned the rationality to realize that we have lost sight of the reasons these institutions were set up in the first place.”

Probably, when this lady returned to India she met some elderly people- this one had set up Planning Committee, that other had written Manusmriti, a third had spearheaded Muslim conquest of India, a fourth had brought the British- and, under interrogation, each confessed to having set up one or other of all the various institutions and Social forces operating in India. But, for the life of them, they could not remember why they had done so. 
This young lady- taking pity on the great age of these eminent people- identifies herself with them and speaks of India's problems as something she has created along with them. This is why she uses the word 'we' though she did not herself personally create any institution in India.  I don't know why she thinks these elderly liars (they could not possibly have set up any of the institutions they claim to have done because the original founders died long ago) got 'willingly entrapped' in the institutions they had created. Probably when she was in Paris she found out that De Gaulle was not dead but 'willingly entrapped' inside the Fifth Republic. She spoke to him sternly in French but he replied in Tamil- most of these so called French people are just Tamils who have caked their face with talcum powder- by reciting dialogue from Rajnikanth film. Anyway, she became very furious and said 'Why you have abandoned rationality to realize you have lost sight of the reasons for setting up Fifth Republic in the first place?! Kindly go back to the place where you abandoned rationality, pick it up and regain sight of the reasons you had for doing it. Then go and bury yourself properly in the cemetery instead of remaining 'willingly entrapped' here and letting off stink bombs all the time.'

Thus having sorted out France's problems, she has returned to India where she is bound to sort out legacy of various conquests by scolding elite people and saying 'tor pode ekta, tiktiki dhukiye debo' till they remember their misdeeds and set thing right.