Evaluations

Evaluations may be defined as E=mc² i.e. Evaluations= Mental manifestations in Contexts.

A matter of evaluating Demonetization, vital mistake we must desist from in evaluating anything is extrapolating with anything either our ideological bias or inferred benefits.

Economic activities as aspects of social engineering and governance need not necessarily be and explicitly always be about short term gains.

On evaluation even great research works like the bulky  ‘Evaluation: A Systematic Approach‘ by Peter H. Rossi, Mark W. Lipsey, and Howard E. Freeman first published  get such reviews like ‘There is never any clear instruction about how one should begin an evaluation or how one should proceed’.

The most comprehensive book on evaluations ‘ Making Evaluation Matter-a practical guide for evaluators’ by Cecile Kusters with Simone van Vugt, Seerp Wigboldus, Bob Williams and Jim Woodhill also emphasizes certain factors repeatedly and predominantly they are context/situation, situational responsiveness, stake holders, inherent qualities of the project /program/person being evaluated ,multiple roles, consequence awareness etc

Even this material also throws lot of light on evaluation ‘American Journal of Evaluation-2011-Smith-565-99.pdf

Here I am tempted to quote, “Friend to Groucho Marx: “Life is hard…” Grouch Marx to Friend: “Compared to what?”

It is preferable to  immerse  any topic or subject matter, primarily and basically with its intrinsic elements/components/aspects/attributes intact, into a cauldron which has  a mixture of all these- knowledge based analysis, limited perception based on frames of reference and scales of observation, skepticism , criticism, intellectual scrutiny, compassionate emotionalism, humane socialism, rational thinking, contextual relevance [ which includes too many components] , traditions, practical viability, psychological comfort, aesthetic sensitivity, scientific scrutiny etc and  churn the cauldron without clinging on to any particular restrictive social, cultural or political or religious identity.

This process inevitably will bring out lot of outputs. We can exercise our freedom and sometimes select and choose some of the outputs. Sometimes the outputs will draw us. Sometimes away from all or any of our intended searches and seeking, outside the circle of these known paradigms, almost tangentially serendipity will drag us to an oasis of serene clarity.

At all costs the intrinsic attributes must be the predominant factor so that whatever is thrown into the cauldron and however it is churned, the ultimate output must include those attributes so that evaluation is not distorted or desperately doctored to fit into any predefined and expected outcome.

So, what pans out ultimately depends on various factors and aspects some of which are explainable within the ken of logical and rational thinking but some are beyond these.

We can also observe uneasily how the human intellect polished by a rare faculty

[ compared to other species]  of conscious awareness, capacity to think, store the knowledge, retrieve it for reference and so on  is mostly, unwilling to take the risk of accepting the uncertain; the intellectually undecipherable and the inexplicable outcomes, even if such acceptance is branded, extolled and promoted as virtues of humility or modesty.

“Get out of your own way… stop the paralysis by analysis… decide what you want, create a simple plan, and get moving!” - Steve Maraboli.

I beg you… to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke.

“Across planes of consciousness, we have to live with the paradox that opposite things can be simultaneously true.” ― Ram Dass.