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The Great Inequality Debate - II: What's Wrong With Inequality?

2011-12-28T20:51:00.000+05:30

This is the second part of a rather long blog post on economic inequality that I set out to write a couple of weeks ago. The first part dealt with definitions, scope and taxonomy and established key facts and figures pertaining to income inequality. The main take-aways from the first part were: (a) there's a lot of economic inequality all over the world, with some really large gaps in several countries (b) in most of those countries income disparities have been consistently increasing over the last two or three decades, and (c) in the view of many economists, appropriate policy prioritization, imaginative democratic practices and investments in infrastructure and human capital would go a long way to reinvigorate democracies and economies.

In this second part, I get into the "so what" of the first two points above and explore the "how and why" of the third point. These are good questions to ask, because the search for answers to those questions would reveal whether or not inequality has any bearing on the well-being of society as a whole and therefore on sustainability (which, as you may recall from my earlier post, is the focus of my concern). And if indeed it does, then it is useful to know what its impact is and what kind of difference it would make (if any) to humanity as a whole, if we were to try and fix it. So let's start with the "so what" questions and take it from there. There's a lot of inequality? OK, so what? It has been increasing over the last few decades? OK, so what? Short answer: severe (and growing) inequality brings along many risks, and if we can avoid it we should.

Inequality – a global risk

In January this year, the World Economic Forum (WEF) released their "Global Risks 2011" report, which highlights two very basic risks that are broad in scope and deeply interconnected to each other – economic disparity and global governance failures – both of which "influence the evolution of many other global risks and inhibit our capacity to respond effectively to them". Reproduced here below is an excerpt from the Executive Summary (which, incidentally, makes an interesting note of what it calls a 21st century paradox: "as the world grows together, it is also growing apart"):

Globalization has generated sustained economic growth for a generation. It has shrunk and reshaped the world, making it far more interconnected and interdependent. But the benefits of globalization seem unevenly spread – a minority is seen to have harvested a disproportionate amount of the fruits. Although growth of the new champions is rebalancing economic power between countries, there is evidence that economic disparity within countries is growing.

Issues of economic disparity and equity at both the national and the international levels are becoming increasingly important. Politically, there are signs of resurgent nationalism and populism as well as social fragmentation. There is also a growing divergence of opinion between countries on how to promote sustainable, inclusive growth.

Appendix 1 of the report lays out the methodology underlying the WEF study. Here's the introductory portion of the opening paragraph:

The Global Risks Survey seeks the opinion of experts, business leaders and policy-makers on a selection of global risks tracked by the World Economic Forum. This is a perception survey which received approximately 580 valid responses across the 37 global risks in five risk categories. Respondents were asked to assess risk likelihood and impact over a ten year time horizon (2010-2020) and also provided their level of confidence in their answers. Respondents also assessed risk interconnections by choosing up to six other risks they judged were related in some way to the risk being assessed. Respondents also had the option to add data on the dominant type of interconnection between risks. Data were analysed using a range of statistical techniques, both descriptive and analytical.

Clearly, economic inequality has been perceived by many business leaders, policy makers and experts, to be one of the two major global risks. The report lists 3 other risks as "risks in focus", of which the first two are what it calls "the macroeconomic imbalances nexus" and "the illegal economy nexus" (both of these are have strong causal linkages with economic disparity and global governance failures). The report analyzes these in detail and tabulates the direct as well as indirect impact of each, on governments, on businesses and on society at large. But the following paragraph gives us a pretty good flavor of what other kinds of risks the respondents to the WEF survey associated with economic inequality:

Economic disparity is tightly interconnected with corruption, demographic challenges, fragile states, global imbalances and asset-price collapse. Respondents perceived economic disparity as influencing chronic diseases, infectious diseases, illicit trade, migration, food (in)security, terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.

As the Wikipedia page on economic inequality informs us, various studies have been carried out on whether inequality can harm societies and if so, how. One study particularly, conducted by Richard Wilkinson (Professor Emeritus of Social Epidemiology at the University of Nottingham and co-founder of The Equality Trust) and Kate Pickett (Professor of Epidemiology at the University of York, a National Institute for Health Research Career Scientist, and co-founder of The Equality Trust), examines in detail the relationship between inequality and the overall levels of happiness, health and well-being within a society.

Equality and happiness: coincidence? correlation? causation?

Here's a video clip from TED Talks, in which Prof. Wilkinson tells us how, among the more developed countries, economic inequality harms societies, and how societies that are less unequal tend to be healthier and happier on the whole. This conclusion is based on research that has been documented in the book "The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone" by Profs. Wilkinson and Pickett. (Prof. Pickett has also presented these findings at the Green Party conference, where she discussed equality and sustainability).

According to the authors, their research found hard evidence to support their conclusions. (More details and access to source data and other resources are available at The Equality Trust website.) However, some critics claimed that Wilkinson and Pickett had got it all wrong. Peter Saunders and Christopher Snowden, in their respective publications – a report by Peter Saunders and a blog by Christopher Snowden (who has also written a book on the subject) – said that the evidence presented by Wilkinson and Pickett was weak, their analysis superficial and most of the correlations in their book did not stand up. Following such sharp criticism that challenged the very basis of their findings, key contentious issues with regard to the data and the methodology were heatedly debated, and responses to the criticisms were promptly issued by Wilkinson and Pickett. The video clip embedded below captures the RSA debate and is worth watching if you have an additional 40 mins. to spare.

Going by the chronology of events (given that the TED Talks video is more recent than the RSA debate), I would imagine that the Wilkinson-Pickett thesis in its present form has resolved critical objections and now provides a higher degree of confidence in the validity of its claims. Prof. Wilkinson's concluding comments in the TED Talks video, suggesting causation rather than correlation, sound like they arise from a stronger conviction, having overcome at least the big "gotchas". Notwithstanding this, different people may react differently to these exposés by critics like Saunders and Snowden, depending on their own unique outlook and disposition. Conservative skeptics may summarily reject the Wilkinson-Pickett thesis in its entirety, in favor of the Saunders-Snowden antithesis, while others may be more selective. Liberal rationalists may accept those parts that stand up to scrutiny (i.e., where the correlations are indisputably strong or where the critics' arguments are weak). Those who favor an intuitive approach may accept correlations of inequality with factors that they feel have a direct linkage, but not others.

Be that as it may, there's the old saying that is better to be safe than sorry. (And this wisdom holds for climate change debates as well.) If one is so inclined, one may take the view that even if income inequality does not impact the well-being of a society as adversely as Wilkinson-Pickett would have us believe, and even if economic disparities don't pose such serious risks as the WEF report points out, it may still be worthwhile to explore avenues to reduce it. But should it be brought down to zero (a Gini coefficient of 0 means everyone has an equal share of income) in order to have a healthy, happy and risk-free world? Probably not, even if that is physically possible to achieve (which I don't think it is). Many hold the view that a certain quantum of inequality is a good thing in a competitive capitalistic economy.

"Good" inequality and "Bad" inequality

In the book "The Haves and the Have-Nots" author Branko Milanović (lead economist in the World Bank's research department) writes:"There is 'good' and 'bad' inequality, just as there is good and bad cholesterol." (In an interview with CNN Money he discusses this point in more detail, and also touches on other aspects of inequality covered in his book.) The author argues that "the possibility of unequal economic outcomes motivates people to work harder, although at some point it can lead to the preservation of acquired positions, which causes economies to stagnate" (quoted from the New York Times review of his book). His view is echoed by another article at the New York Times, of which relevant excerpts are presented below:

Some inequality may be necessary to encourage investment for growth. But as recent research shows, intense inequality actually stunts growth, making it more difficult for countries to sustain the sort of long economic expansions that have characterized the more prosperous nations of the world.

[...]

The economists[1] found that income distribution contributes more to the sustainability of economic growth than does the quality of a country’s political institutions, its foreign debt and openness to trade, the level of foreign investment in the economy and whether its exchange rate is competitive.

It’s not too hard to see why. Extreme inequality blocks opportunity for the poor. It can breed resentment and political instability – discouraging investment – and lead to political polarization and gridlock, splitting the political system into haves and have-nots. And it can make it harder for governments to address economic imbalances and brewing crises.

So if a little bit of inequality is a good thing, but too much of it is a bad thing, then exactly how much inequality should we have? I haven't (yet) come across a heuristic or a model that could help answer that question (though earlier studies[2] have tried to calibrate that scale and actually put numbers around how much is too much and how little is too little). What I did come across was some interesting research that contrasts Americans' perceptions (of wealth distribution in the U.S.) with the reality, and then also with their projection of the "right" distribution based on their personal judgment. The chart below plots all three – the perceived (estimated), the real (actual) and the projected (ideal) levels of inequality in the U.S. – based on the report published by Dan Ariely and Michael Norton. (Their research also finds mention in a debate on rising inequality in the New York Times, which may provide additional insights.)

Percent wealth owned | Source: "Building a Better America--One Wealth Quintile at a Time" by Ariely & Norton

The abstract of their research paper may help decode this infographic:

Disagreements about the optimal level of wealth inequality underlie policy debates ranging from taxation to welfare. We attemptto insert the desires of "regular" Americans into these debates, by asking a nationally representative online panel to estimate thecurrent distribution of wealth in the United States and to "build a better America" by constructing distributions with their ideallevel of inequality. First, respondents dramatically underestimated the current level of wealth inequality. Second, respondentsconstructed ideal wealth distributions that were far more equitable than even their erroneously low estimates of the actualdistribution. Most important from a policy perspective, we observed a surprising level of consensus: All demographicgroups – even those not usually associated with wealth redistribution such as Republicans and the wealthy – desired a moreequal distribution of wealth than the status quo.

And speaking of how even the wealthy indicated a preference for a more equitable distribution, I am reminded of how, last month, some millionaires demanded their taxes be raised, in support of the Buffett rule. However, these are exceptional individuals. Most wealthy people would rather not pay tax, and instead choose to rely on the "trickle-down" effect to spread the benefits of prosperity. But does it really work that way?

More on perceptions and realities

The trickle-down effect may be more myth than reality, going by what OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría pointed out while launching the OECD report:

The social contract is starting to unravel in many countries. This study dispels the assumptions that the benefits of economic growth will automatically trickle down to the disadvantaged and that greater inequality fosters greater social mobility. Without a comprehensive strategy for inclusive growth, inequality will continue to rise.

Then there's the view that inequality spurs competition, which in turn unleashes creativity and innovation. But as Richard Florida (Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, and Senior Editor at The Atlantic) points out in an article, "It is possible to design an economic system that is innovative and competitive, but that causes far less severe socioeconomic divides than we are experiencing today." In the concluding paragraphs he says:

Our analysis has identified the key factors that shape the competitiveness, happiness, well-being and broad prosperity of nations. Countries with greater levels of creativity (measured on the GCI) have higher levels of economic output, entrepreneurship, and overall economic competitiveness. More creative nations also have higher levels of human development, life satisfaction, and happiness. And perhaps most importantly, highly creative nations are less likely on balance to suffer from the deep class divides that beset the U.S. and U.K. The Scandinavian and Northern European countries as well as Japan combine high levels of innovation and creativity with much lower levels of inequality.

[...]

A high-road path to prosperity is not only possible, it's already working in some of the world's most advanced, competitive and prosperous nations. Economic growth increasingly turns on the full development of each and every single human being. Real sustainable economic prosperity can and must benefit the many, not just the few.

Let's look at another popular belief – that there are trade-offs between equality and efficiency; that efforts in improving equality result in lowering economic growth. Research by economists Andre Berg and Jonathan Ostry of the International Monetary Fund (referred to earlier; see footnote [1] below) re-examines the relationship that was thought to exist between equality and efficiency. Their report opens by asking: "Do societies inevitably face an invidious choice between efficient production and equitable wealth and income distribution? Are social justice and social product at war with one another?" which it answers with a categorical: "In a word, no", and then goes on to explain:

In recent work (Berg, Ostry, and Zettelmeyer, 2011; and Berg and Ostry, 2011), we discovered that when growth is looked at over the long term, the trade-off between efficiency and equality may not exist. In fact equality appears to be an important ingredient in promoting and sustaining growth. The difference between countries that can sustain rapid growth for many years or even decades and the many others that see growth spurts fade quickly may be the level of inequality. Countries may find that improving equality may also improve efficiency, understood as more sustainable long-run growth.

According to the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) 2010 report, "growth and equity can be mutually reinforcing, but only when supported by well-thought-out economic and social policies." It notes that "while greater equality is often considered to come at the expense of growth, there is also evidence that under some circumstances, and with appropriate institutional arrangements, lower inequality can contribute to greater economic efficiency." The report then goes on to outline the development experience of Scandinavian countries as an illustrative example.

Arguing as to "Why America Should Spread the Wealth", Mark Thoma (a macroeconomist and time-series econometrician at the University of Oregon) examines the effect of the Bush tax cuts on equality and efficiency, and concludes that:

The claim that there is a tradeoff between equity and efficiency was a key part of the argument for tax cuts for the wealthy, but the tradeoff didn’t materialize. We sacrificed equity for the false promise of efficiency and growth, and society is now more unequal than at any time since the early part of the last century. It’s time to reverse that mistake.

What exactly were those mistakes? How do we reverse them? These are important questions though they end up stirring the pot of political controversy. As Andrés Velasco (former finance minister of Chile and a visiting professor at Columbia University) notes in an article, the "debate about inequality's causes is complex and often messy; the debate about how to address it is messier still."

Probable causes and possible remedies

If we are looking for an analysis of the causes of inequality that is comprehensive while remaining generic and global, the Wikipedia page on inequality that I keep referring to has a section on causes of inequality. Then there's a paper published by the New Economics Foundation (NEF) titled "Why the Rich Are Getting Richer" (which in my opinion is a rather churlish choice of words for a title, though the NEF's credentials are impeccable and their analysis is excellent). While it addresses economic inequality in the U.K., the NEF paper's main findings appear quite generic and applicable to other countries as well.

But, as Andrés Velasco points out, each expert is likely to have their own theories and their own list of causes and remedies. His own proposed solution for example, applicable to Chile and most of South America, focuses on employment opportunities. He explains:

In the rich countries of the global north, the widening gap between rich and poor results from technological change, globalization, and the misdeeds of investment bankers. In the not-so-rich countries of the south, much inequality is the consequence of a more old-fashioned problem: lack of employment opportunities for the poor.

In a forthcoming book, University of Chile economist Cristóbal Huneeus and I examine the roots of inequality in Chile and elsewhere in Latin America and come away with three policy prescriptions: jobs, jobs, jobs.

In a 3 part series of articles for Slate magazine, Robert H. Frank (Professor of Management and Professor of Economics at Cornell University and author of "The Darwin Economy") starts by asking "Does inequality matter?" in Part 1, in which he describes how "expenditure cascades" are squeezing the American middle class, followed by "Why has inequality been growing?" in Part 2, in which he suggests that technology and winner-take-all markets have made the rich much richer, after which he presents in Part 3 "The Progressive Consumption Tax" as a win-win solution for reducing American income inequality.

The WEF report I quoted at the beginning of this post says the following, by way of causes of economic disparities within countries:

Many factors may have contributed to this trend within countries, including the erosion of employment culture, the decline of organized labour, and failures of education systems to keep pace with the increasing demands of the workplace.

Echoing similar thoughts, Angel Gurría's comments while releasing the OECD report clearly call for investment in human capital as the key to unlock the secret to reduction in inequality:

There is nothing inevitable about high and growing inequalities. Our report clearly indicates that upskilling of the workforce is by far the most powerful instrument to counter rising income inequality. The investment in people must begin in early childhood and be followed through into formal education and work.

To quote again from the UNRISD flagship report for 2010, "Income inequality is on the rise, partly as a result of neoliberal economic policies adopted in the 1980s and 1990s." Even a decade ago, when inequality levels were much less (and, of course, the crisis of 2007-8 was still a long way off), a study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research (referred to earlier; see footnote [2] below) notes:

It is clear that there are some common factors causing the widespread surges in inequality around the world. With the exception of worsening educational inequality in Latin America and Sub Saharan Africa, worsening situations in the 'traditional causes' of inequality, such as land concentration, urban bias, abundance of natural resources and inequality in education, are NOT generally responsible. Rather it is 'new causes' that are crucial. These 'new causes' are linked to the excessively liberal economic policy regimes and the rushed manner in which economic reform policies have been carried out.

Speaking about his book "The Price of Civilization" at the University of Oxford, Professor Jeffrey Sachs (Director, The Earth Institute, Columbia University) lists three fundamental shifts in policy initiated by former U.S. President Ronald Reagan that, according to Prof. Sachs, are the main causes of the growth in inequality: (i) tax cuts that mostly favored the wealthy (ii) reduction of government spending on public goods and services that resulted in significant reductions of investment in infrastructure and human capital, and (iii) deregulation of key sectors of the economy, especially of the financial sector.

Nouriel Roubini (Professor of Economics at the Stern School of Business, New York University and co-author of the book "Crisis Economics") writes in "Instability of Inequality"

But the laissez-faire Anglo-Saxon model has also now failed miserably. To stabilize market-oriented economies requires a return to the right balance between markets and provision of public goods. That means moving away from both the Anglo-Saxon model of unregulated markets and the continental European model of deficit-driven welfare states. Even an alternative "Asian" growth model – if there really is one – has not prevented a rise in inequality in China, India, and elsewhere.

Any economic model that does not properly address inequality will eventually face a crisis of legitimacy. Unless the relative economic roles of the market and the state are rebalanced, the protests of 2011 will become more severe, with social and political instability eventually harming long-term economic growth and welfare.

These are but a few examples of the many criticisms of the Reagan (U.S.) and Thatcher (U.K.) administrations (and other countries that followed suit), that hold their laissez-faire neo-liberal policies responsible for the sharp increase in inequality over the last 3 decades, and argue for more effective government intervention through suitable changes in policy and regulatory reforms that promote equitable and inclusive growth. These, however, are the voices of intellectuals who tend to take a top-down, systemic view in a calm and rational manner. There have been more visceral reactions against these gross disparities in the recent past – other voices that have been vociferously denouncing businesses and governments and their unholy nexus of collusion (I am channeling those voices here) that has left the 99% in the economic doldrums.

Inequality and the Occupy protests

According to many observers, one of the Occupy movement's main accomplishments is to have legitimized discussion of rising income inequality in the United States. Indeed, the very purpose of the "Occupation" was to bring a sense of urgency to issues surrounding gross inequality – framing it as a protest against the top 1% income earners by the bottom 99% drove that point home very clearly.

I am not going to spend too much time and effort in writing about the Occupy protests, since a lot has already been written and said about this by people far more intelligent and better informed than I. Instead, I will quote from what others have said. Let me start by quoting U.S. President Barack Obama, the leader of the free world.

By coincidence, a day after the OECD report (another thing I've been referring to extensively) was released, President Obama, delivered a speech about the U.S. economy in Osawatomie, Kansas. The speech unequivocally asserts that growing inequality is the result of systemic failures that arose from weaknesses in both – the design of our economic models and also their implementation. Reproduced here below is an excerpt:

Today, we are still home to the world’s most productive workers and innovative companies. But for most Americans, the basic bargain that made this country great has eroded. Long before the recession hit, hard work stopped paying off for too many people. Fewer and fewer of the folks who contributed to the success of our economy actually benefitted from that success. Those at the very top grew wealthier from their incomes and investments than ever before. But everyone else struggled with costs that were growing and paychecks that weren't – and too many families found themselves racking up more and more debt just to keep up.

For many years, credit cards and home equity loans papered over the harsh realities of this new economy. But in 2008, the house of cards collapsed. We all know the story by now: Mortgages sold to people who couldn't afford them, or sometimes even understand them. Banks and investors allowed to keep packaging the risk and selling it off. Huge bets – and huge bonuses – made with other people’s money on the line. Regulators who were supposed to warn us about the dangers of all this, but looked the other way or didn’t have the authority to look at all.

It was wrong. It combined the breathtaking greed of a few with irresponsibility across the system. And it plunged our economy and the world into a crisis from which we are still fighting to recover. It claimed the jobs, homes, and the basic security of millions – innocent, hard-working Americans who had met their responsibilities, but were still left holding the bag.

Note the categorical "It was wrong". This was the same speech in which he referred to economic inequality as "the defining issue of our times", as I'd mentioned in my earlier post.

Matt Taibbi (author and journalist) in a blog post in Rolling Stone magazine:

The amazing thing about the wave of corruption that has overtaken the financial services industry is that most of it couldn’t happen without virtually every player at every level signing off on these deals. From the ratings agencies to the law firms to the accounting firms to the regulators to the bank executives themselves, everybody had to be on board in order for a lot of these fraud schemes to work.

Paul Krugman (Nobel Laureate, Professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University, Centenary Professor at the London School of Economics) in "Confronting the Malefactors" in the New York Times:

In the first act, bankers took advantage of deregulation to run wild (and pay themselves princely sums), inflating huge bubbles through reckless lending. In the second act, the bubbles burst — but bankers were bailed out by taxpayers, with remarkably few strings attached, even as ordinary workers continued to suffer the consequences of the bankers’ sins. And, in the third act, bankers showed their gratitude by turning on the people who had saved them, throwing their support — and the wealth they still possessed thanks to the bailouts — behind politicians who promised to keep their taxes low and dismantle the mild regulations erected in the aftermath of the crisis.

and in "Oligarchy, American Style" (concluding paragraphs):

But why does this growing concentration of income and wealth in a few hands matter? Part of the answer is that rising inequality has meant a nation in which most families don’t share fully in economic growth. Another part of the answer is that once you realize just how much richer the rich have become, the argument that higher taxes on high incomes should be part of any long-run budget deal becomes a lot more compelling.

The larger answer, however, is that extreme concentration of income is incompatible with real democracy. Can anyone seriously deny that our political system is being warped by the influence of big money, and that the warping is getting worse as the wealth of a few grows ever larger?

Some pundits are still trying to dismiss concerns about rising inequality as somehow foolish. But the truth is that the whole nature of our society is at stake.

Supplementary reading:

"Bankers' Salaries vs. Everyone Else's" in which Catherine Rampell (an economics reporter with the New York Times) tries to find out why the Occupy Wall Streeters are so angry at bankers.

"How to stop the bogus bonus" by soi-disant "undercover economist" Tim Harford (author, columnist, blogger, economist, presenter on BBC), writing for the Financial Times, comments on how fund managers game the system to claim their bonuses and creating bigger risks in the process.

"What caused the Financial Crisis? The Big Lie goes viral" in which Barry Ritholtz (author, columnist, blogger, equity analyst, guest commentator on Bloomberg TV) tries to separate fact from fiction in the analysis of the causes of the financial crisis, and concludes "The previous Big Lie — the discredited belief that free markets require no adult supervision — is the reason people have created a new false narrative. Now it’s time for the Big Truth."

"A Theoretical Look At Why Societies Become Extremely Unequal" by Rick Bookstaber (senior policy adviser at the SEC; views expressed are his own), which I found interesting because he discusses John Rawls' Theory of Justice at some length, in the context of the Occupy protests, and concludes with the following paragraph:

This discussion was not one of capitalism versus socialism. We can take unfettered, eat-what-you-kill capitalism as a starting point. The knob that is being turned is the level of social stability. From their perch in my version of the veil of ignorance those who are wealthy in the initial state will choose to construct a society that induces less inequality with the knob turned to the "do not disturb" setting.

"The Moral Foundations of Occupy Wall Street" in which Jonathan Haidt (Professor in the Social Psychology area of the Department of Psychology at the University of Virginia) whose research currently focuses on the moral foundations of politics, visits Zuccotti Park and finds that the moral foundations of the Occupy protests are primarily centered around fairness, followed by care and liberty.

This is an excellent segue into my third and final part of this long post, which will deal with ethics and sustainability issues relating to inequality. More about that next week. Actually, make that next year.

Oh, and while we're at it, have a great new year ... and dare I add? ... hopefully a more equal one!

[Continued in Part III: Ethics, Morality and Sustainability]

____________________________________________________

Footnotes:

This is a reference to research by Andrew Berg and Jonathan Ostry, economists at the International Monetary Fund
.
The Wikipedia page on economic inequality has a section on "Inequality and economic growth" that contains an interesting paragraph about a 2001 study which concluded that inequality below a Gini coefficient of .25 or above a Gini coefficient of .40 negatively impacts growth.

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The Great Inequality Debate - I: A World Of A Difference

2011-12-17T12:40:00.000+05:30

Over the last couple of years there's been quite a bit of talk about economic inequality, in the wake of the global economic crisis. More recently, thanks to the Occupy (Wall Street, etc.) protests, inequality-related issues have been receiving substantial mindshare from not just economists, policy wonks and academicians but also concerned laity. The mainstream media have been playing a useful role in providing a platform for and promoting public discourse on the subject. The Economist invited guests, earlier this year, to comment on inequality and how it matters. The New York Times runs a special section ("Times Topic") on income inequality. The Boston Review has just recently published a series of opinion essays on inequality by Stanford University professors, exploring key issues raised by the Occupy protests.

Like other controversies of our time, inequality has precipitated sharp differences of opinion, among pundits and plebs alike. But impassioned debate on this subject is not a new phenomenon. Inequality was the subject of fiery discourse even at the time of Greek philosophers, over two millenniums ago. While no clear consensus generally emerges from such debates, it is usually agreed that too much inequality could potentially result in disaffection among the marginalized (whether justified or not is a different question), leading to civil unrest. Dramatic widening of the gap between the haves and the have-nots has been historically known to trigger social uprisings and even revolutions, when the wealthy and powerful few have manifested a "let them eat cake" attitude towards the misery of the many.

Social harmony is a key element of sustainability – my pet "theme-meme" as I track global trends – and so the subject of economic inequality has stayed on my radar, inviting me to study it in a little more detail, at least enough to develop a more informed view of its impact on the sustainability of our current design of human society, and in a broader sense, the longevity of our species. Unfortunately or otherwise I don't have a Ph.D. in economics or other social sciences (or any other subject for that matter), which means I've had to do my own research "from scratch" in order to gain adequate knowledge and insights. As one may expect in such learning expeditions, the initial challenges are mostly about definitions, scope and taxonomy, as one endeavors to mark the contours of the domain under study and map all topics thematically linked to the core subject, and to then develop a method for categorizing, linking and indexing the various terminologies, concepts and constructs within the domain.

I'd like to present this blog entry as the record of a journey rather than an academic thesis, narrated in the spirit of a curious explorer rather than a rigorous researcher or a pedagogical professor. Though my foray into this specialized domain over the last year or so has been a bit of a "random walk" (and a sporadic one, I might add) through a maze of facts and figures, theories and opinions, ideas and ideologies, formal dissertations and informal blog posts, I've aspired for some degree of structure and order in reporting my observations and findings on that journey. I hope the panoply of points to ponder (and pointers to ponderables) presented here makes it worthwhile for you, dear reader, to go through what has turned out to be an inordinately lengthy post. To make it less taxing to read, I've broken it into three parts. In this first part I try and get my head around what exactly we are talking about when it comes to economic inequality, how much of it is prevalent today, and what recent trends seem to indicate. In the second part I ask what, if anything, is wrong with inequality (with specific reference to the Occupy protests, since they have vociferously complained about wrongdoing that has led to inequality), and follow it up with a commentary on the ethical and moral issues involved in the third and concluding part.

So, what exactly are we talking about here?

A good place to start exploring the taxonomy of this domain might be the Wikipedia page on economic inequality, which presents a comprehensive overview covering a variety of related issues, and in doing so, acts as a spoiler to some of what is to follow in this post (though that doesn't stop me from recommending it). Of the many items worthy of note on that Wikipedia page, the distinction between equality of outcome (which, loosely put, means that everybody ends up more or less equally rich or poor) and equality of opportunity (which, loosely put, means that everybody gets the same chances to shape their destiny) stands out as the most significant, asking to be addressed right away. It is particularly significant in that it allows me to clarify my own perspective and vantage position (for which, please see footnote [1]).

Another point of distinction worth mentioning, though not quite as significant as the one we just dealt with, is the one between inequality of income and inequality in distribution of wealth (though both are related). The former refers to differences in what people earn as personal income, say per annum (regardless of the value of assets owned by them), while the latter refers to gaps in the value of assets owned by people (regardless of their annual income). Other topics related to economic inequality include economic mobility and intergenerational equity, though the emphasis on these parameters in this post is limited to contextual relevance. This post focuses on income inequality for the most part.

There are several ways to measure income inequality, and the Wikipedia page on income inequality metrics lists most of them. Of these, the Gini coefficient is perhaps the most noteworthy, since it is referenced extensively. Wikipedia also provides a list of countries by income inequality and a list of countries by distribution of wealth, both of which are interesting to review, in order to get a better idea of where we are by way of economic inequality. It turns out that in a few countries (particularly Scandinavian ones) inequality has remained relatively low over the years. However, in many other countries, such as the U.S., the U.K., India, etc., inequality has been increasing over the last couple of decades.

Inequality in the world's greatest democracy

In the United States, a recently published study by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found that between 1979 and 2007 (i.e., a period of close to 3 decades) the average after-tax household income in the U.S. grew by 62% (computed after adjusting for inflation). However, that growth was not uniform: the top 1% households' income grew by 275%, the next 19% households' income grew by 65%, the next three-fifths grew by just under 40%, and the bottom one-fifth by 18% (see chart to the left, below). Further, the study found that the proportion of overall income going to households in the higher income bracket had increased: the top one-fifth of the population saw a 10 percentage-point jump in their share (most of which went to the top 1%), whereas the slice of the pie going to middle and lower income households decreased by 2 to 3 percentage-points (see chart to the right, below).

Income growth in the U.S. between 1979 and 2007 | Source: CBO Director's Blog

As Joseph Stiglitz (Nobel laureate, Professor at Columbia University and former Chief Economist of the World Bank) noted in July this year in his article The Ideological Crisis of Western Capitalism: "Even in its hey-day, from the early 1980’s until 2007, American-style deregulated capitalism brought greater material well-being only to the very richest in the richest country of the world. Indeed, over the course of this ideology’s 30-year ascendance, most Americans saw their incomes decline or stagnate year after year."

Interestingly, the inequality is even sharper within the top 1%. According to research carried out by some economists, three decades ago a taxpayer at the cutoff for the top 0.01% was making about 10 times as much as someone at the cutoff for the top 1%, but now, someone at the cutoff for the top 0.01% makes 30 times as much as someone at the top 1%. Clearly, keeping up with the Joneses has become far tougher for the rich in America. As far as wealth concentration is concerned, an article in Forbes magazine notes that the "top 0.1% – about 315,000 individuals out of 315 million – are making about half of all capital gains on the sale of shares or property after 1 year; and these capital gains make up 60% of the income made by the Forbes 400." This is consistent with documentary film-maker Michael Moore's claim earlier this year, that "Just 400 Americans – 400 – have more wealth than half of all Americans combined", which has been subsequently verified by PolitiFact.

For more on income inequality in the U.S., there's the Wikipedia page on the subject and for even more commentary, analyses, charts and infographics, here are a few recommendations: (Not) Spreading the Wealth in the Washington Post; The United States of Inequality in Slate magazine; It's the Inequality, Stupid in Mother Jones magazine; Charting the Great Inequality Debate in the New Yorker; Global income inequality: Where the U.S. ranks in CNN Money.

Additional reports, on the related topic of economic mobility in the U.S., are available at the Economic Mobility Project (EMP), an initiative of the Pew Charitable Trusts. (A recent EMP report found that "Americans are more likely than citizens of several other nations to be stuck in the same position economically as their parents.") A New York Times infographic on mobility explains how mobility has worked out in the U.S. over the last few decades. Other useful resources include websites such as Inequality.org managed by the Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington-based think tank. Also read: transcript of U.S. President Barack Obama's speech in which, referring to the Occupy protests regarding inequality, he called it "the defining issue of our times" – a landmark declaration, according to the New York Times.

Inequality in the world's largest democracy

The deeply interested reader might find it useful to forage for data, research papers, resource links, etc. at the personal websites of economists Emmanuel Saez, Thomas Piketty, Tony Atkinson and Facundo Alvaredo, who have carried out considerable research on income inequality levels in many countries. Their seminal collaborative contribution, in my opinion, is The World Top Incomes Database, an excellent source of income-related statistics, which lets you create your own custom-defined chart for any choice of listed parameters for any of the listed countries over any available period, and export it as a PNG file.

Unfortunately this database does not cover the last decade (i.e. 2000-2010) for India. Be that as it may, the two charts I've created (pasted here below) that plot the growth of incomes over 50 years since Indian independence, tell their own story. (Note that the blue curve in the chart to the left corresponds to the red, not blue, curve in the chart to the right.)

Incomes in India - 50 years since independence | Source: The World Top Incomes Database

As an article in livemint.com (which, I am guessing, has drawn on the same data sources as above) explains, the rich did get richer in India too. By itself, this not only not objectionable, as many would rush to point out, but even desirable – as long as the promised "trickle down effect" also kicks in. But has it kicked in? According to a report released earlier this week by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), "India's income inequality has doubled in 20 years" to quote a Times of India news item that covers the report. This seems consistent with the pattern observed in the two charts above. Apparently, keeping up with the Joneses doesn't seem to have gotten any easier for Indians either.

The picture doesn't look any better for India if one were to use a slightly different metric, such as the Human Development Index (HDI) as defined by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) (which publishes the Human Development Report every year, ranking countries by their HDI – please see footnote [2] for additional information and links to UNDP's database on HDI). Since last year, they have introduced an Inequality-adjusted HDI (IHDI), which represents the actual level of human development, taking inequality into account (in contrast to the "vanilla" HDI, which may then be viewed as an index of the potential human development that could be achieved if there is no inequality). A recent UNDP report on the IHDI for Indian states found that "inequality in the distribution of human development is distinctly pronounced in India in comparison with the world scenario". The study estimates that while globally, India is ranked 119 out of 169 countries on the HDI, it would lose "32% of its value when adjusted for inequalities" (i.e. on the IHDI). Commenting on "India's Opportunity Gap" with reference to the report, an article in the online WSJ blogs has this to say:

To some observers, higher inequality at least for a while is the price we have to pay for higher growth. They would cite the famous "Kuznets curve," a staple of development studies which claims to show that inequality first rises and then falls with economic development.

What this misses is that unequal outcomes in areas such as income may be the result of underlying inequalities of opportunity, such as access to education and health. Unequal access could also be the result of belonging to an underprivileged group, such as a religious or ethnic minority, or in the Indian case specifically someone belonging to a Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe and Other Backward Class.

Other studies cited in the WSJ article, examining related factors such as inequality of access to education, wage inequality correlated with inequality of opportunity and the impact of caste considerations, provide the basis to support the hypothesis in the second paragraph quoted above. Some of these findings seem like grotesque reality checks, when seen in the context of India's aspirations to global superpower status. To many observers, such striking contrasts that seem peculiar to India appear to be irreconcilable contradictions. However, such disparities have their reasons, as eminent economists Jean Dreze (visiting Professor, Department of Economics, Allahabad University) and Amartya Sen (Nobel laureate and Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Harvard University) explain.

In a magisterial essay in Outlook magazine titled "Putting Growth In Its Place", Dreze and Sen resolve the apparent contradictions of India's dynamic post-liberalization growth story (dubbed "India Shining" by some), juxtaposed with the poverty starkly visible on the streets and in the shanties of Indian metros, smaller cities and towns. They compare these disparities with China and other countries in South Asia, where the gaps are relatively less than in India (as the tabulated indicators in the article show). In conclusion, they write:

India’s recent development experience includes both spectacular success as well as massive failure. [...] There is probably no other example in the history of world development of an economy growing so fast for so long with such limited results in terms of broad-based social progress.

There is no mystery in this contrast, or in the limited reach of India’s development efforts. Both reflect the nature of policy priorities in this period. [...] An exaggerated concentration on the lives of the minority of the better-off, fed strongly by media interest, gives an unreal picture of the rosiness of what is happening to Indians in general, and stifles public dialogue of other issues. Imaginative democratic practice, we have argued, is essential for broadening and enhancing India’s development achievements.

Pranab Bardhan (Professor of Economics, University of California at Berkeley and author of "Awakening Giants, Feet of Clay: Assessing the Rise of China and India") compares inequality in the U.S. and India and comes to a similar conclusion:

The world’s two largest democracies face a grave economic challenge. They must find a way to channel the rising anger caused by economic inequality into productive investments that make the rich feel that they have a stake in ameliorating conditions for the poor. If India and the U.S. move towards overcoming the most pervasive inequality of all, they will reinvigorate their democracies – and their economies.

Key words: policy priorities, imaginative democratic practice, productive investments, reinvigoration of democracy.

Inequality in the world's oldest democracy and elsewhere

The situation in most other countries of the world is not much better. Rather than dwell in detail on the inequality levels in other countries, I will simply list a few links here that tell the story of inequality in the U.K. and elsewhere in the world:

The "Income inequalities" page at the The Poverty Site provides a lot of data points and graphics, as do the Guardian/ Datablog pages: "Inequality in the UK: the data behind the National Equality Panel report" (almost two years old) and the more recent "OECD inequality report: how do different countries compare?" both of which provide a fairly comprehensive idea of the level of inequality in the U.K. (and both use images of John Cleese, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett to symbolize the three classes). As is visible from the graph in the latter report that plots Gini scores in 1985 and 2008 for various countries, the few countries where the Gini coefficient has improved in those 23 years, such as Greece, Spain and Ireland, are the ones that are presently in the economic doldrums. France seems to be the only exception. All other economically stable countries in that graph show a deterioration of the Gini coefficient, which essentially points to an increase in inequality.

The OECD report (referenced twice, above) "finds that the average income of the richest 10% is now about nine times that of the poorest 10 % across the OECD." Further, it notes that:

The income gap has risen even in traditionally egalitarian countries, such as Germany, Denmark and Sweden, from 5 to 1 in the 1980s to 6 to 1 today. The gap is 10 to 1 in Italy, Japan, Korea and the United Kingdom, and higher still, at 14 to 1 in Israel, Turkey and the United States.

In Chile and Mexico, the incomes of the richest are still more than 25 times those of the poorest, the highest in the OECD, but have finally started dropping.

Income inequality is much higher in some major emerging economies outside the OECD area. At 50 to 1, Brazil's income gap remains much higher than in many other countries, although it has been falling significantly over the past decade.

Supplementary reading:

"Jobs for Justice", an article by Andrés Velasco (former finance minister of Chile and a visiting professor at Columbia University), which says "Income inequality is a top concern not only in tent cities across the United States, but also among street protesters in Taipei, Tel Aviv, Cairo, Athens, Madrid, Santiago, and elsewhere."

"Global inequality: tackling the elite 1% problem" at the Guardian's "Poverty Matters Blog", which quotes Branko Milanović (lead economist in the World Bank's research department and author of "The Haves and the Have-Nots"), presenting at Warwick University's International Development Summit: "75% of the world's population find themselves in the bottom income quintile, i.e. share 20% of the world's income, while 1.7% of the world's population (119 million people) are in the top quintile." Further, the article notes that the world as a whole has become even more unequal, more so than any one country. "While few countries have a Gini measure of income inequality above 60, the world's Gini coefficient is 70, up from 55 in 1850."

[Continued in Part II: What's Wrong With Inequality?]

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Footnotes:

In the interest of full disclosure of predilections, propensities and such, this would be a good time to state my personal biases: I am not in favor of equal outcomes; what I am in favor of is equal opportunity. Given that different people have a different mix of ambition, attitude, acumen and ability, it naturally follows that they will respond to the same opportunities differently and also perform differently at them, and as a consequence their incomes will be different. In my view, this is OK as long as the difference in their incomes is purely a function of these factors and does not arise from differences in access to opportunity.

I must also mention here that a sad fact about discourse on economic inequality is that it is haunted by the ghost of McCarthyism, to the extent that any stated position risks being labeled as commie propaganda (at worst) or the rabid rant of an intellectual pariah (at best), unless prefaced with due apologia and explicit reassurances of a robust pro-capitalism stand. Even now, as a recent article in the New York Times notes, "participants in the national political discourse [are] queasy about addressing issues of class and distribution directly. One of the intellectual victories of the Reagan Revolution was to make it feel practically un-American to talk about how the pie was divided. The culturally acceptable, win-win question to ask was how to make that pie grow."

Let me hasten, then, to reiterate that my ulterior motive here is merely to provide context for discussing proposals aimed at strengthening and improving capitalism, in order to make it more sustainable (though this post does not actually discuss such proposals – that's for another blog post, another day).
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The UNDP Human Development Report for 2011 is worth browsing through, though it deals with a broader scope of issues than income inequality. Also, earlier this year, the UNDP partnered with Google Labs to place their Human Development Report database in the public domain through Google Public Data Explorer, with an interactive charting facility that lets you correlate various parameters for all UN member countries – highly recommended to anyone wanting to play with the statistics a bit and test out various hypotheses.

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Terror: What Are We Fighting?

2011-07-25T20:13:00.025+05:30

The terror attacks in Mumbai and Oslo within the span of just this one month left me deeply disturbed at a personal level. While Mumbai is home to me and my family, Oslo is home to some very dear friends who hosted us on our visit to their peaceful and scenic country last year.

The highlight of our 2010 summer holiday was the "Norway in a nutshell" tour package, which took us by train through the hills, then by boat through the fjords, then by bus on steep winding roads down the ravines and then by train again. From Oslo to Bergen, where we stayed back for a few days to witness the Constitution Day celebrations, and back to Oslo, it was perhaps the most picturesque journey I have ever undertaken. The more or less ubiquitous music of Edvard Grieg complemented the visual experience beautifully to complete the experience. We stopped over on our way back for a couple of days at a quiet little hamlet called Ulvik that might well have popped right out of a Nordic fairy tale, to nestle itself in the neck of Hardangerfjord.

View of Hardangerfjord from our hotel room in Ulvik

I was shocked to learn just the other day that the very same irenic idyll of Norway we took delight in a little over a year ago was shattered by the boom and staccato of terror. It was even more shocking because barely a week earlier the thronging chaos Mumbai thrives on was benumbed by yet another round of brutal bludgeoning by a series of bomb blasts; the buoyant, vibrant spirit of cosmopolitan Mumbai dampened by the persistent overhanging clouds of terror.

On deeper reflection today, a simple truth shines through the miasma of IED explosions even as the dust settles and the bereaved are condoled. And though its voice is soft, its import is clear: we have not framed the problem correctly. Our perspective on terrorism is fundamentally flawed, informed as much by the perfervid rhetoric of ideologues and demagogues, of politicians and religious leaders alike, as by the subtle predilections of prejudiced op-ed columnists, jaundiced celebrity intellectuals and biased news anchors, all cleverly packaged around media coverage of terror attacks and delivered directly to our homes. These opinion-shapers, whose combination of confirmation bias and cognitive fluency recognizes only the vile hand of another religion, would have us believe that such senseless carnage is an extension of some medieval "clash of civilizations" playing itself out again after a thousand years. No. This violence is actually just the visceral reaction of a fanatical kind of jingoism directed against the universal celebration of diversity in an increasingly globalized world.

Norway's stand on terror opens our eyes to this simple truth -- one that we have overlooked for too long now -- that the real clash is not between Islamic and Judao-Christian/ neo-Nazi/ Hindu bigotry, but between tolerance and intolerance; between pluralism and parochialism; between the warm, welcoming, hospitable inclusiveness of the open-minded and the frigid, insular, hostile exceptionalism of rigid xenophobes. While we mechanically mouth clichés such as "terror knows no religion" on the one hand, on the other we are quick to classify terrorists as Islamic or Christian or Hindu fundamentalists. What we should be crusading against is not the intolerance of a specific religion but intolerance per se. When we see it this way, it changes the game. Intolerance is palpable in many small, mundane, routine acts of ordinary people, even atheists. It lies at the very core of discrimination of all kinds, based not only on religion but also politics, ethnicity, race, culture, gender, nationality, language and so on. Perhaps even favorite football teams or preferred Operating Systems. But what do we do about intolerance, once we spot it?

To the naive mind it may appear that we are stuck in an intractable trap of a vicious logic. Living out the paradox of fighting intolerance with intolerance would mean playing into the hands of the intolerant. And typically, this is how minor conflicts escalate and become wars. On the other hand, fighting intolerance with passive tolerance would mean exposing our soft vulnerable underbelly in a tacit invitation to more barbarism. (Example of the latter: in the aftermath of a series of attacks in recent years, helpless Mumbaikars seem to have resigned themselves to a "do nothing; get back to business as usual" approach, more by default than by design.) So the dilemma seems to be: "an eye for an eye" versus "turn the other cheek". We must be quick to realize that this is a false choice.

There is another way, and that is the way of aggressive constructive engagement. It involves more dialog with the intolerant and more debate among the tolerant (including religious moderates) on how to conduct that dialog and trigger reforms. More dialog, actively and proactively pursued. And pursued relentlessly. This is what we should do: appeal to the rational side of intolerance (yes, there is one, weak and small though it might be), get the xenophobes, the alienated, the disaffected, the disenfranchised, the marginalized to the negotiating table, understand and sort out their issues without shying away from them. In many cases there are simple socio-economic realities underlying their feelings of deprivation as some observers argue. In many cases there are simple political motivations (of internal seditionists or external adversarial rogue states) that instigate violence by stoking simmering discontent or sense of alienation. Where religion is concerned, we must work with religious leaders to initiate reforms aimed at removing elements of intolerance and replacing them with elements of inclusiveness; at muting elements that sanction violence against non-believers and amplifying elements that promote love for all humanity.

We must learn the art and science of conflict resolution through peaceful dialog and negotiation. In every situation of conflict, there is a way to look for trade-offs and find positive-sum outcomes. The trouble is that the very voices that have colored our perspectives on terror with the tint of religion are also the voices that hanker after a zero-sum outcome. These voices talk of victory and defeat. As long as there is talk of victory and defeat, nobody wins. Today's victor is tomorrow's vanquished. Then the cycle turns. And "in the long run we are all dead" as Keynes warned us.

Sadly, India and the US (two of the highly affected nations) play to the macho "no negotiation with terrorists" attitude, which eliminates the possibility of any kind of dialog. Guess where that leaves the intolerant fanatic.

Apostatic Alumnus? Or Pragmatic Patriot?

2011-05-26T18:30:00.022+05:30

India's Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh, whose observations and comments invariably attract controversy every now and then, opined to the press the other day that the faculty at the IITs and the IIMs and the quality of the research produced by them were not world class. (Not that the faculty were bad, mind you, just that they were not world class.) A news report from CNN IBN quotes him as saying:

"There is hardly any worthwhile research from our IITs. The faculty in the IIT[s] is not world class. It is the students in IITs who are world class. So the IITs and IIMs are excellent because of the quality of students, not because of quality of research or faculty."

His comment was seen as heresy, given that he is an alumnus of IIT B and that his father was on the faculty there, and provoked an emotional outburst from several quarters (including the lead opposition party, who pounce on every opportunity to bash an incumbent Minister) but hardly evoked any cogent counter-arguments. All criticisms so far either question his moral right to say what he did or accuse him of ignorance and prejudice, and stoutly assert the generally accepted view (in India) that these venerable institutions are indeed among the finest in the world. Nobody has yet stepped forward with specific evidence that the faculty at these institutions and the research produced by them are indeed world class, in direct contradiction to Jairam Ramesh's statement.

Jairam Ramesh's view on this matter is not very different from my own, and when I had aired this view in an earlier post, it drew as much ire (proportionately scaled down to the modest size of my audience), as is evident from some of the comments on that post. My tweet yesterday, questioning the basis for outrage against Jairam Ramesh's comment, was met with equal outrage by someone who offered as proof the fact that Bill Gates and Scott McNealy thought highly of IITians and the fact that in the US, IIM alumni competed (presumably with local managers) to head American corporations. While I have no doubt that these are indeed statements of fact, they not inconsistent with, and therefore do not challenge, the essence of Jairam Ramesh's observation -- that the students are great but not the faculty. Where is the proof that the faculty, and the research they produce, are world class, regardless of the quality of the students or other characteristics of these institutions? Is there any data out there in the public domain that can serve as a basis to substantiate either view?

I decided to investigate the subject of university rankings, focusing on what, according to global academia, might constitute a world-class institution of higher learning, and accordingly, what a list of the world's best institutions might look like. I readily found the 2010 QS World University Rankings of the top 500 institutions within a few minutes of searching. I also came across an old news report that summarized the findings of this same 2010 study from an India perspective. Depending on your inclination and your available time, feel free to download the entire report and analyze it, or to just scan through the rediff news summary. If, however, you are keen on drilling down to the bottom of this issue and so need far more details than what the downloaded pdf ofers, then visit the home page of QS World University Rankings. The home page also explains in detail the methodology underlying the rankings including the parameters for scoring and their respective weights, the process of conducting academic peer reviews and employer assessments and the logic behind the scores.

In the overall "2010 World University Rankings", no Indian institution figures in the top 20 or the top 50 or the top 100 or even the top 150 -- not one single Indian institution of any kind (i.e., not even non-IITs/ IIMs). IIT B, ranked at 187, just about makes it to the top 200. It is interesting to note that among other parameters, 'citations per faculty' (a research/ faculty -linked indicator, under which IIT B ranks 291) and 'employer reputation' (a student-linked indicator, under which IIT B ranks 50) both contribute to the overall rankings, and that our Indian Institutes, generally speaking, rank highly on the latter and rather poorly on the former. This is consistent with Jairam Ramesh's claim. Since I didn't see the IIMs anywhere, I probed further and found a separate niche ranking for "Social Sciences & Management" where JNU and University of Delhi appear in the 125+ range and IIT D, University of Calcutta and IIM A in the 280-300 range (with IIM A just about making it into the list, tying for the 299th position). I also found a separate niche ranking for "Engineering & Technology" in which IIT B manages to make the top 50, coming in at rank 47. Another 4 IITs follow in the 51-100 range, giving India a total of 5 IITs within the top 100 Engineering & Technology universities of the world. These domain-specific rankings certainly paint a better picture of the IITs than the overall rankings, though they don't do much for the IIMs. The 2011 Asian University Rankings are not so kind to the Indian Institutes either -- nothing within the top 10 or even top 20. However, the five "legacy" IITs (i.e., not the more recently established ones) are all within the top 50 and this may be the source of some consolation to the less ambitious. (Shouldn't world-class institutions be within the top 10 or at least top 20 of their own geographical region, if not the world?)

A claim to world class, I would imagine, could best be substantiated if a critical mass of the IITs and IIMs (e.g., the "legacy" institutes: 5 old IITs and 3 old IIMs) were each within the top 100 of the overall world rankings, and each within the top 50 of their world niche/ domain category ("Engineering & Technology" and "Social Sciences & Management" respectively) and further, also well within the top 20 of the overall Asian rankings. These are just numbers I plucked from the air, and you may have your own way of setting the bar for the Indian Institutes of Technology/ Management to be called world class. Either way, the QS rankings for 2010/2011 do not establish either the IITs or the IIMs as world-class institutes. And QS seems to be the only acknowledged brand for ranking universities across the world.

Aggrieved faculty members of the IITs and IIMs and angry alumni (whose wrath, I think, is directed more at the perceived insult to their teachers than to the perceived falsification of facts, if any) would do well to calm down and analyze the hard data freely available to all, instead of being in denial and adopting the proverbial ostrich-like approach. I have this short and simple message for them:

Questioning the validity of the QS rankings or their relevance to the Indian higher education system is not a constructive approach, it is in fact futile and self-serving. It would be useful to understand how the academic world today defines "world class" and to then introspect as to what your institution needs to do to get there, assuming you consider this a priority. If you love your alma mater and your country, then recognize the problems faced by them and look for solutions, rather than question the problems themselves. The first step is to accept reality. But in order to do this, you need to pull your collective head out of your collective ... er ... um ... I mean .. out of the sand, instead of burying it deeper still. (Yes, I'd alluded to ostriches, so sand would be more appropriate.)

Post Script - May 27, 2011

Woke up this morning to find news reports that the Union HRD Minister (responsible for education) Kapil Sibal (whose initial reaction was to say something to the effect that Jairam Ramesh, being an IIT alumnus probably has better insights) had "demolished" Jairam Ramesh's argument, based on "evidence, not perception".

The evidence he offers is in the form of the claim that "IITs rank among the top 50 in the global index, with IIT-Bombay placed at No 21, IIT-Delhi at 24, IIT-Kanpur at 37 and IIT-Madras at 39." I searched extensively for this global index but couldn't find it, and if you do, I'd be much obliged if you could provide a link below in the comments section. For the sake of completion, I thought I would also add other ranking frameworks I found instead:
1. Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU): The wikipedia page presents a table of the top 100 universities in the world ranked over the last 8 years by the ARWU methodology, and states that "If a university is not listed in this table, it did not rank in the top 100 in any of the eight years tabulated." India doesn't figure anywhere in this list.
2. Times Higher Education (THE) World Universities Rankings: THE presents the top 200 ranked by their methodology, in which no Indian Institute (of anything) appears, and also the top universities ranked by reputation (based exclusively on their reputation for teaching and research) where the Indian Institute of Science appears in the 90-100 range, but no mention of any of the IITs or IIMs.
3. Other ranking systems such as webometrics and 4icu that rank world universities based on their web presence and search engine results. Clearly, not relevant criteria apropos of this discussion.

On the subject of research, Kapil Sibal defends the paucity of research, arguing that "the focus of IITs at least for the first 50-odd years was to provide technically trained manpower for the country's needs and that research had not been top priority." Wonder how he feels about that fact that the bulk of that technically trained manpower migrates to the US immediately after graduation.

Kapil Sibal goes on to argue that that 25% of the IIT faculty are IIT alumni, and since by definition IIT students are world class, the faculty is world class too. You don't really need me to point out the fallacy in this logic, but just in case you do, I have three points for Kabil Sibal to consider: (1) Great students do not necessarily make great teachers (2) Even if they do, what about the remaining 75%? (3) How many of those 25% took to teaching as their first choice of career?

Our Minister responsible for education, astute politician that he is, was clearly engaged in damage control, as a reaction to the flak the Government must have received from all the enraged "ostriches". This is indeed a sad day for the Indian education system!

Amis on Hitchens: Something's amiss and that's the hitch

2011-04-26T13:06:00.016+05:30

Regardless of his sexuality and sexual orientation/ preferences (I neither know nor care what they are) Martin Amis's love for his friend Christopher Hitchens, as evident in his recent article about Hitchens in the Guardian, seems to consist more of eros than philia or storge. Why else would a grown man indulge in the literary equivalent of performing fellatio -- that other (and more literal) form of oral gratification -- on another grown man in full view of the whole world? And if this trope offends you, I am sorry. I can't think of any other metaphor that might more aptly describe such wanton idolatry as the kind found in this article, of which the following sentence is a sterling example.

Everyone is unique – but Christopher is preternatural.

Preternatural? I mean, I do think Hitchens's wit is rare and at times outstanding, but preternatural?

Preternatural is the rationalist's supernatural. Amis might as well have gone all out and said "Christopher is supernatural" except that Hitchens might have frowned upon such absurdly banal characterization of his god-like non-godliness. (Being, as he is: a staunch 'antitheist', of serious scientific temper, a purveyor of rhetorical sound-bites to less articulate but equally impassioned atheists, of which "What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence" is an excellent example, as Amis proclaims.) The epithet preternatural, I am sure, gives Hitchens that warm fuzzy feeling deep down inside that we all long for -- an assurance that, after all this trouble we've taken to explain ourselves to the world, someone out there actually gets it. Someone out there actually understands us and appreciates our true worth. This is how we all long to immortalize ourselves; being called preternatural is the crowning glory of our lives.

What kind of obsequious sycophancy is this? And shouldn't the individual at the receiving end (who, we are told, shuns the human "desire to worship and obey") shudder with disgust at such cloying adulation and that too from a peer, a friend? Contrast that with us plebeians, who, when asked about a gifted friend with exceptional talent in some field, usually use 2 words to describe him: great guy. But perhaps professional writers -- especially professors of creative writing like Amis -- need to slavishly lavish in excess of 4000 words (and while they're at it, frequently quote from Nabokov) on their object of worship. When such writers draw on their love for a friend and whip out all the tools of their craft, it seems as though no other skill is more important than the one in which the exalted one excels, and no other person a better exponent of that art than the one being deified. In this case the skill deals with being the excoriating über-critic -- one whose métier is defined as the continuous perfection of the art of the extempore epigram, and mastery over its application to disparaging, deriding and insulting people. And in this case the deified one may be seen as a modern day Wilde-meets-Socrates, only meaner, ruder, but less profound, and with hubris oozing out of his ears. What basis such hubris, you might ask. At first glance it seems as though his hubris doesn't need a basis, since it appears to be more of a premise than a conclusion. It is suggestive of the possibility that it determines his existence, in a Cartesian sort of way: "I exude hubris, therefore I am." Or is his hubris somewhat closely linked to being a successful career contrarian (in terms of correlation if not causation)? But hold that thought. Amis goes through much trouble to clarify that Hitchens is better understood as a 'natural rebel' than as an 'autocontrarian'.

Christopher is bored by the epithet contrarian, which has been trailing him around for a quarter of a century. What he is, in any case, is an autocontrarian: he seeks, not only the most difficult position, but the most difficult position for Christopher Hitchens. Hardly anyone agrees with him on Iraq (yet hardly anyone is keen to debate him on it). We think also of his support for Ralph Nader, his collusion with the impeachment process of the loathed Bill Clinton (who, in Christopher's new book, The Quotable Hitchens, occupies more space than any other subject), and his support for Bush-Cheney in 2004. Christopher often suffers for his isolations; this is widely sensed, and strongly contributes to his magnetism. He is in his own person the drama, as we watch the lithe contortions of a self-shackling Houdini. Could this be the crux of his charisma – that Christopher, ultimately, is locked in argument with the Hitch? Still, "contrarian" is looking shopworn. And if there must be an epithet, or what the press likes to call a (single-word) "narrative", then I can suggest a refinement: Christopher is one of nature's rebels. By which I mean that he has no automatic respect for anybody or anything.

*

This is the way to spot a rebel: they give no deference or even civility to their supposed superiors (that goes without saying); they also give no deference or even civility to their demonstrable inferiors.

"No automatic respect for anybody or anything." That immediately puts Hitchens above and beyond most of humanity. These boys are so into exclusivity! Indeed, Amis awards himself, his father and his friend the dubious distinction of being the only rebels he's ever known, before going on to extol their finer points i.e. their lack of civility to everybody other than those they consider to be their peers (which, again, is a very small and exclusive band of brothers, it seems).

Oh, and I almost forgot. Apropos of the "epithet contrarian" there's this whole business about seeking difficult positions. "He seeks not only the most difficult position but the most difficult position for Christopher Hitchens." Bravo! This sentence reflects the sheer genius of Martin Amis, since it sums up the essence of Christopher Hitchens in a single line. So there are those who seek positions, those who seek difficult positions, and those (or perhaps only one, in that class) who seek the most difficult position -- not for any old polemicist, but for Christopher Hitchens, the gold standard.

Perhaps that's what really irks me about Hitchens. You see, where I come from, we don't go about "seeking" positions on matters. Our positions find us -- sometimes spontaneously, at other times after due soul-searching, and they reflect who we are. If we are unclear about something, we open our minds, we explore, we ask, we learn the facts, we ponder, we converse. And we await the visitation of the position that is ours, via some kind of epiphany. When facts change, we subject those positions to stringent review and if necessary change our minds, as advised by Keynes. OK, granted that not everyone has the cojones to do the latter. Many just stick to positions they've already taken even in the face of new facts that clearly contradict those positions.

Of course, there are several other ways in which people approach matters of import. Some just adopt positions of their intellectual gurus, since they either can't or won't develop one for themselves, on their own. Some others just find it convenient to sync with their peers. And many others take the position dictated by political correctness or expedience. I am not unduly bothered by any of these attitudes though I believe honesty requires that we ourselves organically evolve our positions, aligned with the natural grain of our own weltanschauung and outlook to life.

But this "seeking" of a position is different. It is dishonest in a profoundly fundamental way and I regard it with disdain. The disdain gives way to sheer contempt when that seeking is driven by the need to maximize the "difficulty" of the position. This, to me, is the quintessence of intellectual delinquency -- to refute everybody and everything, and when challenged to explain oneself, take the thin grassy trail left untrodden by the muddied boots of everybody else's pronouncements. (Think 'The Road Not Taken' by Robert Frost.) There always is one; the trick is to find it and talk the walk, surprising or even shocking an unsuspecting audience with the succinct articulation of one's own unique, radically different point of view. This is exactly what seeking difficult positions entails. I know because when I was in my early teens, that's what I used to do. There was a kind of enigmatic heroism about doing it -- the kind of enigmatic heroism that would attract (or so I thought back then) the opposite sex or at least a mixed fan following. And the torment arising from the struggle within, of syncretic attempts to reconcile those varying difficult positions (over time contrarian positions are bound to result in contradictions and paradoxes, which rationalists hate as much as superstitious belief and blind faith) only served to enhance one's magnetism. But with Amis, Hitchens et al. it doesn't end there. There's the icing on the cake: the expression "the most difficult position for Christopher Hitchens" -- suggesting not only an unparalleled greatness but also the continuous effort to outdo that greatness every time. Ergo preternatural.

Sadly, it turns out that some juvenile intellectual delinquents just never grow up; on the contrary, they obsessively hone their compulsions to a fine art form, and then get fawned upon by fanboys. Perhaps this is because of their socially maladjusted adolescence and/ or major childhood insecurities that were never addressed. As happens with most nerds and others suffering from a sense of inadequacy or low self-esteem, they would then stick to small groups of their own kind -- a tight mutual admiration society of bright minds that are socially dysfunctional, to seek comfort in each others' miseries. Perhaps that, then, is whence the hubris develops, as a defensive mechanism against the mocking jeering social success of 'lesser' mortals.

If only that hubris were to be replaced by humility. If only that brilliant wit, that penchant for deliciously timed and executed riposte, that sharply articulated logic behind pithily framed cogent arguments, were put to constructive use in the service of humankind. Amis misses this angle completely, lost as he is in rapturous praise of 'the Hitch'. And that, then, is what's amiss in his glowing portrait of his buddy. And that, then, is the hitch in the maturing of a middle-aged terminally ill writer. The only redeeming point I see in his story is his ability to laugh at his condition. But that could also be because you least expect it of him. That's how contrarians are.

How to write a blog post criticizing Anna Hazare and the Jan Lok Pal Bill

2011-04-14T14:56:00.021+05:30

Apparently many ardent and strident bloggers still want to write critical blog posts on the subject that had grabbed last week's headlines: Anna Hazare's fast and the Jan Lok Pal (JLP) Bill. It is necessary for them to do this, it seems, since their peers have already voiced their opposition on the subject, but they haven't done so yet. And tauba tauba ... they wouldn't want their silence to be construed as support for Hazare and the JLP! Heavens forbid!

If you're not one of those looking to write a critical article on this subject, you could skip reading the rest of this post. But if you are then here're some broad guidelines that are easy to follow and will help you write a really unique post on this subject.

First, express some trepidation around the possibility that what you are about to embark on i.e. criticizing Anna Hazare and the JLP, may be considered iconoclastic and perhaps even blasphemous by the public at large. This establishes you as an original thinker with a really off-beat perspective on things, who doesn't get shepherded into following mass movements. (Besides, it is so uncool for someone like you to be seen on the same side as Baba Ramdev and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar!) Of course, your regular readers know that in matters cerebral pertaining to a cause célèbre such as this one, you always take the road less traveled. But remember that your post will be passed around among friends, and you will have several new readers who should eventually become part of your fan club. Hence necessary to establish you as both: maven and maverick.

Second, give a clean chit to Anna Hazare. Acknowledge the good work he's done and his spotless record. Provide a link to the Wikipedia page on Ralegaon Siddhi. Make it clear that you mean no disrespect to the man. If you are really bold, you may venture to suggest that Hazare played to the galleries and was enthusiastic about being part of the reality show that the movement became. But stay within reasonable limits. You don't want to outrage your audience, just to shock them into a new awakening with the epiphany of your revelations (which you will do in subsequent paragraphs).

Third, agree that corruption is a big problem in India today. Deride the venal panjandrums who have been indulging in jobbery, robbing the common citizen blind. Mention the 2G scam and the CWG scam, for sure, and any other scam that comes to mind (there are many of them). Also make a note of the frustration and anger against graft that has been building up among the hoi polloi over the years, and endorse it as being fully justified. Depending on how bold you feel, you may consider suggesting that people get the government they deserve. If you must do that, then also acknowledge that such homilies are not very useful in crafting solutions. (It would help to remember that the reader is looking for some kind of solution from you, thinking, fallaciously, that if you are criticizing a particular solution then you must offer alternatives.) Strongly advocate the need for urgent action to bring probity to public life and to implement reforms aimed at clean governance at all levels.

Fourth, oppose Hazare's fast as a matter of principle. Call it coercive. Use the word blackmail, if needed, to emphasize your point. Quote, from Dr Ambedkar's speech, that priceless phrase -- "Grammar of Anarchy", and make it your own. (In fact, pwn it, if you know what I mean.) Assert that it is unconstitutional to use fasting and other satyagraha tactics to subvert the normal course of action undertaken by a government constituted by the elected representatives of the people of India.

Next, oppose the JLP Bill as a matter of principle. Call it draconian. Suggest that it paves the way for dictatorship. Identify specific items in the proposed draft JLP and take issue with them. Your duty as a responsible citizen ends here as far as the JLP is concerned. You don't need to suggest alternative language or replacement of egregious text with better verbiage. Since per se you don't believe that this Bill in any form is the solution (or even "a" solution since it doesn't address the real issues), you don't have to pass on your feedback to Hazare & Co., even though there's enough basis to support the belief that this Bill, in some shape or form, is going to be passed by Parliament within a year. Having correctly diagnosed the root cause of the problem as [insert your diagnosis here, followed by rationale] you'd rather focus your keen intellect on developing the "right" solution, than improve what you know to be a draconian Bill that will most likely see passage in a few months. As far as you're concerned, posting your thoughts on your blog is enough contribution. Your fan following will take forward the good work.

Then, call this whole agitation misguided (for above stated reasons) and self-righteous. Inform the reader that it is not enough to be virtuous -- one has to abide by the principles of democracy. Does this imply that Hazare is a morally upright guy, but since politics is the business of villains it should be left to them? No. What it means is that sanctity of democratic processes is paramount. Virtue needs to be patient and learn to work the system. It's a different thing that Vice is unfettered by any such mores and in fact freely abuses the very systems that it is supposed to uphold and protect, through its perversion of powers vested in it by the very people it is supposed to serve.

Further, oppose the constitution of the Committee that will work on drafting the Bill. Oppose it primarily because it doesn't include you or your aantel buddies that hang around your adda, or any other right-minded intellectual (i.e., someone who thinks like you), but instead includes people of questionable predilections and biases. On the other hand, you don't believe this Bill is a solution, anyway, so why would you want to get on this Committee to begin with?

Conclude your post by pointing out how this could well be yet another example of good intentions that can go very, very wrong. Express fervent hope as a concerned and responsible citizen, that this doesn't end up as a cure that's even worse than the disease.

These above are the basic points around which you can build your post. Depending on your individual taste, your own personal style, the tone/ tenor and degree of stridency of your blog, and on what, specifically, is biting your ass right now, feel free to go as heavy or as light as you like, on each of the points above. If you're really good at the craft of using language for atmospherics, then create the overall feel of a savant who sees beyond the obvious and shares deep insights into mundane matters with an audience that is dumb enough to follow you and swallow your nuggets of brilliance whole, without any mastication, much less rumination. Sit back and gloat over the re-tweets on twitter and the 'likes' on facebook that will invariably follow, and the encomiums of praise that will promptly flow in your comments box. Your good work for the day is done!

My WikiTake on WikiLeaks: Assess Before Assassinating Assange

2010-12-04T21:10:00.020+05:30

The big buzz worldwide this last week, more or less a week after the leakage of the Radia tapes in India, was around the WikiLeaks controversy. Even as I write this blog entry, opinion clouds in cyberspace continue to be agog with the good the bad and the ugly about it. Julian Assange's face is now recognizable by more people than Lady Gaga's and people all over the world are learning to spell and pronounce his last name, albeit with some difficulty.

The WikiLeaks phenomenon has not only piqued my curiosity but, being unprecedented in many ways, has also challenged my ability to make quick moral assessments -- I can't readily say if this is a good thing or a bad thing. According to Will Wilkinson, writing in The Economist, this is really not important. However, it is difficult to ignore the urge to develop an opinion on as provocative a phenomenon as WikiLeaks, especially if, as Wilkinson predicts, we are going to see more of the same in the future. Having kept an open mind from the word go, I find that while I don't really support what WikiLeaks stand for (as it appears to me: a kind of information anarchy; I don't eagerly support anarchists of any kind) I am not really against it either. If this suggests that I am being morally ambivalent or noncommittal, then let me clarify: it is just that there are no precedents to WikiLeaks in terms of the nature, scope and scale of public disclosures of secret information and I don't believe we have adequate information to take a position on whether or not this is a good thing from the point of view of the long-term common good of the whole world at large. I believe we should remain circumspect and patiently await revelations and other emergent data before forming opinions on the subject. It would be interesting to observe the trajectory of Wikileaks over the next few years, assuming they're allowed to function unencumbered and unfettered. Frankly, I suspect we have yet to see WikiLeaks in its full glory. Equally frankly, I also suspect that the global powers that be may not allow that to happen in the first place, going by some of the comments that have started to appear in the media. (Links shared by Shefaly Yogendra on facebook.)

Be that as it may, as the future unfolds and (assuming) more disclosures happen and we learn more about the motives and modus operandi of WikiLeaks, I believe we may be in a better position to make an assessment. My proposed assessment criteria would be: (a) intent (b) method (c) outcome and (d) impact. I would want to test WikiLeaks for each of these criteria against the principles of sustainability. In other words, determine whether Wikileaks: (a) aims at the "right" things (b) goes after them in the "right" manner (c) achieves the "right" results, that (d) bring about the "right" state transitions to the world's political status-quo (where "right" is defined as "aligned with progress and prosperity of all mankind for the present and also for future generations"). OK, that may sound like motherhood and apple pie, but I really have no other way of assessing questions of moral rectitude that are not supported by precedent. The alternative being to rely on the opinions of those whose opinions on such matters tend to be pretty close to mine ("those who bought this also bought ...") but that's simply not my style.

Meanwhile, Assange's "boil the ocean" or "have secrets -- will expose" approach has me a bit confused. There seems to be no selectivity, no filtering, no targeting ... any disclosure of any secrets will do, it seems, as long as some part of it or the other stirs some pot or the other in some part of the world or the other. I am assuming that their long-term mission is not specifically targeted at the US, though the recent leaks seem to point in that direction. Before WikiLeaks became infamous recently, for blowing open the lid of the Pandora's box of US diplomacy, WikiLeaks had already uncovered secrets elsewhere -- notably, Kenya. Exposing US Govt. hypocrisy is to an extent quite fashionable among some political observers and analysts (especially those who are not American), and in that sense Assange is not alone, if that is what he is after. Few can resist biting into the meaty steak of American doublespeak, especially if it is served up on a platter au jus. And there has been so much of it over the last decade or so. What would set Assange up as a truly nation-agnostic information anarchist would be if he repeats this number with any or all of countries like Russia, China, Iran, N Korea, Myanmar, Pakistan, Israel, Palestine and so on.

As may be evident from my last post at this blog (in which I severely criticized Arundhati Roy for being an anarchist), I classify anarchists into two categories -- the deontological anarchists, for whom anarchy is the means as well as the end, and the teleological anarchists, for whom anarchy is a means to a "higher" goal. Assange's last comment in the Guardian Q&A:

‎"History will win. The world will be elevated to a better place. Will we survive? That depends on you."

seems to suggest that he's the latter kind of anarchist. On the other hand his utterance might simply be an appeal to crowd-source support for his cause, a swan song for survival.

Not sure if history will win -- history tends to be written by the victorious. But time will tell, for sure.

The Fraud of All Things (or, The Case for the Sedation of the Seductive Seditionist)

2010-10-27T14:25:00.053+05:30

I am not against the very idea of discussing Kashmir's secession from the Indian Union. There, I've said it. Not that I am in favour of secession either -- certainly not, all else being equal. But hey, if Kashmir's Aazadi is the only way things can move forward to bring peace and stability to the region, to reduce conflict in general and terrorism in particular, and to allow India and Pakistan to focus on economic growth, social reform and prosperity for their respective peoples, then it has my reluctant vote. My objection to Arundhati Roy's inflammatory speeches that have been fanning secessionist fires among Kashmiris in an atmosphere already charged with anger and hatred for the Indian Government, is not about that. It is about the motives of Ms Roy, as they appear to me.

I've never been a fan of Arundhati Roy. Years ago, I didn't find her book "The God of Small Things" particularly interesting or worthy of the Booker she got. In fact I found it eminently put-down-able and so put it down after a few honest attempts at reading it. Going on from there, I've found her anti-establishmentarian antics over the last few years very shallow, jejune and churlish -- devices to grab attention, revealing her to be a controversial contrarian who delights in intellectual delinquency and basks in the media spotlight that it brings. I seldom discuss Arundhati Roy or her work, because I fear that it might feed the invisible demons who conspire to bring publicity to opinionated twits like her. In a manner of speaking. However, there are times when I am drawn into it and can't help myself.

About a year ago, at the birthday party of a friend, an impressionable young man (who happened to be my friend's husband's nephew) was gushing over Roy and her activism and her bold stand on various issues to a group of people. According to me she doesn't really have a stand that can stand sharp intellectual scrutiny, but she's definitely got a lot of people fooled. Since I entered the conversation late, I had to ask said nephew of said friend's husband who he was talking about, and when told, couldn't help saying, with a dismissive wave of hand -- "Oh! her." Which, of course, immediately led to my being quizzed about such a response. "She's just an attention-mongering contrarian and devoid of any real substance" said I. The nephew, stung by this blasphemous disparagement of his 'goddess of big things', parried back with "And aren't you being a contrarian yourself by taking that stand when all of us here think highly of her?" Realising by now that this whole bunch was on one side, I said, "No. I expressed a considered opinion, which, as it turns out, is different from what you guys think of her. A contrarian would do it in reverse -- wait to hear what the general consensus of the crowd is, or, if there's no time for that then quickly get a sense of the crowd's mood, and then stun them with outright contradiction."

Roy has been in the media a lot in recent times -- specifically apropos her support for the Maoists, but also for generally being the enfant terrible of the world of social causes. Not wanting to waste time on her and her controversies, I've restrained my urge to comment in the social media, though I did air my views a couple of times in private conversations. However, earlier today, I broke my self-imposed oath to never utter her name in public, and at the risk of drawing the ire of her misguided fan following, tweeted:

They say it takes all kinds to make a world. Apply that to Arundhati Roy, the fraud of all things. Does she make a world? Or break one?

and, feeling recklessly brave, followed that with another tweet:

On a different note, what is the verb from 'sedition'? In Roy's case it could be 'to seduce'. She may need to be 'sedated'.

Someone remarked in a back-channel message (on the second tweet) that it smacked of sexism. I replied that it would indeed have been a sexist comment, if it weren't for the fact that Roy's go-to-market strategy freely draws on her own dainty muliebrity, or the fact that she has a knack for foxily leveraging her feminine allure (or what's left of it) in her interviews and her public interactions. Why should she then escape characterization as a seductress? Moreover, sedition is a kind of seduction in itself, isn't it?

Just as I don't have issues with peaceful discussions on secession as a solution to our problems, I also don't have issues with peaceful discussions on using anarchy as a means to achieve a better end-state. (I don't agree that anarchy can or will lead to a better end-state -- I think there are less risky ways to get there, but I am open to discussing anarchy as a possible approach.) There are many ways of getting from A to B, and my moral compass in such matters is more aligned with teleological morality rather than deontological morality. Which means that I don't think that anarchy is a bad thing per se and so, in my opinion, someone trying to create anarchy is not committing a crime ipso facto. Their motives in doing so are important.

In the case of Ms Roy, in her support for Maoist insurgents and Kashmiri separatists (different contexts, same agenda) the anarchy she is trying to create, as far as I can see, is not a means to an end (such as a better India) but an end in itself. Not a solution to a problem but a deepening of the problem itself. I suspect she would go to any part of India where there is strife and suffering and stoke the anti-establishment fires that are burning there: the far east, the central corridor, the north .. wherever trouble is being fomented. But she cleverly stays within the ambit of the law, in each case, never really crossing the line herself. Not the originator but an agent provocateur. Not a reagent that participates in a chemical reaction, but a catalyst who accelerates precipitation but remains untouched. It is almost as if she wants done to India what the Taliban has already begun doing to Pakistan -- to disintegrate the state and destroy its institutions, and to look like an ingénue while it happens. If that's her motive, that is something I will not stand for.

So, whereas I strongly believe in unconditional freedom of expression in an Einsteinian world -- of curved spacetime inhabited by zen monks where the lyrics of John Lennon's "Imagine" ring true, when it comes to the Newtonian world we live in -- of Euclidean spacetime populated by brutes capable of unimaginable and unconscionable violence and full of volatile mobs that can explode within moments of listening to hate speeches, I would draw the line somewhere. Sorry, no unrestrained free speech for those whose sole purpose is to cause total system failure -- it is not on the menu. True, it takes all kinds to make a world (and those who know me will testify to the fact that I am a strident pluralist, an avid celebrator of diversity and a staunch upholder of all kinds of individual freedoms) but it takes just one kind to break a world -- the kind who loves the smell of napalm in the morning.

Relief and Ground

2010-07-27T10:22:00.006+05:30

There are times when I sit back and observe my 6 year old at play with his friends -- those simple games, those minor squabbles, those negotiations and reconciliations, those squeals of delight, those shrieks of glee.

Children don't need a reason to be happy: they just are. If there are times when they are not happy, then it is because of some reason -- something that did not go their way. And when that has passed, they are happy again. Happiness is their default natural state. It is what they return to every time, all the time. They don't go around seeking happiness; it is already there. It is where they live. We adults refer to childhood as a time of innocence. The loss of innocence comes with the discovery that that is not how life is.

We adults need reasons to be happy. We are constantly seeking happiness (as though something we do can bring it to us, or someone we know can gift it to us). But not finding it, most of the time. If there are times when we are happy, then that is because of some reason -- something that did indeed go our way! And when that has passed, we're unhappy, again. Unhappiness does not always mean sadness or misery, but includes a variety of different feelings, emotions, moods, and states of mind. However, all of these have one thing in common: they cannot be described as happiness. As adults, our unhappiness is our natural state. It is what we return to every time, all the time. It is already there, always with us. It is where we live. We may indulge ourselves in the pleasures of life, we may eke instant gratification from the things money can buy, we may celebrate momentous or memorable occasions, we may revel in the joy of achievements or victories, and at times we may even derive satisfaction from our overall state of being. But we are seldom happy the way children are -- spontaneously and unconditionally. We look for causation through, or at least correlation with, various externalities: places, activities, things, people ...

Those of us blessed with happy children find it soothing to watch them be happy ... and to sometimes even plunge into their moment, to vicariously splash around in that pool of pure natural happiness, letting their waves of joy wash over us, letting some of that clean, wholesome goodness rub off on us like the mud on their sleeves.

Migration Migraines: Going Against My Grain

2010-07-10T20:45:00.011+05:30

Some time last week an article by Vivek Wadhwa (written, no doubt, in the wake of President Obama's recent speech about immigration reform) caught my attention. As I read through this article and followed the link to a related previous article, also by Vivek Wadhwa, I was intrigued by the author's concerns about reverse brain drain. Numerous thoughts relating to immigration and brain drain started straining my brain (pardon the word play). So I brushed them all aside to the background recesses of my mind where I let them jostle with one another and take coherent shape on their own as I went about my daily routine, and decided to put them all down in a blog post over the weekend in one concentrated burst of effort. After all, that's what blogs are for, aren't they?

First, there's the issue that triggered it all off -- Mr Wadhwa's warning to his President that immigration reforms won't stop the reverse brain drain, and his alarm bells on how reverse brain drain to India and China is a very real threat to the American economy. Why, I wonder, would a Vivek Wadhwa be so concerned about reverse brain drain from the US to India as to write about it so often, when he himself was, in all likelihood, part of the original brain drain from India to the US? Didn't the original brain drain concern him then when he was an Indian, as much as the reverse brain drain concerns him now, as an American?

This is not a personal criticism. I don't know Mr Wadhwa and have nothing against him. I can safely speculate, though, that he is of Indian origin and presently a US citizen. It is possible (though unlikely, I think) that he was born and raised in the US and always was a US citizen. (I did 'google' his name and spend some time researching his past, but all I could come up with was that he graduated from a university in Australia. No information about schooling etc. readily available in the public domain.) But it is also possible (and more likely -- don't ask me why) that he was actually born and raised in India, as an Indian citizen, and went overseas as a student/ young adult. Strange, then, that he should write sentences like -- and I quote from his article:

"The reality is that [..] the poor and unskilled will still be here. But the educated and skilled professionals—who could be creating new jobs and making the U.S. more competitive—won’t be here. They will, instead, be boosting the economies of other countries."

Where was he when that same reality prevailed "here"? (And by "here" I mean India, not the US.) In fact, isn't he one of those (to borrow his phrase) "educated and skilled professionals who could be creating new jobs and making India more competitive" who is, instead, boosting the economy of another country? At a personal level, I have no issues with Indians who've migrated to the US. People will go where opportunities abound, and that is most natural. Nothing wrong with that. Several of my best friends from school and college have migrated to the US and other Western countries. But they don't write articles like these -- expressing concern over reverse brain drain from the US to India. If anything, most of them find themselves on the horns of a dilemma, when it comes to the question of supporting US Govt. policies that affect the Indian economy in one way and the US economy in another.

The question of affiliation with the "old country" tends to come up quite often with my friends who've settled abroad (all first generation immigrants) and some of them are quick with preemptive statements like "Don't ask me whose side I would be on if India and America were at war -- that's too hypothetical and too melodramatic and too cliched a question". When I encounter this dodgy argument (or rather, foil to an anticipated argument) I turn around and ask them which team they would root for if India and America were pitted against each other as finalists in the World Cup -- a relatively less hypothetical and less dramatic question that puts many of the Indian Americans I know in a bit of a quandary. But when the same question is re-cast at the level of government policies -- on matters such as immigration, jobs going offshore etc., it becomes far less hypothetical, far more real, and a dilemma for most of my friends. After all, the two countries collaborate but also compete in the global arena. It's not about questioning their sense of patriotism to the US, it's just that the emotional connect with the country of origin is difficult to ignore completely.

Second, there's this laissez-faire attitude in India towards brain drain from India to the US over the last several decades (whose reversal Mr Wadhwa seems so concerned about). Right through my own childhood, adolescence and youth, I have been witness to the steady migration of some of our best and brightest, year after year, moving out from India and into the US and other lands of opportunity. As a nation, our body of talent has been bleeding 'from a thousand cuts' for several years now. Have we in India recognized this as a problem that needs to be solved? No. Instead we have developed an attitude that, to my mind, is best characterized by a tragic and grotesque blend of: (a) denial (b) rationalization and (c) resignation to fate. There's this standard line of reasoning about Indian talent migrating overseas -- in many cases even after receiving education that has been subsidized by the Indian tax payer (from institutions like the IITs), and this is how the argument unfolds, as more and more evidence of brain drain becomes obvious and undeniable:

Initially: Oh it's nothing much -- there's hardly any brain drain to talk about.
Followed by: Well, yes, quite a few good people do migrate, but look at how many people stay back here.
And then: OK, agreed that the ones who are staying back are doing so because they couldn't migrate; agreed that the good talent does migrate, but some day the trend will reverse and they will come back.
Later: Yes, quite a few of those who have come back to India, have again returned to the US in frustration after a year or two because they couldn't deal with the ground realities here. But the point is that many of them have stayed on.
Lastly (the final justification that to their mind clinches their side of the debate): Well, it's all for the greater good of the whole world, isn't it? Look at the big picture -- India is contributing to global progress, people of Indian origin are leading global businesses, are achieving eminence in academia and research, and are even at the forefront of global politics. We should be proud of that instead of complaining about brain drain!
And as an epilogue: In any case, we keep producing more and more people, so how does it matter that many of the talented people migrate?

You seldom hear anything along the lines of:
- Our systems are broken, we must fix the root causes of brain drain.
- We must have a strong resolve to retain our talent. At the very least, we should stop new outflows, even if we can't reverse old ones.
- We must attract the best minds from abroad, just like America does, and make that our competitive strategy.

Why is it that we hardly, if ever, hear people speak this language? I put this down to the mind-numbing fatalism that is hidden deep inside the Indian psyche when faced with monumental challenges. We find it easier to deny, and if denial doesn't work then our next response is reconciliation -- we accept graciously, for it is so ordained. This is what goes against my grain. And gives me a migraine. Apologies, again, for the play on words. My weak humour is but a poor attempt to mask the pain.

Third, there's the broader issue of talent migration and flow of human capital around the world. This is something that America should learn to deal with, if not actively promote. Up until now it was working in their favour -- they were able to attract the best talent from all over the world. The same thing that drove immigration into that country in the past will drive emigration out of that country in the future, when opportunities abound elsewhere. But even before that future happens, Americans must learn to accept what their President has been saying for quite some time now -- that prosperity does not happen in a vacuum, that steep inequities will only serve to be more divisive, and will disenfranchise large sections of the world population and increase global conflict between peoples and nations. This cannot be good for America, can it? On the other hand, qualified Americans going back to their countries of origin will help in bringing those countries up to a better standard of living and ensure a better quality of life for their former compatriots. This will eventually reduce conflict in different parts of the world and also reduce tensions between those parts of the world and the US.

Moreover, Americans who migrate to other parts of the world will act as cultural and knowledge ambassadors for America. They will draw on the intellectual capital that America has created within them, and will therefore replicate American values, institutions, policies, systems, technologies, management models, regulatory frameworks, etc. thus keeping America in a vanguard position and always ahead of the curve. If these other countries were to develop on their own, who knows -- they may even leapfrog over America some day! Don't you think, Mr Wadhwa, that you should warn your President about that?

Filling Buckets Or Lighting Fires - Reprise (plus: more Yeats)

2010-05-26T21:10:00.001+05:30

Just chanced upon this excellent talk by Sir Ken Robinson on TED that I thought resonated with my earlier post from over a month ago.

Amazingly, Sir Ken ends his talk with another quote from Yeats. I guess you could say that great minds think alike!

The Spirit of Inquiry

2010-04-17T13:00:00.000+05:30

My 5 year old asked me about ghosts the other day. He wanted to know if ghosts really existed and whether I believed in them. It was a little after he and his elder brother, my 8 year old, watched the movie Bhoothnath for the n'th time. I guess he was confused by the conflicting responses he got from everyone he asked, every time he saw the movie. (And I bet his elder brother had been feeding him all kinds of stories about ghosts, just to scare him.) So now the younger tyke wanted a definitive answer from Daddy. I told him that ghosts were people who have died but whose memories lived on inside our minds, which sometimes took shape in our imagination as though they were still really alive. Difficult to explain phenomena like hallucination to a five year old, so that's about as close as I got.

That conversation set me thinking about the subject of spirits and ghosts. As a teenager with a strong scientific temper and a keen interest in the physics of the infinite (astrophysics) and the infinitesimal (nuclear physics), I'd already dismissed that kind of talk as mumbo-jumbo. Even so, there were a bunch of questions about ghosts I used to ponder over (when not preoccupied with questions about Schroedinger's cat) just assuming, for the sake of argument, that ghosts were a real phenomenon. For example: Do ghosts age? Is the ghost of Newton older than the ghost of Einstein or are they both "frozen" at the point in time when they died? If one were to "see" Newton's ghost, would he look as he looked at his dying moment or would he look as he would have looked if he were still alive today?

When I was watching the movie Ghost some years ago, I found myself wondering whether the character played by Patrick Swayze, as a ghost, would ever get to change his shirt. It must be rather uncomfortable to have to eternally be clothed in the outfit one died in, I thought. Ditto in the movie The Sixth Sense, which made the line "I see dead people" famous, in which the ghost played by Bruce Willis continues to wear a blood-stained shirt all through but realizes it only at the end. I found that odd. (Such mundane trivia do bother me, even as I watch highly engaging movies.)

Reflecting about it now, after having answered my son's question, I found the idea of a spirit that might exist without a body quite fascinating to investigate (provided one is equipped with the knowledge and tools brought to us by studies in psychology, physiology, anthropology, phenomenology, epistemology and various inter-disciplinary branches of knowledge that draw from these subject domains -- which I don't claim to be). On a related note, there seem to be as many imponderables about the subject of human cloning, along the same lines. The movie Multiplicity played with the idea of cloning, introducing minor changes in capability and personality in the many clones of a single human being, to create amusing situations. But it opened out so many interesting questions, including the question of how each of the clones must have felt -- about themselves and their past(?), the world around them and about one another. But how does one even begin to find answers to such questions?

The common thread running through such questions is the notion of consciousness as we humans experience it. Unfortunately, human consciousness doesn't seem to lend itself to much scientific investigation beyond a point. Clearly, there are obvious limitations to empirical experimentation as a methodology for inquiry into the idea of a spirit without a body. You can't die and then come back and record what you were conscious of when you were dead. Worse, you can't even demonstrate that you can't do that. Or even that you can. Experiments like the ones in the movie Flatliners don't count, because those are near-death situations, not actual death, though they kept pushing the limit in that movie.

But there are no constraints in conducting what scientists like Einstein called 'thought experiments' in the laboratory of our minds. And the reason I have so many references to movies popping up in this post is that the entertainment industry, where having a vivid imagination is just table stakes, is a fertile environment for such thought experiments. The same goes for science fiction movies and their relationship with real-world scientific inquiry, and with real-world technological innovation. Quite often, being bold and going where nobody has ever gone before results in best-sellers and box-office hits, for writers and film-makers who explore extraordinary topics in the spirit of inquiry (not always scientific as it turns out). And that in turn inspires investigations, discoveries and inventions in real life through a process of true scientific inquiry and/ or technological innovation. But that's another story, and another digression.

Let's get back to our own inquiry into the question of consciousness removed from body. As sentient beings our bodies (normally) come equipped with the 5 senses, whose job it is to capture and deliver sensations to us. The dynamism of time ensures that things are never static, as in a photograph -- we are always in real-time, continuously seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching and feeling things. As sapient beings we continuously think about stuff that we see, hear, smell, taste and touch and feel. That's how we learn and grow. Even a computing machine has input / output devices as its peripherals, which connect it to the rest of the world by providing a conduit for data flow. Assuming an advanced computer can be aware of itself (we're not really too far from developing one), could it be aware of itself bereft of its I/O interfaces? Could sapience exist without sentience? That's my big question.

It takes more than intelligence to be human, as we know (though when we interact with some people we begin to doubt that). As different from machines that can think, humans also have a priori impulses: the sexual urge, for one, and the creative urge, for another -- we've all had spontaneous feelings and great ideas that seem to have come out of nowhere. But even these need a vehicle, which the body provides: a medium through which stimulus and response are received and delivered. The experience of a body has a crucial role in shaping what and who we are, what and who we become as our bodies change, and how we think and feel about ourselves and our worlds. If we believe we look good it makes us more confident, even vain, but if we believe we look ugly, it erodes our pride and leads to low self-esteem, even depression.

Our self-image depends a lot on the size, shape and overall appearance of the bodies we wear. The loss of a limb or an organ or a faculty significantly changes us and how we interact with and relate to the world around us. Helen Keller was an amazing human being who lost two of her senses before she was 2 years old, yet rose to become a towering figure in her time. Her determination to overcome seemingly insurmountable challenges continues to be a source of strength to many in similar situations, to this day -- one may even say her intrepid spirit lives on in their hearts and minds and inspires them to achieve their goals despite all odds.

Surely, loss of the whole body would have a dramatic impact on what and who we become? How would we feel about losing our body, and in fact, what does 'feel' mean in that context? Can we feel or think without having a body? What interface would we then have with the world around us, to interact and transact with others, to give and to receive, to act and be acted upon? What is growth and learning and how could it possibly come about without interactions and transactions that can only be effected through an I/O interface of our bodies? Can we be creative without our bodies? How would creativity manifest itself in the case of a ghost?

Questions about ghosts haunt me even if ghosts themselves don't. Maybe I should just be satisfied with the explanation I gave my son and enjoy the rest of my weekend.

Filling Buckets Or Lighting Fires?

2010-04-01T22:07:00.006+05:30

"Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire" -- W. B. Yeats

I was reminded of that quote today as I read a news report in the The Times of India excerpted here below:

The 86th Constitutional amendment making education a fundamental right was passed by Parliament in 2002. The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, a law to enable the implementation of the fundamental right, was passed by Parliament last year. Both the Constitutional amendment and the new law came into force from today.

Future generations of Indians will look upon this as a 'Great Leap Forward' for the Indian education system, notwithstanding the fact that it happened on All Fools' Day. It certainly would be a giant leap when successfully implemented, in terms of enabling 10 million children with access to schooling. Of course, there are several unanswered questions at the implementation level, including the dearth of qualified teachers, lack of suitable facilities, the potential for malpractices, etc., but let's assume that we will find ways and means of overcoming these challenges. But there is a larger issue here, even at the conceptual level, and that deals with our understanding of, and approach to, education itself. And that's where the quote from Yeats comes into the picture. When it comes to Education Reforms, are we seeking to light fires or are we continuing to fill more buckets (and that too, more efficiently)?

I found myself wishing that they had more accurately called it 'Right to Literacy' because that's what it really is. Yes, it deals with primary education. And yes, it comes under the rubric of "Education Reforms" with a capital E and a capital R. But let's not confuse education with literacy. Or with skills training. While all three are important, each has a specific purpose and each plays a unique and vital role in shaping our children's lives as they grow into adults. Literacy gives them the basic tools they would need to learn more, acquire knowledge, develop skills, etc. and training empowers them with a range of capabilities -- some general, some specialized. But education builds character. Unfortunately, nowhere in our education system do we really focus on the last part. A few exceptional schools make an earnest attempt, but that stems more out of their own independent vision than from a systemic requirement.

IIT Bombay, where I spent my late teens and early 20s, has as its motto "Gyanam Paramam Dhyeyam" -- Sanskrit for "Knowledge is the Supreme Goal." The IITs excel in selecting the brightest (read: most analytical) young Indian minds (of those that have opted for the science stream in high school and chosen to pursue engineering as a career, as opposed to medicine) and then honing their pre-existing analytical skills to near perfection, through years of rigorous training in a highly competitive environment. What the IITs do not do, or even attempt to do, is to provide a well-rounded education to their students -- an education that would help them understand, for example, that the supreme goal is the development of the sensibility to apply knowledge judiciously, and not just the mere acquisition of it, as a literal reading of the IIT Bombay motto might suggest. Only the well-educated mind would be able to interpret this motto wisely, and understand the difference between letter and spirit, between acquisition and application. So this is the feedback loop in which this issue is stuck: the minds that run the IITs are the minds that believe that (acquisition of) knowledge is the supreme goal. And that too when what they mostly do is develop analytical skills and impart technical knowhow.

Our children have a right to a decent education too, not just a right to literacy and a right to training. Now that we've taken the first step today, I wonder when we will take the next one. And what, exactly, that would be.

Dictional Differences: Dictates vs. Didactics

2010-03-21T20:19:00.008+05:30

I've given up my indignation over the hijacking of the Hindi word avatar (pronounced "uhv - taar") by English-speaking Westerners (who pronounce it as "av - uh - tar"). I used to get bent out of shape about this mispronunciation and fought it passionately till I found the numbers on the other side of that fight overwhelming. So gradually I decided to let it go, as I had many years ago with a similar fight about the Hindi word karma. But there was a whole war I had yet to lose. Having won some ground, the other side started advancing further by dictating terms of use to me. They started correcting my own pronunciation of avatar, trying to highlight the difference between the English neologism and the original Hindi (actually, Sanskrit) word. And this would get me all riled up, especially if the individual doing the dictional dictation was a condescending NRI / PIO with an attitude (who according to me should have fought the battle on the same side as I).

Over time I learned to let that go too. I may not quarrel any more -- at my impassioned best maybe put up a feeble protest. But I will not accept this dictate. Ever. I'd rather face rebirth as a lower avatar in my next life, than say "av - uh - tar". So what if it is now an English word with an English pronunciation? I'm no orthoepist but I'm of the opinion that words can be pronounced as per their original phonetic structure, even after they've been adopted by another language and adapted (mauled might be more accurate) to suit the marauding language's phonemes. Have the French stopped pronouncing words like penchant or accoutrement or bête noire the French way and embraced the American pronunciation for such words? If they have Gallic pride, don't we have Indian pride?

Be that as it may, I've given up fighting the dictional war over avatar. But there's another war that I am still fighting and shall continue to fight for as long as I have to. It is about preserving the spelling and pronunciation of the Indian name "Gandhi", which has been coming under increasingly strong pressure lately to morph into "Ghandy". I have vowed to fight it through dictional didactics -- I shall correct every written or spoken instance of "Ghandy" that I come across, anywhere in the world and anywhere on the world-wide web, by teaching the concerned author or speaker the correct spelling or pronunciation as the case may be. Not so much out of respect for the man we've all been brought up to revere as the Mahatma, but more out of a sense of outrage that my compatriots who may happen to be closer to the source of the error either don't care or don't seem to be pushing back. Or pushing back hard enough.

I'm quite certain that people who've learned to spell and pronounce Javier Perez de Cuellar and Dag Hammarskjold can also learn to spell and pronounce Gandhi correctly, if taught to do so. My anger is not directed against them. My anger is directed against Indians who don't think it is important to educate their friends from other (predominantly first world) cultures about the pronunciation of Indian names or words from Indian languages. These are mostly the same Indians who modify their own names to make them more user-friendly to the English-speaking world, or, worse still, just adopt the nearest American-sounding name. (Side note: in my case, Westerners tend to mistake my first name for Herman, when written, and Eamon or Hammond, when spoken. But I'm usually quick to point it out and to help them with a mnemonic -- getting them to say "hey" and "month" in rapid succession till they get it right.)

These are also the same Indians that disparage other Indians who don't get the pronunciation of names like, say, McMahon or names of places like, say, Worcestershire. I use a rather colourful expression to refer to such sub-species of Indian origin but I'd rather not reproduce here in full. It consists of 3 words: the first two are 'Cocky Caucasian' and the third word is the unprintable one. (Hint: it is a hyphenated word, referring to a person who fellates men, and alliterates wonderfully with the first two words.) And if you've got that right you'd know that's not a racial slur against Caucasians; it's an obloquy aimed at the obsequiousness of Indians who think that cultural acquiescence brings personal acceptance (and who, in the first place, crave such acceptance by the first world). This is the problem: obsequiousness when facing West to interact with first world citizens; superciliousness when facing East to interact with their compatriots back home who haven't had as much exposure to the occident. Even if I could deal with the former, I find it impossible to reconcile to the latter.

Yet another reason for me to be pissed off with these Cocky Caucasian [unprintables] is that their sort of behavior plays so easily into the hands of the hard-core right-wing Hindutva bigots who are looking for every opportunity to oppose what to their eyes might appear to be a new avatar of colonialism or Western imperialism or religious proselytizing. Look at the way they react to St. Valentine's Day celebrations in India, every year. Why does this have to be a case of two extremes? One set of Indians with a zero tolerance policy towards other Indians imbibing Western culture, and the other falling all over themselves to get accepted by the West. We don't seem to be able to embrace diversity without it having to be a struggle to keep our cultural identity. A struggle that some think they win by digging their heels deeper into the quagmire of regressive morality (which they confuse with tradition), and others readily and willingly surrender to at the altar of acceptance by the West.

I'm all for cultural osmosis. When I travel, I love to soak-in the sights and sounds of the place, mingle with locals, speak their language if I can, or try to learn it, enjoy the local cuisine, and sing and dance the local song and dance. I'm not hung-up about where I come from or how different I am from the people I am amidst, nor am I scared of losing my sense of self by opening myself out to another culture (on the contrary, I revel in it, and it adds to my sense of self). When it comes to identity, "They can't take that away from me", to quote the lyric of an old song. And neither do I go to the other extreme by jumping out of my own skin and into one I was not born in. Or born with.

Cultural osmosis is a two-way process -- you learn some, you teach some. I learn the correct pronunciation of Dalziel and I teach the correct pronunciation of Gandhi. There is mutual respect. Everybody goes home enriched.

Why Does Benevolent Dictatorship Have To Be An Oxymoron?

2010-03-08T16:01:00.008+05:30

It all started with a link I shared on my facebook page a few days ago, to an article from The Economist on the US healthcare bill and the challenges before the Obama administration in getting the job done. In the comments that followed, we discussed the inability of democracies in general to take strong decisive action quickly, and how differently something like the healthcare bill might have played out in a place like China. Somewhere along the line the topic turned to dictatorships and I posed the question that forms the title for this post. My question sparked off a debate in the ensuing comments and that's when I thought that an open blog is a better place to have that debate than a restricted facebook page. But before I got into open debate on this subject, I wanted to conduct a small experiment. I wanted to find out if people thought about this question in the same manner as I did.

Could it be that my question is misunderstood to be an assertion that a dictatorship can never be benevolent? That's not what I had meant, but it occurred to me that if I had used the word "did" instead of "does" it might have given than impression. Could it be that the question as it now stands is being confused with another question -- one with "did" in place of "does"? I wasn't sure. So before launching into open discourse through this blog, I decided to test responses of people in general to the way the question might have been phrased. That test was carried out through a 'teaser' which I posted at my mini-blog on Saturday, inviting readers to respond with their interpretations of the two similar sounding questions. As evident from the comments on that post, most people understood the two questions in more or less the same way as I did.

One comment went directly to heart of the matter, undistracted by the main thrust of that post (which was to elicit subjective interpretations of the question) and undeterred by the instructions in bold type. And I agree wholeheartedly with that comment. In my opinion, the idea of a benevolent dictatorship doesn't have to be an oxymoron at all. However, there is no mistaking the fact that it has been one right through our troubled history. Our collective level of maturity (or lack thereof) as a species, up until our current stage of our evolution, has rendered it an oxymoron. This is a generalization, and of course, there will always be exceptions. If we look at the history of the world, dictators who were bad guys (the general rule) stack up way higher than dictators who were good guys (exceptions that prove the rule). And this has made 'fascist dictatorship' a pleonasm and 'benevolent dictatorship' an oxymoron. But does it have to be so? It is not impossible to envisage a future for mankind in which we evolve into more mature beings in this respect. A future in which dictatorships, if any, would generally be of the benevolent kind, and tyrannical despots would be the exceptions. This is my perspective for this debate -- I want to explore what makes us the way we are in the present, and what needs to change to make that future happen. It's really not about whether or not certain specific regimes in certain specific countries are or aren't benevolent dictatorships, and if so, what that proves or disproves (though my facebook debate did tend to go down that path).

To me the crux of this debate lies in understanding the turn in the grain of human nature that makes (most) people behave differently when they acquire power. This is not just about dictators. This is also about people who become hugely successful in a short period of time, and therefore experience a kind of empowerment that they had never experienced earlier (much like dictators when they seize power). Abraham Lincoln once noted: "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power" (to which I'd append "or give him overnight success"). And then we have that old adage: Power corrupts and absolute Power corrupts absolutely. It seems that the tendency for moral standards to drop when intoxicated by the power to realize any desire of one's choosing is a well known and widely accepted attribute of human nature as we know it today. So what makes this happen?

Anyone who has just recently come into a position of authority would remember their experience of the rush -- the heady feeling of wielding power. This is as valid for dictators and political leaders as it is for other individuals in civil society (businessmen, artists, athletes, etc.) who are suddenly successful and who achieve fame and recognition overnight as it were. The knowledge that one enjoys an unprecedented amount of power, which gives one the ability to exercise one's will on a range of issues (each of which has a greater impact on more things) does indeed produce an intoxicating feeling. In my opinion, this state of mind is triggered by two twin driving factors: the removal of constraints and the availability of choices. However, this comes with a price tag. The freedom to do pretty much as one wishes, coupled with the empowerment to make those wishes a reality, brings its own complexity.

I recently came across an interesting article that quoted Clay Shirky (a teacher, consultant and writer focused on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies) who in his keynote address at a conference, said "Abundance breaks more things than scarcity does. Society knows how to react to scarcity." Highly insightful, to say the least, and in the context of studying the psyche of a human who is suddenly empowered, it helps understand the mindset of someone who all of a sudden has before them an abundance of choices around just about anything within their purview and no explicit accountability to any specific authority other than themselves. Coupled with the fact that their sphere of influence and control has also rapidly expanded in a short time, this significantly raises the level of complexity that the mind has to deal with. This creates tremendous anxiety as a talk on TED that I watched some time ago explains.

The ability to deal with that anxiety is predicated by two main pre-requisites: intelligence and maturity. Intelligence enough to recognize the choices, analyze possible responses to situations, understand the implications of each response, and so on, and the maturity to recognize the responsibility implicit in each action, and most importantly, the maturity to be rooted in a value system and to maintain its robustness as the incumbent grows into the position of power. This is where most dictators (and many instantly successful people) have failed. This is what makes them anything but benevolent as they grow more and more powerful. And therefore, this is what has made benevolent dictatorship an oxymoron, generally speaking.

Of Opposites, Continua and Love

2010-02-13T21:26:00.010+05:30

Opposites, sometimes, are not really what they purport to be. We take the opposite of X to be Y but in reality X and Y form a continuum. The thing that is really in sharp contrast to that continuum turns out to be Z, which stands orthogonally to the duality of X and Y. If that's too much math for a Saturday night (especially on the eve of Valentine's Day), let me make my point through a simple example: black and white might be understood to be opposites, with shades of gray forming the continuum between one extreme and another, but it is colour that really distinguishes itself from the black-gray-white continuum. We find that this applies in other cases as well.

We take atheism to be the opposite of religiosity / faith (in God), but even atheism involves belief in something -- it is a committed position at one end of a continuum defined around theism. Atheists are not sceptics, they are believers: they're convinced that there is no God. Theirs is an assertion of non-existence, not a challenging of existence. Agnostics on the other hand keep their minds and their options open. They do not take any specific position on the question of existence of God. Some might choose to adopt a 'don't know / don't care' attitude, but others, who do care, know that they will never know for sure, since they forever live in doubt. These are people who can never abandon reason to take the 'leap of faith', and, paradoxical though it may sound, may not even commit to being sceptics or rationalists. Such is the nature of doubt, that in its quintessence it turns on itself ipso facto. The presence of doubt is the absence of faith. It is the asking, challenging, will-not-accept-as-given nature of doubt that causes it to disable belief and faith. Doubters are never sure: they live in a world of uncertainty and will always be suspicious of anyone with strong convictions about anything.

We take hate to be the opposite of love, but both love and hate exist on the same emotional plane. They form a continuum of consummate passion at the extremes, that tends to result in behaviour that is generally viewed as irrational and/or unpredictable. Economics, on the contrary, studies the rational and predictable behaviour of participants in free markets. It deals with needs and wants and demand and supply and, assuming rational actors, predicts the behaviour of markets under various circumstances. It presupposes a clinically dispassionate (if not cold-bloodedly detached) approach to exchanging surpluses for deficits in order to fulfill needs or wants. This is the very antithesis of love. When you love, you don't track levels of demand and supply to arrive at a pricing strategy. You don't try to gauge which one of you needs the other more and then go on to determine where your negotiating leverage might come from. You don't think "What's in it for me?" and you don't expect stuff in return. Whether it is your child, your parent, your sibling, your partner, your lover, your friend, your country, your community, your club, your god, your cause, your car, your pet iguana -- in love, you give out of the sheer joy of giving. Whether your love god is Eros, Philia, Storge or Agape, you so revel in loving a particular person/ place/ animal/ thing, that you are scarcely conscious of your own needs and you don't care how much of your self and your resources you're giving away. Supply is seemingly immeasurable, perhaps infinite, even though Demand may at best be marginal if not altogether non-existent. You don't think of the consequences of that giving. You don't think of where it puts you vis-a-vis the loved one, in the context of the political dynamics of the need for emotional fulfillment and the kind of power-play that it quite often involves. What really stands in stark contrast to love, therefore, is detachment. Not indifference, but detachment of a certain kind: the kind that enables a political assessment of the economics of need. This is something to think about over this Valentine's Day weekend, as we celebrate love.

Just as the continuum of theism-atheism is to doubt, so is the continuum of morality-immorality to amorality. Just as the continuum of love-hate is to dispassion, so is the continuum of charity-cupidity to self-interest. Those who want to save the world must rise above all of these continua -- above the polemics of climate change evangelism versus denial, above the arguments of religious fanatics and materialistic consumerists, above the debates between altruistic social workers and avaricious profiteers. Saving the world needs serious work. It needs an open and questioning mind that remains free from the predilections of moral/ religious beliefs and passionate/ missionary zeal. However, freedom from belief should not mean complacent agnosticism, but the relentless search for knowledge without biases. Similarly, freedom from passion should not lead to apathy or indifference but should foster sensitivity towards the right kind of concern: a concern for ourselves and the world we live in, and the future of our children and our children's children and the world we bequeath to them. Perhaps this needs a fifth kind of love god to symbolize it, that the Greeks didn't think of.

The Lesson from Seth Godin's Post

2010-01-11T19:10:00.012+05:30

I read Seth Godin's blog quite often and over a period of time have come to expect that with each post I would learn something new, or gain fresh insights into stuff I was already aware of. I am usually not disappointed -- at worst, I might find a post or two to be about a business or a market or an industry that is far removed from mine or that I don't understand, and so less engaging. However, his last post (reproduced below in its entirety) was quite disappointing -- not in the sense that it was dull or uninteresting or lacking in gravitas, but in the sense that it was misleading, if not wrong.

The lesson from two lemonade stands

The first stand is run by two kids. They use Countrytime lemonade, paper cups and a bridge table. It's a decent lemonade stand, one in the long tradition of standard lemonade stands. It costs a dollar to buy a cup, which is a pretty good price, considering you get both the lemonade and the satisfaction of knowing you supported two kids.

The other stand is different. The lemonade is free, but there's a big tip jar. When you pull up, the owner of the stand beams as only a proud eleven year old girl can beam. She takes her time and reaches into a pail filled with ice and lemons. She pulls out a lemon. Slices it. Then she squeezes it with a clever little hand juicer.

The whole time that's she's squeezing, she's also talking to you, sharing her insights (and yes, her joy) about the power of lemonade to change your day. It's a beautiful day and she's in no real hurry. Lemonade doesn't hurry, she says. It gets made the right way or not at all. Then she urges you to take a bit less sugar, because it tastes better that way.

While you're talking, a dozen people who might have become customers drive on by because it appears to take too long. You don't mind, though, because you're engaged, almost entranced. A few people pull over and wait in line behind you.

Finally, once she's done, you put $5 in the jar, because your free lemonade was worth at least twice that. Well, maybe the lemonade itself was worth $3, but you'd happily pay again for the transaction. It touched you. In fact, it changed you.

Which entrepreneur do you think has a brighter future?

Like many other famous and popular bloggers, Seth Godin does not provide his readers with a window to comment on his posts, presumably because moderating and responding to a large number of comments can be too tedious and time consuming. Be that as it may, I found I had a couple of things to say with respect to this last post, and since there was no space for comments, I decided to come back to my own space where I am monarch of all that I type, as is my usual wont in such situations.

Let me tell you which entrepreneur I think has a brighter future: I think the kids behind the first stand have a brighter future. Now let me tell you why I think so. For one, they provide a reasonably good product at a reasonably good price, and deliver it fairly quickly through efficient processes -- all good and highly desirable business values in themselves. Secondly, because their entire delivery cycle moves fast, they are able to cater to more customers within a shorter time-frame. This gives them more throughput, higher volumes and a better top-line. The second stand delivers an experience that is described by Seth Godin over 4 paragraphs (as compared to the modest description of the experience at the first stand, within a single paragraph). Is such an elaborate and if I may use the word - enchanting - experience really something that a lemonade consumer is looking for? Well, perhaps 1 in 10 customers is (my guess). Now do the math, and while you're at it remember that a dozen people drove past the second stand because it was taking too long.

Lemonade is not a high-touch / high value-add product. It does not need an elaborate conversation with the consumer to understand their needs or their pain points. The scope for innovation is anywhere between zero to very little, even for a highly ingenious entrepreneur. Expectations are fairly well understood on both sides of the lemonade dispensing table. If the point being made is about user experience and the perception of value and stuff like that, then lemonade is not the best choice to write a customer delight story around. On the contrary, this could almost become the story of how not to hype-up a mass-market commodity product by building fluff around it.

I'm not saying the second stand is doomed to fail. I'm saying that the second stand caters to a niche market, and should locate itself in a neighbourhood where there are abundant target customers -- those 1 in 10 who: (a) have a lot of time on their hands (b) don't mind waiting in a queue to get what they want, rather than settle for something else which could be procured faster (c) prefer hand-made lemonade, which is made at the appropriate pace at which good lemonade should be made (d) attach a lot of importance to the beaming countenance, graceful bearing and joyful spirit of the individual behind the stand making the lemonade, and finally (e) like to pay, of their own volition, an amount of their own choice which is commensurate with their own assessment of the value they got from a transaction. I'm sure such customers exist, and in fact, other than Seth Godin who walked away 'touched' and changed by the experience, I could be one of them myself. But then where are the volumes? Even to generate the volumes needed to make this a viable business proposition, the second stand would have to have enough smarts to locate the right neighbourhoods where such niche markets exist and are as yet untapped. If I were a VC, I'd invest in the first model and not the second, though I may give my business to the second more often than the first, circumstances permitting. Not that I am betting on the failure of the second, but that I am betting on the success of the first. There are more people who are not like me (and Seth Godin), and the people who are like me (and Seth Godin) are in a hurry more often than I am (not sure about Seth Godin). C'mon - this is lemonade we're talking about, not high-end consulting or private banking or haute couture, where exactly the opposite argument would no doubt hold. Different horses for different courses!

There's a phenomenon that I'd like to call the comedian's momentum trap. When you are watching comedy your mind is already set to 'laugh' mode. You feel your mood lifting within the first few seconds, and a feeling of levity seems to come from nowhere and pervade through you. A few really good jokes are all it takes to build the momentum of laughter. Soon you're holding your sides, tears rolling down your cheeks ... all that. The momentum of this is so strong that even a weak joke will get more laughter out of you than it deserves. If someone else cracked the same joke in a stand-alone mode or in some other context, you'd have found it barely risible and it would have just fallen flat. I think Seth Godin's readers arrive at his blog with a similar 'momentum' -- a momentum of expectation, of the momentous. So just about anything that is posted there is seen as great insight and gets retweeted and delicioused and digged, just like all other posts.

I wonder whether Mr Godin would realize at some point that the real lesson from his blog post is a little different from the lesson he hopes readers will take away. Well, it was, for me. Ergo this post.

"It Won't Happen" - Why Justifying Investment in Prevention is a Challenge

2009-12-12T20:28:00.003+05:30

Whether we are dealing with risks to our health or risks to the continuity of our business or risks to the safety and security of our society, the age-old wisdom of prevention being better than cure is easy to recall but difficult to cost-justify. Even when there is adequate evidence that points to a statistically significant probability that disaster may strike us, most people would rather spend time, energy and even money, sometimes, on debating the need for investing in preventive measures. People on the side of the debate that call for investments in prevention would be treated by those on the other side of the debate as alarmists, and would be challenged to prove not only that it is highly likely that a disaster of the type they are anticipating could happen, but also that it would wreak the kind of havoc they are forecasting it would. These are the people who would bet good money that it won't happen, and lose, rather than invest the same money on preventive measures. Typically, these are also the people who benefit from the status quo, and who therefore would resist changes that acceptance of the likelihood of disaster would entail. In the context of climate change, these would also be the people with vested interests who would spend a lot of time and money on climate change denial and avoidance, because accepting the reality of climate change would mean far more changes to their business models than they can handle.

The current 'best practice' approach on disaster management is broadly stratified into 4 'levels' that deal with strategic and tactical planning, and implementation of various types of measures and countermeasures. These levels are: Prevention, Containment, Mitigation and Recovery. To a rational mind, it is fairly logical and self-evident that you would first try to prevent a disaster from happening, and if you just can't prevent it you'd try to restrict any damage that might be done to as narrow an impact zone as possible, try to minimize the damage done even within that narrow impact zone, and try to recover the situation and restore normalcy to the extent possible, as quickly as possible. Attempts to tackle disasters at any of these 4 levels need careful planning and skilled execution, and cost money. While investments at all 4 levels have their own pay-offs, the best RoI comes from investments at the level of Prevention, as opposed to the other 3 levels. It is not difficult to see why, as the following example illustrates. For a marathon runner, a fractured leg (resulting from some accident, let's say) even when mended will never be the same again. In the case of this athlete, money spent on averting the accident that resulted in the broken bone will pay back far more than large sums of money spent on post-accident treatment (which, incidentally, may not even ensure a full return to pre-accident normalcy). The problem is that such wisdom usually occurs in hindsight, and for the most part the athlete is likely to believe that it won't happen, simply because believing that it might happen would mean investment in Prevention, which in turn would involve too much of a change in lifestyle as also an outflow of cash.

If planned and executed properly, preventive measures can be quite effective in averting disasters. In all likelihood most people would not even be aware that a disaster could have struck them but was successfully prevented. And that is precisely where the problem lies, in terms of justifying the investment. When successful, preventive measures don't even let you know that they have delivered results. Most people would barely see the ghost of the disaster looming over them, if at all they do, and then disappearing - it would barely be a blip on the smooth surface of their daily routine. Only a few would know anything about the magnitude of the disaster that was averted and how close they came to being hit - and these would be the people who are closest to the apparatus that monitors the leading indicators of the disaster and triggers / oversees the preventive measures that should kick-in. Other people would, over a period of time, when the public memory of the disaster that never struck has faded, sceptically ask as to why so much is being spent on prevention. The ones who confidently bet that it would not happen will continue to believe that it hasn't and that it never will, while the few in the know will try to point out that it almost did, on at least one occasion, and is likely to happen again in future - and would promptly be called alarmist. And the same debates would continue.

By very definition, investments in Prevention will not tell you that they are working for you. If indeed disaster does strike, in spite of preventive measures, then it points to the underestimation of the probability and/or the scope and impact of the disaster, or else the effectiveness of the preventive measures. In such cases a common mistake would be to consider the investment in Prevention to be a waste. ("What's the use of spending so much if it had to hit us anyway" would be the line that sceptics would take.) Quite to the contrary, investments in Prevention should be directly proportional to the cross product of probability and impact. If it did hit you finally, and hit you badly, it most likely means that you got the probability and/or the impact wrong. (Of course, other reasons could be failure of execution / technology, but again that would most likely be due to inadequate investments.) And now it is the turn of investments at those other 3 levels - Containment, Mitigation and Recovery to work for you and deliver returns on those investments. However, even if they do work out as planned, they will never take you back to the way things were just a moment before the disaster struck. There is no resetting to normal, once disaster strikes: there is only adapting to the 'new normal' - a term that comes into vogue in the aftermath of a disaster, as it has in the wake of the global economic crisis.

Prevention works at the fork in the path of reality unfolding around the disaster - at the point in the eternally streaming flow of cause and effect, where things could turn left and towards disaster, or turn right and away from it. If the preventive measures are effective, things will take the right turn (quite literally). To justify the investment beyond doubt, you have to go back in time to the fork, as it were, take the other route to the left, and witness the alternative reality. Unfortunately, the laws of physics, as known to mankind up until now don't permit time travel. And so you have to settle for conjecture and speculation as to what might have happened, and whether the investment was worth it - there would never be any solid proof that it was. In science fiction, concepts like the 'Butterfly Effect' and movies like the Terminator series explore the possibility of going back in time to specific moments, where the outcome of a single seemingly insignificant event changes the course of history. The need for investment in Prevention would be obviated only if and when such time travel becomes possible in our real world, and not before. As of now, there is no going back - the only hindsight allowed to us is foresight. Which is why we need to make sure that we get this sustainability thing right the first time around. There will be no second time, and no world to get it right in, if we don't.

The Wisdom to Know the Difference

2009-10-13T10:48:00.085+05:30

As a child in school, I used to make silly mistakes while solving problems in subjects like Mathematics, Physics etc. Typically, I would work out the solution but at the very end do something stupid (the equivalent of adding 2 and 3 to get 6) and get the final answer wrong. I vividly remember one of my teachers admonishing me once, and urging me to focus hard on the problem till it was fully solved and resulted in the correct final answer. "Life gives you no marks for wrong answers, even if your approach and method are correct" he declared in the soft but authoritative tone of a mentor who has seen a lot in life. "Remember, it is all about the final answer!" he added, with an indulgent smile, eyes twinkling benignly behind the thick lenses of his spectacles, and a slight wag of his index finger. It was a lesson I had to learn the hard way, and a very useful lesson that has helped me in confronting and overcoming many challenges in life. Many. Not all. Definitely not some of the more complex ones - the ones, for example, dealing with human relationships in the face of adversity, where there is no "correct final answer".

On the sports field of the same school, I kept hearing this one homily: "It's not about winning or losing, it's about playing the game to the best of your ability." As I grew older, I noticed that they typically said this to those who came second (or third) in the race. Winners are seldom told this; they are only congratulated and given a medal. I used to get quite confused by what appeared to be mixed messages, to my impressionable and naive mind, and I was too young to even identify the source of my confusion. All I could see was that it was the trophy, bright and shiny, that everyone coveted - be it for academic excellence or sports, and the system was set up to award medals and prizes to the one guy who topped the class, and to make everyone else want that, somehow, anyhow. While I could see why it had to be that way in some cases, I wondered why this seemed to apply to just about everything else in life.

As an adult, I have come to recognize the boundaries of the simplistic models we sometimes use, in our naivety, to understand, describe and deal with the complex challenges of life. Life is not a mathematics test and nor is a 100 meter sprint. Both of these have a beginning and an end, simple rules and clear targets to achieve, and a finite number of possible outcomes. Yes, life does consist of situations that closely resemble either an exam or a game or both, but it also consists of other situations that really don't. It is essentially our need for cognitive fluency - our resistance to complexity that makes us force-fit all situations into a zero-sum model. Life, on the whole, is just not a zero-sum game, but we make it look like one because it makes it easier for us to handle. And that's where we make the mistake that Einstein cautioned us against with these words of advice: "Make things as simple as possible but not simpler". The zero-sum model is neat, simple and lays out clear rules for winning and losing, and so we go ahead and use that as the basis to model all human endeavour. In the sphere of education, all the systems we have set up for evaluating our children's performance are based on the zero-sum model. (Exceptions, though they exist, are too few to be statistically significant.) We have extended the ostensibly resounding success of this model into our adulthood as well. We wage war to resolve conflict, since war leads to decisive victory. We compete in free markets for market share and growth, edging out our rivals. All the systems we have created at work (performance measures, KRAs and KPIs, RoI, quarterly results) and at play (scoring goals, scoring runs, bettering the timing of the world's best athlete) are zero-sum models. Message: Achievement, not Effort, matters.

What we have not recognized is that this has resulted in creating a culture of over-achievers, as I have argued in a previous post. And a culture that silently encourages Jugaad, as I have argued in another previous post. If you can't win by staying within the confines of the rules of the game, then bend or break the rules so you can win. Because only the final answer counts. It is precisely this culture - of winning at any cost - that has led us, the human race, to the brink of collapse as evident in the 3 major global crises the world is still reeling under, as a glance at the global economy, the environment and socio-political landscape will testify. We are where we are, in each case, because a small number of over-achievers have been playing to win a zero-sum game, to meet their own narrow goals. Zero-sum is the reason why we use wars to work out conflicting needs between two groups of people, instead of trying to achieve congruence of different agendas through negotiation and diplomacy, in a spirit of partnership, tolerance and mutual respect. The bravado associated with winning wars, the drama, the romance, the glory ... all make us pooh-pooh earnest attempts at a peaceful positive-sum resolution, which the uber macho alpha prime male stereotype would mock at as the approach of wimps. On the contrary, it is war that is the refuge of the weak, as the strong will only look for peace.

Few events in recent world history have brought out the contrast in these two approaches (particularly in the area of global diplomacy / foreign policy) more starkly than the two Presidential campaigns in the United States last year. We saw the conservative business-as-usual approach, albeit with some modifications in a few areas, and the "other guy's" strategy that was radically different, since it was based on inclusiveness - an intent to actively engage with allies and a willingness to negotiate unconditionally with adversaries, even with those that were historically considered to be enemies. It is not as though the latter is unprecedented in the history of the United States (or of the world) but to a lot of minds, caught up as we were in the panic of the crises of our current time, and in part due to the outrage expressed by the incumbent Party, it seemed like a revolutionary approach. When Obama was elected President, I considered it a testimony to the American people's resolve to adopt a dramatically different position on the world stage and to actually lead other countries and communities to a world of peaceful co-existence. However, reactions from most people - Republicans as well as Democrats, Obama's supporters as well as detractors - when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace, have led me to believe that Americans elected him President simply because they thought he was the only guy who could save them from the financial mess that his predecessors had left behind - essentially a domestic issue. It wasn't really a mandate to him to go implement his vision of world peace, as I realize now. Sadly, a significant proportion of the American population displays a "don't know / don't care" attitude towards the rest of the world, not realizing the long-term impact of that attitude. Several political analysts and commentators have been criticizing Obama in the last few months for having "apologized" to the world for America's hubris and imperiousness in the past, for trying to build bridges with the Muslim community, etc., claiming that such moves have diluted the leadership position of the United States. It's a pity that they do not realize that what he has been trying to do, in fact, is to restore the U.S. to its former position of glory, but in a way that is different from what their simple, zero-sum minds have been trained to think.

Leadership comes with privileges, no doubt, but it also comes with accountability. Americans must realize that if they expect their country to lead the world by the same democratic principles as they expect their President to lead their country, then they must acknowledge that their country is as accountable to the rest of the world as their President is to them. This includes responsibility for world peace, considering America's position as a military mega-power and its hegemony in most other areas 'that matter'. And this peace cannot come by taking an "us versus them" approach (where quite literally, "us" = "U.S."), which for several years has been the fundamental plank on which American foreign policy was built. Obama's most significant contribution towards world peace has been in initiating moves that are already shifting the "us versus them" paradigm, and this is not something he started working on only after he became President. When it comes to world peace, there is no exam, no top score, no super-bowl, no tape at the finish line to breast ahead of others and no final answer. Peace is characterized by the absence of conflict, which comes from the de-escalation of tension, which in turn comes from the birth of hope among affected parties - the hope of working out a win-win resolution. Positive-sum, not zero-sum, outcomes. And again, there is no finality to it, no single event or milestone, the accomplishment of which can qualify as having achieved world peace forever. War is different from peace, in this respect. Start World War III and you will get a final answer - the end of the world, and nothing can be more final than that. On the other hand global peace is like nirvana: you continuously work towards it but you may never attain it. But that doesn't mean you give up your effort. And so it all comes down to effort and attainment.

The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to several people, including, as Rachel Maddow painstakingly points out in this video clip, some whose efforts towards world peace have ended in failure (Woodrow Wilson / League of Nations), some whose efforts did not bear fruit till several years later (Desmond Tutu / ending of apartheid in South Africa) and some whose efforts have yet to make any significant impact to disrupt the status quo (Aung San Suu Kyi / democracy in Myanmar). Why then single out Obama? After my initial post at my mini-blog on Friday, a few hours after the news about Obama's Nobel Prize broke (during which few hours I valiantly and more or less single-handedly defended the decision in various debates - actually, diatribes - that erupted on mailing lists and social media), I thought it prudent to back off a bit, let the dust settle over a couple of days and wait for second thoughts from observers, analysts and commentators. I would expect that Obama supporters, at the very least, look for the silver lining in all this, like Michael Moore. Especially if they are American, to whom my question would be: "What are *you* doing to support your President?"

Meanwhile, Elinor Ostrom and Olive Williamson were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics. Since I did not know enough about them or their contributions, I decided to do some research. "Let's find out who these people are and what the heck they have DONE to deserve this award, considering that they haven't achieved anything by way of ending the global economic crisis", I said to myself sotto voce, parodying the same line of reasoning that critics took in challenging the Nobel Peace decision. Interestingly, I found an article by Ostrom titled "Governing The Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action", which addresses the classic Prisoner's Dilemma in game theory, and which also carries a paragraph that starts with:

"Changing the rules of the game to turn zero-sum games into non-zero-sum games may be one way to describe the arc of civilization for the past 8000 years"

I smiled as I read that, since a lot of this is pretty much the kind of thinking underlying the core values and principles that my little fledgling business venture is based on. I even have a downloadable FAQ (right click to download) that talks about playing to win versus playing for win-win (on Page 4, in the answer to the last question on Page 3). My own solution to the Prisoner's Dilemma has always been to stay silent and take the least cost approach for both parties taken together, and I've always wondered as to why on earth anyone should want to exercise any other option. Most economists expect that the "rational" decision of an average human would be to betray the accomplice, which is an indication of how deeply steeped in zero-sum thinking we all are.

I shall end this rather long post (and thanks for staying with me till here) with my own paraphrasing of the Serenity Prayer - Dear Lord, grant us the capability to win zero-sum games, the skill to negotiate a win-win in positive-sum partnerships, and the wisdom to know the difference. Amen to that!

Staying On Top: The Challenge to India's Leadership in Off-shoring

2009-08-28T13:38:00.041+05:30

In a recent (August 2009) article in the McKinsey Quarterly (accessible by clicking here, and then clicking on the shortened URL link mentioned in the archived tweet), Noshir Kaka et al. suggest that Innovation will be a critical success factor for India to maintain a leadership position in the globalized business / technology services industry. Here's an extract from that article:

Indian business and technology services companies needn’t stand by passively and watch their global market share decline. Innovation will be the key to maintaining and even expanding their market share. Business models that continue to focus on low labor costs won’t suffice.

While it is true that 'business models that continue to focus on low labor costs won't suffice', in August 2009 this cannot be a epiphanic revelation! This is yesterday's news, not thought leadership. Most companies foresaw this many years ago, and (as the McKinsey article suggests) turned to Innovation (among other strategies), hoping to leverage it to create a sustainable competitive advantage for India as a destination. All Indian industry majors have been chanting the Innovation mantra since then. (Show me one Indian company of some standing in the global business / technology services space that does not lay claim to 'Innovation' as its key differentiator, several times over, at its web-site or in its brochures.) Several companies have been relentlessly trying to institutionalize Innovation in everything they do, in a bid to maintain their market share in the face of competition - from within the Indian market as well as from companies based in the other BRIC countries (and their corresponding regional neighbours in Latin America, Eastern Europe, Asia / South Asia / South-East Asia) and also emerging destinations such as Egypt (and, potentially, other West Asian / African countries). However, the very act of institutionalization makes it a replicable commodity, just like any other 'best practice'. Which means others can do it too.

My comment to the article (not visible at the site at the time of writing this post) is reproduced here below, and what follows subsequently is an elaboration of the rationale behind my argument and an elucidation of my point of view on the subject.

India's competitive advantage (beyond wage arbitrage) has always been scale and process maturity. Other destinations simply cannot match the ability of Indian companies to offer large pools of talent to dip into (in terms of breadth as well as depth), or to ramp-up their teams quickly. Besides, a lot of non-Indian companies are still struggling with the challenges of managing process quality in very large projects. However this is not a sustainable competitive advantage. China has the potential to match and surpass India's strengths in terms of both scale as well as process maturity, given the size of their literate population and their culture of rigour and discipline (which is being applied even now, for example, to learning English as well as learning large scale process management). But other than China, there aren't too many countries that represent a real threat to India. Innovation is a buzz word, in my opinion, and though this may sound counter-intuitive, it is a fairly commoditizable and replicable attribute. It does not represent a sustainable competitive advantage. Talent pools from the countries / cultures that presently constitute off-shore destinations (or aspire to join the club) are equally good or bad at learning, practising and delivering on the promise of innovation. There is nothing unique about Indian ingenuity that makes Indian talent intrinsically and significantly more innovative than the average knowledge worker in, say, China or Egypt or Eastern Europe or even Latin America!

Clients based in North America and Western Europe (the predominant 'buyer' markets) have been tapping into India as a destination for well over a decade, and by now have a good understanding of the issues and opportunities that India represents. They know where the trade-offs are: while on the plus side, as I have argued, India offers a wider range of skills, better scale and better process quality, the down-side comes primarily in the form of higher attrition, greater geographical distances and time-zone differences, cultural incompatibility and to some extent lack of infrastructural robustness. Attrition can be a major problem for clients who have invested time, cost and energy in transferring knowledge. Secondly, while it is true that India enjoys the advantage of a large educated and English-speaking resource base, one must also remember that cultural compatibility is not just about being able to speak in a common language (which itself is debatable in the first place, since a lot of the knowledge workers who originate from smaller towns in India cannot really boast of fluency in English, not to mention American colloquialism). Thirdly, while time-zone differences of up to 12 hours do offer the advantage of having someone, somewhere, working on a project 24x7, they do not solve the problem of logistics (when professionals on either shore need to travel great distances to the other shore) and the problem of disrupted daily routine (when professionals on either shore need to be on conference calls at odd hours in their working day).

Comparatively, Central and South American destinations are closer, by way of both time-zone compatibility (in terms of virtual meetings / conferences) as well as geographical proximity (in terms of travel), for North American clients. The same goes for Eastern Europe in the case of European clients. Also, clients find better cultural compatibility in dealing with teams in those destinations, and business communication between client and provider teams is relatively easier and smoother. Language barriers are not significantly higher than when dealing with India, and in some cases may even be lower. Also, attrition is comparatively much lower in most of these destinations. The only disadvantage these destinations have is in terms of skill mix, scalability (especially in terms of ramp-up time) and process maturity. And that is where India has been scoring. Of all competing destinations, China is the only one that has the capability (not to mention the will!) of outstripping India on these fronts. Through concerted efforts in strengthening infrastructure (power, telecoms, etc.), in fighting attrition, in broadening and deepening the pool of trained and qualified professionals, and in imparting cross-cultural and soft-skills training to its resources (a la finishing schools), India can hope to keep the No. 2 slot if / when China overtakes India (may just be a matter of time). Perhaps this is a more pragmatic goal for India as an off-shoring destination.

That said, the opportunity for Indian companies to maintain their leadership position lies not in trying to fight the up-hill battle of keeping India as the most preferred destination. In fact, it lies in not confining themselves to India as a destination. Again, this is not an epiphany - in fact it is not even news. Most of the top-tier India-based service providers (including those founded by Persons of Indian Origin) have already started the process of building (or in some cases, consolidating) 'near-shore' hubs in Central and South America, Eastern Europe and other regions. A few have done this through organic growth, but most have done so through acquisitions of stake in local players, to whom Indian companies offer stability, scale, leadership in process maturity and access to other markets, in return for a better presence in the local / regional market, a ready local client base, and the ability to provide a multi-locational offering to their global clients. Leading Indian companies have already figured out that globalization is no longer about staying in India and offering ITO / BPO type of services to the world, as clients have increasingly started demanding lower attrition rates and flexibility in terms of location and time-zones, over and above range of skills, scalability and process maturity.

India as a destination will lose its leadership position in a few years - at the very least, the gap between India and other destinations will start closing rapidly (it already is) as they ramp-up and start competing. Innovativeness is not a special gift that is unique to India-based talent pools and believing that it is so can at best be termed as misplaced patriotism (at worst, it is a kind of jingoistic denial of reality) on the part of Indians. Innovation is a great value proposition and I am not suggesting that it should be abandoned altogether (especially because others will start offering it too!) The smart thing to do, for service providers of Indian origin, is to focus on developing a global delivery footprint (not just sales offices) and the ability to provide the right mix of capability, capacity (i.e., scale), team stability and cultural compatibility, and process excellence, at locations preferred by the client - on-site / off-site / near-shore / off-shore. And as the adoption of globalization shifts to the mid-tier client base, focus on forging strong partnerships with clients to achieve the distinction of becoming an extended team. Cultural compatibility and responsiveness to changing client needs are key. Innovation will just be a hygiene factor.

[This is not really a blog post]

2009-08-27T09:50:00.004+05:30

Seriously, it isn't. I am just testing Disqus ... I hope it works now. I've been trying to get it to work, and I pride myself on a little more savvy than the average user (what with my techie background and all that - so what if it was in a bygone era?) but installing Disqus and getting it to work has been a major challenge.

If this works, you should be able to leave a comment - as a Disqus user, as a Facebook user, as a Twitter user, or with your OpenID, or just plain anonymous, with Name and email address.

Help me test this if you will. Thanks!

Notes on Lead/Follow Models

2009-08-07T17:18:00.014+05:30

All this "mass un-following" on Twitter recently got me thinking once again about the concept of following (and its antonym, leading), which I have been pondering over for some time now. But before I jump into the main subject of this post, let me complete my train of thought around Twitter's methodology to make social connections. Twitter's use of 'following' is a misnomer -- all it signifies, really, is an asymmetric connection where the unidirectional vector of 'interest to connect' may point either from someone to you, or, to someone from you. However, some people take 'following' in Twitter quite literally and tend to imagine that they could have a large band of 'followers', like the fan following of a celebrity, if they did things right. Earlier in the hype cycle of Twitter, users evolved a de-facto social protocol of following those who followed them -- a polite gesture to maintain the symmetry of the connection, based on normal social etiquette. Then came the 'auto-follow' tools like Twollow that did this automatically for you. As Twitter's popularity grew, and grew explosively, this has led to a culture of gathering followers arbitrarily, just so one may boast of a large following. Several services in the Twitter ecosystem promise tweeters a quick way of getting hundreds of followers, while tools like Twitalyzer measure one's 'success' as a tweeter using parameters like influence, clout, etc., which are a function of how many followers one has, among other things. Be that as it may, on to my main point in this post.

It seems to me, to my simple and lay mind (which hasn't been trained in social anthropology or whatever category this falls under in the taxonomy of things), that there are 4 types of what I'm calling the 'Lead/Follow' model -- four ways, broadly speaking, in which the idea of leadership and following could find a workable implementation in a society or a group of people. I am outlining them here, in the order of 'least evolved' to 'most evolved'. Please note that this is not about right and wrong, or about good and bad -- I use the word 'evolved' in contrast to the word 'primitive'. Humans are more evolved than aardvarks, who in turn are more evolved than cicadas, but that doesn't make us better or more morally righteous or give us more rights (though, sadly, some people seem to think so).

The most basic of all Lead/Follow models is based on fear. You find this in a command and control hierarchy: leaders assume positions of authority, seize power and command their followers and control their behaviour. The idiom here deals with 'orders' and 'obedience'. The leader makes sure that followers remain afraid so that his/her orders and directives are obeyed. Followers do not have a right to think independently or develop their own opinions, much less voice them. If they do, they will be summarily excommunicated from the regime (or worse: executed). This is a sustainable model when followers also expect to be ordered and led in this manner and consider this to be the natural way of life. Examples: fascists like Hitler and Stalin, marauders like Genghis Khan, and corporate bullies like Microsoft and others of their ilk.

Then there is the model based on respect. People follow a leader because they respect the individual, and the leader makes sure that he/she earns the respect of followers so that rules and regulations promulgated by the leader are adhered to. Leaders are appointed to positions of authority and persuade their followers to accept their proposals and expect their compliance. Followers have a right to develop independent opinions, and are expected to voice them without fear. However, the final decision remains with the leader, and after followers have had their say, decisions are made (which generally take important opinions into account) which are binding, even on those who do not agree. Followers who do not conform are frowned upon and invite the scorn of others. This is sustainable for followers who consider this to be a fair and reasonable way of organizing their society. Examples: democratic leaders like Barack Obama, religious leaders like the Pope, and companies like Google.

Beyond respect, there is inspiration. People are not required (much less compelled) to follow such a leader, but the leader inspires them through discourse, with the power of their ideas, insights, vision etc., and their unique and original thinking. Leaders usually do not officially hold positions of authority, but mobilize their followers to move towards a certain goal, and followers voluntarily embrace the goals and ideologies of their leader. Where they disagree, they question and argue with their leader. The leader in turn welcomes questioning and argument, and in some cases may even use discourses in which there is intense debate, as tools to refine their own thought process. When people simply cannot agree, they agree to disagree without being disagreeable. Followers remain free to disengage at any time, if they are not comfortable with the norms (quite often implicit) that govern their system. This is sustainable for followers who zealously guard their right to independent thought, but are motivated and moved by their leader. Examples: visionaries like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. and innovative companies like Apple.

And lastly, there is the model based on sharing. This is not really a Lead/Follow model (or alternatively, one may call it a sublimated Lead/Follow model), since everybody's a leader and everybody's a follower, in different spaces and/or at different times, but all together and all at once. Here one imagines society as a loose network of peers, where members share ideas, thoughts and opinions with one another as equals. There are no fixed positions of overall authority, though some may hold authoritative positions on subjects of their expertise. People do not consciously aim to influence other people -- they just share their ideas and thoughts as they collaborate with others in a spirit of partnership. In turn, other people may be influenced by those ideas and may draw on them to further improvise on the theme or to develop related ideas of their own. Platonic dialogue resolves contradictions or disagreements around an idea, and is seen as a way of enriching and evolving ideas, as different from establishing one as prevalent over the other. Conflicting interests are resolved through negotiation towards a positive-sum (i.e., non-zero-sum) outcome. There may be some who seem to (statistically) influence others more often, but such individuals desist from taking on 'leadership' of the group in the conventional sense, and in fact eschew the idea of others 'following' him/her. This is only sustainable in a society of people who have transcended the need to find a leader to follow, and who believe in self-regulation towards the common good. Examples: 'non'-leaders like J Krishnamurti and Lao-Tzu and the open-source movement.

The amazing thing is that all 4 models co-exist in the world as we know it today, though not necessarily in harmony. While an average person probably represents some mix of these four models, there seems to be one model which is their 'home', where they are most comfortable (could also be in the overlapping area between models a step away from each other). Then there are the outliers, who represent an extreme implementation of one model, with very little or no overlap with neighbouring models. The trouble starts when people whose memetic DNA (the metaphorical 'grain of wood' of their home model culture) of one type mingle with those whose memetic DNA is essentially different. Value systems vary significantly across these 4 types, as is perhaps obvious, and people who come from one home model would find it difficult to succeed in another. A typical follower from a fear-based model would be quite lost in a sharing model, since it would be impossible to find a leader who evokes fear and is always in command. Under such circumstances, smart folks try to adapt and fake it while they can, but in the long run, it is evident as to who they really are because it shows.

You know who you are. I do.

"In Praise of 'Jugaad'"... Wait! Really?

2009-07-15T15:52:00.047+05:30

In an article in The Wall Street Journal, Ms Devita Saraf extolls the virtues of Indian ingenuity and proposes Jugaad as a concept that Indian enterprise should leverage in order to be globally competitive. I recognize that there's a chance that you, dear reader, may not know what Jugaad means, in which case I would recommend that you find someone who knows the Hindi vernacular well enough (including colloquialisms and slang) and get them to explain to you its full meaning, since I would be digressing significantly if I were to go into it here and now. (My guess is that you will know it anyway by the time you've finished reading this post.) Jugaad is not a new concept -- at least, not in the Indian IT industry, and that I can assert confidently. In my by now rather longish career, I've worked for (or with) several companies where the sales force openly specialized in Jugaad tactics, and veteran salesmen took great pride and pleasure in narrating their Jugaad war-stories after work, at their favourite watering hole, to bright-eyed tyros who would give their left index finger to be able to emulate them. In fact one company used to unofficially (but affectionately) refer to its PC sales division as the "J-segment", since Jugaad was what really seemed to work in that fiercely competitive market.

I've never been impressed by cunningness, clever lies, cheap tricks and other forms of prevarication and prestidigitation in business. Jugaad has been something I've sought to be as far away from as possible, managing to successfully evade it through most of my career on the 'sell' side of the market, barring perhaps a few exceptions. (Let me add that in those exceptional situations I always strove to retain my professional integrity even at the risk of earning my team-mates' ire for being, from their perspective, a party-pooper. But that was not enough to stop them from tricking unsuspecting customers or suppliers or alliance partners.) And while on the 'buy' side of the market, I've generally been a Jihadi against Jugaad. As a buyer, I've developed a nose for all forms of chicanery, sophistry and subterfuge over the years, having been on the other side and having had a ring-side view of the metamorphosis from the 'sudden brilliant idea' stage to the parasitic feeding off the budget of the hapless customer -- I smell such creepies and crawlies from a mile away, and tend to promptly squash them before they could get under my skin and disrupt my plans.

This is not to say that I am against out-of-the-box ideas to overcome typical constraints faced by Indian industry / business. I wholeheartedly support clean and honest ingenuity and innovation in, for instance, applying modern tools and technologies to solve India's unique problems through effective low-cost solutions sourced from local providers and drawing on locally available resources. (While on this, I want to add that I do not see this as 'insular' as Ms Saraf suggests -- I still believe in the nascent post-independence doctrine of self-sufficiency as the platform for development and growth of the Indian economy, but unlike Nehruvian socio-economists, I would advocate that it be coupled with liberalisation and international trade in relevant sectors.) There is no question in my mind that the indigenous development of 'appropriate technology' solutions is a highly beneficial strategy for India. The same goes for original ideas and innovative management thinking around challenges in the way we organize and conduct business in India. I have in fact always lamented the lack of focus on these areas in our technical / higher education curricula, and lack of adequate impetus to / funding of research aimed at developing indigenous solutions, in Indian educational and research institutions. Some of the examples cited in the article are great testimonials to Indian ingenuity, and exemplary models worthy of replication and emulation not just in India but any other geography or economy where the basic underlying approach could be ported. But there are some areas where ingenuity is clearly not to be encouraged (e.g., 'creative accounting', regulatory compliance, etc.). The problem with Jugaad as an overall inspiration to strategy is that it is an omnibus category that includes all of these ideas and does not exclude the bad parts (such as deceit, trickery and evasiveness). Jugaad clouds ingenuity with disingenuousness.

Online WSJ requires you to register and log-in, in order to be able to comment, and while I usually get discouraged to comment because of this, I made an exception this time since I thought it was important that readers of Ms Saraf's article also see things from a different perspective, i.e., mine. My comment is reproduced here for your benefit, to save you the trouble of searching for it at the site.

Good post! Thanks for sharing some very interesting insights on Indian ingenuity, which, arguably, is unparalleled across global industrial and business cultures. However, I have a couple of concerns about Jugaad, which I shall attempt to crystallize around two focal points:

1. 'Jugaad' could easily become another word for 'adjust' - an English word that is used in a totally different sense in India. While it means different things to different people in different contexts, the common thread running through all of those is the ability to 'make do' with the situation and 'somehow manage' to meet your goals. It can be a positive thing sometimes (for instance, when we learn to accommodate and tolerate some inconvenience, with a larger good in view) but quite often, it becomes synonymous with either compromise or poor quality or unfair means - or any combination thereof. We must be cautious, in according official sanction to this approach, to not sweep all of these overtones into the same box. Frugal engineering is a good, healthy, positive spin to put on Jugaad, but only if we mine the 'ore' of the broad concept, get rid of the unwanted and toxic sludge, and refine the valuable part (i.e. the part dealing with value addition through innovation out of constraints) of the core concept. If we are successful in doing that, India could actually create her own unique methodology aimed at gaining competitive advantage in the global economic value chain across all industry.

2. Notwithstanding the above, and from a different point of view, where are environmental considerations in all this? Are Jugaad strategies green? Does Jugaad provide an opportunity for sustainable competitive advantage? Unfortunately, the path of socially responsible ecological economics is not easy, in that there are no short-cuts. Instead, there are some really tough trade-offs to be considered and hard decisions to be made. Jugaad sometimes also becomes synonymous with short-cuts, as explained above. But if Jugaad strategies also result in sustainable wealth creation, then they are more than welcome. If not, even if they are ethically sound practices, we must first check if they are also 'clean and green' before we deploy them.

To summarize, my mixed feelings about Jugaad centre around the potential for breach of ethics and the absence of environmental / ecological and social considerations. While I am excited by the potential of Jugaad - to become our next national slogan, if you like - I am equally concerned that official endorsement of it may become a license to unscrupulous businessmen to continue indulging in malpractices with even more gusto. Let's remember that the myopic tactics followed by some sections of the global financial services industry, which eventually led to the global economic crisis, were also a form of Jugaad. Such tactics were innovative, perhaps, but they were also toxic, as time has shown. And non-sustainable.

Thanks for your patience with my rather lengthy comment!

While the article does acknowledge, towards the end, that 'it needs some serious work on two fronts ...' before the idea of Jugaad can be embedded in all Indian business thinking, it does not address the concerns I have outlined. On the contrary, the two fronts it says it needs serious work on, are (both) in the nature of further advancing the concept as it exists, without any cleansing or sanitization along the lines I have suggested in my comment. I really hope Ms Saraf pauses to factor-in relevant inputs from the comments and makes the necessary tweaks in her ideology before further developing the 'Jugaad-as-the-way-forward-for-India-to-become-a-superpower' theme. Otherwise, the glorification of Jugaad just might result in business folks of questionable integrity smirking to themselves, thinking: "Heh. Jugaad is cool - even the voices at the top say it is. So what if it is not always above board or not sustainable? It is now official!"

I have my fingers crossed, but am not holding my breath.

Sense and Sustainability

2009-05-09T18:25:00.000+05:30

In an earlier post I wrote: “I would advocate Responsibility over Opportunity, Assimilation over Growth, Pace over Expediency, Sustainability over Efficiency, Quality over Quantity, Wisdom over Knowledge / Intelligence.” I did not specifically elaborate on this then (I had already written too much, and knew I was going to be writing more in that post), and that left me with the feeling of a job half-done. Also, the more I thought about it, the more I felt the need to document these values and principles as the basis for a framework for development of a doctrine of professional ethics that we could teach in our B-schools (refer my post below) and within which, in a broader context, we could build a better life.

As I propose these value and principles, I do not have the audacity to believe that this is a radically new stream of thought, nor that this will create a new world order. Yes, there is always the 'audacity of hope', but I do not have the audacity to compare myself with the author of that phrase and the eponymous book. At the very least, however, I will say this - I plan to follow these principles more consciously (and conscientiously) going forward (not that I haven't been doing that till now, but a framework provides structure and improves the quality of implementation). If I am lucky, I will be able to impart these values and principles to my children and/or others who seek my counsel. To the rest of the world, I can only hope to share these thoughts and offer them, modestly, for discussion and debate.

So here goes …. (a summary is posted at my mini-blog)

Note: The principles, as appear in the heading of each paragraph below in the format "(x) over (y)", are to be read as "Value and prioritize (x) over (y)" and "Let (x) govern (y)". It does not mean that per se (y) is bad and undesirable, but that there is a higher good over (y) and that is (x), and that (y) should not be pursued at the cost of (x). Business schools today are mostly focused on encouraging (y) and seldom, if at all, even mention (x) as a priority. And never as a governing principle over (y).

Responsibility over Opportunity – We value opportunity and that's nice. We want to seize opportunity, and that's OK too. But up to a point. Beyond that point, we need to have a sense of responsibility that would govern the impulse to exploit opportunity. The irresponsible exploitation of opportunity can never be a good principle to embrace. Sir Edmund Hillary, when asked what motivated him to climb Mt. Everest, responded with the famous epigram - "Because it is there". We cannot afford to apply the same idea to opportunity, however. Let us learn to be responsible in seizing opportunities and not exploit them recklessly just because they are there, and just because we can.

Assimilation over Growth - We are always looking for growth, and that's a good thing. We want to grow, and fast. Very soon, we find ourselves chasing 'Big Hairy Audacious Growth', and at that point, we have already started to go downhill, from a long term perspective, though we may not realize it immediately. We need to pause a bit, and assimilate the growth that we have already undergone, just as while eating our favourite food, we learn to eat moderately sized morsels, chew on them, and pause every once in a while. Gorging recklessly on food can only cause indigestion. A wise friend of my father-in-law (and a famous film personality) once told him (in Hindi, which I am translating here): "Eat less, eat more. Eat more, eat less". When asked, he explained this as follows - if you eat less, you can live longer and thus eat more. But if you eat more, you will fall sick and die a premature death and therefore you would have eaten less. Let us spend adequate time to assimilate the fruits of growth, as we grow towards a better world.

Pace over Expediency - Speed is good, and I love it. But speed can kill, as we realize soon. We tend to glamourize speed and impatience. There's a commercial on TV these days for a telecom carrier, that glorifies the 'impatient generation', which is constantly hankering for more speed and better response time. While better response time is a good thing in telecom and technology, the general glorification of speed and impatience sends the wrong message to an already misguided mind-set. There is a certain pace which works best for moving things along. Go any faster and you're already sowing the seeds of failure and destruction. We must learn to find the 'right' pace at which to do things. Einstein, when he was repeatedly called upon to explain his complex theories in plain English, said he could only try to "make things as simple as possible, but not simpler". If he simplified it beyond a point, then it wouldn't be the same thing. Oversimplification runs the risk of distorting the meaning of a truth till it becomes a falsehood. Let's apply the same principle to speed, albeit with some paraphrasing - do things at the 'right' pace, not faster. As to the question of what is the 'right' pace, there is no single answer, and life is too complex for us to create a heuristic that is universally applicable for all activities and all initiatives. Here's where we need to embrace the principle in spirit rather than letter. I can only suggest a broad guideline and that is - the right pace is the slowest speed at which something can get done. Any slower than that will not meet your goals. So, do things as slowly as possible but not slower. This is the polar opposite of what we tend to do - we look for the fastest speed at which we can get things done as per the dictum 'don't put off for tomorrow what you can do today and don't put off for later what you can do now'. I disagree. Do not clutter up your 'now' with things that can wait for later. There is already too much happening in the 'now'. Let 'right pacing' govern speed, for a better world. The 'slow' movement is a good initiative in this regard and I support it wholeheartedly.

Sustainability over Efficiency - Efficiency is great and we all seek it in everything we do, and especially so in everything others do, to which we become customers or users or beneficiaries of. We pursue efficiency relentlessly: 'cheaper, faster, better' and other synonymous mantras, chanted increasingly unthinkingly, have become de facto standard goals of business processes for any organisation - profit oriented or not. But the 'better' in that mantra does not always keep long-term sustainability in mind. And even if it did, the question I have is - sustainability of what, exactly, were you thinking about? I bet in most cases (of the few cases where 'better' includes sustainability) the answer (if it is honest) would be sustainability of the business. The scope would end there, and not extend to sustainability of life on the planet. Quite often, these would be in conflict. The most efficient engine in the most efficient car made by the most efficient automobile manufacturer through the most efficient production line in the most efficient plant, and supported by the most efficient supply chain and other processes, is not necessarily also the most sustainable. Let the principle of sustainability govern the quest for efficiency, for a better world.

Quality over Quantity - Thanks to science and mathematics, and the methodologies of sciences, we live in a world of numbers. Because management purports to be a science, it aligns itself with the compelling argument of measurement. If you cannot measure it, you cannot manage or control it. This is OK, since it is true to a large extent. But the pressure of this truth pushes minds to believe that if you cannot measure it, it doesn't exist! It is inconvenient for the sciences (including social sciences) to deal with stuff that cannot be measured. Pundits invent systems of measurement to support systems of management. They create scales for calibration, benchmarks for evaluation, etc., where the subject at hand does not intrinsically provide for a quantified analysis. They use proxies where parameters do not easily lend themselves for quantification. The weaker minds, unfortunately, confuse this with the truth. In a bureaucracy, if something is not backed by documentation and records, it does not exist. In the bureaucracy of modern management, the same is the case. While this may work in engineering, it doesn't work in education (e.g., grading systems). Or in management, beyond a point (e.g., performance measurement, balanced scorecard, etc.). Let us not confuse metrics for reality. Just as we have learned to value substance over form (in GAAP, for instance), we must learn to let qualitative aspects govern our quantitative anlayses.

Synthesis over Analysis (just added this) - taking the argument of quality vs quantity forward, and in the same vein, we have grown to value analytical skills highly, and are only now learning to value creativity and other 'synthetic' skills. Analysis is synonymous with breaking down; synthesis with putting together patterns and creating new stuff. That's where innovation and 'out-of-the-box' thinking comes from. But alas, innovation has become a buzz-word - copied and pasted on corporate web-sites from top tier to start-up. While analytical skills are good, and necessary in several fields and professions, we need to start focusing on other skills as well. Life and life's problems are not linear and simple. While our immediate spacetime appears to be Euclidean and our immediate physical world seems to be Newtonian, the real world is far more complex and chaotic. We can teach machines to be analytical, but we cannot teach them to be imaginative or creative or innovative. Experiments with computer-generated poetry or music (or other art) are instances of using arbitrariness (not to be confused with randomness - true randomness is beyond the realm of computers), to make sense. This cannot really be called creativity. Edward de Bono demonstrated the need for, and utility of, lateral thinking. But how many schools focus on developing minds in this area? Most schools and education systems teach students to solve problems (using analytical techniques) that are readily articulated and put before them. How many schools or education systems teach students to recognize and define problems in a given situation which offers no clues whatsoever as to what the underlying problem(s) may be? Let us increase our focus on the development of more creative skills, alongside analytical ones. (Here's a fascinating example of a completely 'out-of-the-box' solution to a known problem in health care. I don't think one could arrive at a solution like this through analysis.)

Contribution over Achievement (just added this too) - The single most prominent characteristic of modern man is his ever increasing need for achievement. While this is a good thing, going overboard with it is harmful. In earlier posts I have dwelt on the perils of over-achievement, and lamented that fact that we seem to have created a culture that worships overachievers by making them not just our heroes but our gods. We have yet to learn to ask what we have contributed, before we credit ourselves for what we have achieved. Contribution towards a better world is the biggest achievement any caring global citizen can ever aspire for. As opposed to achievements aimed at fame, glory and personal aggrandisement. We have to learn to care before we seek to achieve. Let the urge to care for, and contribute to, the world around us govern our impulse to achieve greatness.

Wisdom over Knowledge and Intelligence - Knowledge, they say, is Power. They also say that Power corrupts. However, they don't usually sequence these two sayings in the manner that I just did. To me, the second might as well be a corollary of the first. They also say, in jest, that specialization involves knowing more and more about less and less till finally we know everything about nothing. To me, this is the opposite of wisdom: wisdom is the discovery that there is more and more that we know less and less about, till finally we realize that we know nothing about anything. Our education systems are aimed at sifting the most intelligent minds, honing their analytical capability, bombarding them with knowledge and letting them loose on an unsuspecting world. Well, actually, a conniving world. Where is wisdom in all this? Where do we teach students the importance of insight and understanding? Again, the voice of the soft / subtle / qualitative is lost in the din of the hard / tangible / quantitative. If knowledge is power, let wisdom govern the use of knowledge and save us from abuse of the power that comes from knowledge and intelligence.

This is a rough draft, as a framework. I would love to know what you think, and would request your indulgence in leaving a comment.

Teaching the Ethics of Sustainability

2009-04-14T11:47:00.000+05:30

Yesterday, one of my twitter feeds brought me an interesting article posted at the Harvard Business blog, with the controversial title of "MBAs Cheat. But why?" I read the blog post with great interest, agreeing with most of what was being said there. Scrolling down a bit, I was intrigued by a comment made by Jim Champy, which essentially held the opposite view: that MBAs are less likely to cheat in business as compared to non-MBAs, and further suggesting that the global financial crisis was triggered by the indiscriminate unethical actions of sales professionals with different backgrounds, mostly non-MBAs. I commented on that comment, wondering where Mr Champy got that from, if indeed it was based on hard data, and speculating that his theory probably arose more out of personal prejudice than fact-based intelligent opinion. This morning I went back to see if my comment was posted and how it looked on the blog page (vanity!) and found several additional comments on various aspects of the original posts and its key submissions, as also comments on other comments. There seemed to be a fairly interesting debate on whether MBAs cheated more than other professionals, set in the context of what B-schools could or should do about this. While the original blog post made some hard-hitting observations, I thought that most of the commentators were dragging the debate down into anecdotes and statistics about which class of professionals cheated more, and this inspired me to post my second comment, which I reproduce here with some minor changes.

For a moment, let's park the debate on whether MBAs cheat more than non-MBAs do, together with all the anecdotal and statistical evidence within our collective body of knowledge that points one way or another. (I know this is a key element of Donald McCabe's blog post to begin with, but let's keep that aside for now, take a look at the bigger picture and then come right back to the role of B-schools in this context.) The trigger to this discussion, and various related discussions (here and elsewhere on the web and other forums) on ethical practices / behavior, has undoubtedly been the global economic crisis. So let's look at the big picture for a moment. I know that several root cause analyses have been carried out and various observations and recommendations propounded by various analysts, economists, industry experts, political pundits, academics and scholars, practitioners, financial / business journalists and bloggers. However, to my mind, one thing stands out clearly as the key driver to this situation, which I hereby name as the 'causal smoking gun' as one reader has dubbed it.

Over the years, we have created a culture of over-achievement in business and that has extended to everything else (including sports which is now big business). And we're proud of it: we worship over-achievers in every sphere and every walk of life. Over-achievement by definition means going beyond current benchmarks of achievement, beyond even 'stretch targets', to attain the impossible. Every era has a myth that drives leaders and star performers of that era, and in this era it is the myth of over-achievement. A close corollary (though not an intrinsic pre-condition) which is subtly understated (if at all) but well understood is that you can over-achieve at any cost if you're smart enough to get away with it. You then become a hero, who everyone will idolize. (Even athletes cheat, these days - if not for financial gain then to break records.)

If we think over-achievement is a good thing then so be it - there's no need for reform, in B-schools or elsewhere, and let's agree to live in a world where crises like these will happen repeatedly over time like all other cyclical phenomena. If on the other hand we think this is not a good thing, then let management thinkers and B-schools take the lead in determining how to change it. Clearly, I would throw my mite with the latter. I propose two key words to focus on: ethics (obviously) and sustainability (which is not necessarily derived from an ethical perspective). Ethics and morality tend to be deontological in nature i.e. they preach the doctrine of 'be good, do good' as an end in itself. This works best side-by-side with an accompanying culture of self-regulation, and if that is a successful dynamic then there is no need for hard external regulation. Sustainability is a bit different in the sense that it does not directly deal with 'goodness' in itself or by itself. Sustainability as a value or principle is teleological in nature i.e. it focuses on outcomes and advocates aiming at the larger and longer term desirable scenario. In extreme situations, sustainability may even require a temporary suspension of the ethical, when one is challenged to transcend the smaller / short-term definition of 'good' in deference to a larger / long-term 'good'. It is precisely because these ideas and concepts are soft and nebulous, if not vague, that such subjects need to be taught to students, and not just in B-schools.

The pursuit of sustainability as a guiding principle (the "North Star" in Mr McCabe's post) would deal with creating a normative framework where guidelines / norms / rules etc., are defined in the context of one simple question that must govern every strategic, tactical, operational plan and/or activity in business, and that question is - "Would this lead to a better, longer and more prosperous life for all of us on planet earth?" It is not necessarily about ethics alone - it is about survival and longevity. Teaching ethics is a good way to catalyze the process and inculcate the culture of responsibility and self-regulation. Clearly if we don't behave ourselves, someone (an authority) or something (a disaster) will make sure that we do, eventually. But a focus on sustainability as a broader idea (i.e., a concept much wider in scope than just the word might suggest - there's an ecological, a social and a financial aspect to it) in B-school curricula would certainly go a long way in avoiding disasters in the future.

Where The Mind is Without Fear - Rabindranath Tagore

2009-04-07T21:13:00.000+05:30

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake

My 25 Things

2009-02-18T17:40:00.000+05:30

I got this viral note from a friend on Facebook recently, which asks you to list 25 things about yourself - essentially factoids / trivia / minutiae, including aspirations, hobbies, habits, etc. You are then expected to post this on your Facebook page and tag 25 other friends. At first I ignored it but then one fine day I thought I'd give it a shot and see what comes out of it. So here're my 25 things - for the benefit of my non-Facebook friends.

1. My life is an open book, but that doesn’t automatically mean that I will let you read it.

2. I am still trying to understand the meaning of the complex number “i” (the square root of minus one). Frankly, I’m still trying to understand the meaning of “meaning”.

3. Five things I can’t live without – love, music, work (not to be confused with 'job' or 'career'), good food & fine wine, conversation.

4. I started blogging so that I could hone my writing skills but with every post, I become increasingly disappointed with the way it turns out. I have a long way to go, it seems, before I learn the art of crafting extraordinary poetry from ordinary words. Prose lends itself to the proclivity to be bombastic (I could have said tendency but I said proclivity – see what I mean?), and while I try to desist, I find it hard to resist.

5. I grapple with my ability to tolerate intolerance … and rarely succeed.

6. As a kid, I used to make model airplanes, ships etc. Some of my airplanes actually flew. My favourites were the gliders I made out of thermocole sheets – I enjoyed launching them from a height and watching them glide gracefully. Few things give you more joy than seeing something that you have created, actually work the way it was supposed to.

7. Some time ago I propounded my own version of the Uncertainty Principle – “It is impossible to simultaneously and precisely eat your cake and have it too, but you can come pretty darn close to doing so, if you’re lucky”.

8. I don’t drive. But strangely, I have implicit faith in the person sitting behind the wheel (though quite often, they are complete strangers), as I do in the nameless pilots who fly the aircrafts I travel in. This is perhaps the only real manifestation of faith that I have. When my son jumps down into my arms from a tree, he has the same faith in me. This is awesome!

9. I am always looking for opportunities to do absolutely nothing. This is not as easy as it sounds. Try it some time!

10. I learn a lot from everyone, especially from the ones I teach. Quite often, my most intense learning comes from trying to teach something I believe I know, to someone who doesn’t seem to understand. Some of my most momentous moments of epiphany have been in such situations.

11. One of my favourite quotes is from Tunda Kababwalla (a famous kabab chef in Lucknow). In a TV interview, he was asked why he had not started a franchise to expand his business. His reply: “Munafa utna hi ho jitna khane mein namak”. I understood that as: “Target only as much return (in business), as you would have salt in your food”. (I hope my Urdu is accurate!) To me, this was a lesson in moderation.

12. I am fascinated by the universe and everything in it. Especially women. (Kidding! Just thought I’d add that last part to make it funny in a Woody Allen-esque way)

13. Though I do not purport to be a believer, I pray often, because it teaches me humility.

14. My paradoxes don’t bother me as much as they used to: I’d rather be complete than consistent. Then again, I’m not a fan of inconsistency either.

15. Speaking of which, I’d rather be consistent and reliable than inconsistent and unpredictable. It is only those who are truly and intrinsically boring that are afraid of being predictable.

16. My paradoxes don’t bother me as much as my convictions do. But, over time, they turn into paradoxes, and then I am a bit more comfortable with them.

17. Some day I hope to be able to form a band that will play my favourite music and let me play along too!

18. Anyone with strong and deep-rooted beliefs (even if it is belief in the doctrine of faithlessness), scares me. However, I must admit that the zealously devout scare me more than staunch atheists do. It is only with the uncertain sceptics that I am comfortable, though I doubt I am one of them. (A wise wag once said – Always trust a seeker, but only till he finds the Truth.)

19. I have great respect for a few people – some for their vision, some for their character, some for their talent (as manifested in their work) and others for various combinations of these three great qualities. I am not so impressed with personality or charisma as an attribute by itself – if it comes along with vision or skill or character, then so be it, but stand-alone, it represents insignificant value to me.

20. Unlike John Stuart Mill, I’d rather be a contented pig than a dissatisfied Socrates. While Socrates is among the few people I have the greatest respect for, I’d rather not be him, if I have a choice. Ah to be a contented pig!!

21. I would love to travel the world (not on business, like I’ve been doing all these years, but as a carefree nomad). Places, people, cuisines, cultures, music, dance, art, architecture, tools, technologies, history … a vast ocean of enchantment.

22. I’ve always considered Invention to be easier than Discovery; Innovation easier than Insight; Building easier than Understanding. Which is probably why scientists are more intelligent than engineers!

23. My learning from relationships – Give more, expect less. But don’t give more than what you have and don’t expect less than what you deserve. (Works at the personal level as well as in business.) The toughest part is learning to deal with expectations – your own as well as your counterparty’s. Master that and your relationships will be successful.

24. I enjoy getting away from the hustle and bustle of the city to the open and wide country. I can actually hear the absence of the ‘white noise’ in the background of all urban spaces, and it is the most beautiful sound. It feels like a load has been lifted off of you, and you are light and alive. (To those who don’t know what I am talking about – I can only liken this to the fragrance of the first rain on dry earth, which I am sure you can relate to.) Now ... if only those places had broadband!

25. I’ve always empathized more with Hector than with Achilles, and more with Karn than with Arjun. It is easy to be brave when you have been blessed with the protection of gods, which makes you almost invincible. Be a mere mortal and fight your battles yourself! Here’s a quote on bravery from the movie “Kate and Leopold” (yup, the chick flick with Meg Ryan et al.): “The brave are simply those with the clearest vision of what is before them – glory and danger alike, and notwithstanding, go out to meet it.”

26. (Bonus) I didn’t realize I had 25 ... correction 26 ... things to say about myself till I started with this list.

Slow Down! Quick - Before It Is Too Late!

2009-02-10T16:42:00.004+05:30

A few months ago, I was visiting a friend who lives abroad and over the weekend that we spent at his place, we got into several interesting debates about a wide range of subjects. On one such occasion (I can't recall the context or the trigger for this discussion) my friend, a man of great erudition, experience and intelligence, talked about the progress made by Man, passionately asserting that it was all good in the final analysis, and that we need more of the same, and faster. I argued that the history (as well as the current state) of the world is not something one could be proud of, since several bad things have happened too over the last several millennia. More so in the last couple of centuries. While he agreed with that my friend predicted with conviction that at some point in the near future, mature change agents -- in the form of individuals or institutions -- will initiate and lead transformation programs on a global scale that would wipe out (or at least mitigate) the bad stuff and enhance the good parts. I, on the other hand, had a different view.

First, I was clear that I would not use the word progress in a general and context-independent sense while describing Man's journey to date. I believe it would be accurate to say that we have made progress in some areas (as long as we confine ourselves to the narrow boundaries of those specific areas, in isolation, without looking at them in totality) but we have been increasingly destructive in others. In my view, the net effect of all Man has done so far is value zero. And I do not share the optimism that the force of human goodness (even if quite plainly, it may boil down to nothing but the survival instinct) would be strong enough to correct our mistakes, solve global problems and set life on the planet on a happy and positive course. I would like to think and hope that it is true, but I do not share the conviction that it will happen. Not that I am a pessimistic doomsday pundit either -- just that I choose not to speculate about how and where the world might end-up, given the way things are going and at the speed with which they are rushing there. That said, my main point of issue was not about whether good would triumph over evil. Instead, it was about whether more / faster 'progress' as currently defined and understood, was indeed a solution. My view was that explosive growth is not progress; only responsible growth could aspire to deliver progress in the true sense, and this cannot be hastened beyond a point. Responsibility towards the larger interests of Mankind requires consideration and contemplation on the part of actors before they act, and that requires time. I would advocate Responsibility over Opportunity, Assimilation over Growth, Pace over Expeditiousness, Sustainability over Efficiency, Quality over Quantity, Wisdom over Knowledge / Intelligence. However, our value systems (as evident through actions, not words) are exactly the opposite. Sadly we have created a culture that rewards "Big Hairy Audacious Growth" and worships the over-achievers who deliver it, as heroes. How many of these heroes, beating their own narrow (but seldom straight) paths to profitability, have stopped to think whether they were creating toxic assets? or toxic pollutants? Or, having thought, have they cared? The few soft voices that call for socially and environmentally responsible behaviour through regulation and moderation are drowned in the melee of quarterly results and market up-ticks.

Later, as I pondered over this particular discussion, I was increasingly convinced that the 3 biggest crises threatening the world today: (1) the global economic meltdown (2) the global environmental deterioration and (3) the world-wide breakdown in security -- have but a few common root causes, all of which have to do with what we have been taught to call progress. All 3 of them have, in some way shape or form, arisen out of an unbridled need, of some rogue individuals/ groups/ organizations/ nations, for achievement of their own self-interests and progress of their cause, which in turn is nothing but complete surrender to the gods of "More / Faster". But this is not new -- the history of human life on earth is full of stories of such behaviour on the part of a few who were either wealthy or powerful or both. What is new is the empowerment of common people, thanks to which small groups or even lone individuals, anywhere in the world (and a far more populous world, at that, compared to even a century ago) can perpetrate such actions; what is new is the scope of the impact their actions can have in terms of geography and number of people affected; what is new is the speed with which these actions can trigger chain reactions across the world. This is new because of the extreme inter-connected-ness that exists today, unprecedented in the history of human civilization. And this is because of technology - the same technology that we keep inventing and putting to much good use in other areas. Where there once was the knife (which, even then, could be used to chop vegetables or to kill people), there is now nuclear power (which could be harnessed to provide electricity or to make weapons of mass destruction). Knife to Nukes: the story of evolution of tools is also the story of evolution of weapons of destruction. So much for "More / Faster"! These mantras, chanted by almost each and every one of us, almost every day of our lives, have overheated the world's engine. The milk of human kindness has begun to turn sour. In each case, of the 3 crises, just one single idea -- the idea of moderation -- could have averted our headlong plunge into disaster. The argument that self-interest in its purest form is adequate to ensure that we will not destroy ourselves, is very weak in the face of the overwhelming evidence of greed, apathy and intolerance underlying these 3 big crises. This argument is predicated on a sense of maturity and responsibility, leading to self-regulation that should go along with self-interest, but which is conspicuously absent in the various actors that have precipitated and are continuing to exacerbate each of these 3 crises, even as you read this.

I was reminded of this discussion with my friend and my post-discussion pondering, as I watched the news on BBC this afternoon. It featured an interesting story about a new note that was played just today, in a concert that has been playing continuously since 2001 and will continue playing non-stop till 2640. Yes, you got that right - its a 639 year long concert, composed by the late John Cage in the late 1980's. The John Cage Organ Project in Halberstadt, Germany set out, on September 5, 2001 (his birthday) to play his composition "As Slow As Possible". Apparently, when he composed it, he did not specify as to over what period of time it should be played. So the folks in Halberstadt decided to play it, on an organ that was built in the year 1361 (which happens to be 639 years before the year 2000, at the time they were planning this project), for another 639 years. I was intrigued when I learned about this and was also reminded of a related idea, called the Long Now, that I came across some time ago as I was aimlessly surfing the web. It encourages people to think in the very long term, and The Long Now Foundation has built a clock that measures time over a much larger scale than, lets say one year per year. In a sense, the Halberstadt project is an excellent example of a "Long Now" concert - playing a composition called "As Slow As Possible" on a 648 year old organ, over the next 630 years. The Foundation, in their own words, "hopes to provide counterpoint to today's faster/cheaper mind set and promote slower/better thinking". A little more research led me to the Slow Society, whose key message is - eschew speed and embrace slowness, for sustainability. And then on to In Praise of Slow by Carl Honore, who inspired Oprah Winfrey to experiment with living without e-mail for a month, according to a recent news item on CNN which also, by a strange coincidence, I came upon today!

(In the interests of brevity, I have resisted the urge to elaborate further on the virtues of 'Slow' and 'Long Now' thinking, and would therefore encourage you to click on the links above and read a little more about the 'Slow Movement'. Yet another site worth a visit is The World Institute of Slowness and its connected site Slow Planet. You will find more links to related resources at some of these sites.)

Self-interest is good. It is also all we have by way of a valid, legitimate motive to seek a better life. But it must be tempered by self-regulation, based on responsibility (if not duty), moderation (if not restraint) and pace (if not slowness). Unregulated and immature self-interest will only lead to excesses, extremism and blind speed, which could be catastrophic not just to those who act out of it, but to the whole world. It is time we woke up to the realization that the human race is currently set-up to go nowhere, really fast. Speed kills, in more ways than one. It makes far more sense to lead a richer life at a slower pace than a dangerous one really fast! For one, it will ensure longevity for all of us, as also for our planet.

"Next Is What?"

2008-12-01T13:40:00.000+05:30

I generally try to keep my blog posts light, short, and if I can manage it, funny. Not this one. I feel heavy and dark in the aftermath of the terrorist attack in Mumbai last week. For me, this was a déjà vu of the '93 bomb blasts that I was fortunate to have survived. (I was in my office, interviewing candidates to recruit for my BOLT team when the first bomb rocked the Stock Exchange building.) Like others, I have been feeling anger too - not just a passing annoyance or mild indignation, but a deep, visceral kind of rage, the kind that manifests itself not in a one-time tempestuous outburst of temper, but in wave upon wave of wrath. At first, I was furious at the sheer audacity and impunity of the attacks on November 26. Over the next couple of days, as I kept checking the news every few hours across half a dozen channels waiting for the nightmare to get over, I started getting increasingly pissed off at a whole bunch of people - the politicians (for their negligence: allowing national security to be compromised while playing their power games) the news media (for being insensitive to the repercussions of their actions, in their frenetic competition to uncover the most startling facts, break the most sensational story and win better ratings) the celebrities and the wannabes (for most of whom this was a PR / photo opportunity) etc. Then there were the panel discussions, and there were all kinds of preposterous demands being made by all kinds of people including film and theatre personalities, corporate executives, college students, journalists, business tycoons and so on. Some called for a mass boycott of the elections, some called for mass tax avoidance by Mumbaikars, some called for carpet bombing of suspected camps in Pakistan, and some called for outright war!

I have been learning to let my raw anger settle within me, like tar inside a smoker's lungs, telling myself (and anyone else who might read my status update on Twitter or Facebook): "Hold your anger inside you. Let it sublimate into a constructive plan and let it propel you to take positive steps". It is Monday morning as I start writing this post, and the city is back to normal (whatever that means from now on - it can only be a 'terror-adjusted' normalcy). Some politicians have resigned, some are resigned to resigning and on some resignation has been thrust upon (to paraphrase Shakespeare). This had me asking myself, quoting the Samsung ad - "Next is what?" From the time the attacks started, I have not reacted except for status updates or a few choice comments on social networks, and forwarding some well-written (in my opinion) articles to friends and associates. I wanted to calm my mind, 'still my beating heart' and compose my thoughts as I developed my response to this situation. I think I am approaching readiness now, so I've started writing this post. Don't expect brevity, though I shall give it a shot. My line of reasoning, after a dull weekend speckled with a few bright moments of epiphany, developed around the following sets of questions, in the sequence presented here (fairly simple, really and I would bet that most people with half a brain would have gone through more or less the same questions, more or less in the same sequence):

1. What can we do to stop this once and for all? What is the root cause? What would a permanent solution involve?

2. While we try to find a permanent solution, it is likely that such attacks will continue. How do we manage to protect ourselves each time we are attacked? How do we mitigate the impact of such attacks? How do we recover quickly?

3. What can the common man do to help? What are the avenues for the average person to contribute in solving this problem at various levels?

First, the root cause analysis and the search for a strategic resolution that is both long-term (if not permanent) as well as wider in geographic coverage (if not global). To my mind, terrorist activity in the years after 9/11 resembles a global corporation that operates through a two-tiered distributed franchise model and has embraced the mantra 'think global, act local' (now a stale cliché in business circles). At the apex there seems to be a core group of like minded individuals - a virtual team that is not necessarily tied down by geography, that is responsible for (i) vision, mission, ideology development and evangelism (ii) sourcing of funds and financial sponsorship of strategic programs and tactical strikes (iii) infrastructure, technology / tools, provisioning and project enablement, and (iv) franchise management consisting of indoctrination / recruitment, skills training and deployment. The only major difference between this approach and that of say Yum Brands (KFC, Pizza Hut, etc.), is in terms of branding strategy: when it comes to terrorist networks, brands are amorphous and fluid - terrorists want to remain anonymous to the extent possible and therefore throw out as many brand names as they can, just to confuse the world, making some of them up as they go along, dropping old ones and creating new ones as new recruits and new franchisees enter their operating ecosystem. Some franchisees take on names and those names stick to them, and they are then banned or outlawed in their host country/ies. When this happens, it is not at all difficult for them to morph into another band of outlaws with a brand new brand name. The growth strategy of this global enterprise is to identify pockets of disenchanted but smart, enterprising and able-bodied young men, to stoke their anger and brainwash them with messages of hate (which is not difficult if those smart, enterprising and able-bodied young men are also poor, hungry and unemployed) and to get them to volunteer for missions and strikes, and then train them to deliver terror. The final aim is to destroy everyone who is not 'them' and terrorize those who survive their attacks into submission (conversion). By doing this repeatedly, in different places, they hope that the world will be left with people who either convert to their point of view / system of beliefs out of sheer terror, or die resisting. The core group may not directly get involved with routine business operations - autonomous franchisees are the delivery vehicles of the message, but they would certainly approve specific missions or projects for sponsorship, if not actually advocate, plan and direct them. Quite simply, they want to build a franchise network of the 'disenfranchised' in as many parts of the world they can.

To neutralize this omnipresent yet invisible and intangible network, one may wage war (unconventional war, of course, given the nature of the 'enemy'), or one may try the language of love and peace. It is unlikely that we will ever know which of the two will succeed, but let us think through the options. Personally, I am all for resolution of conflict through peaceful dialogue and negotiation. Not only is war a less civilized approach, but also war is expensive from all points of view (though some may argue that war can trigger economic growth). And this war - in this specific case - involves fighting a hydra-like monster (or Ravana, if you prefer): you cannot behead it one head at a time; you have to take out all its heads, all at the same time, and kill its very core, and that to my mind is an impossible task. I am sure many experts will differ and will assert that taking out just one bearded guy up in the mountains and perhaps a few of his evil cronies will neutralize this problem. Well, let them do that first. If they can. I wish them luck, but my money is on the franchise network that has already been created across the diaspora which, though geographically dispersed, is bound together by the teachings of extremism and the power of hate. No. If you want to take these guys out, you have take them all out - there are way too many of them - and all within a very short timeframe if not simultaneously, so that they don't live to fight another day. Let me go a step further, though I am now venturing into the realm of the ludicrous, and assume that we will be successful in eliminating each and every individual known or even suspected to belong to this network of terror, as well as its financiers. Even if we have done this, it will still not be possible to eliminate the 'meme' since the meme will stay dormant in history books and news archives and the hearts and minds of silent supporters, and will find manifestation again in another space and time, in the not-too-distant future (e.g., neo-Nazism / white supremacism). No, war would not work. To fight hate, we need an equally strong force - love. And if conflict is what 'the enemy' is spoiling for, let us respond with peace.

Love and Peace. Two words I grew up with back in the seventies, of which the Beatles sang many songs. If we were to go down that path, we would need the key western nations of the world to partner with countries like India and others, to jointly go to these guys and smoke the peace pipe. Is this possible? Or am I smoking a pipe with some other stuff in it? I am not sure, but my sense is that this is our only hope. Be that as it may, India could still try and do whatever we can by way of making it difficult for them to recruit disenfranchised Indians to their cause, by keeping its citizens (especially the pockets targeted for recruitment by the preachers of hate) more or less happy with normal life. It is important to remember that most volunteers do not necessarily buy into the grand vision of the core group or perhaps even understand it. But their immature, impressionable minds are fertile grounds to sow the seeds of hatred on the one hand and to impart a sense of purpose on the other. To the disenfranchised youth, the call of the fundamentalist preaching becomes something that gives their lives meaning, a cause they can espouse, an institution they can belong to, a group of people who respect and value them and who they can call their own. If they were not disenfranchised to begin with, they would be less likely candidates for a mission such as the Mumbai attack on November 26. Messages of love can counter those of hate. The more difficult it becomes for fundamentalists to recruit volunteers, the less potent they become. Love and Peace can help in disarming the terrorist apparatus, if not neutralize their agenda. ("All you need is love", "Give peace a chance"!) If our population is by and large enfranchised and happy, if children feel loved and cared for, if young men and women have a sense of belonging to the communities and societies that they are a part of, we would be successful in isolating the core group, who we could then work on, through a process of peaceful dialogue. While this sounds simple, I have no doubt that it is a humongous task. It would be imprudent to assume that we can do so in a short period of time, and to be content with this assumption. We must therefore prepare for a world where such attacks will recur, recur often and recur in different parts of the globe, while we work towards a world of peace and love.

Given that we may be attacked again, what do we do? In listening to the news reports over the last few days, I learned that there was adequate intelligence in the system, for us to have taken precautionary measures to safeguard against this attack, as also to respond to it (when it did happen) with rapid counter-measures. Where did the system fail? It could be that the people who were alerted and needed to act did not see this as a serious threat. It could be that they lacked the will to act. It could be that there were pre-occupied (justifiably or otherwise) with other matters that seemed more important at that time. It could be that they receive several such alerts every day and have grown insensitive to them. It could be anything (and I don't want to speculate on the more sinister possibilities). This needs investigation - it is always good to know what went wrong in the past. However, the bottom line is that each of the "it-could-be's" above needs attention, so that it does not become the reason for inaction in the future (including the more sinister possibilities). Let us consider a three-pronged approach to effective crisis management of terrorist strikes, consisting of:
- prevention of terrorist strikes (how to avert / deflect the occurrence of an attack),
- damage control of inevitable strikes (how to minimize the harm done to lives and property, in cases where the attack could not be averted)
- recovery, reconciliation and retribution in the aftermath of the event (how to restore 'normalcy', how to assess and come to grips with the loss of lives and property, how to deliver justice, learn from this experience and improve the way we handle such attacks in the future).

Prevention requires, firstly, that we have a robust intelligence network that gathers accurate information well in advance, assimilates it and passes it on to the executive authorities. Secondly, it requires that the people who receive such information are empowered to mobilize the various local as well as federal agencies that would be involved in implementing preventive measures. Thirdly, it requires that the agencies who are provided the information and directed to act upon it have access to the right kind of resources, infrastructure and tools which they are able to deploy and execute their mandate speedily. Damage control requires that we improve the efficiency as well as effectiveness of all law enforcement vehicles and our disaster management machinery. These agencies need to be properly funded and their staff appropriately compensated (so pay your taxes, please), adequately trained and equipped with the tools and techniques, and enabled through suitable infrastructure and processes to do their job. Recovery, reconciliation and retribution require that we improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our rescue teams, medical response teams and other agencies that provide relief to victims and their families. Our judicial system needs to be reformed so that we quickly bring justice where justice is needed. This would also send a message to potential terrorists that they cannot escape - we are not a soft target any more.

Which brings us to the last set of questions - what can each of us do to help? The ordinary citizen can contribute in many ways to produce concrete results in each of these areas. Peace marches and demonstrations and expressions of solidarity and resilience are great morale boosters, but we need more, and we need our anger and our energies to be channelled in other, more concrete constructive ways. Ideally, we should prevail on politicians, diplomats and policy makers to work with their counterparts in other countries and adopt a unified approach in peacefully neutralizing the source of terrorist threat through a process of dialogue and negotiation (i.e., try to solve the problem once and for all). Within each country or society, we could work at the individual, community as well as national level to embrace diversity, eschew bigotry and jingoism and achieve harmony with our brethren. India already has a strong secular culture - let's strengthen it and build on it. Our goal should be to not let any section of society feel discriminated against because of their culture or beliefs. As far as safeguards are concerned (i.e., reducing the probability and impact of strikes), at the very least we can help in creating a culture of accountability by constantly persuading the people we elect to take appropriate action. By building adequate pressure on those in power, it should be possible to get them to act on simple practical recommendations towards prevention of, control of, and recovery from terrorists strikes in the future, thereby making the world a safer place. So please vote, and please engage with your elected representatives to make sure they do their job and remain accountable to you. If they fail (regardless of whether they can't or won't take appropriate action), find someone else who can and will do a better job. If they fail too, then, if you really care, take on the mantle yourself. Be the change.

Across the Universe: Concerns about the Big Bang Theory

2008-09-13T17:03:00.000+05:30

The CERN experiment launched last week brought out a few concerns about the Big Bang Theory that I've been quietly nursing over the last several years. Since my day-to-day life at work or at play does not in any way deal with such things, I've had no option but to toss around my thoughts on the subject in the private silence of my open mind when "in vacant or in pensive mood". Now that the CERN thing happened and now that I have a blog, it gives me a window to vent and a place to vent at. But before I go any further, I need you to forgive me the weak pun on CERN / concern - it was unintentional, believe me (and if you missed it in the first place, please excuse my having pointed it out). Also, before I go further - this is not about how the $10 billion or so spent on building the Large Hadron Collider could have been spent instead on more deserving causes (e.g., hunger, healthcare, education ... the list is quite long). I am not saying there is no merit in that discussion: on the contrary, there needs to be some debate on the matter of prioritising the expenditure of globally available funds. However, this blog post is not about that. This is about the methodology of science and scientific research as currently practised, and issues about the integrity of the scientific community. So, for the moment, let's say it is worth $10 billion to find out whatever it is that we are trying to find out through the CERN experiment. (Like most research projects, the expected outcome is not known / not clear - they want to create a set of conditions, which they believe prevailed at the instant the universe was 'born', and then sit back and see what happens.)

First, let me deal with the issue of the veracity of the Big Bang Theory (BBT for short). From what I have understood so far, the BBT is still a theory. It has not been proven beyond doubt to be a 'fact' (benchmark: it is a 'fact' that the Earth is round, not flat). Over the last several decades, numerous scientists and scholars have attempted numerous other explanations and proposed them as coherent and credible alternatives. Most notable of these is Sir Fred Hoyle who together with his student Jayant Narlikar and others, authored the Steady State Theory (SST) and who, right till the time he died in 2001 did not accept the BBT (though most of the scientific community considered it a done deal by then). Over the years, the BBT has found an incredible amount of traction with the scientific community, which keeps finding more and more evidence that suggests that the BBT provides a reasonably robust set of explanations to questions on the origin of the Universe. And sadly, there does not seem to be adequate encouragement to upholders of SST and other theories - by way of resources, for instance, or even a platform of credibility, to prove or disprove theirs. For more on this, please read "An Open Letter to the Scientific Community", especially the last few paragraphs. It almost looks like the BBT meme is bullying all other competing memes out of existence. (To know more about the concept of 'meme', wiki it here .)

So what's the problem? Well - quite simply, the scientific temper does not tolerate bullying. When it comes to the quest for knowledge, if there is a doctrine I have learned to uphold above and beyond all else, it is this - let ideas be developed and be heard for what they are worth (even if nothing) and let them stand up (or not) to the strictest scrutiny of the sharpest and finest minds available at the time, before we accept them as valid (or not). For a theory to be accepted as fact, over alternative and competing hypotheses (e.g., heliocentricity vs. geocentricity), it must be proven to be true beyond all doubt; it is not enough to say "we have sufficient observed data that points to X being true". Finding "adequate" or "sufficient" evidence to "believe" that X must be true does not mean that X "is" true. It only means that there's a more than fair chance that it is true. Until, of course, it is proven to be false. The BBT is an instance in point: it stands on about 2 or 3 key premises which are backed up by observed data (e.g., Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, Hubble Red-shift / Expansion, etc.). Now, if those same phenomena could be explained in some other way (e.g., click here), that would take a substantial quantum of wind out of the BBT sail. In legal terms such observations may be termed 'circumstantial evidence' - stuff that is highly suggestive but doesn't prove anything conclusively.

Second, let me deal with the possibility that some 'secret influences' just might have made the BBT a far more compelling proposition to the minds of key influential scientists, than pure scientific investigation could ever do on its own. The history of intelligent inquiry into the nature and origin of the world around us is full of theories that were taken to be true till someone found evidence shattering those beliefs. Scientific inquiry is just one of many methods that human civilisation has used to understand our world and the worlds around us, and over the last couple of centuries Science has established itself to the rational mind to be the only credible and meaningful way to really know or understand something. It thus has its own sets of believers - good people who have faith in the premises and methods of Science - and its own agnostics and doubters. The same is the case with all other ways to knowledge including various schools of astrology, various religions, spiritualistic paths and other belief systems and practices. To the credit of Science, it has maintained the ability to question and correct itself when faced with irrefutable contradictions. But does this always happen? I am not so sure. Is there a sub-conscious belief system - religiously and/or politically motivated - underlying the process of scientific investigation that might have, at least in a few cases, sacrificed the unflinching search for Truth at the altar of Belief? Quite possibly so. We are all human and we all have our own predilections that might secretly influence what we consider to be our rational thought. It is perhaps as important to understand our minds, as it is to use those minds to understand the Universe. Let me elaborate on that a bit ...

One of the things the BBT does is to assert that the Universe had a finite beginning. In other words, the BBT says that in the beginning there was nothing and then suddenly there was the Universe. This sounds a lot like the first few lines in Genesis 1! At the very least, it suggests that there was a spontaneous prime cause (which has no cause that preceded it) - and raises the question of the 'metaphysical why'. Let me take a quick moment to go on a side-bar to explain what I mean ... there's the physical / mechanical why, which is answered by cause and effect relationships (e.g., why did the ship sink? because it struck an iceberg that tore a hole in its hull) and there is the metaphysical why, the answer to which involves something that may be understood to be an intention or purpose or a will, which only a sentient being could possibly have (e.g., why am I writing this blog post? because I want to express my thoughts on this subject ... or whatever other reason YOU, dear reader, think I may be writing it for). If the Big Bang were spontaneous (i.e. there is no prior physical or mechanical cause which effected it), then the only 'cause' could be will (God's?) or intent or purpose. The concept of a Universe that was spontaneously created (space, time, forces, fields, energy, matter, momentum) from nothing resonates really well with the Creationistic view of many religions that, one way or other believe that God created the Universe, and that too for a Purpose. Perhaps then, the teachings of these religions have taken such deep roots in the minds of some scientists that they lean in favour of the BBT without even realising their own predilections? On the other hand, the SST does not involve the proposition that the Universe had a finite beginning - to know why something happened, you needed to go further back up the causal chain, and to know that, go further back ... look for the mechanical 'why' ad infinitum. With the SST all you have is the mechanical why - no suggestion of purpose or intention, just continuous creation / evolution.

Lastly, there's the question of symmetry / balance / harmony of opposites. The human mind is trained to look for symmetry and when presented with the concept of a beginning, it tends to believe that there should also be the concept of an end. Similarly if there is no beginning then there may be no end. I am not sure what believers in the BBT have to say about the end of the Universe, or even if they have any clear thoughts on that part of it and if they do, how many of them are in agreement. Speaking for myself, I would be more comfortable with a BBT that also explained how the Universe would end, and found adequate evidence to back that up as well. The SST on the other hand, is more symmetrical. But let me hasten to add that I am not saying that this makes the SST 'better' or - Heaven forbid - makes it 'right' or 'true'. Just that it does have more appeal (to me) probably because of my Taoistic outlook on things. (See? I know where that comes from!) Of what use is a Universe that has a finite beginning, of which nothing can be said about its end (even whether it is finite and closed or infinite and unbound)?

I have no idea, but I am not going to pay 10 billion bucks (in any currency) to find out. Over the years, I've pondered a lot about the origin of the Universe and the fascinating workings of Nature with awe and wonder. And today, when I come across something I just don't get, despite hard attempts over a prolonged period, I smile quietly to myself and hum "... she moves in mysterious ways".

Cultural Xenophobia: The New Racism

2008-04-21T16:34:00.000+05:30

In my travels in North America, quite often I'd enter into conversation with a fellow traveller, especially if the journey afforded us the luxury of time and neither of us had much else to do. I met all kinds of men and women from different walks of American life - some young, some old, of different ethnic origins, with varying socio-economic backgrounds, residing in various parts of North America, and with different political inclinations. There were just three things common in the people I met, the first two being the more obvious ones - the fact that they were on a journey with me, and the fact that they were Americans. The third common element is what I am about to describe in this post.

At some point in the conversation, my travel companion's attention would turn to me and there would be carefully worded casual expressions of curiosity and interest in where I was headed, who I was, what I did for a living, etc. Quite often people assumed that the destination city of that journey was where I lived and when the conversations were shorter I would let them stay with that impression. When I did finally reveal that I was from Mumbai, I'd get a range of responses. Some did not know where exactly that was, and some others thought I was a Pakistani and on being corrected couldn't stop the "yeah whatever" response, though few were rude enough to be verbal. Even for those who did know their South Asian geography, the assumption would be that I was from there originally but had settled somewhere in the US more recently and was basically an American (invariably, the next question was "Oh and when did you move here?") I would then point out that Mumbai was home for me even now - I lived and worked there, had a family there, and that's where I would be returning to, after completing my business visit to America. This was when I would notice the subtle but distinctly palpable shift in my companion's expression and tone. Usually it was one of surprise - as in "Are you really an Indian from India?" This was the moment of truth. An Indian from India (not an Indian-American) who spoke your language fluently (without a heavy accent like the guy in the Simpsons), who grew up reading Hemingway and Dashiell Hammett and listening to CCR and Bob Dylan, who enjoyed Hollywood movies, loved modern Jazz and who, for all intents and purposes, sounded like a free-spirited, egalitarian and secular individual with a nuclear family (including a spouse with a career), familiar with all the aspects of modern life in the Western world.

How could this be? Surely, I was educated in the US? or Canada? or the UK? or perhaps lived in an English-speaking western country over a period of time in my formative years? I would watch with amusement the increasingly bewildered expressions of amazement when all my responses were in the negative. What they did not ask about, though I was keen on revealing, was that I had also grown up reading Dostoyevsky, Hesse and Sartre, listening to Jethro Tull and old Hindi film songs, loved Mozart and Rachmaninoff and had an interest in Greek philosophy. In other words, they did not see or were not interested in the part of me that was shaped by other cultures; did not notice that I had a more global, rather than an American outlook. While some were intrigued and curious to know how I had come to resemble what to their minds appeared like an American clone, others became suspicious and closed up. The more open-minded ones would immediately want to know more about India, and I would proceed to give them an overview of Indian history, geography, culture, current affairs, etc. But what they really wanted to know was how come a widget like me got manufactured in that factory to American specifications and whether my other compatriots were also like this.

As the conversation progressed, my companion's disposition towards me would vary from a benignly patronising concern ("So - are we treating you well here?") to mild wariness, to, at times (though rare) open suspicion (was I one of those fundamentalists?) Common theme: alienation - I was not one of "us". It would not matter to them where I was from originally, as long as I was one of "us" now. In other words, foreigners are welcome as long as they learn to become Americans. I found it strange that while they love it when you come from outside and adopt their culture, they would not do the same when they travel to your part of the world. Of course, there are exceptions to this (I know a few myself) and I'm sure that if I were to meet more people, I'd find more Americans who were different. But for most of them, 'American' is the de-facto standard culture that everyone must adopt as their core identity, to be considered one of "us" and therefore, an equal. Anything else is either not sophisticated or cool enough (euphemisms for backward or obsolete) or, even if not that, altogether too complex and in any case needing too much effort to get into and understand, leave alone appreciate or respect. Sadly, such people don't realise that such an attitude can only invite mockery (e.g., Borat), or worse still, hostility (needs no examples).

I came away from these chance encouters with a sense of disappointment - that such a great people, forged by the amalgamation of several hundreds (if not thousands) of diverse cultures, have, in more recent times, developed a non-inclusive attitude on the grounds of, for want of a better word, nationality (though its not really about the passport you hold). On the positive side, I must mention that I never encountered even a single instance of discrimination on the basis of my skin colour (paradoxically, I have experienced more racial discrimination here in India from other Indians, when visiting a restaurant, say, accompanied by colleagues or friends from overseas). So clearly, its not about skin colour. Its about being American (or not) and being assimilated (or not) into the mainstream American culture - be it East Coast or West Coast or Mid-west or wherever (even Canadian!) Being a non-American set me apart in America, to Americans. I was prepared for some racial discrimination, but this I had not expected.

On one of my long journeys back home, I spent some time thinking about cultural diversity and the emerging global order. In my job as a globalization consultant, this also formed part of my professional sphere of interest. I concluded then that 'tolerance' was just the beginning, and that there's so much more that all of us need to learn. Most of the world seems to be struggling with just the idea of tolerance - so much so that we appreciate tolerance when we see it. Sadly, we need to go way beyond that to make this a planet with less conflict - we have to evolve beyond 'tolerating' to 'respecting' to 'embracing' and finally, 'celebrating' diversity. It takes a lot of effort but its a journey worth every bit of the effort we put into it. And perhaps the only journey that could lead us away from the path of self-destruction through hatred and intolerance.

If by Rudyard Kipling

2008-02-08T17:48:00.000+05:30

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

The Dying Art of Dialogue

2007-12-08T17:43:00.000+05:30

The other day I was casually chatting with a friend about something and as we went along, the casual chit-chat changed in tone into a not-so-casual discussion, which soon became bi-polar, with both of us adopting opposite positions, thus evolving into a debate. The debate continued in our next conversation and raged on, starting to sound like an argument. Being mature adults (though, arguably, also 'Argumentative Indians'), we were able to keep it from crossing the boundaries of 'dispute' into the no-holds-barred territory of 'quarrel'. So, instead of saying "Pistols at dawn?", we agreed to disagree and changed the topic, with the tacit understanding on both sides that we would not bring this up again - at least not in the near future.

That set me thinking ... I am not usually like that - I do confront, but without being confrontational. I don't like dispute. I like dialogue, and I want to stick to dialogue in the Platonic tradition. Dialogue is about achieving clarity, and if we're lucky, obtaining resolution. It is not about winning or losing. It requires humility on part of all participants (of which there could be more than 2, contrary to popular belief), and ruthless honesty with oneself. My natural tendency is to enter into dialogue, but am invariably drawn into debates, if not disputes, arguments or worse still, quarrels. My style is to question a proposition. All right, I could be persuaded to say 'challenge' a proposition. Unfortunately though, my questioning or challenging approach is perceived to be confrontational thanks to our zeitgeist - that of apprehending conflict even where there isn't any. And as a lot of people these days say (unwisely) "Perception is Reality" (the currency and popularity of this belief is another characteristic of our zeitgeist - that of believing that if somebody thinks it, it must be true).

Let me quote a paragraph from the Wikipedia page on dialogue, before I elaborate upon my style of questioning:

"The typical way is for Socrates to probe his partner for further beliefs until a contradiction is reached with the disputed belief or hypothesis by implication. In this way the interlocutor is made to see the impossibility of his hypothesis, and then tries some other hypothesis, which is again subject to the same scrutiny."

And now let me paraphrase that - my questioning aims to probe the participant's line of thought, hoping to lead them to a point where either a contradiction emerges with the original position they adopted, OR they present me with irrefutable facts that I cannot deny or with propositions that are consistent with my own, thereby making me accept their thesis. The key fact is that I am open to it going either way, and will not take that as either a victory or a defeat. It will just enrich and refine my own on-going process of pondering and reflecting on life.

Sadly, my type of questioning is almost always misunderstood. Most discussions these days that I have participated in or have observed closely, do not embody the spirit of dialogue - they evolve very quickly from casual conversations to verbal battles which somebody has got to win, and their 'opponent' lose. Again, yet another characteristic of our zeitgeist - that of every interaction or exchange being a zero-sum game which a 'successful' person simply must win. The whole context of such questioning has become one where the person raising the questions (usually, me) is doing so either because they don't know (the 'teaching' paradigm) or because they are "cross-examining the witness" (the 'inquisition' paradigm).

What to me starts as dialogue, becomes therefore, either a teaching/learning experience, where the other person/s take it upon themselves to educate this impertinent fool (me) who is asking all these silly questions, or an inquisition, where Mr. Know-It-All (me again) is putting us on a stand and hammering away at our defenses to expose our lack of substance. Sorry folks! I question to probe, to clarify, to fully understand what is being said. And in that process, hopefully, get the other participants (including the proponent) to fully understand the proposition on the table. So that then I could offer my perspective, which may be similar or different or similar-yet-different. There is no 'high' or 'low' position when I enter into dialogue. We're all on the same plane - all equals. There is no teacher and there is no inquisitor - though I am always inquisitive and wanting to learn more!

If you, dear reader, and I, ever have the good fortune to enter into dialogue on any subject under the sun (including this one - 'The Dying Art of Dialogue'), we would do well to keep this simple approach in mind. Even if our ambitious, aggressive, competitive, confrontational zeitgeist enters my spirit somewhere along the way and compels me to stray (as I did in the anecdote I narrated at the beginning of this post), I hope you, being the humbler and more mature of the two of us, would lead me back, kindly!

It's Only Words ...

2007-10-15T11:23:00.000+05:30

Back when I was a kid we used to play a lot of Scrabble. Those were the days when we had exactly one telephone for the family - a big black heavy instrument with a thick brown cable attached to it. There was no Internet, no mobile telephony, no cable TV (only one Govt. controlled channel that aired in the evenings, with content that mostly focused on the appropriate use of fertilizers). Computers were big expensive things with tapes twitching and turning every few moments in a restricted area with glass walls where it was freezing. And long-distance telecommunications really sucked.

It used to rain (not too heavily, and hardly any flooding except in really low-lying areas) and Mom used to make tea and pakodas in the afternoons. And we used to pull out the Scrabble board and play. No dictionaries were allowed in the regular course of the game - you were supposed to play words whose meaning you already knew. You could be challenged by any other player, and you had to be able to provide the meaning, and if they chose to, they could look up the dictionary to verify it (and they could look up only that word - they could not sneakily look up something else they might have been toying with). My father used to excel at making 7 letter words and sometimes he'd make as many as 3 of them in a single game. I learned a lot; my vocabulary improved and I knew the meaning of each word I played. There were times when I knew a word existed but wasn't sure what it meant, and I would refrain from playing it, for fear of being challenged.

End of flashback. Cut to circa 2007. Between my wife and I we have 4 mobiles and 3 land-lines. I am on-line most of the time - my line of work involves using mail, IM, mobile telephony and teleconferencing extensively. Recently, when I was casually surfing, using a laptop immensely more powerful than most mainframes in those years, sitting in my room in some crummy hotel somewhere in North America with really high-speed broadband access, I discovered Scrabulous - the online version of Scrabble. Since then I've played a few games and won some, lost some. I was horrifed initially, to learn that you could freely reference the dictionary. And the fact that you could make two-letter words like CH, UG, MM and ZA which, in my humble opinion, are abbreviations, not words. This game requires a killer instinct. It appears that most players spend hours (sometimes days) trying out all kinds of combinations with their tiles, for a given board configuration. There probably are tools out there to help you maximize your score for each play - I don't know. Players are happy making words sticking to other words and not opening out the board (they leave this to me I guess). Nobody cares if you make a word whose meaning nobody knows - the 'TWL' or 'SOWPODS' dictionary must allow it. Period.

My style is very different. I like to play interesting words that result in a reasonably decent score, and I don't like to spend too much time computing scores of each available option ad infinitum. If a word seems nice and I can notch up a good score, I play it. Usually this is within a few minutes after my opponent has played. And then my opponent will respond after several hours. Or a few days.

This game has killed Scrabble, according to me. The skill being tested here is your ability to quickly look up as many tile combinations as you can in the dictionary. Not your word-power. I thought I should keep up with the times and adopted the style that this game requires. I looked up the dictionary. I made those meaningless 2 letter words. I won a few games but it gave me no joy at all.

Give me a rainy afternoon with a real board, real tiles, real people, real cups of tea. And a real dictionary, to be used only when one player wants to challenge another. Some day real Scrabble lovers will beg to go back to that. Till then, let the fast and the furious megaflop generation knock themselves out with this on-line apology for a word game. Playing all the words that TWL / SOWPODS has, that don't take your heart away.

Prayer for the Man from Modena

2007-09-08T09:35:00.000+05:30

Ave Maria
Gratia plena
Dominus tecum
Benedicta tu in mulieribus
Et benedictus fructus ventris
Tui, Jesus

Sancta Maria
Mater Dei
Ora pro nobis peccatoribus
Nunc et in hora mortis nostrae
Amen.

R.I.P. Luciano Pavarotti

The Idyllic Idealism Of An Idle Mind

2007-08-16T12:43:00.000+05:30

On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of Indian Independence, a few thoughts and observations (all my own work) ...

Like the papers said we're sexy at sixty (by the way - the media also said that about Big B some time back), but chose to ignore the smut around the sexiness. And this is not about censorship of so-called vulgar content on cable TV (ref. my post dealing with the time they shut down most English movie channels). Then what's it about did you say? Go figure! There's way too much to be said about this and if you're not with me already then there's no point in my going into it here and now.

Like we're forever talking about our potential as a global superpower but doing precious little to become one. I guess it's a nice thing to have as a dream but hey - reality's better, for a lot of us. There are abundant opportunities in today's India, for a lot of us to get rich and powerful quickly. But once such people get there, they do nothing other than continue to enhance their own wealth and power. Those who have a vision but not the means don't count (they're not Page 3 gliteratti), and those who can actually make a difference are doing sweet F.A.

Like I can't get over the fact that there's a gutter that overflows every monsoon outside my house and I am told there isn't much that can be done about it. Considering that I live in an upscale part of a tony suburb, I find that hard to digest. Guess I'll have to drop all my other pressing affairs and devote my attention to this and that will be the only way it will get fixed. If ever.

Like how I started out wanting to put back more than I got, to the land that gave me and to its people. I argued several years ago that if good people left this land in favor of a better life, then life in this land will never get better. I stayed back because I wanted to change our world. Still do. But today I'll consider myself lucky if I can get that wretched gutter fixed.

Like how I'd love to participate in a good strong movement with a robust foundation backed by people with vision, resources and integrity to clean up our act and hit the path to progress. If I find one.

And like how much I miss Busybee and his gentle way of making poignant points. Mr. Contractor I salute you and I hope you will excuse the liberties I have taken in imitating your style here though I know I've not got the tone right. And I salute all my other great compatriots - past, present and future, who've dedicated their lives trying to make a difference. I just wish there were more of you and less of the parasites who live off the fruit of your labour.

Vande Mataram!

The Political Animal In Me

2007-06-17T00:07:00.000+05:30

I came upon this interesting site the other day http://www.politicalcompass.org/ and, of course, couldn't resist the temptation of taking the test. Go ahead, check it out, get yourself assessed and come back here - this post won't go away. It's anonymous too, and the secret service agents who have you under observation will never find out your political inclinations unless you choose to make them public. Which I am about to do in this blog post, with mine.

I got a -2.50 on the economic left/right scale and a -3.33 on the social libertarian/authoritarian scale. Let me tell you what that means (if you haven't already gone there and figured out how it works). It means I am a bit to the left of centre in my economic ideology and a bit anti-authoritarian with regard to the philosophy of social organisation. It puts me in the same quadrant as Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama and Mohandas Gandhi; diametrically opposite to Adolf Hitler, George Bush and Tony Blair. Now - I didn't need to take this test to tell me that. At 45 I know who and what I am and am happy with that, as I usually say. However, it did bring a smile to my face - I enjoy the company in this quadrant, though I may not be as far left (communist) as, nor as much of a libertarian (anarchist) as some of my other quadrant-mates. I'm happy to be bracketed with some of the great peace-loving, enlightened and spiritually evolved revolutionaries that have walked this earth. The fact that I am closer to the centre also tells me that I may even be a bit more balanced than some of them. Hurray!

I was, however, a bit surprised to find that I was more libertarian (3.33) than I was left of centre (2.50). Even though I thought I'd made my peace with the establishment! If I'd taken this test a couple of decades ago ... well lemme not go there (too much detail - you don't need to know). Maybe as I grow, I will evolve closer to the centre and perhaps one day be a perfect 0. Standing erect like a spinning top - a perfectly balanced revolutionary ...

After spending adequate time gloating over my results and feeling smugly satisfied about my evolutionary path, my attention turned towards the framework itself (I love pondering). It would be natural to put left on the left and right on the right, which would appear like giving minus marks to the economic left and plus marks to the economic right, much to my chagrin (it's the connotation of - and + as a value judgement that I am commenting on here, not the academic semantics, which of course is value neutral on either side). However, why put authoritarian above and libertarian below? That has its connotation too. Both axes seemed to have been calibrated by right-wing capitalists (mild ones perhaps, to give them the benefit of my jumping to conclusions) who would want themselves and others of their ilk to score a + on the x axis (think of all the meanings of the word 'right') and a + on the y axis (think of all the meanings of the word 'above'). Hmm ... like it or not, the academics could not get away from leaving behind a trace of their own political sensibilities in the design of their framework, like some kind of watermark. Of course it would be too much to expect them to put left on the right and right on the left. That would be counter-intuitive if not downright confusing. But ... could they have avoided this by putting the economic left/right on the y axis? Still, one of them would be 'above' the other. Well, too bad for those who think that the top right quadrant is the 'correct' place to be. The way this has been designed right now, they'd have to share their political space with the great leaders of the free world. Some people may actually like that. Good for them!

The other thought I had was ... they should have had a z axis too. Something to characterise, let's say, attitudes towards change i.e., liberal (not to be confused with libertarian) / progressive vs. conservative / traditionalist. I wonder where I would have scored on that axis. I have enough going on both sides. Perhaps I would have been a -2 or -3 there as well i.e., leaning towards liberal / progressive evolving towards 0. I have assumed that conservative traditionalism would be a plus, and liberal progressive would be a negative, going by the spirit of the design.

There were some interesting moments as I took the test. I read "It's natural for children to keep some secrets from their parents" and thought of myself and smiled as I answered. Then I read "Marijuana should be legalised", smiled some more and answered. Then I read "The most important thing for children to learn is to accept discipline" and remembered my answer to "Good parents sometimes have to spank their children". And then I went back and changed a few answers. I would definitely want to spank my kids if I catch them secretly smoking a joint, and they better accept the discipline meted out to them. With me it was different ... (sigh) ... in the good old days. And no, Dad, I never inhaled.

Dwelving On Dwelve

2007-06-10T16:47:00.006+05:30

The first time I heard someone say 'dwelve', a couple of years ago, my mind momentarily stopped following the conversation and circled around what to my ears was a new combination of syllables, like a hawk around a small furry animal before it disappears into its burrow. The individual who shall in my memory be eternally associated with that word (let's call him A) was senior to me in the firm I was working for at that time and anybody who knew him would be familiar with his tendency to mispronounce words (and then assert that it was the American pronunciation), combine words (not creativity -- ignorance!) and otherwise indulge freely and unabashedly in solecisms and malapropisms (some of which had me in splits). So I didn't pay much attention to this latest in his series of gauche utterances, letting it disappear into the black hole of A's discomfort with the language. And so the hawk in my head continued the futile search for meaty nuggets of sense and meaning in A's long monologue which mainly consisted of him marvelling at his own latest achievements.

Then I heard it again a few weeks later, from a business acquaintance. "Let's not dwelve on it ..." he said, referring to a mishap in the business we were transacting. The Prof. Higgins in me was alert again, and again, I chose to let it go since I didn't have a personal rapport with this guy, and acquaintances don't take too kindly to being corrected by someone who isn't their back-slapping beer buddy. But I did make a mental note of it and when I had some time to myself, looked up 'dwelve' in as many dictionaries as I could, just to be absolutely sure.

A few months ago a dear friend of ours (let's call her M) invited my wife and me to dinner and somewhere in the conversation over a bottle of Grey Goose the word 'dwelve' popped out of her mouth. This time I was not going to let it go. "There's no such word as dwelve" I said quietly, setting my empty glass down so she could pour me some more of that excellent vodka. M is a proud and successful businesswoman -- not one to let someone get an edge over her. But over the years M has learnt to recognize when a battle is not worth fighting. For a moment she stared at me, opening then closing her mouth a few times, and I could see her trying to decide whether to humbly acknowledge this fact or to challenge it, with her characteristic bravura. "There isn't?" she said finally, with that lost child look. "No." I said, "It could be an interesting portmanteau word combining dwell and delve, trying to establish a certain level of currency for itself, but as of now it doesn't exist except in the ersatz lexicon of fast-talking fast-thinking overachieving platinum carders, who through a series of etymological mutations coin such words and phrases that then go forth and multiply like viruses and become common parlance". And then, having run out of breath, went on to enjoy more of her hospitality.

The other day another business contact of mine (let's call her U) used the dreadful word. Now U is very different from A and M: she is not your Type A/ alpha prime/ chest-thumping bull ape. U is convivial even if (and when) she is not on top of things. She is an open, friendly person with a disarming smile and not at all your cutting edge corporate type (though she has a fairly senior position in a large global bank). When someone like U starts using a word of dubious coinage, you know that it has won, in spite of the Hemant Puthlis of this world who tried quite hard to abort its birth. I came away from my meeting with U with a sense of defeat. I realized that its only a matter of time before this wretched non-word finds its way into the dictionary.

So, prudent as I tend to be in such matters, I've decided not to dwelve on it. Notwithstanding this blog entry, of course.

The Logic In Ecological Economics

2007-05-25T12:40:00.008+05:30

In my early years there were several things about the world and its people that puzzled me. I was a highly curious kid and could not contain my questions till I found some answers. As I grew older I came to understand how things worked, and came to an understanding about the things that I could not understand. As an adult, a few things do puzzle me even now, but there aren't too many things that leave me totally bewildered. One of the few things in the latter category is this whole fuss over saving the world by saving endangered species from extinction, when what we should be panicking about is population explosion. Let me elaborate ...

The fuss over endangered species manifests itself in various missions and movements, has many names, has world-wide reach, and leaps at you in various forms and forums, all aimed at making you feel guilty. The problems they talk about are numerous, but a closer look at each of those problems, and at all of them collectively, reveals that they all essentially point to two things we humans are doing too much of: (a) consuming (in many cases permanently depleting) planet earth's natural resources, and (b) dumping (in many cases non-biodegradable) waste matter, back on to planet earth. Wildlife activists, who campaign with missionary zeal, pull out all kinds of statistics to show you how Man's greed has been pushing many species into extinction. Man should learn to take only what he needs, in small quantities, and when done, recycle the waste matter so as to not disturb the natural scheme of things too much. (I saw a bumper sticker in California that said "Ignore the environment long enough and it will go away".) Operative words - preserve, conserve, save, protect.

In principle I am in agreement with this PoV. I'm a softie at heart. It hurts me to watch a cheetah kill a gazelle on Natural Geographic, to hear its desperate bleats as sharp fangs sink into its throat. It makes me want to jump into the TV set, shoo the bad cheetah away and save Bambi. When I was a kid (who was puzzled by a lot of things he didn't understand) I tried to rescue a rat which was being attacked by a crow in our building compound. I managed to drive the crow away but the rat bit me when I tried to pick it up to nurse its wounds. (This was one of the things that puzzled me, by the way -- I was a dumb kid.) So quite often I wonder why people go into the jungles of Africa and film these splendid animals, but don't save prey from predator. After all, these film-makers are sensitive -- which is why they take so much trouble to go to these inhospitable areas, live under hostile conditions and film animals in their natural habitat. Then it dawns on me that gazelles need to die so that cheetahs can live, and the food chain can continue and the cycle of life and death can perpetuate. I also realize then that people who film a kill don't want to disturb the natural order of things, and that this is a mature form of caring: observe, don't participate. However, on the drive back home if they came upon an injured baby wildebeest they would pick it up and take it to a vet. Right? I think so, but am not so sure (wouldn't that disturb the natural order of things?) But I digress.

As I was saying, I'm a softie at heart and I definitely would not want more rhinos or tigers or pandas or whales dead than need to die. But I have trouble when I start thinking about the nitty-gritty. Like -- in the previous sentence -- how many "need to die"? Assuming we could save endangered species from extinction ... would we then allow (or even facilitate) those species to go forth and multiply arbitrarily? ad infinitum? No, we would want to stop their rampant reproduction before their population exceeds ours (and well before that, really). And I believe hunting is permitted in some parts of the civilized world simply because hunting helps in controlling the growth in population of certain species. So, here's my question: do we have the magic number for each species which represents what the 'correct' population of that species should be? In fact, what does this mean? What is meant by the 'correct' number and according to whom? In other words, who are we to save any species from extinction? Isn't any attempt to do so also an attempt to disturb the natural order of things?

Another dilemma -- paper or plastic? There are as many arguments in favor of one over the other as there are in favor of the other over one. I won't go into any of them here. What I will say is that I have a different take on this: NEITHER! Don't buy stuff that requires you to decide between paper and plastic. Start from this statement and go back up the causal chain, till you come to your own existence. Well? Where did it get you? Consider this: Indiscriminate consumption and over-consumption could, with some education, be controlled. But consumption cannot be stopped as long as there are consumers. For consumption to be controlled we need to control the number of consumers. As long as humans exist and have wants and needs, and the means to satisfy them, they will consume (voraciously) and dump (copiously). And that is the natural order of things. What Man is doing to the planet today is as much a part of natural evolution as anything else. In fact changing it ... or reversing it, would be challenging "God".

What does this mean? It means that the humans will eventually destroy the environment, but they have a choice to be smart and let it happen slowly. We can slow down the pace of self-destruction through smart consumption and smart disposal (assuming we can find answers to some of the questions I've posed earlier that continue to confound me, such as 'paper or plastic?'). However, the best way to slow down the pace of self-destruction is to slow down the growth of population. We're talking root cause here. There's this whole body of over 6 billion free agents, expanding in size by the minute, which eats whole forests, sucks out the ozone layer, farts noxious gases into the air and craps tonnes of non-degradable garbage all over land and sea. How much permanent damage to the environment can we avert when we produce more and more of the very same free agents that cause the very same permanent damage, every day of their lives?

It's the people, stupid! Not the fluorocarbons! Save whales if you're fond of them, but if you want to save the world, it would be more effective to spend that same time, energy and money on stopping the next 10 humans from being born. That's what the fuss should be about.

(P.S. I am tempted to shout "Soylent Green is people!" to every wildlife conservationist I meet. That movie makes so much sense to me now.)

Thoughts In Transit

2007-05-03T10:10:00.000+05:30

You Know You're Heading Home When ...
1. You approach your boarding gate and the unmistakable sights, sounds and smells hit you.
2. You see women in brightly coloured salwar kameez or sarees, wearing Reeboks or Nikes, running after children.
3. Speaking of which, there are lots more of them around, compared to the next gate, and they are far more volatile and noisy than the few kids at the next gate, even on a per capita basis.
4. Men wear mustaches of different size and shapes and styles, and a lot of them use hair oil that leaves smelly stains on back-rests.
5. There are conversations going on in several different languages (other than English) of which you can identify at least 3.
6. There is an all-pervasive smell of B.O. which has managed to escape the feeble disguise of the cheap perfume which has been liberally sprayed-on to cover it.
7. You hear high treble sounds coming out of headphones and the guy believes in enjoying his bollywood (c)rap by grooving hard and shaking the bench you're sitting on.
8. Someone is using their mobile phone to set up an appointment for Friday 10 a.m. in Kandivili (E).
9. Young programmer-types (of which there are several) are comparing salary structures in their respective companies. One of them is already contemplating a switch.
10. While you're trying to decide between a Pinot Noir and a Syrah, everybody else has a bottle of Black Label in a duty-free bag.
11. When boarding is announced, they don't queue up - just stand around in a cluster, each hoping to get in first (regardless of whether their seat number / class has been called out)
12. Finally the airline staff forces a queue, and the guy behind you starts pushing even before the queue starts to move.

To Indians in Frankfurt (or Amsterdam or London or Singapore or ... wherever it is you're taking your last flight home from) feeling homesick, I would recommend spending a few hours at the boarding gate of any flight headed to India. It will give you a good enough dose to last a couple of weeks at least.

To Be of Use - Marge Piercy

2007-04-15T07:10:00.000+05:30

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

Great Minds Think Alike ...

2007-03-13T15:02:00.000+05:30

... they say, and fools seldom differ, they add. As for me, I think what makes great minds great is the fact that they don't have a problem with being called fools. Be that as it may, my point in this post is to bring to your attention the fact that the creator of Dilbert is more or less as sartorially challenged as I am - a fact that gives me some comfort at times when I feel small and overwhelmed by haute couture. Check it out - http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/03/the_best_defect.html. Maybe my blog is not as funny as his, and maybe I'm not as prolific a blogger (or cartoonist) as he is. After all, I have other ways to make a living and (hopefully) am good at those. But hey - this is uncanny - he says "I rely on my wife to do the heavy lifting, fashion-wise". Somewhere some small part of me felt vindicated when I read that. I am not alone, it seems.

A minor success in my shopping career (and cause for some jubilation) is that recently, after spending long hours at large malls in small obscure towns (side note: in one such large mall in one such small obscure town called Pleasanton in California, I heard someone call out to me by name ... turned out to be a former colleague who moved there "after marriage" - hard evidence that the world is indeed shrinking) and after getting the specifications wrong, going through the returns process etc., I eventually managed to procure perfume and lingerie that my wife actually liked.

And oh - not to mention having to lug a bright pink umbrella (didn't fit into any of my bags) which came free with the Estée Lauder box (side note: how can a perfume be called Beautiful and Love at the same time?) across as many airports as mentioned parenthetically in my last blog post, and the corresponding number of flights. It takes courage for a heterosexual male to nonchalantly carry any object as brightly pink as this, I can assure you. Must confess that I did have a weak moment when I felt compelled to explain to an exec. type who had a puzzled look on his face as I pulled out the object in question from the cabin baggage hold above his head, that it was for my wife. "Yeah right" was his retort.

Three Songs I Sang In My Head Over Last Weekend

2007-03-06T17:50:00.000+05:30

HOMEWARD BOUND - Paul Simon & Art Garfunkel

I'm sittin' in the railway station (in my case - airport: 6 of them in less than 48 hours)
Got a ticket for my destination
On a tour of one night stands (didn't have any of these, sorry to disappoint)
My suitcase and guitar in hand (didn't pick up the Gibson SJ200 Custom Vine I was drooling over at the web-site, after all)
And every stop is neatly planned
For a poet and a one man band (this is applicable)

Homeward bound
I wish I was
Homeward bound
Home, where my thoughts escaping
Home, where my musics playing
Home, where my love lies waiting
Silently for me

Everyday's an endless stream
Of cigarettes and magazines
And each town looks the same to me
The movies and the factories
And every stranger's face I see
Reminds me that I long to be

Homeward bound
I wish I was
Homeward bound
Home, where my thoughts escaping
Home, where my musics playing
Home, where my love lies waiting
Silently for me

Tonight I'll sing my songs again
I'll play the game and pretend
But all my words come back to me
In shades of mediocrity
Like emptiness in harmony
I need someone to comfort me

Homeward bound
I wish I was
Homeward bound
Home, where my thoughts escaping
Home, where my musics playing
Home, where my love lies waiting
Silently for me

Silently for me

HOME FIRE - Louis Armstrong (original?)

Pardon the smile on my face my friend
Dreamin' of reachin' my journeys end
I'm headin' straight for my hearts desire
Gee, it's good to know I'm near the home fire

All of the folks that I love are there
I got a date with my favourite chair
With every step every hope grows higher
Didn't know how much I missed the home fire

The noises, the TV, the rusty old pipes
The cat always teasin' my dog
The neighbours, the quarrels, the screaming of kids
For the first time in years I'll sleep like a log

Heaven is waiting for me, my friend
Seven or eight dreams around the bend
And if you're ever in town inquire
We'll be glad to have you share the home fire

BREATHE (Reprise) - Pink Floyd

Home, home again.
I like to be here when I can.
When I come home cold and tired
It's good to warm my bones beside the fire.

Far away across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells.

Cognito Ego Ergo Sum

2007-02-20T07:44:00.000+05:30

I have assumed permission (from I know not what authority - perhaps the Rene Descartes school of thinkers) to borrow the (in-?)famous postulate "Cogito Ergo Sum" and modify it with a quick-and-dirty Latin twist (Latin as in the language of ancient Rome; the phrase 'quick-and-dirty Latin twist' is not a reference to the salsa) - my own pseudo-Latin concoction: 'Cognito'. Having put that up-front, I feel less morally burdened and free to proceed with my prosaic pronouncements propounding my profound proposition (which the cognoscenti may find confoundingly contrarian).

So let me present the prose (and you can identify the con's yourself). First let me translate the Cartesian premise which I have liberally re-cast in improvised Latin: "I am cognizant of my ego, therefore, I am". Here, 'ego' is defined as: "the boundary of my being, that which defines me as separate from other things, and which contains me". Having paraphrased it thus, let me proceed with my thesis. I submit that the only true verification of 'my' existence stems from consciousness of the fact that there is a 'me' distinct from the universal continuum of energy, matter and various sentient beings (which I recognize as the rest of the universe - 'I' vs. 'The Other'). It starts with my being aware of the universe (of which, it turns out later, I am an integral part), and then being aware of the awareness of the universe (i.e. of the fact that there exists a being who is aware of the universe), and ends with my awareness of a such being, which I recognize as me. The observer observing the observed, and then the observer observing the observer as the observed.

(Phew! If you've had enough of this mind-bending B.S. you should stop reading this post - NOW! and jump to my post on Paris Hilton which you may find far more interesting.)

I am thus able to draw a line where the rest of the universe stops and I start (going from the outside in) or, seen differently, where I stop and the rest of the universe starts (going from the inside out). That line defines the contours of my being ... of me ... of my ego. The moment I am conscious of my existence as distinct from everything else, I have asserted my self, assumed responsibility for my existence and taken pride in myself. I have broken away from the universe and introduced a discontinuity in the (erstwhile) continuum. I am banished from the Kingdom of God. This is my fall from Grace - separating myself from Him, I have become a stand-alone power to reckon with, albeit not comparable with Him. I'm an outsider struggling with the 'other', such is my existential crisis. I am Science analysing Creation and Nature, trying to understand that which I could have known, being part of it - that which I already knew till I saw myself as being outside of it and wanted to understand objectively, as an object. So, from nothing, we got something, and then along came another thing. We now have a duality of I and the Other.

The beauty about duality is that it gives great pleasure in negating itself to make way for singularity. The joy of recognizing oneself as one removed from the other, and then transcending that to achieve one-ness with the other, again, is tremendous. It is embodied in the fusion of charged bodies, which start out being wholly complete and distinct entities, but for an instant of blissfully ecstatic communion, become one through union. And then become two again, in the harmony of opposites. If they were always one to start with, where would that intense joy come from?

So finally, through the awareness of duality yielding to singularity, we become aware of the duality of: (a) duality and (b) singularity, together, as a singular truism. Consciousness of the I and the Other as being part of the same continuum, the I as distinct from the Other and yet a part of it. With the harmony of opposites, the plane of harmony itself as unity.

This is as good as it gets, from what I know and have learned up until now in my life, about the ontology of existence. If you know more and/or better, I would love to hear about it.

... Never Having To Say You're Sorry

2007-02-15T06:10:00.000+05:30

On my Delta Airlines flight from San Francisco to Atlanta this morning they were playing the movie 'Love Story' - based on the book by Erich Segal, with Ryan O'Neal and Ali MacGraw (not sure if there are other movies since then with that name). Guess it was because it was Valentine's Day.

It brought back so many old memories - the visuals, the song, the piano work. It took me back several years - I saw the movie with Dad in a theatre downtown (which probably doesn't exist now). I can't recall where Mom was that afternoon. I remember the last shot with Ryan O'Neal (I think his name was Oliver) sitting on the stands of the hockey stadium with snow all around, and how when they first meet they had a argument which Ali MacGraw (I think her name was Jennifer) ended with something like ".... and I am not going to have coffee with you" to which he said "but I never asked you for coffee ..." and that's how it all started for them.

As I grew older I found the song maudlin, the story a tear-jerker which at times I even called pathetic, and used to make fun of it. Today however, far from home and far from my family ... tears just flowed and I couldn't stop them. I thought of everybody I loved and everbody who loved me, but most of all my Dad, who passed away about 20 years ago and with whom I would give anything to have a long conversation now. Especially about everything he would want to be sorry for, as would I for my misgivings.

I didn't see the whole movie - just the beginning and the end. I didn't buy the headphones they were selling on board and didn't have any of my own. I took a short nap in between, and when I woke up, she was dead and he was getting out of the hospital and his father was telling him how sorry he was, and Oliver utters the famous line that Jennifer had once said to him (I lip-read it) "Love is ... never having to say you're sorry". I reached for my handkerchief and the nice middle-aged lady sitting next to me looked at me, surprised. Yes, ma'am ... real men do cry.

Happy Valentine's Day!

News That's Fit To Print

2007-01-27T18:48:00.000+05:30

Earlier this week, on Monday January 22, the SRE1 launched by the ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation, for those who don't know) twelve days ago, was successfully recovered after being maneuvered to reenter the earth’s atmosphere and descend into Bay of Bengal. The ISRO issued a modest press statement http://www.isro.org/pressrelease/Jan22_2007.htm outlining various technical details about the mission. What they did not mention was the fact that this makes India one of the few nations to return from orbit, a spacecraft that it had launched earlier. This is quite characteristic of humble technicians buried deep in research, who do not realize the significance of what they've achieved. I don't blame them one bit, and needless to say, applaud their feat wholeheartedly.

I waited patiently through the week to see what kind of coverage this got from the press. I haven't seen any yet that came out on its own and sought viewer / reader eyeballs in any of the dozen or so TV news channels / dozen or so newspapers. On searching around a bit on the Internet I found some coverage about the launch on Jan 10 but nothing on the recovery.

What I did get a lot of, and which was hard to miss, was coverage on 'Abhi and Ash' and the rest of the Bachchan family visiting temples and doing other family things. And on Navjot Sidhu and the Supreme Court decision on his conviction and sentence several years ago on a road rage case. And various people's opinions on Shilpa Shetty and reality shows. And several other news stories not worth mentioning here (or, frankly, anywhere else either).

It is appalling to see what people who launch campaigns like 'India Poised' focus on and what they don't.

A Phenomenon Called Paris Hilton

2007-01-26T14:24:00.000+05:30

My life is divided into two parts: before Paris Hilton and after Paris Hilton. No, I don't know her and I've never met her, but the turning point that I am referring to, is my discovery of the phenomenon that she is - a celebrity celebrated just for being famous. She is the embodiment of what fame means in this highly evolved (socio-culturally speaking) state of human development as evidenced at present. She epitomises everything that someone wanting to be famous would aspire for. She's the zenith of glamour - the ultimate aspiration of all wannabes. Maybe some day, someone may achieve even more Paris Hilton-ness than her, but for now, she is as Paris Hilton as you can get.

Several people may be endowed with wealth and/or positioned within easy reach of celebrity status, right from the time they're born. Some, in fact, achieve it at conception itself (a la TomKat: Tom Cruise - Katie Holmes' baby, who has achieved celebrity status even before birth). However, not all can carry it well and make a lifestyle out of it. Paris Hilton has shown us that this is a serious business. You can fuck it up, or you can take it to new heights. This is not very different from taking a small business your granduncle set-up and making it a huge global conglomerate. Yes, you inherit some assets. But what you do with them is all up to you and you alone. Paris Hilton had the choice of being a nobody. Or of being a somebody. Or of being anybody. But no, she chose to be Paris Hilton - a unique phenomenon that remains unparalleled, unrivalled and unsurpassed.

All form, no content - what an amazingly profound concept! Whatever content there may be, is completely irrelevant at best, and at worst may even spoil the whole show. For instance, if she really had musical talent, she would have been known as a great musician; if she could act well she would have be known as a great actor; if she could write well she would be known for her books (speaking of which - it seems she has released a book titled 'Confessions of an Heiress: A Tongue-in-Chic Peek Behind the Pose' which guides aspirants with do's and don'ts of living her kind of life); if she was good at modeling she could have become a super-model; if she was a good designer ... etc., but the world would not have been presented with such a superb icon for super-chic fluff - a model non-product extraordinaire. A phenomenon such as this one can only meaningfully exist if meaningful content is non-existent. This concept itself is the hallmark of our times, and that precisely, is where Paris Hilton has contributed to the progress of mankind: she has given that concept a name, a face, a personality, a life. Apparently she will appear in the 2007 Guinness World Records as the world's "most overrated celebrity". Overrated? that sounds like she's not as good as she appears to be. Wrong benchmark used by people who have not understood the concept. Sadly, they're missing the point: she is by no means an overrated celebrity, she is famous for being Paris Hilton - a celebrity debutante, a cause celebre of all dilettantes. And she excels at being that!

Consider this: as Paris Hilton grew up, she could have become a junkie or an alcoholic, and got some nominal press coverage about that, but she would have been one of several thousands of rich folks getting in and out of rehab for substance abuse. She could have turned into an eccentric and got her outrageous antics written about, but then there are so many of those. She could have married a big shot and become his (or her) home-maker, shining in the reflected glory of her spouse / family. Clichéd as hell. She could have been a business woman or a professional and carved out a career all by herself, even larger than her legacy business. (Yawn - how boring!) However, she's done none of the above. This woman is fabulously famous for absolutely no reason at all. All she has is the ability to carry her heiress status in a way that makes people envy her, want her, want to be like her, want to be her. And what an ability that is! Every little thing she does attracts media attention, and she's mastered the art of doing those little things she does, and doing them in the most media-seductive style. This is a very fine art, and some people are born with it and others aren't.

If you're one of those who are born with it, you should try and emulate her: learn, implement, evolve - she's set the benchmark, see if you can even reach that height or die trying. And if you're not one of those who are born with it, keep wishing you were. Loser! Go become famous for something meaningful ... and become just another ordinary garden variety celebrity!

Sheepish In The Wolf's Clothing Section

2007-01-13T12:44:00.000+05:30

Last weekend my wife and I went shopping for new clothes for me. I should rephrase that as – my wife dragged me to the nearest clothes store, kicking and screaming (in fact ‘bleating’ may be the mot juste here). We don’t go shopping very frequently and the few times we do, it serves to remind us of the fact that we have antipodal views on what, where, when, why, how, how much, and any other possible criteria associated with (a) choice of items and (b) the process of shopping. Long ago (when I was single) in my small and cozy little world, there was not much to think about when it came to buying new clothes, and decisions were fairly easily taken the few times I needed to take them. The most agonizing decisions for me those days revolved around which white shirts I should buy and how many of them I should buy on this shopping expedition (i.e., this year). I used to be happy in that world ... but then in my wife's big wide world of several thousands of choices in matters sartorial, life is not so simple. Apparently, apparel is a complex affair. And according to my wife, I have the dress sense of an aardvark.

We've been married for a decade now, but know each other over two, and have gone shopping together for (my) clothes, several times over that period. Has anything changed over time? Well, yes. I am less reluctant now, to experiment with pinks or with checked patterns, than I used to be. But I draw the line somewhere, and she knows that. Differences are quickly aired and understood. Sometimes even this is redundant – a twitch of my upper lip, when shown a disagreeable sample, is enough, though I may nod with hastily mustered vigor while making some positive-sounding noises. We have learnt to conclude these sessions at the optimal level of happiness averaged out across both of us. We emerge from the store pleased with what we have achieved together as opposed to walking to the parking lot quarreling over my quirkiness. To give you an example of how this works – we settle for the bright red paisley patterned shirt once in 5 years, and that works for both of us.

While getting in and out of trial rooms (the part I hate the most) and at various other times in the shopping ‘experience’ when I'm by myself for small slices of time, I can't help reflecting on yet another truism about men and women: that men aim to be as consistently recognizable as possible at every appearance, while women aspire to present the most vividly unexpected apparition each time. Over the years, I have developed more and more conviction in the belief that I've found the key to this whole gender thing – my own version of 'women are from Venus and men are from Mars' (I hope I got that right). It is about consistency and variety … about the excitement, versus the insecurity, of change.

It is as though men are saying "Look, this is me - the same old me you knew yesterday and the day before that, and the same me that will be with you tomorrow and the day after". Men want to impress upon you the fact that they are consistent and steadfast. They want to provide security through the assurance of no-change, and make you comfortable by making everything about themselves predictable – to the point of being boringly so. Hence they lead structured, orderly lives and their wardrobes are full of white shirts and gray trousers neatly organized in a row. Deviations from normal plain white would be to the extent of cream / light blue / light gray / yellow shirts; some pin-stripes and some different collar styles or cuff styles perhaps, to break the monotony.

Women, on the other hand, seem to be saying "Hey! Guess who this is – it's me! Today's me. Not the woman you knew yesterday, not the one you knew the day before. Which do you prefer? Well it doesn't matter because I can be all of those and more." Women want to enchant you by presenting a variety of expressions. They want to surprise you with a refreshingly different look each time, hinting at the excitement of change. There are two sides to this message if you can read between the subliminal lines: (1) If you don’t recognize me, then good – I can be ‘the other woman’ and in fact be all the other women (2) If you do recognize me, then perhaps I’m looking different because I’ve moved on? You need to woo me all over again! And this is not just about clothes – it is more holistic: it is about the appearance per se. The range of tools available to a woman to do this is ... well almost infinite! I could go ahead and talk about different styles of clothing, make-up, hair styling choices etc. but this would only expose my abysmal ignorance in these areas (I referred to moisturizing lotion as make-up some time back and got an earful) and would confirm my stereotype. I'd rather ’fess up to it in so many words, than indulge fecklessly in malapropisms of a language I do not understand.

To summarize: Men provide an image of consistency and predictability to women because they believe it keeps women secure and comfortable, and women present an image of variety and unpredictability to men because they believe it keeps men excited and in anticipation. If you want to test this out, try telling a woman that she’s predictable to the point of being boring, and a man that he’s inconsistent and unpredictable (caveat: don’t try this at home). Then try the reverse. Tell me what you get.

P.S. In case you’re wondering why we never go shopping for her clothes and you want to tell me what a chauvinist you think I am, let me take that hit up-front and meekly accept all of it, rather than present my (typically male) PoV and hopelessly try to explain why that is an even more challenging experience for me. What I do enjoy is shopping for things for her when I’m traveling, but that’s an entirely different story …

The Great Indian Con - Ideas vs. Myths

2007-01-08T11:31:00.000+05:30

Some time back, when I heard that Shashi Tharoor was a candidate for UN Secretary General, I took great pride in the fact that a compatriot of mine had risen to a level where he was being considered for the post. I had neither read his books nor seen the impact of his work, but over the years formed an impression of him that could best be characterized by two parameters: erudition and achievement (and I may be right on both counts). However, I had by extension, also attributed to him additional qualities that should be natural corollaries, such as a keen and sharp mind (that wouldn't easily be fooled by clever sophistry), deep insights into the Indian socio-economic context, and above all the wisdom of a philosopher. In short, I used to think he was an intellectual and I was favorably disposed to accept his views, generally speaking. (Not his fault, really, that I developed this image of him - mea culpa.) And so, when I read his recent article "Looking to the future with Brand IIT" this last New Year's eve in the Times, it was an eye-opener. Check it out: http://www.shashitharoor.com/articles/timesofindia31dec06.html

His article is based on his address to a gathering of IIT alumni from the all over the world at the recent PanIIT 2006 global meet (http://www.paniit2006.org/). Either he felt obliged to say nice things to please his hosts, or he genuinely believes that the IITs are doing a great job. If he felt obliged but didn't have too many nice things to say, he ought to have declined the invitation altogether. But he didn't do that - he came, he talked and he submitted. This is a case of diplomacy over substance if not form over substance. It is one thing to believe that the IITs are doing a great job simply because it is generally believed by all to be true. It is altogether another thing to have dug out facts and figures, thought it through and placed it all together and then to assert firmly and with conviction that they are. And then go beyond that and assert that they hold a lot of promise for India's future. Mr Tharoor has done the latter, which in my opinion is inexcusably foolish for a man of his stature and station. According to me, the IITs have failed to deliver and it is not at all difficult to see why and how.

Let me step back for just one moment, to present the background to my own assertion that the IITs have failed. This is not directly connected with Mr Tharoor and his views, but more of a quick recap of the genesis of the IITs and their original raison d'être. Back in those days, Nehru and his team had a vision of India as a self-sufficient economy. The key to real freedom, they realized, was economic independence, and this could only come about if we were self-reliant as a nation. I have no quarrel with this thesis, in very broad and general terms. Some highlights of this school of thought include the "non-aligned" policy, "mixed economics" (our own brand of socialism), etc., all of which, incidentally, I am certain that Mr Tharoor has studied in far more detail than I have (he's written books about it). The establishment of the IITs needs to be seen in this context: they were created so that India could build our own cadre of engineers who should engage in the noble task of nation building, thus making us self-reliant through not only indigenous technological development but also development of indigenous technologies. These institutions were funded partly through international aid (initially) and on a more sustained basis by Indian tax payers - it seemed logical that tax payers should pay towards building a bigger brighter better India, a stronger India, a richer India. And all this, by achieving self-reliance - particularly in technology, which was clearly the weapon of the future: not mastered, it would threaten India for ever, through the prospect of economic and/or military domination by technologically superior foreign powers.

However over the years, this vision has blurred, become foggy and vanished altogether. Perhaps it is obsolete? In that case we must change it and have the right vision in place for the IITs. Perhaps it is still relevant? In that case we must ensure that everything we do continues to be aligned with it. Alas, we seem to be doing neither. Again, this is Failure. The first failure of the IITs was that of not meeting the objectives they were set up for. The second, of not recognizing and correcting the first failure. And Mr Tharoor's failure? Of missing both! Or perhaps, like I said earlier, he was being the eternal diplomat or the natural yea-sayer (see my post "What part of No don't you understand?" in the archives of this blog), conveniently brushing the bad news under the carpet.

Consider an analysis along the following lines. To keep it simple, let me select one area - let's say, Civil Engineering. First take the Life-To-Date number of IIT graduates in Civil Engineering - the grand total number of Civil Engineers which all the IITs put together have ever produced. Of these, let x be the number of Civil Engineers who, after graduating from an IIT, have continued to live in India to work as Civil Engineers. Let y be the number of Civil Engineers who, after graduation, have continued to live in India, but did not / do not work as Civil Engineers. And lastly, let z be the number of Civil Engineering graduates who left India for greener pastures in foreign lands (of this number there could be three components: z1 - those who are still overseas, z2 - those who have returned to India but are not working here as Civil Engineers, and z3 - those who have returned to India and work here as Civil Engineers). I am willing to bet that of all these numbers, x would be far lower than y which would be far lower than z, to the extent that z would come close to equaling the sum of x and y. Further, I would wager that z3 would be lower than z2, which would be lower than z1, and that z1 would be greater than or equal to z2 plus z3. If instead of Life-to-Date one were to take a base of the last, say, 20 years, the results would be even more skewed in favour of the point I am trying to make. Which means the deviation of the outcome from the intent is even more in the last few years. From another perspective, there could be departments where the trend is more pronounced one way or another. However, my point is not about departments; it is about the institution as a whole. If someone has actual real data on this, I would LOVE to see it. I would also LOVE to be proved wrong about this. Quite simply put, the IITs have been contributing more to the technological and economic progress of other countries (such as the US, for which they have been formally recognized - read on) than to India. This is like a poor man who sets out to cook food for himself but because he is such a good cook, ends up cooking for the rich man, only to be left with a few crumbs for himself. If it happens once, it's happenstance, and if it happens twice it's coincidence. But to allow this to happen on a sustained basis, over several years, without doing anything about it and in fact not even recognizing it is as a problem, is downright foolish. And it is outrageously foolish on the part of the poor man's friend, to compliment such behavior with a pat on the back for earning the beneficence and goodwill of the rich man while starving himself to death, almost.

Apparently an IIT alumnus is writing a book on 101 IITians who've made it big, globally. Why doesn't someone make a list of 101 IITians who've made it big in India? A few years ago, someone mailed me a copy of House Resolution 227 of the 1st session of the 109th Congress of the United States of Amercia, which formally acknowledged the role of IITians in building a more robust US economy. Why has nothing like that happened here? We can put it down to the apathy of Indian administrators / bureaucrats / politicians etc. (as we usually do in the case of Indians who become stars abroad and get no recognition at home). But hey .. could the problem be somewhere else? Could it be that someone compiling a list of 101 great IITians who have contributed to the Indian economy may not find more than a dozen or so entries of merit? Could it be that the Indian govt. has not formally recognised the contribution of IITians simply because there hasnt been anything significant that IITians have done for the Indian economy?

Mr Tharoor's point seems to be that IITians have spread their wings, gone all over the world and achieved a lot, and in doing so have acted as brand ambassadors for India. But I ask: was that what the IITs were set-up for - to create brand ambassadors? Here's something Mr Tharoor says in his article: "Nehru's establishment of the IITs (and the spur they provided to other institutions like Birla Institutes of Technology and Indian Institutes of Management) have produced many of the finest minds in America's Silicon Valley and Fortune-1000 Corporations." Tell me again, Mr Tharoor, was this Nehru's vision? To create institutions that feed Silicon Valley and Fortune 1000 Corporations? Was that the idea? No, my dear sir - it's a myth. Worse still, a con. I am disappointed that someone like you cannot see it. Someone like you, who is best placed to call the bluff; to let everyone know the truth about the Emperor's new clothes.

The Push and Pull of Telemarketing

2006-12-11T13:31:00.000+05:30

Whenever my mobile phone rings and flashes a number (as opposed to a name), I am fairly certain (about 0.8 probability) that it's an outbound sales call from a direct sales agency, typically plugging a financial services or telecom product. This is telephone spam, which has yet to be legally regulated or in any other manner controlled, in this part of the world. I guess we have bigger problems as a nation (such as someone's paintings or writings or movies or other creative expression offending someone else), so this one is something we'll have to live with for several years to come. Evidently, the number of people affected by telephone spam is not large enough to be called anything - not even a 'minority community'.

There are several levels of irritation such calls cause me and it is a constantly evolving thrust-and-parry battle of wits between the caller and me. My initial tactic was to stop them in their tracks with "Is this a sales call?" which worked most of the times in the early days. Thanks to other victims like me, the intruding sales force slowly started developing counter tactics. The dumber (and/or less sophisticated) ones ignored my question and bashed on with their script, while the smarter ones would skirt around it and say: no sir, its not a sales call; we'd like to educate you about our product. Yeah right! Tell me about it, buddy. I have a meeting going on but never mind the banal distractions that might draw my attention away from your call - I am here to make your work easier, and you are here to improve the quality of my life by educating me about your product, at a time that suits you. And so my counter to this counter gradually evolved to a few choice epithets and a rude disconnection of the call.

About a year ago, I was carpet-bombed with cold calls from several direct sales agents, all representing a certain large multinational bank. Apparently they were running an aggressive campaign to recruit new customers. There were times when I got about 3 or 4 calls a day. It got to a point when I used to hang up the moment I heard the bank's name. Finally, I lost my patience. I started calling the bank's head office - I wanted to get to the head honchos in consumer banking and give them a small piece of my broad mind, including lessons in brand management, CRM and basic telesales etiquette. Reaching the head of retail was an ordeal: everybody at HQ was trained to keep callers at bay (they'd ask who you are and what you want and then won't even give you the time of the day) so that their top brass could drool uninterruptedly at the next sports car they'd buy after this telesales campaign closed. Even getting his name seemed to be a bigger challenge than most other things I faced at work those days (finally found it on the web-site). I must have spent over 6 hours straight before I got his direct number, and it turned out he was on vacation (surprise surprise). Not to be discouraged, I waited till he returned another couple of weeks later, to speak to him. And that conversation is another story, which I shall keep for another blog post.

Things get a little tricky if you already happen to be a customer. You suspect they're calling about something concerning your existing account. And if you're like me, you'd suspect the worst. For example - we haven't received your payment for the last bill and your subscription will be disconnected, or - your balance has dropped below minimum and your cheque has bounced. Before you conclude that I'm either generously disorganised or parsimoniously tardy, let me tell you that I'm usually prompt with my financial commitments and in general a good customer. However, there could be errors and omissions along the way ... cheques mailed may not get delivered in time or may get stolen (next scam?) and payments effected through "e-channels" may get debited twice and take your closing balance below sea level (this has happened to me, and the bank made no attempt to provide any relief of any sort and took 2 months to rectify it without bothering to apologise, much less pay me the interest for those 2 months). Since I am acutely aware of the fragile and fragmented nature of 'best practice' business processes prevalent in the back-offices of most of my 'best-in-class' service providers, callers representing such organisations end up getting my attention right away. So my next question to them is "Is this about any of my existing accounts with you?" the answer to which (assuming it's a sales call and not routine operations) should be: no, sir, it isn't; we thank you for being our customer, but we'd like to offer you more products that could fulfill your other needs. Right? Wrong! I just get more of the scripted yadda yadda yadda. "Excuse me ... " you go again. This cycle is repeated 4 times on average (yes, I have statistics on this) before you get some traction. Switching to a local language helps - it may get the average down to 3 iterations. If the caller is from a 124 area code, an assertive "oi jee ... hallloh ... galle sunoh" is likely to get immediate attention.

Life is strange and its many twists and turns could spin this whole game around ... to your disadvantage, all over again. If due to some quirk of fate you happened to actually need one of these wretched products one day ... well, guess who has the last laugh. Last week, I spent several hours per day for a good 2 or 3 days, trying to get hold of someone who would sell me a new mobile connection (the same was being shoved down my throat several times in the last 6 months and I vehemently pushed back each time), with certain special services thrown in (there's a reason I'm vague about this - if I get more specific, the company's name will be known, and I don't want to to indulge in malicious blogging against a specific organisation). Each name and number I was given led to another name and number. Most of the contact information at the website didn't work. It took Paul Simon four days to hitch-hike from Saginaw, and me as long to get my connection, and a whole lot of negotiation over the documentation needed and who needs to go where to do what, so as to complete all formalities. At the time of writing this post, I am waiting for the connection to be activated, after which the special services will be activated. Hopefully by the end of this week, unless they're waiting for Christmas (next year's - this one is round the corner).

And now I'm thinking that maybe it is more prudent to let them badger you after all. Perhaps push works better than pull at times.

Miscellaneous observations on the last day at my old job

2006-11-30T12:37:00.000+05:30

At this very moment there are an unspecified number of thoughts in my head that are competing to be articulated (I was going to say 'competing to be said' but then it would rhyme with 'thoughts in my head' and impart a touch of frivolity to this sentence, which was not my intention). I'm going to try and keep this short - I know I have a tendency to ramble! There's no specific sequence and I am just going to let passion determine the order of presentation of my competing thoughts, some of which may be inter-related.

First, there's the issue of behaviour and conduct in general - be it business protocol or social niceties, some people (in fact quite a few people ... hang on, actually, most people) just don't get it. It has nothing to do with geography (which part of the galaxy / solar system / world / country / town you live in) or tax bracket (how much you're worth in any given currency) or even (surprisingly) which school you went to! It does have something to do with success, however: it is inversely proportional to how successful you've become over how short a time. Please note that I am talking about sudden success here; incremental success allows you to take it in slowly. What do I mean by success? Doesn't matter. What matters is what the individual in question means by success. Which leads me to the following observation: inside each of us is an obnoxious arsehole waiting to get out, and what lets that genie out of the bottle is sudden, immense success! A wise man (Abraham Lincoln, perhaps) once said something to the effect that the true character of an individual is brought out not when he is down and out but when he is hugely successful. Alas - it is so rare to find people with even a modicum of social graces, that the few one comes across, one treasures. Even if those people are otherwise not one's 'type' (in terms of common interests, etc.)

The second thought, which is probably, in some 'spaghettistical' way (another word of my coinage, to mean: 'similar in nature to an entangled mass of spaghetti strands') related to the first, is about Talent and Luck, and their role in success. And about Self-Actualisation. I would sum it up as follows, the metaphor being a card game: (1) You are not responsible for the cards you are dealt - this is obvious (2) You, and you alone, are responsible for your play - also, obvious (3) You are free to quit the game for any reason whatsoever, it is entirely your call (4) If you want to stay, you may want to learn to play well so you don't go through the trauma of failure unless you want to wallow in it (5) If you like the game, you may want to learn to play well in order to experience the joy in winning, or at the very least, indulge yourself in the art of fine card play.

So where's the connection with Talent, Luck and Self-Actualisation? Well, duh ... Luck - the cards you're dealt (you could get a series of lousy deals: sorry, bad luck). Talent - what you do with them (great players can win with a losing hand too). Self-Actualisation - reaching a state of being where in each deal, you are able to take the hand you're given, set yourself a goal or a target (which may be 'win' / 'lose' / 'pass' that round, based on that hand, your capability of which you are fully aware, and knowing what you want, of which also you are fully aware) and give it the best you've got. In this state, the word potential makes no sense. You ARE in the present, what in the past was considered as your 'hidden potential'. To me, that's success.

Lastly, on a different note, I was touched by the going-away gifts I got from my team: books, music, chocolate, a lamp and a large greeting card with everyone's messages on it. I'm a fairly private person at work, though I do choose to make friends as well, sometimes. Somehow they found out that the piano and the guitar are prominent instruments in my life, and that I like classical music. So they got me a Richard Clayderman CD and another one called 'Hawaii' featuring acoustic guitar by an unknown musician, with backing arrangements. Content: instrumental version of pop songs old and new - mostly romantic ballad -type stuff. I was so touched by the gesture and the effort that must have gone into buying these gifts. The book was something about the 'Present' by the guy who wrote who stole my cheese or whatever. I flipped through it and it had an uncanny resemblance to 'The Power of Now' which I reviewed (rather harshly, I may add) in an earlier blog post. Maybe it's me - maybe I attract these themes. Or maybe these topics echo the zeitgeist. But this book is in story form and held my interest from the word go. Maybe I will learn something from it! Thank you, team.

The Unbearable Lightness of Paperback Gravitas

2006-11-22T17:46:00.000+05:30

Birthdays are great fun and I really enjoy celebrating mine. For two reasons – first, I like celebrations in general (read parties) involving any or all of: good food / fine wine / nice music / interesting conversations with interesting people etc., and second, I like my life and so I like celebrating the day I was given it; I like who and what I am, I like what I have grown to become and am evolving towards. I am truly grateful that there are people out there who wish me well, come over to my home when I throw a party and bring me gifts on my birthday. I got some wonderful gifts this year, and one of them was this book called ‘The Power of Now’ written by a gentle and benign looking gentleman called Eckhart Tolle. And you may treat this blog post as a kind of a book review.

If your life is troubled you should read this book. Let me rephrase that (everybody's life is troubled, to some extent) – if there’s a lot of sturm und drang in your life, you should read this book. You will know if this book is working for you, if you are able to purge all negative thoughts and feelings about the past and the future that might be tormenting you. And post this cathartic deep-pore cleansing, you are able to live in the 'Now' – a state of joy (a.k.a. bliss) that transcends the duality and cyclicality of pleasure and pain that we experience through all the trappings of a worldly life. The Now is the only real thing … all else is just something in your Mind that your Mind has created because it needs to create those things to feed itself on. Badd Mind!

This book is ideal for the new age 'liberati' (a word I’ve just coined as a play on ‘literati’, to describe those who seek liberation by reading books). Maybe they should make a new category called spirit-lit and put this book there. Don’t get me wrong - there’s tons of useful stuff in here: sound advice to people who get all knotted up with regrets about their past and/or bent out of shape with worries about their future. It tells such people in such situations to take a deep breath and let go. To not let their mind get the better of them by running away with self-flagellation for misdeeds or with its own doomsday forecasts, but instead to focus on the moment and recognise the beauty in the present and the joy in just being. And I would fully agree with such advice. Kind of suggestive of the Latin expression 'Carpe Diem', but I didn't actually see that written in so many words anywhere in the book. But then I must confess I haven't actually read the whole book - only browsed through it and that too not sequentially. The Question/Answer format makes it easy to read at random, a few pages at a time. Plus there's a lot of repetition of ideas and themes (by the author's own admission), so if you missed something it will probably pop-up again later. And the language is simple and lucid so it can be speed read too. It may not have the lyrical lilt of a Khalil Gibran or the picturesque imagery of a Richard Bach, but P-of-N is prophetic all the same.

Why then, do I sound disdainful? Well, for one there’s this kind of Nirvana-in-ten-easy-steps feel about this whole thing. Einstein once said “Make things as simple as possible but not simpler”. To people who live in Euclidean space on a Newtonian planet, it's easy to explain gravity using falling apples. It is far more difficult to explain space-time warps caused by intense gravitational forces around super-dense matter, using apples or oranges. This does not discourage laudable efforts by people of science to use simple models involving rubber sheets bending around a heavy marble to illustrate space-time curving around strong gravitational fields or blowing balloons to illustrate the expanding nature of the universe after the Big Bang and such, but unfortunately such explanations spawn more questions than answer existing ones. And what is true about gravity is true for gravitas too. First, spiritual experience (any part of it - from awakening through attainment) cannot be mass distributed. When it does, it turns into either a cult or a religion or an institution or ... a business! Second, there's gotta be room for questioning. You can't shut the reader up by saying sorry, no questions, no thinking, do not apply your mind to what you're reading.

Which brings me to the other thing. This book stops you from questioning (maybe doesn't actually say that in so many words, but the discouragement to question is implicit everywhere). The message is that these thoughts you’re thinking and the questions you are asking are all the work of your feeble brain trying to understand the phenomena of Life using Reason, something that is beyond the grasp of the Mind. Here's where I have a problem agreeing. I saw phrases like "thinking is a disease" which could easily persuade troubled readers (remember our target audience?) to stop thinking about their lives altogether. And to forget the past and the future, as the book suggests. And to immerse themselves fully in the Now. My problem is that this could potentially remove any sense of responsibility the reader might have. Dropping the past and the future directly causes you to drop responsibility for what you did and what you are about to do. OK, maybe some people take on more responsibility than they should, and that screws them up. Agreed. In such cases, the solution lies in their rationalising their portfolio of responsibilities. In fact, more thought - better thought, is to be applied towards doing that, and not lack of it. The key lies in the ability to balance freedom with responsibility. 'Stop thinking' is a slogan for escapists, to my mind. In contrast, 'Stop brooding and get on with life' is good solid practical advice to most anybody, because we all need it at some time or other. So what's the big fuss about, if this is all there is to it?

Last criticism: Nowhere in the entire book (which, again I should remind you, I have not actually read word-by-word sequentially from start to finish), did I find that one most vital element - humour! Benign and gentle looking as he may be, he never smiles in his pictures. In fact his eyes look sad. At no point in my reading (OK, browsing) of the book did I come anywhere close to even chuckling at anything that I read.

So, all in all, this is a strange and rather paradoxical combination of a book - too much gravitas in form and delivery, but not enough weight in the content, which is kept light so that it can go around and reach more people, but is not fun. There are probably more oxymorons in my last sentence than I care to count, but you get my drift. Speaking for myself, I have no place for things (light or heavy) that don't make me smile or chuckle or better still ... laugh! Certainly not for spiritualists who take themselves and their (pre)occupation too seriously!

Zen and the Art of Management By Doing Nothing

2006-11-16T12:35:00.000+05:30

It's been over a week now, that I've been waiting for some people at work to get back to me on something. (Sorry to be so vague, but I really can't reveal much more about this, than that, at this stage.) It is important to me that this gets done soon, because it impacts my future. Which is why I keep looking for a sign that somebody somewhere has decided something and we can now move to the next step. Frankly, I don't care what they decide - I just want them to do it within a reasonable time frame. I am ready with action plans for each possible outcome for all the conceivable outcomes I could think of (including 'nothing'), given my intrinsically worrisome nature (which, according to someone I know who has a penchant for hyperbole, sometimes borders on paranoia) compounded by many years of dealing with bullshit artists of all kinds (ranging from the wildly exotic spiritual tripper to your plain old garden variety overambitious and highly political overachiever) that have taught me to expect the unexpected, and further exacerbated by a fairly vivid imagination that can conjure up the bizarre from scratch - right 'out of the box'. And by now I am equally detached, emotionally speaking, from all of them (well, ok, almost). So it really doesn't matter to me which way the cookie crumbles. I write this, then, not out of pain but out of ... something akin to amusement, actually, if you ignore my slightly disparaging tone.

Some people just can't make a decision. Or take one. So they do nothing. Some others can't act on decisions already arrived at, so they do nothing too. Quite often it turns out, in let's say 3 out of 5 cases, problems go away (or so it seems) even when nothing is done. So the wise among the foolish say "See? It went away without us having to do anything". Years of practice leading to mastery of this approach towards dealing with problems, gave birth to the wonderful art of Management By Doing Nothing (MBDN) - a proven methodology that saves time energy and money spent on thinking (valuable benefit for those are intellectually challenged), especially thinking about complex things that really matter (valuable benefit for those who don't know what those things are and are scared by complexity), then arriving at decisions (valuable benefit for those who are accountable for decisions but shudder at the very thought of making them) and then acting upon those decisions (valuable benefit for those who don't feel empowered to implement any decision unless it has been agreed to by all members of the Security Council and ratified by majority vote in the General Assembly) and still .... a methodology that delivers ... (drum roll) .... at least 60% of the time!

Strangely and paradoxically, what the ancient Chinese (Taoists) called 'wei wu wei' (which literally means 'action without action' or 'effortless doing') is indeed a profound philosophy, also involving a very different way of conducting one's life. (More on this at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/wu_wei if you’re interested.) When I used to practice T'ai Ch'i Ch'uan, I understood this as the minimal action required to bring about desired results. In a lot of cases that involved doing nothing. This is not like the MBDN methodology at all. This 'doing nothing' has a conscious decisiveness underlying it ... and an action involving non-action. A decision to act by not acting. To act by letting happen. To intervene when necessary and that too only to the extent required. This involves a profound understanding of, and deep insights into, situations. And a fine appreciation of the concept of causality and its manifestations in the sometimes deterministic, often probabilistic (if not stochastic) and usually chaotic world in which those situations occur. Apparently these ancient folks understood chaos theory far better than most of us do today.

For those familiar with the 'butterfly effect' ... sometimes all you have to do to save a whole world is to not trample on a butterfly. For those not familiar with the butterfly effect - go figure!