future writing topics

I have felt on many occasions that I am unable to express my thoughts related to policy because of my poor writing skills. I tried using others to write for me but that also didn't work. Writing is one work, which cannot be delegated easily. You have to do it yourself. This was the primary reason for my opting for policy writing course in Harvard.

In that course, although we are asked to write about only 2 topics, I used that opportunity to pin myself down to write on all those areas where I felt strongly but couldn't write so far. This list is given below.

I will try to write on each of these topics in detail in next few months.

1. Smaller states in India: We have 29 states and their populations vary from 0.6 million to 210 million. That's ridiculous. In my view, it is administratively next to impossible to govern any administrative entity of more than 50 million population. The problem gets compounded when there is no decentralization and everything reaches to top level. Unlike many developed countries, Police and many regulatory services are still controlled from state level rather than from county, city or district level. Most of our districts are more in population than many countries in the world.

2. Ridiculously low fees/fines for Government Services: You can get a driver's license for $3 in India. Court may fine you $20 for an offence even if you are a billionaire. Many of the fees/fines in India and the states are given in Acts and it requires the amendment of the Act to change them. I want to make a case for a one time exercise to bring all these fees/fines away from acts and make them part of rules/schedules which can be changed by the governments easily.

3. More power to politicians: India is probably only democracy where the hands of Politicians are tied by red tape. There is very strong permanent bureaucracy and a complicated set of rules which make any politician's life miserable. Politicians on the top do have the power to transfer these bureaucrats but no direct powers to do many things. Thus Politicians have the power (hidden) and the bureaucrats have the responsibility (open). There is this big mismatch between power and responsibility which leads to failure of administration on many occasions. This needs to be corrected by giving more open powers to elected people and then making them responsible for their actions rather than allowing them to rule from backstage. MLA/MPs present job chart is so much different from what they actually do.

4. Demonetizing Rs.1000/500 notes to control black money: There are many ways it will reduce black money in the country without doing any inconvenience for 90% of the poor and middle class citizens in any way. Even the rich people with white income won't be affected. The only inconvenience would be to rich with black incomes.

4A. m-Currency/m-Wallet: Using talk time/talk value in your mobile phone as cash. It means 2 changes from the existing setup. One, facility to transfer talk time to other user on any network. Two, to be able to get cash by surrendering talk time.

5. Paying politicians and government servants well: so that they stay away from greed and can concentrate on their work.

5A. Seven types of Corrupt Officers: 7 shades of grey and the related lessons/strategies.

6. Importance of measuring soft emotions: like happiness, anger, jealousy, sadness, pain etc. If BP, urine sugar, pulse, brain activity which were immeasurable 50 years back can be measured now, why can't these things be measured if we work on it seriously and commit more research funds for these than for nuclear power or for space exploration. The measurement of these emotions will benefit mankind much more than going to Mars.

7. Keeping general compartment in the middle of the trains rather than at two ends: India is a socialist country but still in Indian trains, the lowest class (cheapest ticket) compartments are at two extreme ends of the train rather than in the middle. There are coolies in India at railway stations to carry the luggage for higher-class people but poor people need to carry their own luggage. They first run to the front of the train. In case, those compartments are full, they travel the whole platform to go to the back end. If not in the middle, at least general coaches can be all placed together instead of keeping them at two ends.

8. Swachh Bharat Abhiyan and missed opportunities: There is so much we could achieve out of this like employment generation and clean streets by placing garbage bins properly.

9. Committing our selves to charity: I belong to the 2 best networks in India, IIT and IAS. They are the most fortunate and influential people in India. But many times, I find that they talk more and do less. Especially my IIT batch mates settled abroad never get tired of talking about giving back and doing something for the country. But they never put their money where their mouth is. If you calculate the money donated or invested by them for any good cause as a percentage of their annual income, in most of the cases, it would not even be 0.5%. For this, their excuse is that they are not sure whether their money would be well used or not. But then, if they are serious, there are many ways today to find out good organizations doing serious work. Can they commit to themselves that every year they will put aside a certain % (it can be anything from 0.1% to 20%) of their annual income for others?

10. Role of failures in my life: I remember my failures very fondly and thank god for each one of them. Success is short-term happiness and failure is long-term happiness. Success only validates your learning, failure improves it. Today, I got this quote from Winston Churchill in my whatsapp group- "Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm." As a personal essay, I want to write for myself all my failures and the strong role they have played in my life. Somebody suggested that I should use the commencement speech of J.K.Rowling at Harvard.

11. International Social Security: Once I was discussing with a US friend of mine about the homeless people in USA. His simple response was that it was a matter of choice rather than a matter of compulsion for them. And his second remark, which struck me most, was that many of these are much richer than even some lower middle class in Africa and Asia. Why should a human being be deprived of basic necessities of life because of the accident of birth? If all human beings are equal, why should some be more equal than others (George Orwell: Animal Farm)? Now with world becoming a global village, shouldn’t there be a concept of International Social Security? There should be minimum subsistence level income (for food, shelter, clothing), education and health guaranteed to every citizen in the world so that they can realize their full potential irrespective of their nation of birth. UN now is a very weak institution and hence this idea seems very impractical now. But there is no other way to protect humanity from terrorism and crime.

12. Achievement/Happiness: Lets say you are climbing a staircase to reach the top floor (say its 105^th floor or something) of a building to get a good view of the city. You realize on the way that you don’t have the strength to reach the top floor. If you apply all your strength, you might be able to reach up to 70^th floor, but you will be dead tired to enjoy the view. But if you just go in a relaxed way, you would reach 40^th floor. What will you choose?

Globally, in the field of business, the top floor is Bill Gates, in power politics, the top floor is Obama, in social work the top floor is Mother Teresa, in celebrated authors the top floor is JK Rowling. But then there are local top floors in every country, state, city and village. So a big man in one context or geography is a small man in another geography. A business tycoon from Kanpur is a lower middle class man in Mumbai. A business tycoon in Mumbai is a middle class in London or LA.

No matter, which field we work in, the chances of our reaching global top are very less. If we know that we cannot reach the top, doesn’t it make sense to enjoy the journey and reach the highest possible floor while enjoying the view at each floor? This is motivated by the story “How much land does a man need?”

We nostalgically look at the happiness in the past and wait for achievements in future to be happy and satisfied. Can’t we switch this? Lets nostalgically look at our achievements in past and to the happiness in future as an independent entity in itself delinked from achievements, successful relationships, possessions etc. Why should our happiness be dependent upon other factors? The book “The power of now” motivates this thinking of mine.

13. The five priorities of a state: I have often wondered about this question. As of now my answer for my state Uttar Pradesh (UP) would be justice, land reforms, police, family planning and social security. Note that there is no education, health, roads, electricity, food, poverty alleviation, and rural development there.

14. Casteism and corruption account for 70% of India's problems. 

A childhood common sense lesson

Some small incidents teach big lessons in life, even bigger than many years of education put together can.

I was 12 years old and was in class 9^th. My priciest possession was a Physics book by Kumar & Mittal costing Rs.20. That was roughly 6 months of my pocket money then. I was taking my half yearly exams. When I came out after Physics first paper, I found out that somebody had stolen my book.

My closest friend Amit saw my situation and came to my rescue. He gave a practical suggestion. As someone has taken your book in the first paper, you take someone else’s book in the second paper. Try to finish the second paper 5-10 minutes early and come out before others to get the book. He justified this very neatly. This won’t amount to stealing, as you are only recovering your loss. You didn’t start it. When I tried to argue about the person whose book I would be taking, he said, “That’s not your problem. Did the person who took your book think about you? Why are you thinking about the whole world? You are not stealing someone’s book and selling it. You are only settling scores.” We discussed this for a few minutes. But in the end he won by saying “It’s your wish. If you want to be a loser, I have nothing to advise you. You must take revenge for the wrong inflicted upon you, otherwise you will always be mistreated. You should not be a weak person who takes things lying down.” At that age, I certainly didn’t want to be a loser. So I agreed with him and got someone’s Kumar & Mittal book after the second paper exactly the way we planned.

I rushed home so that nobody would find me with the book. There were two conflicting voices going on in my head. It was like a Bollywood movie, in which there is one good version of yourself wearing white clothes and one bad version wearing black clothes, both presenting their arguments.  One voice was strongly saying that I was a thief and the other practical voice was congratulating me on being brave in taking the first step to live smartly in this big bad world. You have to stop thinking too much about others, if you want to be a smart man and not a dumb guy. I erased the name of the actual owner quickly and the book became mine. Life went back to normal.

But a few months later, my father found out that the book wasn’t mine. It was a big shock for him. His son was turning into a thief despite all his teachings and the atmosphere he provided. “Spare the rod and spoil the child” is the way kids were brought up those days. I got the first slap of my life from him then.

We were 2 brothers and 2 sisters. All four of us were brought up in a democratic atmosphere and were always encouraged to question and understand things logically. So, despite the historic slap, I defended my actions. I was still unwilling to accept that I had done something completely wrong. I felt my act was justified the way the world was around us. My basic question was, “Should I take it lying down if anything wrong is done to me? Should I not take revenge? Should I not teach the wrongdoer a lesson? And above all, should I be a dumb guy tolerating everything, should I be a loser in the name of being a good boy?”

My father, to his credit, listened to all my concerns very patiently. We discussed in detail all the scenarios and options, arguments and counterarguments.

He explained, first, that it wasn’t my fault that my book had been stolen. Life is not always fair and one should be mentally prepared for any wrongs. But one should never blame himself for the wrongs of others.

Second, revenge is not a good thing. An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind. A book for a book will make the whole school a thief. The best policy is to forgive and forget, my father said. If it’s hard to forgive, the second best thing is, don’t forgive but forget. Forget not for the sake of wrongdoer, but for your own sake, for your own mental peace. If later in your life, you are in a situation to take revenge from that person, and it’s still important for you to take revenge, go ahead. But why take away peace of your mind thinking about it all the time?

Despite all this teaching, he said, if taking revenge was still so important for me given my young blood, the third best thing would be, “to take revenge from the person who did wrong to you rather than from someone like him.” I should have taken the revenge from the boy who stole my book. Why was I taking the revenge from someone innocent? I should have used all my smartness in finding the thief rather than in becoming a thief myself. Settling someone’s scores with someone innocent is not smartness but cowardice. “If you had guts and brains, you could find out the thief,” he said, “I would not feel so bad even if you had beaten him and I had got the complaint from the school about that.”

He got a new book for me and made me return the book to its original owner. This happened about 30 years ago, and to this day, lessons from this incident have guided my response to any injustice or unfairness done to me.

But I am writing this today because I am perplexed at the educated world’s inability to follow the clear message from the above story, i.e. “If at all necessary, take revenge from the person who did wrong to you rather than from someone like him.” Isn’t it a commonsensical thing to do? Isn’t it as simple as 2+2=4?

We are taking revenge not from the wrongdoer, but from the persons who are like the wrongdoer, persons who are of the same religion or caste or race or looks or who speak the same language or who dress like him. I see many Physics books getting stolen when some people in France hate Muslims because someone from their religion killed their French brother or sister. Or when US airstrikes kill many innocent civilians in Syria or Iraq. I also see the same story being played out when a young boy turns terrorist to take revenge for the death of his family members not from those who killed them, but from innocent people in India, in France or in the USA.

Each act of revenge perpetrated on any innocent could give rise to a chain reaction following an exponential growth pattern. This is quite similar to the nuclear chain reaction, which produces an atom bomb. Are we heading towards humans killing humans in a chain reaction, a mega human bomb killing millions in a few years, as a nuclear bomb would do in a few seconds?

I know it is very difficult not to react after losing your loved ones. But if the reaction itself gives rise to the same action that resulted in your loss, why should you react that way? Many times, we are both, a perpetrator as well as a victim.

I hope this common sense will prevail upon the leaders and citizens. But I am not sure. After all, common sense is not so common.

Are we a country of selfish, self-centred people having double standards in every walk of life?

         On Independence Day, I read a news item in TOI that on many indicators, China, Indonesia and Sri Lanka have done much better than us. China's per capita income is 4-5 times of that of ours. What I was surprised about that even Sri Lanka and Indonesia's per capita income is double of ours. Just because our population is high leading to a big size economy doesn't erase the fact that we are amongst the poorest and worst (socially and human development indicators wise) countries of the world.

         Why is it so? I think one of the main inhibitors of our progress is our mindset. Here are some everyday examples, which demonstrate duality of our character or double standards-

1. Ragging Mindset: Those who criticize ragging in the first year in College change overnight and indulge in it second year onwards. More than 90% freshers would be against ragging and more than 90% seniors would be pro ragging.

2. Dowry: Your arguments and position change depending upon whether it is the marriage of your son or your daughter. I have hardly seen any bride’s father speaking in favor of dowry and similarly a groom’s father not justifying dowry for practical reasons.

3.  Corruption: Every citizen who doesn’t have a government servant in the family is dead against corruption and most of the family members of government servants can tell you 10 practical justifications for the corruption.

4.  Reservations: I have hardly seen a HUC (Hindu Upper Caste) person being pro-reservation (except for some politicians and bureaucrats for whom it is a compulsion) and hardly any OBC/SC/ST/Muslim person being anti-reservation?

5.    Police Commissioner System: IAS, IPS are supposed to be the people who should keep the country’s interests above their own selfish power interests. Why then I am yet to find an IPS opposing Police Commissioner System and an IAS advocating for it?

To begin with, I have listed only 5 examples. I have deliberately not included the obvious double speak of political parties depending upon whether they are in power or in opposition. You are most welcome to add to this list through comments.

Measuring soft emotions

Why its more important to focus on measuring soft emotions (happiness, anger, love, lust, greed, jealousy) than on going to Mars

I am thinking of a scenario in 2040 when a young boy goes to a doctor for treating his mild depression. After all the tests are done, the doctor says, “Don’t worry, you will be all right. Your HH level is 84 (normal range 100-150) and this is due to high levels of anger and jealousy which are both above normal in your case. Your AL is 324 (180-270) and JL is 6.5 (2.5-5.5)”. Here, HH is Happiness Hormonal Count, AL is Anger Level and JL is Jealousy Level. 

You may think I am joking, but I'm not. After all, about 50 years back, had anybody thought the way doctors speak today about our sugar, BP, blood tests, MRI, CT Scan?  Many things like sound intensity, luminescence, bitterness/sweetness, clear weather, hot/coldness were considered as a matter of subjective judgment until we found ways to measure them objectively and precisely. The journey of science so far has been a parallel journey of subjective parameters becoming objective and measurable. If we extrapolate this journey, we can easily imagine the above-described scenario in 2040.

We have definitely come a long way in the field of measurement since the days we used to measure even distance and time subjectively. The correlation between technological progress and ability to precisely measure has been direct, although it is difficult to say which one is the cause and which one is the effect. But then, why even now, are we not able to measure some basic human emotions like happiness, anger, love, lust, greed, jealousy?

One reason probably can be that the scientists went after the physical things, things that could be seen, touched and felt and easy to quantify (well, today they seem easy to quantify and not 100 or 1000 years back). We were more focused on machines than on minds, on gadgets rather than the need for those gadgets. We wanted to reach Moon and Mars without too much bothering why in the first place we wanted to be there.

Speed thrills. So you want speed and you measure speed. But why not directly go for thrill and measure thrill? Are we caught in intermediate goals rather than the ultimate goal? Honestly, have the human beings made as much efforts on these soft emotions like happiness, love, pain, pleasure, sorrow, anger etc. as they have on hard physical things like planes, rockets, cars, buildings, computers?

One basic management principle is “You can’t improve what you can’t measure.” If our aim by the means of this technological progress is to have a better world or more happy human beings, then what’s our criterion of measuring a better world or happy human beings?

What’s the ultimate goal of the human race and of an individual human being? If that is to live harmoniously and happily, then we need to measure our progress against that goal and not some intermediate indicators of Physical/Technological progress. I feel that somewhere we have got lost in means (GDP, economic progress, education, infrastructure, mortality, health etc) because we can measure them and forgotten about the ends (happiness, joy, satisfaction, harmony, peace) because they can't be quantified. Before it becomes too late, the need of the hour is to develop technologies which can quantify these ends, otherwise we would get lost in maximising the means and thereby destroying the ends.

I am not trying to argue here that we should stop materialism or economic and technological progress and all become monks. But we should do things, which really make us happy rather than following a rat race. And that won't happen until we are able to measure the happiness. We all have read inspirational books like "The monk who sold his Ferrari" but none of us would let go of our Ferrari because Ferrari can be seen, felt, experienced but the happiness out of selling it cannot be measured. Today, world is disproportionately prioritising Economic Prosperity over mental prosperity precisely for the reason that mental prosperity is immeasurable and can't be reduced to a number like GDP.

Big companies and developed countries have a big business/leadership opportunity here to launch projects aimed towards measuring these so far unmeasured human emotions. There is lots of money to be made and goodwill to be generated. I see much more profitable business opportunities in investing in this research than in space research.

A small country like Bhutan came up with the concept of Gross National Happiness, GNH, about 40 years back. But, unfortunately, not much progress could be made in absence of the objective measurement of individual human happiness. Also, it was primarily seen as a tactic used by the King to divert attention from real economic issues. But now many countries have started taking interest in it, UAE emerging as a leader.

Many of our great scientists have been philosophers like Galileo, Newton, Einstein and many more. Now with so much development in computing power, time is again ripe for an interdisciplinary research involving Philosophy, Psychology, Biology, Medical Science and IT to come together in this field of measurement of human emotions. Lets run for the ends and not the means.