Viswanathan K's Thoughts

In a set of lab experiments involving rats, the rodents were taught to press a lever to get a reward, usually food. Once the rats had learnt this technique, a cup of the same food was placed in a cup inside the cage. The cup in the food was there for the taking: unlike the press-lever-for-food mechanism, it didn’t require any action by the rats. This is where things get strange: even after the rats had discovered both ways of getting food (by working on the lever and by doing nothing), the majority of rats preferred to “earn” their food by pressing the lever! And this just didn’t happen with rats. Fish, birds and monkeys behaved the same way preferring to “work” to get their food. Maybe the preference to work is something that is hard wired into all species for survival reasons. I mean, in nature, one can’t get food for nothing. And a species that expects to get food without effort will go extinct soon enough. We humans behave the same way. Even though people curse thei

In the backdrop of the current financial crisis and all the criticism about ridiculously oversized bonuses for bankers, an American university decided to conduct an experiment to check the impact the size of the bonus had on performance. So they decided to give 3 different bonuses: a small bonus (equal to one day’s pay of the participant), a medium sized bonus (2 weeks’ pay) and an extra-large bonus (5 months pay). Obviously such an experiment would require a huge budget. Definitely way beyond the amount given for a university study. So the university decided to conduct the experiment in India: after all, what could be cheaper? I didn’t even know they outsource even such studies these days. I used to associate outsourcing with IT, BPO’s, KPO’s, pharma and call centers! I’d have happily signed on for such a study but the university was smart: they decided to conduct their study in rural India, where costs would be even lower than in, say, Bangalore. Who says universities can’t

Rahul Gandhi, heir-to-the-throne, is a reclusive figure. He doesn’t give interviews. What are his views on different issues? What does he believe should be India’s priorities? How he intended to solve any of our problems? No idea. And now we get a hint about the man’s views, thanks to the WikiLeaks cables. He believes “radicalized Hindu groups” pose a greater threat to India than even LeT. And yes, he made this statement in 2009, i.e., after the 26/11 attacks. So let’s look at what Rahul Gandhi is really saying here. In terms of body count, did the 26/11 attacks kill more people than any other terrorist attack or religious riot in India? Obviously not: many religious riots have killed far more people. On the other hand, did any of those riots push India (even slightly) towards war with Pakistan? Of course not. But hey, to Rahul Gandhi, the prospect of a terrorist group pushing 2 nuclear armed countries towards war is less scary than those Hindu groups. Now at least we know ho

The aftermath of the WikiLeaks saga hasn’t caused any major country-to-country relationship breakdowns. I guess that’s because most of the information has only been titillating, not surprising. After all, how many people are really surprised that that the Sunni Muslim countries want America to attack Shia Iran, to “cut off the serpent’s head” as the Saudi king put it? The events following the leaks show the true face of European countries. Like Switzerland. Always happy to take money from every criminal, crook, murderer, swindler, drug lord and terrorist. But hey, Julian Assange puts the wrong city as his place of residence and the Swiss bank blocks the WikiLeaks account! Or take UK. They’d never extradite a terrorist out of their country, but Assange, now that’s different. The Brits are falling over themselves to extradite him for a sex crime! Australia, which would normally defend its citizens (including Assange), has suddenly developed “confidence in the British legal system.”

(Some of) The recent Wikileaks revelations make for fun reading. I liked the one where the Americans refer to Russian President Medvedev as Robin to Vladimir Putin’s Batman role! There’s nothing new about that power structure for us though. After all, Bal Thackerey made the remote-control-style-of-ruling famous years back in Maharashtra. Sonia Gandhi continues the practice at the Center. Across the border, Pakistan’s generals have been doing the same thing for ages. But all of those are instances of a guy (or gal) ruling his own country. But George W. Bush’s took it one step further when he was able to rule Britain via his own poodle, er, puppet: Tony Blair. Trust the West to outdo the rest of the world on all fronts, even proxy-rule!

Even with questions being asked about the integrity of the press based on the Radia tapes, we still don’t seem to care that the media never asks the hard questions to politicians. Sure, we have the odd show like Devil’s Advocate by Karan Thapar, but even that gets a bit too aggressive and in-your-face at times. And even Thapar only goes after people who are obviously wrong or guilty. But nobody in the media ever asks politicians what they are doing about even the basic minimum things they are supposed to do: stuff like providing good administration and development? No wonder then that it’s only students who ask questions the media won’t: like the student who confronted Obama about Pakistan’s terrorism. Or the student who asked Rahul Gandhi in Ahmedabad why they should vote for the Congress when Narender Modi has developed Gujarat so much more? Rahul Gandhi’s response? He compared Modi to Chairman Mao saying while both did develop their areas, they also caused a lot of de

We’ve heard the famous Tom Sawyer and his fence story. Of how Tom presented a punishment (painting the fence) as something attractive, so much so that his friends begged to paint the fence…and in some cases, even paid for a piece of the punishment, er, action. Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, did something similar in 2007. When he was still at Harvard, he was spending so much time with his company that he hardly attended any classes. So when this art test was due, Zuckerberg had no idea of the course contents (Yeah, I know: most of us had no idea of our course contents at college even without forming companies, so does that make us smarter than Zuckerberg?!). Anyways, dropping out of college is not that uncommon, but to flunk out doesn’t sound so good, does it? So he posted all the images he should have studied on a web page and sent a mail to his classmates offering a “study guide”. Bingo! They posted the information about each image. Plus, they even filtered the most import

There have been so many corruption scandals in recent times: the Commonwealth Games, the Adarsh apartments meant for Kargil martyrs, 2G spectrum (mis)allocation, the Karnataka CM & Co’s bribe taking spree. A few people even got sacked in all these scams: Suresh Kalmadi, Ashok Chavan, A Raja. Sure, none of them will ever be found guilty of anything, but even the sacking of such people is a big surprise. Why won’t anyone be found guilty? For one, they’ll just bribe their way out. Also, the prosecutors know they have blood on their hands (and money in their mattresses or Swiss accounts). If not in these scams, they’re guilty in others. So the prosecutors wouldn’t want to open the can of worms by ever imprisoning anyone else on corruption grounds. And even by some miracle if a couple of guys are ever prosecuted with sincerity, how long do you think the verdict will take to come? I’m not holding my breath. If we can’t even complete Ajmal Kasab’s trial 2 years after 26/11,

Many people complain about being overwhelmed by the amount of information that’s out there today. I never really bought that times-were-simpler-back-then argument but couldn’t articulate why it couldn’t be right. And then I read this article that articulates very well why the information overload complaint is just a myth: “A woman in a farm kitchen had a LOT to consider–just mak­ing a cook­ing fire took con­stant atten­tion, and infor­ma­tion about the kind and qual­ity of the wood, the spe­cific char­ac­ter­is­tics of the cook stove, the nature of the thing being cooked. The mod­ern cook flips on the burner, and his or her atten­tion, freed up, diverts to other things. She or he has much less infor­ma­tion to deal with. So what appears to us as “too much infor­ma­tion” could just be the free­dom from neces­sity. I don’t have to worry about find­ing and cut­ting and stor­ing fire­wood: I don’t even have to man­age a coal fur­nace. That atten­tion has been freed up f

Chris Anderson, curator of TED and author of The Long Tail is a smart guy. And his book on the economics of Free makes for interesting reading. In that book, he points out an interesting difference between the physical and digital worlds when it comes to placement of ads and content. Anderson points out that traditional media build a Chinese Wall “between their editorial and advertising teams, to ensure that advertisers cannot influence the editorial e.g. by ensuring that a car ad is not next to a car story or a Sony ad anywhere near our reviews of Sony products.” In the digital world, he points out that companies like Google do the exact opposite: they match ads with content! Having made this observation, he then tries to analyze why such matching is taboo in print but so successful online…and with no loss of credibility? I was surprised Anderson doesn’t seem to realize that it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison. In print, the magazine/newspaper is the content provi

That’s the statement that sort of summarizes the philosophy of the Internet: “Information wants to be free.” But that’s a mis -quote! Rather, it’s just a part of what Stewart Brand said more than 25 years back: “On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.” Brand’s reaction to the misquote being so popular today that most people don’t even know the actual statements is quite interesting. He says it happens to memes : they propagate in their most efficient form, whether that was what was intended or not. I suspect that since most people want information to be free (who wants to pay for Britannica when you can get it for free on Wikipedia ?), so we’ ve just latched onto the part that suits us. Guess y

Remember that James Bond movie, “ Tomorrow Never Dies ”? In it, a media mogul stages international incidents involving the world's superpowers. In one such staged incident, a deliberately messed up GPS system causes a British war vessel to think they’re still in international waters when in reality they’ve entered Chinese waters. Sounds very far fetched, right? Think again. Last week, Nicaraguan troops crossed the border into a neighbouring Costa Rican town. The funny thing in all this is that it wasn’t a planned invasion at all. Rather, the “ accidental invasion ” happened because the Nicaraguan troops used Google Maps , which mistakenly said the territory belonged to Nicaragua! Apparently, Google is human after all: it errs.

I love Star Trek . I liked the TV series far more than any of the movies based on the same though. I found it quite amusing when Spock was quoted in a Texas Supreme Court ruling recently! Check out the relevant part of that ruling: “ Appropriately weighty principles guide our course. First, we recognize that police power draws from the credo that "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." Second, while this maxim rings utilitarian and Dickensian (not to mention Vulcan 21 )…” And Footnote 21 says: “ See STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN (Paramount Pictures 1982). The film references several works of classic literature, none more prominently than A Tale of Two Cities . Spock gives Admiral Kirk an antique copy as a birthday present, and the film itself is bookended with the book's opening and closing passages. Most memorable, of course, is Spock's famous line from his moment of sacrifice: "Don't grieve, Admiral. It is logical. The needs of th

Though I’m in the technology-does-way-more-good-than-harm camp, I agree with Annalee Newitz’s comments on the unpredictable impact of any technology over the long term. Her point even covered technologies that save lives. Like penicillin. Sure, it saved a whole lot of lives but then went on to “create problems we'd never imagined”. How? It forced bacteria to mutate to survive which in turn causes very hard to cure infections today. As per Newitz, this is the litmus test question one should ask when hearing the predicted impact of any technology: “Does the narrative promise you things that sound like religion?” In other words, do the predictions promise some kind of Utopia? If the answer is Yes, then we should be wary. On the other hand, this kind of predicted impact of any technology is likely to be closer to the truth: “… if that narrative deals with consequences, complications, and many possible outcomes, then you're getting closer to something like a potenti

The RTI Act (Right to Information gave anyone the right to ask for information & the government had to respond to it. Within certain limits and categories, of course. Plus, it forced every public authority to computerize their records for wide dissemination and to proactively publish certain categories of information so that the citizens need minimum recourse to request for information formally. But is providing access to information enough to empower people? No, says Mike Gurstein who analyzed the impact of the digitization of land records in Bangalore: “Their findings were that newly available access to land ownership and title information in Bangalore was primarily being put to use by middle and upper income people and by corporations to gain ownership of land from the marginalized and the poor. The newly digitized and openly accessible data allowed the well-to-do to take the information provided and use that as the basis for instructions to land surveyors and lawyer

Recently, there was news that the Indian government wants to write its own operating system (OS) for use in national security contexts. The belief is that it would be proprietary and hence harder for hackers and terrorists to break into to steal data. While there is no guarantee it will come through or be better at security than what’s in use today, it does raise interesting possibilities. America has a history of items developed for defense purposes that eventually got used in the civilian domain. The most famous example of that is the Internet itself which was designed as a structure/format using which American installations could communicate even after a Soviet nuclear attack. Given India’s increasing tendency to copy/paste everything from the US (the good, the bad and the ugly), here’s hoping we too create similar spillover effects from military into civilian areas. Whether or not this OS effort succeeds.

Guys don’t get what gals feel. Women say the reason for that is we guys are insensitive. But I think the real reason is to be found in the book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix . Check out this passage: “Don’t you understand how Cho’s feeling at the moment?” she asked. “No,” said Harry and Ron together. Hermione sighed and laid down her quill. “Well, obviously, she’s feeling very sad, because of Cedric dying. Then I expect she’s feeling confused because she liked Cedric and now she likes Harry, and she can’t work out who she likes best. Then she’ll be feeling guilty, thinking it’s an insult to Cedric’s memory to be kissing Harry at all, and she’ll be worrying about what everyone else might say about her if she starts going out with Harry. And she probably can’t work out what her feelings toward Harry are anyway, because he was the one who was with Cedric when Cedric died, so that’s all very mixed up and painful. Oh, and she’s afraid she’s going to be thr

The idea of “ comparative advantage ” is very counter-intuitive. Popularized by David Ricardo, it says that free trade can work to everyone’s advantage even when one participant is more efficient/cheaper than the other on every parameter. I saw a very good explanation of how that’s possible in a TED talk by Matt Ridley . He showed this picture of two guys, Adam and Oz, and how long each takes to make a spear and an axe: As you saw above, Oz is faster at making both spears and axes. So it would appear that Oz wouldn’t benefit through any interaction (trade) with Adam since he (Oz) is faster on both fronts: spears and axes. So there’s nothing to be gained through trade in such a scenario, right? Wrong, says the comparative advantage theory. Here’s why. See the picture below to see what happens if Oz makes 2 spears and Adam makes 2 axes: You have to look closely to see what each of them gained: Time! By splitting it this way and then swapping items, each still gets a spear and an ax but

So many people place way too much emphasis on intent . It sometimes even reaches a stage where they ignore the success or failure of what was intended! Vinod Khosla, the billionaire venture capitalist and co-founder of Sun Microsystems, pointed out the problem with that misplaced emphasis when he made this comment about NGO’s: “I am relatively negative on most N.G.O.’s and their effectiveness . I am not negative on their intentions .” I sometimes wonder whether that overdone focus on intentions is partly a cultural thing. Doesn’t the Bhagwad Gita tell us to focus on the act and not on the reward? Sure, going to the other end of the spectrum and focusing only on the success/reward isn’t good either. The ongoing (or just ended, depending on who you ask) Recession is an example of what results from the other extreme. That said, if we want the lives of the poorest to improve, it is important to focus on the methods that work. Rather than terming every sincere attempt as p

When I was a kid, one of my aunts used to send clippings of newspaper or magazine articles that she found interesting. I don’t remember any of those clippings (maybe I was too young or maybe the topic didn’t interest me), but it got me thinking on how easy it is to share articles that you like today. You can send it via e-mail. Or you could put a link to that article on Facebook or Twitter. You can even recommend an article to people you don’t even know with recommendation sites like Digg and Delicious . I remember reading this very amusing article on the wicked character in Indian soaps recently. I read it at office; so obviously, I couldn’t cut out the article. Solution? Google for the article, copy/paste it and send it to whoever I wanted. Of course, the downside of all this is that we can broadcast every article we like. Which may feel like spam to the receiver (I am pretty sure I am guilty on that front). Unlike the old days when people sent the article by snail m

The preparations for the Commonwealth Games have been a complete and utter disaster. Footbridges and false ceilings collapsed even before the games had started. A budget overshoot by a factor of 30 times; you can imagine the scale of corruption. On the other hand, there’s the Goldman Sachs prediction about India becoming the world’s 3 rd largest economy by 2050. How exactly do we manage to be so corrupt, so incompetent and so behind schedule on so many fronts and yet seem to be racing ahead overall? Despite the corruption and inefficiencies that are so obvious, why are so many (foreigners and Indians alike) still confident about India’s growth prospects? Part of the answer seems to be the faith in the private sector. Not just in getting the work done but increasingly even in funding it! Take infrastructure funding, for example. Around 50% of every incremental rupee in Indian infrastructure is being funded by the private sector. Case in point: IDFC just launched an infrastructur

When I used to hear people use the phrase, “laws of physics”, I wondered why they didn’t say “laws of science ” instead? I mean, why exclude chemistry and biology? Later I learnt that the reason is that physics deals with fundamental concepts. And the other sciences are built on top of physics. For example, physics talks about the basic building blocks like quarks and electrons and photons (Well, ok, they keep breaking everything further and further…but that doesn’t change the point being made). Chemistry, on the other hand, is all about how combinations of building blocks behave. And biology is one level higher still than chemistry. Then I noticed the terminology difference. Until the 20 th century, every major concept of physics was called a “law”. Like the Second Law of Thermodynamics and Newton’s Laws of Gravitation. On the other hand, the most famous physics concepts of the 21 st century are called “theories”, not “laws”. Like the Theory of Quantum Mechanics and the Theory

By now, everyone must have seen this Blackberry ad that Vodafone is running: This ad indicates Blackberry’s attempt at an image change from being a high-level manager’s gadget to the new toy anyone can have. It’s no longer just for the smart guys or the rich guys or the ones wearing suits, the ad says. Reminds me of how mobile phone charges were around Rs 16 per minute back in the mid-90’s. And hence, it was only used by a handful back then. Fast-forward to today: it costs less than a paise per second. And everyone from your maid to the auto-driver has a cell phone. If only we make a lot more of the currently exclusive systems in our country just as inclusive. And while we’re at it, here’s hoping we can make things inexpensive as well.

The Brits and the Americans usually talk contemptuously about the French. I guess the Brits feel that way due to all the wars they’ve fought with France over centuries. And the Americans feel the French surrendered without a fight to the Nazis and then had to be “saved” by the Yankees. Subsequent events reinforced the animosity: in the 1970’s, Charles de Gaulle said he didn’t trust the dollar and wanted to convert all of France’s dollars into gold. And the French, unlike the Brits, refused to be America’s poodle in the Iraq war. In India, (for most of us) our opinion of France is largely based on Paris and the Eiffel Tower. And if you like arts and paintings, there’s no place like the Louvre. Plus, the French language sounds sexy. What’s not to like about the French? Other than their reluctance to speak in English… Among the Europeans, I feel the French are the least hypocritical and moralistic nation. They do what they want to do. And couldn’t care less about what others do.

When my mom went to a hospital in the US, the doctor there recommended getting a CT scan done in the US. The doctor’s reason? It’s trust-worthy in the US as opposed to one done in a country like India. Hey doc, if we were so bad at it, would so much of America’s healthcare work be done in/from India? Take the generics industry for starters. But first, what’s a generic? Once the patent on a medicine expires, anyone can manufacture it because, well, the patent has expired. Then it’s called a generic. Ranbaxy and Dr.Reddy’s Labs are extensively into generics, which they sell in the US and Europe. Then there’s CRAM: Contract Research and Manufacturing. Western pharma companies increasingly outsource parts of their medical research and manufacturing to Indian companies. As India grows richer and increasingly becomes the market to sell in, Western companies find the requirements here are different. The cost of the product is the key factor. Given the lack of hospitals and medical centers in

There are so many types of power that countries wield: military power, soft power and economic power. Having or using only military power is very expensive: after all, weapons cost money, positioning troops in another country costs money. Ask the Americans how much the Iraq war cost. Soft power includes the non-military ways of creating a favourable opinion about one’s country abroad. Like American universities and Bollywood. Economic power can work in many ways. It can be of the “I have this technology but won’t share it with you unless you do that” kind. Like the US did with super-computers decades back. Or it can be in the “Play by my rules or you won’t get access to our markets to sell your products”. Like what China does. And to a lesser extent, even India. Three recent instances of how India is wielding its economic power would not have been possible even a decade back. The first one is the ongoing discussion with Blackberry on getting access to its data for security (r

When it comes to gifts, I always felt cash were a better choice than goods. After all, how could one know for sure what the recipient wanted? Don’t many of us receive all sorts of items we don’t care about? And even if you knew what the other guy wanted, wasn ’t it possible that he was getting the same item from someone else as well? And by giving cash, didn ’t you give him the choice of buying what he wanted when he wanted it? And with cash, didn ’t the receiver also have the option of pooling in other cash contributions and/or from his pocket to buy that really expensive item? To me, cash feels far more valuable than an object of that same value. Because cash can buy so many different objects of a particular value. Or combinations of objects that add up to that value. This comment by Arthur Schopenhauer captures that sentiment: “(Money) is always ready to turn itself into whatever object their wandering wishes or their manifold desires may fix upon. Everything else can satisfy only

When the Pakistani cricket team’s spot-fixing scandal broke, one of my friends said he was just waiting to see how long it would take the Pakistanis to blame it on…who else?…India. Well, it took the twisted Pakistani mind a few days to invent the India connection but they got there. First they accused the bookie, Mazhar Majeed, of being a RAW agent. Today, I saw reports that they claim that Majeed was an agent of the players. C’mon guys, make up your mind: Is Majeed a RAW agent or your players’ agent? Or maybe he is a double agent? Now wouldn’t the twisted Pakistani mind love that theory. John le Carré should be taking tips from the Pakistanis for his plots! Next, they say the whole sting operation was a conspiracy launched by the ICC since it is headed by an Indian, Sharad Pawar. But wasn’t it a British tabloid that ran the sting and broke the story? Isn’t it Scotland Yard that’s launched an investigation into this? Or are they too “controlled” by India? Me, I am just waitin

Shakespeare famously said, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”. I don’t know if he was being sarcastic when he said that. If he wasn ’t, then boy, was Shakespeare wrong! George Orwell, on the other hand, was spot on when he assumed that the most noble sounding terms would be used by the very people who would be its worst violators. Take the official names of countries for instance. Like German Democratic Republic (East Germany), People's Republic of China and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. The first one wasn ’t democratic, the second did mass deportations of its own and the third is the pious hub of all terrorism. Contrast that with the names of the countries that are truly free. Like the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), Republic of India and the United States of America. Notice how their names make no tall claims about their intent and are just so, well, bland? Or take the religion whose name means “peace”. And the one whose name is just derived from t

Why did the Indian government give $5 million to Pakistan for flood relief ? Pakistan’s Mr.Ten Percent, Zardari, will swindle 10% (how do you think he got that nickname?) of the money. The ISI, Pakistani Army and their terrorist groups will swindle much of the rest. And use it to launch the next 26/11. Or to kill Indians in Afghanistan. Even if a small fraction is left over after all those groups take “their share”, do you think the Pakistanis getting aid purchased with that money would be told it came from India? Yeah, right, keep dreaming. Some countries even suggested India should have given more. And offered it earlier. Really? By this “logic”, I am guessing the same folks would have criticized the Jews for not funding the Nazis! Some suggest we give them items of use instead of cash. Newsflash: we already tried that during the 2005 earthquake in Pakistani Kashmir. Guess what the Pakistanis did? They removed the “Made in India” labels to avoid any goodwill from being cre

When Karl Marx pointed out the exploitative nature of capitalism with his famous point about workers having nothing to lose but their chains, he had many valid points. Today though, what Joan Robinson, a British economist, said (in 1962) is more accurate: “The misery of being exploited by capitalists is nothing compared to the misery of not being exploited at all.” The wheel had come full circle! Sadly, that is not the case in India. At least not in terms of our labour laws. They still reflect Marx rather than Robinson. Take the manufacturing sector for an example. In most countries, that sector creates the most jobs. Not so in India. The reason is our labour laws: they make layoffs close to impossible. That in turn discourages hiring of temporary workers. Industries like steel, textiles and automobile are cyclical, i.e., they grow, then contract and the cycle repeats itself. Such industries turn to technology to automate the work instead of hiring people during the boom times who they

Demographics refers to the characteristics of a population. Like age or income or education or a combination of some attributes. Depending on the context, it could refer to different attributes. Age has become one of the most important demographic parameter when evaluating future economic prospects of countries. Simply put, one looks at the age distribution of the population. And if the number of people in the working age is going to shrink in a country, it’s very likely that the country will get poorer in the long run. Strangely, that is especially true for developed countries. Why? Because their increasingly aged population will draw more and more on their healthcare and pension facilities even as the younger set contributing to that kitty decreases . Today, one in five Japanese and Europeans are over age 65. As per UN estimates, in 2050, that ratio will be one in three. That would inevitably stress their healthcare and pension systems further, require a raise in retirement age and

Want to convey a positive image to something that is bad? You don’t need to call a PR guy or advertising professional. Just add the Buddha name somewhere in the narrative. At the very least, that will dilute the badness. I found an amusing instance of that in a book titled “Johnny Gone Bad” . The protagonist of that story goes from being (among a host of other things) a Buddhist monk in Cambodia to a drug dealer in South America. Guess what they called him? Coke Buddha! Even nations have used that trick. Just look at the words used to announce India’s successful nuclear tests in 1974: “The Buddha is smiling”. What better way to declare your weapons were developed with a peaceful intent?! Of all the founders and prophets of religions, it’s only Buddha whose name can be taken in jest without fear of retaliation by some group or the other. In a world where fanatics will cite their religion as the justification for their violence, Buddhists stand out in magnificent contrast. I guess that’s

We see evil around us all the time. Today, it’s terrorism. Before that, some called it communism (Reagan even called the Soviet Union the “Evil Empire”). The holocaust, imperialism, the Inquisitions, slavery…the list of what we call evil seems endless as we go back in time. Religions don’t pretend evil doesn’t exist. And they inevitably face the question: Why does evil exist if God is good and all-powerful? Their usual response is that good shall be rewarded and evil punished…eventually. In ways that can be described but never proved. But for many, “just believing” is not enough. I found this solution by a philosopher named Spinoza very interesting. He felt that what we humans call good and evil is just based on our criteria, preferences and ends. In other words, the descriptions are neither absolute nor accurate. And that is why we run into the "problem of evil". In his words: “…we have but a partial knowledge of things, and are in the main ignorant of the order and coheren

Most people who go to work curse and crib about their jobs. But a strange transformation seems to happen when some of those same folks retire. Several of them go back to work! It’s not like they start doing the sort of things they wanted to but couldn’t. They go back to the same profession! Sure, in some cases, it may have to do with money problems. A few of my dad’s office colleagues have even gone abroad for engineering jobs post-retirement. I’ve always wondered what possessed them to do that at their age. After all, there are very few things you don’t get in India today. What could possibly be so appealing about going to another country and adapting to their culture and their systems? And, oh yeah, working again? Another set gets back to the workplace because they are bored. Again, something I don’t understand. C’mon, guys, there are a zillion options today. Watch TV. Surf the Net. Read a book. Blog about something. Paint. Do day-trading. Watch that game. Or see those saas-bahu seri

Pointing at a picture of early man’s tools, Matt Ridley in his TED talk said: “Who made them and for whom? Early man made them for himself; it was called self-sufficiency. We call it poverty these days.” Self-sufficiency equals poverty? But think for a minute. Do you know anyone who grows his own food? Or hunts for it? Know anyone who grows cotton, converts it into cloth, stitches it and then wears it? The guys who come closest to doing all that are farmers. And an overwhelming number of them are indeed poverty stricken. Next, look at the set that is far better off economically than the farmer. Like journalists, teachers, engineers, doctors, businessmen, sports stars and movie stars. What’s common with that set? None of them is even remotely close to self-sufficiency. They all depend on others to provide different things for them! Well, ok, but maybe that only holds for individuals? Are self-sufficient societies richer than the non-self-sufficient ones? Not at all. America is rich and

Microfinance refers to the providing of financial services to low-income clients, especially those who traditionally lack access to banking and related services. This includes not just loans but also savings and insurance. Those who promote microfinance believe that such access helps people out of poverty. The most famous guy from the world of microfinance is Muhammad Yunus , a Bangladeshi banker, economist and Nobel Peace Prize winner. SKS Microfinance is India’s largest and the world’s fastest growing microfinance organization. Operating in 19 states, it provides collateral-free loans to the poor. 85% of its borrowers are poor women. It made loans worth Rs 20,000+ crores last year. It provides loans for cell phones, local retail shops, housing loans (via a tie up with HDFC) and life insurance (via a tie up with Bajaj Allianz). So where does SKS gets the money to lend? From other banks and financial institutions. Also from private equity investors and venture capitalist

Everyone knows that Hellenic (Greek) philosophy is the bedrock of Western civilization. By that, most people refer to the Hellenic legacies of democracy, abstractions and generalizations (the “Ideas” of Plato), the clarity generating “Logic” of Aristotle, and the concept of defining all terms. Including defining terms like justice, ethics and morality. You can agree or disagree with their definitions; but at least they were willing to stick their neck out and take a stab at such items. Far less, however, is said about the Greek impact on the idea of God in the West. The Greeks philosophers, be it Socrates or Plato or Aristotle, were all practical men. While they certainly had some idealism in them, they were pragmatic about what was possible in the realm of governance. Plato felt that no ideal society (Utopia) ever comes to be because men are not content with a simple life. That men are acquisitive, ambitious, competitive, and jealous. Aristotle was a bit more cynical (realistic?) and