Viswanathan K's Thoughts

The lack of a definition to a term, as we know all too well, is a problem when dealing with governments. NASA, for example, wanted to search for life in space. For that, it needed a definition of life, writes Carl Zimmer in Life’s Edge . NASA came up with this: “Life is a self-sustained chemical system capable of undergoing Darwinian evolution.” That sounds right, even if a bit heavy on technical language.   But… the well-known exception is the good old virus. It doesn’t eat. It doesn’t grow in size. It doesn’t even reproduce – instead, it hijacks a living organism’s cellular machinery to make copies of itself. Viruses then are a headache for definition seekers. They have some characteristics, while lacking others.   Think of the good old RBC’s – red blood cells. They transport oxygen through the body. As anyone at a blood bank will tell you, blood has a life span of storage. “If something has a life span, surely it has a life.” And yet, be many definitions, RBC’s aren’

Policy changes can often only be made gradually. Montek Singh Ahluwalia makes this point via two excellent examples in his book, Backstage .   The first one was about how cement prices were deregulated. He starts by explaining the problem. Even in the early 1980’s, cement prices were set by the government. The Center even controlled who got how much cement! Such a system led to cement makers feeling that they could make a lot more if only the market could decide prices, private buyers never knowing whether they could get enough cement, all of which then fuelled corruption and black markets.   What finally caused a change of heart? AR Antulay, Maharashtra CM, was caught in a scandal where he was siphoning off cement allocated to state projects to be sold to private buyers in return for kickbacks. Much worse (politically speaking) was that he’d used Indira Gandhi’s name in his dealings. She was furious and that opened the window to do something to prevent such things from recurri

When I was a kid, I remember the Big Book of Amazing Facts startled me when it said there was no definition for the term “life”. How can a term life “life” not have a definition? Now, as an adult, I found myself reading Carl Zimmer’s book on the same theme – that life defies definition.   In Life’s Edge , Zimmer starts with the contradiction. Even babies follow dots on a screen that seem to move with a purpose but not dots moving randomly: “Our knowledge of life… arises long before we can tell ourselves what we know.” If something can live, it has two states, right? Alive or dead. Think again. Take the tiny animalcules that Antony Van Leeuwenhoek, the inventor of the microscope, found in water. If he let the water evaporate, most animalcules would burst (and die) as they dried. But not all. Some animalcules didn’t burst – it shrank into a smaller version of itself and became motionless. If he doused them with water weeks later , they unfolded their bodies and “came alive”.  

The last city we visited in Europe was Innsbruck in the Austrian Alps. After the cold and windy experience (at times) of Paris and Netherlands, Innsbruck was a wonderful change – it didn’t feel that cold, it was not windy all of which made it easy to walk around. Something absolutely necessary given how scenic the place is.   Since the hotel check-in time was much later in the day, we left the baggage and went to the Swarovski HQ-cum-museum about an hour by bus from Innsbruck. The crystal exhibits were brilliant – colorful, bright, shiny. Jewellery aside, it was a display of what one can do with crystals. While my wife and daughter loved the jewellery, I liked the superhero themed exhibits of Batman, Spiderman, the Hulk, and Star Wars. We didn’t buy anything there, though we did buy stuff in the Swarovski store in Innsbruck – jewellery, not the superhero stuff.   Innsbruck is a major tourist attraction during the skiing season but now in summer, we saw many groups of Indians a

From Paris, we went to Amsterdam by the superfast Euro Train. Since my wife has been to the Netherlands many times from her Philips days, she knows the country (not just Amsterdam) very well. In Amsterdam, a huge number of the tourist’y sites are all close to each other (and to the railway station).   The Dutch are truly comfortable in English, so communication is very easy. After spending a few hours at the interactive science museum, we went to the street famous for its food and knick-knacks. I ordered the falafel and it was great, spicy as ordered. I also enjoyed the stroopwafels , a type of waffle. While I am not a fan of waffles, the Dutch variant is delicious. I’ve told my 12 yo daughter to learn the recipe and make them for me in Bangalore…   The next morning, we took the ferry across the river to the tour office for the bus to the Keukenhof Gardens. My wife had spoken highly of the beauty of the place, and she wasn’t exaggerating. Tulips for miles on end, in so many va

I was blown away by Paris the last time I visited it over 20+ years back. I was a bachelor with little forex, we stayed overnight at the (free) Youth Hostel, you get the idea… This time though, the trip to Paris would be on vacation, with family, it would be my 12 yo daughter’s first trip out of Asia, and I wasn’t on a tight budget. So I was hopeful that while the experience wouldn’t be novel, it would be better on many fronts.   The Europe trip started off badly. We’d planned to fly via Dubai, but with that city facing massive rains and floods, flights to/from Dubai were getting cancelled. So we switched airlines to Lufthansa. Both my wife and I had bad memories of Lufthansa – the cabin crew always felt arrogant. Not anymore. They were very courteous. Unfortunately, with the Iran-Israel flareup, our flight took a longer route avoiding those places, thus got delayed and we missed our connecting flight to Paris. Lufthansa had rebooked us on the next flight automatically – but we now

Sometimes, indulging your child’s whims can set off a change in policies, writes Montek Singh Ahluwalia in Backstage . One such example was the establishment of Maruti Udyog Limited (MUL). It was established to realize Sanjay Gandhi’s dream of producing an affordable people’s car. The Planning Commission and the Finance Ministry opposed it – cars were a luxury item, why spend on that? Indira Gandhi approved nonetheless. “(Unintentionally, MUL) helped change attitudes on many important aspects of industrial policy.”   First, it forced us to accept our limits. Yes, we could manufacture a car, but we were nowhere ready to design one. The hunt for a collaborator began. “This also opened the door to a more relaxed approach to the import of foreign technology in other sectors.” Why Suzuki was selected is amusing. No other Japanese car manufacturer was interested. Suzuki though was open to talks since they were still a motorcycle manufacturer and had just introduced a small car wit

Montek Singh Ahluwalia’s book, Backstage , is (in his words): “A travelogue of India’s journey of economic reforms, in which I had the privilege of being an insider for 30 long years.” At college, he loved to debate. In real life: “I realized the art of persuasion is very different from the art of debating, and much more challenging.”   It is easy to criticize Soviet style central planning. But only with hindsight, says Ahluwalia . In Nehru’s time, central planning seemed to be working – it had transformed the USSR from a “feudal society into an industrial power within a few decades”. In fact, in the 1960’s, several top American economists felt that it was entirely possible that the Soviet planning could make their national income higher than America’s by the end of the century!   Ahluwalia’s stint at the World Bank (WB) “would give me first-hand experience of development problems in a range of developing countries”. WB aid to countries came with terms and conditions ar

There’s this famous 1953 idea called the Hedgehog and the Fox by Isaiah Berlin. It refers to how different people view the world . “The hedgehogs are more the big idea people, more decisive," while the foxes are more accepting of nuance, more open to using different approaches with different problems.” At first glance, it seems obvious that the foxes must be right, but in real life, hedgehogs are abundant (capitalism is the best system, everything boils down to physics, religious tolerance is the best course…).   Why do so many people become hedgehogs? The most common reason is that when you start to understand or appreciate an idea or theme, it can become like that famous line in the movie Inception: “What is the most resilient parasite? Bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm? An idea. Resilient... highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it's almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully formed - fully understood - that sticks; right in