Viswanathan K's Thoughts

The younger, seen-the-West generation has varying degrees of pride in India. Sure, they have their complaints and criticisms too, but when I was a kid, people rarely had any pride in any aspect of modern India. If at all, their pride was limited to ancient philosophies or ways of life from back then. But even today, there are still plenty of Indians who talk of the West as if it is better than us on parameters where the situation has actually turned 180˚, done a U-turn. Take the recent ranking of countries based on the confidence of citizens of a country in their government. Keep in mind this was done by the OECD, a grouping of most of the world’s largest economies, barring China and Brazil. While India was 3rd best on that list, both the US and UK were below even the average confidence ratings among the OECD countries! Some people tend to explain this as a Trump/Brexit induced effect. But even if that was true (and it probably is), it only raises another question. After al...

One of the comments I listed in my last blog raises an interesting point. The comment I refer to was this: “There is a common ancient horridly flawed assumption often afoot that if something is written in a book, it must be true or will become so. There is zero basis for that assumption. The first book supposedly ever mass-printed was a bible. Enough said. Books were originally designed to spread words, period. They could be fact, fiction, opinions or folklore.” Both points are true: most people do trust the printed word. Even though printed does not equal truth. Now consider the other source of truth that most people trust: Wikipedia. Though we don’t realize it most of the time, even Wikipedia relies on other sources of truth, though not necessarily only printed books. In case you didn’t know it already, this is the Wikipedia philosophy: “Wikipedia is not ‘truth’, Wikipedia is ‘verifiability’ of reliable sources . Hence, if most secondary sources which are taken as reliable happen ...