Sunday Posts

The trouble with Critical Thinking is that we live in a society based on Mimicry. If we take away the mimicry, the whole society falls apart. That innovation is the basis of our economic progress is a modern myth, propagated in an industrial scale. But doing things similarly, rather than differently, is what keeps our society going. The trouble is that we have so convinced ourselves with the innovation myth. The whole idea of capitalist society stands on mimicry. Dating back to Adam Smith, its foundational idea was that we would desire things that others desire, because their desire indicated that these things are worth desiring after all. This is the fundamental idea that creates consumer demand, industrial production, finance capital and so on. It is about aspiring to be the same, rather than aspiring to be different, that drives our economy. Surely, the argument has moved forward since the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries. As the individual has become the centre ...

As we speak to employers about what skills they value, they often talk about Critical Thinking. When we talk to colleges and universities, at least in the UK, Critical Thinking comes right at the top of the list of the things they want their students to be able to do. Someone I know, who has been working on the Educator-Employer interface for more than a decade now, tells me that even if they are using similar language, they mean different things by Critical Thinking. According to him, this creates the disconnect, and this is why while 70% educators may think the students are ready for the workplace, less than half the employers think so. With this in mind, I was engaging with educators and employers to figure out what the different definitions of Critical Thinking may be. It seems that both employers and educators mean the same thing - the ability to test and validate the assumptions that underlie a decision - when they talk about critical thinking. They are both talking about n...

We built an education system designed on Information Retention skills because information was, until about very recent times, scarce. We needed to memorise because timely access to information was a problem. The analog, printed stuff that we had - which was the primary form information was stored - was place-bound and time-shifted. Even if someone knew it, it took some time to be available for general consumption. And, it sat on bookshelves or filing cabinets. Knowing things, as in remembering, was the mark of an educated person. But we have the opposite problem now. We have too much information. Gutenberg and his press brought a revolution that doubled the information stock of the world in fifty years. Now, we are doubling it, a much larger information stock, in three years or less. Every person in the world has 320 times more information than was stocked in the entire Library of Alexandria, designed to hold all the knowledge of the world. And, within this deluge, even if we mis...

This did hurt because I still remember it after a good seventeen years. As a young professional, appraisals meant a lot to me. This was my first year at a big brand company, and we had come through a difficult year with flying colours. And, I thought I did particularly well. Starting at a point when we were definitely trailing the competition, the business in my territory had a remarkable turnaround, expanding geographically and posting impressive like-for-like sales. Personally, I fought it out too: I was competitive and did everything I could to ensure that we trounce the competition. We worked well in teams, and my team won the best team awards in the company through the season. So, I was expecting a grand review, a promotion etc. The review was good and I did get the promotion. Senior Managers came and complimented me, and one of them told me something that became a permanent fixture in my vanity, that I was the best Marketer in the country. But I did not get th...

I learnt something new about India when I travelled around the country in April/ May. I was accompanied by two colleagues: One, my Co-founder, a Briton who has never been to India before; Another, a senior colleague who is the Chair of our Academic Board (and previously been a member of the executive in an UK university), who was born in Mauritius but settled down in England three decades ago, and have become as English as anyone (in contrast, though settled in England, I preserved my Indian, arguably Bengali, identity in day to day life, and even in work). I learnt a lot seeing India through the eyes of these two close colleagues,who were visitors to a country I consider my own. What I learnt went beyond the usual staff one expects: One gets embarrassed by the lack of basic facilities in India when accompanying a 'guest', but at the same time, on reflection, feels proud about how little we have to go by, yet how aspirational we are. Coming back-to-back to a visit to China...

Industrial age has long ended, the pundits proclaimed, and we live in the information age. Indeed, the world in perspective is downtown LA, not some remote areas of Congo, where some farming tools, if they could be afforded, would be a good idea. However, once the proclamation is printed in books legitimised by top publishers' logos and the authors credentials longer than their names, it must be believed. Further, that idea is already in vogue and typing these words on a remote computer hooked in some network, I seem to be voting affirmative with my action. However, one question remains though: It seems that history has indeed accelerated a bit too fast, and this information age, or network economy or whichever name one calls it, is precariously close to catastrophe just after it has barely began. Call it the revenge of Congo, where children who would consider themselves lucky to have a decent meal a day and would not miss anything if the Information Age ends tomorrow: However...

Last weeks riots in London, if it was ever reported, largely went unnoticed in other countries. Indeed, no one died: Just a few disaffected students with support from serial troublemakers ransacked the Conservative Party Headquarter and threw, in totality, one empty Fire Extinguisher from the roof towards the police. Such things happen, particularly in the context of severe 'cuts' that the British society is going through. We shrugged this off as a minor event. It should be, coming after the Tube Strikes in London the previous week which caused more disruption for a greater number of people. And, also, seen in the context of the proposed (but later canceled) strike by Fire Wardens on the Bonfire day, this incident snapped up less Column space in the newspapers. BBC mentioned it in the passing: Most of people moved on, including the protesters. Nick Clegg , the Liberal Democratic party leader and the Deputy Prime Minister, whose party got elected after signing a pledge not to r...