Sunday Posts

The feeling that my life is drifting away is perhaps the most creepy one to have. Yet, it's a non-feeling. One doesn't really feel the drift until after the fact; otherwise, it will not be one of drift, it will be of change. Yet, I have that. It's really a combination of two things: of comfort - imagine listening to the gentle waves while looking out of a porthole - and of anxiety - of not knowing where one is off to, or, if at all, one is off to anywhere. It's the opposite of the fear of change; it's the fear of non-change, of meaningless stability. Indeed, days pass and seasons change. It does not help that this country, and almost all countries I care about, are suddenly caught in a cycle of non-change, history going backwards in a climate of global counter-revolution. Every day's new, it appears, could be of any day; like a bad movie, things do not happen in a sequence anymore. Instead, they appear randomly, making sense just by themsel...

As Brad Smith invited us to think - any technology can be a tool or a weapon. Which one we make it is our choice. Often, though, technologies start as weapons before becoming a tool. This is not because all the technologies we have so far are inherently warlike, but because of the money. The powerful can fund the workshop and pay the craftsmen to produce what will give them more power. That many technologies, starting as weapons, become a tool later prove a good thing about ourselves: That our ingenuity is often peaceable and we turn weapons into tools when we can. Here is a narrative, therefore: The crafty genius in his workshop, funded by and for the Prince, creates technologies of war, and it remains as such until another crafty genius comes up with its antidote. Thereafter, bereft of strategic value, the technologies are deployed in peaceable purposes. There is a lovely, benign, story of progress. Of course, it's too neat and in real life, it's not...

The easy point to miss about the different modern institutions that we live by - markets and democracy - that these take for granted a compassionate society. Take away compassion and democracy looks like a majoritarian oppression, and markets a grinding mill where all human values are destroyed for a self-defeating end. Hannah Arendt may have got Adolf Eichmann wrong and took his defence strategy - that he was a mindless, powerless, small cog in the Holocaust machine - too seriously, but she was accurate in her meta-diagnosis of the Nazi mind, the complete incapability to see anyone else's point of view or to contemplate the consequences of one's own action. The difference between the American Democracy as imagined by the Founders and in the age of trump is the abandonment of compassion, and suddenly that shining example of Republican imagination looks like a belligerent monstrosity intent on tearing itself apart. And, withering of compassion turns Adam Smith's dynamic...

Ideas are fascinating and exciting. We live in a culture that celebrates ideas. In a sense, we see all history as history of ideas now. It is ideas that make men great, and the great men are those who belabour with ideas, either to bring it into being or to create impact with it. Entrepreneurs, our modern Heroes, are the idea-warriors, who puts everything on stake to make their idea work. Ideas, in short, are divine inspirations, whose blessing we all seek and whose existence makes us meaningful. But there is a dark side of ideas, which never gets talked about. All the monstrosities for the last two hundred years have been committed in the name of ideas. And, indeed, if one counts religion as an idea, the history will go back much further. Just as we transformed the Great Men doctrine into a narrative of great ideas, we should also perhaps replace our evil men doctrine with a narrative of bad ideas. However, I anticipate an objection coming: Many ideas, which turned out to be...

I have been reading Mark Lilla's The Reckless Mind (New York Review of Books, 2016), which is an insightful portrait of six intellectuals in Politics. Lilla's broad point is that seeking the purity of ideas in the messy practicum of the political world is a hazardous enterprise. This has led - whether inspired by enlightenment reason or by religious passions for a new beginning - to tyranny, or philosophies in the service of tyranny, which Lilla calls 'philotyranny'. In Lilla's vision, the love of ideas, the pure passion, more often than not, turn to ideologies, sacrificing freedom in the quest of a perfection that is both unknowable and unattainable. In this, his ideas are not too far from those of the American pragmatists, John Dewey in particular, for whom ideas turning into ideologies was the cardinal sin of our time. I came away, however, with another thought: That tyranny is somewhat our original condition, basis of our moral thought. Whether we think in...

I took a 'Political Coordinates Test' on Facebook. This is about answering a few superficial questions on a scale of 5, and then you are placed on a strange Communitarian-Liberal-Left-Right spectrum. I was placed, predictable, slightly towards the left than the right, though right along the middle line of the communitarian and liberal.  Admittedly, this is largely a meaningless exercise, worth attention during a few bored minutes during a train journey, but not much else. What does being indifferent on legalising Marijuana mean to me anyway? Or for that matter, why do I agree on legalising prostitution rather than strongly agree? Besides, there are the question of terminology. Communitarian is a strange label to be put on the other end of being a Liberal, the latter term representing its American meaning, for individualism, rather than the European one, for state provisions. But in any case, these questions allow me to think about my 'political' self, the part t...

In a way, 1st January is the strangest day, when the present and the future come together. Our conversations, more than on any other day, centre on things to come. And, that makes this day somewhat special, a brief but momentous journey between the nostalgia of year-end and present-mindedness of the 2nd January. It is, for most of us, both a pause and a spark, to enjoy the present possibilities. One way of seeing it is that we have one day every year for future and one day for the past, and the balance three hundred and sixty three (or four, as in 2016) for living in the present. That proportion sounds about right. Indulging too much on the future, just like being stuck in the past, can be somewhat harmful, obscuring the wonderful and immediate potential of every day. But, as there is value in our past in providing us with a perspective to live, there is value in the future, as it broadens our horizons. A good way to live the present, as the self-help books will tell you, is ...

I write, but one advice I have taken to heart is not to take my writing too seriously. That, I thought, is the best way to avoid any traps - from writing blocks to scholasticism - and be able to enjoy writing. This is exactly I did, on this blog, for the last ten years. I wrote as words came to me, and stopped, sometimes abruptly, just as one would do in conversations. It was difficult not to be conscious of those who might read it - I experimented with private blogs but the conversations felt unfulfilled without others - and over time, this put some constraints of subjects, what to say or not to say, all those little things about appropriateness. There was, however, somewhere a wish, a hope, that I can attempt a meaningful writing project someday. After ten years, I feel ready to try. A few weeks ago, I wrote a post announcing my intention to write about the death of Mahatma Gandhi ( see here ). Or, rather, what then started as a general enquiry into an imperfect but persistentl...

There are things that interest me, the stories of heroic and meaningful lives, the narratives of creative flowerings at certain points of time and in specific places, revolutionary ideas and why human beings, at certain points of time, degenerate into depravity and destroy their own achievements. These interests, as one could tell from my rather straight-jacket life as a business executive, lie outside my work, and only as a pastime. But, such interests are also the essence of my curiosity and creative pursuit, and define who I want to be.   There are times when I take these interests seriously and this is one such indulgent moment. My life is at a crossroad in many a sense, and a systematic enquiry is one way of uplifting myself from the compromises I have to make everyday to make a living and to be fully alive. Hence, the plan - to construct a series of essays on Gandhi - is more about my own life than about its subject.  However, the choice of the subject requires som...

I look forward to read Karen Armstrong's Fields of Blood , which is waiting for me at one of the stops of my inevitable work tours. Ms Armstrong's point, as I picked up from the reviews, that religion can not be held directly responsible for violence, intrigued me, because that is precisely what I believe. I, therefore, look forward to engage with her argument and understand the other point-of-view. I am indeed not dismissive before I managed to read the book, but hoping that she has something to offer more than the assertion, oft-repeated, that no religious doctrine is actually founded on violence. It must be noted, at this point, that while this is a common defense (that no religion encourages violence), it is, by no means, the common understanding. A large number of people in the world believe Islam directly encourages violence, given the acts of Islamic terrorists in the recent years. Indeed, a previous generation, having experienced worldwide bloodshed incited by imp...

I was recently forwarded an Wall Street Journal article ( see here , may require subscription) arguing against the Ford Foundation pledging $11 billion to fight inequality, by a colleague. I was not sure whether to agree or disagree with the claims of the article, as, at one level, the claim that businesses should spend their money doing business, seems entirely justifiable. But, there is a bigger, and implicit, claim - that the businesses can solve the problems of the world by doing business - which I can not disagree more with.  Before I return to the subject of the article, I should elaborate why I have such a dim view of the capacity of businesses to solve all the problems. Businesses are usually good at one thing - focused efficiency - but this is not the only thing that can solve all the problems. In fact, the businesses often create more problems than they solve. Before we jump into this conclusion positing the Capitalist as the ultimate Philanthropist, we must careful...

One of the key functions of a modern university should be promote a Secular Morality. However, by turning technocratic, this often becomes the missing piece, the point that universities relegate to private sphere, rather than an active value that they need to promote. The reason for this is obvious. We have three kinds of universities. The State-sponsored ones, while nominally secular in most countries, define secularism as equal sponsorship of all religious ideas. Their secularism is non-discriminatory, rather than an idea in itself. The other kind, private, charitable ones, often backed by religious founders or organisations, exist to promote one or the other religious ideal, or at the least, exist because of the religion-inspired social obligations of its founder. For these universities, the only kind of morality possible is inspired by religion, and indeed, their kind of religion. The third type of university is the For-Profit ones, set up as businesses to serve people who do...

Elizabeth Losh of University of California San Diego contends that it is a mistake to view education as a product and not as a process. But even this is stopping short, because the question, process towards what, also must be asked. Burying ourselves in the process paradigm, powerful as it is, may obscure our inability to find a purpose. Many of today's debates centre around the question - education for what - and not answering this adequately may inevitably lead to this idea of education-as-a-pill. Indeed, the purpose question can be limiting too. The proposition, education is for an employment, is presented as a self-evident and universal truth all too commonly. While an education-for-employment must undoubtedly have its place in a modern economy, in many ways, this also serves as the key rationale for stripping education from its all other functions, that of joy, discovery and of being, and this is the process element Professor Losh is concerned about. Besides, this is the...

There is a touch of surreal in the discussion about Education-for-Employment. Most educators object that education should 'merely' be about employment, and everyone else blame them for being insensitive: They point out that college costs are soaring and with mounting debts, the students can't but think of economic returns when going to college. However, no one is seriously saying that education shouldn't be about employment, but rather that it should not just be about employment. Yet, the debate rages on. For some, the education-for-employment conversation is ultimately informed by Margaret Thatcher's 'profound' insight that 'there is no such thing as society'. Once one accepts the proposition, everything else falls in place: It provides a clear framework within which the 'superstar' economies can be built (where a few information elites take all the rewards), allowing, for the rest of us, lives of debt without redemption.  The educ...

I am currently in Manila. It is good to be back here after almost four years, and meet old friends and new people. Most of the people I meet here, I met them first time for business reasons (I met others through them, so that was business too). However, now that I have no obvious business proposition to meet them, I still feel like seeing them - and they do too. I would like to believe this is a very Asian thing, but perhaps not, because the same thing happens to me in England too: I meet people without business reasons, or at least, without ones that are apparent. While this may sound incredibly pointless to some of my more business-minded associates, I have come to realise that this is my style. I don't meet people to do business, I meet people and then may end up doing business with them. For those who may wonder why I am not very successful in my business career, this should be an easy explanation: That I don't begin with an end in mind. If I appear to lack a sense of...

Experiential Learning is the old hot thing. Not only everyone likes the idea - that learning should happen from practical life - it has a great pedigree in education theory. The new formula of competency-based learning, that learning should focus on useful competencies required at work, takes this idea further, and tightly weave all learning around experience, making all else superfluous. However, while this has become the new orthodoxy, one limitation of this conception is how to fit this into a rapidly changing world. When everything changes, and today's competencies may not translate into any future advantage, one would wonder whether experiential learning is enough. Besides, one ought to ask how to approach learning when change happens in our life and work so rapidly. The answer may lie in learning from experience. I use the term in the classical sense, as used by Dewey, and as opposed to the idea of experiential learning. Dewey himself contrasted his idea of 'experie...

I have chosen to live outside India for more than a decade. This was my attempt to become Indian. I did not leave India because I felt constrained. Rather, I was comfortable. And, it is that comfort that I wanted to overcome. My persistent requests for transfers abroad, even to remote locations in Asia and Africa, were often met with puzzlement by my bosses, who could never figure out why I would want to go away, leaving what seemed to be a promising and safe career.  Eventually I went away, but I never really left. Most of my conversations always centred around India. All that I learnt along my way added to my perspectives and changed me. I lived in Bangladesh first, which made me cross the first boundary, that of religious stereotypes that afflicted so many conversations when I lived inside the cocoon in India. Travelling in South-East Asia opened up my mind to the value of working by hand, and challenged the deep-seated caste-based presumptions that I grew up with. And...