Sunday Posts

On a rather gloomy day in Melbourne - a sad one when the city has lost its greatest cricketing son ever - I came across the latest idea of government innovation: A minister for loneliness!  Election season, so Victorian politicians are confronted with many catchy manifesto ideas. Emerging from one of the most stringent and longest lockdowns anywhere in the world, mental health is indeed at the top of the agenda here. Therefore, the ministry to tackle loneliness sounds right - and timely! I am not a huge fan of governments looking to address social issues. A friend helpfully pointed to me to the Ministry of Silly Walks, which is indeed as innovative and perhaps as needed for our dour times. The effects of the lockdown were devastating, but a minister to solve the problem? I almost misread the proposed title as a minister OF loneliness! To my surprise, though, it turned out not to be a new idea at all. That I did not know that the UK was the first to have such a minister in 2018 was ...

We have an ambiguous relationship with history. We did genuinely suppose that history had ended, with the collapse of the Soviet Union - and yet we claim to be making history all the time, with every speech made, every feature upgraded and every ribbon cut. Between the two, it's possible to come up with an explanation about the two kinds of history: The faceless force of time that shaped our lives, ideas and civilisations seem to have lost its potency - or at least so we believe - and our newfound technological prowess has given us the opportunity to shape the future and fashion departures from History, thus make history. The History with the big H are therefore purged from the school curriculum and increasingly from the universities. Unemployed historians now take comfort that the popular history as a literary genré seems to be exploding, keeping the bookstores and public broadcasters - those two should have been history by now - alive and kicking. Therefore, when History makes a ...

Narratives matter for the economy. The point is somewhat obvious, but the Nobel laureate economist Robert Shiller re-emphasizes the point in a new book ( a preview here ). Yet, as Shiller argues correctly, we miss this point all too often. We claim that data will speak for itself, but people think in terms of overarching stories rather than nuanced arguments. And, in this, I shall argue, Bengal misses a trick. By Bengal, I mean the state of West Bengal in India. This sliver of the ancient state of Bengal, which became prosperous and pre-eminent in Indian politics for a variety of environmental (changing courses of rivers), historical (the gradual shift of influence from Dhaka to Calcutta, via Murshidabad) and economic (early emergence of capitalist class through privatization of land ownership, spread of English education and emergence of a hub of global trade) reasons, is - by common perception - in a state of decline. When I use Bengal, I am only using the popular shortha...

All humans are not born equal. Some are born in the shadows of a colonial past, with an indelible history embedded in themselves. Whatever they may do - and many of them do a lot - they remain unerringly colonial. Even if they are accepted by kind friends, behaviour with them - towards them - falls under tolerance; and indeed, they are always periodically reminded of who they are by others not so kind. They are confronted with stereotypes of themselves in daily lives, and even when those stereotypes are positive - for me, being considered an IT specialist just because I am Indian, for example - it is often living another person's life: That of a historical person, who we don't know and aren't ourselves, but who was present at birth and will always stay with me. It's hard to explain this experience to someone who is not born into this perpetual coloniality. There are things a colonial can see - even when she chooses to ignore it - which the others may not notic...

It only seems natural to hire people who fit the organisation's culture. In fact, the most common excuse for executive failure is the inability to fit into the culture of an organisation. We all have our own stories about colleagues or bosses who were complete misfits and caused havoc. However, a recent post on Linkedin presented the downsides of hiring for culture and that is this: That it breeds conformity. Seen from this perspective, hiring for culture is another 'corporate creep' that at least the Start-ups must avoid, as the objective of a start-up as an organisational form is to confront the status quo. I have observed in my life with the start-ups that while many, most of them, want to change the world, they don't want to change themselves. While their motto is to upturn entrenched industries and introduce new ways of doing things, organisationally and structurally, many start-ups are derivatives of some defunct organisation of the past. This is human: We a...

College Education may indeed change as the social demands of it transform radically. We can debate whether this is good or bad - I have argued elsewhere that there is little objective discussion here and a lot of self-interested talk - but one frightening consequence of this is the impending demise of Humanities. This threat is less clear in some countries than others. An extreme case is India, which is fast becoming a nation of Engineers (and also Doctors and Lawyers), where humanities is usually treated as a subject for girls, or those who are not expected to make a living. But this is also pronounced in countries like the United States, where humanities funding is under threat in many states, and even in Western European countries, which were traditionally focused on liberal education but that edifice is being dismantaled rapidly with the roll-back of public funding of Higher Education. In response to this decline of the humanities, a number of books and articles have been wri...

Ask anyone what 'Online Learning' means and you know why they think it is a poor alternative of the classroom learning, the real thing. 'Online Learning' is mostly reading texts and watching video online, and that dreaded 'forum', which is about talking to each other but 'not for me'. This picture is consistent, as even the proponents of Online Learning would often concede that those who can afford college, should go to college. But, while the advocates of Online Learning may make its case based on affordability, its costs at the point of delivery is insufficiently understood: The learner has to find appropriate device (or devices), data plans, quiet spaces and required self-discipline. If the popular 'Total Cost of Ownership' estimation was ever applied, Online Learning is not a cheap alternative.  Despite this paradox, that its costs and promises are not in sync, Online Learning became wildly popular because of one thing: Degrees. The...

Disruption of higher education gets a lot of attention, and investment dollars. We say Higher Ed is broken, as costs rise and students end up unemployed, or underemployed. However, less mourned is the trouble another industry is in - Recruitment! As workplace transforms and talks of a superstar economy - one with less workers - gain traction, the neat business model of sourcing thousands of workers for a fee gets threatened. Of course, new possibilities are emerging - Headhunting is transforming into Talent Agencies - but those solution shops can not offset the coming loss of the bulk orders. Temp agencies too, with their time in the sun in the emerging economies now threatened by automation at the shop floor or service jobs, stand ripe for disruption. We talk about this less as this is not the usual public-to-private transformation that draws lot of investment. This is a classic disruption scenario. The recruitment arrangements have become dated, overtly expensive, as the profes...

I stopped reading The Economist, and that makes my weekends somewhat free. For fifteen years, since the time I first left India and went on to live in Dhaka, fetching it from the shop and reading it from cover to cover was part of my Friday routine. There were early disappointments - such as its blood-curdling advocacy of the Iraq War, which clearly exposed its Western bias - but it was one essential viewpoint that I needed to understand the world.  However, I increasingly found it disagreeable for its fundamentalist approach towards Free Markets. This is not a political left / right thing. Though I am openly delighted by the election of Jeremy Corbyn as the Labour leader, who I consider to be a vast improvement over the careerist politicians we see all around (alas, one of my favourite writers, Tristram Hunt, turned out to be one of them), I would like to think that I support free markets if they are really free. These are indeed my points of agreement with The Economist - w...

I was in the United States when the news of US Supreme Court disallowing gay marriage bans hit the wire. I did not follow all the developments, but picked up the news dinnertime while looking at the TV in the dinner hall of the hotel. Delighted, I turned to colleagues sitting at the dinner table and declared my joy at such a landmark judgement. The two other non-Americans present at the table obviously agreed, but only American colleague present shook his head in dismay - I am shocked! he said. In the ensuing discussion, I picked up the reasons for his objection, stemming from his belief, some perfectly justifiable ones once you accept the basis - the religious belief - to be valid. And, I do, as I am aware that my delight is also informed by my own preference (and belief) that people should be free to choose who they want to marry! The fact that I continue to believe my colleague is a perfectly decent, rational and reasonable individual, even if he disagrees with what I think one of...

Competency-based Higher Education is the new mantra in the United States, something that the For-Profit sector loves to talk about. The reaction to this is bound to be ambivalent elsewhere, particularly in Europe, where Competency-based Education has a rather long tradition, though not in Higher Education. Whether this is a new idea or an old thing packaged anew, the old questions persist - whose competencies and who gets to define them. The answers are less obvious than it appears. An offhand answer may treat a sector or an industry as the starting point, which was the traditional approach followed in European Further Education and now being copied in the developing countries. While such competency frameworks may have some merit, we are also aware of their limitations - that the individual employers may not necessarily follow the same competency frameworks (in other words, company culture plays a dominant role regarding which competencies are valued) and these are highly dynamic...

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...

I finished reading Kevin Ashton's super-smart How To Fly A Horse , a very readable book on creativity. This is the kind of book I love reading, about new ideas, and what makes people come up with them. While I would not put this one at the top of my favourites list on the category, that will be Steven Johnson's  Where Good Ideas Come From , this is still very good. At this very point of my life, when I am searching for a potential topic that I could do further studies on, this is a feast, a birds-eye view of one of the things I keep reading about - about creation and creators. However, more than just being a good start for me on my project to make my reading more thematic, the book is full of great insights and ideas that will hopefully help me in my work. One of these ideas comes from an inspired passage in the book, which distinguishes Confidence and Certainty. In Mr Ashton's view, Confidence is the belief in yourself whereas Certainty is the belief in your belief. ...

I often talk about creation of a brick-and-mortar college as a part of my future plans. However, my current work is all about online, as was most of my past engagements. Therefore, the question that I often face is why I think Brick-and-Mortar college is a good idea: In fact, whether I think brick-and-mortar colleges have any future at all, in this age of dramatically improving education technology. The starting point for me is that I see a college as a community, first and foremost. It is a community of teachers and of learners. We have systematically undermined this community aspect over the years, as we promoted individual success over collective goals and reduced the education proposition to the mere degrees and college brand names. The community of teachers was undermined by increasing managerial domination over academic life, as well as by disconnecting academic life from the life on the main street. What was left - as many of the proponents of the online college point out ...

Humanities subjects are usually derided for their lack of practical application, yet those who studied humanities, like me, would vouch for its ability to inspire curiosity and develop judgement. Compared to many other disciplines where there may be one absolute answer to every question (though the point of education is to discover that there is no such thing), humanities often deal with judgment and opinions, abilities that we most often call upon in solving complex problems. Besides, in a world where the nature of fast evolving – from process-based to creative work – a good humanities education may be enormously helpful in equipping the leaders of the future. However, this is not to argue that nothing has to change in humanities education, which is often delivered without regard to these changes that I just mentioned, and commonly in resentment to it. The idea I am working on is to design and deliver a humanities programme connecting it better to the goals such as employabil...