Sunday Posts

Having failed a few times, I claim I know what it means.  Knowing failure means a few things.  First, it means that I know that there are degrees of failure. There is indeed that complete, catastrophic failure - the end - that most people think about when they think of failing. But the actual experience of failure teaches you that it can be far more gentle, and indeed reversible. Having failed, therefore, means many bad things but one redeeming one - overcoming the fear of failing. Second, the experience of failure also teaches one to plan for failure. This is a departure both from the failure-as-catastrophe view of the world (in which case, no plan is really enough) and also the bravado of not thinking about failure. Indeed, this is not planning to fail, but planning for failure, so that if and when it comes, one has a Plan B in hand. Third, failing leads to an optimistic view. This does not mean failure is nice - it is never so when you tried something that...

There is an essential disconnect between how we educate our young people and what we expect them do afterwards.  When in education, we assume a world which can be neatly divided into a world of ideas and the world of action. In the university settings, the world of ideas is higher, neatly rational, one to be mastered through disinterested inquiry. And, indeed, the world of ideas is sets the norms, with which one should guide the world of action.  However, after this, we expect those educated enter real life and work. At work, the expectations are little different. Here, ideas are important, but they are not the norms within which all actions must be taken, but the tools to use in action, and indeed, actions shape as many ideas in their turn. There is no disinterested inquiry, but the messy world of practice - where human interests, follies, emotions, all must play out - is shaped by engagement.  While these two views are so different, our current systems of ...

July and I complete a year of travel. I spent most of the year on the road, travelling mainly to India and sometimes to the Philippines. This was some kind of reset, just as my project in global education seemed to have stalled, which, at the least, allowed me to regain the confidence that ebbed in the midst of a failure. When I launched the previous project - where the cardinal sin was optimism and we set out despite knowing we were underfunded - I told my business partner that i felt confident that I could rebound from a failure, if it might come. This last year was just that, my effort to rebound from a failure, and I feel reasonably satisfied with where I am now. Satisfied but not content, which is a curious feeling, as I know how much is still to be done. So, I am not counting the chickens yet. However, I needed to test some assumptions, restore faith in my own abilities, and clarify some of my own objectives, all of which I have done now. This meant three weeks of travel ev...

If we accept there is a tipping point for any trend or fad, that is now for this conversation about man versus the machine, or, more specifically, what impact automation would have on jobs. This is an old conversation, dating back centuries (Luddites, Ricardo, Marx, Keynes and Leontieff - all made their point), and the fear that machines will take over our jobs is not new. And, indeed, the counter-argument, what the Economists call the Lump-of-Labour fallacy, or the mistaken notion that there is only a fixed amount of work to be done (and, therefore, a job for a machine means one less human job), is extremely well-known. So, one may ask - what is the fuss about? Indeed, it is quite a fuss if you call it so. As The Atlantic visualises a World without Work , the Foreign Affairs says Hi to Robots and wonders whether humans will go the way of horses. Harvard Business Review tries to look beyond automation and allows Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson, the High Priests of the Secon...

The Indian Prime Minister unleashed a big idea in his big speech last week, India as the HR Capital of the world! Speaking at the launch of Skill India campaign on the World Youth Skills Day on 15th July, he laid out the goal of making India the Human Resources capital of the world. This was a sound objective, something that is suitably aspirational for a statesman and rather obvious at the same time. There is a looming Global Workforce Crisis, using a term coined by Boston Consulting Group, which may notionally cost the global economy upwards of $10 trillion between 2020 and 2030 - and India has the right raw materials, young people, for a solution.  It is also India's  opportunity to lose. The country's 'Demographic Window of Opportunity', a period when at least 55% of its population is working age, opened in 2015. When population of most other countries are ageing - both United States and China would start to have more retirees than working people within the ne...

I wrote about the need for a paradigm shift in thinking about Higher Education in India and the pointlessness of carrying out the discussions, and drafting policies, without answering the question what this is all for. I alluded to the innovation of Morill Act for its boldness, but did not literally mean that is what India should now be doing. The discussion in India needs to be conducted in the current context of development of the country, and its specific challenges - how to build mass provisions for Higher Ed without allowing rampant fraud and profiteering, how to combine its heritage and global outlook, how to reconcile the variations of regional and religious thinking into an overarching Indian identity - and it would be an act of imagination, not mimicry. The current paradigm in Higher Education thinking is defined by three factors, the requirement of employable graduates, the need for an educated technocracy and the role of the State as the protector of public interests an...

Higher Education has become a subject for Prime Time TV in India. This is not because there is a sudden awareness that the system is not working, but rather a string of other events - the closure of a high profile institution which operated without a license for many years (see my earlier post here ), a scandal that exposed Civil Services examinations in one state were rigged for a long time, a Nobel Laureate Economist writing about Government meddling and limitations of Academic Freedom - that brought the subject to the fore. The conversations, stoked by temporary concerns, would almost certainly fade away again, once these issues become old news. But, it is worthwhile to follow it while it lasts. [See one Indian-style talk show, where everyone talks, here ] One could claim that this is not new and the question of Higher Education has got political attention throughout the last decade. The Presidents and the Prime Ministers regularly talked about it. There was a huge expansion w...