Sunday Posts

What would an Indian Education system look like? There are many interesting conversations about this in India. The primary reason for this is indeed the ascendancy of BJP, a Hindu Nationalist party, which now controls the Union and most State governments in India. In order to secure its rule, the BJP leaders know that they have to transform the education system. And, they are at it, with a clear agenda and intent - curbing the Western influence where they see it. Most of it has come in the form of petty settling of scores - removing people favoured by earlier administrations - and mindless government meddling in curriculum and governance. However, this has put 'Indianness of Education' as an issue to reckon with. This arises primarily as much of the current Indian Education system was shaped by the British Imperial administration. The British imperial rule did not just set up an Education system in India: It, at the same time, destroyed what was there, pushing S...

In earlier posts, I wrote about my current exploration of possibilities of a Liberal Education for the 21st Century (See A Liberal Education For The 21st Century and A Liberal Education for India ). For last several years, I have been looking closely at the Education-to-Employment (as well as Education-to-Enterprise) transitions, a territory far removed from Liberal Education ethos and conversations, but the main lesson I took away from this work is that what we offer now is too narrow an education, and the solution of the talent problem - the challenge employers are facing in finding the right talent as technologies disrupt industrial business models - lies in broadening the scope of education. The other part of my life, study of the history of the education systems, emphasised the point further: A narrow education at a time of great technological change can turn a 'demographic dividend' into an unmitigated disaster (See An Education for Decline ). This is the background ...

This is a question I asked my Trainer friends often, without ever receiving a satisfactory answer: Why isn't there a course on understanding failures? Business failures are more common than business successes. Failures teach more - 'double loop learning' is what the learning theorists would say - and understanding what not to do is indeed the bedrock of a sound strategy. Yet, while various trainers sweat out in the endless quest of differentiating themselves, they all offer different formula of success - this method or that, always fool-proof, always the only route to success - no one wants to talk about failure. Why? Apart from the explanation that talking about failure would be bad omen, there are hardly any good explanations for this rather inexplicable omission. That Business Executives don't want to talk about failure is wrong: Read any business book, and the narrative is often structured as a struggle, that things got worse before it got better! It i...

In the conference circuit, the most common complaint against Higher Education institutions is that they do not understand employer requirements. Thereafter comes the slide that cites either the World Bank or the World Economic Forum, or some neoliberal think-tank, and maintains that employers are, most crucially, looking for 'soft skills': Ability to communicate, collaborate, think critically and empathise with others.  Languages hide as much as they reveal. In another day and age, one would call those very attributes human skills and recognised the problem as one of narrow education. And, this alternative perspective is exactly what we need: The problem is not that the education is not specific enough, but it is too specific. The Higher Education institutions, since everyone, students, their parents, regulators and governments have become outcome obsessed, are endlessly chasing 'employer requirements', in a world where the recruiters are always focu...

Henry Moore's idea - that one should work all life towards a slightly unattainable goal - appeals to me: That way, I can have meaning at work and yet never be satisfied. I am sure I have written about it and yet I write about it again. This is because at moments like this, when that goal seems remote, I get a peculiar sense about goals in general. It is not the conventional wisdom about setting goals and linearly progressing towards it bit by bit. That can only be possible with goals which can be clearly defined, which, by definition, are not unique, mediocre. But for the goals that ought to be created, which are new, which remain just slightly outside the possibility of ever being attained without ever appearing absurd, there isn't a straight path. Rather, they are ones which, with their fuzzy yet constant existence, allow us to follow an orbital path, balancing just right the sense of purpose and the daily business of living, with us inching towards it wit...

Is the game over for Facebook? Would this outrage of knowing that the network is controlling us - reading out our most guarded desires and obsessions and feeding and fuelling the same through the mechanics of mind control - drive many to really delete themselves from Facebook? Is that even possible, to let a digital me die unmourned? Someone I nurtured so diligently, someone who anchors me into a different world of digital connections and relationships, affords meaning beyond the day-to-day affectations - can I let the person pass away without an effort?  And, yet, can I allow that person to control my life, my ideas and my engagements with the world? Can I let this digital demon, simply because I can't let go, manipulate the world on my behalf, subverting my most cherished ideals and making me a patsy for secretive billionaires and manipulators? Wouldn't that be an act of incorrigible narcissism, an act of submission to an evil empire, cowardice not unlike thos...

Is Donald Trump mad? That's the question that popped out in my mind as I engaged with the very unlikely New York Times piece When The Leader of the Free World is an Ugly American ,which argues that Trump's Foreign Policy approach is consistent - contrary to the claims made by the Foreign Policy establishment in America and elsewhere - with the longstanding American approach that put the American national interest above everything else. It is powerfully argued, and maintains that the Liberal commentators may be getting fooled by their own rhetoric of globalism. Can this indeed be right that there is method in Trump's madness, or what is portrayed as madness? Indeed, it is rather easy to convince myself that Trump is mad if I look at Facebook. A number of Facebook posts confirm a number of psychologists said so. Indeed, we are at a time of implosion of Facebook itself, proving that it may be just showing you what you already believe. So, more you click on posts t...