Ideas We Believe

 There is a statement from Albert Einstein on Gandhi, which always made me think. "generations to come will scarcely believe a man like this walked on earth. " I have always wondered why it would be true. Since Gandhi lived a much more recorded life, I thought it would always be easy to appreciate his efforts for Indian independence. But there is a catch: as we continue to rejoice in peace and independence, we often discount the grief caused by the lack of these.  Gandhi preached a different policy in a world dominated by wars and violence, where armies saw war as the inevitable means to take back or take control. Even in the current world order, deterrence is considered a soft stand, and imagine a century earlier preaching for non-violence. Gandhi saw non-violence as a means of getting attention and could use it to create a voice. He did so for 40 years, giving the Britishers a negotiation, while most other independence movements were based on armed rebellion. While India...

It's often perplexing to note how violent human existence has been. Until the end of world wars, it was common for armies to be raised and sent to die. Only when institutions like trading, finance and learning, which do not occur optimally in turmoil, spread worldwide, there was an incentive to keep peace. This leaves us with a question as to why peace wasn't pursued over the early years of human civilisation. The answer to that would be science or, to be more specific, maths. Before maths, most languages were subjective and interpretive rather than definite and logical. With that power of subjectivity, it was easy to evade having to answer. How big is the earth, you ask? While under maths, you will have to put units, and then under physics, estimate and verify it; in any other language, you can just have a word for it. Subjectivity gives an illusion of an answer, preventing one from digging further and, in this case, striving to learn more. That leaves us with a vacuum, which ...

The journey of Microsoft as a company can be paraphrased into three leaders and their approach to the industry. When bill gates developed a proprietary OS, he knew he had hit the potluck. Over the next few decades, he ensured that the Microsoft ecosystem kept itself updated and remained a close source. Given the philanthropy that Bill is known for, many expected the then-richest man to let go of the closed head and let the CS community have a look at the masterpiece, but Bill's wrath against open source was second to none. He and his successor Steve Balmer would call the open-source OS like Linux cancer. However, at the turn of the millennia, they were hit by rivals like Google in terms of the biggest tech company. Unlike Apple, Bill hadn't been able to trap its customers into an ecosystem. Therefore the battle moved away from OS to browsers, where the once reigning internet explorer faced an upward struggle from two emergent, one which its earlier rival had open-sourced to, an...

India's latest parliament building was done within 2 years, which is remarkable in a country where large projects are known to be marred with corruption and bureaucratic blockades, ultimately shooting the estimates. The parliament like most of the other Delhi architectures, was a reminiscence of the colonial era, which the rulers of the day found symbolic in taking over. It has to do with the fact that Indian independence was mostly seen as a peaceful transfer of power rather than a violent outing of the colonizers, as with many other Asian countries. The claim for peace in the process was somewhat lost in the massive riots that followed the partition of the erstwhile British India Colony. But the establishments of the British era were carried on, and sometimes even the legislation still needed to be changed. This, if one would agree, does manifest the Indian idolisation of the Western culture, or at least the veneration of the West among its ruling elite. It was, therefore, impera...

 Prashant Kishor has been the most enigmatic discovery of the new Indian politics. While the BJP, in true merit, can boast of being a poll crusader with the margins and amount of states they have swept, PK remains the undoubted champion for electoral success. The man behind Modi, to the man behind any opposition leaders that one may list in 2023, be it Kejriwal, Mamta, Statin or even Jagan Reddy, all have at least once sought the professional services of India's Ballot John Wick. With his scientific approach to electorate data, straightforward representation of the facts, and ingenious formulations, parties today mick several of his strategies and mantras. The greatest challenge for PK is to retain his reputation; he has to be constantly innovating in the electoral marketing landscape. That is why he did announce his retirement after the victory in Bengal. However, He today is on a different mission, one that looks like something Congress tried to pull off with their bharat jodo ya...

Before the Newtonian phase of philosophy, when natural philosophy was segregated from ordinary philosophical ventures for its commitment to repeated experimentation and scepticism, which would later be called the scientific way of knowing, there was an abstruse language. Unlike its well-known counterparts, this was extremely difficult to communicate and required well-defined logical reasoning to understand or expand. Essentially the worst kind of language, even millennia after its origin, it continues to haunt people by the name of mathematics.  Mathematics, as a language, starts with well-defined axioms. The most visible of them is in geometry, with the definitions of a point and a line. But such esoteric definitions continue all across mathematics. They do serve a great purpose, though, building one abstract concept over another because only when the idea of points well learn is it became easy to build that there can be another abstract concept of line, which passes through two p...

The rise of Chat GPT gave way to an interesting question, could the machine learning model come to pace with some of the benchmarks of human intelligence today. What followed next was the GPT models facing many management studies and legal tests and doing fairly worse in most. Chat GPT 4 today has increased its likelihood of passing the bar exam from a mere 10% to a whopping 90%. For someone who has seen how these models work, such a jump from one generation to another is no new. But it, therefore, poses more extensive and practical cases for us to implore. Before these large language models took the helm, any legal practice involved the tiresome job of scrounging through numerous precedents and preparing a case for both the defendant and the plaintiff. This involved rigorous search in databases (thanks to the digital revolution) and coming up with critical analysis from the texts. With AI promising to replace this final step in the process, it removes the final bits of human intellige...

 Martin Seligman noticed that much present-day psychology concerned diseases and their redressal. This prompted him to look at wellness and mindfulness as a psychological study, ushering in a new age of positive psychology. In the later years, even corporates noticed that employees' mental health was much more closely related to their productivity than many other factors, including competence. This begs a profound question about the importance of positive social reinforcement in its role towards a developing society.  India celebrates multiple public holidays compared to most other places, which relish a vacation during Easter and Christmas break. However, Indian holidays are mostly a day or two, but much more frequent. To look at the positives, these are primarily social celebrations, so instead of a day off from work, it is dedicated to family, friends and community. A rejuvenated mind works much better. Secondly, it is essential to note that the holiday season, as it is cal...

KM Munshi, a revered drafting committee member, wanted a uniform civil code; otherwise, he believed it would be impossible to reform the attitude of Hindu society towards women. However, the case for a uniform civil code would lose out to a 5:4 vote split in the same and has remained a controversial page ever since. Today, the call for UCC is pressing in the Islamic corners of Indian society, as the supreme court noted in its landmark Shah Bano case of 1985. The then-incumbent prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, was already worried about his northeast and south pursuits and did not want to mettle with the turbulent religious politics. Ever since BJP has made it a part of the manifesto. There are a few merits to the UCC case, such as the ambiguous nature of marriages in multiple committees and the growing disparity in the civil laws between the Hindu and Muslim communities. one of the most cited examples is the provision of polygamy in the Muslim community and the triple lakh law. Present-day...

By no means the pace of education has slowed; if anything, there is a larger contribution of developing nations into the educated world in the current days. However, it is imperative to note the rise of a vocal opinion against the current educational establishments, especially in the OECD countries, regarding these institutions being aligned with the political left. To frame it better, right-wing parties worldwide, who have found a new series of acceptance in countries, have repeatedly attacked colleges with relatively young populations to be guided by a political motive under the mask of intellectualism. The internet is divided between a public outburst of so-called Karens and protesting woke students at rightwing seminars. The larger question is whether it contributes to a rising distrust of the educational establishment, leaving millions questioning the scientific literature they published. If so, in light of such mistrust, how do we ensure these developmental metrics are kept from ...

As soon as the newbie lawyer reaches the valley, he facetiously remarks, "wahan sirf terrorists marte hain, army wale nahi? ". This line is what the writers of shaurya must defend. The reason why an age-old movie makes a mention today is to signify how crudely "Aman ki Asha" was shoved down the throat of millions of unsuspecting Indians. Morarji Desai was given Nishan-e-Pakistan for his contributions to the State of Pakistan, including sabotaging the RAW mission to extract and prevent the nuclear program in Pakistan. The second person who was this close to the Pakistani establishment has to A. S. Daulat. One who was said to know everything about Kashmir, but instead of working out a solution, he kept the status quo, enjoying a leveraged position from the government and the separatists of the valley, selling a dream of peace which kept his coffers filling.  At this time, India wanted to make a case for its pacifism, showing the west it was a follower of the Gandhian ...

Standard & Poor's (better called the S&P), Fitch and Moody are the three prominent players in the world of credit rating. Their words have such a significant impact on the speculative markets all over the world that one can safely call them the ventriloquists of the modern era. But reputation is a goose laying golden eggs; it must be well-fed and well-kept. Therefore, it's surprising that when Fitch's holding CreditSights reported that the Adani enterprises were deeply debt leveraged, the regulating authorities should have batted their eyelids. A lousy bureaucracy is no excuse for a country aspiring to be in the top 5 of the world's stock markets. In fact, a BBB- is a stern warning that we are looking at the humble origins of the 2008 subprime crisis.  A bigger and yet more straightforward question is what drove the Adani stocks so much? And quite a bit of the answer comes from the defence Adani group put out to the Hindenberg research - a rising nationalist sen...

Throughout human existence, expression has changed forms. The journey has been long and seldom rewarding, from cave paintings to ballads, journals, and memes. Because most often, the authority ascertained to a particular medium of information tends to discredit its predecessor. There is little complaint against this since newer technology promises truth. Ballads, as we know, were changed over time to appease patrons, something that books couldn't do. But what happens when we look at a civilisation's history through the lens of writers who were perhaps biased. There is little doubt about their calibre, but to rule out all bias would be folly. With more intro, let's examine the Indo-Aryan Theory, predicaments and preconceptions. The Harappan Mohenjodaro civilization has long been clouded under an unclear end, without a good theory as to why or where the inhabitants of these well-planned city-states migrated. Given the trade and craftsmanship of the Indus valley civilization, ...

There is furore among diplomats regarding medium-sized autocratic nations wielding more hard power on the new world order. Countries like Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia have begun to meddle in the politics of their neighbourhood, which was earlier restricted to great powers like Russia or Europe. The reason was the grand exit of the US from the world scene post-2016 when it began to look inwards in response to the awaking dragon. However, a bigger picture in these battles must be more easily seen. The fall of the Soviet union was globally witnessed, but none stood watching when the colonies fell into the European merchants. In fact, the peace that shadowed post second world war saw colony owners sign on behalf of their holdings. Boundaries were drawn to satisfy the European view of the world. Thus the constant turmoil in these autocratic nations speaks of a history that was ignored in this treaty of the west. Baghdad, for example, had long been the capital of the Islamic dynasties. Howe...

Korean pop has been a vital engine to the peninsula's soft power projection. The concept of creating an idol, rather than just marketing them, has been well formulated and is now ready to reach the world. In fact, of late, k-pop has been inducting foreigners into the groups to capture emerging markets in Japan, China and other Asian states. One of the few groups which boast today of an enormous global influence is BTS, a boy band from Bangtan, which calls its fans ( Stan's, to be specific ) an army.  The whole formulae have become quite a household knowledge in South Korea, where the big three, namely YG, SM and JYP, vouch for making idols out of talents. The trick is gruelling training which can last up to five years (or more), where talent is groomed into performance. This method has worked exceptionally well, churning out bands one after other who sway the audience to their tune. In fact, these companies are known to plan out the entirety of the band's activity, from the...

Faced with the dearth of religiousness, the 21 century has a new guidebook to the purpose of life. A complex interplay of identity and oppression, and revaluation of self as the saviour. From the speaker's perspective, it is a brilliant story of liberation and may have some benign outgrowths like the cancel culture. The first step is identifying the oppression.  The first context in which oppression came into my vocabulary was the freedom struggle from colonisation. Thus a scary picture of pressure is etched into my memory. But, the oppression, like everything else, could be subjective. When I learnt of the hardship of my parent's childhood, I was to believe that I had successfully leapt out of oppression. However, it's clear now that I was a victim of an oppressive third-world system, where my counterparts in more prosperous economies lavishly spent their young years. There is a subjective truth in this. And perhaps masked envy. But what is distinct is that it combines dis...

Before it was named science, this branch of rational debates on natural phenomena was a part of philosophical discourses. However, the biggest differentiator was the approach. Scientific truths were to remain objective and under scrutiny forever when one phenomenon that contradicts a hypothesis is enough to bury it. This explains that scepticism is the central facet of scientific thinking. Today, the nature and physics of systems have gone too complex for the truth to be objectively identified. We gamble on the empirical formulation of reality and quantify its error. Also, specialisation has made science disciplines wander so far off that a singular authority is hard to conceive. This has ushered into an era where unscientific theories conspire to challenge established truths. This problem is pressing since it seeks to undermine centuries of human intelligence. Today, when information is abundant, the means of verification are limited and sources of authority in multitude, what could b...

The battle between push and pull is familiar to supply chains. For ages now, industries have produced goods they thought were relevant for the customer and then used networks of distributors and retailers to push these to the consumers. The apparent outcome of this is the massive scale of advertising that uses tactics to lure a customer base for the product.  The shift to a pull-based supply chain seems more rational. One is where the production takes in the customer's demand before the show. Not only does that minimize the risk of product failure, but it also captures the market sentiment with greater accuracy. In other words, it caters to an existing demand rather than creating one for itself. This process is lean and profitable, except for a shortcoming; Production takes time. During the early 90s, when the internet spread like wildfire, people almost immediately expected the internet business to take off. However, it was only after a decade and a massive dot com bubble that tod...

Just as social changes accumulated over generations bring about evolutionary development, technological currents have a massive impact on shaping bigger social demonstrations. Although causation is only sometimes the right way to connect the dots, a heavy influence can't go mistaken. Yes, the topic is families with same-sex parents, the impression of technology in this and the changes in social order it aspires to bring. At the outset, the massive success of the gender fluid theory and its recognition is significant to feminist movements. One that brought under scanner a systematic suppression of gender under various social and economic pretexts. Its far-reaching consequences have been the question of the gender binary, mainly in the social context. This liberating idea of multiple genders asks the next obvious question: relationships and family. For a simplification, let's look at families with same-sex parents, what makes them possible and what concerns them. Here comes the i...

India finds its etymological origins in the Indus, the first of the largest rivers that marks the plains if one travels through the land routes from the West. However, in the present fate of the State, the river lies in Pakistan, best described as a geopolitical adversary. The other words for the state, like Hindustan or the abode of Hindus, have slightly relevant terminology but none that reflects the actual history. Since no Hindu king had presided over the land after the 11 century. Further, it's crucial to note that no king has ever ruled over the entirety of present India at any point in history. Instead, rulers have found it easier to consolidate the connected regions of Pak and Afghan than the southern coasts. Midst all these historical facets, the question that begs to be asked is when India began to identify itself. Many believe the form that India exists today must be credited to the Britishers. I find this argument, first of all, hollow and, secondly, misleading. Open be...

When finally made independent, the Indian state was poised to embark on a prosperous economic voyage. But disappointingly enough, this golden bird never took off on that miraculous journey. For decades till the 1990s, the growth was stuck below 4 per cent, churning more people into poverty than out of it. Countries like Japan, whose industrialization started almost as soon as India, had grown to become top economies when India languished to meet its balance of payments. Even after liberalising the economy, it was stuck with institutions and bureaucracy. Let's look at two decisive steps that made a growth rate be named after a religious identity. In 1947, the economy planned for India was mixed, allowing corporate and public ventures. Business houses like Tata were materializing this promise of India. However, a solid socialist turn was stamped into the economic planning in 1955, the Avadi Congress sessions. Forcing state control over important industries and enforcing 5-year plans ...

Indian politics has remained a bastion for the old guards, a system that feeds from the young workers and rewards the ancient dynasties. It is, therefore, not surprising that the MP's average age of 60 in the world's most young population. Only those blessed with ancestral thrones have made it to the parliament, even young politicians. Only a few times have reigning leaders handed the helm to ambitious newcomers, and only sometimes have they been women. Today, look at two of the most shameful events orchestrated against two of India's brave chief ministers. To start with Jayalalithaa. Things went south with her after the demise of MGR, leaving a vacuum in the AIDMK. Even in his funeral procession, Jayalalithaa was brushed off by MGR's relatives. But the worst came on March 25, 1989, when the DMK and AIDMK legislators faced each other. Midst abuses and allegations, the assembly turned violent. Attacks were directed at both the leaders, Jayalalithaa and Karunanidhi. And j...

There is still enough room for feminism to achieve that a post-feminist thought is perhaps an attack on feminism than a product of it. But there has been a progeny of view in reaction to the feminist waves, and addressing them shall, in many ways, shape the 21st-century feminist debates. Contrary to the existing postfeminism thought that argues that the feminist movement has achieved the objectives it had set for itself, I believe there is more scope in analysing the reactions to the feminist waves because of the changing identity of the feminist movement. The conservative reaction to feminism grew after the third wave of feminism, with an irrational fear of radical feminism that sought to establish female supremacy to counter male dominance. The coining of female superiority is, on its own, a remark to red-label the movement. To identify weak points and knock down the juggernaut. However, the argument has merit as it points out that feminism seeks to create a class of oppressed men su...

Jerry Seinfeld phrased it out most concisely when he said, " The talk all around the comedy bars was who was going to take over 'The Tonight Show' after Johnny Carson. Never did anyone expect he would pack the show and take it with him". Jerry has a massive sitcom to boast about, but he never could be a 'Tonight Show host. So let's look into what happened to Tonight's show. Johnny Carson was the best comic of his age and only natural that he would take over the Tonight show, America's biggest talk show. With his calibre, he put the show to its prime. David Letterman, a young, engaging host, was given a new 'Late Show' to train under Carson's guidance. However, one ambitious comic, Jay Leno, had eyes on that coveted seat. So in 1991, Leno's manager planted a story in the media on how NBC was planning to replace Carson with Leno. This came as a shock and humiliation to Carson, who quit the show hastily. Meanwhile, NBC wanted to avoid part...

The world today is 281 trillion in debt to itself. There is no science more mysterious than that of money. What drives my enthusiasm for finance is its underlying devotion to mathematics, just like most of the pure sciences. This pride in being extremely logical and putting rationality before empirical bias is what makes it worthy of a Nobel (though not the original one). But its influence on daily life is enormous, a genuinely distinct feat in pure sciences. So let's delve into the unapparent philosophical side of the currency. 281 trillion is a significant amount. If everyone called on their cards, we would have a lost game of poker. In fact, we have such a bluff on the table that we can't risk calling it. It is horrifying that this accounting deficit makes no difference to the world. Has there ever been a scam this benign? Or do we need a piece of the puzzle? The latter seems rational. The reason for this debt is simple, sovereigns have printed more and more money over the y...

In a powerful piece which challenges the earlier established trust within the virology researchers, Dr Nicholas Wade has put in a few arguments that we cannot afford to overlook. He points out the practise of developing virulent in-vitro strains for a gain of function, to have counter-action ready in case nature puts us in trouble. However, we probably ran into trouble in this double agent game, and what is to blame is still unclear. Is it the human error, the risk-taking nature of the scientific community or the plethora of lies that were spun to misguide the world? The consequences of the latter are more lasting than the former. Science experiments gone wrong is the narrative that has fuelled dystopian sci-fi thought for years. We could have, in a sense, brought virology under the same scanner as that of nuclear proliferation, given the deaths that are today attributed to the covid. This is more concerning because science is an easy target and hasn't been a particular political l...

The Bengal elections have ratified that despite massive inputs and involvements, raising a regional party against an incumbent govt. It is not one of the most straightforward tasks. This highlights the dynamics of regional and national politics in India, especially regarding geographic specifications and whether the BJP expansionist strategy needs a sanity check. The earliest signs of this defiance were spotted when the state of Odishavoted simultaneously fore MLA and MP candidates. It was the first time people were choosing candidates from two different ( and conflicting ) parties, clearly portraying a choice concerning the role, not allegiance.  To start with, BJP had its prominence in the Hindi heartland of UP, MP and Rajasthan before it became a national alternative. The first few stints, which came from the NDA, saw active partners like Shiv Sena, JDU, BJD, AIDMK and, ironically, TMC. In this stage, the opportunity for a right-aligning Hindu-biased vote bank developed, which t...

As condolences gather for prince consort, the British royalty has made it again into the international columns. The gossip around racist allegations on the royal family and of a prince who relinquished his right. But amidst, of this chaos, there is a hugely undermined player in royal politics. And this unlikely character is that of British media. Although media stories and rumours are often dismissed as trivial indulgences, the case here is different and disheartening. To start with, only a few people have a kinder impression of the majesty's sibling, Princess Margaret. And perhaps, hers plays a minor role to play in this perception. As a younger child of the household, she was indeed free-hearted and spoiled by love. But those aren't sins to condemn at. But, when suddenly her father was crowned the king of England, the media flushed into their lives. Scrutinising Margaret for her failings and rewarding Elizabeth for her triumphs. It was a great story, portraying the future que...

There are obvious downsides to democracy. When we look at the distribution of opinion on a particular issue, it generally follows a normal distribution. This implies that to achieve the majority, it's theoretically advised to stick to the centre. And this love for mediocrity makes democracy allergic to politically solid decisions.  Along with it, democracies tend to be the rooster for sweet talkers. And that is an outcome rather than a voluntary trait. Primarily because most voters need to be equipped to deal with the complexities of the field. For example, it could be more practical for an electrical engineer to comprehend medical patterns and the pandemic's effect on production. Thus, democratic institutions need people managers who have two keywords to watch out for - sweet talking and status quo. However, democracies have been hugely popular. And people have reported being happier. Whether this is induced, indoctrinated or influenced is another question. But history has cho...