Human beings are cooperative by nature

 Here is a very interesting interview on new book Human Kind: A hopeful history by historian Rutger Bregman.

I particularly, I like the below Q and A:

In the book, you point a finger at the media for spreading cynicism and highlighting, if not sometimes exaggerating, the worst part of humanity. What are your suggestions for the news industry?

It’s important to make a distinction between the news and journalism. The news is about recent, incidental and sensational events. It’s mostly about exceptions. So if you follow a lot of the news, and you only hear about these exceptions, then at the end of the day you’ll know exactly how the world does not work. And you’ll be quite pessimistic as well. Psychologists have a term for this: "mean world syndrome".

I think it’s important that journalists zoom out, and focus on the bigger, structural forces that govern our lives. I also think it’s important that they are constructive. This means that they don’t just write about the problems, but also about the solutions, and the people who are helping us move forward.

You devote one part of the book to education, how seeing children as responsible and full of potential might actually help them grow. But do you have any tips for parents, on how they can educate children to be more compassionate and less cynical?

Children are born as emphatic and compassionate beings – so you don’t have to teach them generosity, it’s in their nature to be friendly. We know from scientific studies that infants as young as six months old can distinguish right from wrong and have a preference for the good over the bad. I think it’s important to design our education and our schools around that insight, to bring out the best in our kids. So don’t try to teach them to be cynical, but give them the freedom to play and explore. 

MK Gandhi@150

Author Ramachandra Guha has given a long interview with a list of five important books about Mahatma Gandhi's life and works in UK, SA and India. Though, the list of book and the interview is good narrative is good but I would like to add in the list the tiny book based on speeches of Osho who was close friend of Gandhi's eldest Son Harilal Gandhi. Also Osho has spoken about the other side of Gandhi's life and works which is unknown among masses.

I am not against Gandhi's life and works but I am very curies to know his entire life in totality. I am not that person to believe only one side story of any human being living or lived or will be living on this earth. Human life is so complicated with wire of millions things but one need not worry about all of things about a man or a woman.

Certainly, it is very strange to celebrate about one person who was never a benefactor for long march of attaining independence life India's freedom. There are whole lot of others who were equally contributed to the freedom struggles. I mean the entire works of first generation of Indian classical liberals (1850-1915) were ignored in the Independent India. This is the period where Gandhi was not in India fully. The great works of Ranade, Gokhale, Srinivasa Sastri, Tilak, etc.

Oshos views on Gandhi are at 1, 2, 3, 4.

Poems and Books

Great Tamil poet Subramania Bharati wrote: "We will learn both scripture and science We will explore both heavens and oceans We will unravel the mysteries of the moon And we will sweep our streets clean too"

The above poem was quoted by the President of India in his address to the nation on August, 14.


Nobel prize winning scientist Prof. S. CHANDRASEKHAR wrote a poem in 1993  titled "Gods", the poem starts:

"Secularism has only been on our lips.

In its most modem form,

It says not what it does

And does not what it says."

and ends with the following lines

"Man’s collective consciousness

Runs riot when stripped

Of reason, and at journey’s end.

When culture is consumed at religion’s crossroad

In the name and altar of righteousness."

What he says in between are the lines about Gods.

Author Gurcharan Das has listed books which are important to read in some or other ways to recount the India and other narratives. The list is here.

Author and writer Aravindan Neelakandan has listed seven books which will change your views about India's of last seven decades. The list is here.

Must Read Books Published Recently

I like reading books like talking or walking with a close friend. Reading books which interest you are more pleasurable than anything else. It is the book that gives the world view of matter that matters man and nature, other things in between.

In the current education system in government schools in India, is such that they do not deal with books which has world views and helps them only in their jobs!

Reading books while thinking in authors views is like watching birds flying at fifty thousand feet height from the ground.

The following are some of the interesting books which I have come crossed recently, though it has been long time, five years of gaps reading books seriously.

By virtue of observations, the truths are simple but detailed in books- the ways and means of it.

Just forget the title of the books, dive into the content of it!

• agriculture is not merely an occupation in India. It is a way of life and must be protected and preserved at all costs. 

• young people in southern states, or in the north-eastern states, may have different perspectives, and this could be a very interesting subject for further exploration

• I gave Mahatma Gandhi’s example that he never went to court for his release and insisted that political matters had to be dealt with only politically. 

• Government cannot change the nation; selfless people change it

• There is a detailed narration of certain clusters as in Tiruppur (hosiery), Sivakasi (crackers) and Surat for diamonds. He also refers to what he characterises as Vaishyavisation of India or the morphing of backward castes into the business class.

• The poor Raghul Gandhi who did not know his job want to know badly others job to do good

• Yengde provides an unflinchingly honest account of divisions within the Dalit community itself-from their internal caste divisions to the conduct of elite Dalits and their tokenized forms of modern-day untouchability-

Of that fault lines

Finally, I read the book "Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy" by Professor Raghuram Rajan. Its a wonderful book. All those interested in understanding the global economic issues and challenges should read it at least once. He gives great narrative in each chapter in the beginning and good summary at end.

The chapters I enjoyed reading are chapter 2 and chapter 9.

The full introduction chapter is freely available here.

Some of the interesting book reviews:

WSA piece here, here is another piece by Rajan's friend highlighting the essentials, here is must read piece and the last one I would like to cite is here. 

Growth, Development and Prosperity

Here is my latest article published in the June Issue of Pragati. This piece is based on my talk given at Sikkim Central University, Gangtok (see here my earlier post).

A bit from the piece:

• The book not only has startling articulations on numerous national and international issues but also has well-researched analysis of about 60 years of the history of economy and polity in India. For instance, it is not common to see Economists like Amartya Sen come up brutally and say that India’s GDP growth is helped by the supportiveness of the economic climate rather than by the ruthlessness of the political system and that the roots of the economic climate are being increasingly hampered by politically engaged community without the public reasoning.

The Madras School of Orientalism

In his book review Tirthankar Roy writes:

• They touch on some of the issues that engaged the Madras orientalists that have received less attention than they deserve. Trautmann argues that the Mirasi tract was motivated by an implicit aim to show the antiquity of private property right in land in south India, in an attempt to question the administrative orthodoxy that eventually led to the ryotwari settlement.

Freedom from within House

Yesterday I have read the book Untouchables by Dr.Narendra Jadhav, such a inspiring book. It’s a full of stories about struggles and freedom of his parents in pre-independent India.

A bit from the book review:

• “At the end of the book is an addendum written by Jadhav's daughter, Apoorva. It's a little alarming that she sounds exactly like the sorority girl that she is. An undergrad at Johns Hopkins, a pre-med, she uses sentences like "the beauty of my ancestors' efforts is that they were not in vain." But it's true: Damu and Sonu toiled to get their children the chance to succeed—and they have.”

From The Telegraph review:

• No one is more painfully aware of this debilitating socialstatus quo than Jadhav himself. Which is why the ever-conscious Mahar is constantly wracked by references to his low caste — from his teacher, from the upper-caste south Indian to whom he gave a lift and his colleagues. Jadhav, a noted economist, banker, former official at the IMF and now head of economic research of the Reserve Bank of India, asks, “Why can’t they accept me for what I am? …Why did they always have to judge me on the basis of my origins?”

From the Outlook:

• The memoir thus bears testimony to the change of mindset in a Dalit family in the course of a single generation. A similar change has been under way in millions of other Dalit homes, not in full measure, not wholly reassuringly, but a change under way all the same. It is young Apoorva, Jadhav's young daughter, who reveals in the epilogue what emancipation truly means: it does not matter one whit to her that she is a Dalit for, in a resurgent India, she has no reason to flaunt that tag or to suppress it. She has become what her forebears had always aspired to be: just normal people who are neither aggressive nor apologetic about their identity.

Economist's unforgivable silence

It is extremely worth reading a piece by Mr. Cohen. It talks about a book review in The Economist. He concludes with the following para:

• …the Economist's book reviews are unsigned, it's impossible to know -- and the Economist would not say -- who's at fault here. So the magazine itself is accountable not just for bad taste or unfathomable ignorance but for disregarding its own vow, published on its first page, "to take part in a severe contest between intelligence . . . and an unworthy timid ignorance obstructing our progress." During the week of July 15, it didn't just lose the contest -- it never even showed up for it.

Workers, labourers, men

The wolf at the door is not an idle threat.

2 States just don’t love each other!

In 2009, two Indian states (Punjab & Tamil Nadu) Chief Ministers raised their sons to the level of Deputy Chief Minister. It is not a surprise one, of course the people of these states have hugely wounded. Father marries his sons (no matter how old they are!). Son married none, at least yet. The people of these two states marry their votes once in five years to marry politicians each other!

It is utterly true to borrow Sauvik’s famous often saying of (now days) the ‘Chacha State’, of course he refers in quite different context.

Here the story goes something different. 2 States the story of my marriage is the new book by youth icon author Chetan Bhagat in India. A beautifully narrative (albeit imperfectly: in media he said it’s a true story but in the book it is written as fiction may be for personal reasons) of his love marriage, the key takeaway from this book is many but to be precise. He encourages intercommunity marriage by all means, of course the interstate marriages without any barrier like or a Free Trade Marriage (FTM). He asks the reader to ‘love India’ before loving their state or union territories where they are born. “…these stupid biases and discrimination are the reason our country is so screwed up. It’s Tamil first, Indian later. Punjabi first, Indian later...” He continues, we all marry “National anthem, national currency, etc..still won’t marry our children outside our state. How can this intolerance be good for our country?’

It is not just the parents moody restriction on their children but the mindset that square it doubly with a vested interest and foggy ideas of own-state, tradition, culture, this language or that language is rude, this states or that states is more superior or inferior etc which actually nobody produces out of a centralized planning.

The technology made huge breakthrough in human life in the last century, at last. It was possible to pursue these ideas with freedom to think beyond the earlier generation. Similarly, the change of crude mindset could unleash in huge way in a dynamic economy that dog is underway now in any case! Whether, it is ‘The State’ mindset or the citizen’s mindset. Alas, the former still believe that the population is a burden rather than ‘resource’ and the later has huge cultural nexus which has long way to go. But the price is already huge.

First when I came out of my village (from south India) and travelled for my study as well as to work in central and North India (even went Srinagar) wondered how vast this country is. Chetan concern is as genuine as any one can think “this country, cutting through the states…….these states make up our nation. These states also divide our nation. And in some cases, these states play havoc in our love lives.”

Chetan writes about the change in Indian society in way that is also an order which nobody intended like a centralized planning to make like this or that or forward or backward, left or right. It is quite revealing book. Impact of this book may be seen in the decades to come.

Who is simply professionally qualified? One is the ability to work unsupervised

Simply children should work when they are in teen-age and learn simple soft skill and nurture it, almost in a self eat way:

Yes Subroto Bagchi says:

• “You can't watch a video and become a surgeon; you can't watch a video and become a journalist. You have to go through the ups and downs, the thick and thin; you have to dip your own hands in. So you cannot just simulate it in a classroom.
• One of the things why Indians don't get to understand workplace issues till they are 23 or 24 is because they don't go to work as youngsters. When a 13 or 14 year-old in a country like the US or Japan or Europe or anywhere goes and works in a store, packs bags, or becomes a gas station attendant that individual knows the difference between my time and company time, my money and company money, what is the meaning of a paying customer.”

Read also here

Eric Arthur Blair and George Orwell

Chandrahas Choudhury had a good review of a new book "George Orwell Critical Essays". Key paragraphs:

• “If ideas are the “characters” of essays, then the main characters of Orwell’s essays could be said to be four heavyweights: freedom, socialism, totalitarianism and language. Just as no family ever agrees on any one point, these four ideas also never work themselves, in Orwell’s writing, into some clear and consistent pattern.
• The strongest of Orwell’s stresses (and hence the easiest argument to reproduce) was against totalitarianism, both of the communist and fascist varieties. As early as any other observer of his time, he grasped how the Soviet state was far more evil than the system which it claimed to refute, and that its “management” of thought and opinion could only end up making automatons of both the bureaucracy and citizens.
• We know well today the truth of Orwell’s argument that the organized deception practised by totalitarian states is not a temporary expedient, but is something integral to totalitarianism”.
• Orwell’s interest in language as an instrument of politics—as a means not for expressing but “for concealing or preventing thought”—is what animates his most famous essay, Politics and the English Language. Here, Orwell’s attack on bad, overwrought or obfuscatory English is not made just as a writer. He also sees that such language can be a result not just of incompetence or laziness, but of a deliberate intent to distort or mask the truth. Orwell proves that it is often in the interest of the state to only pretend to be giving information or to be demonstrating intent, or empathy, or solidarity (he cites the classic bureaucratic cliche, “we will leave no stone unturned”).
• Orwell’s argument is of course aimed against the state and against the peculiar jargon of ideologies such as Marxism, of which he was a relentless opponent.”

Gray’s Anatomy: Selected Writings

John Gray has many works on ‘liberalism’ in general and on F A Hayek in particular. In fact he authored a book “Hayek on Liberty”. In his own words on Hayek (Daniel B. Klein article):

• [W]e find in Hayek a restatement of classical liberalism in which it is purified of errors -- specifically, the errors of abstract individualism and uncritical rationalism -- which inform the work of even the greatest of the classical liberals and which Hayek has been able to correct by absorbing some of the deepest insights of conservative philosophy. (1984, viii).

However, Gray has his one flaw in understanding of Hayek’s ideas which is altogether different matter here.

In today’s Business Standard V V reviews a new book “Gray’s Anatomy: Selected Writings” it is John Gray’s “collection of critical essays on the contemporary world of ideas that demolishes the dogmas of secular liberalism, expose the inherent weaknesses of crony capitalism, and reiterate the limits to energy-driven economic growth.”

Excerpts from the review:

• Gray’s main thrust is to highlight the shallow philosophical foundations of the whole western model about progress and the perfectibility of man on which it is founded. There is a crooked timber of humanity, which always asserts itself at the turning points of history. According to him it is the whole concept of liberalism which is interpreted as ‘live and let-live’ but which allows much jiggery-pokery to get by that is responsible for the imperfections of the world. (Saul Alinsky (1909-72), described as the father of American radicalism, defined a liberal as someone who would leave the room the moment the argument was about to turn into a fight. Gray would rather have a liberal who would go into the room and fight all the muck that is being thrown around.)
• The first part which opens with “Modus Vivendi”—working out an arrangement between competing interests—sets the tone for the entire book. Liberalism, Gray explains, always had two faces. From one side, toleration is taken as the ideal form of life; from the other, it is the search for the terms of peace among different ways of life. In the first view, liberalism is seen as the application of universal principles; in the second they are the means for peaceful coexistence.
• The strongest case for liberalism is that it is the only solution to the modern problem of pluralism. All societies are mixed, and get much more with mass migration and globalisation. But quite apart from that, even Hinduism recognises different duties in different stations and stages of life. Without liberalism, we would simply fall apart. But, again and again, Gray attacks people he describes as “neo-liberals” without defining who these people are and what they stand for.
• Gray says, “The ethical theory underpinning modus vivendi is value pluralism. The most fundamental value-pluralist claim is that there are many conflicting kinds of human flourishing, some of which cannot be compared in value. Among the many kinds of good lives that human beings can live there are some that are neither better nor worse than one another, not the same in worth, but incommensurably—that is to say, differently—valuable. Even so, there may be good reasons for preferring some incommensurable goods over others.”

India is an emerging delusion but the antidote is wakeup and stand for Rule of Law

Soutik Biswas has a book review in Mint Lounge which I think fair enough. Some excerpts.

• “Monarchies, fascism and communism have been discredited. Theocracies don’t have many takers. Roy, however, wonders whether democracy should be the “utopia that all developing societies aspire to”. Her political insight lags far behind her clever prose. Sample this: “What happens once democracy has been used up?” Used up? How? Then she continues, “What happens when each of its institutions has metastasized into something dangerous? What happens now that democracy and the Free Market have fused into a single predatory organism with a thin, constricted imagination that revolves almost entirely around the idea of maximizing profit? Is it possible to reverse the process? Can something that has mutated go back to being what it used to be?” What did it use to be? Weren’t democracies and free markets always compatible? Is this an activist’s cant or a writer’s rant?
• Roy’s apocalyptic pitch continues: “Could it be that democracy, the sacred answer to our short-term hopes and prayers, the protector of our individual freedoms and nurturer of our avaricious dreams, will turn out to be the endgame for the human race?” So, what fascism and communism and feudalism couldn’t do, democracy might. The end of the world is nigh, thanks to democracy’s failings.
• In all these respects, India remains a work in progress. The country is still quite a distance from being a truly “liberal democracy” in which democracy extends from being a mere celebration of free and fair elections to a rule of law, and protection of rights to speech, religion, property and so on (Journalist Fareed Zakaria calls this “constitutional liberalism”). Also, it is common knowledge that democracy hasn’t always led to liberalism and elections don’t necessarily lead to more democracy—after all, Adolf Hitler was voted into power through free elections.”

More interestingly:

• “Democracies have often been imperfect, with rulers abusing power, undermining human rights, stoking intolerance, and promoting sectarianism and bigotry. It is surprising to see Roy writing off democracy because it is not delivering all the goods; this is hardly a revelation. Indian democracy is even more complex.”

Better understanding of theory helps to build better world than a mixed gimmick….

When the world entered into twenty-first century, there were talks about the emergence of new economies-China and India. This talk become further triggered now. In fact there is a slogan of “The future belongs to India, not China”. Recently the Infosys Chief Mentor N R Narayana Murthy compiled some of his lectures/speeches in a book form as A Better India A Better World. 

The book has 10 Part. The first five chapters are nothing but quite interesting, energizing and encouraging for reader- address to students, values, important national issues, education and leadership challenges. The last five chapters are more focused on corporate governances-corporate and public governance, corporate social responsibility and philanthropy, entrepreneurship, globalization and Infosys. 

In many ways the growth and process of Mr Murthy’s thinking is mixed gems which is quite visible when he says that “no reforms can bring about inclusive growth unless our population growth is contained” (p.xxi). Remember after all these are his lectures/speeches only! 

For Murthy the government is the solution to do everything for the poor except the employment which will be provided through private sector. His understanding of theory is not at all clear and singles wrong path, but for many it may not be. He also advocates some theory to others and believes something else. Like our first Prime Minister and his daughter did everything right for this country and we should salute for that!  

More interestingly he writes “Dr Y Venugopal Reddy….best free market champions” (p. 87). Further, he believes that “the global software industry would not have been possible without Nehru’s vision”. What are those visions according to him the IITs and IIMs nothing more, but all these institutions trains the students who are already skilled in many ways than the other students. 

In other words he preaches some sort of statism for people and he wanted to enjoy the fruits of freed market economics. 

Unless his co-chairman Mr Nandan Murthy has no clarity of thought and quotes which are dangerous to people. Albeit he recognises that it is “anathema to most Indian politicians who were brought up with the belief that poverty was virtue, businessmen were crooks, making profit was a sin, and government was the solution to every problem”. 

In sum, Mr Murthy forgives the whole Nehru’s misguided, socialist control policy which is still a dominant among our policy makers.  

If the reader has open mind like me and out of box thinking will be disappointed. Though I had no specific expectation before reading this book, some years back I only read two  of (In Praise of Secularism and what can we learn from the west?) his of lectures which are also covered in this book.

Language divide

Language divide

'I'll be able to deal with bad reviews'

'I'll be able to deal with bad reviews'

Community Currencies…….

Jamal Mecklai book review throws some new coins “there is a very interesting section on the QQ, a new Chinese coin created by online marketers, which has already moved into the real world. The second is a brief mention of Community Currencies, which, in many senses, are a reactionary response to globalisation.”

Three tales to tango-Outliers- Tiger -Ideas

Well, we have just passed three months in the year 2009 and now the spring has come once again. Many are thinking how the “Green shoots of spring are all very appealing but will they really spread and grow into a solid recovery?” (Spring fever). 

I had good time to read books that was published in 2008. Two are from Indian authors one went to win The Man Booker Prize. 

Imagining India: Ideas for the New Century by Nandan M. Nilekani, and 

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga 

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell 

All three are well written with consciences.   

Nandan’s book is well searched and thought out book especially I enjoyed his lucid coverage of language issues in India. 

For me the Adiga book is a great history of Indian Economic Thought as he rightly emphasised the brutalism of the great Indian Socialist darkness India and emergence of lights. As Freakonomics author STEPHEN J. DUBNER says if your read White Tiger “you learn a great deal about modern India”. 

Gladwell’s book is a full of insights with paradise of imagination. It thrills me like when I traveled first time in plane from New Delhi to Srinagar for an international conference. 

DAVID BROOKS said in his review in NYT “It leads to resilience, the ability to persevere with an idea even when all the influences in the world say it can’t be done. A common story among entrepreneurs is that people told them they were too stupid to do something, and they set out to prove the jerks wrong.

It leads to creativity. Individuals who can focus attention have the ability to hold a subject or problem in their mind long enough to see it anew. 

Gladwell’s social determinism is a useful corrective to the Homo economicus view of human nature.”

All three has a significant common focus on ‘entrepreneurship’ which is a industry born with human intuition or ethics. 

I will shortly post my reviews. But first I wanted to post a serious of posts on The White Tiger as he has covered a great amount of The Great Indian Socialist Darkness.