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Category: Excerpts

Platform economy in a post-pandemic world

Posted on by penguin

The decade leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic witnessed the rise of platform business models as they drove stock market gains and extended their influence across economic and political activity. The pandemic has accelerated these platforms further.

 

Platform Scale for a Post-Pandemic World by Sangeet Paul Choudary explains the inner workings of platform business models and their ability to scale rapidly. Here is an excerpt from the book that illustrates the same.

 

Scene One: The Pandemic

 

In August 2020, Apple became the first company to reach a $2 trillion market cap. That same month, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos became the first man to reach a personal net worth of $200 billion.

 

Even as most companies struggle to cope with the realities of a post- pandemic world, the platform firms—Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook—have performed exceptionally well. Relatively smaller firms like Netflix and Shopify have also generated significant shareholder value.

 

The impact of platform firms during the pandemic has extended far beyond gains in the stock market alone. Google and Apple have joined forces to launch the Google–Apple contact tracing (GACT) platform, which uses application programming interfaces (APIs), Bluetooth technology and operating system (OS) level changes to assist in contact tracing.

While most supply chains reeled under the effect of the pandemic, Amazon and Alibaba came to the rescue. Even as the US–China trade war heats up, Alibaba’s Electronic World Trade Platform initiative is working with countries like Rwanda, Malaysia and Belgium to create a new infrastructure for global trade.

 

China’s platform economy leaders—Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent— have also been developing AI-driven solutions for COVID-19 diagnosis, vaccine development, contact tracing and risk assessment. Alibaba’s epidemic prediction solution model is trained on public data gathered from across China and predicts the trajectory of a coronavirus outbreak in a specific region with 98 per cent prediction accuracy. Meanwhile, the Alibaba Cloud hosts a virus genome sequencing application to diagnose new COVID-19 cases and has opened up its computing resources to research groups working on vaccine development around the world.

 

The pandemic has also highlighted the role of platforms as arbiters of discourse. Amazon took down books that it determined carried medical disinformation from its marketplace. Facebook, Twitter, Medium, Reddit and Pinterest have performed similar judge-jury- executioner roles, limiting search results for certain terms or entirely removing content deemed as misinformation.

 

Platform regulation was on the rise over the second half of the 2010s, and 2020 was supposed to be the year when Big Government would seize power away from Big Tech. Instead, what we’re seeing is quite the opposite.

 

The pandemic has accelerated the very grounds on which Big Tech was supposed to be regulated. Data access, privacy and usage laws are being revisited to counter the pandemic through contact tracing and other surveillance mechanisms.

 

As a final testament to the pervasiveness of the platform economy, platforms have started taking over governmental functions during the pandemic. This sounds dramatic but isn’t without precedent. During times of crisis, private firms often step in and take over activities which governments fail to perform. Platforms, as market mediators, are even more likely to take on such roles. Amazon’s directive to stop accepting non-essential products from third-party sellers who use its warehouses is an example of a private firm stepping in as a market regulator.

 

The pandemic has reinforced the importance of the platform economy. In the 2020s, we will see the platform economy gain further strength as the post-pandemic world uncovers new value pools for platforms to exploit.

 

Scene Two: The Post-Pandemic World

 

As we emerge into a post-pandemic world, we are already beginning to see the first signs of massive value migration.

 

More broadly, the post-pandemic world will see shifts in power across value chain actors. Platform scale and the ability to aggregate large and engaged user bases in order to attract other actors around your business will play a pivotal role. As an example, consider the rise in demand for online streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video during lockdown. These two brands may not use an open ecosystem of producers as other platforms do, but they benefit from many of the same drivers of platform scale that we explore subsequently in this book.

 

One might argue that things will return to normal post-lockdown. But it’s quite likely that they won’t. This seemingly transient shift in demand-side behaviour is driving a shift in negotiation power in the value chain.

 

With the pandemic-induced closure of major theatre chains, studios are breaking what’s known in the industry as the ‘window’— the three-month period between when a movie hits the big screen and when it’s offered for rentals or streaming. This window protects theatre revenues.

 

But with the pandemic, studios have been launching their films directly on streaming channels, eroding the window. Universal, with Trolls World Tour, announced that it will make movies available at home on the same day as their global theatrical release. In response, AMC Studios barred Universal from ever launching a movie in their theatres. Meanwhile, with AMC Theatres struggling, Amazon was looking to acquire its assets as of June 2020, further driving the consolidation we see during such periods of value migration.

In India, Amazon secured rights to premiere Bollywood movies, originally scheduled for a theatrical release, directly on Prime Video. Pre-pandemic, Amazon was getting into online sales of movie tickets to gain bargaining power over movie theatres and possibly negotiate the release window. With the pandemic, this balance is likely to further tilt in Amazon’s favour.

 

The post-pandemic world will also see new revenue models emerge. China’s Huanxi Media partnered with Douyin, a streaming platform by ByteDance, to launch its movies and TV shows direct to streaming on a new business model involving a combination of a licensing deal and a share of the advertising revenues. As studios like Huanxi Media test the success of releases on streaming platforms, they will likely use that data to negotiate with theatres post-lockdown. Theatres won’t go away, but their bargaining power may decrease. The combination of demand migration and a shift in bargaining power will likely create a permanent shift in power towards Amazon and Netflix. The longer the pandemic- induced changes last, and the greater the number of hit films and shows released direct to streaming, the more likely such a shift becomes.

 

The pandemic has induced a similar shift in the food retail value chain. With many countries moving into lockdown during the pandemic, there’s been a significant shift towards e-commerce in food retail. This is further reinforced by the disruption of food supply chains, a supply- side effect. A combination of these demand-side and supply-side effects has driven value towards online grocery platforms that can best harness these shifts. Demand has been increasingly centralized, with a few large online grocery platforms that can use centralized demand data to better predict demand patterns, improve stocking of fulfilment centres and better inform their supply chains. Post-pandemic, supply chain inspections and quality control requirements are likely to increase, and this will again favour larger players. This combination of demand- and supply-side effects will strengthen large grocery platforms.

 

In the post-pandemic world, we will increasingly see aggregation of demand with a few large players. With centralized and aggregated demand as a control point, large platform firms will be able to effectively orchestrate the entire ecosystem to deliver value to consumers and will be best positioned to harness value in these new value pools. As this book illustrates, leveraging technology—often commoditized—to orchestrate connected users towards new and efficient value-creating interactions holds the key to the business models of the future.

 

Platform Scale for a Post-Pandemic World serves as a maker’s manual, helping executives design and build platforms, and provides a lens to analyse the shifts currently underway and their implications for future platform-scale businesses.

Between coaching and controlling, there is only one winner

Posted on by penguin

The world today is facing a looming crisis in leadership. Ruchira Chaudhary’s book Coaching: The Secret Code to Uncommon Leadership makes the crucial distinction between controlling from a position of power and coaching from one, which often make the all the difference between success and failure. Here is an excerpt:

 

‘You are failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal . . . You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say we will never forgive you. We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line.’

A visibly emotional Greta Thunberg, the teenage climate activist, berated and excoriated world leaders for their inertia over the climate crisis. Her speech at the United Nations summit became symbolic of her generation’s demand for a better world. She has constantly provoked world leadership, demanding ‘how dare’ they not do more for the environment and for the future generations.

Would we—the current leadership of the business world— have to be similarly answerable to our younger colleagues one day for leaving the corporate world bereft of good leadership?

There is a massive leadership shortage in the world today even though there is enough talent, according to leadership gurus James Kouzes and Barry Posner. There are potential leaders out there who have a lot of talent. People who are eager, passionate and keen to succeed. And yet, we find ourselves in the midst of a leadership crisis when looking to steer the organizations (and nations) of tomorrow.

By 2025, 75 per cent of the workforce will comprise of millennials. Yet organizations around the world do not feel they have an ample leadership pipeline for current and future needs. About 86 per cent of the respondents to the latest World Economic Forum Survey (WEF) corroborate the view that we are indeed experiencing a leadership crisis. Companies believe they do not have enough leadership bench strength and the demographic shifts are creating more demand for exemplary leadership than the supply.

They go on to ask that if the need for leaders is so high—why aren’t we developing enough leaders? Why is the pipeline so bare, despite the knowledge that having the right leadership is critical to thriving and surviving in the future?

What holds true with the environment can also hold true for business.

Building sustainable leadership for the future is complex and unfortunately not enough of a priority, yet it is critical to the vitality of future businesses. As with the environment, the choice to act rests with us. We can bridge the leadership gap by nurturing and coaching our teams and our emerging leaders now, creating a much stronger pipeline of future leaders, ready to hold the rudder of the economy, when the time comes.

According to leadership scholar Jack Zenger’s research on the topic—this shortfall is fuelled by inadequate preparation. Potential leaders are simply not ready to lead others and most leaders are not getting adequate training. Not surprising, considering that the average age of a manager who goes through any leadership programme was forty-two!5

Just as you would not seek medical treatment from an untrained physician or allow an untrained mechanic to fix your new car—why would you let untrained, unprepared leaders steer your organization?

Why then aren’t we building enough leaders especially in light of such alarming statistics? Why aren’t organizations, educational establishments and governments spending more time, effort, energy and resources in developing this next line of leaders?

That’s because our approach to building leaders isn’t working!

Organizations (societies and nations) are often run according to ‘the superchicken model’, where the value is placed on star employees who outperform others. The model refers to ‘interactions among chickens’ observed in a study by Purdue University evolutionary biologist, William Muir, and explained later in this section.

As we saw in the case of Dr Big, Sachin and Travis—we are instantly drawn to our best performers, our stars, and there is a natural assumption that these superstars will morph into superstar leaders.

We’ve assumed that success is achieved by picking the superstars, the brightest men, or occasionally women, in the room, and giving them all the resources and all the power. The reality however can be very different says Margaret Heffernan.

The idea that top performers can be selected for desirable characteristics has a long pedigree. Charles Darwin, himself, relied upon animal breeding practices to explain how nature plays the same role as the farmer. During Darwin’s time in the mid-19th century, it was widely assumed that creating a better society was a matter of selecting the most able individuals.

This was the basis of an experiment conducted in the 1990s by Dr William M. Muir, professor of animal sciences at Purdue University. The purpose of the experiment was to increase the egg-laying productivity of hens. The most productive hen from each flock was selected to breed the next generation of hens, and so on and so forth, inevitably resulting in a flock of high-productivity chickens. In this model, scientists at Purdue University set out to build a flock of successful chickens by selectively breeding the best of the flock.

According to a Forbes article, ‘Muir left the chickens alone for six generations, expecting to see the super chicken flock turn into a breed of productivity thoroughbreds. But that’s not exactly what he found. The first group—the average chickens—were the same as before . . .’ These were plump, well feathered, healthy and actually producing more eggs than they were at the start of the experiment. ‘The super chickens, on the other hand, weren’t exactly fat and happy. All but three were dead. The individual superstars had pecked their kin to death.’

What should have amounted to a breed of ‘superchickens’ ended up producing a strain of hyper-aggressive hens that incessantly attacked each other.

Muir’s chicken experiment has become legendary among social scientists because it’s a kind of a parable—window into human behaviour and the way we work, and maybe also a lesson on how we could do better. It is not a surprise that these superflocks seem like an apt comparison to organizations of today. As Margaret Heffernan shares in her TED Talk, ‘Forget the Pecking Order at Work’, superchickens in the workplace can cause super problems.

…The superchicken model tells us many things about teamwork, collaboration and, most importantly, that being a star performer or being naturally gifted at your craft is sometimes not enough. These performers need to be nurtured and their craft honed if we want them to lead with the same panache and excellence.

~

Coaching: The Secret Code to Uncommon Leadership is a must-read for leaders, aspiring leaders and especially those that wish to transition from being just good leaders to extraordinary ones.

Technology and justice – a match made in heaven

Posted on by vanyajaiswal

In India 2030, thought leaders from twenty diverse fields, ranging from politics, economics and foreign policy to health care and energy, predict what 2030 will look like for India and how the nation will evolve in this decade. The book can be seen as a handbook for citizens, a road map for policymakers and a guide for scholars. Its collection of essays capture the many aspects of a future that will see India becoming the world’s third-largest economy and a regional power before the decade gets over.

Here’s an excerpt from the book on how technology will revolutionise the way we mete out justice in the 2020s.

 

**

The biggest change in justice in the coming decade will be the use of technology in courts. Artificial intelligence will not only help organize cases, it will also bring references into the judgment at a speed not seen so far. Technology will ensure that those who do not have access to justice due to distance will not be excluded anymore. Appointments of judges to the higher judiciary, the high courts and the Supreme Court, will see a change in the 2020s. The collegium system has exposed its weaknesses; its critics say that the system has degenerated into cronyism and is arbitrary, with merit as a mere sideshow. Again, technology will ensure that by the end of the decade, this system is revamped and rationalized towards objective criteria. When India enters the 2030s, it will do so with a more robust, transparent and credible system.

The law and justice system operates to touch our lives in two ways. First, in the sphere of transactional events in our daily lives. Second, in the sphere of litigation: of lawyers, judges and the various fora for resolution of conflicts and disputes. Indubitably, there need be to be, and will be, drastic changes at both levels. The decade ahead will ensure these constitutional aspirations are fulfilled. Besides, citizens need to be educated generally, and in particular about their basic human rights. They need to be empowered to demand the satisfaction of these basic rights by society. They also need education on the means by which society can be compelled to accord to them the basic necessities of life. These too will expand in the 2030s.

Democracy, Constitution and Justice

These changes will not be easy to make. In a democracy based on adult franchise and wedded to the rule of law, like India, this could be a herculean task. While India has a brilliantly worded constitutional document, there are millions who are unaware of the true nature of the Constitution. There is a crying need to educate the people on their fundamental rights guaranteed in Part III of the Constitution and the Directive Principles of State Policy declared in Part IV, which determine the path of governance for the state.

front cover of India 2030
India 2030 || Gautam Chikermane

 

Access to information through low-priced telecommunications infrastructure will multiply the speed with which people will be able to learn and exercise their rights. When there is holistic awareness about the rights and the means of exercising those rights, the scene will shift to the legal arena. If the rights are required to be satisfied by the state, and if the state is deficient, the rights can only be enforced by resort to legal machinery and judicial fora. As people understand their rights and access to justice improves, litigation will rise.

…

Technology as a Change Agent

The extended lockdown in the wake of COVID-19 radically changed the lifestyles of all players in the field of justice— litigants, lawyers and judges—forcing them to resort to online resolution of disputes. It has also taught citizens the need for increased use of digitization. That would necessarily entail massive investment in the hardware and software required for effectively running virtual courts in the country. Though feeble attempts were made in the past for e-filing of petitions in the Supreme Court, they turned out to be mostly photo ops. Now there is an opportunity to test the verisimilitude of the words of the bard of Avon, ‘sweet are the uses of adversity’. And the Supreme Court has grabbed this opportunity with both hands and set the stage for speedy and more efficient delivery of justice in the decade ahead.

In May 2020, the Supreme Court introduced a new system of e-filing as a process tool and artificial intelligence as reference support infrastructure, both of which are characterized by efficiency, transparency and access to court- delivery services for every user. Effectively, India’s courts have ushered in a new and future-ready justice dispensation system that is not only in tune with the coming decade, but will also ensure it becomes the base for justice delivery in twenty-first- century India. The four key components of this system—24/7 filing, online communication of defects and scrutiny of matters, e-payment of court fees and digital signature for filing-related conversations—will speed up the court process. These process reforms stand on the infrastructure provided using artificial intelligence, and will play a big role in the organization of courts, categorization of matters and process automation. It will also enable extraction of information from court documents at the rate of one million words per minute and can be used by judges to decide a case. In the middle of COVID-19, these experiments in virtual courts have delivered success. Going forward, they will become the norm.

Once the use of artificial intelligence becomes a judicial standard, it will percolate and fix another problem: the continuing vacancies in judicial posts. Presently, 25–45 per cent of judicial posts remain vacant for unduly long periods, which puts a disproportionately large burden on the incumbents of other posts. This is a problem whose genesis is more in a lack of will than in a lack of resources. With appropriate artificial intelligence solutions, it will be easy to draw up a reserve list of judicial officers that can be kept updated, so that the proper person can be identified and promptly placed in the appropriate vacancy without loss of time. The 2020s will see this being implemented, and a major portion of the judicial pendency issue will be tackled effectively and resolved.

**

 

 

The kite rises into the air

Posted on by swara

Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib was born in Agra in the closing years of the eighteenth century. A precocious child, he began composing verses at an early age and gained recognition while he was still very young. He wrote in both Urdu and Persian and was also a great prose stylist. He was a careful, even strict, editor of his work who took to publishing long before his peers.

Ghalib’s voice presents us with a double bind, a linguistic paradox. Exploring his life, works and philosophy, Ghalib is an authoritative critical biography of Ghalib and opens a window to many shades of India and the subcontinent’s cultural and literary tradition.

Here is an excerpt from the text by Mehr Afshan Farooqi:

 

One day, my heart like a paper kite,

Took off on freedom’s string,

And began to shy away from me,

Became so wayward, it pestered me.

 

Ghalib, from an early composition

 

 

To tell the truth – for to hide the truth is not the way of a man free in spirit – I am no more than half a Muslim, for I am free from the bonds of convention and religion and have liberated my soul from the fear of men’s tongues.

 

Ghalib, in Dastanbuy

 

front cover of Ghalib
Ghalib || Mehr Afshan Farooqi

 

‘Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib, known as Mirza Naushah, titled Najmuddaulah Dabir ul-Mulk Asadullah Khan Bahadur Nizam Jang, with the nom de plume Ghalib for Persian, and Asad for Rekhtah (Urdu), was born on the eve of 8th of Rajab 1212 hijri (27 December 1797) in the city of Agra.’ Thus begins Maulana Altaf Husain Hali’s important biographical account, Yadgar-e-Ghalib.

Indeed, Hali’s critical, path-breaking memoir of his great ustad reconstructs the poet’s life story in a thrilling narrative woven with anecdotes, letters, personal trivia, first-hand observations and, most importantly, a penetrating analysis of Ghalib’s poetry and prose. Ghalib’s colourful personality shines in Hali’s lucid prose. It is hard to imagine how much or how little we would have known of Ghalib without Hali’s seminal work. There were Ghalib’s letters – volumes of them, a vital source of information – but the inspiration and direction that Hali’s work provided to generations of scholars remains undeniable.

In his youth, Ghalib was counted among the most handsome men in the city, be it Agra or Delhi. He was tall, with broad shoulders; his hands and feet were noticeably strong. Even in old age, when Hali first saw him, the signs of beauty were apparent on his face and demeanour. He was married on the 7th of Rajab, 1225 hijri (1810 ce) to Umrao Begam, the daughter of Navab Mirza Ilahi Bakhsh Khan Ma’ruf. Ghalib was thirteen years old at the time, and his bride eleven. Some years after his marriage, Ghalib moved to Delhi. It appears that he lived in Delhi for the next fifty years, till the end of his life. According to Altaf Husain Hali, in this long period, he never bought a house. He chose to live in rented houses; when he got tired of one house, he moved to another, but always remained in the same neighbourhood: Gali Qasim Jan, or Habsh Khan ka Phatak, or a place nearby.

Ghalib became an orphan at the impressionable age of five, when his father, Mirza Abdullah Beg Khan, was killed by a stray bullet in Rajgarh, Rajasthan, where he had gone with a force from Alwar to quell a rebellion. He was buried in Rajgarh. Raja Bakhtawar Singh of Alwar fixed a generous allowance for Ghalib and his siblings – his older sister, known as Chhoti Begam, and his younger brother, Mirza Yusuf. The children and their mother had always lived at the maternal home in Agra. In fact, Ghalib was born in the grand mansion of his maternal grandfather, Khwaja Ghulam Husain Khan Kamidan. Khwaja Ghulam Husain, a military commander (kamidan in colloquial speech) in the province of Meerut, was among the leading elite of Agra. His estate included numerous villages, and he owned many properties in the town itself. Ghalib’s mother, Izzatun Nisa Begam, was literate. Because Ghalib’s father lived with his in-laws, he was fondly known as Mirza Dulha, or Mister Bridegroom. Ghalib himself was known as Mirza Naushah, which, too, means Mister Bridegroom. Such nicknames were terms of affection used for males living with their in-laws. Presumably, Ghalib’s father died in 1801 (although Ghulam Rasul Mehr gives 1803 as the date), because we know that his paternal uncle, Mirza Nasrullah Beg Khan, died some five years later, in 1806, because of the injuries he suffered after accidentally falling off his elephant. Although Ghalib recorded his uncle’s death as an important event in his life, there is no evidence that he was close to his uncle; however, he and his siblings did become entitled to a pension because they were among Mirza Nasrullah Beg’s dependents.

**

Forces: consolidation of a rajasic India

Posted on by penguin

Thought leaders from twenty diverse fields, ranging from politics, economics and foreign policy to health care and energy, predict what 2030 will look like for India and how the nation will evolve in this decade.

 

Editor Gautam Chikermane has masterfully weaved together essays by Abhijit Iyer-Mitra, Ajay Shah, Amish Tripathi, Amrita Narlikar, Bibek Debroy, David Frawley, Devdip Ganguli, Justice B.N. Srikrishna, Kirit S. Parikh, Manish Sabharwal, Monika Halan, Parth J. Shah, Raghunath Anant Mashelkar, Rajesh Parikh, Ram Madhav, Reuben Abraham, Samir Saran, Sandipan Deb and Vikram Sood into a single volume that looks towards India’s future.

 

India 2030 | Gautam Chikermane

 

 

Here is an excerpt from the book India 2030-

 

Beyond all other transformations in India, the 2020s will see a rajasic reawakening of the nation. This dynamic surge in the country’s soul will be driven individually, one citizen at a time; it will articulate its self-becoming as a coming together of India’s collective soul. Its manifestations will be physical and mental, its driving force spiritual. Supported by a political leadership that is in tune with the soul of India, Bharat, this change began in the 2010s. It will consolidate in the 2020s and reset the material destiny of India in the 21st century.

 

It will create a new balance between two forces. First, a centripetal force that will concentrate the energies of India to the principles of its nationhood, be informed by its own intellectual traditions and expressed through a modernity rooted in its soul. And second, a centrifugal force that will expand its footprint outwards, through a deeper and stronger engagement with civilised nations going hand in hand with a self-assured confidence that will keep a check on barbaric powers on its borders.

 

The 2020s will be a decade of transition. The transition will impact every aspect of India – its psychological approach, its democratic institutions, its diverse people, its global engagements. The shift will impact individuals, bind them, it will be powered by them and will simultaneously serve them as a collective. It will be a time when the very life force of India will be in constant motion towards a new equilibrium that will take inspiration from the nation’s swabhawa (essential character or spiritual temperament) in order to follow its swadharma (express its true essence).

 

The politics of a religious society

Posted on by ashmita

Journalist Khaled Ahmed examines how religion became intricately stitched into the fabric of Pakistan’s political and social framework. Read an excerpt from his book Pakistan’s Terror Conundrum:

 

The state of Pakistan was founded on the ‘consensus’ that it has to be Islamic. As a religious state, it seeks sharia as an ideal. All states must seek an ideal as their foundational teleology. There is muted disagreement between ideologues and pragmatists over this ideal. It is muted because of intimidation, but it is definitely there, especially after the Talibanization of the country through illegal action by the Islamists. It is the threat of religion as an extra-legal force that is causing many Pakistanis to wonder if the state can move forward into the future with Islam as its credo.

Front cover Pakistan's Terror Conundrum excerpt
Pakistan’s Terror Conundrum||Khaled Ahmed

…It is interesting to note that when in 1949 the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan adopted the Objectives Resolution, it used the less-threatening terms ‘Quran’ and ‘Sunnah’ rather than sharia, which later came to be embedded in Article 203(C) of the Constitution and is related to the Federal Shariat Court. The politicians who signed the resolution knew nothing about what the ‘guiding code’ meant, as they reassured the non-Muslim members that they would be equal citizens. The non-Muslims, not easily consoled, came down to Lahore only to learn from the clerics that they would be zimmis (non-Muslim subjects of a state governed according to the sharia) who would have to pay a special tax. When General Zia shoved the Objectives Resolution into the Constitution through the 8th Amendment, he removed the word ‘freely’ from the sentence, which assured the non-Muslims that they would be able to practise their religion freely. No notation was made in regard to the change of text. In 1949, the resolution had ‘God Almighty’ in its first paragraph; it was changed to ‘Almighty Allah’ in 1953 without any reference to the assembly that had passed it. The guiding principles, passed off as harmless in 1949, became menacing for both Muslims and non-Muslims with the passage of time.

Pakistan became less and less viable as it converged on sharia. Jihad used to be the grand Islamic subterfuge, confusing the world about war and ‘peaceful effort’; now it is straightforward qital (killing). It used to be accepted that jihad could only be declared by the state. Now it is consensually privatized and internationalized, thus undermining a fundamental function of the state. On the law of evidence, if a scholar leans on the Quranic text to challenge the clergy on the half testimony of a Muslim woman, he is told to shut up because sharia has already decided the matter. Sharia is what fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) makes of the Quran and Sunnah. An Egyptian professor at the Saudi-funded International Islamic University of Islamabad contended that infibulation (female circumcision) was sharia in Egypt, under the practiced Shafi’i fiqh, but banned ‘wrongly’ under the official Hanafi fiqh.

… An Islamic state intent on a sharia-based revolution embraces isolationism as its programme, almost like the Stalinist slogan of socialism-in-one-country. After 1947, the state misunderstood itself as a castle of Islam. It fondly thought of itself as a society cut-off—that is what the word ‘castle’ means—from the rest of the world, with an ability to stand up to hostile sieges. It also presaged the totalitarianism of the clergy after the ‘modern’ state was overthrown. Pakistan also allowed the transnational concept of the umma to inform its ideology. It acknowledged that the concept of the nation state was not compatible with its teleology because of the concept of umma.

When it tested its first atom bomb, the state of Pakistan could not for long keep up the pretended doctrine that it was India- specific. It was soon acclaimed as an Islamic bomb, a transnational weapon that would threaten not only India but many other states across the globe. The moment it became a religious bomb, its transformation into a sectarian one was inevitable. Many respectable scholars believe that Pakistan’s Sunni bomb caused Iran’s Shia bomb to be produced. Just as a religious state Pakistan cannot avoid becoming a sectarian one, conceptually, its bomb too threatens Iran, in addition to threatening the entire non- Muslim world.

The terrorist outreach of political Islam is being opposed by strong powers that have the capacity to strike at its incubation grounds. If this polarity is interpreted as Christianity versus Islam, then Islam doesn’t benefit from the neutrality of the non- Christian world either. In fact, the non-Christian world feels equally threatened and is inclined to forget its contradictions with the dominant Christian powers, seeking to form an alliance with it to confront Islam. Given this near-total opposition of the world, political Islam, thriving on lack of secular education, has little chance of surviving as a winning force. Political Islam can only eat its own children.

The Islamic state is not viable in modern times unless Islam is reinterpreted. This is not the project of Islam today; this inclination to change the world by force to fit sharia. This springs from the intellectual attitude of not rejecting the premise when it fails to encompass reality. The suicide bomber of today is an agent of forcible change of reality to the premise of Islam. When not democratic, the Muslim state begins its process of decline as a state denying rights; when Islamic, it begins its process of decline under challenge from the clergy; when theocratic, it achieves stability by suppressing demands for rights under the doctrine of fasad fil ard (corruption on earth). The theocratic stage is the terminal stage, after which the state is either undone or finds refuge in reverting to the identity of the modern state with economic imperatives overriding religious passions. Pakistan is in the process of entering the terminal phase and is looking at itself once again in 2020, hesitating in the face of a possible negative reaction from a scared world.

~

Pakistan’s Terror Conundrum is a gripping examination of the origin story of Pakistan’s ideals, and how religion became the driving force behind Pakistani nationalism.

 

 

The real cost of COVID-19

Posted on by ashmita

By now it is more than evident that the pandemic was different for the rich and the poor. Arun Kumar’s stellar research in his book Indian Economy’s Greatest Crisis  helps us understand the real cost of the pandemic and those who have had to bear it.

~

The Plight of Labour and Migrants

…The pandemic has brought into the open the terrible plight of the unorganized sector and its workers. They are the marginalized in society and policy seldom caters to their issues. They could not cope with the lockdown and now continue to suffer even with the lockdown eased under business pressure. …Without adequate testing, a large number of people will get infected as lockdown is eased. For herd immunity, if 60 per cent get the disease and develop immunity, 5 per cent of those infected will be serious, requiring hospitalization. That would be 4 crore people and most of them will be workers forced to go to their place of work. The poor are malnourished and don’t have the resources to get tested or get proper medical treatment. Even if only 2 per cent die, and this number will be larger if India’s weak medical system fails, 1.6 crore people will die—and most of them will be the poor.

 

Uncivil Conditions That the Urban Poor Live In

… Why was our medical system so weak and testing inadequate even months after it became clear in March that the disease would spread? It is a reflection of a political system and an executive that has hardly ever prioritized the welfare of the vast majority of the people it is supposed to serve. They are the residual, or the one’s marginalized in policymaking. If some benefits trickle down to them, that is well and good. If the poor rise above a given poverty line, the system claims it an ‘achievement’. The elite make it out that the poor ought to be grateful for the gains they have made since Independence.

The ‘achievement’ hides the uncivil conditions in which the poor live, especially in urban areas, and this now stands exposed thanks to the pandemic. They live in cramped and unhygienic slums, with little access to clean water and sanitary conditions. How are they to observe the lockdown and practise physical distancing? They live cheek by jowl and share toilets and water tankers. They have little savings, so they have to earn and spend on a day-to-day basis. With the pandemic, their earnings have stopped and they have turned destitute—this highlights the precariousness of their lives. One shock and they slip below the poverty line; one major illness in the family and they fall below the imaginary poverty line (Kumar, 2013). They had always been poor, but for policymakers, ‘progress’ was that they had jumped above the poverty line (APL).

 

Cause of the Mass Migration

…Industry and ruling elites capitalize on the poor working and living conditions of labour to lead their own comfortable lifestyle and make higher profits. Consequently, neither the state nor businesses grant workers their rights. For instance, a large number of workers do not get a minimum wage, social security or protective gear at worksites. They mostly have no employment security; often their wages are not paid in time; muster rolls are fudged; and there is little entitlement to leave. Given their low wages, they are forced to live in uncivilized conditions in slums. Water is scarce, and drinking water more so. Access to clean toilets is limited and disease can spread rapidly. There is a lack of civic amenities such as sewage. Their children are often deprived of schools and playgrounds.

front cover Indian Economy's Greatest Crisis - excerpt
Indian Economy’s Greatest Crisis||Arun Kumar

Now, using COVID-19 as an excuse, state after state has reduced even what little security was available to workers, by eliminating or diluting various laws to favour businesses. In Uttar Pradesh, at least fourteen of the Acts have been changed, such as the Minimum Wages Act, 1948, the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, and the Payment of Bonus Act, 1965. It’s the same thing in Madhya Pradesh and Punjab. The plea is that this is needed to revive economic activity. The chief minister of Madhya Pradesh has said that this will lead to new investment in the state (Singh, 2020).

…In India, workers are characterized as either organized or unorganized. Those in the former category work in larger businesses and have some formal rights (which are being diluted) but, often, they find it difficult to have them enforced. Increasingly the big and medium businesses are employing contract labour provided by labour contractors from the unorganized sector, rather than permanent workers. Businesses pay contractors, who then pay the labourers part of the money they receive. So businesses claim that they are paying the minimum wage but the workers aren’t getting it.

In a scenario where even the minimum wage is inadequate for a worker to lead a dignified life, what chance do those receiving even lesser stand to lead a civilized existence?

Businessmen who now talk of livelihood have never shown such concern for the workers in the past. They have paid low wages to earn big profits. How else, at such a low level of per capita income, could India have had the fourth largest number of billionaires in the world? Clearly, most of the gains of development over the past seventy-five years, more specifically since 1991, have been cornered by businessmen. They have made money not only in white but also huge sums in black (Kumar, 1999).

Businesses have manipulated policy in their favour—before 1991, by resorting to crony capitalism, and since then by bending policy in their favour, curtailing workers’ rights and pressurizing the government to weaken its support to the marginalized sections on the plea that the markets be allowed to function. Now using COVID-19 as the shield, workers’ rights are being further curtailed. No wonder, then, that the country collects only about 6 per cent of the GDP as direct taxes despite huge disparities. The burden of taxation falls on the indirect taxes, such as GST and customs duty, paid by everyone, including the marginalized.

The lesson to be learnt from the pandemic is that India has not been able to cope with it because of the adverse living conditions of the majority of its people, namely the poor. Now labour laws are being diluted (such as increased working hours and reduced wages), which means a worsening of their living conditions (Kumar, 2020g). This will ensure that the country will flounder again when the next pandemic strikes. The tragedy is that India is today headed towards societal breakdown for short-term gains of some sections of society. But it appears that a rethinking of the prevailing ruling ideology always comes at a heavy cost.

~

Indian Economy’s Greatest Crisis  is a detailed and insightful work examining the various fault lines of the Indian social fabric and how they’ve been affected by the pandemic.

Lord Krishna’s fatal encounter with the hunter Jara

Posted on by vanyajaiswal

As the Mahabharata war wages on, it shows no mercy and takes no prisoners. Death and destruction abound.

In the midst of a world rendered unrecognizable by the lust for power, malice and the machinations of war stand Bhishma, contemplating the immeasurable death he sees around himself as a man who cannot die, Draupadi, above and beyond the chaos and yet at the very centre of it, trying to protect her husbands at any cost, wondering whom to trust, and Arjuna, beloved, conflicted and melancholic in equal measure, uncertain of the ultimate cost of the war he is intent on winning. The Dharma Forest is a magnificent first novel in a trilogy filled with complex characters, conflicted loyalties and erotic jealousies from India’s most beloved epic.

Here’s an intriguing excerpt from the book.

**

By the time the arrowhead left the bow’s frontal arch, Jara was already filled with regret. He could have been more patient; he could have not abandoned his aspiration for non-violence; he could have not surrendered to who he truly was—one who loved to hunt and kill. All the while as the arrow travelled, Jara noticed that the trees had stopped swaying and the winds ceased their frenzied moves. Every falling twig was now audible, each drop of dew hit the grounds with a crackle. Up from the trees, the leaves began to abandon their tenuous bonds with the branches, frogs scampered around their puddles nervously and birds in the skies circled anxiously, like expectant fathers at the hour of birth. The forest stilled itself in anticipation. And the evening sky had acquired a darkness that Jara had rarely seen. The world was now brimming over with portents that not even the darkest oracles could fathom. And then, all too suddenly, he heard the arrow land with a thud and tear into some flesh which, ironically, brought about a semblance of normalcy to that moment thanks to the iron laws of cause and effect which had now seemingly prevailed. His arrow, as always, had found its mark, and Jara sighed in relief—finally!—as if some long nursed revenge had eventually found its release. From afar, he could see a pool of blood begin to flow and wet the grounds, and a voice in his head told him that an hour of sacrament was near.

Jara ran towards his mark, past the small ponds and the trees, to inspect the animal that lay there. Even as he hurried, he prayed that he may find an injured deer and not a dead one. To assuage his guilt, he told himself that he would bandage the animal and let it go. The flute’s melancholic song, meanwhile, had come to a stop. From the skies a roar broke out and boomed through the trees and branches, which had already shed their leaves, as if an untimely winter had arrived. Jara found himself running through a corridor of yellow and green when he heard the forests echo three times.

Jayaa, Jayaa, Jayaa…

 

front cover of The Dharma Forest
The Dharma Forest || Keerthik Sasidharan

 

Before he could make sense of it all, he had arrived at a spot where blood seeped freely into the earth. And there he found a man with many arms—was this a God who had lost his way, Jara asked himself in wonder and fear; his complexion was as dark as the blue nights of Jara’s dreams, and from his feet, blood trickled steadily. Jara’s arrow had sliced away the ankle of his foot. Instead of pain and horror, however, this injured otherworldly person sat there in silence, with his eyes closed, as if he was meditating. And then, perhaps stirred by Jara’s presence, he opened his eyes and smiled at him. A generous and beatific smile that took Jara by surprise, for he had expected to be on the receiving end of anger and abuse. Overwhelmed by grief and guilt on having hurt somebody, Jara bowed to this injured being and for reasons unknown to him, tears welled up in his eyes. He bent down to touch this being’s feet, out of concern and in regret, as if to make amends for this gratuitous injury. When Jara looked up again, the many arms on his body were no longer there. He was just another ordinary man, even though his presence exuded a form of gentleness and beauty of the kind that Jara had never thought possible in another human. Perhaps, Jara tried to reason, it was another trick played by the forest. Then, this kindly one spoke, ‘Jara, my dear friend. I hope it wasn’t too difficult for you to find me.’

Jara looked at him again, only to recognize an intuition froth within him that his wanderings through the forest which had lasted for weeks, had now come to an end. The man’s presence—despite the blood and agony all around—filled Jara with a kind of peace that he had not experienced in a long while. Then, even as he bled to death, the man said with an easy contentment: ‘I am Devaki’s son, Rukmini’s husband, and Arjuna’s friend. I am also known as Krishna of the Yadavas.’

He paused to let silence enter between them and then said to Jara, ‘I have waited for you my whole life.’

**

Why design thinking is need of the hour?

Posted on by vanyajaiswal

Creative problem-solving is at the heart of innovation, and some of the world’s most innovative companies are very systematic in following this approach. Pioneered by IDEO and Stanford d.school, design thinking is one such approach that draws inspiration from the realm of product design. This book attempts to offer a practitioner’s perspective on how the tenets, methods and discipline of design thinking can be applied across a range of domains, including to everyday problems, and help us become expert problem-solvers through the use of the appropriate toolsets, skill sets and mindsets.

Here’s an excerpt from the book which elucidates why design thinking deserves to be adopted more seriously and pervasively.

**

Whether you are buying a product or hiring a service, at the end of the day you are consuming an experience, and in this experience economy, a lot more of your senses are involved. The traditional products have become more like services, and services have become experiences. In today’s marketplace, customers are shifting from passive consumption to active participation. Memorable experiences are not scripted by leaders or marketing departments but are delivered at the moment of truth by the customer-facing executives. And such experiences must be crafted and delivered with the same precision as the products. We are all seeking authentic experiences and even the most mundane task can be made into a cherishable experience. Such authentic experiences often take shape by allowing for spontaneity, and, paradoxically, this spontaneity must be designed beforehand, and technology is only a small part of that desirable experience.

Do you wonder why people spend such huge amounts to attend TED Talks, when all of these are available for free on the Internet? Because people want to ‘experience’ being in the company of thinkers and doers and get inspired. That is the same reason that thousands of Indians queue up every summer to watch Indian Premier League matches in their cities. Many of them travel across cities, stand in lines for well over four hours, often in scorching heat, when they could have watched their favourite players from the comfort of their living rooms. They seek genuine experiences, and they are ready to pay anything, risk anything to seek that involvement.

front cover of Design Your Thinking
Design Your Thinking || Pavan Soni

 

People, rich and poor, are going beyond amassing stuff to seeking experiences, and that is visible among a wide cross section in India and in several other emerging economies. Abhijit Banerjee, co-recipient of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics, notes, ‘Generally, it is clear that things that make life less boring are a priority for the poor.’6 He offers a counterintuitive explanation of why the poor spend more on festivities, marriages and other social functions, even if they are often deprived of material goods, such as televisions, bicycles or radios. Another explanation is to do with social equity and collateral, but equally, there is the desire to seek an experience and make life less boring.

Is it possible to infuse experience through design in the most commoditized and undifferentiated products? Yes, and the Indian watch brand Titan has made an empire doing so.

In December 1987, when Titan opened its first retail outlet at Bangalore’s Safina Plaza, watches were perceived as functional products, dominated by HMT Watches and Allwyn Watches and a few international brands whose watches were smuggled into the country. It was Titan that made us think about watches as pieces of adornment and even collectables. (The same was done later for jewellery, accessories, perfumes and, more recently, sarees.) Since its formative days, Titan has paid special attention to how its watches are displayed and to the overall buying experience. Notwithstanding the award-winning designs of its watches, the company’s focus has largely been on designing the buying and gifting experiences. Not just these, Titan has also invested in the product repair experience, setting up repair centres within showrooms to win customers’ trust.

On how Titan went about improving customer experience, Bhaskar Bhat, the company’s former MD, notes, ‘Formalising an informal sector and transforming it for the benefit of the consumer is what we have done best. We are sort of bringing order from disorder. We create elevating experiences for the customers.’7 As Titan demonstrates, designing experiences could be an enduring competitive advantage.

**

 

Salma’s women live fragile lives but dream of hope

Posted on by ashmita

Salma’s women dream of a better world and better lives. Caught up in their circumstances, this simple dream seems more and more distant. Read an excerpt from Women, Dreaming, translated into English by Meena Kandasamy:

 

Parveen runs as though her head is falling apart. Seeing Amma, Hasan and a few others chase her, she runs even faster. The panic of being captured makes her run without paying heed. She runs bounding across walls, past open grounds, she runs and runs…

Waking suddenly out of this nightmare, Parveen was very relieved that no one had caught her. Drenched in sweat, lazy and reluctant to get out of bed, she started thinking about the nature of her dream, what she could recollect of it, the dregs of an earlier life that tormented her now in the form of fantasy. She hated it. She pinched herself to make sure that she had really got away – and that made her overjoyed – then she once again raided her memories.

Meanwhile, downstairs… ‘Her mother has come to visit Rahim’s wife,’ Hasina heard the violent disdain in Iqbal’s voice. Absorbing her husband’s words, Hasina gathered her loose hair, tied it up in a bun and slowly made her way out of her bedroom. Because she could not see anyone in the living room, she shouted, ‘Parveen, Parveen,’ her voice loud enough to display her authority as mother-in-law.

Parveen shouted back, ‘Maami, here I come,’ as she rushed down the stairs. Hasina saw Subaida trailing behind her daughter. Responding to Subaida’s muted salaam with a loud and prolonged ‘wa ‘alay- kum al-salaam,’ Hasina sat down on the sofa.

When Subaida asks her how she is doing, her tone is reverential, its politeness exaggerated. Hasina’s cold response – ‘By the grace of Allah there is no dearth of wellness here’ – comes across as slightly menacing. Although Subaida is upset that Hasina hasn’t asked her to take a seat, she hesitantly stoops to perch on a corner of the sofa.

Parveen is annoyed and angered by her mother- in-law’s tone and manner, but she quickly pacifies herself, refusing to show any sign of being perturbed.

Front cover Women Dreaming
Women, Dreaming||Salma

‘You took the stairs to be with your daughter without first paying your respects to me,’ Hasina remarked. Subaida, registering the reason for Hasina’s displeasure, attempts to placate her: ‘You were sleeping, that’s why I went to talk with Parveen. It has been two weeks since I saw my daughter, you see, so I was very eager…’

This makes Parveen even angrier, to watch her mother plead and try to make peace in such a cringing act of deference.

Perhaps because Hasina had just woken from a nap, her face appeared to be bloated. She had not parted her jet-black hair, merely tied it up into a loose knot, not a hint of grey visible. Parveen compared her mother’s veiled head; most of Amma’s hair had gone white although both women were of the same age.

‘Here, I have brought some snacks,’ Subaida extended a bag that she had brought with her towards Hasina, who rejected it casually.

‘Why? Who is there to eat them here?’

Parveen ground her teeth in anger – this was all too much to take.

‘So, what happened to your promise of buying a car for us? This Eid or the next one?’

Parveen caught the sarcasm in Hasina’s sudden barb. She looked towards her mother to see how she would react.

Parveen could not forget that this was the same Hasina who on the day of Parveen’s marriage to her son had said, ‘She is not your daughter – from this day, she will be my daughter, she will ease my pain of not having given birth to a girl.’ She wondered if her mother, too, was ruminating on something similar that Hasina had told them in the past…
‘It has been three months since the nikah. When are you going to make good on your promise? Your daughter doesn’t understand the first thing about how to conduct herself. She appears to be unfit for any sort of domestic work, as if she was a college-educated girl. Even after I’ve got a daughter-in-law, I’m the one stuck in the kitchen.’

Subaida regretted having come here. Parveen was meanwhile chastised by Hasina: ‘Why are you standing here like a tree – go and fetch some tea for the both of us.’

Parveen moved towards the kitchen. She was curious to know what excuse her mother was going to provide for the demand of a car – but she also knew that she did not have the strength to listen to her spineless words. They must not have promised a car. Why should they have sought an alliance like this? What was wrong with her? Why did they arrange this wedding? She understood nothing.

She filtered the tea into a tumbler. She carefully stirred only half a spoon of sugar in her mother-in- law’s cup, knowing that she had to keep an eye on her sugar intake.

Though Parveen had eagerly awaited her mother’s arrival, her foremost instinct now was that Amma should leave here immediately. She had wanted to share as many things with her as possible, but now she decided not to confide in her at all. She only wanted her mother to return home peacefully.

With shaking hands, she extended the cup of tea towards her mother-in-law, then served Amma, looking at her intently for some clue.

Hasina, taking a sip and grimacing, remarked: ‘Hmm, it’s too sweet. Why have you poured so much sugar into this? There’s nothing you can do properly. In three months, you have not even learnt how much sugar to add in your mother-in-law’s tea. Go, add some milk to my cup and bring it back.’

Her harsh tone made Parveen feel crushed. She worked out that her mother’s response about the car must have displeased Hasina. She could see from her mother-in-law’s face how embittered and angry she felt.

The house wore a dreadful silence.

~

Women, Dreaming is a beautiful and painful read, both heart-breaking and hopeful at once.

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