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In Conversation with the Nation: We The People

Posted on by sanjeeta

Over the last decade, conversations around constitutional rights and state directives have taken precedence. Facts and opinions ebb and flow into each other, and in some instances, it becomes difficult to separate their boundaries and compartmentalise. Public perception and our understanding of our own locations within structures of the state and state power have shifted to a great extent, and how we understand the nation and nationhood has also been coloured by communal differences, identity politics and an onslaught of conservative discourse around human rights and minority communities.

We The People, the fourth volume in the series Rethinking India, does the difficult work of trudging through this quagmire. It agglomerates the most visionary thinkers and the sharpest minds in the political and sociolegal sphere and brings us a volume packed with indispensable insights into the construction and mechanism behind the functioning of the nation, and our relationship with it.

In their essay ‘Fighting Inequality: Rights and Entitlements’, Amitabh Behar and Savvy Soumya Misra write about how even someone like Manmohan Singh, who was pro-liberalisation of the market, had highlighted the necessity to consider carefully the status of inequality in the country. He elaborated on his warning, explaining how despite being one of the fastest growing economies of the world, some groups have been marginalised and remain divested of access to social and economic reform. In fact, he also links this fast growth to this very inequality, stating that its speed and scope is actually achieved at the expense of peripheral groups who are left behind.

India is a country where 63 billionaires own more wealth than the union budget for 2018-19, and the wealth of the nine richest people equals the wealth collectively owned by the poorest 50% of the population. Behar and Misra explore how India, due to its population, is a major factor in the global development and inequality trends. The writers also highlight social inequalities, no doubt a key agent in economic inequalities. Citing the work of Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen, they discuss how caste hierarchies have created deep seated roots of inequality, breeding discrimination through the fabric of our society.

Prashant Bhushan and Anjali Bharadwaj take up another extremely important strand of discussion around the structures of the nation in their essay, ‘The Role of Independent Institutions in Protecting and Promoting Constitutional Rights’. They discuss how an effective rule of law can only be guaranteed by independent and efficient institutions, and how this is the primary safeguard of democracy. The Indian judiciary has passed some landmark judgements in the recent past, securing the rights of citizens in the process. But, the writers note, it is not enough to merely have the skeletal promise of these rights. There is a need for independent and reliable networks that ensure at ground level that these rights are secured, and that theory is indeed translated into practice. Delving into the judiciary as one such system, Bhushan and Bharadwaj discuss fault lines that have been exposed in the system, and how despite the Right To Information Act being applicable to courts as well, courts have resisted making their workings in certain cases transparent. The writers also give a clear picture of the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act of 2013, and pick up many more tensions in the conversation around the institutions which are supposed to be the guarantors of rights, like the Central Bureau of Investigation.

We The People spans crucial ideas like economic rights, social democracy, right to education and health, and the MGNREGA among others, bringing into sharp focus important discussions that too often do not engage the public. But the public is the most crucial aspect of these constitutional directives; after all, these conversations affect us and our positions as citizens directly. This volume breaks down these important concepts into accessible essays, and is a much-required reading.

 

[To delve deeper, get your copy of We The People today.]

Establishing rights and deepening democracy

Posted on by sanjeeta

A regime of economic rights constitutes a blow against the spontaneity of capitalism. Therefore, this regime cannot be instituted except through struggles, that is, through collective action. Hence, even though the rights may be individually enjoyed, they can come into being only through a collective struggle. The collective struggle of the workers that is needed for achieving a set of individual rights, including above all a set of economic rights, already makes the workers transcend their individualism.

…Furthermore, the unprecedented crisis caused by the pandemic and the lockdown have created both a clear necessity for the state to meet its obligations with regards to these rights, and greater public awareness of the costs of not meeting them. This can therefore provide an opportune moment in which to rethink the social contract between people and the state in ways that would ensure the future realization of these basic rights.

Oxfam released its 2019 inequality report titled Public Good or Private Wealth? during the World Economic Forum at Davos… The fulcrum of the Oxfam report is the trend of growing inequality in the world, which is reflected in the tremendous concentration of wealth amongst a few individuals and a small number of TNCs (transnational corporations). The report says that twenty-six individuals (not surprisingly, all men) have more wealth than the bottom 50 per cent of the global population. Globally, the number of billionaires has doubled since the financial crisis. India has added eighteen new billionaires in the last year, raising the number of billionaires in the country to 119. In 2018, the total wealth of India increased by $151 billion (Rs 10,591 billion). However, the wealth of the top 1 per cent increased by 39 per cent, whereas the wealth of the bottom 50 per cent increased by a dismal 3 per cent.3

Front Cover of We the People
We the People || Nikhil Dey, Aruna Roy, Rakshita Swamy

According to the India Inequality Report 2018, India is home to 17 per cent of the world’s population; it is also home to the largest number of people living below the World Bank’s international poverty line measure of $1.90 per day… In the chapter titled ‘Grip of Inequality’, in the 2013 book An Uncertain Glory: India and Its Contradictions, economists Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen state that inequality may be rising in the last couple of decades but India has a historical legacy for multiple social inequalities… Drèze and Sen show how caste hierarchies have bred inequality. They look at a 1901 study12 that compared the literacy rates of Brahmins and Dalits. The study showed that in most regions, a majority of Brahmin men were already literate (in Baroda, up to 73 per cent). At the other end of the spectrum was the literacy rate among Dalit women, which was zero in most states. Dalit men achieved a literacy rate of at the most 1 per cent and Brahmin women a maximum of 6 per cent. The data showed a clear gender and caste monopoly of education back then.13

Education and health are central to achieving a dignified life for all. While the Constitution of India now explicitly recognizes the right to education, a number of Supreme Court judgments and the spirit of the Directive Principles of the Indian Constitution imply that the right to healthcare is also something that is accepted… While there have been significant improvements, health and education outcomes in India still remain poor and uneven, calling for continued and greater investments in these sectors with reforms to strengthen the government programmes in a manner such that they deliver.

The crisis in public health became even more apparent in the wake of COVID-19, which exposed the huge gaps in health infrastructure and access to personal protective equipment (PPE), staff, test kits and so on… Health allocations have been historically low, with currently only about 1.4 per cent of GDP being allocated to health, while the National Policy on Health, 2017, makes a commitment of spending 2.5 per cent of GDP on health by 2025.2 The Union government’s spending on health as a percentage of the GDP reached an all-time low in 2015–16, even lower than in the much-tainted early 1990s.3 Given such a low base, the Government of India announced only an additional Rs 15,000 crore (~0.1 per cent of GDP) in March 2020 for COVID-19 emergency response and health system preparedness.

[In Kerala, redistributive] measures—such as land reforms, collective bargaining for higher wages and public provisioning of education, healthcare, food and social security and so on—ensured that the average citizen is assured of the basic needs that uphold human dignity… Access to government schools and hospitals was given to all sections of society, even in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Rights-consciousness among the backward classes, inculcated by social reform initiatives, enabled them to fully utilize these opportunities.

It was against such a background that the People’s Plan was launched in August 1996… The People’s Plan approach consciously embodied the spirit of rights-based development… Most of the people-related functions such as health, education, women and child development, SC/ST development, agriculture-related development, poverty alleviation, the provision of basic needs like housing, sanitation, water supply, etc. were entrusted to local governments at the cutting-edge level—village panchayats, municipalities and corporations.

[…] The big lesson from Kerala is that the potential for participatory rights-based development is real and achievable in local governments. But nothing is ‘per se’ or ‘ipso facto’; there is a need for proactive policy by the government, which has to be translated into purposive processes and procedures with active involvement, support and guidance from the fraternity of believers in democratic decentralization, inclusion and participatory development from all sections of the society.

 

 

The life and times of Vasoo Paranjape: The Cricket Drona

Posted on by sanjeeta

“You couldn’t miss Vasoo Paranjape”, writes Dilip Vengsarkar, opening his essay on the legendary cricket coach who changed the lives of everyone who crossed paths with him in marvellous and indelible ways. Cricket Drona is a portrait of the life and times of Vasoo Paranjape, created through first-hand accounts and stories told by the people who were shaped by his wisdom and his compassion. Get a glimpse into the illustrious mentor’s life trough this extract:

 

“ I must have been ten or twelve years old when I watched Denis Compton and Vinoo Mankad playing at the Cricket Club of India in a Ranji final. By 1947–48, I was training at the New Hind Club nets and became a member of the Dadar Union Sporting Club at Matunga. I was given a two-year playing membership by the P.J. Hindu Gymkhana in Mumbai. I was a left-arm slow-spin bowler, and I used to bowl the chinaman as a regular part of my armoury. It was a big occasion for me when, one day, I saw all the Indian players playing at the adjoining Matunga Gymkhana ground, including the great Vijay Merchant. Watching me bowl, Merchant called me over for a chat. However, I was so awestruck that I couldn’t muster the courage to respond. In retrospect, my love for the game of cricket originated with that encounter!…

I studied at the King George School and was the captain of the junior team there… During this period, I had the advantage of being coached by the great Homi Vajifdar, who was the first Bombay captain. Vajifdar was a big man with powerful wrists…Leading by example, Vajifdar taught us the value of being a good person. He was disciplined, meticulous and had an eye for detail. If you trained with him, your shoes had to be properly polished and your cricket attire had to be perfect. He always said, ‘Whatever you do, you must be the best at it.’

…I joined Dadar Union in 1953, when Madhav Mantri was captain. We never had any meetings but focused on fielding a month before the league. Mantri used to come from work at 6.05 p.m., remove his tie, get into his cricket attire, and we practised like maniacs…‘A family atmosphere. Terrific bowlers, terrific batsmen and even more terrific fielders. We were a great fielding unit. Daya Dudhwadkar, Suresh Tigdi, Avinash Karnik, Ramnath Parkar, with Sunny in the slips and myself…When I saw him for the first time, Sunny was a young boy who would accompany his father to Dadar Union games. Right from that time I could sense how serious he was about batting. He would play on the sidelines, with one of the team members chucking balls at him endlessly. He played with a very straight bat—quite uncommon for a beginner, as your instinct is to put power into the shot with your bottom hand, which then changes the angle of your bat from the vertical to the horizontal…

On all his English tours, though, he invariably excelled. He had an intuitive ability to adjust to the varying conditions of the English atmosphere and pitches. The matchless 221 he scored at the Oval, during the 1979–80 season, in challenging conditions was possibly the pinnacle of his career, though the 101 he made at Old Trafford in typical English conditions probably gave him greater satisfaction. But for all his successes in England, he could never fulfil the ultimate dream that every batsman has—to score a hundred at Lord’s, the Mecca of cricket.”

 

 

Cricket Drona is out now! To read more inspired accounts of how Vasoo Paranjape impacted and changed lives of the most famous cricketers, get your copy here.

Five magnificent words from Tharoorosaurus every linguaphile must know

Posted on by vanyajaiswal
Tharoorosaurus || Shashi Tharoor

Language can act as a loaded weapon when used with lucidity and eloquence. Shashi Tharoor is the wizard of words, his literary prowess unparalleled. In his book Tharoorosaurus, he shares fifty-three examples from his vocabulary: unusual words from every letter of the alphabet as well as fun facts and interesting anecdotes behind the words.

 

Today, we are giving you an exclusive glimpse into the exquisite world of Tharoosaurus by sharing five spectacular words from the book with you. Are you ready to impress? Well, here we go!

 

Agathokakological

Meaning: consisting of both good and evil

Usage: The Mahabharata is unusual among the great epics because its heroes are not perfect idealized figures, but agathokakological human beings with desires and ambitions who are prone to lust, greed and anger and capable of deceit, jealousy and unfairness.

Origin: Coined in the early nineteenth century by sometime British Poet Laureate Robert Southey, best known for his ballad ‘The Inchcape Rock.’

 

 

Kerfuffle

Meaning: a disorderly outburst, tumult, row, ruckus or disturbance; a disorder, flurry, or agitation; a fuss

Usage: In view of the kerfuffle around my tweet wrongly attributing to the US a picture of Nehruji in the USSR, I thought it best to tweet some pictures that really showed him in the US.

Origin: Kerfuffle turns out to be quite commonly used in Scots, the language of Scotland, and is an intensive form of the Scots word ‘fuffle,’ meaning ‘to disturb’. The modern word comes from the Scottish ‘curfuffle’ by way of earlier similar expressions that were spelt variously as curfuffle, carfuffle, cafuffle, cafoufle, even gefuffle.

 

 

Rodomontade

Meaning: boastful or inflated talk or behaviour

Usage: The politician’s rodomontade speeches sought to conceal his total lack of substance, or indeed of any real accomplishment.

Origin: It originated in the late sixteenth century as a reference to Rodomonte, the Saracen king of Algiers, a character in both the 1495 poem Orlando Innamorato by Count M.M. Boiardo, and its sequel, Ludovico Ariosto’s 1516 Italian romantic epic Orlando Furioso, who was much given to vain boasting. 

 

 

Snollygoster

Meaning: a shrewd, unprincipled politician

Usage: Though ‘Snollygoster’ is a fanciful coinage in American English slang going back to 1846, it can easily apply to many practitioners of Indian politics in 2020.

Origin: Snollygoster (sometimes spelled, less popularly, snallygaster) was originally, in American English, the name of a monster, half-reptile, half-bird, that preyed on both children and chickens—suggesting rural origins. From its usage in 1846 to describe an unprincipled politician, however, it has come to mean ‘a rotten person who is driven by greed and self-interest’.

 

 

Zugzwang

Meaning: in chess and other games, a ‘compulsion to move’ that  places the mover at a disadvantage.

Usage: The grandmaster, outwitted by his opponent, found himself in zugzwang and chose to resign.

Origin: Zugzwang, a word of German origin, comes from two German roots, Zug (move) and Zwang (compulsion), so that zugzwang means ‘being forced to make a move’. 

 

 

 

 

Of profound visions and a higher calling

Posted on by vanyajaiswal
Running Toward Mystery || Tenzin Priyadarshi, Zara Houshmand

At the age of six, The Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi began having visions of a mysterious mountain peak, and of men with shaved heads wearing robes of the color of sunset. At the age of ten, he ran away from boarding school to find this place which he saw in his visions.

Running Toward Mystery is the Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi’s profound account of his lifelong journey as a seeker. At its heart is a story of striving for enlightenment, the vital importance of mentors in that search, and of the many remarkable teachers he met along the way, among them the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Mother Teresa.

Here’s an excerpt from the book.

 

**

 

I was six years old in 1985, when the dreams and visions had started. The very first time too, there was no question that I was wide awake. I was with a friend who lived in the same compound, at Evelyn Lodge, where our bungalow was. I had gone to his apartment to ask him to play and we were walking toward the cricket field when I saw what looked at first like streaks and patches of orange in the sky. Was it sun- set already? That would mean it was time to go home, but it couldn’t be. We hadn’t even started playing. Then the colors resolved into shapes and their outlines became clear. Men in robes of that saffron sunset color, with shaved heads, were milling about. There was a deer and a small hut. Some of the men went into the hut and came out again. It was as vivid as if I were watching a scene from life.

“Do you see that?”

My friend followed my gaze, squinting into the sky. “See what?” He swung the bat at nothing. I pinched myself. That was what you were supposed to do if you thought you were dreaming. It made no difference. Slowly, as we continued to walk, the scene faded into the sky and disappeared. Later, when I got home, I told my parents, but they said I must have imagined it.

I worried that there was something wrong with my eyes. But I had no trouble seeing the blackboard in class, or the ball when it was my turn to bat, or the mangoes hanging in the orchard, waiting for my arrows. And if it was my mind that wasn’t right? Well, it was right enough in all other depart- ments. My grades were excellent.

And so it was forgotten, no big deal, and the memory would have been lost in the jumbled closet of a child’s mind if I hadn’t seen the other things later. There was a place that I dreamt of again and again, but even when I was awake it ap- peared very clearly to my mind’s eye: A rocky peak loomed above a plain, wrapped in woods and scrub but with boulders and a cliff face exposed. I had a bird’s-eye view, but I could see no buildings, no human mark on the landscape, nothing to hint at where this place was or why it should rouse in me a lingering sweetness, a yearning. It was as perplexing as the man who kept visiting my dreams, and just as persistent. There were other people who appeared at times, some with shaved heads and some with dreadlocks, wearing different shades of yellow, orange, or red. But he was the one I saw most clearly.

I was old enough to know that dreams, however weird they might seem, are normally rooted in the workings of our own minds and that waking hallucinations are not normal. I didn’t have a theory—not even a half-baked hint—about what these intrusions in my mind might signify. They seemed to come from beyond me, beyond the world of logical sense, a genuine mystery that begged to be solved.

Now I lay there in the darkened room, listening to the random snuffles and snores of a hundred sleeping boys, and felt a mounting sense of urgency. I wasn’t going to get any closer to the answer by lying here wide awake until the morning bell.

To find it, I needed to go out and search for it. After all, mysteries are how adventures begin.

It was time. I crept out of bed slowly. There was just enough shadowy light spilling over from the foyer to see by. Moving as quietly as possible, I put some clothes into a small daypack. I sat on the edge of the bed, so I didn’t have to risk the noise of pulling out the desk chair, and wrote a note to my parents. Just a few words that revealed nothing so much as a ten-year- old’s hubris—that I was leaving on a spiritual quest and didn’t know where it would take me, but they shouldn’t worry. I slid the note under the wooden lid of the desk.

** 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thrilled in 240 pages

Posted on by sanjeeta

Bilal Siddiqi’s The Phoenix is a classic roller coaster of intrigue, vengeance and excitement. Read an extract here.

Mumbai

The Gateway of India was beautifully illuminated in honour of the victims of that fateful night of 26 November 2008. It had now been over a decade since the day those ten Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists swarmed in and carried out a series of attacks that brought the city to its knees. The coordinated massacre had lasted about four days, taking at least 170 lives and leaving some 300 injured. The city had been under siege, but the residents began to pick up the broken pieces soon after, resuming their everyday lives with their indomitable spirit.

The city was now paying homage to the martyrs of 26/11. Around 200 people had gathered at the Gateway of India, and the number was increasing with every passing minute. A popular actor had just taken to the stage and was addressing the crowd. It was a sombre moment for everyone present—some were reduced to tears as they lit their candles and uttered their prayers. Little did they know that there were plans for an unprecedented attack to be carried out that very night by a patriot who had repeatedly put his life on the line for his country.

The Indian flag fluttered proudly in the wind. People bowed their heads in respect. The actor’s voice from the stage broke the two-minute silence…

 

Aryaman’s eyes met those of a policeman. They nodded to each other, and Aryaman put on his hoodie. The policeman stepped back and turned off the metal detector as Aryaman went through. Aryaman read the policeman’s name as he moved past: Sanjay Rane.

Although he had switched off the security system to allow Aryaman to pass, Rane went slightly against Eymen’s plan and frisked Aryaman when he saw that a fellow constable was casually looking over at him. Aryaman felt Rane’s hand go over the concealed vest. The frisking done, Rane cleared Aryaman and gently pushed him in towards the venue.

Aryaman moved past the crowd, reluctantly walking towards the centre… His unsure steps were being watched through a sniper scope by Eymen, who had perched himself atop a nearby terrace.

Eymen’s instructions could be clearly heard through the earpiece that Aryaman was wearing: ‘Any funny business and a bullet ends you on the spot. And I don’t have to tell you what happens to your family after that.’

Aryaman didn’t bother responding. He was going to do it. There were no two ways about that. He stepped on a poster that had the faces of the deceased printed on it with the words ‘Gone But Not Forgotten’, and he pushed past a group of children as he reached the centre.

A middle-aged woman looked at him disapprovingly. She saw his bruised face, his glassy eyes, his salt-and-pepper stubble and his dishevelled, greying hair. And then she witnessed something she couldn’t decipher until it was too late…

 

There was mayhem—the kind Aryaman had rarely witnessed. People began to scream and run haphazardly. The actor, who until a few moments ago had been talking about how Mumbai had risen like a phoenix from the ashes after the 26/11 attacks, was now being whisked away by security personnel into an armoured car. Aryaman was jostled and pushed to the ground by the frenzied crowd.

A security team of four, all in hazmat suits, rushed towards him. They handcuffed and dragged him along the ground towards an armoured vehicle.

[The Phoenix is out now. Get your copy today!]

The Phoenix|| Bilal Siddiqi

Six ways that big technology may be turning our reality into a version of Black Mirror

Posted on by swara

Acclaimed tech reporter, Alex Kantrowitz, gives a fascinating insight into the inner workings of the Tech Titans —Amazon, Google and Facebook, playing with the Amazon mantra of ‘Day One’— code for inventing like a startup, with little regard for legacy and prioritizing reinvention over tradition and collaboration over ownership.

Through 130 interviews with insiders, from Mark Zuckerberg to hourly workers, Always Day One reveals the tech giants’ blueprint for success but also posits how the dystopian alternate reality of the popular series Black Mirror actually anticipates modern technology’s dark consequences.

Here are six quotes from Always Day One that illustrate how the Black Mirror is not far off – being slowly but surely shaped by Big Tech.

*

 

The pervasiveness of technology is slowly ‘eroding meaning’ in our lives by altering our personal, financial and faith based equations.

 

In November 2018, Pew released a study looking at where Americans find meaning in their lives. The top three boil down to: (1) friends and family, (2) religion, and (3) work and money. Modern technology is weakening all three. The screen is warping our relationships with friends and family. We have more virtual friends than ever and fewer real ones, and a growing number of us have no friends at all.

 

The dystopian fantasy of a handful of AI- powered firms dominating the competition and controlling the economy is scarily similar to how big technological firms are operating even now.

 

“The dystopia is now,” Barry Lynn, director of the Open Markets Institute, told me. “The dystopia is not in the future.” To Lynn and the growing number of big- tech critics, the tech giants have already grown too big and powerful, and are causing real harm. While making this case in 2017, Lynn got himself, and his institute, ousted from the New America Foundation, which counts Google among its donors.

Always Day One || Alex Kantrowitz
Big Tech is shaping our worldview through their management of information enabled by their monopoly over the advertising revenue which funds news.

 

Advertising revenue declines have hit small and midsize papers especially hard, hollowing out local accountability reporting across the United States, a boon to local officials who would rather not be watched. Facebook and Google earned 60 percent of all dollars spent in US digital advertising in 2018, according to eMarketer, for a total of $65 billion.

 

Global dominance is empowering firms to shape the very nature of our reality with their monopoly over the products that are integral part of our lived experience.

 

Amazon has similarly used its platform power to hamper businesses that sell products through its systems, Lynn said. The company has built scores of its own “private label” brands that compete with its independent sellers, placing these sellers in a rough position: If they don’t work with Amazon, they’ll reach far fewer customers. If they do work with Amazon, the company might eventually displace their businesses.

 

Scientific research that shapes our future is controlled and shaped by big-tech, meaning that the futuristic dystopia of Black Mirror may be nearer than we think.

 

Tech companies are buying out not only entrepreneurs, but academics with artificial intelligence expertise as well. This practice is depleting the knowledge students will learn from before they head into the broader workforce. Over the past fifteen years, 153 artificial intelligence professors have left academia for private companies, according to a University of Rochester study.

 

If AI, which is the chief thrust of Big Tech wipes out a considerable number of jobs, the devastation could be destabilizing—and dystopian

 

Cowie, who’s spent his career studying how a changing economy is impacting workers, said that when people lose the ability to work and the hope to regain it, their lives are devastated. “If you look at these guys in the rust belt, where the jobs have left, nothing’s replaced them, they really have lost the narrative of their lives,” he said.

**

Always Day One gives you a lot to learn about the Tech Titans and what makes them tick!

Preparing for a world without work

Posted on by vanyajaiswal

New technologies have always provoked panic about workers being replaced by machines. In A World Without Work, Daniel Susskind shows how these fears, that were hitherto misplaced, are very real now owing to advances in artificial intelligence.

A World Without Work || Daniel Susskind

As machines no longer need to reason like us in order to outperform us, eventually we must learn to thrive in a world with less work. The challenge will be to distribute prosperity fairly, constrain the burgeoning power of Big Tech, and provide meaning in a world where work is no longer the centre of our lives. In this visionary, pragmatic and ultimately hopeful book, Susskind shows us the way.

Read on for a peek into A World Without Work.

 

**

 

A lot of people have assumed that, if a machine at the bottom of the mountain is to join us at the summit, it must go through apotheosis as well—not to become more like a god, but to become more like a human being. This is the purist view of AI. Once the machine gains ‘human intelligence’,peak capability is reached and its climb is over.

But as the pragmatist revolution has shown us, there are two problems with this assumption. The first is that there are other ways to climb in the Capability Mountains than to follow the particular path that human beings have taken. The purist route is just one way to make the ascent; technological progress has revealed a range of other promising paths as well. The second revelation is that there are other peaks in this mountain range alongside the one that humans proudly sit atop of. Many humans have become distracted by the view down from the summit: we spend our time looking down at the less capable machines below, or gazing at each other and marvelling at our own abilities. But if we looked up, rather than down or across, we would see other mountains towering above us.

For the moment, human beings may be the most capable machines in existence—but there are a great many other possible designs that machines could take. Imagine a cosmic warehouse that stores all those different combinations and iterations: it would be unimaginably big, perhaps infinitely so. Natural selection has searched one tiny corner of this vast expanse, spent its time browsing in one (albeit very long) aisle, and settled upon the human design. However, human beings, armed with new technologies, are now exploring others. Where evolution used time, we use computational power. And it is hard to see how, in the future, we will not stumble across different designs, entirely new ways of building machines, ones that will open up peaks in capability well beyond the reach of even the most competent human beings alive today.

If machines do not need to copy human intelligence to be highly capable, the vast gaps in science’s current understanding of intelligence matter far less than is commonly supposed. We do not need to solve the mysteries of how the brain and mind operate to build machines that can outperform human beings.

And if machines do not need to replicate human intelligence to be highly capable, there is no reason to think that what human beings are currently able to do represents a limit on what future machines might accomplish. Yet this is what is commonly supposed—that the intellectual prowess of human beings is as far as machines can ever reach. Quite simply, it is implausible in the extreme that this will be the case.

**

Meet Saurabh Mukherjea and Anupam Gupta, the authors of The Victory Project

Posted on by vanyajaiswal
The Victory Project || Saurabh Mukherjea, Anupam Gupta

The Victory Project is the ultimate guide to surviving and thriving in the professional and social domains, which are increasingly becoming tough, competitive, often cutthroat and deeply political. It delves into a treasure trove of material from global gurus as well as from highly successful Indian and American professionals, and it draws on the authors’ own careers to show how readers can apply these principles to the fields of business and investment, even to life itself.

 

Here’s an insightful Q/A session with Saurabh Mukherjea and Anupam Gupta, the authors of The Victory Project. Saurabh Mukherjea is the founder of Marcellus Investment Managers and a bestselling author and Anupam Gupta is a chartered accountant, investment research consultant and podcast host.

**

Questions we asked Saurabh

 

What has been your greatest learning while writing The Victory Project?

Saurabh: Every single expert we interviewed for the book spent 1-3 hours with us. During that time period, these experts gave us their undivided attention. For example, we have spoken to Mark Mobius several times over the last couple of years. In some instances our discussions have extended beyond 90 minutes. Not once has Dr Mobius interrupted the meetings to take phone calls or read his Whatsapp messages. In fact, the longer the meeting goes on, the greater the powers of concentration of this 83 year old investment legend who did much to build the asset class that is today called Emerging Market Equities.

When we met Prof Sanjay Bakshi, the managing partner at Value Quest Capital, in Delhi at the Lodhi Hotel to interview him for the book, the meeting lasted for over two hours. Prof Bakshi is a big believer in the idea of intense focus and cutting off all distractions to spend quality time on a single idea. He showed his phone, which had a blank home screen and no notifications. Throughout our meeting, his phone did not beep or light up or ring even once. In those two hours he gave us some of the deepest insights into fierce focus that I have received in my career. Chapter 3 of The Victory Project contains these insights.

Similarly when we interviewed Sanjiv Bikhchandani of Infoedge – arguably amongst the most successful VC investors in contemporary India – for The Victory Project, the meeting lasted for over 90 minutes. During that time, he did not once look at his mobile phone or entertain other visitors.

 

Do you think there’s an increased acknowledgement of the negative impact of highly stressful professional environments in the present times? What do you think has prompted this awareness?

Saurabh: As we discuss in the Prologue to The Victory Project, divorce and depression rates in our large cities have risen sharply over the past decade. Most Indian professionals can now clearly see that their peers and their friends are at the receiving end of these stressors. Corporate captains can also see that this has an adverse impact on employee productivity. The question is what should be done about it. The superficial corporate response is to organise a helpline for employees wherein they can speak to a counsellor. As our interview with Dr Sharmila Banwat, a psychologist in Mumbai indicates, what is required is a much deeper rethink by employees and employers around how hard working, ambitious professionals can hit peak potential without burning themselves out. This issue is the key focus in The Victory Project and hence the subtitle of the book is ‘Six Steps to Peak Potential’.

 

How do you relax and recharge after a hectic work day? 

Saurabh: My unwind routine is a hot shower followed by dinner with the family which in turn is followed by telling the kids their bedtime story. I usually doze off during the narration of the bedtime story!

 

How successful have you been in applying the principle of ‘decluttering’ to your own life? 

Saurabh: I have had modest success in this regard. I don’t have social media apps on my phone. I make it difficult for people to reach me and for me to reach other people. Other than books, I typically don’t buy anything else for myself. I avoid parties and networking events. It helps that I enjoy sitting by myself and reading for hours on end. The only challenge is that I enjoy writing so much that every other year I end up committing to write another book for Penguin!

 

Questions we asked Anupam

 

What changes do you think organisations can introduce at their level to reduce stress at the workplace? 

Anupam: The Simplicity Paradigm in our book can work as a guide for organizations as well. If organizations can, for example, find ways to a) help employees towards their specialization b) put them in teams that collaborate cohesively c) encourage creativity among employees – all of this can go a long way in employees and teams working towards common goals and, as a result, reduce stress. Spirituality also plays a vital part here and meditation, as we’ve detailed in our book, can also help in reducing stress and improving productivity.

 

What role do you think support systems like families, friends, partners, play in ensuring an individual’s professional success? 

Anupam: Support systems play an important role within the overall Simplicity Paradigm and hence for an individual’s success. In our book, we’ve written about mentorship as part of honing your skills. Similarly, colleagues and bosses play an important role in collaboration. Friends with whom you can talk on a diverse set of topics can inspire creativity. 

 

What has been your biggest takeaway from writing The Victory Project? 

Anupam: Meeting the diverse set of experts has been an inspiration on the power of the Simplicity Paradigm construct. While the books we read for preparing The Victory Project gave us great background material, watching these experts embody the steps of the Simplicity Paradigm and achieve outsized success was truly the biggest takeaway. 

 

Please recommend some of your favourite books to us. 

Anupam: I’m a big fan of corporate history so all the books on great companies (mentioned in The Victory Project) are my favourites:

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the age of Amazon by Brad Stone

Ambani & Sons by Hamish McDonald

Disrupt and Conquer by T.T. Jagannathan and Sandhya Mendonca 

Bhujia Barons by Pavitra Kumar 

 

**

 

Over 25 predictions that came true: the book that has been ahead of the curve

Posted on by sanjeeta

Written by Dr Swapneil Parikh, Maherra Desai and Dr Rajesh Parikh, The Coronavirus is an immense resource that comes to us at a time when accuracy of information is just as immediate and necessary as sound medical infrastructure. Dedicated to the health professionals who have been risking their lives at the frontlines of this erratic pandemic, the book dissects the disease from every possible angle in the most accessible and comprehensive way, and is a must-read for anyone trying to understand the past, present and possible future of not only the Coronavirus itself but the turning of the world at large. We bring you a few of the many predictions and speculations the authors get absolutely right.

The Coronavirus||Dr Swapneil Parikh, Maherra Desai, Dr Rajesh Parikh

 

As China lifted its restrictions, many feared the virus would spread again.
So it has. China confirmed around 1300 new cases mostly from Wuhan, Jilin and Shulan. Mid-May onwards, Wuhan managed to test every single person in its 11 million population over a ten-day period.

 

There is fear that cases are going undetected in some countries, especially those with weak healthcare systems. In an interview in July, Professor Brahmar Mukherjee, a leading epidemiologist, said India possibly had 30 million undetected COVID-19 cases at that time, going up to a 100 million in just six weeks.

 

Researching flight data of outward-bound flights from Wuhan for January 2020, many models predict that the virus should have had a wider spread than reported in many countries.
This has been confirmed. medRxiv has shown that the passengers travelling outside China two weeks before Wuhan’s lockdown were headed for Asia, Europe, the US and Australia, all of which showed unprecedented jumps in confirmed cases in the months that followed.

 

Information coming from China about COVID-19 related statistics has been under scrutiny for tampering. In fact, when the US started to investigate the accuracy of the Chinese data, China immediately announced an additional 1300 fatalities due to COVID-19 that had been misreported earlier. This translated to a 50% increase in total number of deaths reported from Wuhan. The authors of the book ask if China was simply sanitizing its narrative rather than doing due diligence. Turns out, it was the former.

 

In India, some experts continued to claim there was no community transmission, facetiously portraying the low number of confirmed daily cases as a low number of daily new infections. With few daily tests, the writers suspect that India had far more daily new infections than new daily confirmed cases.
Despite the government repeatedly denying community transmission in India, the Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on July 17 confirmed that there were cases of community transmission in Kerala. In fact, when on July 19 the Indian Medical Association confirmed community transmission in the country, Dr Arvind Kumar, Chairman of the Centre for Chest Surgery, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital said that this mode of transmission had been rampant in the country for quite some time.

 

Many countries may already have more cases than South Korea, but unless testing is significantly scaled up, several new cases will go undetected.
This was proven true to the letter in India, US, Russia, Brazil, countries that soon surpassed every other nation after a surge of cases.

 

The book predicted that by mid-April, there will be thousands of COVID-19 cases detected in India, and several thousand more will go undetected.
By mid-April, India had indeed crossed the 1000 mark of COVID-19 cases. On April 13, there were 1243 new cases and the 7-day average had hit 811.

 

Perhaps human social contact patterns will change drastically with changing weather (unlikely), or an unprecedented successful social distancing strategy might be implemented (possible) or the virus itself could change for better or worse (possible). Any or all of these factors could affect the eventual number infected and dead.
The movement of the pandemic and related statistics has unfolded as predicted. With increased testing, the number of active cases has also increased because there is more extensive documentation of cases.

 

The writers of The Coronavirus wrote that millions of tests worldwide are needed, and we must prepare for an eventuality where we need billions.
This has now been acknowledged by both WHO & CDC.

 

The book also states that the pandemic is far from over in China which was successful at disrupting transmission by essentially shutting down the country and economy.
Beijing saw a recurrence as late as June 11, 2020 where a 52-year-old man tested positive for the virus.

 

It is important to state that containment and mitigation are not mutually exclusive; we must do both, but somecontainment strategies are devastating to the world economy and stigmatize the sick. While we must continue containment strategies that are effective, we must aggressively try to mitigate the destruction that COVID-19 leaves in its wake.
Many countries have adopted policies that are more tempered, attempting to strike a balance between restricting inessential movement and safely opening up the sectors which impact the economy greatly.

 

The book calls for a readiness to significantly change our daily lives. With a surge in cases, various countries including India are implementing drastic social distancing measures, including closure of schools, cancellation of mass gatherings, work from home, voluntary home isolation for mild cases and aggressive exposure avoidance for high-risk individuals.
Our lives have become compartmentalised into ‘pre-pandemic’ and ‘post-pandemic’. In fact, it is becoming increasingly unclear if we will ever fully return to the former.

 

The strategies come at a huge cost. The economic, social, developmental and mental health cost must be justified by aggressive increases in testing, tracing and treatment capacities. Social distancing strategies are never meant to be permanent; they can buy us a few weeks or months to scale up our health infrastructure. We need to use that time wisely.
This is also a widely adopted and acknowledged strategy now, with more investments being made in testing kits and ventilators.

 

A pandemic cannot be stopped by spending billions in North America and just a few millions in Africa. A pandemic does not respect geographical boundaries or military arsenals. There needs to be an agreement between the private sector and governments of the world that during a pandemic, medical supplies will go not to the highest bidder but will be distributed strategically to save lives.
A Californian company is now using drones to deliver medical supplies in Rwanda and Ghana, a delivery strategy that was also used in China and Chile. India has also sent medical supplies to 13 African nations.

 

Infections that spread via droplets are strictly speaking not airborne but can be said to be borne by air. Some nuance can be lost in the oversimplified false dichotomy of airborne versus droplet transmission; they are not mutually exclusive.
The book cited the 1934 paper on the Wells evaporation-falling curve and postulated airborne transmission long before the paper was revisited and then widely accepted.

 

The book states that just one sick passenger can cause an outbreak all over the world. “If a sick passenger coughed or sneezed on his hands, the virus would get deposited onto his hands. If he took out a magazine during the flight, the infectious viruses would rub off onto the magazine, and the magazine becomes a ‘fomite’”.
Having now been proved as a fact, extensive measures and restrictions have been implemented regarding travel, especially air travel.

 

The increase in infections isn’t because of a change in the virus but because of a change in human behaviour.
While the book anticipated this, it is now a fact accepted by all including ICMR. Recognizing the impact of human behaviour on the pandemic, news outlets have criticised gathering, inessential travel and hoarding essentials among other things. Instances like ‘COVID parties’ in the US have been severely disparaged because they end up creating coronavirus hotspots. The Outbreak Communications Planning Guide by the (WHO) states that behaviour changes can reduce the spread by as much as 80%.

 

However, with a new virus like SARS-CoV-2 the weather is unlikely to significantly affect transmission because the entire human population is susceptible. Across the globe, various regions experience different seasons and temperatures at one point in time. A steady increase in infected cases globally dampens hope that the weather will affect transmission.
No correlation has been established between seasonal conditions and transmission. Initial claims that tropical regions would withstand the spread better have been voided as the virus has seen an exponential surge over the hottest months in India.

 

What is so special about children that they seem protected? Maybe children are just healthier because they get good nutrition, plenty of exercise, regenerate better and have been exposed to lower cumulative doses of environmental pollution. Children are far less likely to smoke or to have diseases like diabetes, and their lungs have much less background inflammation. Research has indicated that children have less ACE2 and these levels increase with ageing. A child’s angiotensin system might be immature and therefore less susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Acquired data from antibody blood tests suggests that children under the age of 12 in particular are less likely to catch the virus than adults. Scientists are also positive that children are more likely to remain asymptomatic.

 

Coronaviruses can also cause Antibody-Dependent Enhancement (ADE). High concentrations of antibodies prevented SARS-CoV from infecting the cells but low concentrations of antibodies caused ADE.
This has been found to be the case for COVID-19.

 

It is possible that varying levels of antibodies against common cold coronaviruses may be causing ADE of SARS-CoV-2 infection, but the evidence of this so far borders on speculation. High concentrations of partially cross-reactive antibodies in children may overwhelm the virus and neutralize it but low antibody levels in the elderly may cause ADE and severe infection.
This was verified for COVID-19.

 

When the Th1 and Th2 cells are in balance, the immune system functions properly. However, when there is an imbalance between these cells, the immune system may either be predisposed to severe infections or it may attack its own tissues.
Research found it true for COVID-19.

 

RT-LAMP (Reverse Transcription Loop-Mediated Isothermal Amplification) test, which is faster and easier to perform, has been combined with CRISPR, an innovation that can make it simpler, cheaper and quicker to test. The testing process can be done with minimal training and this offers tremendous promise for low resource settings.
RT-LAMP based COVID-19 diagnostic kits are in use, and Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan has said that the test is quick, accurate and cost effective that has very low and easily manageable infrastructural needs and does not require any special expertise.

 

Antigen tests are rapid tests that give results in minutes. While these tests hold promise because of their low cost, quick results and simplicity, in the past similar tests have not been very sensitive. Nevertheless, there are several such tests in research and development for SARS-CoV-2 and if scientists perfect this technology, they could be combined with rapid antibody tests. These combined rapid tests, if accurate, would be powerful tools in the pandemic.
This claim has also materialised. The developed rapid test kits are easy to use, can test patients with and without symptoms, and most importantly can be deployed in COVID hotspots.

 

A study published in The Lancet used mathematical predictive models to test the preparedness and vulnerability of developing nations, especially African countries. Considering strong economic ties between China and many African nations, and the flight data available for travel following the outbreak and before the lockdown in China, Egypt, Algeria and South Africa had the highest chances of acquiring COVID-19, with a moderate to high capacity to manage the outbreak.
This was also proved to the very last detail. In March, out of the 1300 confirmed coronavirus cases in the African continent, Egypt, South Africa and Algeria alone accounted for over 58% of the cases.

 

While it is premature to gauge to what extent AI will affect the COVID-19 outbreak, AI will probably play a role in containing this outbreak and even more so in future outbreaks.
In fact, Artificial Intelligence start-ups like Closedloop, Clevy.io and Mantle Labs have been extremely active in identifying the virus and communicating related information.

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