Mining the internet gems

It is difficult to remember a time when there was no internet, when you could spend months searching for an elusive article and when the news of the world reached you, if it ever did, not in real time but in months. We have now however reached another end-- it is now difficult to find anything anymore because there is so much of it to go through. If you put a word in Google search, it will offer you over a million possibilities. And so now you spend months deciphering which of the million or so hits you need to examine to get to your objectives! First there was too little information, now there is too much. Nevertheless internet is an ocean of discovery and there are many a new gems to be found.

Some gems that I have found that you too might enjoy.....

Writing a book. You can now write a book, design it, illustrate it and publish it without needing an agent or a publishing house. If you have always wanted to publish your poetry, or your unique collection of receipes or share your paintings, you can now take charge and design and publish and market these collections yourself. And if you need help in any of these elements, you can hire a consultant from a large number to advise you at a rate determined by you as well. And best of all, you can decide how many copies of your books are printed-- you can print enough to give to all your family and friends or you can sell them through internet based book houses. Click here.

Blogging. A new development in which you can convert your anger and frustration at the days columnists and pontificating pundits on TV by writing about it and sharing it on the internet. You can write your own blog or better still, comment on the blogs of the many talking heads and nattering colunmists. The troubles of the newspaper industry in the US in particular has led many of the most famous columnists to write their own blogs inviting reader comments. The best of it is that your comments are not screened by an editor but are posted for all the world to see. Of course, there is another side of it as well where you can now read some of the finest minds on their blogs. Go to my blog where you will see a selection of the ones I admire and read.

Reading. A few years ago, I decided that I would read a new book every month on a subject I knew nothing about. See the results here. It has been a most interesting ride. I recently chanced on Project Gutenberg, which provides books on a variety of subjects and from a large number of countries at no cost.

Study. A number of world famous universities have started putting some of their most lectures on the youtube for free access. For access, click here.

New developments in technology and design. A new site called Ted.com provides a preview of the latest developments in technology and design around the world in bite sized bits. Click here This can be a very addictive site so be careful when you enter. To get you started, look at Rosling presentation of data on poverty,Patti Maes on the sixth sense, Larry Brilliant on how stop pandemics.

Dealing with epidemics of the future

A few weeks ago, I wrote about an interesting book "The Age of the Unthinkable: Why The New World Disorder Constantly Surprises Us And what We Can Do About It" by Joshua Ramo. His take on the recent swine flu and how it portends the future is fascinating as well and well worth pondering over

"…... The spread of swine flu looks similar to the financial flu that blitzed and crippled our banking system last year. It evokes the virus of Islamic fundamentalism that we now see infecting the planet at an ever-faster rate—and that is terrifyingly unresponsive to traditional medicines of politics or even the best surgical strikes…It’ a reminder that dangerous contagion abounds now, not just disease contagion. ... Here are the lessons I learned and how they fit with the larger problems the president now faces.

1. Virus risk is now everywhere—we can’t avoid it and live the way we want.
Maybe the most unnerving feature of our age is that the things we rely on to make life better often also make it more perilous. Airplanes, financial markets, computer webs—all of these bind us ever closer together and into shared webs of risk and danger. Scientists call dangers like these “systemic risks” because they emerge from the very way in which the system is organized. Any tightly bound network faces systemic risk, and the more closely a food web or financial web is linked, the more dangerous it becomes. In fact, in one of those weird quirks of our world, the more efficient a network is, the more dangerous it is—this is why financial markets are so efficient at blowing themselves up. Perturbations in linked nets spread with astonishing speed; crises in one area (think the sub-prime crisis) quickly turn into challenges in another (U.S.-China relations). The lesson: Obama has to begin to think and speak in terms of is preparing all of us for flu attacks of all kinds: financial, ideological and biological.

2. Think like an epidemiologist not a politician.
Confronted with big challenges—economic crisis, health disasters—the instinct of most politicians is to hack problems to pieces and then tackle them bit by bit with targeted legislation or departments or high-level envoys. But in an interconnected world that’s not enough. Every problem is linked to every other problem so our solutions need to be broad-based and aim not only at the particular problem (like bad lending practices) but also at the way these problems effect everything else. And that offers a crucial lesson for Obama: Systemic risk means that simply tacking the parts of a challenge—no matter how brilliantly you do so—can never be enough. In foreign policy terms this systemic sense is called a “Grand Strategy,” and it’s the thing most obviously missing from this very active presidency at the 100-day mark.

3. Even the best doctors can’t stop a pandemic alone.
What the president has built so far is an administration that looks like a health care system filled only with great doctors but without a plan for public health. Today there is no unifying principle that backs the work of aggressive diplomats like Richard Holbrooke or smart operational cabinet members like Janet Napolitano. In an age of unthinkable pandemic risk, that’s a dangerous problem. Without a grand strategy the ambitions of Obama’s Team of Rivals risk slipping into incoherent political struggle. And a big strategy hole like the one we have now encourages our enemies to mistake Obama’s valuable openness for indecisiveness. Worse, it makes it hard to progress in complex areas such as nuclear proliferation or trade and environment talks since we’ll never have a real plan for where to compromise and where to stand firm. And worst of all, we’ll be poorly prepared for other pandemics surprises that lie ahead.

4. The next 100 days: Build us an immune system.
What the Obama needs to deliver now isn’t a grand strategy in the old-school style of the Monroe Doctrine but rather one that looks like a global immune system: fast-moving, capable of quickly working across traditional lines to confront problems, flexible, and with power and responsibility widely distributed. Many of our enemies have such an immune system. For my book, I spent time with Hizballah. Their resilience in the face of Israeli attack is famous.
Building an immune system for the United States would be a political boost to Obama, helping to reinforce ideas he holds most strongly. Epidemic theory—which studies everything from runs on banks to forest fires—teaches that it’s vital to focus on the weakest, most vulnerable links in a networked system, a lesson that supports Obama’s actions on poverty and on narrowing the rich-poor gap. Another epidemic crisis principle is the importance of resilience, of the ability of a system to withstand challenge and get stronger—an idea that transforms Obama’s focus on infrastructure, education and health care from “nice to have” reforms into urgent priorities. An immune system grand strategy would also help end the debate about if Obama is “doing too much.” Confronted with the potential of more destabilizing infections, we can never “do too much” to boost our immunity."

Old Age Blues

Everyone ages. Only the speed and rate of decline varies. It is the inevitable path that Shakespeare mentions in the seven stages of life while Hinduism believes human life is comprises just four stages : "Brahmacharya" or the Student Stage, "Grihastha" or the Householder Stage, "Vanaprastha" or the Hermit Stage and finally the Fourth Ashrama - "Sannyasa" or the Wandering Ascetic Stage. Old age for most seems to begin when his duty as a householder comes to an end: he has become a grandfather; his children are grown up, and have established lives of their own. At this age, according to Hindu scriptures, a man should renounce all physical, material and sexual pleasures, retire from his social and professional life, leave his home, and go to live in a forest hut, spending his time in prayers. In the next stage of sanyassa, he becomes the Wandering Recluse when he is totally devoted to God with no home, no attachments and he has renounced all desires, fears and hopes, duties and responsibilities.

But despite all this literature, the fact is old age still seems to come as a surprise to most people when it touches them. My friends often say that old age is stealing upon them faster than they expected. What they are saying is that mentally they still feel young even when their bodies are telling them differently.

People handle aging differently. Everybody seems to be unhappy about getting old.

Cicero said “there are four reasons for old age being thought unhappy: First, that it withdraws us from active employments; second, that it enfeebles the body; third, that it deprives us of nearly all physical pleasures; fourth, that it is the next step to death.” He then proceeds to give his assessment in exquisite detail of how to handle these travails.

In reality the great affairs of life are not performed by physical strength, or activity, or nimbleness of body, but by deliberation, character, and expression of opinion. Of these old age is not only not deprived, but, as a rule, has them in a greater degree. There is therefore nothing in the arguments of those who say that old age means not taking part in public business. If anything, most cultures value old age and the wisdom it portents, and are more than willing to let them be the leaders. In India, the two major contenders for the post of the prime minister are Manmohan Singh who is 76 and LK Advani who is 82 and many people yearn for Vajaypee who is 81! And this in a country where the average age is less than 35. So those that say that old men should withdraw from public life are like men who say that a steersman does nothing in sailing a ship, because, while some of the crew are climbing the masts, others hurrying up and down the gangways, others pumping out the bilge water, he sits quietly in the stern holding the tiller. It is true that he cannot do what young men can; nevertheless he can do what is much more important and better.

Many people miss the bodily strength of a young man. They yearn for the time they could run the marathon or play tennis. But the course of life is fixed, and nature admits of its being run but in one way, and only once; and to each part of our life there is something specially seasonable; so that the feebleness of children, as well as the high spirit of youth, the soberness of maturer years, and the ripe wisdom of old age—all have a certain natural advantage which should be secured in its proper season. One can bewail the ravages of time as they inflict the body as so many do but with little effect, or one can fight them as some do by compelling the body to undertake tasks beyond its ken( witness the tennis player who continues to play singles before collapsing) or one can accept the new limitations and work within them ( say with walking sticks and wheelchairs). You can use what you have, and combined with the wisdom of your years, make the most of what you do have left.

The third charge against old age is that it lacks the pleasures of the senses- the pleasures of the table, the heaped up board, the rapid passing of the wine-cup. But then, it is also free from headache, disordered digestion, broken sleep and hangovers. But if we must grant pleasure something, since we do not find it easy to resist its charms—for Plato, with happy inspiration, calls pleasure "vice's bait," because of course men are caught by it as fish by a hook—yet, although old age has to abstain from extravagant banquets, it is still capable of enjoying modest festivities. As Cicero notes “I am thankful to old age, which has increased my avidity for conversation, while it has removed that for eating and drinking”.

There remains the fourth reason, which more than anything else appears to torment men of my age and keep them in a flutter—the nearness of death. Again Cicero puts all this in perspective when he says” realize that death is common to every time of life. Yes, you will say; but a young man expects to live long; an old man cannot expect to do so. An old man has nothing even to hope. Ah, but it is just there that he is in a better position than a young man, since what the latter only hopes. he has obtained. The one wishes to live long; the other has lived long. For die we certainly must and that too without being certain whether it may not be this very day. As death, therefore, is hanging over our head every hour, how can a man ever be unshaken in soul if he fears it?”

The fact is that at any stage of life, we have a choice to make regarding the use of the time and talent still available to us, although both are certainly reduced in quantity and quality. It was during their "sunset strolls" that Michelangelo, at 88, was designing the monumental dome of Saint Peter's Basilica; Stradivarius, in his nineties, produced two of his most famous violins; and Verdi, when an octogenarian, composed the opera "Falstaff." Mary Baker Eddy founded the Christian Science Monitor at 87; Frank Lloyd Wright was 91 when he designed the Guggenheim Museum in NYC; business guru Peter Drucker wrote "Management Challenges For The 21st Century" when he was 89; George Burns was still delighting audiences well into his nineties; Impresario George Abbott, after passing the century mark, was still advising the latest crop of theatrical entrepreneurs; and Dr. Seuss was 82 years young when he penned "You're Only Old Once."

While many of us will not be able to reach the horizons of these old people, but there are many examples of people around us who have conquered the old age blues. While many are content to spend their time with family and friends, there are others who seize on old age for starting completely new endeavors. And those who have conquered the old age blues have a lot to teach us.

I was looking for those who still had a spring in their steps and a glint in their eyes. I invariably found them among whose despite their age were deeply immersed in new ventures—writing a book, publishing their poetry for the first time, volunteering in and creating new NGO’s, starting computer workshops in rural areas, mobilizing schools in urban slums, managing old age homes and even among those who continued to be outraged at the injustices of life around them. It seems that of all the misfortunes that can possibly befall anyone, none is more deadly than purposelessness - not having something meaningful and rewarding to do during one's waking hours.

Finally what did I learn about their conquest of the old age blues? One, they even while they suffered physically as most of us do as we age, they rarely talked or bemoaned their physical ailments; while they were proud of their past achievements, they rarely dwelt overmuch on them; while they regretted the loss of sensory delights of youth, they compensated the quantity of the past with the quality of the present; they did not shy away from discussing death but once they had taken care of all of its implications on their loved ones, they rarely mentioned it again. But what consumed them all was their latest passion – be it writing, teaching, volunteering, and learning the latest in science and technology. Contrary to all religious precepts about detachment in old age, these were people who were full of passion and passionate intensity. None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm

They were also the people who wanted “to die young at a ripe old age”.

A Peace Corp in every country

“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country”. When John Kennedy uttered those stirring words, it inspired a whole generation of young Americans but it was the creation of the Peace Corps in 1962 which enabled those ideals to be put into practice.

In the fifty years since the creation of the Peace Corps, almost 195,000 young Americans have served two year stints in 139 developing to work on issues ranging from AIDS education to information technology and environmental preservation. By all accounts this has been one of the most successful programs in the western world. But the real success of this program has been one of unintended consequences. People are apt to forget that the original mission of the Peace Corps, as enshrined in its mission statement, were to help countries in meeting their need for trained men and women, and promoting a better understanding between these countries and Americans. Its creators must have known that given the fact that most of the early volunteers only had liberal arts degrees, their impact on actual development in poor countries could only be limited. The original thrust was thus more on burnishing the image of the US around the world than to really undertake substantive development work. The US had the USAID for that. But what the creators had not really anticipated was the impact the two year of duty in a poor country would have on the volunteers themselves!

In fact the most lasting impact of the Peace Corp may well have been on the future lives of those who volunteered. A large number of these volunteers went into public service on their return. Many became politicians and public servants at various levels of government. Most retained a love of the country they had spent two years of their lives in and many confided that these were for them life changing events.

I had been struck by these changes as I met many of these volunteers in late sixties when I was at Berkeley and working part time with an NGO called Forum International. I became convinced that a similar initiative in the developing countries would yield similar results and so we developed the concept of an international action corps modeled on the Peace Corps. At that time we failed in our efforts to raise funds to start this initiative but four decades later, perhaps the time has come when every developing country needs to develop its own Peace Corps.

In my travels through a large number of developing countries, I have found that the young people there are no less idealistic than the Americans but they have no avenues to channel their idealism. Most young people are really keen to leave their domestic confines to see and experience the world outside but again have neither the money nor the opportunity. Almost all the countries in Asia seem to have not only a history of conflict with their neighbors but also a high level of ignorance about each other. This lack of knowledge and empathy is breeding ground for needless jingoism and conflict. Public service in these countries is being increasingly seen as a path not to nation building but rather to corruption. The growing middle class is unwilling to enter the political arena or join any public service, with predictable results. In the recent Indian elections, fully one quarter of the candidates have prison histories. Of the rest, a large number come from political dynasties both at the federal and state levels. In many developing countries, it has been a truism that while the middle class and intellectuals are vociferous in their criticisms of their government, few are actually willing to do something about it other than write articles of protest. Rather than bewailing the lowering of political morality, the corner can only be turned by a change in the participants in the political process. A call to service to the young around the world is fundamental to this change.

What Obama said at a commencement speech to graduating seniors at Wesleyan university, he could have equally said it to graduating seniors at any college in the developing world: “Each of you will have the chance to make your own discovery in the years to come. And I say “chance” because you won’t have to take it. There’s no community service requirement in the real world; no one forcing you to care. You can take your diploma, walk off this stage, and chase only after the big house and the nice suits and all the other things that our money culture says you should by. You can choose to narrow your concerns and live your life in a way that tries to keep your story separate from America’s. But I hope you don’t. Not because you have an obligation to those who are less fortunate, though you do have that obligation. Not because you have a debt to all those who helped you get here, though you do have that debt. It’s because you have an obligation to yourself. Because our individual salvation depends on collective salvation. Because thinking only about yourself, fulfilling your immediate wants and needs, betrays a poverty of ambition. Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential and discover the role you’ll play in writing the next great chapter.”

This is what a Peace Corp could do for a developing country? It would create an avenue- a path for idealistic youngsters to harness their idealism to some practical and useful ends. It would provide them unwittingly an education about the problems of their neighbors first hand thus leading to a better understanding between neighboring countries. It would most importantly lead to the creation of an ethos of public service that most developing countries – after the first flush of the freedom struggles have worn off- presently lack. And most importantly it would perhaps lead to a substantial portion of these volunteers joining public service in their own countries on their return.

Friends and friendship

Literature is filled with paeans to friends and friendship. "The better part of one's life consists of his friendships . The best mirror is an old friend. The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him with friendship. Friendship enhances prosperity, and relieves adversity of its burden by halving and sharing it. Or as the poet Blake puts it "The bird a nest,
the spider a web,
man friendship."

Indeed, friendship is considered one of the central human experiences, and has been sanctified by all major religions. The Epic of Gilgamesh, a Babylonian poem that is among the earliest known literary works in history, chronicles in great depth the friendship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu. The Greco-Roman had, as paramount examples, the friendship of Orestes and Pylades, and, in Virgil's Aeneid, the friendship of Euryalus and Nisus. The Abrahamic faiths have the story of David and Jonathan.

It seems that friendship is the only thing in the world concerning the usefulness of which all mankind are agreed.

But what I was curious about was how people found their friends. And how they kept them? And here is what I found?

Most – but not all—of our friends tend to be made when we are in school or in college. This is the time when minds are open and the quaint habits of ones friends become the foundation of fond memories later on. "There is magic in the memory of schoolboy friendships; it softens the heart, and even affects the nervous system of those who have no heart “ . And this seems to hold true both for men and for women.

While it is true that a certain tie unites us all, but this tie becomes stronger from proximity. So it is that fellow-citizens are preferred in our affections to foreigners, relations to strangers; and friends to strangers. Thus it is no wonder that another source of lifetime friends is public services—the foreign Service, the railway, the military. Thrown together in remote places, camaraderie seems to develop. It seems that acute discomfort sanctified by distance and memory contributes to bonds that last. The very stability of a public sector life seems to provide fertile ground for long term relationships.

For some reason, few could recall making friends in their own work place in the private sector. Could it be that the competitiveness of modern life drains the openness and genuine affection which forms the basis of friendships? Gerard, one of those I asked, disagreed and stated that he had made a lot of friends in his work place. But when I pressed him further, he conceded that while most of his friends did work in his company, none worked in his group. They all belonged to different parts of the organization and came from completely different backgrounds and thus there were no direct competition with him.

I also found out that women tend to have more best friends than men of almost any age. My wife claims that that is due to the fact that men have no small talk or that their small talk tends to be almost fully in form of grunts when they do meet after a long time. According to her, “small talk is the lubricant of communication, and without communication, how can there be any friendship. “ Others say that friendship can only exist between persons with similar interests and points of view. Man and woman by the conventions of society are born with different interests and different points of view. Whatever the reason, most women have many friends while men can count theirs on the fingers of one hand.

Marriage seems to present another hurdle. After marriage, the husband almost always leaves the social landscape to his wife and his bachelor days friends are among the earliest to be consigned to the shadows. Unless of course, these bachelor friends marry women that the wife approves of. Children when they arrive further narrow the social group to like minded parents bolstered by family picnics and having to weather similar storms during the growing up years. Nothing, it seems, binds friendships more than sharing experiences of handling rebellious teenagers.

Friendships in the east tend to last longer and are deeper than those in the west. It is difficult to decide whether this is due to cultural differences or the absence of TV and other distractions while they were growing up. But what is true is that according to a 2006 study documented in the journal the American Sociological Review, Americans are thought to be suffering a loss in the quality and quantity of close friendships since at least 1985. The study states 25% of Americans have no close confidants, and the average total number of confidants per citizen has dropped from four to two. According to this study: Americans' dependence on family as a safety net went up from 57% to 80%; their dependence on a partner or spouse went up from 5% to 9% while friendships have declined. In recent times, it seems that modern American friendships have lost the force and importance they had in antiquity. To the ancients, friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves; the crown of life and the school of virtue- the modern world, in comparison, ignore it. Some observers point to homophobia being at the root of a modern decline in the western tradition of friendship. It seems that fear of being, or being seen as, homosexual has killed off western man's ability to form close friendships with other men. Many Americans often cite their fathers as their best friends but it is true that most of us find friends in our extended families more often than among outsiders.

Strangely few friendships are formed in the old age period of ones life. Philosophers have always urged us to grow gardens in the autumn of our lives but rarely have they recommended that we cultivate new friends as well?

Of course, the most difficult thing in the world is for a friendship to remain unimpaired to the end of life. So many things might intervene: conflicting interests; differences of opinion in politics; frequent changes in character, owing sometimes to misfortunes, sometimes to advancing years. But the most fatal blow to friendship in the majority of cases seems to be the lust of gold. Even in the case of the best of men, the cause for discord was often a rivalry for office and reputation. Too late we learn a man must hold his friend, unjudged, accepted and trusted to the end. “If you judge people, you have no time to love them" Says Mother Teresa.

Friends are like flowers. You need to plant the seeds early, water them often and tend them tenderly as they grow to enjoy their scent forever.

New Ideas for New times

In the last two months, I have read two very stimulating and hopeful books – Joshua Ramo’s “ The Age of the Unthinkable- why the new world disorder constantly surprises us and what we can do about it” and Nandan Nilekhani’s “ Imagining India- ideas for the new century”. Both urge the readers to discard the old ways of thinking and looking at problems and provide some guidance on how to navigate the emerging chaos both in international relations and in the largest democracy in the world.

In “The Age of the Unthinkable”, Joshua Ramo seeks to challenge the conventional wisdom with a completely different perspective and framework. It begins by stating that we are going to be constantly surprised by major changes in the world. Complex systems can exhibit catastrophic behavior when one part of the system can affect many others by a domino effect. This new basic volatility of the global order has been caused by the increasing number of players and the connections between them. And now even small things can trigger a big change just as an additional grain of sand can cause a sand pile to collapse. And all change produces unpredictability and surprise. The issue really is how to prepare for and manage this change.

The main argument of the book is that in this emerging revolutionary era of surprise and innovation, you need to think and act like a revolutionary. Wisdom is encapsulated in the Buddhist thought of “right view, right intention and right action”. We need to begin by challenging conventional wisdom. The right view is a holistic view of things. You have to constantly ask new questions and the goal has to be watch for change and to focus on what you cannot measure rather than on what you could. In a fast changing world what really matters is often hidden in the corners where the usual experts don’t often look. And there is a danger in too much certainty. Today there is constant process of shifting adjustment of innovation, or surprise for both good and ill.

Deep security will come from mastering the forces at work deep inside our world and will be predicated on the idea that we don’t have all the answers and in fact that we cant even anticipate many of the questions at any time. Tackling them will require a new kind of an immune system, a reactive instinct for identifying dangers, adapting to deal with them and then moving to control and contain the risk they present. Many of most serious threats we face today, and will face in the future, will start small, spread fast and be often bred at the intersection of things that look benign until combined ( e.g. jet travel and fundamentalism, home mortgages and hedge funds).

Resilience will be the defining concept of the 21 st century security and not deterrence. This will require creating systems that allow institutions to shift and learn and change. This resilience will need an ability to constantly reconceptualize problems, to generate a diversity of ideas and solutions, to communicate with everyone and to encourage novelty and even small scale revolts or crises and recoveries instead of waiting for the big unanticipated collapse.

The third change will be to augment our instinct for direct action with a new sense of the incredible power of an indirect approach. This requires that you attack your enemy’s strategy instead of his troops. As the Chinese philosopher Sun Zi urges “he who does not engage in battle is likely to defeat the enemy”. The indirect approach places a premium on patience rather than persuasion and on developing relationships to solve problems rather confrontation. Ramo argues that the new way would avoid direct conflict, use the forces already at play, manipulate so quietly as to be unnoticed, and know that no effort truly ends.

Since links accelerate the propagation of problems, the real issue becomes how to use these same links to propagate solutions. This will require decentralization for the moment you hand over power to other people; you get an explosion of curiosity, innovation and effort. Once users step into active engagement, the dynamics of the system shift forever. Users stop being consumers and become participants. The more users a centralized system has, the closer it comes to exhaustion but the more users a decentralized system has the more efficient it becomes because often they manage to put excess capacity to work that would otherwise be wasted. We owe everything to human creativity and so should work for a revolutionary spread of power that can empower as much of the world as we can. The more something lends itself to invention and imagination, the more enduringly useful it becomes. The question really is what can we do make all the people of the world peers and how can we add as many connections as possible between people and global sources of information and ideas. As a philosopher noted “what we do to others, we do to ourselves.”

Nandan (Imagining India- Ideas for the new century) too begins by looking at the old ideas. He examines the ideas and attitudes that have evolved with the times and contributed to our progress, as also those that keep us shackled to old, unproductive and fundamentally undemocratic ways.. And then moves on to what new ideas can do for India. He talks of a demographic dividend, that if properly harnessed can provide a salutary kick to the Indian economy. He urges a more seamless marriage of technology and new ideas culling examples from his life where it has worked. India is in the middle of a huge transformational process, Nilekani argues, and only a safety net of ideas—from genuinely inclusive democracy to social security, from public health to sustainable energy—can transcend political agendas and safeguard the country’s future.

But some themes are common to both books. Both argue that we need to look anew at our emerging problems with a completely different perspective. The complexity of future life will need new and unique solutions. Harnessing technology will be essential to solving intractable social and economic problems. Solutions may emerge from new breakthroughs in information technology or biosciences. In the future the Anglo-Saxon predilection for confronting issues head-on may not necessarily be the right approach to increasingly complex social, economic or even political issues. Success may increasingly arrive by following an indirect route to the objective. And finally increasing empowerment and involvement of people the world over will be essential to our future well being and growth.

In short both books provide a blueprint for aspiring policy makers as well idealists who seek to change the world.

Memories and memoirs

Researchers have long been trying to answer a question that has dumbfounded thinkers since the beginning of modern inquiry: How on earth can a clump of tissue in the brain possibly capture and store everything — poems, emotional reactions, locations of favorite bars, distant childhood scenes? And what stimulates it to bring back these memories on the least expected of situations? The answer, previous research suggests, is that brain cells, activated by an experience, keep one another on biological speed-dial, like a group of people joined in common witness of some striking event. Call on one and word quickly goes out to the larger network of cells, each apparently adding some detail, sight, sound, smell. The brain appears to retain a memory by growing thicker, or more efficient, communication lines between these cells.

Researchers in Brooklyn have recently accomplished comparable feats, with a single dose of an experimental drug delivered to areas of the brain critical for holding specific types of memory, like emotional associations, spatial knowledge or motor skills. The drug blocks the activity of a substance that the brain apparently needs to retain much of its learned information. And if enhanced, the substance could help ward off dementias and other memory problems. By 2050 more than 100 million people worldwide will have Alzheimer’s disease or other dementias, scientists estimate, and far more will struggle with age-related memory decline. A substance that improved memory would have far reaching implications in the treatment of memory related illnesses.

It also reminded me of an earlier time when my memory had been jogged inadvertently by events outside my control – and without the use of any experimental drugs. About three years ago, I was recovering from an unsuccessful open heart surgery. It was a cold and dreary winter made more depressing by the gloomy prognostications of all my expert doctors and a persistent insomnia. One midnight as I restlessly prowled around the quiet and cold house, I sat down at the computer in my study and idly started tapping on the key board trying to recall my past. But even as I sat there in the quiet night, I was overtaken by memories that I had long forgotten. Events and characters from the time of my childhood came rushing back and for those few moments I was taken back remembering the sounds and smells of the past. Conversations long forgotten rang in my ears. Events that I did not remember now engraved themselves on my mind. It was fortunate that I did not let that opportunity slip by but started writing these flashes of past down. Now the days instead of being dull and dreary became exciting as I eagerly awaited the quiet stillness of the night to restart working on my memoirs. I finished my book of memories over the next three months – “A Passion to Build- India's search for offshore technology- a memoir” and published it. What was even more surprising to me was that my extended family confirmed much of my memories as being accurate. To this day, I do not know how I remembered events so far in the past and without any diary or notes of those bygone days to help me. Perhaps this latest research will help unlock the mystery. A few days ago, I received a newsletter from an organization I had joined almost 40 years ago. The editor had sent me this issue as it recognized my contributions, in laudatory terms of course, during the decade or so that I worked there. I am as vain as the next person, and I must confess that it was good to be remembered. But this EIL newsletter also brought back memories that I had long since forgotten.

Understanding the economic crisis

All major economies in the Western world will report negative growth in 2009 – the first time ever. There is now a 30% chance that every industrialized economy in the world will reports zero or negative growth in 2009, with the exception of China and India, who will report growth rates considerable lower than the past few years. There is talk of a great depression and a world wide recession from which we will take years to recover. We seem to be in a global economic meltdown. And we are having difficulty in trying to understand this looming catastrophe and what it will mean to us and our grandchildren. How did it all start? Who is to blame? What needs to be done now? How to make some sense of this financial and economic crisis?

Here is an attempt to try and understand it these tumultuous events.

Think of it as a three act drama. In the first act, we see the all too human desire – of wanting to own a home- playing out. In the old days, people would put down 20 % of the value of the house they wanted and take a mortgage to pay the balance over the next 20-30 years. The Banks scrutinized these loan applications for mortgages carefully to decide if the person could afford the house they were buying and would be able to make the monthly payments. But about a decade ago, human greed took over and went rampant. The banks found that they had more money than ever, thanks to profits from overseas and low interest rates for borrowing money domestically, and needed to make loans to increase their profits. So they decided to approve prospective home buyers for loans even when the buyer did not comply with the strict requirements of the past decades. These were the sub prime mortgages where no money down was required, documentation was waived ( no-doc loans) and ability to make the monthly mortgage payments turned a blind eye to. Of course the home buyers were happy and many of them bought 10-15 homes, none of them which they could afford, hoping to resell them in a growing property market to make a profit. The loan mortgage officers and the banks were happy since they got a cut from each such sale. And of course profits soared.

In the second act, the banks put together a large number of these mortgages into bonds called mortgage backed securities or collateralized debt obligations- CDO’s. The banks pay the rating agencies to grade these bonds so that they can then be sold on to investors on the Wall Street for a premium. The investors- which included banks worldwide, investment companies, hedge funds, pension funds, etc –bought these bonds as they provided a steady stream of money for the future. Some investors also insured them with insurance companies or banks ( the biggest insurer being AIG) against possible defaults in the future – of course again for a hefty premium. These insurances were the so called credit default swaps or CDS’s. No one really understands the risks of these bonds or how the securities are guaranteed. Nevertheless as their prices continuously climb, the securities become top selling items around the world.

As the third act begins, the story begins to come to a head in September of 2008. Some home buyers cannot make the payments on their houses. Home prices stop increasing and start falling as foreclosures spread in the neighborhood. Bankers have some of these failing loans on their book – but now they are called toxic assets. The prices of these bonds decline sharply. The investors who own these bonds demand compensation against their insurance policies from AIG. But AIG computer models did not predict that so many of these CDS will be called in and, in any case, they have not set aside any money for defaults. AIG believed in their computer models and no body was asking them to set aside money anyway. So now AIG has no money to reimburse the various investors, and they are millions of them and they are spread worldwide. If not paid, it means that all these banks and investors will lose all their money and perhaps go bankrupt along with AIG. For the moment, they stop lending any money to anyone. This in turn leads to more failures, more people out of work and more foreclosures all working in a vicious downward spiral with no end in sight.

Since so many of these banks and AIG are headquartered in the US, all of them appeal to the US government for help. In a panic, the US government decides to provide billions to AIG and then to the Banks hoping to stave off collapse of the financial system.

If you do not like dry as dust account above, listen to this musical instead.

But wait, the third act is not yet over. The hero of the drama ( aka “no drama Obama”) comes charging in and lays out a plan for the rescue of the world. The first step is to try and create jobs through major investments (aka the American Recovery act) which provide government funds to the states for infrastructure and to people directly. The second step is to lower interest rates and soften terms so that home buyers can remain in their homes and continue making mortgage payments. The third step is to provide funds to AIG so that they can honor their insurance commitments and the final step is to buy some of the toxic assets from the banks so that they do not need to set aside their own capital against these possible defaults but can use it instead for making more loans and provide credit to various investors for more investments that could lead to greater employment.

Will it work? Or will this drama end in tragedy? We do not know.

The fine print

If you are like me, you have more than one occasion to go to a pharmacy for medicines. In recent days, I find that the fine print on the medicines is more scary than the disease you may be suffering from!

In India, though the problem is that you cannot read the fine print. Most of the pills come pressure packed in silver packages that are not only difficult to cut open but almost impossible to read. If you are lucky, you can decipher the name of the medicine and that of the manufacturer. Beyond that you need a powerful microscope to find out the composition of the pill-- even if it is there-- or any instructions on how to use them. The neighborhood pharmacist can help to a limited extent and perhaps your doctor who prescribed this in a completely undecipherable scrawl can unscramble his order. For the rest, you are generally on your own and are often reduced to asking friends about what to do.

In the US, the problem is the reverse. Every medicine here has a four page enclosure accompanying it of which half gives instructions and the other is dictated by a lawyer to prevent potential lawsuits. These enclosures are, however, guaranteed to frighten you into even more visits to the doctors if not dissuading you from even taking the medicine. Let me quote from one such actual enclosure "Side effects: Dizziness, lightheartedness, headache, blurred vision, loss of appetite, stomach upset, diarrhea, or constipation...This medication may lead to excessive loss of body water and minerals..Tell your doctor immediately if the following side effects occur...numbness/tingling of arms/legs, ringing in the ears, hearing loss." One would imagine that the medicine in question would be some serious earthshaking concoction. But no these warnings are for a very common drug- furosemide or lassix ! Besides giving this warning on possible side effects, this goes onto detail precautions, drug interactions and what to do if you overdose. Reading these enclosures is enough to cause a heart attack or at the very least a constant run to the doctor at the sign of the least of these symptoms.

Faced with this divergent approaches, what is a patient to do? In the day of the internet, there is emerging a new solution. You can consult a web doctor on line or go to one of the many user forums. The user forums are a relatively new development where patients from around the world post their experience of using different medicines and discuss with each other the impacts of different dosages and alternative medicines. While this is not recommended as a solution or an alternative to consulting a full fledged doctor, it does substitute for word of mouth advise that most indulge in and it does provide access to detailed information on most medicines and their results. At the very least, consult these pages before you go to the doctor so that you are an informed patient rather than one sitting before a high priest or oracle and blindly obeying their prescriptions!

A ray of hope.... in Pakistan

It has been six decades since Pakistan came into being during which period it has been governed by military dictators for most part with occasional brief periods of democracy. But during this period, one thing seems to have remained consistent—the public and government willingness to blame all problems on foreign interference from afar- the US and near- India. India too went through this phase of blaming CIA for all its own problems but thankfully, except for the lunatic left, the polity has matured to take responsibility for its own sins. That has not been the case for Pakistan. This was further driven home in the recent Pakistani reactions to the terrorist attacks in Mumbai when the Pakistani government and even the media- with a rare exception or two—convinced themselves that the terrorists did not come from Pakistan and they bore no responsibility for these acts despite major envidence to the contrary. It took them over two months to finally accept responsibility.

Thus is it was with great surprise to see recent editorials and columnists in the Pakistani media finally coming to terms with the truth and being brutally honest in their assessment of what Pakistan needs to do.

Kamran Shafi, a Pakistani columnist recently wrote “ We Pakistanis must stop living in denial forthwith if this country is to survive. We must take head-on the terrorist/extremist/Al Qaeda menace if we are to leave our succeeding generations a country half worth living in. We must stand up collectively as the great nation we are and say to those that engineer situations to suit their own institutional needs and wants that enough is enough!” He goes on to say that “ We seem to have learnt no lessons at all from history. We were in denial about East Pakistan and see what happened there. We foolishly became the front-line state for America’s war against the Soviet Union and see what a mess we made of Afghanistan, and of our own country as a spin-off. We went along with the ‘bleeding of India’ nonsense in Kashmir and see where that particular exercise landed us. In 1991, when we began to ‘bleed’ India, our foreign exchange reserves were $300m and India’s were $5.8bn. In February 2008, India’s reserves were $292bn and ours in November 2008, nine months later, were $6.5bn. So who bled who?”

Some of his anguish was even reflected in an editorial in Dawn, the respected Pakistani newspaper, which said “It should be clear by now that we are at war with ourselves as the enemy within grows more audacious by the day. Yet there are educated people in this country who continue to blame American foreign policy and the ever-potent ‘foreign hand’ for the wave of terrorism sweeping the country. This argument is deeply flawed on several counts. For one thing, the Pakistani state threw its weight behind America’s Afghan policy in the late ’70s and after 9/11, and as such we are equally responsible for the fallout. It is also common knowledge that Pakistani intelligence agencies once provided logistical support to militant organizations that could further our ‘strategic depth’ interests in Kashmir and across the Durand Line. It is argued that those behind the storming of the police training centre in Lahore on Monday, and the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team earlier this month, were so sophisticated in their methods that they must necessarily have had the backing of a foreign power. Such reasoning overlooks the fact that those who were freedom fighters a few years ago and are now labeled as terrorists were trained by the best in the business…..What we have now are Pakistanis killing Pakistanis, Muslims killing Muslims. And while we are at it, let us discard once and for all the absurd notion that the people who carry out such dastardly acts cannot possibly be Muslims. They are Muslims. In fact, these terrorists and militants consider themselves to be far truer Muslims than those who oppose them. The militants involved in Monday’s siege may have been overcome but it is time to hammer out a political and social consensus on this issue. It is time to show the kind of fervor the obscurantist’s demonstrate in abundance but the well-meaning couch in carefully chosen words. This is a fight and it cannot be won without throwing punches. The country’s mainstream political parties need to draw a line in the sand and show the people, with no room for ambiguity, where they stand in this battle for the soul of Pakistan. ….. If we can’t do the job ourselves, others might do it for us. And that way lies disaster. “

Before a battle can be won, it is essential to accept reality. Perhaps a few sparrows may not a summer make, but they do provide hope that Pakistanis will finally take their destiny in their own hands.