A National Public Radio for India

During my recent visit to India, I had the opportunity look at the state of the media in India. It is in a word abysmal. Take the national newspapers: the two cover stories vying for the honor during the week were the fact that there is a difference of one year between the official and unofficial dates of birth of the head of the armed forces and the other that a film star slapped another star at a party! And this at a time when the world economy is collapsing. And less said about the TV coverage the better-  India has perfected the art of interrupting the commercials with hysterical commentators at random moments. 

Perhaps the time has come for India to develop a non commercial but objective broadcasting media network. I understand that TV licenses are difficult but surely it should be possible to develop and maintain a public radio station that caters to the intelligentsia as well as the common man. The model I am looking at is the National Public Radio in the U.S. Here is what I propose:

Set up a foundation for public broadcasting which in the initial stage would focus on creating a national radio network of public broadcasting separate from the government channels. This INPR( or Indian National Public Radio) would have as its objective the following:

▪                Provide an identifiable daily product which is consistent and reflects the highest standards of broadcast journalism.

▪                Provide extended coverage of public events, issues and ideas, and to acquire and produce special public affairs programs.

▪                Acquire and produce cultural programs which can be scheduled individually by stations.

▪                Provide access to the intellectual and cultural resources of cities, universities and rural districts through a system of cooperative program development with member public radio stations.

▪                Develop and distribute programs for specific groups ( adult education, literacy instruction, modular units for local productions) which may meet needs of individual regions or groups, but may not have general national relevance.

▪                Establish liaison with foreign broadcasters like NPR in the US and BBC for a program exchange service.

▪                Produce materials specifically intended to develop the art and technical potential of radio in India

The bulk of revenues for this venture could come from programming fees, grants from foundations and business houses, contributions and sponsors. In the U.S, for example, about 50% of NPR revenues come from the fees it charges member stations for programming and distribution charges. The member stations, in turn, receive funds through on-air pledge drives, corporate underwriting, state and local governments, educational institutions, and the federal government.

In contrast with commercial broadcasting, INPR would not carry traditional radio commercials, but may have advertising in the form of brief statements from major donors, statements called underwriting spotss, not commercials, for unlike commercials, they cannot advocate a product or contain any "call to action".

The issue is how do we start? First step is to examine if similar efforts have been made in the past in India at the federal level or at the regional/state level. What were the problems they encountered and why did or did not succeed? The next step would be to search for like minded people who would support such a venture and could become the core advocacy group. 

So while I research ( of course with your help) the first step, I welcome offers of support from all others as well.

The new future of technology

Here is an invention that will change the future trajectory of product design and indeed products. No more need for prison labour for cheap production, no more need for costly redesigns, no more need for accurate and expensive supervision. You can sit at home, design a product and produce it to the nth degree of accuracy. This is the 3 D printer.


What can you do with a 3D printer. It seems plenty. And you can do it remotely. You may be sitting in remote Africa but need a crucial delicate part for your machine. If you have invested in a 3D printer, the design can be sent to you over the internet and voila in a few minutes you will have the part in your hands.

Designers can now use 3D printers to quickly create product models and prototypes from drawings, but they're increasingly being used to make final products as well. Among the items made with 3D printers are shoe designs, furniture, wax castings for making jewelry, tools, tripods, gift and novelty items, and toys. The automotive and aviation industries use 3D printers to make parts. Artists can create sculptures, and architects can fabricate models of their projects. Archaeologists can make a 3D scan of a fragile artifact and print out a copy of the object. Likewise, paleontologists could duplicate, say, a dinosaur skeleton for display.

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Certain 3D printers can even be used in food preparation, to apply items in liquid or paste form such as cheese, icing, and chocolate. 

"Physicians can use 3D printing to make prosthetics, hearing aids, artificial teeth, and bone grafts, as well as replicate models of organs, tumors, and other internal bodily structures from CT scans in preparation for surgery. Also, 3D printers are being developed that can lay down layers of cells to create artificial organs (such as a kidney http://www.ted.com/talks/anthony_atala_printing_a_human_kidney.html) and blood vessels (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14946808) are already in the R&D phase. 3D printing can be used in forensics, for example to replicate a bullet lodged inside a victim (human or otherwise):http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKhpa5Nt6Ck"

Printed electronics is a set of printing methods that enable electronic devices or circuitry to be printed on flexible material such as labels, fabrics, and cardboard, by application of electronic or optical inks. It provides very low-cost fabrication of low-performance devices. Printed electronics is beginning to be combined with 3D printing, allowing for the printing of layered circuitry or devices. A natural outgrowth of this potent combo is that someday you may be able to print out a future generation of gadgets from 3D plans rather than buying them.

3D printers could conceivably even match the Star Trek replicators, found in starship mess halls throughout the galaxy: These fictional food printers can fabricate most any food item on demand. If 3D printing lets doctors someday print a heart or kidney with internal structure, printing a steak or other foods should be a snap—though probably as not cost-effective. 

In short this technology is on the cusp of the future. I understand that you can now buy one of these printers for your home for about $ 1000. Does this remind you of the begining of the laptop revolution?

Who do we listen to?

When my kids were young, we were used to disciplining them in the old fashiioned ways. In the early years, it is " do what i tell you to ", which then becomes " because I say so" to cut off arguments that you may not win. In the teen age years when the arguments turn into debates, we perfected a different version of " because I say so". This relied on unknown virtual authority figures- in our case it was Inspector Should and Dr Day!

The Inspector was given mystical powers and his word was law which brooked no questions. That was the way it was and that was the way it was going to remain if the Inspector had his way. Dr Day was a more logical- at least apparently- because he carried implicitly the verdict of the market place on his shoulders.

 " Why should we do this?" would come the query from our teens.

 " Because they say ( or Dr Day in our parlance) that this is the right way." would be the answer. It was better to personalize it than to say "because they say so" whoever 'they" may be!

Many argue that most cultures have their own authority contained in the bible, gita, ramayan or the torah. Unfortunately they have little to offer when it comes to practical issues that confront parents like when their children say: "Why should I eat spinach?" or "My curfew is too strict!" or "Why cant I go out like others do?"

There is an interesting twist in different cultures too. In India for a very long time, the British were supposed to have the last word on any issue- from table manners to relationships. The " white man" was automatically expected to know more about the world and its mores than the poor natives. Three hundred years of domination had left its mark in subtle and unsubtle ways which is only now being shrugged off.

In other cultures not subject to colonial domination there are other authority figures. In Vietnam it is usually what othe Vietnamese think and what the ancients have handed down. They look with suspicion on external remedies and adopt them only after great persuasion and much evidence. I worked for eight years with a Vietnamese colleauges whose first answer to any idea or suggestion of change was invariably "No". He always insisted that there was a right way and a wrong way and then there was a Vietnamese way! And you knew which was the way he wanted to go!

The internet has however scrambed everything. Now the reply to any difficult question is " why dont you look it up on the internet". The problem is that the internet now has replies of over 10,000 for even the simplest queries all of which very often contradict each other.

So we are really back to square one -
" Because I say so" or " Dr Day says so"!

Whats it like being a baby?

We have always wondered what's it like being a baby. Now, thank to recent research, we know!

" It's like being in love in Paris after three double espressos,” says Alison Gopnik, a University of Berkeley psychologist, "including waking up crying at 3 in the morning!"

Sure, they may while away their days eating, sleeping and soiling diapers. But it's high time that babies got some respect. Modern research is revolutionizing our understanding of the first years of life, revealing early childhood to be a frenzied period of intellectual, emotional and moral development. "Any child will put the most productive scientist to shame," as she writes about how babies think.“Babies and young children are like the R&D division of the human species." 

“Babies are already as smart as they can be and have incredibly powerful ways of learning about the world."

If you just casually look at a baby, it doesn't look like there's very much going on there, but they know more and learn more than we would ever have thought. Every single minute is incredibly full of thought and novelty. It's easy as adults to take for granted everything it took to arrive at the state where we are. But babies take in much more information from different sources than adults do and work very hard to make sense of that information. It's one reason we think babies sleep so much — they're doing much harder work than grown-ups are!

At birth babies' brains have 100 billion neurons  -- as many as they will ever have. As a baby grows, so do these neurons, forming branches that connect with other neurons to transmit signals and share information. Each bit of information a baby takes from his environment stimulates a different part of the brain and reinforces particular neural connections. In the first two months alone, the number of these connections increases from an estimated 50 trillion to 1,000 trillion.

The learning starts with the sounds and sensations a baby experiences before he's even born. At birth, the sense of hearing is more developed than vision. "Full-term infants have the benefit of having heard their mother's voice for weeks preceding delivery and when a newborn hears his mother's voice, he shows a different pattern of brain activity than when he hears a stranger's.

Outward evidence of a baby's learning and thinking is subtle at first: the newborn modifying his sucking to adapt to the breast, bottle, or pacifier; the 3-week-old who takes a break from feeding to look into her mother's eyes. Because a newborn's vision is believed to be no better than 20/400  -- meaning he sees things at 20 feet away as a person with perfect vision would see them from 400 feet away  -- he can focus only on things within seven to ten inches from his face. So he is more attracted to stark contrasts, such as black and white. But as the connections between neurons in the brain's visual cortex increase, a baby begins to see more clearly. His depth perception also develops as he begins to coordinate his eye movements so that both eyes focus on the same thing at the same time. Now a baby may become fascinated by the finer features of a toy or his parents' faces, noticing three-dimensional details rather than looking only at the edges of objects.

By the time babies are 2 to 3 months old, they'll begin watching people as they walk across the room and be able to make eye contact with Mom and Dad. At this point, vision improves enough that babies are ready for new things to stimulate them (while still being attracted to the details of familiar objects that they are only now noticing). Vision improves to 20/60 or better around 6 months of age, allowing your little bundle to distinguish your face from the sea of adult faces he's already encountered.

 "When I'm hungry, one of them feeds me," thinks the baby. An infant may look across the room toward the refrigerator because she's learned that bottles come from there. A breastfed baby may look at Mom the same way, as if to say, "Hey, there's the one with the milk!"

By 4 to 5 months of age, a baby will visually follow an object  -- such as a spoon or a rattle  -- when it falls out of her hand, marking the beginning of her understanding that she is separate from other people and things around her. A baby is beginning to crack into the huge world of encoded communication that flies around  -- what we call language.

 As the baby's babbling becomes more distinct (around 8 to 10 months), parents begin to wonder if she is actually forming words: "mama," "dada," or even complex phrases. But in general, babies this age don't associate words with meanings. By babbling, a baby practices forming the varied sounds of her native language, with parents trying to help by providing lots of verbal input. 

By 8 months, babies begin to retain words in their long-term memory, even though they don't comprehend their meanings. At 12 months of age, most infants have retained enough information to understand 50 words, and by 18 months, they'll probably be able to use those words themselves.

Most parents already know that infants thrive on attention. Our instincts tell us to cuddle, talk, read, and play games with our children. But despite all that we know about our babies' developing brains, each infant is born with a distinct personality and potential. Day by day, he'll offer up more insights about who he is. It's a mystery that is revealed all too quickly, since by the time he's a toddler, few of his thoughts are likely to go unexpressed.

 Baudelaire was right: "Genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recovered at will."

In an attempt to further this research, I try to teach Nikhil my three month old grandson how to speak!

"But the tears are extra.."

I was kept awake all night yesterday with a wailing with an accompanying band of musicians. What was going on? In the morning I asked my Vietnamese daughter in law to explain how in the rigidly rule based society, where all loudspeakers were turned off sharply at 10 pm, this dirge could continue till the early hours. "Dad", she explained, " this was a wife saying farewell to her dead husband. And sometimes they allow this still. Also it may not be the wife but some hired mourners". Hired mourners?

I remembered some years ago I was in Milan at an opera and found the program being interrupted by a group of people who got on their feet periodically and clapped and shouted "bravos" throughout the performance.  Apparently these were a group of people, known as claques, who were paid to applaud during a performance, and that the practice was quite widespread in olden times. Roman emperors used soldiers to swell the crowds for speeches, ( as do modern day Presidents in the US) with the soldiers being instructed to cheer loudly when the emperor emerged. Claques also guided the audiences of Greek plays, and they were never really absent from performance halls, but in the 19th century, the claque was refined to an art form, with members of the claque guiding the audience, showing them when to laugh, applaud, or cry. The members of the claque would be smoothly integrated into the audience, ensuring even distribution to reduce suspicion. Rieurs would laugh at appropriate moments in the performance, while pleureurs would cry; many of the pleureurs would be women, who might find themselves without handkerchiefs, requiring assistance from an innocent bystander. Bisseurs would call for an encore at the end of a performance, while commissaires were hired to point out particularly interesting or notable points in the piece to the people around them. Together, the members of the claque would ensure an enthusiastic audience response to a performance. Claques are fine but hired mourners at a funeral? Really?

It seemed that this was an old custom both in Vietnam and China when funerals were both an occasion for grief and dancing. In parts of China, where rural pre-burial rituals are still observed, mourners

known as kusangren are hired to guarantee that a funeral is a spectacle in grief. Many of these hired mourners come to work with a full sound-system, multi-colour spotlights and a full fledged band. 

An observer describes a typical funeral scene. The relatives kneel around the coffin, their eyes fixed on lead hired mourner as her wails reach a fever pitch. “Why did you leave us so soon? The earth is covered in a black veil for you. The rivers and streams are crying to tell your story – that of an honest woman. I shed tears for your children and grandchildren. We’re so sorry we could not keep you here,” she croons between sobs. “This is goodbye, with no return date. The path to the great beyond is arduous,

and beset by storms. Take good care of yourself.” She then dances for several minutes, falling to her knees and crawling several times before shaking the hands of the visibly moved family members. And then suddenly, the evening turns festive. Funereal chants are replaced with popular songs and comedy stories. A belly dancer performs ( I kid you not), followed by a woman in a leopard-print bustier, black leather

hot pants and fishnet stockings who writhes to a pulsating techno beat. But they explain that the spectacle should not be seen as a lack of respect for the dead. “Saying goodbye to the dead is a very important moment, and so the ceremony must be animated and vibrant. If not, the children would be seen poorly by the villagers, who would say they did not respect their elders. And how much does this cost? The most extravagant can cost as much as $30,000. A scaled-down event – something without a procession and floats – can cost $6,000. A typical mourners group charges $600 for a half-day's work. Of course the funeral ceremonies in the west cost many times as much and are far less colorful.

Vietnam News, the national daily, reported recently that at a funeral in Ha Noi's Cau Giay District last month, most of the many cries of anguish came from hired mourners, not bereaved relatives. The head of the hired group of mourners from Ha Noi's Thanh Oai District Nguyen Van Moc said his group was hired to cry for two whole days at the funeral. Under the contract, a female member of the group would make heart-rendering cries on behalf of the women in the deceased's household. Moc said members of his group were often hired to cry for people who were too busy or simply had trouble crying. "We can really earn money from this job," Moc said. "Besides the contract money, normally VND4-5 million (US$180-230) depending on ‘dry' or ‘wet' cry (those with or without tears), we also receive small tips for extra cries." He said that in the cold season, which normally has more funerals, his group could earn a steady income.

History professor Nguyen Quang Ngoc, head of the Institute for Vietnamese Studies and Development

Sciences, says crying was not compulsory as funeral customs could differ, but he said it was

understandable to have hired mourners. "There is a traditional understanding that a funeral is not a real one without crying," Ngoc said. "Many people believe the death of a person needs the cries, which show affection from the living and that without crying, the dead would feel lonely." Ngoc said hired mourners were traditional parts of many funerals, like the bands playing sorrowful sounds. "Originally, the band played to support the cries of the dead person's relatives," he said. "Gradually, the relatives give them money to mourn for the dead person through rhythmic verses." Kieu Van Thanh from Dong Ha Village in Ha Noi's outer district of Quoc Oai, is part of a family of paid mourners going back six generations. The Kieu family also has an eight-piece band and has created their own verses to cry to at funerals. "In months with many contracts, we have to mourn almost 28 days," he said. "In lesser months, we still work at 15 or 16 funerals." 

But there are now dissidents who despise this practice. One said that since she and her little brother were too busy working out funeral arrangements, they couldn't cry. They were labelled "heartless" and "disrespectful" for the absence of crying. Though some relatives advised her to hire professional mourners to make it "more like a funeral", she refused. "Such affections should have come from our hearts, the fake ones don't count," she said "My mother knew exactly whether we loved her or not, regardless of tears." Besides tears cost extra.

Vietnam today – some thoughts about its past and future

Few countries have grown so rapidly as Vietnam has in the last two decades - the average economic growth rate has been over 8 % per annum. Fewer countries have faced down not one but three dominant powers of the day, in war - China, France and US- and emerged triumphant. Yet in my visit in 2010 for two weeks, I wrote that I found an undercurrent of anxiety in the mood of the country reflected in its leadership and in the media. It was vague and unformed and very rarely explicitly discussed but to me it was an ever present ghost at the party. The very success of the country seemed to leave many puzzled and sometime confused as if the success had come too easily and the future seemed undefined when there seemed no more mountains left to climb.

I had first come to Vietnam over 20 years, lived here for over 8 years during the nineties and was now returning after an absence of five years. It was a completely different world that I encountered. Streets were filled with the latest model of cars, there were gleaming shopping malls everywhere, and restaurants were packed not with expatriates but locals. There were signs of prosperity everywhere with multi-storied buildings and five star hotels coming up at every corner of the two cities I visited- Hanoi and HCMC. When I first came here twenty years ago, there were no taxis, no hotels and certainly no cars on the streets. Perhaps all that provided me some perspective and some ability to decipher the vague issues that existed but were left undiscussed.

The dominant ones were- the feeling of rapid development without values. It recalled for me the dilemma that Gandhiji had illuminated over a half a century ago: that there could be no " politics without principles, wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, and worship without sacrifice." And that every nation must enshrine some core values in their national life and character. The passionate nationalism of the past few decades had yet to find a new definition in the new era of economic development.

All recent politics and policies seemed without a clear vision. Where was the country headed? Did they want to be another China, Korea or did they want to emulate the US? What were the choices and which ones did the leadership seek? What were the trade offs that needed to be made and could the country get by without calling for any sacrifice from their citizens? The absence of clarity of vision underlay an anxiety about the future that their present prosperity belied.

While the future vision was blurred, the path to advancement required choices that few in leadership seemed to relish making. Thus the recognition that the system needed much greater efficiency in governance was matched by an equal reluctance to tackle the "culture of entitlement" in the bureaucracy. Administration grew in size even as there was increased recognition that the civil services were the key constraints to change and any growth.

Aggressive organizational changes were designed and implemented but unmatched by any effort to bring in new blood. So the organizational blocks became ever more complicated, helped along by international donors and consultants, yet the chairs were still occupied by the old guard, the very ones whose lack of expertise and initiative had created the problems in the first place. The young were reluctant to enter public service except for the careerists but the government was reluctant to trust the open market system for its recruitment of the talent it sorely needed for the new challenges that lay ahead.

There was a desire to grow globally and become a global player, yet an extreme reluctance to permit open competition of any kind in the system, except under very controlled circumstances and except for the low level business retail efforts. There was a growing facade of competitive frameworks but without development of the key ingredients- meaningful competitors functioning under an independent regulatory system.

Despite the almost universal education the country enjoyed and relatively open access to internet and TV, there was still a degree of insularity that seemed to persist. There were few attempts to inculcate public service - domestically or overseas- as the intelligentsia still struggled with the fact that they were "developed" but still felt "developing".

There were signs of enthusiastic consumption everywhere- but with the older generation that had lived through the war, there was only cautious hedonism, while the younger generation pursued pleasure and money in a Gekko like greed with the creed that " money was good".

Many had, however, started to recognize that Armani and Dunhill shops in hotel arcades and ever growing new shopping malls- however unoccupied they may be- were really not an accurate measure of the country's growth or development. The issue that bedeviled them was what should be a truer measure of their forward progress. Should it be the US constitutional guarantee of " right to happiness" for all its citizens or should it be the European quest for universal equality? Should they set their sights on the Indian version of democracy and secular governance or the Chinese version of a modern day " big brother" government? How should the transition from the authoritarian leadership to a greater measure of local democracy take place? Was the national parliament an adequate measure of popular participation in public life?

These were all questions that will need to be answered as Vietnam moves forward-- as it surely will.

I returned last year and during the past few weeks have been asking my hosts and other friends about what had not changed in twenty years and what had not based on their perspective at the ground level. The answers were revealing for not only what the government had managed to do right but also what still needed to be done. Here are the five areas these questions had elicited where action was needed.

Corruption. The level and extent of corruption had remained unchanged in the public perception. Few had any real answers on how this problem could or should be tackled. While not claiming any unique insight, there are a few things that action can be taken on. One, a greater focus on e procurement both at central and provincial levels as a move towards greater transparency. Setting up of provincial ombudsmen to impart a greater sense of accountability could be another action. Declaration of personal assets of those in power could be another requirement for any advancement.

Leadership and bureaucratic change.  Attitudes of the powerful to the public at large had remained unchanged. These are long term issues requiring long term strategies. Here area a few ideas: for developing leaders of the future – create an ASEAN peace corps based on the U.S experience. Finance a few think tanks and a few great research institutes to provide a sustained input from outside the existing systems. In the long term the present bureaucrats and elites will shift to the private sector for greater rewards and they will be gradually replaced by the educated from the rural areas. If not careful, these new bureaucrats will tend to be coarser and cruder with less education and perhaps greater proclivity to corruption and inefficient behavior. So select 50-100 promising young people from the provinces and send them abroad for training and education as they on their return could form the infrastructure for growth in the future.

Education. There was a great appreciation of increased opportunity but a realization that the quality of education had not kept pace with the demands of the modern society. Rather than trying to do it from the top down, develop a new model – a good model would be the “race to the top” of the U.S.

Health. Again a great appreciation for the increased availability but now emerging concerns about quality of care and medicines. There is need for government entry into quality control and a degree of certification to assure the populace about quality.

Infrastructure.  There is a need to move to city counter magnets rather than satellite cities as seems to be the pattern now. This means a greater focus on the provincial cities but providing them with a wider range of attractions. At first the rural citizens will move to the provincial cities rather than to the major metropolises alone. The cost of developing metropolises is considerably greater than it would be for the provincial cities. One approach would be to single out particular cities each with its own unique selling brand- football city, museum city, selling malls, entertainment centre, drama center, etc etc. To a certain extent this is already happening – Dalat, He, Danang, Halong = all have their own unique aura. This needs to be expanded to a greater number of towns in the provinces.

Vietnam, as usual, will define its own way into the future. Perhaps they will not need to make all the mistakes others have made before embarking on the right path.

The joy of less

How much stuff is enough stuff? At what point should we worry a bit less about getting and spending and devote more time and energy to other things? As is usual, science documents the basis behing most conventional wisdom: things dont matter, people do.
 
Recent research suggests that we are happier if we have less rather than more. It seems that people thrive when they have a network of close relations to others and when they have meaningful work that they find engaging and not if they have more material things.


It seems that most of us get more pleasure out of doing than out of having. Though the line between “doing” and “having” is not always a bright one Leaf Van Boven, Tom Gilovich, and their collaborators have shown that doing satisfies us more than having does. In reflecting on the past or contemplating the future, people are happier when they have experiences on their minds than when they have things on their minds. And the higher a person’s income is, the bigger the disparity between the joys of doing and the joys of having. 

According to this research, there are several possible reasons why doing does more for us than having. "First, though doing is just an episode in life, we continue to “consume” the things we do by remembering them, and sharing our memories with others. Second, doing is almost always social, and I’ve already indicated how important social relations are to well being. Doing things together with others may actually strengthen social ties". Third, doing seems to constitute a more meaningful part of our personal identity than having does. Now there is reliable research indicating that people who have what we might call materialist values are less satisfied with their lives than people who don’t. 

And by the way, as people age, doing seems increasingly to dominate having as a goal. This may be a key part of the “wisdom of aging,” and may help explain why, despite persistent aches and pains in recalcitrant body parts, older people are happier than younger ones.

The inside story of India's innovation- the $ 50 computer tablet

The Wall Street Journal has a brilliant story on the development of India's first low cost IPAD look alike.

It is one more blow for technology helping the poor.

The joys of solitude and quiet

In an interesting piece Pico Iyer extolls the value of solitude and quiet.

He notes that the   average American spends at least eight and a half hours a day in front of a screen and the average American teenager sends or receives 75 text messages a day. It is a common sight to find businessmen plugged to their Blackberries as soon as they get off a plane and teenagers not moving their eyes off their iphones even during dinner. Social conversation has reached a new low as everyone seems to be busy finding out new information and data. Parents have started complaining that their children may be home now but their minds are not. But now a reaction has set in. Now many people want nothing more than to get away from the very devices that keep them constantly plugged in to the world all the time. 

As  Iyer observes "In barely one generation we’ve moved from exulting in the time-saving devices that have so expanded our lives to trying to get away from them — often in order to make more time. The more ways we have to connect, the more many of us seem desperate to unplug. Like teenagers, we appear to have gone from knowing nothing about the world to knowing too much all but overnight...We have more and more ways to communicate, as Thoreau noted, but less and less to say. " The fact is we are now so overwhelmed with readily availble data that we confuse it with information. We rarely have time to organize the data into some form of reconizable information much less into any kind of knowledge. We thus confuse data with information, information for knowledge and knowledge for wisdom.

But slowly this paradox is sinking in. And since luxury, as any economist will tell you, is a function of scarcity, the children of tomorrow will crave nothing more than freedom, if only for a short while, from all the blinking machines, streaming videos and scrolling headlines that leave them feeling empty and too full all at once. Perhaps they will realize the difference between what important and what is essential. And we too need to make a start in seeking some quiet moments in our lives to contemplate and reflect on all we learn. Iyer suggests turning off the internet for a few hours or for the weekend and to take to some retreats periodically to get away from it all.  I have found the perfect answer- I sit and play with my grandson who demands constant attention and complete dedication!

"Its a matter of principle". Really?

This is is a story many husbands will vouchsafe for: you have just taken your wife out for a night on the town, palmed the maitre-de a fiver for a good seat, the waiter for great service and paid a bomb for the meal. And then you take a taxi to go home but the driver takes a wrong turn, or has a slightly malfunctioning meter, or whatever but the meter shows about twenty five cents more than what you are normally used to. And this leads to an argument about why you should not pay him any more -and this after you have spent over a hundred dollars for the evening!
" Its only a few cents", you argue. " after all you just paid the waiter over twenty dollars in tips."
"No, that is different", counters your wife, "This is a matter of principle!". Really?

Since I found that this obsession with accuracy in taxi fares widespread among all the wives of my friends, I decided that it was worth examining the underlying rationale for this perplexing mania. To begin with let us admit that all of us have some blindspots or some areas where, after a while, all rational discussion becomes moot. It is what I call the moment when you state your position and, you say like most mothers, " because I say so" and turn a deaf ear to any further pleas and entreaties. These may vary from discussions about political parties or candidates abilities, or the foibles of public personalities or certain customs and traditions. After you have exhausted all your stock of explanations and basically run out of patience explaining your point of view, you essentially shut up shop and say "enough".

Unfortunately for most women, taxi drivers are univerasally the objects of this "lakshman rekha" of tolerance. They seem to be all convinced that taxi drivers are sent on this earth to take a longer route to the destination or have a malfunctioning meter, so that the fare is always slightly greater than it should ideally be. And denying them that extra dime thus becomes their life's main objective. And no amount of rational discussion or data is going to dissuade them. Believe me I've tried. So poor taxi drivers be resigned to your fate as we all husbands have.