Tucked away on the last page of the latest Economist was a table on Old Age Dependency Ratios that caught my eye. I had been hearing about the “demographic dividend" and had never really understood it till I saw this little table.
This table showed the number of elderly people (65 and over) as a share of those of working age (15-64 years)- or the old age dependency ratio- in a country in 2010 and projected in 2050. “Continued increases in longevity” according to this European Commission report, “will ensure that the number of elderly people as a share of those of working age will rise sharply in most countries over the next forty years. The biggest absolute increase will be in Japan, where the ratios of 35.1% in 2010, already the world’s highest, will more than double, to 73.8% by 2050. At that point, the number of pensioners in China will be equivalent to 38.8% of its labor force, up from 11.6% in 2010.” In the same period, however, in India the number of old age pensioners will only be 21% up from about 9% in 2010.
How do these changes really affect anything?
The basic idea of a demographic dividend is straightforward enough. In the year 2004 India had a population of 1,080 million, of whom 672 million people were in the age-group 15 to 64 years which is called the "working age population". Since outside of this age group very few people work, it is reasonable to think of the remainder, that is, 408 million people, as the "dependent population". A nation's "age dependency ratio" is the ratio of the dependent population to the working-age population. In the case of India this turns out to be 0.6 or that there are 60 dependants for every 100 working age people. On the dependency ratios India does not look too different from many other developing countries. Bangladesh's dependency ratio is 0.7, Pakistan's 0.8, Brazil's 0.5.
What is different about India is the prediction that it will see a sharp decline in this ratio over the next 30 years or so. This is what constitutes the demographic dividend for India.
India's fertility rate - that is, the average number of children a woman expects to have in her life time - used to be 3.8 in 1990. This has fallen to 2.9 and is expected to fall further. Since women had high fertility earlier we now have a sizable number of people in the age-group 0-15 years. But since fertility is falling, some 10 or 15 years down the road, this bulge of young people would have moved into the working-age category. And, since, at that time, the relative number of children will be small (thanks to the lowered fertility), India's dependency ratio would be lower. It is expected that, in 2020, the average age of an Indian will be 29 years, compared to 37 for China and 48 for Japan; and, by 2030, India's dependency ratio should be just over 0.4.
This can potentially confer many benefits.
First is the direct benefit of there being a rise in the relative number of bread-winners. Moreover, with fewer children being born, more women can now join the work force; so this can give a further fillip to the bread-winner ratio.
A more indirect but vital benefit for the economy is the effect this can have on savings. Human beings save most during the working years of their lives. When they are children, they clearly consume more than they earn, and the situation is the same during old age. Hence, a decline in the nation's dependency ratio is usually associated with a rise in the average savings rate. India's savings rate as a percentage of GDP has been rising since 2003. It now stands at 33% which is comparable to the Asian super-performers, all of whom save at above 30%, with China saving at an astonishing near 40% rate. This savings growth is driven by improvements in the government's fiscal health and a sharp rise in corporate savings. But even if these factors disappear, the decline in the dependency ratio should enable India to hold its savings and investment rate above the 30% mark for the next 25 years.
Another factor is the number of dependents that the working people need to support in a country. The World Bank computes a metric called the “age dependency ratio” which is the ratio of dependents--people younger than 15 or older than 64--to the working-age population--those of age 15-64. For example, 0.7 means there are 70 dependents for every 100 working-age people. According to the Bank’s projection, in India in 2010, there will be 55 dependents/100 working age people but by 2050, the ratio will move to 49 ie the relative number of dependents will decrease. Compare this with say Japan where the figures in 2010 were the same as in India, 55, but by 2050 they are projected to rise to 91 dependents for every 100 working age people. Thus in Japan, the savings of a 100 working age people will need to provide for 91 dependents while in India they will need to provide for only about half of that number.
This theory of demographic advantage has been challenged by some as just that - theory. One way of evaluating this in reality is to look at the actual experience of other nations. The most striking example of economic growth being spurred by demography is the case of Ireland. Ireland's legalization of contraception in 1979 caused a decline in the birth rate, from 22 (per 1000 population) in 1980 to 13 in 1994. This caused a rapid decline in the dependency ratio. The phenomenal economic boom in Ireland thereafter, earning it the sobriquet "Celtic Tiger", is very likely founded in this fertility decline. As David Bloom explains “ in Ireland the ratio of workers to dependents improved due to lower fertility but was raised further by increased female labor market participation and a reversal from outward migration of working age population to a net inflow. Africa, on the other hand continues to have high fertility and youth dependency rates, which contribute to its economic stagnation”. “The magnitude of the demographic dividend appears to be dependent on the ability of the economy to absorb and productively employ the extra workers” he warns, “rather than be a pure demographic gift”. One has seen a similar sequence of changes in demographics and the economy in Japan in the 1950s and China in the 1980s.
But even if this happened in some places, will it happen in India? Will India get benefit from higher savings and investment rates will this continue to fire India's high growth rate? Will India be able to develop the primary and secondary education so as to make sure that the larger working-age population conferred by the demographic dividend is an educated lot? And will the manufacturing sector which is needed to create job opportunities for the larger labor force be able to absorb these skilled laborers?
What is important to remember is that the demographic dividend is a population bulge in the working-age category. Like a pig in a python's stomach it will eventually move up, causing a rise in the old-age dependency ratio some three to four decades from now. The doubling of the old age dependency ratio from 9 % to 20 % in 2050 is thus the obverse of the dependency ratio. That is, every demographic dividend comes with an accompanying "demographic echo".
It is in the nation's interest to reap as much as possible from the dividend so that it is robust enough and not stymied later by the echo.
The political scientist Ivan Arreguín-Toft recently looked at every war fought in the past two hundred years between strong- the Goliaths- and weak – the David’s- combatants. The Goliaths, he found, won in 71.5 per cent of the cases. That is a remarkable fact. But when the underdogs chose an unconventional strategy, David’s winning percentage went from 28.5 to 63.6.
But how exactly does an underdog like David win against the more powerful Goliath? There seem to be three major elements in these victories: one, alter the terms, rules and terrain of the conflict in your favor, two, develop superior energy and enthusiasm for results and finally, mobilize unique and unconventional approaches.
These have been known for a long time under the rubric of asymmetric warfare, where the tactical success of asymmetric warfare is dependent on at least some of the following assumptions:
• One side has a technological advantage which outweighs the numerical advantage of the enemy, • Training and tactics which allow a smaller force to overcome a much larger one, • unconventional tactics in which the superior power is weaker, • using prohibited tactics to its advantage.
The genius of Gladwell is to show how these can strategies and tactics can work for underdogs everywhere, from a girl’s basketball team in California to the Viet Minh in the Vietnam War. Gladwell theorizes why Davids beat Goliaths: “Insurgents work harder than Goliath. But their other advantage is that they will do what is “socially horrifying”—they will challenge the conventions about how battles are supposed to be fought. All the things that distinguish the ideal basketball player are acts of skill and coördination. When the game becomes about effort over ability, it becomes unrecognizable—a shocking mixture of broken plays and flailing limbs and usually competent players panicking and throwing the ball out of bounds. You have to be outside the establishment—a foreigner new to the game or a skinny kid from New York at the end of the bench—to have the audacity to play it that way. George Washington couldn’t do it. His dream, before the war, was to be a British Army officer, finely turned out in a red coat and brass buttons. He found the guerrillas who had served the American Revolution so well to be “an exceeding dirty and nasty people.” He couldn’t fight the establishment, because he was the establishment.” He describes in some detail the approach that Ranadive, the coach of a junior girl’s basketball team, took in taking this team to the finals- changing the conventional approach of using only half the basketball court by applying a full court press, understanding the time elements of the game and motivating his young charges with energy and enthusiasm.
The Viet Minh in Vietnam similarly defined the battle on their terms by avoiding full front attacks against a far superior equipped enemy by moving to guerilla tactics of attack and disappear. Their leadership shaped the conflict as one of national liberation thus mobilizing the entire country. And they designed tactics that constantly surprised the US forces ranging from the underground tunnels of Cu Chi to the Tet offensive. And they were willing to fight for ever against an opponent tired of the conflict ten thousand miles from their country. In more recent times, the primary election campaign of Obama to win the nomination from the clear front runner Hillary Clinton is another example of an underdog using asymmetric warfare tactics for success. As a matter of fact, it is classic David Goliath story and the tactics teach us a lot. Clinton had the establishment support - so Obama never fought for their endorsements but went around them directly to the state level organizations. He doubted that he could win the big states without the democratic establishment support so he went to the small caucus states. He had no major donors so he went to the internet and sought small donations from those who had never participated in elections before. Since he did not have support of the big unions, he used social sites on the internet to mobilize volunteers for his effort. In short his was a brilliant strategy to win against a tougher, better known and better financed candidate with an insurgent candidacy.
In summary, what are the winning tactics of the underdog: The weaker power can only win if it aggressively defines the rules of the conflict in a way that disadvantages the stronger power. When underdogs choose not to play by Goliath’s rules, they win, according to Ivan Arreguín-Toft, “even when everything we think we know about power says they shouldn’t”. Insurgents must work harder, much harder, than the Goliaths. Davids can beat Goliaths by substituting effort for ability—and substituting effort for ability turns out to be a winning formula for underdogs in all walks of life. The biggest shaft in the underdogs arsenal is their ability to try completely different surprising tactics sometimes even sometimes doing what is “socially horrifying” to win. By refusing to be bound by conventional rule of conflict, they can obtain that crucial edge essential for success.
There was a time when we heard about the great achievements of the day only from the newspapers and came to know of outstanding explorers, scientists or others only when they were given awards. Albert Einstein, Albert Schweitzer, Nelson Mandela were all distant but haloed names when we were growing up but we knew little of their work in any detail. In the past fifteen years with the internet, now you can google almost any name to find out the latest discoveries and breakthroughs and those making them and also read their latest papers. This change I thought was drastic in that it made it possible for people all over the globe to know the latest breakthroughs in real time. That was till a few days ago when, Kit, a friend of mine, sent me an audio clip of Swami Vivekananda made more than a century ago speaking at the World Religion Congress in Chicago in 1895. I had been reading Vivekanda since my childhood, since he was a particular hero of mine, but I must confess that hearing his voice in this audio starting with " Brother and sister of America" was an exhilarating experience.
But even this has been surpassed in the past five years when you can hear and see the greatest minds of the day talk about their work on the internet youtube videos. The power of one person to change the world of science, technology, medicine, politics can now be seen in real time. The impact of this new reality on the world has yet to be fully grasped. But the wonder of being able to listen to and see the greatest minds of the day talking about their passionate discoveries and endeavours is immense. For we are no longer talking about the past but of the future since in many cases their journey is not yet complete.
Here are a few of these modern day visionaries and explorers of the mind and spirit speaking themselves of where they are in their efforts.
"Can we create new life out of our digital universe?" Craig Venter asks. His answer is "yes" -- and pretty soon. He walks through his latest research and promises that we'll soon be able to build and boot up a synthetic chromosome.
Alan Russell studies regenerative medicine -- a breakthrough way of thinking about disease and injury, using a process that can signal the body to rebuild itself.
Juan Enriquez thinks and writes about the profound changes that genomics and other life sciences will cause in business, technology, politics and society.
Shai Agassi has a bold plan for electric cars and to make countries oil free by 2020.
Dr. Larry Brilliant talks about how smallpox was eradicated from the planet, and calls for a new global system that can identify and contain pandemics before they spread.
Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the MIT Media Laboratory, describes how the One Laptop Per Child project will build and distribute the "$100 laptop."
A call to service by Obama. Speaking at a commencement ceremony on a college campus during his campaign, Obama spoke passionately about a call to service to the young.
Nandan Nilekhani's optimistic book "Imagining India: The idea of a renewed nation " which lays out the achievements and challenges facing the country and how technology can be mobilized for development.
As Bobby Kennedy once said "few will have the greatness to bend history itself" but I am certain that a few will certainly come from the group above. I would welcome my readers contributing their own views on who they see as an explorer and visionary based on their knowledge.
When I was growing up, we were continually being told that success was 90 % perspiration and 10 % inspiration. Nobody told us how much perspiration. Till now. Now we know -- it is ten thousand hours worth.
According to a new book, Outliers, Malcom Gladwell argues that raw talent without hours of practice and preparation is not going to lead to success. In fact researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours. " Ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world class expert- in anything". He adduces examples of this ranging from the Beetles to Bill Gates. Lennon and McCartney of the Beatles started playing together in 1957 but their greatest hit came ten years later. And the real reason for their success- preparation and practice. The Beatles spent years playing at Indra, a strip club in Hamburg eight hours a day seven days a week. By the time they had their first burst of success, they had performed alive an estimated twelve hundred times. Bill Gates started doing real time programming as an eighth grader in 1968 because the Mothers Club at his school had started a computer club. For the next five years, Bill Gates spent a great deal of time on computers- sometimes eight hours a day for seven days a week for months on end. By the time he dropped out of Harvard, he had been programming practically non stop for seven consecutive years-- way beyond the ten thousand hours mark. Even Mozart ( whose father made him practice and whose best work came after the age of twenty one, had been composing for ten years).
What about our own Mozart of Madras- the Oscar winner A R Rehman? Rehman's father was a composer and musician who inspired Rehman to learn music from the early age of four. But he died when Rehman was only 9 making him the breadwinner of the family. For the next 8-9 years Rehman worked as an assistant to a number of music directors in the south while selling musical instruments as the family business. In 1987 he turned his hand to advertising, writing over 300 jingles over the five year period from 1987. " Working in ads", he now says, " contributed to the precision in my music. In jingles, you only have a few seconds to create a mood, or convey a message or emotion. Jingles taught me discipline". Rehman finally got his breakthrough in Mani Ratnam's Roja at the age of 25. Yes, by that time he had put in his ten thousand hours of practice and hard work to complement his innate genius!
What about another icon- Sachin Tendulkar widely regarded as one of the greatest batsmen in the history of cricket. Tendulkar began his cricketing career under the guidance of his coach and mentor, Ramakant Achrekar . When he was young, Tendulkar would practice for hours on end in the nets. If he became exhausted, Achrekar would put a one rupee coin the top of the stumps the bowler who dismissed Tendulkar would get the coin. If Tendulkar passed the whole session without getting dismissed, the coach would give him the coin. Tendulkar contributes this technique in being instrumental for enhancing his concentration. He still treasures the 13 coins earned by him during the practice sessions. On December 11, 1988, aged just 15 years and 232 days, Tendulkar scored 100 not-out in his debut first-class match him the youngest cricketer to score a century on his first-class debut. By that time he had been playing and practising for - yes- ten years.
But according to Gladwell, there are other elements too besides inborn talent that lead to the creation of what we call genius which we often ignore-- the family they are born into, the cultural environment of the day, even the structure of society. He argues that the outliers in a particular field reach their lofty status not only base on their innate talent but through a combination of ability, opportunity and utterly arbitrary advantage. Intellect and achievement are far from perfectly correlated. Thus higher IQ does not correlate with success. With intelligence you also need practical intelligence. And you need others- parent, mentors- when you are young and averse to harsh discipline of practice. Success is a function of persistence and doggedness and the willingness to work hard over a long period of time. But still no one it seems clear ever makes it alone. Gladwell concludes that the outliers are "products of history and community, of opportunity and legacy..their success is grounded in a web of advantages and inheritance..all critical to making them who they are."
In a recent newspaper article, David Brooks points out the modern view of genius which takes a somewhat similar and yet different tack. According to him " the key factor separating geniuses from the merely accomplished is not a divine spark. It’s not I.Q. .. Instead, it’s deliberate practice...and the ability to focus for long periods of time and a father ( or mentor) intent on improving his skills."
Based on the latest research, he tries gamely to design a genius thus " take a girl who possessed a slightly above average verbal ability". Let her meet a famous author when young to "to create a sense of affinity" and would give her a vision of her future self. "It would also help if one of her parents died when she was 12, infusing her with a profound sense of insecurity and fueling a desperate need for success." Then she would practice writing under a mentor who would provide a constant stream of feedback, viewing her performance from the outside, correcting the smallest errors, pushing her to take on tougher challenges. And our genius is on the way!
A common refrain emerges from all of these studies. Innate ability is fine but true genius requires hard work and practice of your craft for almost two to three hours a day for ten years. Yes ten thousand hours worth !
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.
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."
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”.
“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.
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.
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 philosopherSun 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.
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.
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.
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!
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, aPakistani 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.
