One of the hardest tasks that aspiring youngsters in India face is entry to the prestigious Institutes of Technologies. Every year 230,000 from all over India compete for barely 5,000 seats in the country's seven IITs. With only a one in forty chance of getting in, the fact that one training school managed to get all of its 30 students selected for the IIT’s is an amazing feat, made even more amazing by the fact that all of them came from the poorest families from the poorest state in the country. Thereby hangs a tale worth telling.
Anand Kumar trains the poorest students in Bihar for entry into the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology’s. A brilliant mathematics student himself, but from a very poor background, he could not take up admission at the Cambridge University even with a fellowship as he had no means to provide for his basic expenses. But he was determined to keep the tradition of Ramanujam, the mathematics wizard, alive and started giving lessons to the street children and those in the slums in the early 90s. He started the Ramanujam School of Mathematics in the mid-90s.
The task that Anand has taken on himself is to ensure that not a single underprivileged boy or girl in Bihar (with exceptional intelligence) is deprived of an opportunity to get ahead because of their lower social and economic condition. Anand is acutely aware from his own history that to be born with an extraordinary intelligence quotient alone does not guarantee success in life. He remembers all too clearly that he had to fight hard just to get to use the superior mathematical ability he realized he possessed early on in life. "The Super 30 was born with this idea in mind," explains Anand.
Super 30 is a highly ambitious and innovative educational program which hunts for 30 meritorious talents from among the economically backward sections of the society and shapes them for India's most prestigious institution – the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). The normal group comprises wards of brick kiln worker, rickshaw puller, landless farmer, roadside vendor and the likes. During this program students are provided absolutely free coaching, lodging and food. This initiative is funded by the money Anand Kumar earns from his coaching. Founded in 2003, 18 students made it to the IIT’s in the founding year. The number rose to 22 in 2004 to 26 in 2005 to 28 in 2006 and 2007 and up to 30 in 2008 and 2009. Yes that’s correct! In the last two years, the super 30 boasts of a cent percent record with 30 out of 30 students coming through. The training school's feat is even more amazing in a state where more than two million children are out of school, and the literacy rate is a shameful 47%.
How did they do it?
The students come here to attend classes from Patna and also from faraway villages and make the journey every day by bus, on bicycles or even on foot. Those who stay in the hostels are provided free food and lodging. Each year 6,000 young boys buy the application form for Rs 60 from the Institute and submit it in the hope of making it to the Super 30. Candidates then take three separate admission tests to determine IQ, administered in ascending order of difficulty. Of the 500 short-listed initially, 30 eventually make it to the core group. The basis of the selection is that the candidate has to be from an underprivileged background. These are the poorest but with the most powerful minds. The training that lasts a year is rigorous and almost monk like in its intensity. But there are no drop outs from the program.
When you are trapped in a situation where you know you have the intelligence to conquer the world but you are crushed in by your circumstances, you'll do anything to break free. This is perhaps the true secret behind the success of Super 30. This and the commitment of a single individual to an idea.
anil
Monday, June 15, 2009
Sunday, June 14, 2009
The great US health care debate
Recent months have seen the start of the great debate on health care in the US. The facts are clear- there are 45 million uninsured citizens in the richest country in the world which has the highest cost of health care but with no comparable favorable outcomes.
While the next months will see this debate demagogued no end, as a user of this health care system, some things are absolutely clear- there is absolutely no incentive in this system for anybody to control costs. Not the patient, who is insured, and has no interest in shopping for more cost effective care, just the best that is available; not the doctors, who on the plea of malpractice suits possibilities, order all or any tests that may be relevant ( and some of them performed by facilities owned by them); not the hospital which is happy to provide all the latest facilities needed or not as it adds to their profits; not the pharmaceutical companies who encourage new and costlier drugs rather than the generics on the plea of need of funds for further research, not the insurance companies who are happy to pass on the costs of all this health care to the public through rapidly rising premiums. In short everybody is happy with their health care - that is till the bill comes due!
An average US family today pays $ 500-1000 per month in health premiums, deductibles, medicines etc. I could see a tip of why after I insisted on a bill from the hospital I had just returned from -- in the itemized bill, an aspirin pill was charged at $ 8-- yes $ 8-- and a simple blood sugar test at $ 25 while every intern who visited me even for five minutes along with the team was happy to add his wages to the bill leading to a cost of almost $ 2500 per day for a simple stay in the hospital without any major surgeries. Clearly it is a system where the costs have run amok. In some ways it is the inverse of the major damage caused in the recent collapse of the financial system- in the financial system people were investing other peoples money in the riskiest of bets; in the medical health care system, people are spending other peoples money to ensure the least possible of risks for all operations !
But is that the way it should be ? Are there any no alternatives that offer cost effective care? Atul Gawande in a recent article pointed out that indeed there are alternate ways of delivering health care that are both effective and less costly since they align the patients well being with cost effective care. He does that by describing two operating systems in different parts of the country to make his point.
McAllen is in Hidalgo County, Texas has the lowest household income in the country but it has one of the most expensive health-care markets in the country. In 2006, Medicare spent fifteen thousand dollars per enrollee here, almost twice the national average. The income per capita is twelve thousand dollars. In other words, Medicare spends three thousand dollars more per person here than the average person earns. The place has virtually all the technology that you’d find at Harvard and Stanford and the Mayo Clinic, and yet there’s no evidence that the treatments and technologies available at McAllen are any better than those found elsewhere in the country. Nor does the care given in McAllen stand out for its quality. Medicare ranks hospitals on twenty-five metrics of care. On all but two of these, McAllen’s five largest hospitals performed worse on average. McAllen costs Medicare seven thousand dollars more per person each year than does the average city in America. But not, so far as one can tell, because it’s delivering better health care.
Why is this so? It seems that doctors here order unnecessary tests just to protect themselves. Doctors were racking up charges with extra tests, services, and procedures- patients in McAllen got more of pretty much everything—more diagnostic testing, more hospital treatment, more surgery, more home care.Thus the primary cause of McAllen’s extreme costs was, very simply, the across-the-board overuse of medicine. This is further exemplified in its newest hospital in the area which is physician-owned which has a reputationfor aggressively recruiting high-volume physicians to become investors and send patients there. Physicians who do so receive not only their fee for whatever service they provide but also a percentage of the hospital’s profits from the tests, surgery, or other care patients are given, providing physicians an unholy temptation to overorder. It was clear that a few leaders of local institutions in this area took profit growth to be a legitimate ethic in the practice of medicine and a medical community came to treat patients the way subprime-mortgage lenders treated home buyers: as profit centers.
On the other extreme of medical practice lies the Mayo Clinic model, which is among the highest-quality, lowest-cost health-care systems in the country. Its core tenet “The needs of the patient come first”—not the convenience of the doctors, not their revenues is as different from McAllen as is possible. The doctors and nurses, and even the janitors, sit in meetings almost weekly, working on ideas to make the service and the care better, not to get more money out of patients. Decades ago, the Mayo Clinic recognized that the first thing it needed to do was to eliminate the financial barriers. It thus pooled all the money the doctors and the hospital system received and began paying everyone a salary, so that the doctors’ goal in patient care couldn’t be increasing their own personal income. Mayo promoted leaders who focussed first on what was best for patients, and then on how to make this financially possible. They focussed on rooting out problems like poor prevention practices, unnecessary back operations, and unusual hospital-complication rates- on patient well being rather than on profit maximization.
When you look across the spectrum from the Mayo Clinic to McAllen—and the almost threefold difference in the costs of care—you come to realize that there is a battle being waged for the soul of American medicine. But a choice must be made. Whom do we want in charge of managing the full complexity of medical care? We can turn to insurers (whether public or private), which have proved repeatedly that they can’t do it. Or we can turn to the local medical communities, which have proved that they can. But we have to choose someone—because, in much of the country, no one is in charge. And the result is the most wasteful and the least sustainable health-care system in the world.
It is interesting that the solution most opposed by the right wing ideolouges actually embraces the twin principles of market competition and individual choice !
While the next months will see this debate demagogued no end, as a user of this health care system, some things are absolutely clear- there is absolutely no incentive in this system for anybody to control costs. Not the patient, who is insured, and has no interest in shopping for more cost effective care, just the best that is available; not the doctors, who on the plea of malpractice suits possibilities, order all or any tests that may be relevant ( and some of them performed by facilities owned by them); not the hospital which is happy to provide all the latest facilities needed or not as it adds to their profits; not the pharmaceutical companies who encourage new and costlier drugs rather than the generics on the plea of need of funds for further research, not the insurance companies who are happy to pass on the costs of all this health care to the public through rapidly rising premiums. In short everybody is happy with their health care - that is till the bill comes due!
An average US family today pays $ 500-1000 per month in health premiums, deductibles, medicines etc. I could see a tip of why after I insisted on a bill from the hospital I had just returned from -- in the itemized bill, an aspirin pill was charged at $ 8-- yes $ 8-- and a simple blood sugar test at $ 25 while every intern who visited me even for five minutes along with the team was happy to add his wages to the bill leading to a cost of almost $ 2500 per day for a simple stay in the hospital without any major surgeries. Clearly it is a system where the costs have run amok. In some ways it is the inverse of the major damage caused in the recent collapse of the financial system- in the financial system people were investing other peoples money in the riskiest of bets; in the medical health care system, people are spending other peoples money to ensure the least possible of risks for all operations !
But is that the way it should be ? Are there any no alternatives that offer cost effective care? Atul Gawande in a recent article pointed out that indeed there are alternate ways of delivering health care that are both effective and less costly since they align the patients well being with cost effective care. He does that by describing two operating systems in different parts of the country to make his point.
McAllen is in Hidalgo County, Texas has the lowest household income in the country but it has one of the most expensive health-care markets in the country. In 2006, Medicare spent fifteen thousand dollars per enrollee here, almost twice the national average. The income per capita is twelve thousand dollars. In other words, Medicare spends three thousand dollars more per person here than the average person earns. The place has virtually all the technology that you’d find at Harvard and Stanford and the Mayo Clinic, and yet there’s no evidence that the treatments and technologies available at McAllen are any better than those found elsewhere in the country. Nor does the care given in McAllen stand out for its quality. Medicare ranks hospitals on twenty-five metrics of care. On all but two of these, McAllen’s five largest hospitals performed worse on average. McAllen costs Medicare seven thousand dollars more per person each year than does the average city in America. But not, so far as one can tell, because it’s delivering better health care.
Why is this so? It seems that doctors here order unnecessary tests just to protect themselves. Doctors were racking up charges with extra tests, services, and procedures- patients in McAllen got more of pretty much everything—more diagnostic testing, more hospital treatment, more surgery, more home care.Thus the primary cause of McAllen’s extreme costs was, very simply, the across-the-board overuse of medicine. This is further exemplified in its newest hospital in the area which is physician-owned which has a reputationfor aggressively recruiting high-volume physicians to become investors and send patients there. Physicians who do so receive not only their fee for whatever service they provide but also a percentage of the hospital’s profits from the tests, surgery, or other care patients are given, providing physicians an unholy temptation to overorder. It was clear that a few leaders of local institutions in this area took profit growth to be a legitimate ethic in the practice of medicine and a medical community came to treat patients the way subprime-mortgage lenders treated home buyers: as profit centers.
On the other extreme of medical practice lies the Mayo Clinic model, which is among the highest-quality, lowest-cost health-care systems in the country. Its core tenet “The needs of the patient come first”—not the convenience of the doctors, not their revenues is as different from McAllen as is possible. The doctors and nurses, and even the janitors, sit in meetings almost weekly, working on ideas to make the service and the care better, not to get more money out of patients. Decades ago, the Mayo Clinic recognized that the first thing it needed to do was to eliminate the financial barriers. It thus pooled all the money the doctors and the hospital system received and began paying everyone a salary, so that the doctors’ goal in patient care couldn’t be increasing their own personal income. Mayo promoted leaders who focussed first on what was best for patients, and then on how to make this financially possible. They focussed on rooting out problems like poor prevention practices, unnecessary back operations, and unusual hospital-complication rates- on patient well being rather than on profit maximization.
When you look across the spectrum from the Mayo Clinic to McAllen—and the almost threefold difference in the costs of care—you come to realize that there is a battle being waged for the soul of American medicine. But a choice must be made. Whom do we want in charge of managing the full complexity of medical care? We can turn to insurers (whether public or private), which have proved repeatedly that they can’t do it. Or we can turn to the local medical communities, which have proved that they can. But we have to choose someone—because, in much of the country, no one is in charge. And the result is the most wasteful and the least sustainable health-care system in the world.
It is interesting that the solution most opposed by the right wing ideolouges actually embraces the twin principles of market competition and individual choice !
Thursday, June 11, 2009
The human heart
The cockroach has survived every civilization known to man.Evolution has favored cockroaches above human beings, at least when it comes to the functioning of the heart. A cockroach’s heart will continue to beat even when one of its chambers has failed; in similar circumstances, a man will die. Thus the lowly cockroach is at the heart of successful research by scientists who are developing an artificial heart. Using the roach’s heart as a model, the new prototype promises to be much cheaper and more reliable for implantation in humans than models currently in use.
The key to the new heart involves the insect’s unique breathing system. The cockroach is blessed with thirteen blood-pumping chambers while humans only have four. When a chamber fails in a human heart, it usually leads to a fatal cardiac arrest but in a cockroach with its 13 chambers,linked like a string of sausages, it can keep pumping even if one breaks down!A cockroach’s heart is a tube that runs the length of its body. As each chamber contracts, the blood within is pumped to a higher pressure. Each successive chamber increases the pressure. A human heart, by contrast, has four chambers. Two of these pump blood to the lungs, where it picks up oxygen, then the other two pump this oxygenated blood throughout the body. One of these four chambers—the left ventricle—contracts most strongly to pressurize the blood.
The artificial hearts developed so far have mostly mimicked human ones. The first devices, developed in the 1950s and 1960s, were large machines placed on trolleys next to the patient and attached by tubes. Modern artificial hearts are less cumbersome, but they are still rather unwieldy because they use compressed air to pump the blood and are powered by heavy batteries. They are used temporarily, usually for a few days or weeks, until a real heart is available for transplant.
Instead of trying to mimic the action of the left ventricle, Dr Guha’s design uses a multi-step approach borrowed from the cockroach. His device, made from plastic and titanium, is the same size as a human heart but with five chambers arranged like the layers of an onion. Each chamber acts in succession to increase the pressure of the blood. The contraction of each chamber is controlled by a motor driven by bulky batteries. "Our model is based on the cockroach system, where we build up the pressure in smaller steps. So even if one chamber fails, a person can still live. This model does not stress the other components (pumping elements) and there is less stress on the blood cells”, says team leader Professor Sujoy Guha.The artificial heart, named TAH ( total artificial heart) is being tested on goats, with human trials scheduled for next year. If these are successful, the device could be on the market in three to five years.
The multi-step approach makes this artificial heart much cheaper to build than those that use compressed air to pump the blood. Dr Guha says it would cost $2,000-2,500 about thirty times cheaper than the present models.
I read these reports with great pleasure for a number of reasons. First the research was led by an Indian. Secondly it was done in India. And even more importantly the work was done at the Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur, my alma mater. I graduated from this IIT in 1961 and visited the institute only last year- as the institute had decided to honor me as a Distinguished Alumnus. But the most inspiring news was that the leader of the team was Sujoy Guha who graduated with me in 1961! Wow indeed.
On a more personal note, I spent the better part of 2007 in Johns Hopkins hospital in Baltimore being evaluated for a heart transplant.I was not approved for a human heart transplant, but perhaps the cockroach inspired TAH of Professor Guha would be the replacement! To have your heart redesigned by your own classmate- how cool is that!
The key to the new heart involves the insect’s unique breathing system. The cockroach is blessed with thirteen blood-pumping chambers while humans only have four. When a chamber fails in a human heart, it usually leads to a fatal cardiac arrest but in a cockroach with its 13 chambers,linked like a string of sausages, it can keep pumping even if one breaks down!A cockroach’s heart is a tube that runs the length of its body. As each chamber contracts, the blood within is pumped to a higher pressure. Each successive chamber increases the pressure. A human heart, by contrast, has four chambers. Two of these pump blood to the lungs, where it picks up oxygen, then the other two pump this oxygenated blood throughout the body. One of these four chambers—the left ventricle—contracts most strongly to pressurize the blood.
The artificial hearts developed so far have mostly mimicked human ones. The first devices, developed in the 1950s and 1960s, were large machines placed on trolleys next to the patient and attached by tubes. Modern artificial hearts are less cumbersome, but they are still rather unwieldy because they use compressed air to pump the blood and are powered by heavy batteries. They are used temporarily, usually for a few days or weeks, until a real heart is available for transplant.
Instead of trying to mimic the action of the left ventricle, Dr Guha’s design uses a multi-step approach borrowed from the cockroach. His device, made from plastic and titanium, is the same size as a human heart but with five chambers arranged like the layers of an onion. Each chamber acts in succession to increase the pressure of the blood. The contraction of each chamber is controlled by a motor driven by bulky batteries. "Our model is based on the cockroach system, where we build up the pressure in smaller steps. So even if one chamber fails, a person can still live. This model does not stress the other components (pumping elements) and there is less stress on the blood cells”, says team leader Professor Sujoy Guha.The artificial heart, named TAH ( total artificial heart) is being tested on goats, with human trials scheduled for next year. If these are successful, the device could be on the market in three to five years.
The multi-step approach makes this artificial heart much cheaper to build than those that use compressed air to pump the blood. Dr Guha says it would cost $2,000-2,500 about thirty times cheaper than the present models.
I read these reports with great pleasure for a number of reasons. First the research was led by an Indian. Secondly it was done in India. And even more importantly the work was done at the Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur, my alma mater. I graduated from this IIT in 1961 and visited the institute only last year- as the institute had decided to honor me as a Distinguished Alumnus. But the most inspiring news was that the leader of the team was Sujoy Guha who graduated with me in 1961! Wow indeed.
On a more personal note, I spent the better part of 2007 in Johns Hopkins hospital in Baltimore being evaluated for a heart transplant.I was not approved for a human heart transplant, but perhaps the cockroach inspired TAH of Professor Guha would be the replacement! To have your heart redesigned by your own classmate- how cool is that!
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Pakistan on the brink
Pakistan is close to the brink, perhaps not to a meltdown of the government, but to a permanent state of anarchy. Even as most Pakistanis have concluded that the Taliban now pose the greatest threat to the Pakistani state since its creation, the president, the prime minister, and the army chief have, until recently, been in a state of denial of reality. One can therefore expect a slow, insidious, long-burning fuse of fear, terror, and paralysis that the Taliban have lit and that the state is unable, and partly unwilling, to douse.
The Taliban have taken advantage of the vacuum of governance by carrying out spectacular suicide bombings in major cities across the country. Having won Swat, the Taliban have made clear their intentions to overthrow the national government. Although the group has no single acknowledged leader, it has formed alliances with around forty different extremist groups, some of them with no previous direct connection to the Taliban. Moreover, the Afghan Taliban have become a model for the entire region. The Afghan Taliban of the 1990s have morphed into the Pakistani Taliban and the Central Asian Taliban and it may be only a question of time before we see the Indian Taliban.
Ahmed Rashid in his latest article paints a grim picture of the impending failure of Pakistan and its likely repercussions.
The Taliban have taken advantage of the vacuum of governance by carrying out spectacular suicide bombings in major cities across the country. Having won Swat, the Taliban have made clear their intentions to overthrow the national government. Although the group has no single acknowledged leader, it has formed alliances with around forty different extremist groups, some of them with no previous direct connection to the Taliban. Moreover, the Afghan Taliban have become a model for the entire region. The Afghan Taliban of the 1990s have morphed into the Pakistani Taliban and the Central Asian Taliban and it may be only a question of time before we see the Indian Taliban.
Ahmed Rashid in his latest article paints a grim picture of the impending failure of Pakistan and its likely repercussions.
Empathy anyone ?
During the past few weeks, ever since Obama announced his pick for the supreme court justice, there has been one word at the center of all discussions-- empathy. It was important for people to have empathy as they preside in the supreme court. But what is empathy ? It is the ability to be able to feel someone else's pain and be able to walk in their shoes?
From the time of Adam, the one thing that men have never learnt is to empathize with their better halves- witness the tomes written on " understanding women". But once in a while, a writer gets it just right. Here is Dana Jennings on his brief life as a woman..
From the time of Adam, the one thing that men have never learnt is to empathize with their better halves- witness the tomes written on " understanding women". But once in a while, a writer gets it just right. Here is Dana Jennings on his brief life as a woman..
" As my wife and I sat on the couch one night this past winter, reading and half-watching the inevitable HGTV, I started sweating hard and my face got so fevered and flushed that I felt as if I were peering into an oven. I turned to Deb and said, “Man, I’m having a wicked hot flash.” And she said, “Me, too.” Then we laughed. You laugh a lot — unless your hormones are making you cry — when you’re having menopause with your wife."
Dana was taking a course in hormonal therapy as part of his cancer treatment and one of the side effects was menopause like symptoms."The side effect that surprised me most were the hot flashes" he writes, " — not that I got them, I was expecting that, but by how intense they were. They often woke me in the middle of the night and made me sweat so much that I drenched the sheets. In midwinter I’d walk our miniature poodle, Bijou, wearing shorts and a T-shirt. I sometimes felt as if Deb could fry eggs on my chest. (It’s also a bit disconcerting when your hot flashes are fiercer than your wife’s.)"
"Hand in hand with the hot flashes came the food cravings. I lusted after Cheetos and Peanut Butter M&M’s, maple-walnut milkshakes, and spaghetti and meatballs buried in a blizzard of Parmesan. Isn’t it funny how cravings very rarely involve tofu, bean curd or omega-3 oils?
Then there was the weight issue. During the six months I was on Lupron I gained about 25 pounds. That was partly a byproduct of the cravings, but it also stemmed from the hormonal changes triggered in my body.
And I hated it, hated it, hated it. I had never had to worry about my weight, and I began to understand why media aimed at women and girls obsess over weight so much. It was strange and unsettling not to be able to tell my body, “No,” when it wanted to wolf down a fistful of Doritos slathered with scallion cream cheese.
When I wasn’t devouring a king-size Italian sub or smoldering from a hot flash, it seemed that I was crying. The tears would usually pour down when I got ambushed by some old tune: “Sweet Baby James” and “Fire and Rain” by James Taylor, “That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be” by Carly Simon and, yes, “It’s My Party” by Lesley Gore. Not only was I temporarily menopausal, but it appeared that I was also turning into a teenage girl from the early 1970s.
There were other side effects, too, like headaches and fatigue. But when I started drinking Diet Coke for the first time in my life, my son Owen couldn’t take it anymore. He said, “Dad, are you turning into a chick?”
Even though Dana only got to spend a brief time on the outer precincts of menopause, it did confirm his lifelong sense that the world of women is hormonal and mysterious, and that we men don’t have the semblance of a clue!
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
The Caregivers journey
There is nothing harder or more complex in life than to tend to a loved one whose life is slowly and painfully draining away. The caregiver- be it the parent, spouse or sibling face difficult and in some cases incredibly painful choices. While more attention is focused on the patient, we sometimes forget that such illness not only attacks the patient but indeed the entire family. How does the caregiver, who may make this difficult and painful journey alone, cope with the physical, mental and psychological problems that lie ahead?
The journey often starts with a call that says your mom's fallen, your dad's had an accident or your spouse has a frightening diagnosis. Little do you realize the turns and twists that await you on this tortuous journey of caregiving – a role you never asked for nor sought but one that will dominate your life into the future. You realize, perhaps for the first time, you have a new role—family caregiver and the family rock.
The first reaction to the news is usually one of stunned disbelief—“It’s not possible” or “Why me?” But as the hard facts sink in, there is both denial and defiance. Both the patient and the caregiver often refuse to accept the verdict- often delivered by the doctor with clinical accuracy in guise of objectivity. Could the diagnosis be wrong? Is there another expert to be consulted? Thus starts a period of intense activity. There is a search for the best experts in the world, the latest advances in medicine, and experiences of others who have survived. “We will beat this thing” you tell your loved one. Experts and doctors are consulted, blood tests and other diagnostic instruments repeated, google searched for any other options around the world for any cures. It is the period too when family and friends express their concern and offer suggestions as who to consult and what to do, sending cuttings from newspapers about the latest advances in medicine. Each day brings hope of a new cure or a new discovery and promise of a different future.
Sadly, in most cases, this does not sustain and the cold hard realization sets in that there are no silver bullets and no quick cures to what afflicts your loved one. The sprint for recovery now becomes a marathon. You begin living with a new uncertainty. You know that you're not going back to the old normal. You, the caregiver, are slowly gradually left alone as family and friends, the crisis of discovery over, return to their respective lives. Thus begins a period where you realize that you must now learn to live with an affliction that would be long lasting. “When I first learned that my husband would be an invalid and had none or little chance of a full recovery, my first reaction was of relief. At least I would have him for some more time. And that perhaps over time medical breakthroughs might help his recovery” says one caregiver whose husband was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
It is true that things usually settle down after the first excitement is over but you are now entering the most painful part of the journey. First the daily routines take over. The patient is slowly learning to accept the limitations of the affliction. But burdened with the sole daily responsibility, the physical toll mounts on the caregiver and soon fatigue takes over. As the days stretch out and the constant drumbeat of doctors and medicines dominates daily life, you will often despair and yearn for the old days. Pangs of regret over travels not taken and visits not made will overwhelm you at times. Sometimes anger overcomes you as the prospect of endless ministrations lies before you without end. It is a cell that you cannot break out of and sometimes you lash out at your loved one till remorse overtakes you. He or she did not choose this illness and is as much a prisoner of this situation as you are. Yet watching life go by does require a resolution and steel as you tend to your loved one. Some come to terms with the limitations and yet continue to lead a busy and productive life. There can be high points too as you both discover new things despite constraints and continue building memories for the future. You soon realize that it will continue to be a rollercoaster—you may be up and down for weeks or even months. But surviving this despite the physical toll it is taking becomes crucial during this period since you are essentially now alone.
In the Indian system the caregiver used to have a support system. In the joint family system, the invalid remained a part of the family and everybody pitched in to help and care along of course with the servants. But with the breakdown of the joint family system, the nuclear family has become increasingly ill equipped to handle any major long term illness particularly since there are so few institutional facilities to help the caregivers. In the US there are a large number of nursing homes and assisted family care institutions, and even a home care service provider service, and finally a hospice, but besides being ruinously expensive, they rarely satisfy the urge to hew closely to the loved ones at their times of need
And then there is the psychological toll even as flashes of past joys intermingle with the sorrows to come in future. As a caregiver, you totally commit yourself to caring for another person who no longer functions as they once did in the normal scheme of life. You may give up our job, your own independence, and very often your lifestyle. You become so involved with the care of that person out of love that you become removed from normal day to day living. Your entire life revolves around comforting and making our loved one feel loved. In a very real sense you have given your life for another but this comes at a price. Gail Sheehy advises the caregivers “You've become very good at caregiving by now. You're the only one your loved one trusts. You believe you're the only one who truly understands what he or she needs. You're seen as heroic. You're playing God. But you know what? We ain't God. We can't control disease or aging. And if we keep trying we'll be overcome by stress and fatigue and come to a dead end. You were convinced you could do it differently. But a few years into it you break down in tears and total fatigue. You've given up so much. You absolutely must come up for air or you'll go down in despair.” This lesson is the hardest to accept.
Slowly as your loved one’s conditions worsens, there comes the acceptance that this long journey can have but one end. Yet there remains a fierce desire to prolong this journey even as the daily setbacks mount. Yet no one can answer your most burning question. How long? He too understands and begins to withdraw into silences as he comes to term with his mortality. Besides making sure that those left behind are well provided for, he will also wonder what life would be for them when he is no longer around. This is where the process of separation must begin. It is a slow and painful progression, but the other way is to lose your self and go down with the person you're caring for. That would be a double tragedy.
And then, suddenly, it's over. Your loved one has passed on. Now what? Maybe you've forgotten who you were before. You've been consumed for so long by caring for someone you love. You have given of yourself and done a beautiful thing. Unfortunately for the caregiver the journey does not end with the end. For you have now have to embark on a new journey to come back to a life without your loved one, a journey almost as difficult as the one just completed.
And when the grieving is over, it is time to begin the process of finding your way back into the world. How does one pick up the pieces and start to live again? It will come down to taking one step at a time, some will walk slower than others and some will speed their way back out into the world! Often there will be one step forward and two backwards. While it is not an easy process, remember that there is a life after caregiving! You just have to look forward and find opportunities that are once again there for you. Renew old friendships, find a job that you feel good doing, do volunteer work, find a new or renew an old hobby but you must begin to take a few small steps towards living again! One of the best therapies is finding a friend you can talk to, one who will listen and support you as you ease back into the world!
Soon you will find that life does still exist and you are a part of it! After the first months of mourning, grief will come out of nowhere when you least expect it. Don't sit around and wait for depression to set in. Pick up your passion—whatever you do where time passes and you don't even notice—and follow it. It will lead you on a new path. Look at it as a new adventure in your life and your tribute to the one who has gone before you.
The journey often starts with a call that says your mom's fallen, your dad's had an accident or your spouse has a frightening diagnosis. Little do you realize the turns and twists that await you on this tortuous journey of caregiving – a role you never asked for nor sought but one that will dominate your life into the future. You realize, perhaps for the first time, you have a new role—family caregiver and the family rock.
The first reaction to the news is usually one of stunned disbelief—“It’s not possible” or “Why me?” But as the hard facts sink in, there is both denial and defiance. Both the patient and the caregiver often refuse to accept the verdict- often delivered by the doctor with clinical accuracy in guise of objectivity. Could the diagnosis be wrong? Is there another expert to be consulted? Thus starts a period of intense activity. There is a search for the best experts in the world, the latest advances in medicine, and experiences of others who have survived. “We will beat this thing” you tell your loved one. Experts and doctors are consulted, blood tests and other diagnostic instruments repeated, google searched for any other options around the world for any cures. It is the period too when family and friends express their concern and offer suggestions as who to consult and what to do, sending cuttings from newspapers about the latest advances in medicine. Each day brings hope of a new cure or a new discovery and promise of a different future.
Sadly, in most cases, this does not sustain and the cold hard realization sets in that there are no silver bullets and no quick cures to what afflicts your loved one. The sprint for recovery now becomes a marathon. You begin living with a new uncertainty. You know that you're not going back to the old normal. You, the caregiver, are slowly gradually left alone as family and friends, the crisis of discovery over, return to their respective lives. Thus begins a period where you realize that you must now learn to live with an affliction that would be long lasting. “When I first learned that my husband would be an invalid and had none or little chance of a full recovery, my first reaction was of relief. At least I would have him for some more time. And that perhaps over time medical breakthroughs might help his recovery” says one caregiver whose husband was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
It is true that things usually settle down after the first excitement is over but you are now entering the most painful part of the journey. First the daily routines take over. The patient is slowly learning to accept the limitations of the affliction. But burdened with the sole daily responsibility, the physical toll mounts on the caregiver and soon fatigue takes over. As the days stretch out and the constant drumbeat of doctors and medicines dominates daily life, you will often despair and yearn for the old days. Pangs of regret over travels not taken and visits not made will overwhelm you at times. Sometimes anger overcomes you as the prospect of endless ministrations lies before you without end. It is a cell that you cannot break out of and sometimes you lash out at your loved one till remorse overtakes you. He or she did not choose this illness and is as much a prisoner of this situation as you are. Yet watching life go by does require a resolution and steel as you tend to your loved one. Some come to terms with the limitations and yet continue to lead a busy and productive life. There can be high points too as you both discover new things despite constraints and continue building memories for the future. You soon realize that it will continue to be a rollercoaster—you may be up and down for weeks or even months. But surviving this despite the physical toll it is taking becomes crucial during this period since you are essentially now alone.
In the Indian system the caregiver used to have a support system. In the joint family system, the invalid remained a part of the family and everybody pitched in to help and care along of course with the servants. But with the breakdown of the joint family system, the nuclear family has become increasingly ill equipped to handle any major long term illness particularly since there are so few institutional facilities to help the caregivers. In the US there are a large number of nursing homes and assisted family care institutions, and even a home care service provider service, and finally a hospice, but besides being ruinously expensive, they rarely satisfy the urge to hew closely to the loved ones at their times of need
And then there is the psychological toll even as flashes of past joys intermingle with the sorrows to come in future. As a caregiver, you totally commit yourself to caring for another person who no longer functions as they once did in the normal scheme of life. You may give up our job, your own independence, and very often your lifestyle. You become so involved with the care of that person out of love that you become removed from normal day to day living. Your entire life revolves around comforting and making our loved one feel loved. In a very real sense you have given your life for another but this comes at a price. Gail Sheehy advises the caregivers “You've become very good at caregiving by now. You're the only one your loved one trusts. You believe you're the only one who truly understands what he or she needs. You're seen as heroic. You're playing God. But you know what? We ain't God. We can't control disease or aging. And if we keep trying we'll be overcome by stress and fatigue and come to a dead end. You were convinced you could do it differently. But a few years into it you break down in tears and total fatigue. You've given up so much. You absolutely must come up for air or you'll go down in despair.” This lesson is the hardest to accept.
Slowly as your loved one’s conditions worsens, there comes the acceptance that this long journey can have but one end. Yet there remains a fierce desire to prolong this journey even as the daily setbacks mount. Yet no one can answer your most burning question. How long? He too understands and begins to withdraw into silences as he comes to term with his mortality. Besides making sure that those left behind are well provided for, he will also wonder what life would be for them when he is no longer around. This is where the process of separation must begin. It is a slow and painful progression, but the other way is to lose your self and go down with the person you're caring for. That would be a double tragedy.
And then, suddenly, it's over. Your loved one has passed on. Now what? Maybe you've forgotten who you were before. You've been consumed for so long by caring for someone you love. You have given of yourself and done a beautiful thing. Unfortunately for the caregiver the journey does not end with the end. For you have now have to embark on a new journey to come back to a life without your loved one, a journey almost as difficult as the one just completed.
And when the grieving is over, it is time to begin the process of finding your way back into the world. How does one pick up the pieces and start to live again? It will come down to taking one step at a time, some will walk slower than others and some will speed their way back out into the world! Often there will be one step forward and two backwards. While it is not an easy process, remember that there is a life after caregiving! You just have to look forward and find opportunities that are once again there for you. Renew old friendships, find a job that you feel good doing, do volunteer work, find a new or renew an old hobby but you must begin to take a few small steps towards living again! One of the best therapies is finding a friend you can talk to, one who will listen and support you as you ease back into the world!
Soon you will find that life does still exist and you are a part of it! After the first months of mourning, grief will come out of nowhere when you least expect it. Don't sit around and wait for depression to set in. Pick up your passion—whatever you do where time passes and you don't even notice—and follow it. It will lead you on a new path. Look at it as a new adventure in your life and your tribute to the one who has gone before you.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Emerging Technologies that will change the world
Each year Technology Review, a journal for the alumni of MIT, chooses 10 emerging areas of technology that will soon have a profound impact on the economy and on how we live and work. These advances span information technology, biotechnology and nanotechnology-the core of TR coverage in every issue. All of these areas merit special attention in the decade to come. In each area TR also highlights one innovator who exemplifies the potential and promise of the field. Since these predictions have been ongoing at least since 2001, it is worth examining how good has been the track record of the premium technology university in the world.
Brain-Machine Interface : Nicolelis predicts that Human brain machine interface will allow human brains to control artificial devices designed to restore lost sensory and motor functions. Paralysis sufferers, for example, might gain control over a motorized wheelchair or a prosthetic arm-perhaps even regain control over their own limbs
Flexible Transitors : Cherie Kagan, may have opened the door to cheap, flexible electronics that pack the mojo needed to bring ubiquitous computing closer. Her breakthrough? A compromise: transistors made from materials that combine the charge-shuttling power and speed of inorganics with the affordability and flexibility of organics.
Data Mining : also known as knowledge discovery in databases (KDD): the rapidly emerging technology that lies behind the personalized Web and much else besides. the future of data-mining technology? One very hot area is "text data mining": extracting unexpected relationships from huge collections of free-form text documents. Another hot area, says Fayyad, is "video mining": using a combination of speech recognition, image understanding and natural-language processing techniques to open up the world's vast video archives to efficient computer searching.
Digital Rights Management | Singh, president of ContentGuard, is on a mission to commercialize content protection in a wired world. Digital rights management, or DRM, is "the catalyst for a revolution in e-content," says Singh. "DRM will allow content owners to get much wider and deeper distribution than ever before,
Biometrics Visionics develops and markets pattern-recognition software called FaceIt. In contrast to the main competing technology, which relies on data from the entire face, FaceIt verifies a person's identity based on a set of four facial features that are unique to the individual and unaffected by the presence of facial hair or changes in expression. They plan to build the first line of "biometric network appliances-computers hooked to the Net with the capacity to store and search large databases of facial or other biometric information. The appliances, containing customers' identification data, can then receive queries from companies wanting to authenticate e-transactions. And while consumers will be able to access the system from a cell phone, PDA or desktop computer, Atick expects handheld devices to be the biggest market
Natural Language Processing a new generation of interfaces that will allow us to engage computers in extended conversation--an activity that requires a dauntingly complex integration of speech recognition, natural-language understanding, discourse analysis, world knowledge, reasoning ability and speech generation.
Microphotonics In Joannopoulos' lab, photonic crystals are providing the means to create optical circuits and other small, inexpensive, low-power devices that can carry, route and process data at the speed of light
Untangling Code Kiczales champions what he calls "aspect-oriented programming," a technique that will allow software writers to make the same kinds of shortcuts that those of us in other professions have been making for years.
Robot Design Pollak demonstrated how to fully automate the design and manufacture of robotics by deploying computers to conceive, test and even build the configurations of each robotic system: in short, to use robots to build robots.
Microfluidics Stephen Quake uses tiny volumes of fluids thousands of times smaller than a dewdrop. Microfluidics is a promising new branch of biotechnology. The idea is that once you master fluids at the microscale, you can automate key experiments for genomics and pharmaceutical development, perform instant diagnostic tests, even build implantable drug-delivery devices-all on mass-produced chips. It's a vision so compelling that many industry observers predict microfluidics will do for biotech what the transistor did for electronics.
And what does TR predict will be the emerging technologies in 2009:
Saturday, May 30, 2009
The real danger in Pakistan
The last few days have seen headlines of the Pakistan army’s attacks on the Taliban strongholds in Swat valley. The danger is that the army will succeed in taking over Mingora. This is a danger for the Pakistan polity because this military success will likely divert attention away from what really is the real danger to the country- the spread of Talibanization. For at heart the real danger in Pakistan is not the attacks of the drones or the shady antics of the ISI nor even the Al Queda cells spreading into Punjab and other parts of Pakistan. The real danger- the real cancer eating the society - which will lead Pakistan to being a failed state are the Madrassas. These madrassas are spawning millions of young people who are brain washed into a belief system that is not only medieval but even worse- it is violent and justifies the use of murder in the name of religion.
Here is a country of 180 million where over 37 % of the population is below the age of 15. According to the Pakistani ambassador, only 50 % of the young go to school and the literacy rate is less than 50%. It is not that the young are not going to schools, it is just that they are going to madrassas and not the government run secular schools. During the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, madrassas provided the US-Saudi-Pakistani alliance the cannon fodder they needed to fight a holy war. The Americans and Saudis, helped by a more-than-willing General Zia, funded new madrassas across the length and breadth of Pakistan. Their own ministry of education estimated that about 1.5 million students are acquiring religious education in the 13,000 madrassas in 2005. By 2008 the number of madrassas had doubled with the number of students being correspondingly larger.
It is true that not all madrasas in the country are active centres of jihadi militancy but even those without direct links to violence promote an ideology that provides religious justification for such attacks. Given the government’s half-hearted reform efforts, these unregulated madrasas contribute to country’s climate of lawlessness in numerous ways – from illegal land encroachment and criminality to violent clashes between rival militant groups and use of the pulpit to spread calls for sectarian and jihadi violence. The Pakistan government has yet to take any of the overdue and necessary steps to control religious extremism in the country. These madrassas may be called religious schools but they are in reality the heart of the Pakistan long term dilemma because in essence these are breeding grounds for jihadists with a few exceptions. Exploiting the military government’s weakness, the religious parties and madrasa unions have countered all attempts to regulate the madrasa sector. Do the math in your head- these madrassas have been around for the past 15 years and so have spawned a large number—counted in millions- of young people who have no skills other than knowing Koran and building bombs to kill their enemies. This is the real cancer at the heart of the problem.
But what needs to be done?
The first step has to be a clear eyed diagnosis of the problem. Exactly three decades ago, in the spring of 1979, an uprising against Afghanistan’s then-Soviet-backed regime drew the US into discussions about how to assist the region’s Islamist rebels. Ever since, the United States has been struggling to grasp the patterns of cause and effect in its own policymaking. The miscalculations across five Administrations are by now generally understood: near-unequivocal support for anti-American militias during the nineteen-eighties; averted eyes as Pakistan pursued its covert nuclear ambitions; the abandonment of Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal; the failure to recognize the menace of Al Qaeda during the nineteen-nineties; erratic investments in Pakistan’s democracy, economy, and civil society; and, most recently, a war in Afghanistan after 9/11 which did not defeat Al Qaeda or the Taliban but chased them into Pakistan, where they regrouped and have proceeded to destabilize a country now endowed with atomic bombs. While this recognition of foreign culpability has been finally recognized, the intelligentsia in Pakistan itself has been slow to accept the internal impact of the growth of the jihadi culture and the madrasas that have perpetuated it. In the past few weeks, however, a number of Pakistani journalists have courageously pointed out the monster that the madrassas have created. Nasir Abbas Mirza, a free lance Pakistani journalist in a perceptive piece titled, A monstrous experiment, lays out the long term dangers of neglect. “ At full steam ahead in Pakistan” he writes, “ this is a monstrous experiment in brainwashing and it is on a par with, if not worse than, Nazi Germany’s eugenics. They did it in the name of science; here, it is being done in the name of God and religion”. Recent editorials in Pakistani newspapers have finally started realizing the long term danger these Taliban represent to their dream of an independent, modern state.
The army attack on the few major known eruptions after a decade of denial has to be the next step. But it is important to understand that taking back the Swat valley is only a small part of the problem. Because as the latest missives from the Jihadists point out, these attacks will continue in other population centers including Lahore, Multan and Karachi. Ultimately the country will realize that there is no way this war is going to be won militarily. You simply cannot kill your way to peace so long as the system that produces the jihadists is allowed to continue. The fact is that the madrassa system provides the main fodder for the jihadists and so the lifeline of these madrassas, money needs to be brutally cut off. But choking off the flow of funds to these madrassas has been made more difficult since these contributions from abroad are now disguised as charity. But the control of these external funds is essential to any strategy. The government could clamp down on these flows- both through the banking system and the havvala- by declaring that all money flows to the madrassas must be routed through a government agency specially set up and that any madrassa that receives these contributions must comply with the minimum educational curricula of the government. The International Crisis group provides specific recommendations on what the government can do
Pakistan needs to adopt an effective, mandatory and madrasa-specific registration law that bars jihadi and violent sectarian teachings from madrasa syllabi; requires the disclosure and documentation of income and expenditure based on an annual, independent and external financial audit; requires the documentation of students and their areas of origin and monitors living conditions of students in madrasas; and establishes controls over financing from domestic and foreign sources, accompanied by regular and proactive monitoring. It could also establish a single Madrasa Regulatory Authority, headed by the interior minister, operating under parliamentary oversight and with the necessary resources and powers to: suspend registration of madrasas until such a new law is in force that also includes a new, mandatory registration regime and contains meaningful financial and curricular regulations; and commission an independent, comprehensive survey to obtain authentic data on the number of madrasas and the size of the student body. It certainly needs to close all madrasas affiliated with banned organisations or with other sectarian and jihadi organisations; take legal action against the administration of any mosque or madrasa whose leader calls for internal or external jihad; take legal action against the administration of any mosque or madrasa or religious leader responsible for issuing an apostasy fatwa, whether verbal or written; and enforce existing laws against hate-speech and incitement of communal violence. Finally it needs to reform the public education system by purging material that promotes religious hatred, sectarian bias or historical accounts that justify jihad.
The Taliban on their part have long realized the importance of the madrassas to their long term ambitions and have sought to attack any competitor. Thus the attacks and razing down of 400 government run schools in swat valley. They have also realized that education of girls will in long term upend their brand of religion and hence the attacks in particular on girls schools. It is for the government to take a hard line on these attacks by laying down that for every government schools razed by the Taliban, the government will take over two madrassas removing the teachers and principals. In addition of course the government will have to massively accelerate its own education program. Pakistan today spends less than 2.5 % of its GDP on education while other countries spend twice as much. Pakistan has not seen the mushrooming of Teach Pakistan or Each one teach one movements but it is time for the civil society to move towards this. The example of Indonesia with its myriad islands and multiple languages in the fifties provides an inspiring model how literacy can be brought to large Islamic countries in a relatively short period of time.
And there is yet one more issue that will tend to get lost and that is the reeducation of the talibs who have already gone through the madrassa system. Left alone these could continue to provide an uneasy underbelly of violence in the country. As Mirza points out “remote madrassas may be turning boys into drones but then there are thousands of madrassas spread all over Pakistan’s urban centres that are producing millions of neo-drones who may not become suicide bombers but are totally unfit to live in this world. These kids need to be rescued”. Pakistan will have to systematically track down these budding jihadists and re educate them.
The fact is that this cancer has already taken root in the body politic of Pakistan. The real danger is that people of Pakistan will move too late or do too little to root it out.
Here is a country of 180 million where over 37 % of the population is below the age of 15. According to the Pakistani ambassador, only 50 % of the young go to school and the literacy rate is less than 50%. It is not that the young are not going to schools, it is just that they are going to madrassas and not the government run secular schools. During the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, madrassas provided the US-Saudi-Pakistani alliance the cannon fodder they needed to fight a holy war. The Americans and Saudis, helped by a more-than-willing General Zia, funded new madrassas across the length and breadth of Pakistan. Their own ministry of education estimated that about 1.5 million students are acquiring religious education in the 13,000 madrassas in 2005. By 2008 the number of madrassas had doubled with the number of students being correspondingly larger.
It is true that not all madrasas in the country are active centres of jihadi militancy but even those without direct links to violence promote an ideology that provides religious justification for such attacks. Given the government’s half-hearted reform efforts, these unregulated madrasas contribute to country’s climate of lawlessness in numerous ways – from illegal land encroachment and criminality to violent clashes between rival militant groups and use of the pulpit to spread calls for sectarian and jihadi violence. The Pakistan government has yet to take any of the overdue and necessary steps to control religious extremism in the country. These madrassas may be called religious schools but they are in reality the heart of the Pakistan long term dilemma because in essence these are breeding grounds for jihadists with a few exceptions. Exploiting the military government’s weakness, the religious parties and madrasa unions have countered all attempts to regulate the madrasa sector. Do the math in your head- these madrassas have been around for the past 15 years and so have spawned a large number—counted in millions- of young people who have no skills other than knowing Koran and building bombs to kill their enemies. This is the real cancer at the heart of the problem.
But what needs to be done?
The first step has to be a clear eyed diagnosis of the problem. Exactly three decades ago, in the spring of 1979, an uprising against Afghanistan’s then-Soviet-backed regime drew the US into discussions about how to assist the region’s Islamist rebels. Ever since, the United States has been struggling to grasp the patterns of cause and effect in its own policymaking. The miscalculations across five Administrations are by now generally understood: near-unequivocal support for anti-American militias during the nineteen-eighties; averted eyes as Pakistan pursued its covert nuclear ambitions; the abandonment of Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal; the failure to recognize the menace of Al Qaeda during the nineteen-nineties; erratic investments in Pakistan’s democracy, economy, and civil society; and, most recently, a war in Afghanistan after 9/11 which did not defeat Al Qaeda or the Taliban but chased them into Pakistan, where they regrouped and have proceeded to destabilize a country now endowed with atomic bombs. While this recognition of foreign culpability has been finally recognized, the intelligentsia in Pakistan itself has been slow to accept the internal impact of the growth of the jihadi culture and the madrasas that have perpetuated it. In the past few weeks, however, a number of Pakistani journalists have courageously pointed out the monster that the madrassas have created. Nasir Abbas Mirza, a free lance Pakistani journalist in a perceptive piece titled, A monstrous experiment, lays out the long term dangers of neglect. “ At full steam ahead in Pakistan” he writes, “ this is a monstrous experiment in brainwashing and it is on a par with, if not worse than, Nazi Germany’s eugenics. They did it in the name of science; here, it is being done in the name of God and religion”. Recent editorials in Pakistani newspapers have finally started realizing the long term danger these Taliban represent to their dream of an independent, modern state.
The army attack on the few major known eruptions after a decade of denial has to be the next step. But it is important to understand that taking back the Swat valley is only a small part of the problem. Because as the latest missives from the Jihadists point out, these attacks will continue in other population centers including Lahore, Multan and Karachi. Ultimately the country will realize that there is no way this war is going to be won militarily. You simply cannot kill your way to peace so long as the system that produces the jihadists is allowed to continue. The fact is that the madrassa system provides the main fodder for the jihadists and so the lifeline of these madrassas, money needs to be brutally cut off. But choking off the flow of funds to these madrassas has been made more difficult since these contributions from abroad are now disguised as charity. But the control of these external funds is essential to any strategy. The government could clamp down on these flows- both through the banking system and the havvala- by declaring that all money flows to the madrassas must be routed through a government agency specially set up and that any madrassa that receives these contributions must comply with the minimum educational curricula of the government. The International Crisis group provides specific recommendations on what the government can do
Pakistan needs to adopt an effective, mandatory and madrasa-specific registration law that bars jihadi and violent sectarian teachings from madrasa syllabi; requires the disclosure and documentation of income and expenditure based on an annual, independent and external financial audit; requires the documentation of students and their areas of origin and monitors living conditions of students in madrasas; and establishes controls over financing from domestic and foreign sources, accompanied by regular and proactive monitoring. It could also establish a single Madrasa Regulatory Authority, headed by the interior minister, operating under parliamentary oversight and with the necessary resources and powers to: suspend registration of madrasas until such a new law is in force that also includes a new, mandatory registration regime and contains meaningful financial and curricular regulations; and commission an independent, comprehensive survey to obtain authentic data on the number of madrasas and the size of the student body. It certainly needs to close all madrasas affiliated with banned organisations or with other sectarian and jihadi organisations; take legal action against the administration of any mosque or madrasa whose leader calls for internal or external jihad; take legal action against the administration of any mosque or madrasa or religious leader responsible for issuing an apostasy fatwa, whether verbal or written; and enforce existing laws against hate-speech and incitement of communal violence. Finally it needs to reform the public education system by purging material that promotes religious hatred, sectarian bias or historical accounts that justify jihad.
The Taliban on their part have long realized the importance of the madrassas to their long term ambitions and have sought to attack any competitor. Thus the attacks and razing down of 400 government run schools in swat valley. They have also realized that education of girls will in long term upend their brand of religion and hence the attacks in particular on girls schools. It is for the government to take a hard line on these attacks by laying down that for every government schools razed by the Taliban, the government will take over two madrassas removing the teachers and principals. In addition of course the government will have to massively accelerate its own education program. Pakistan today spends less than 2.5 % of its GDP on education while other countries spend twice as much. Pakistan has not seen the mushrooming of Teach Pakistan or Each one teach one movements but it is time for the civil society to move towards this. The example of Indonesia with its myriad islands and multiple languages in the fifties provides an inspiring model how literacy can be brought to large Islamic countries in a relatively short period of time.
And there is yet one more issue that will tend to get lost and that is the reeducation of the talibs who have already gone through the madrassa system. Left alone these could continue to provide an uneasy underbelly of violence in the country. As Mirza points out “remote madrassas may be turning boys into drones but then there are thousands of madrassas spread all over Pakistan’s urban centres that are producing millions of neo-drones who may not become suicide bombers but are totally unfit to live in this world. These kids need to be rescued”. Pakistan will have to systematically track down these budding jihadists and re educate them.
The fact is that this cancer has already taken root in the body politic of Pakistan. The real danger is that people of Pakistan will move too late or do too little to root it out.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
The sixth sense
One of those discoveries that you want to own instantly.
'SixthSense' is a wearable gestural interface that augments the physical world around us with digital information and lets us use natural hand gestures to interact with that information made by Pranav Mistry.
We've evolved over millions of years to sense the world around us. When we encounter something, someone or some place, we use our five natural senses to perceive information about it; that information helps us make decisions and chose the right actions to take. But arguably the most useful information that can help us make the right decision is not naturally perceivable with our five senses, namely the data, information and knowledge that mankind has accumulated about everything and which is increasingly all available online. Although the miniaturization of computing devices allows us to carry computers in our pockets, keeping us continually connected to the digital world, there is no link between our digital devices and our interactions with the physical world. Information is confined traditionally on paper or digitally on a screen. SixthSense bridges this gap, bringing intangible, digital information out into the tangible world, and allowing us to interact with this information via natural hand gestures. ‘SixthSense’ frees information from its confines by seamlessly integrating it with reality, and thus making the entire world your computer.
The SixthSense prototype is comprised of a pocket projector, a mirror and a camera. The hardware components are coupled in a pendant like mobile wearable device. Both the projector and the camera are connected to the mobile computing device in the user’s pocket. The projector projects visual information enabling surfaces, walls and physical objects around us to be used as interfaces; while the camera recognizes and tracks user's hand gestures and physical objects using computer-vision based techniques. The software program processes the video stream data captured by the camera and tracks the locations of the colored markers (visual tracking fiducials) at the tip of the user’s fingers using simple computer-vision techniques. The movements and arrangements of these fiducials are interpreted into gestures that act as interaction instructions for the projected application interfaces. The maximum number of tracked fingers is only constrained by the number of unique fiducials, thus SixthSense also supports multi-touch and multi-user interaction.
The SixthSense prototype implements several applications that demonstrate the usefulness, viability and flexibility of the system. The map application lets the user navigate a map displayed on a nearby surface using hand gestures, similar to gestures supported by Multi-Touch based systems, letting the user zoom in, zoom out or pan using intuitive hand movements. The drawing application lets the user draw on any surface by tracking the fingertip movements of the user’s index finger. SixthSense also recognizes user’s freehand gestures (postures). For example, the SixthSense system implements a gestural camera that takes photos of the scene the user is looking at by detecting the ‘framing’ gesture. The user can stop by any surface or wall and flick through the photos he/she has taken. SixthSense also lets the user draw icons or symbols in the air using the movement of the index finger and recognizes those symbols as interaction instructions. For example, drawing a magnifying glass symbol takes the user to the map application or drawing an ‘@’ symbol lets the user check his mail. The SixthSense system also augments physical objects the user is interacting with by projecting more information about these objects projected on them. For example, a newspaper can show live video news or dynamic information can be provided on a regular piece of paper. The gesture of drawing a circle on the user’s wrist projects an analog watch.
The current prototype system costs approximate $350 to build. Wow indeed !!
'SixthSense' is a wearable gestural interface that augments the physical world around us with digital information and lets us use natural hand gestures to interact with that information made by Pranav Mistry.
We've evolved over millions of years to sense the world around us. When we encounter something, someone or some place, we use our five natural senses to perceive information about it; that information helps us make decisions and chose the right actions to take. But arguably the most useful information that can help us make the right decision is not naturally perceivable with our five senses, namely the data, information and knowledge that mankind has accumulated about everything and which is increasingly all available online. Although the miniaturization of computing devices allows us to carry computers in our pockets, keeping us continually connected to the digital world, there is no link between our digital devices and our interactions with the physical world. Information is confined traditionally on paper or digitally on a screen. SixthSense bridges this gap, bringing intangible, digital information out into the tangible world, and allowing us to interact with this information via natural hand gestures. ‘SixthSense’ frees information from its confines by seamlessly integrating it with reality, and thus making the entire world your computer.
The SixthSense prototype is comprised of a pocket projector, a mirror and a camera. The hardware components are coupled in a pendant like mobile wearable device. Both the projector and the camera are connected to the mobile computing device in the user’s pocket. The projector projects visual information enabling surfaces, walls and physical objects around us to be used as interfaces; while the camera recognizes and tracks user's hand gestures and physical objects using computer-vision based techniques. The software program processes the video stream data captured by the camera and tracks the locations of the colored markers (visual tracking fiducials) at the tip of the user’s fingers using simple computer-vision techniques. The movements and arrangements of these fiducials are interpreted into gestures that act as interaction instructions for the projected application interfaces. The maximum number of tracked fingers is only constrained by the number of unique fiducials, thus SixthSense also supports multi-touch and multi-user interaction.
The SixthSense prototype implements several applications that demonstrate the usefulness, viability and flexibility of the system. The map application lets the user navigate a map displayed on a nearby surface using hand gestures, similar to gestures supported by Multi-Touch based systems, letting the user zoom in, zoom out or pan using intuitive hand movements. The drawing application lets the user draw on any surface by tracking the fingertip movements of the user’s index finger. SixthSense also recognizes user’s freehand gestures (postures). For example, the SixthSense system implements a gestural camera that takes photos of the scene the user is looking at by detecting the ‘framing’ gesture. The user can stop by any surface or wall and flick through the photos he/she has taken. SixthSense also lets the user draw icons or symbols in the air using the movement of the index finger and recognizes those symbols as interaction instructions. For example, drawing a magnifying glass symbol takes the user to the map application or drawing an ‘@’ symbol lets the user check his mail. The SixthSense system also augments physical objects the user is interacting with by projecting more information about these objects projected on them. For example, a newspaper can show live video news or dynamic information can be provided on a regular piece of paper. The gesture of drawing a circle on the user’s wrist projects an analog watch.
The current prototype system costs approximate $350 to build. Wow indeed !!
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
The new datarati
It has been said that data is not information, information is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom.We are today flooded with data-- from polls on all subjects to human development indices and world bank statistics. It has become increasingly harder to make sense out of this flood of data even if we can access only ten percent of it. Looking at tables in UN statistics or the back pages of the Economist does little to clarify the facts underlying these data much less provide either information or knowledge.
Now comes the chief economist of Google, Varian,who believes that a new era is dawning for what you might call the datarati. "What's ubiquitous and cheap?" Varian asks. "Data." And what is scarce? The analytic ability to utilize that data.
Here is an example of how massive data can be analyzed and presented to convey information and wisdom. Rosling, a Swedish professor has developed a unique software that takes raw boring data and converts it into wisdom. Rosling’s presentations are grounded in solid statistics (often drawn from United Nations data), illustrated by the visualization software he developed. The animations transform development statistics into moving bubbles and flowing curves that make global trends clear, intuitive and even playful.What sets Rosling apart isn’t just his apt observations of broad social and economic trends, but the stunning way he presents them. Guaranteed: You’ve never seen data presented like this. By any logic, a presentation that tracks global health and poverty trends should be, in a word: boring. But in Rosling’s hands, data sings. Trends come to life. And the big picture — usually hazy at best — snaps into sharp focus.
We will increasingly need datarati like Professor Rosling to explain the world we live in- using the data that is now readily available on the internet but converting it into knowledge through its intelligent interpretation.
Now comes the chief economist of Google, Varian,who believes that a new era is dawning for what you might call the datarati. "What's ubiquitous and cheap?" Varian asks. "Data." And what is scarce? The analytic ability to utilize that data.
Here is an example of how massive data can be analyzed and presented to convey information and wisdom. Rosling, a Swedish professor has developed a unique software that takes raw boring data and converts it into wisdom. Rosling’s presentations are grounded in solid statistics (often drawn from United Nations data), illustrated by the visualization software he developed. The animations transform development statistics into moving bubbles and flowing curves that make global trends clear, intuitive and even playful.What sets Rosling apart isn’t just his apt observations of broad social and economic trends, but the stunning way he presents them. Guaranteed: You’ve never seen data presented like this. By any logic, a presentation that tracks global health and poverty trends should be, in a word: boring. But in Rosling’s hands, data sings. Trends come to life. And the big picture — usually hazy at best — snaps into sharp focus.
We will increasingly need datarati like Professor Rosling to explain the world we live in- using the data that is now readily available on the internet but converting it into knowledge through its intelligent interpretation.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Indicator of success
From the time they are born, to the time they leave for college, all parents only have one concern-- will my child be successful in the world? Of course, this worry for some parents starts even earlier and they do their best to give their offspring the best start they can including playing Mozart or self improvement tapes during the child bearing months! But the intensity increases from the time when the offspring arrives and his or her first first words are awaited with bated breath.Even as most parents enjoy their children, they are also keenly aware that the first few years of life is when the future character of the child will be formulated. There is at least one theory which states that the lifelong character is formed in the first five years.
So it is no wonder that some of the modern research seeks to find if they can determine what will make a particular child a success when he or she grows up. One of these experiments postulates that if the child is able to abstain from instant gratification when he is less than five years old and is able to show some self disciploine in face of temptation, it is an indicator of likely success. And they formulated a test-- yes a test - for four year olds to determine this.
Watch Joachim de Posada demonstrate the indicator of success in this charming video
So it is no wonder that some of the modern research seeks to find if they can determine what will make a particular child a success when he or she grows up. One of these experiments postulates that if the child is able to abstain from instant gratification when he is less than five years old and is able to show some self disciploine in face of temptation, it is an indicator of likely success. And they formulated a test-- yes a test - for four year olds to determine this.
Watch Joachim de Posada demonstrate the indicator of success in this charming video
Monday, May 25, 2009
Why woment dont have old age blues?
The fact is that the art of growing older is one honed mostly by women.
But the real issue is why and how have they managed to navigate these treacherous waters with such success?
One of the major reasons women age more successfully than men is their creation and cultivation of a network of friends and acquaintances. Women at all stages of life just have a larger web of relationships that they call on more regularly than men do. They are simply better at patching together a social network that helps them through the process of growing older.
Also as they grow older, women are more apt than men to plug into activities — social, religious, community and family — that keep them busier and for the most part happier late into their lives. This emerges from the fact that women generally have a network of friends and family that they have nourished throughout their lives.
The transition from professional work to retirement and then in retirement to old age too does not catch them with as much surprise because for them the change is not that drastic in their daily lives as it is for men. With some exceptions, they are not so deeply involved in their work lives that it takes over their total lives even if they are professional women.
Even when a spouse or loved one dies or is incapacitated, women are able to cope with these tragedies much more successfully than men. In the
Aging, in part, is about declining powers and men seem to take it harder -- and more personally -- than women. It is true that aging is often a painful process in which one needs to come to terms with increasingly diminished capacities. The people who do the best with aging aren't thinking that much about getting older. They're not really focusing on what's not working anymore. Aging changes everyone and to age gracefully, one needs to anticipate the changes that are inevitable. Part of the challenge of aging gracefully is that you have to continue to find things that are important to you which can include travel, spiritual pursuits, hobbies, new social groups, lifelong learning, or recapturing time with family if one lacked the chance during the career years.
In my experience, however, how one ages depends on a couple of factors, none of which is gender specific. First and foremost is: Have you kept yourself fresh? Have you kept exposing yourself to new challenges and new discoveries? If you haven't, your brain will slowly congeal, and you'll become a parody of your younger self. Second is: Have you kept alive a healthy network of friends? Men and women who have invested in personal friendships throughout their lives will not find themselves wanting for friends when they are old. Conversely, men and women who have let family life impose a hermetically sealed barrier between them and anyone outside their family life will find themselves suddenly lonely and friendless, which will increase their sense of fear and grumpiness. Thirdly, are you able to cede centrality to the younger generation; are you able to give up whatever power you held uniquely over others. Men and women who have invested in being the most powerful person in their world will have a very difficult time adjusting to the young turks who take over from them. Men and women who have invested in their attractiveness as the main center of their being will quickly find themselves at odds with the younger generation, who possess a level of attractiveness they can no longer match.
One other thing: much of what we attribute to aging has nothing to do with getting old, and everything to do with having nothing to do.
It almost seems that what a man needs to do to get over the old age blues is to become more like a woman!
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
The long view
Empirical studies are fundamental to the scientific tradition. “As a means of uncovering truth, some believe, the experimental method is superior to intuition.During the past few weeks, I have read of two studies that both intrigued and surprised me. Intrigued, because these longitudinal studies were carried out over decades-- yes- decades and surprised, because these were in area of human knowledge where the general approach has been to look to philosophers and religious seers rather than empirical studies for answers. One was a study on how to enjoy life carried out over 70 years and the other on how we die, which started in 1958, and is still being carried on.Both required a vision and commitment on the part of both the researchers and the volunteers that is truly amazing.
The first of these studies , also known as the Grant Study is about trying to discover if there is there a formula—some mix of love, work, and psychological adaptation—for a good life? What makes us happy ? For 72 years, researchers at Harvard have been examining this question, following 268 men who entered college in the late 1930s through war, career, marriage and divorce, parenthood and grand parenthood, and old age. Begun in 1937 as a study of healthy, well-adjusted Harvard sophomores (all male), it has followed its subjects for more than 70 years. The originators of the study believed that medical research paid too much attention to sick people; that dividing the body up into symptoms and diseases—and viewing it through the lenses of a hundred micro-specialties—could never shed light on the urgent question of how, on the whole, to live well. This study would draw on undergraduates who could “paddle their own canoe,” and would “attempt to analyze the forces that have produced normal young men.” Normal was defined as “that combination of sentiments and physiological factors which in toto is commonly interpreted as successful living."This study of successful men was pitched at easing “the disharmony of the world at large.”
Some gems from this ongoing study: BLSA researchers were able to disprove the long-held belief that people get crankier as they age. Using data collected from the study's participants, they found that personality traits don't generally change much after age 30: People who were cranky at 27 were likely to be cranky at 87. Also that older people were better able to handle stress than their younger counterparts, who tended to cope by becoming hostile or retreating into fantasy worlds. And in another finding, which I point out to my children, 50 BLSA men were given the equivalent of three martinis over the course of an hour to find out whether age influenced a person's ability to metabolize alcohol. Turns out the older participants were able to metabolize the alcohol just as well as their younger counterparts. However, older men did show greater impairment as a result of their consumption.
What struck me was that there were such long term investments in empirical studies lasting over decades and even more there were so many people willing to donate their time in the cause of science.
I wondered if there were similar studies in India.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A longitudinal study is a correlational research study that involves repeated observations of the same items over long periods of time — often many decades. It is a type of observational study. Longitudinal studies are often used in psychology to study developmental trends across the life span, and in sociology to study life events throughout lifetimes or generations. The reason for this is that unlike cross-sectional studies, longitudinal studies track the same people, and therefore the differences observed in those people are less likely to be the result of cultural differences across generations. Because of this benefit, longitudinal studies make observing changes more accurate and they are applied in various other fields. In medicine, the design is used to uncover predictors of certain diseases.
The first of these studies , also known as the Grant Study is about trying to discover if there is there a formula—some mix of love, work, and psychological adaptation—for a good life? What makes us happy ? For 72 years, researchers at Harvard have been examining this question, following 268 men who entered college in the late 1930s through war, career, marriage and divorce, parenthood and grand parenthood, and old age. Begun in 1937 as a study of healthy, well-adjusted Harvard sophomores (all male), it has followed its subjects for more than 70 years. The originators of the study believed that medical research paid too much attention to sick people; that dividing the body up into symptoms and diseases—and viewing it through the lenses of a hundred micro-specialties—could never shed light on the urgent question of how, on the whole, to live well. This study would draw on undergraduates who could “paddle their own canoe,” and would “attempt to analyze the forces that have produced normal young men.” Normal was defined as “that combination of sentiments and physiological factors which in toto is commonly interpreted as successful living."This study of successful men was pitched at easing “the disharmony of the world at large.”
Bock assembled a team that spanned medicine, physiology, anthropology, psychiatry, psychology, and social work, and was advised by such luminaries as the psychiatrist Adolf Meyer and the psychologist Henry Murray. Combing through health data, academic records, and recommendations from the Harvard dean, they chose 268 students—mostly from the classes of 1942, ’43, and ’44—including John Kennedy, Ben Bradley and a few who later became senators, and measured them from every conceivable angle and with every available scientific tool.
One of the results the study sought was to answer the question " What allows people to work, and love, as they grow old?" The Grant Study men identified seven major factors that predict healthy aging, both physically and psychologically. Employing mature adaptations was one. The others were education, stable marriage, not smoking, not abusing alcohol, some exercise, and healthy weight. What factors don’t matter? The study identified some surprises. Cholesterol levels at age 50 had nothing to do with health in old age. While social ease correlates highly with good psychosocial adjustment in college and early adulthood, its significance diminishes over time. The predictive importance of childhood temperament also diminishes over time: shy, anxious kids tend to do poorly in young adulthood, but by age 70, are just as likely as the outgoing kids to be “happy-well.” Vaillant sums up: “If you follow lives long enough, the risk factors for healthy life adjustment change. There is an age to watch your cholesterol and an age to ignore it.”“It is social aptitude,” he writes, “not intellectual brilliance or parental social class, that leads to successful aging.” Warm connections are necessary—and if not found in a mother or father, they can come from siblings, uncles, friends, mentors. “That the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people.”
There is another study ,also carried out over 50 years, in Maryland on aging. Here individuals -- homemakers, retirees, doctors and myriad others -- are participants in the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging (BLSA), the country's longest-running study of aging. Since 1958, a total of more than 1,400 volunteers have agreed to regularly undergo in-depth physicals and memory and other screenings conducted by the study's physicians. The resulting data thus span more than half a century and are a gold mine for researchers interested in the aging process. Because of the BLSA,for example, scientists now know that signs indicating that a person could be at risk for dementia and other cognitive diseases may appear 20 years before symptoms emerge.
Some gems from this ongoing study: BLSA researchers were able to disprove the long-held belief that people get crankier as they age. Using data collected from the study's participants, they found that personality traits don't generally change much after age 30: People who were cranky at 27 were likely to be cranky at 87. Also that older people were better able to handle stress than their younger counterparts, who tended to cope by becoming hostile or retreating into fantasy worlds. And in another finding, which I point out to my children, 50 BLSA men were given the equivalent of three martinis over the course of an hour to find out whether age influenced a person's ability to metabolize alcohol. Turns out the older participants were able to metabolize the alcohol just as well as their younger counterparts. However, older men did show greater impairment as a result of their consumption.
What struck me was that there were such long term investments in empirical studies lasting over decades and even more there were so many people willing to donate their time in the cause of science.
I wondered if there were similar studies in India.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A longitudinal study is a correlational research study that involves repeated observations of the same items over long periods of time — often many decades. It is a type of observational study. Longitudinal studies are often used in psychology to study developmental trends across the life span, and in sociology to study life events throughout lifetimes or generations. The reason for this is that unlike cross-sectional studies, longitudinal studies track the same people, and therefore the differences observed in those people are less likely to be the result of cultural differences across generations. Because of this benefit, longitudinal studies make observing changes more accurate and they are applied in various other fields. In medicine, the design is used to uncover predictors of certain diseases.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Unintended consequences
We often take it for granted that progress is inevitable and that it is inevitably good and that there are no downsides. Thus it has been for the internet. No one but no one doubts that the internet has connected the world and provided the world with information and knowledge in unprecedented quantity, that it has enriched our lives and made possible myriad discoveries in science and technology. So what is to dislike. Now come some interesting insights that examine some of the unintended consequences of the rapid spread of the internet.
Clearly the internet and Google have dealt a mortal blow to the print newspaper industry. There is neither the money nor the persistence, they say, for uncovering of corruption at local and national levels or for the diligent research that underlies the Watergate or Pentagon Papers type scoops. Print journalists decry the bloggers who have replaced them and the internet newspapers sites like Huffington Post for trivializing news and for severely curtailing any investigative journalism. Worse these sites encourage skimming so that the readers barely read the headlines and rarely spend time in delving deeply into any subject. Yet the number of readers of news has increased manifold. But the readers, it is claimed, are sacrificing depth for width.
Have people who love reading books started reading less as a side effect of the internet? It seems to many that people have less patience with the written word and tend to read less deeply. Nicholas Carr opines “Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle”.
We no longer remember key dates and places and facts anymore. Since nowadays there is so much information, it’s no longer terribly efficient to use our brains to store information. Why memorize the content of a poem or a play when you could be using your brain to hold a quick guide to an entire library? Rather than memorize information, we can now store it digitally and just remember what we stored and where. I had thought that the magic of the information age was that it allowed us to know more, but then I realized the magic of the information age is that it allows us to know less. It provides us with external cognitive servants — silicon memory systems, collaborative online filters, consumer preference algorithms and networked knowledge- who could do this job for us. We can burden these servants and liberate ourselves. In this system we can " outsource the brain" and as David Brooks points out: ” we won’t become books, we’ll become their indexes and reference guides, permanently holding on to rather little deep knowledge, preferring instead to know what’s known, by ourselves and others, and where that knowledge is stored”. The price we will pay for this outsourcing is that we will know a bit about a lot of things but only a bit in depth of any of these things.
It is argued that another casualty of the internet may be individual creativity. The proponents of internet argue that it has freed them from having to memorize anything since all facts are only a click away on an Iphone or a laptop. Why remember anything when you can call it up on the screen when required? But memorization is not the antithesis of creativity; it is absolutely indispensable to creativity. Creative insights come at odd and unpredictable moments, not when you have all the references spread out on the table in front of you. You can’t possibly hope to have creative insights unless you have memorized all the relevant information. And you can’t hope to have creative insights unless you have memorized a vast amount of information, because you have no way of knowing what might turn out to be useful. So internet and access to Google, while they provide access to a great deal of information at your finger tips, they can also paradoxically reduce your creativity.
So is Google making us stupid? Will digitized books and e-readers devalue the written word? Does reading on the web harm human thinking? Do technologies like Tweet and Twitter simply provide too much too fast? Can you compress knowledge in 140 letters? Are we all about to drown in a informational tidal wave? Don’t get me wrong-- there is so much that the internet and Google have provided us but there are unintended consequences too of all this power.
Clearly the internet and Google have dealt a mortal blow to the print newspaper industry. There is neither the money nor the persistence, they say, for uncovering of corruption at local and national levels or for the diligent research that underlies the Watergate or Pentagon Papers type scoops. Print journalists decry the bloggers who have replaced them and the internet newspapers sites like Huffington Post for trivializing news and for severely curtailing any investigative journalism. Worse these sites encourage skimming so that the readers barely read the headlines and rarely spend time in delving deeply into any subject. Yet the number of readers of news has increased manifold. But the readers, it is claimed, are sacrificing depth for width.
Have people who love reading books started reading less as a side effect of the internet? It seems to many that people have less patience with the written word and tend to read less deeply. Nicholas Carr opines “Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle”.
We no longer remember key dates and places and facts anymore. Since nowadays there is so much information, it’s no longer terribly efficient to use our brains to store information. Why memorize the content of a poem or a play when you could be using your brain to hold a quick guide to an entire library? Rather than memorize information, we can now store it digitally and just remember what we stored and where. I had thought that the magic of the information age was that it allowed us to know more, but then I realized the magic of the information age is that it allows us to know less. It provides us with external cognitive servants — silicon memory systems, collaborative online filters, consumer preference algorithms and networked knowledge- who could do this job for us. We can burden these servants and liberate ourselves. In this system we can " outsource the brain" and as David Brooks points out: ” we won’t become books, we’ll become their indexes and reference guides, permanently holding on to rather little deep knowledge, preferring instead to know what’s known, by ourselves and others, and where that knowledge is stored”. The price we will pay for this outsourcing is that we will know a bit about a lot of things but only a bit in depth of any of these things.
It is argued that another casualty of the internet may be individual creativity. The proponents of internet argue that it has freed them from having to memorize anything since all facts are only a click away on an Iphone or a laptop. Why remember anything when you can call it up on the screen when required? But memorization is not the antithesis of creativity; it is absolutely indispensable to creativity. Creative insights come at odd and unpredictable moments, not when you have all the references spread out on the table in front of you. You can’t possibly hope to have creative insights unless you have memorized all the relevant information. And you can’t hope to have creative insights unless you have memorized a vast amount of information, because you have no way of knowing what might turn out to be useful. So internet and access to Google, while they provide access to a great deal of information at your finger tips, they can also paradoxically reduce your creativity.
So is Google making us stupid? Will digitized books and e-readers devalue the written word? Does reading on the web harm human thinking? Do technologies like Tweet and Twitter simply provide too much too fast? Can you compress knowledge in 140 letters? Are we all about to drown in a informational tidal wave? Don’t get me wrong-- there is so much that the internet and Google have provided us but there are unintended consequences too of all this power.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Ideas about India's future
Here is a brief summary of Nandan Nilekhani talks about ideas for India's future but you should see his whole presentation. He divides his presentation, which is also a summary of his book " Imagining India: Ideas for the new century", into ideas that have been accepted, still under execution, unresolved and in conflict and those about the future.
It is instructive to see his presentation alongside a defense against the charge that Pakistan is now a "failed state" by Manan Ahmed.
But first Nandan's optimistic view of India.
According to him, there are certain big ideas that India has now generally accepted that: people are not a burden but a resource; entrepreneurs are not villains but a role models; English is not a language of colonizers but of aspiration and jobs; technology is not the enemy but a friend; globalization is to be embraced not contested; and the deepening of democracy even though it means shifting fr one party rule to 13 party rule is to be embraced.
Then there are ideas which have been accepted by the polity but have not fully managed to execute: in education a lack of universal access to primary schools; infrastructure which is still to fully connect the nation; cities need to become engines of growth; and a single market growing for a smooth seamless flow of goods across states is essential for internal globalization benefits.
But there are still ideas which are unresolved: Conflicting political ideologies which are leading to policy making gridlock; lack of labor reform where job protection is hampering job creation; and higher education where state control is barring private funding.
Then there are ideas for the future which India needs to learn from abroad and apply in its governance : E-governance about democracy,technology,efficiency and transparency; health care and how to avoid the diseases of prosperity while still battling diseases of poverty; managing pensions and entitlements; handling environmental issues and creating a new energy model.
India is well on its way to proving that democracy and growth are compatible. But our next door neighbour who started on this journedy at the same time, is rapidly becoming a " failed state". Or is it?
It is instructive to see his presentation alongside a defense against the charge that Pakistan is now a "failed state" by Manan Ahmed.
But first Nandan's optimistic view of India.
According to him, there are certain big ideas that India has now generally accepted that: people are not a burden but a resource; entrepreneurs are not villains but a role models; English is not a language of colonizers but of aspiration and jobs; technology is not the enemy but a friend; globalization is to be embraced not contested; and the deepening of democracy even though it means shifting fr one party rule to 13 party rule is to be embraced.
Then there are ideas which have been accepted by the polity but have not fully managed to execute: in education a lack of universal access to primary schools; infrastructure which is still to fully connect the nation; cities need to become engines of growth; and a single market growing for a smooth seamless flow of goods across states is essential for internal globalization benefits.
But there are still ideas which are unresolved: Conflicting political ideologies which are leading to policy making gridlock; lack of labor reform where job protection is hampering job creation; and higher education where state control is barring private funding.
Then there are ideas for the future which India needs to learn from abroad and apply in its governance : E-governance about democracy,technology,efficiency and transparency; health care and how to avoid the diseases of prosperity while still battling diseases of poverty; managing pensions and entitlements; handling environmental issues and creating a new energy model.
India is well on its way to proving that democracy and growth are compatible. But our next door neighbour who started on this journedy at the same time, is rapidly becoming a " failed state". Or is it?
Manan Ahmed,a historian of Islam in South Asia at the University of Chicago,in a contrarian view, argues that the " decades-long tendency to reduce
None of this matters, we are told, because
A comically exaggerated version of reality underpins such concerns. There are roughly 400 to 500 Pakistani Taliban fighters in the Buner region (the area deemed to threateningly close to
Even if
The monotonous drone of “failure” implies that the fragile democracy currently in place is not worth preserving. It encourages the marginalisation of the civilian government and boosts the claims of both the military and the militants.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)