Category: Essay

Obsolescence is an unavoidable truth. It is best reflected in generation gap, where our behaviour and choices fail to match the changing times. There is nothing new in this phenomenon. Our grand parents must have felt the pinch of generation gap in the same way as our parents did. Yet this time it is different!! No generation prior to ours may have seen such profound obsolescence of iconic products and services that once dominated daily lives.

One thing that comes to mind is the telegram service, which used to be the fastest way to communicate in earlier times. Introduced to the public in the year 1954 in India, telegram had become a ubiquitous mode for important communications. When one travelled long distances, one would send a telegram to confirm safe arrival to his near and dear ones. Messages of death and ill health usually travelled through telegrams giving the service a sense of notoriety in the Bollywood.  Telegram was professed as a scientific wonder, which contributed greatly to human welfare. Contrast this with the communication technology available today.

‘At its peak in the mid-1980s, more than 45,000 telegraph offices dotted the country, with tens of thousands of telegraph workers and delivery men dispatching more than 600,000 telegrams a day’ (The Telegraph, UK – 15 July 2013). However, with the advent of alternative communication methods, telegram services looked archaic. By the year 2013, the service was withdrawn as unviable and unnecessary. Thousands were seen queuing up in front of the Central Telegraph Office in Mumbai on the last day of the telegram service in 2013 only to experience sending the last telegram of their lives. It was an emotional moment bidding goodbye to the telegram service as it transited to the pages of history.

The other thing that has practically vanished from sight is the humble typewriter. We could never imagine an office without the click-clack of the typewriter. It looks incredible today that hundreds of ordinary people possessed the ability to type out neat pages without having to use a ‘delete’, ‘back-space’ or ‘copy-paste’ button. The carbon paper was the inseparable companion of the typewriter helping it to create multiple copies, as the typewriter had had no memory. Further, every street corner boasted of a training school teaching the art of typing – it definitely served as a source of ample employment! The advent of computers pushed the typewriter out of its useful life first in the West and thereafter in India. Godrej & Boyce in India produced the last batch of typewriters in 2011. The extinct species of typewriter can still be found quite inexplicably inside the court premises producing affidavits, lease deeds and other documents related to the judiciary. This is perhaps the last phase after which the typewriter will pass completely into oblivion.

There are many more things that have come and gone in our lifetime: the music cassettes and the cassette player, VCR – the owners’ pride of yesteryears, and pager that lived a short life in the world of telecommunications; to recount a few. Smartphones and Internet have changed our lives for good. When we look back about two decades ago, our own ways of doing things at that time look archaic to us, not just to the generation younger than us. This type of obsolescence is really amazing.

As overwhelming changes on account of Internet and smartphones took over an existing generation of people, they had to upgrade their skills and adapt fast – even by unlearning a thing or two of the age-old habits. Interaction with a touch screen comes naturally to a teen-ager today because he has seen no other, but it has taken a process of adjustment for a generation to get a hang of it.

Obsolescence is perhaps setting in quicker than ever before. Rapid change in technology is bringing in frequent twists and turns in the way we interact with others including with the inanimate objects.

Imagine, a person who was once sending telegrams as the fasted means of communication, is now using on-line video chats. Gone are the days when he tried his best to minimise the number words he would write in a telegram message, as every additional word beyond the first few would be very expensive. His office is no more dotted with busy typewriters, as e-mails and other applications are seamlessly doing things with greater efficiency. The changes around such a person are absolutely transforming.

This generation is indeed lucky to experience obsolescence of unthinkable magnitude.

 

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Every country has a brand image – a perception about the country associated with its name. If we think of Syria or Yemen, we have an outsider’s general impression of war, miseries and destruction while the perception about Singapore or Australia is drastically different. Is there a way to formally analyze nations’ respective brands and even order them from best to worse?

There are several agencies, which come out with periodic reports on nations’ brands. These agencies reckon perceptions about a country in terms of its culture, heritage, present-day infrastructure, governance, tourism, investments, etc. to estimate its brand value. India’s ranking in the list of nation-brands published by some reputed agencies is as follows:

• Brand Finance, a London based agency measures and contrasts the brand image of leading 100 countries and comes out with an annual report. The last available report (2016) places India at the 7^th position – US, China, Germany, Japan and UK are the first five countries in that order.
• In terms of the Anholt-GfK Nation Brands Index of 2016, USA, Germany, UK, Canada and France adorn the top five ranks in that order. India’s ranking under this index is available in the public domain for 2014, when it stood 31^st among 50 countries.
• Country Brand Index published by FutureBrand places India among the bottom 10% of the 118 countries it covered in its 2014-15 report.

The brand position of India as a nation varies widely depending on the underlying factors considered by the concerned agencies. Whatever be the brand ranking, it is true that India is one of the top destinations for Foreign Direct Investments (FDI). Just as customers would flock to buy products belonging to the most valued brand, investors would gravitate towards the country that promises long-term value for their money. In that sense, India seems to have scored over many other countries by being an attractive FDI destination.

Let’s look at two reports on FDI flows – one published by UNCTAD in its World Investment Report 2017 and the other, FDI Confidence Index 2017 presented by A.T. Kearney, a global consulting firm.

• FDI flows to developing Asia decreased by 15% in 2016 compared to the previous year. Yet FDI flow to India stayed largely flat; rather it was up by 1% from the previous year. The year 2017 is expected to be far better with FDI flows to developing Asia poised to rise by 15%. The most favourite FDI destinations in the world for 2017 are expected to be US, China and India. (UNCTAD)
• A.T. Kearney FDI Confidence Index captures investment intentions and thereby provides a forward-looking stance. The latest Index places India at the 8^th position, an upward jump by one notch from the position held last year. US, Germany and China secure the first three positions in the FDI Confidence Index.

India’s population of over a billion, demographic dividend, skilled manpower and high GDP growth are some of the known positives to attract foreign investment. It s, however, interesting that international confidence in India is high despite opaque government processes, rampant corruption and poor physical infrastructure. Investors perhaps draw confidence from the fact that it is the world’s largest democracy and the possibilities are immense. The positives about India perhaps outweigh the constraints associated with it.

While high FDI appears to be a global acknowledgement of India’s attractiveness and a welcome boost to the country’s brand image, there is another global ranking we may not feel proud about. it is the Global Hunger Index (GHI), presented by the International Food Policy Research Institute. The latest GHI (2016) ranks India at 97^th place in a list of 118 countries. The index is based on a measure of malnutrition, under-nutrition among children and child mortality. Low ranking in the hunger index is a matter of concern.

Hopefully, high FDI inflow will eventually help raise the country’s ranking in the hunger index.

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Are we happy as a nation? The answer should be positive considering that we have the oldest and richest history of philosophic exploration of ‘happiness’. After all, this is the land where Buddha had received his enlightenment and had discovered the eightfold path to overcome the miseries of human life! Further, we have perhaps the largest contingent of Gurus today, who are guiding hundreds of thousands to be happy. Yet India’s ranking in the formal World Happiness Report of the current year is a depressing 122 in a list of 155 countries. All our SAARC neighbours stand ahead of us except the war ravaged Afghanistan. Countries such as Nigeria, Somalia and Vietnam are happier countries than India. We have scored higher over the likes of Sudan, Yemen and Ghana.

When an international ranking is adverse, it is an easy defence to doubt the methodology and definitions underlying the ranking. In the instant case, one would tend to say, ‘well, does anybody really understand what happiness is? Is there an agreed definition of happiness? And how can one measure or compare the levels of happiness of different countries to construct a ranking?’ These questions are valid as long as we do not consider some practical aspects of being happy.

I remember a poem by John Hay taught to us in school – ‘The Enchanted Shirt’. The beautiful story told in the poem goes as follows:

Once a king felt that he was sick. The court physician was called in to diagnose the problem. As he could not find any sign of physical sickness in the king, he was sent to the gallows. More doctors were sent for, but no one could discover the king’s ailment. They were all beheaded as punishment. Finally there came a doctor, who declared that the king was indeed sick. The king was very pleased with the doctor and rewarded him well. However, the doctor handed over a strange prescription – ‘the king will be well, if he sleeps one night in the shirt of a Happy Man’. Spies were sent out in search of a happy man, but they failed to find one. Everyone living in the kingdom had some reason or the other not to feel happy. At last, the spies spotted a beggar, who was demonstrably happy, but he had no shirt to wear. The unsuccessful search for a happy man’s shirt made the king realize the sad state of affairs in the kingdom; he was ‘ashamed of his useless life, and his maladies hatched in gloom’.

Happiness is a state of mind – how else was the beggar happier than the wealthy! I don’t think the message on happiness embedded in the poem had then penetrated the mind of a young school boy. As I think about it today, I feel happiness cannot entirely be a state of mind – perhaps the ‘state of mind’ part of happiness is a necessary but not sufficient condition to be happy. A hungry and deprived person can seldom be happy. If I see a beggar jumping in happiness, I would first check if he is inebriated! Happiness should not be confused with temporary spurts of euphoria stimulated by specific incidents; it is more enduring and worthwhile.

Think about a child. The basic condition to see him happy is to ensure that he is not hungry. The other conditions that follow are that he is healthy, receives adequate attention from others around him, has a sense of safety, and has some interesting engagement. The child’s happiness depends on all these factors (by no means it is an exhaustive list) though the degree of influence exerted by each factor may vary. As the child grows into adulthood, the sources of happiness continue to be the same in essence; only the narrative around each essential factor changes. These factors take the form of healthy life expectancy, workplace happiness, extent of social support, trust and freedom in life, to name a few. All these factors may not be measurable cardinally, but an ordinal measurement should be possible.

Talking about happiness in day-to-day life, no two individuals derive the same level of happiness even under similar circumstances. Every individual has his own unique way of interpreting the known sources of happiness. In any case, happiness at workplace is a big contributor to a person’s overall happiness as he spends a lot of time on a given day at his workplace. Everyone may not have the same capacity to absorb the depressing effects of dealing with a rude and yelling boss at office the whole day and yet bear a smile in the evening at a family get-together. The reverse spill over is equally responsible when your spirits are down at the workplace due to a bad conjugal life. Managing the spillovers is sometimes a difficult balancing act. Further, an employee needs recognition, independence, self-esteem, fair competition and a host of other factors to feel happy. Even if you are working for a company well ranked in the ‘great place to work’ survey, you cannot be sure of individual happiness at your workplace.

No one can have a life free of worries. A happy person is one who knows that he has friends and relatives to support him in any kind of trouble. Mutual trust and support are foundations for happiness. At the same time, there are people who derive happiness by helping others. These people act as catalysts in enhancing overall happiness in the society. Many people try to seek happiness through prayers – they look for a divine source to seek support from. A profound faith in the Almighty reduces worries and enhances happiness. Indeed, any means to reduce your worries should be a welcome step.

A colleague of mine, who considers himself as nothing less than a God-man often says, ‘worries in life take your happiness to ransom, but it is easy to blow them away. What you need is to learn to blow the worries away.’ He then gives the example of his Guru and professes that the followers of his Guru are blessed to know the only path to happiness in this modern world. In the process, he appears to be soliciting membership for his organisation and inevitably assumes to himself a sense of divine respectability. He perhaps feels happy while doing so. But we know how upset he was when he lost a simple promotion opportunity. There are many who pretend happiness – perhaps they are the unhappiest in the world!

There is no hard-coded path to happiness. Yet one thing that is most likely to bring happiness to anyone, whether wealthy, poor or powerful, is a sense of fulfilment.

First and foremost, one must be able to discover one’s own likes and dislikes, strengths and deficiencies. Once this realistic assessment gets printed in the mind, one’s goals shape up with clarity. A sense of fulfilment comes when one achieves those goals by pursuing ways that conform to one’s own convictions. The goals may be just day-to-day tasks or bigger lifetime goals. As long as you have the freedom to be yourself and not artificially live other people’s contrary expectations, you are close to lead a life of fulfilment. It does not matter whether you achieve every goal as long as you have not lost the freedom to be yourself. You compete with none for happiness.

A classmate of mine studied Sanskrit literature in the university merely because his father forced him to do so. He is a professor of repute today, but I know, his real interest was Mathematics when he was in school. Is he happy now? Could his happiness be greater if he had become a professor of Mathematics instead of Sanskrit? Many of us get into professional lives where our personal values do not necessarily converge with that of our employer. When your friend is able to make a killing in a rising stock market, you perhaps lament your inability to match him. But why this unfair comparison if your goal never comprised short-term investments in stocks? Sometimes you start following a Guru because others are seen doing it. Happiness remains elusive.

Henry David Thoreau, the American philosopher of the 19th century says, “Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.”

In my view, ‘just be yourself – you will be happy’.

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I was in my hometown on a short vacation. It was time to catch up with friends and relatives.

One Sunday afternoon I was heading to meet a friend living in the heart of the town but in a narrow by-lane. I was walking my way as I entered the by-lane; my friend’s house barely three hundred meters away. It was unusual calm there compared to the hustle and bustle of the lane. As I moved towards his house, I found two stray dogs following me. Slowly more strays joined them emerging out from behind parked two-wheelers and boundary walls. Within minutes, there were about a dozen stray dogs walking around me as they were trying to evaluate my presence in their turf. I began to feel claustrophobic while a few unusual moves by a large dog enhanced my perception of threat. I started walking faster and unwittingly triggered their aggression. I was almost in front of the large gate leading to my friend’s house, when a dog came charging towards me from inside. Soon the other dogs started barking terrorizing me to the core. Luckily, my friend came out just in the nick of time on hearing the commotion and made the dogs retreat just by waving his hands with authority. The dogs were quiet like obedient pets and started to retreat although there were few who still kept their gaze on me.

My friend comforted me patronizingly insisting that those dogs were harmless. He seemed to have given a name to each dog and knew each one’s unique attitude and preferences, as he was trying to sort of introduce me to them. Apparently, the by-lane was free from theft and burglary due to these strays, as no stranger could enter the place unnoticed. I was amazed to discover the ardent animal lover in my friend. But the sheer number of stray dogs and the aggression in them left me wonder if the problem was getting out of hands. Never before did I feel the presence of street dogs to be so intimidating!

Dog bites are indeed common in India. Children in slums routinely get bitten by stray dogs and take it as a part of their day-to-day life. I doubt if their parents even notice these dog bites, leave alone seeking medical treatment. No wonder, India accounts for 18,000 to 20,000 cases of rabies a year and about 36% of the world’s deaths from the disease (Bulletin of World Health Organization – Vol 92: April 2014). What is significant, however, is the increasing incidence of fatal attacks by packs of dogs, threatening human life. With the rise in the population of dogs on the streets, parents can no more afford their children to walk unescorted while the old and the sick can no more venture out. People are afraid to move freely in their own locality. The threat perception is far higher than a simple occasional dog bite; it may be a fierce attack by a pack of dogs! Can anybody imagine we have lost our freedom to stray dogs in this modern world!!

Let not anyone dismiss this as an exaggerated narrative by an animal-hater! We must realize that the stray dogs and human beings are encroaching upon each other’s lives and resources and the conflict is inevitably getting nastier by the day. The brutal killing of stray dogs in certain parts of Kerala (and elsewhere) is simply a reflection of angry reaction of victims, who are frustrated at the lack of tangible solutions to the menace. I am not justifying killing of dogs by the mob, but before showing the law book to these men and branding them as criminals, we must address the underlying provocation that may have driven them.

It is perhaps impractical to think that stray dogs would ever get completely eliminated from the streets. But is there no method by which we can bring down their number? I know indiscriminate mass killing of stray dogs is not only illegal but also gross cruelty. The best solution is perhaps mass sterilization of stray dogs – Ovario-hysterectomy performed on females and castration on the males. The sterilized dogs are non-breeding and supposed to be less aggressive.

But this solution (mass sterilization) is not seen to be working. The Canadian Medical Association Journal (Feb 26, 2008) says, ‘The success of this program (animal birth control) hinges on the sterilization of 70% of the strays in a given geographic area within 6 months, before the next reproductive cycle begins, otherwise the entire effort is negated.’ The pace of stray dog sterilization is dismally low in the country (just 31,341 sterilizations in 2014-15 as reported by the central government to the Parliament) and is not considered reliable enough. The number of dogs is far too many (1.71 crore as per the only all-India stray dog census carried out in 2012) and resources hardly match the requirement. An effective solution through sterilization of stray dogs is an impractical, rather impossible idea at this stage.

Instead of recognizing the urgent need to seek a tangible solution to the stray dog menace, we find that the civic society is divided on the following issue: should we protect animal rights to the extent that we put human life / freedom to risk?

‘Compassion should be shown towards stray dogs but in the meantime, these animals cannot be allowed to become a menace to the society. A balance needs to be created for dealing with such situation.’ This is what the Supreme Court sated in September 2015 while dealing with a petition on the problem of stray dogs. In another order the Supreme Court has further stated, ‘There can be no trace of doubt that there has to be compassion for dogs and they should not be killed in an indiscriminate manner, but indubitably the lives of the human beings are to be saved and one should not suffer due to dog bite because of administrative lapse.’ The Court is still hearing the petitions.

The only effective solution at this stage is to ‘put to rest’ the lives of the unwanted, surplus dogs. I am referring to euthanasia – mercy killing. Usually, euthanasia is applied when a stray dog is suffering untold pain from an irretrievable disease. Suggesting euthanasia for the so called surplus dogs may seem to be cruel to the dogs. The counter argument could also be that the dogs have a right to live. These arguments are valid – but in normal times. We are dealing with an abnormal situation of overwhelming stray dog population. The civic authorities are unable to cope with the situation through the animal birth control (ABC) programme and we need to strike a balance as the Supreme Court’s comment above suggests.

I am afraid, the animal rights activists would be up in arms to hear this suggestion. I would like to draw their attention to what the PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) says – ‘Until dog and cat overpopulation is brought under control through spaying and neutering, we must prevent the suffering of unwanted animals in the most responsible and humane way possible. Euthanasia, performed properly, is often the most compassionate option’ (refer PETA website).

A prominent animal rights activist has argued in a column (Firstpost: February 28, 2017) as follows: ‘The dog is nature’s city scavenger and predator. If you remove it, apart from the piling up of huge quantities of garbage, the cat and rat population will get out of hand, and from that, the natural bird population will die out.’ The perverse argument amuses me as the columnist believes that a) stray dogs help clear a city’s garbage, and b) the most effective method to control the population of cats and rats in a city is to depend upon the predatory stray dogs. Laughable indeed!

The menace of stray dogs must be taken seriously with all its dimensions. The Government must carry out effective sterilization and vaccination of dogs on a mission mode, with adequate budgetary resources. However, in the meantime there should be no hesitation to euthanize surplus dogs by engaging veterinarians and trained professionals and by adopting the most compassionate methods of euthanasia. Contrary to what animal rights activists may routinely like to believe, a well administered, calibrated euthanasia of the kind discussed above would provide a life of dignity to the stray dogs.

 

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I was in school that time. My father once gave me a hand-written card on the occasion of my birthday. The card contained a quote from the famous American poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

“The heights by great men reached and kept

Were not attained by sudden flight, but they,

While their companions slept, were toiling

Upward in the night.”

Today we have the social media, which generously circulates inspirational quotes every hour for every occasion, perhaps to the point of a receiver’s irritation. However, in my childhood a Longfellow quote was indeed rare to come by and hence I must have treasured it as a piece of wisdom.

The wisdom in the quote suggests that success is achieved by those who do an extra bit of effort when their ‘companions are sleeping’ or when others are not doing enough! What is striking is the assumption that ‘others are not doing enough’ in the above wisdom. Will there ever be a situation like that? Can I know when exactly others are sleeping so that I would wake up and put in some additional efforts to succeed? Well, let me not search its literal meaning and miss the essence of the quote. I cannot, however, avoid seeing an element of ceteris paribus in it!!

Ceteris Paribus is a Latin Phrase meaning ‘other things being equal’. Economists love the phrase. No theory in Economics can stand without ceteris paribus. This all-pervasive assumption in Economics is quite intriguing. It helps economists explain causality by isolating an independent variable from innumerable other variables that influence a dependent variable. For instance, an economist would say in a matter-of-fact style that higher demand for a commodity would push its price up. However, this hypothesis is based on the underlying assumption that all other factors that may influence the price (say, supply position, price of other similar commodities, level of income, etc.) are believed to remain unchanged. We may find the assumption unrealistic, but it helps us simplify matters to understand causality.

We keep making ceteris paribus assumptions in our day-to-day life without actually realizing it. In fact, we assume the world around us to behave in a certain way. Things do change over time, but not in a perceptible manner in the short-run. And that corroborates our implicit reliance on ceteris paribus.

A teacher expects a certain kind of discipline in the classroom; the driver on the road assumes how the traffic would generally behave, and the police have their own idea of crowd behaviour in a city. All of them try to view their environment with a reasonable degree of certainty based on previously experienced patterns. But they seldom realize that the element of ceteris paribus is working behind all this; it is nothing but the assumption, ‘other things being equal’. They do not anticipate dramatic deviations from what is considered ‘usual’.

Our day-to-day implicit reliance on ceteris paribus is, however, different from that of an economist. It is less pure and is capable of accommodating a layer of small deviations within itself. Thus the Longfellow quote seeking to highlight the key to success is not just a poetic inspiration; it is a realistic guide to success based on ceteris paribus of the day-to-day kind.

What happens when your teenage daughter refuses to abide by the code of conduct you set out for her? What happens when the subordinate suspects the rationale of an order and refuses to execute it against his own conviction? What if your friend does not show up this time defying his usual character of being a friend in need? This disturbs us because the behaviour does not conform to our implicit ceteris paribus assumption. ‘Other things’ do not always remain equal and the pace of change may, at times, be greater than what the tiny layer of accommodation our day-to-day ceteris paribus can sustain.

As a student of Economics I was never impressed with the ceteris paribus assumption. However, it increasingly appears that the balance in our life hinges on the innumerable ceteris paribus assumptions that we involuntarily make. Economists may term it as ‘model risk’ each time an assumption goes wrong. In our day-to-day life, we may call it ‘expectations risk’! We could perhaps jargonize and call it a ‘ceteris paribus’ risk.

 

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This is startling indeed! Sixty percent people lie at least once during a ten-minute conversation and tell an average of two to three lies. This observation is based on the result of a research study published in 2009 by Robert S. Feldman, a professor of psychology in USA.

So, don’t get upset if your close friend lied to you last evening for no apparent reason and you discovered it later somehow. Your friend conforms to the generally expected behavioral pattern in our society. We live in a world full of lies.

We are taught from childhood that lying is a sin; the virtuous is always truthful. Yet the atmosphere is filled with lies all around.

Why do people lie? In what way does that help them? Can the society sustain itself when lies routinely contaminate the truth in our day-to-day conversations? Are we living in a make-believe world because what is told to us by others could potentially be lies?

Some people believe that there are ‘good’ lies and they tend to attach no element of sin with those. For example, a doctor may lie to the patient when he says, ‘you have a minor problem; we will deal with it… you should be fine soon’. The patient cheers up with these encouraging words and smiles with hope. However, a minute later, the same doctor may confidentially turn to the patient’s attendant and disclose the truth, ‘the condition of the patient is indeed critical and there is very little doctors can do to save him at this stage. Keep your trust in God.’

There are also ‘good’ lies that prevent a crime or save a life. Not only at the individual level, lies are often carefully dispensed out at the level of the government on the grounds of public order, national security, etc. There is half-truth or suppression of truth in some form or the other. The Home Minister often declares normalcy after a communal tension although the situation on the ground may not have improved much. His words calm tensions in other parts of the country and serve a larger good. Similarly volatility in the forex and stock markets respond to the soothing words of assurance coming from the regulators. These words are carefully crafted, which are not lies, but are not the whole truth either.

Our perception and attitude get greatly influenced by what we are made to believe through media campaigns and through our textbooks. History is a narrative presented to us about our past enemies and friends, about our achievements and follies – all propagating certain points of view. The element of truth in such narratives is often blurred as the story is passed on from one generation to another. We tend to accept cardinal truths passed on to us from our forefathers without realizing that some of them may just be based on years of unquestioned falsehood.

Let me not step into the big canvas of lies influencing the society at large and just confine myself to the lies in our day-to-day conversations. There are small lies and big lies in our conversations, some are meant to deceive while some are innocuous. Some element of lies gets unnoticed, as it does not materially influence the topic of a discussion. Perhaps little lies in conversations spice up the discussions. Little exaggeration attracts and retains others’ interest while one narrates, say, an incident in a party. Does it mean that a layer of lies is acceptable in our general conversations as long as it is not stretched too far and remains non-malicious?

People have various provocations to lie. At an instinctive level lying may be a defence against an odd. A person may lie to escape an embarrassment, avoid a punishment or simply to make a personal gain. But habitual liars constitute a different breed – they lie in all conversations. Often they misrepresent facts in a manner suitable to the situation. One of the seemingly universal provocations behind habitual lying is to project oneself in better light. These people simply twist facts to make coherent stories about themselves. For instance, my friend told me about the great experience he gathered during the last Mumbai Marathon, giving me an impression that he ran the 22 kms beautiful track from Bandra to the Nariman Point. In reality he actually stood for sometime on the roadside to cheer the participants while they were running. Similarly, my boss in office has successfully given an impression to everybody that he has graduated from the famous Stanford University; the truth is that he visited the university only for three months on an executive development programme sponsored by his previous employer. Some people try to create an aura around themselves by resorting to small to big lies. Interestingly, the stories are believed and propagated with layers of additional lies till the time the person making the story himself starts believing in his own lies!

It may not be easy to sustain specific lies told in long conversations – the liar needs to be consistent in what he falsely represents.

Another research in recent times deals with lies in on-line conversations. The research article is going to be published in the November 2016 issue of the journal, Computers in Human Behavior. The world of Internet (i.e., social media, online dating, anonymous chat rooms, and sexual websites) is fraught with greater density of lies as revealed through this research. As less as 16 to 32% of the people (in the sample) were believed to be honest across the sites. Further, 55% to 90% believed that others were also lying in these sites. Such is the extent of deception in the on-line conversations; it far exceeds the lies told in face-to-face conversations.

It is not known whether these lies can be categorised as ‘good’ and non-malicious and whether they fall in that acceptable layer of lies that just spice up on-line interactions.

In all probability, the layers of lies in our day-to-day conversations are fragile and can threaten relationships. A sustainable relationship thrives on truthfulness. Honesty continues to be the best policy – perhaps little lies would spice it up. Hope some professional research would throw up tangible results in this area as well.

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I was shocked to know the reason for the prolonged absence of Ranganath from office.

I was under the impression that Ranganath’s father had become critically sick once again. The whole office knew that Ranganath’s father had been in bed for over a year due to old age. But Ranganath’s absence this time had nothing to do with his father’s illness. He was at home for a strange reason – his teenage son had decided to stop going to school ever again. His son was sad, depressed and determined not to go back to school. Ranganath was trying in vain to grapple with the situation!

It was corporal punishment in school that had pushed his son to this situation. Apparently, he had been facing severe punishment at school for miscellaneous reasons. Extreme humiliation and repeated physical abuse at school had left a deep scar in his mind. The school appeared to him as a dreadful place. Ranganath was trying to persuade his son to speak out what exactly had happened at school; but his son would give no details. His son did not want Ranganath even to meet the school authorities, lest he should face the brunt of punishment again. His little mind could think of just one solution – he would never again step into that dreadful place called school.

Ranganath pleaded again and again with him: ‘punishment is a way of disciplining students, and it is in their (students’) interest’; ‘Ranganath was himself brought up with regular corporal punishment commonly used in schools in his childhood’; ‘teachers think of your future and do not intend to harm you physically’; ‘teachers know what is best for students and they must have the freedom to impose discipline’; etc.

Nothing could pacify his son. Ranganath was perhaps not convinced with his own arguments. He knew something was terribly wrong, but did not know how to deal with it.

Corporal punishment in schools is a menace that is not acknowledged well enough in our society. The pity is that most parents endorse teachers’ (so called) right to punish students physically in the name of disciplining them. No one knows when the line is crossed and the teacher turns a tyrant.

I remember my school days, when beating students in the classroom was common. A teacher could not be imagined who did not use a stick, a duster, a scale or even his own hands to hit students for various reasons. There were only a few exceptions. Punishment and abuse by teachers used to be our daily routine. We feared our teachers, which was considered as respect for the latter. Over three decades after passing out from school, whenever my classmates organise alumni get-togethers, our favourite discussions revolve around romanticising the classroom horror of the time. We remember our school days by recalling incidents of teachers hitting specific students or our glorified failed attempts to dodge likely punishments.

I thought times had changed and corporal punishment in schools had become a thing of the past; some incidents highlighted at times in news channels were perhaps sporadic exceptions. But the lessons from Ranganath’s experience and a little search over the Internet have unfolded the enormity of the problem.

A Government report of 2007 (commissioned by the Ministry of Women and Child Development) shows some horrible statistics: out of the sample surveyed by the Committee, 69% children reported physical abuse including corporal punishment in all settings including schools. The physical abuse was found to be more in the smaller age group (5 to 12 years) of children. Further, it was higher for boys compared to girls in the older age group. The same survey also elicited stakeholders’ views on corporal punishment. What is shocking is, over 44.5% of those surveyed felt it (corporal punishment) was necessary to discipline children while 30.0% expressed no opinion. A small 25.5% of the surveyed stakeholders disagreed with its necessity. There seems to be an inherent societal support to physical punishment in schools.

If you thought 2007 (the year when the Ministry’s survey was held) was too distant in time, there are many more surveys conducted subsequently by various organisations. The results unfortunately are no better. A 2014 document showing a survey (covering the period 2002 to 2009) of 3000 children on corporal punishment in Andhra Pradesh revealed the following: 92% of children aged 7-8 years reported having witnessed corporal punishment in the last typical week at school, while 77% said they had experienced it (http://www.endcorporalpunishment.org/assets/pdfs/states-reports/India.pdf). Surveys held in West Bengal, Delhi (2014) and Lucknow (2015) are some more examples. The statistical information shows the enormity of the issue.

Corporal punishment in schools is against the dignity of a child as it inflicts insult, pain and causes emotional setbacks. The international community is alive to the cause of the child as can be seen from the overwhelming majority of countries joining the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted since 1989. It speaks about the right to protection of the child against abuse. The convention specifically states that school discipline should not be in violation of child rights. India has signed and ratified the convention in 1992. Despite international awareness, corporal punishment is still in practice, officially and non-officially in many countries; a report on global progress towards prohibiting all corporal punishment in schools prepared in September 2013 by the Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment of Children bears testimony to it.

India’s official position on abolition of corporal punishment in schools is evident for long. One cannot more than agree with what has been stated in the Education Policy that was revamped in 1986. Let me quote from the policy as it best expresses the policy intentions: “A warm, welcoming and encouraging approach, in which all concerned share a solicitude for the needs of the child, is the best motivation for the child to attend school and learn. A child-centred and activity-based process of learning should be adopted at the primary stage. First generation learners should be allowed to set their own pace and be given supplementary remedial instruction. As the child grows, the component of cognitive learning will be increased and skills organised through practice. The policy of non-detention at the primary stage will be retained, making evaluation as disaggregated as feasible. Corporal punishment will be firmly excluded from the educational system and school timings as well as vacations adjusted to the convenience of children.”

Unfortunately the above intentions have not translated into reality.

Teachers and parents need to be made aware of the need to abolish corporal punishment in schools. Social awareness is the key – not legislation and well-drafted policy intentions.

I hope Ranganath will soon restore hope and dignity to his son’s life.

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Not everyone may have a glorious past. But why spoil the present by brooding over it? Well, you may succeed in forgetting some past events and decide to move on in life, but what if others around you do not forget your past and keep reminding the same to you and to the world?

The problem can be really acute in the digital age, as information is aplenty on all matters. A person may find several information about himself available on the Internet, which he would wish not to see at all – such information may emanate from social media posts, newspaper reports, court rulings, government publications, university records and so on. At the click of a button search engines collate all the relevant information and faithfully present the same. Whether a person likes it or not, his ‘not-so-glorious-past’ may keep haunting him. It is true that some of this information may have lost relevance over time and in some cases, the context may have changed completely.

Think about the greatest saint Valmiki, who authored the epic Ramayana. He had a notorious past of being a hunter and a dacoit. An incident, as the legend goes, changed his life as he made the best use of the second chance that came in his way. Valmiki’s notorious past and the transformation in his character are cited today as lessons for others – the lesser mortals in the present day world may not, however, be as fortunate. They would wish their past not to overhang on the present, especially if it is not perceived to be too good.

In 2010 the above problem came to the fore when a Spanish individual complained against a newspaper for having retained a report on the auction of his house several years ago, even though the dispute had long been settled and against Google, the search engine, for having made the information available through normal Internet searches. The courts upheld that an individual has the right, under certain conditions, to request a search engine to remove links containing personal information about him, especially when the information is inadequate, inaccurate, irrelevant or excessive for the purpose. This is referred to as the ‘right to be forgotten’.

The ‘right to be forgotten’ seems to be a great comfort to millions of individuals. This right will help a criminal under rehabilitation to quickly get back to a normal social life. It will also prevent misuse of old and irrelevant information and avoid damage to one’s reputation. Courts in more than one jurisdiction have recently found merits in upholding the right to be forgotten. The mighty US, however, is yet to grant this right.

But this right, if granted, may cause some collateral and perhaps unintentional damage to the cause of right to information. There have been thousands of applications from individuals to Google to delete links to past information about them. All requests have not been honored, but the question remains, how can Google exercise consistent and acceptable judgment about whether a particular past information has indeed become ‘irrelevant’ or ‘inadequate’? There could be a tendency on the part of a search engine to accept and honor requests (for deletion of links to past information) rather than face litigation later! In that case, information available in the public domain could be less credible. In a way, it is a sort of censored information, which would henceforth be available.

The advocates of ‘right to be forgotten’ argue that the information is actually not deleted from the Internet; the link to such information is only disabled. So the ‘censorship’ allegation is overblown. However, in the world of Internet, disabling the link to information is as good as erasing it from public memory.

Before Internet became all-pervasive, people had little control over information associated with their past. Though public memory is always short-lived, no one could stop the neighbourhood gossip about a person’s dubious past even during those times. Sometimes, a person’s reputation was prone to such gossips founded on false anecdotes and exaggerated interpretations. The age of Internet has made past information about a person easily accessible and has thereby provided legitimacy and authenticity to the so-called neighbourhood gossips. Thanks to search engines, a person’s reputation is no more controlled by exaggerated public gossip. However, by granting the ‘right to be forgotten’ and allowing censorship of information at the initiative of the person himself, we would dilute the power of Internet to help us form informed opinion about the person. With the ‘right to be forgotten’ are we trying to provide primacy to mundane public gossips and rumours once again?

The society must keep pace with the advent of Internet and people must mature to live with the plethora of information without censors. May be, the Internet will be able to discipline a probable errant in the society just as the threat of a bad credit history is able to enforce credit discipline in many. I find a lot of wrong in the right to be forgotten!

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To err is human, to forgive divine.

On plain reading, this has two implications. First, humans are prone to make mistakes. One need not get upset over such mistakes. Second, it is a virtue to forgive – perhaps the implicit assumption is that it is difficult for humans to practice such forgiveness. While human error is mundane, forgiveness comes to those who rise to divinity. This sounds like a piece of preaching from the scriptures – authentic and irrefutable.

Human error has no more remained simple, as the world has grown in complexity.

Many may recall the report released by the US Institute of Medicine in 1999 entitled, “To Err is Human – Building a Safer Health System”, which showed that preventable medical error had led to large number of deaths in US.

You will agree, a mistake by a pilot may cause a fatal accident leading to death of hundreds of innocent passengers. In fact about 80% of commercial airline accidents occur due to pilot error as per an estimate put out by Boeing. Further, a WHO study on ‘road traffic injuries’ says, over 3400 people die on the world’s roads every day and tens of millions of people are injured or disabled every year. Most of these accidents are caused due to errant human behaviour. To add to this, a new dimension emerges out of the unbridled access to powerful weapons by some rogue nations and terrorist outfits and the possible disaster due to erroneous handling of the same.

Human error has far reaching consequences. It cannot simply be ignored let alone be forgiven.

Most human errors are execution errors caused due to omissions and commissions. These are operational lacunae. The simplest example is the ‘fat-finger’ error, where an operator presses a wrong key while inputting data into a computer system. One can build checks and balances to prevent or minimize errors of omission and commission. The other way is to bring in automation that helps in avoidance of human fatigue related errors in a repetitive work, say on the factory floor. Automation may not be an unmixed blessing unless continuous up-gradation of safeguards is assured.

I don’t intend to rediscover here, the theoretical literature on the types of errors. But, I need to bring into context the other human errors that occur due to failure of judgment. This is difficult to deal with. The consequences of such human errors are getting bitter by the day. The recent example is the bombing of a hospital in Afghanistan in October 2015 by the US forces where scores of innocent civilians lost their lives. The US clarified that it intended to eliminate terrorist outfits in the area but had made a mistake.

The impact of human error is magnified when it occurs within an inefficient and unresponsive environment. Thousands of buildings are built with inadequate safety standards. Factory workers are made to operate dangerous machines without explaining to them the risks of human errors. In Mumbai it is quite common for a vendor’s guy to dangerously step outside a flat in a multi-storied building to fix TV antennae while precariously balancing himself on small projections on the outside wall. This is no less than a daredevil act as the person hardly uses any safety equipment. A small error on his part would cost him his life. Accidents ascribed to human error in such an environment are primarily rooted in factors other than mere human error.

To err may be human, but to forgive may not be so divine.

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The following information published in a World Bank Report (World Development Report 2016: Digital Dividends) is amazing. On the average, 8 out of 10 individuals in the developing countries own a mobile phone. Further, within the bottom 20% population, 70% possess individual mobile phone connections. There is more access to mobile phones than to electricity and clean water in the developing countries!

It seems access to mobile phone is near universal and the coverage is growing very fast. What benefits may have motivated the poorest of the poor to seek a mobile phone connection even when basic amenities like water and electricity may have been near absent in their lives? Convenience of communication may have helped create more opportunities for them while affordable prices would have been the spur.

Alongside the spread of mobile phones, the world has witnessed growth of Internet connectivity, but at a much slower pace. About 31 percent of the population in developing countries has access to Internet while 80 percent of the population in the developed world enjoys such access. Most businesses (9 out of 10) have access to broadband Internet in high-income OECD countries. The coverage of businesses in low-income countries is woefully less (mere 4 out of 10). There is no doubt that benefits of digital revolution would accrue to the fullest when more and more people and businesses are connected to the Internet. However, people must be imparted minimum skills to use the Internet. The digital spread must be accompanied by appropriate public policy for everybody to benefit in a fair and competitive manner.

In this context, it is interesting to read what Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook had said while launching his ambitious internet.org services in India in February 2015: “ …to continue connecting the world, we have to connect India. More than a billion people in India don’t have access to the Internet. That means they can’t enjoy the same opportunities many of us take for granted, and the entire world is robbed of their ideas and creativity.” There is a compelling reason to get everybody connected, but the Facebook seeks to achieve this by providing free data access to people on their mobile phones so that they can take advantage of certain Internet services. This has subsequently been termed as ‘free basics’.

I have no intention of entering into a debate on the policy makers’ dilemma on ‘free basics’, nor do I intend to comment on any orchestered opinion poll by Facebook, which apparently has mired the process of public consultations in this country. Let me rather go back to the basic debate on whether Internet should be made available free of cost as if it is a public good? And.. whether Facebook’s offer of ‘free basics’ can be treated as a public good? Will the Digital Dividend as described in the above mentioned Word Development Report be accelerated in India through the offer of ‘free basics’?

Let me try to answer these three questions:

Internet is a form of public good but not in the traditional sense: A public good essentially is one, which once provided, is available to all, whether they pay for it or not. Typical examples of public good are street lights, defence or policing services, etc. provided by public authorities. Internet in that sense is not a public good in itself as access to the net is usually subject to a fee. The providers of internet services are mostly in the private sector, and the private sector is least inclined to produce a public good. However, the traditional text-book definition of public good based on ‘non-rivalrous’ and ‘non-excludable’ characters do not appeal in the modern context. A public good is rather something that creates enormous positive externalities and contributes significantly to common good making a case for its universal availability. This availability may be ensured free of cost or at an affordable price irrespective of whether it is provided by a private entity or a public authority. Access to Internet could fall in the category of public good in this modern sense.

Facebook’s ‘free basics’ is made out to be a public good in the modern sense as above, but does it appear reasonable? ‘Free basics’ is a bouque of Internet services that Facebook thinks are essential for the common good of the society and it thinks that the same should be made available free of cost. Without going into what exactly is the proposed content of this bouquet of services, there is a prima facie question: how does Facebook determine what should come to the customers free of cost? What is the guarantee that it is really going to promote the ‘positive externality’ aspect of the public good argument? As a private entity is trying to determine the contents, the positive externality character of ‘free basics’ comes under suspicion. Remember, it is the fundamental access to internet that may qualify as a public good, not the access to certain specific services by exclusion of certain others. Thus the public good character of ‘free basics’ appears dubious.

Digital Dividend from ‘free basics’ appears vague and taken for granted. Mere access to Internet is not enough to guarantee economic and social upliftment of the people it intends to address. There is a lot more that needs to be ensured. The World Development Report articulates this aspect very well. It says that the impact of digital revolution has not fully fructified, as its ‘analog complements’ have not made commensurate progress, such components being mainly the right kind of regulations on entry and competition for operators and enabling people’s skills to reap the benefits of the digital revolution. Here comes the role of public authorities in India to see if ‘free basics’ is indeed a public good with enormous positive externality. Available information in the public domain does not tell us the exact positive externality that ‘free basics’ proposes to provide.

Universal access to Internet is a public good of a different kind and it needs calibrated intervention by the public authority.

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