Nikhil Kulkarni's Blog

Is Humanity Diverging into two civilizations?

v/s

I've written earlier about my musings on Clustered cities vs Suburban Sprawls being the two contrasting futures mankind stares at. I concluded in the 3 part series that the future of humanity, at least until the developing world gets to a median level of development, will be to be present in clustered cities. The other alternative which I envisaged for the longer term was to set up a colony on Mars.

However, since then we've had many developments and Covid-19 impacting the whole world. While Covid-19 has been devastating on economies across the globe, its impact on climate has been benign - fall in economic frenzy has only led to a reduction in carbon emissions, a civilizational realization about the value of boosting natural human immunity and end to wasteful ways of living.

The other side of Covid-19 is the realization that the pandemic is also an impact of human activities much like climate change itself. And as Covid-19 rages on forcing people to stay indoors, California faced the worst possible forest fires in history burning 3.1 million acres of forests, 26 times higher than last year (2019). More than 6500 structures were damaged or destroyed - assuming even 50% of them were homes with average 4 residents, we are talking about 13000+ people impacted.

Notably, forest fires are a major threat to suburban living and not so much for metropolitan clustered cities - suburban living disperses populations far and wide, closer to the forest not only increasing the risk of forest fires but also their impact on human life. Metropolitcan clustered cities instead promote isolation of human populations in urban limits leaving nature to thrive in the hinterland without much intervention.

Amidst all this, are increasing advances being made by cleantech enthusiasts in the areas of sustainable suburban living - whether it is super-efficient HVAC by Tesla or rave reviews of their Powerwall in combination with the original Solar roof. Improvement in battery technologies are also making a lifestyle disconnected from the powergrid possible. Ironical or not, but it is Californians, worried about an insecure energy future, who are increasingly looking to this kind of solution - a powergrid disconnected suburban home which produces its own power using the roof, stores it in a Powerwall which can keep running the house through the year. The economics don’t yet work for every household, but the economics of scale for green-power combo of solar panels plus batteries is slowly building up. Needless to say, the math won't work out for clustered cities where per-capita solar charging space would be a premium.

The Fork

Summarising, it looks like humanity is diverging (or has already diverged?) into two separate civilizations at the moment.

First, the developed world population which can live off the power grid, work and earn remotely. A typical suburban family, in this part of the world, will have a large house without any need to step out if there's a pandemic out there, they can get contactless food delivery via robots and as much entertainment online on the Internet via Starlink satellites. This civilization will live and work between the developed parts of earth and Martian colonies. They'd travel back and forth between these Martian outposts and earth, plan the future of the human race on the red planet and beyond.

The other fork to humanity will live in the ever-developing world in clustered cities, live lives more industrial in nature. They will be under constant threat of being impacted by outages, climate change events (pandemics or natural disasters) and their raison-d'être would primarily be producing goods (and services) for the other civilization.

Taking a leaf out of my other post on inequality, this is a future we stare at - a humanity split into two and unequal in not just the quality of life but also in their purpose and stature. This split may not be as visible as Aparthied but it will surely be as evident as Segregation, it may not be as unfair as Colonialism but definitely be based on Neocolonialist tendencies. And hence directionally, this split would be opposed to the liberal thought and libertarian ideals which many of us cherish.

If we believe that inequality is a bane for humanity, we must make all efforts to prevent this fork in the future of human civilisation.

Tags: Cities and Urbanization , CityvsSuburbseries , Post

हिंदी दिवस के उपलक्ष्य में एक ट्वीटमाला

A thread on Hindi Diwas; for the last few months I have been influencing my daughter to learn Hindi by telling her greatness & elegance of Hindi

हिंदी दिवस के उपलक्ष्य में एक ट्वीटमाला; पिछले कुछ माह से मैं अपनी बेटी को हिंदी की महत्ता और लालित्य के बारे में समझा रहा हूँ|

She is in Grade 2 and just started learning the Hindi alphabet and grammar.

वह कक्षा २ में है और अभी हिंदी वर्णमाला और व्याकरण के पहले पाठ पढ़ रही है|

Yesterday, she asked me why I think Hindi is a great language. Context being India has so many languages and our mother tongue is Marathi.

कल उसने मुझे पूछा कि मैं हिंदी को एक महानतम भाषा क्यों मानता हूँ - जबकी भारत में इतनी सारी भाषाएँ हैं और हमारी मातृभाषा मराठी है|

My answer - No doubt Hindi is a rich language in terms of literature, vocabulary, variety and its script Devnagiri is very scientific in nature...

मेरा उत्तर था की यद्यपी हिंदी साहित्य, शब्दावली, विविधता से परिपूर्ण हैं और उसकी प्रमुख लिपी देवनागिरी वैज्ञानिक है, ...

... But then these virtues describe almost all Indian languages.

...ये सारे गुण केवल हिंदी नहीं बल्की सभी भारतीय भाषाओं में हैं|

Hindi is great because above all else, its a perfect representation for the melting pot which India stands for.

हिंदी की प्रतिष्ठा इसलिए है क्योंकि वह भारत देश ही की तरह वसुधैव कुटुम्बकम की परंपरा को सजीव करती है|

Its name comes from a Persian word Hind (used for Sindhu / Indus River).

हिंदी यह शब्द फारसी लब्ज़ हिन्द (जो कि सिंधु नदी के नाम से निकला है) से है|

Its vocabulary is not just from Sanskrit but enriched by words from Prakrit, Arabic, Persian and many Indian languages; and it shares its word roots with several Eurasian languages.

हिंदी की शब्दावली प्रकृत, अरबी, फारसी और कईं अन्य भारतीय भाषाओं से बनी है और इसके शब्दमूल कईं यूरोपीय भाषाओं के शब्दों से मिलते हैं|

Hindi has at least 10 documented dialects and can be written in at least 3 scripts - Devnagiri, Urdu Script and now Romanised Hindi (used on Whatsapp mostly).

हिंदी १० से भी अधिक बोलियों में बोली जा सकती है और दीवानागिरि, उर्दू और [अमूमन व्हाट्सऐप पर] रोमन लिपियों में लिखी जाती है|

As the fourth most spoken language in the world, Hindi is possibly the best representation of the Indian ethos of Unity In Diversity.

विश्व की चौथी सबसे अधिक बोली जाने वाली भाषा, हिंदी, भारत की अनेकता में एकता का सच्चा प्रतिबिम्ब है|

इस ट्विटमाला को यहाँ पढ़ें: https://twitter.com/kulkarninikhil/status/1305567715260731392

Tags: India , Post

The natural order of things!

I just finished watching all 4 seasons of Mr. Robot - the cyberpunk TV/Web Series about a fictional sequence of events where a vigilante hacker group fsociety (styled on the Anonymous group) attacks E-Corp, the world's largest conglomerate (think GE + JP Morgan) and brings them down through a Ransomware attack.

The objective of the attack is to free millions of people from massive debt which they are running - the fountainhead of debt across the US being E-Corp. With the hack, millions of loans become unserviceable because data for them is no longer available, but it also leads to E-corp being unable to dispense cash to its depositors and freezing of further lending, ultimately the entire hacking episode leads to an economic collapse!

While my initial interest in the series arose due to its cyberpunk lineage, my interest post Season 1 was retained more because of its depiction of the interplay between epochal events and the nature of human society. Eliot / Mr Robot's original intention in the ransomware attack is to bring down E-Corp and the entire 'elite society' which runs around it. But when the economic meltdown transpires, the exact opposite happens - credit freeze and restrictions on deposit withdrawals hit the poor the most, millions lose livelihoods, homes and relations go sour. The rich, on the other hand, do get impacted but only in losing the sheen of their lifestyles or social stature.

This made me think back of the various other such epochal events we have noticed in past several years - the 2008 economic collapse, some electoral changes in various countries, and most recent Covid-19. Just like the fictional Five/Nine hack in Mr Robot, most of these events haven't impacted 'natural order of human society'. The rich are still rich, the poor even poorer, the middle classes remain locked in a constant graze to crack the glass ceiling to become the rich.

This does not mean that the natural order never changes. For example, Independent India's most revolutionary land policy was the abolition of the Zamindari system (feudal landholding practices). Another such change was the 'The Protection Of Civil Rights Act, 1955' which abolished the practice of untouchability in India. The American Civil War which abolished Slavery was another such epoch event globally, as was the Civil Rights movement led by Martin Luther King Jr and the Civil Rights Act of 1968 which followed his assassination. The 1994 South African general election which led to the abolishment of Apartheid in South Africa is another such epoch event which changed the social order.

However, while all these legislative events might have aimed at bringing instant changes to social order, their success has been excruciatingly slow at best. Casteism is still rampant in rural India, even though it may not take the extreme form of Untouchability. The recent Black Lives Matter campaign in the United States illustrates that African Americans still face discrimination in American society. Housing and economic differences are still quite pronounced between Whites and Blacks in South Africa. For this reason, such legislative changes are often not acceptable to 'revolutionaries' like Che Guevara or hackers of the Anonymous group or the fictional Eliot Anderson. They prefer a more radical approach, which often involves eliminating the privileged.

At the same time, it is interesting to note that instead of revolutionary epochal events, the real march of civilisation towards being more egalitarian and impacting social order has been littered with technological progress of the human society. Industrialisation, for example, led to the formation of cities and as people moved to cities, it led to their intermingling and weakening of casteist structures among them. Another wave of awakening against casteism was a result of Indians travelling overseas for education and trade. Gandhi himself travelled to South Africa to set up a new legal practice and Ambedkar, while he was an anti-casteism torch bearer early on, strengthened his ideology while studying in London and the US.

The American Civil war also has an interesting relationship with Industrialisation; while the key reason for Civil War was disagreement over the abolition of slavery, the reason why this became an issue was because of the economic makeup of the US circa 1860s. The Northern States were largely Industrialised while the Southern States more agrarian. Slavery was critical to the South mainly because it allowed them to remain economically competitive in spite of being agrarian, against the onslaught of industrialisation the world over. Slave labour was virtually free and hence the South could produce raw agricultural produce much cheaper than the rest of America or Europe. Europeans imported heavily from the Southern States and in turn, exported finished goods to America which were cheaper than finished goods produced by the Northern States themselves. This led the Northern States to propose the Tariffs of 1828 against cheap European imports, and the opposition of such Tariff by Southern states came in form of the Nullification Crisis. These two initial sparks ultimately spiralled slowly into the Civil War.

The 21st century has been different however. Industrialisation in the 19th century paved way for changes to social order in the 20th century. Laws and reforms mentioned above all belong to the early/mid 20th century. However, even though the Internet brought about massive changes in the way we live towards the end of the 20th century and early decade of the 21st, we haven't had any laws, regulations or revolutions challenging the social order for almost 50 years now. The Internet has changed a lot for humanity, and while millions are now getting educated on their own through the web, they haven't been able to uproot themselves from the social order they are born into.

The continuance of caste mindset in Rural India or the police atrocities on African Americans which came to light following the killing of George Floyd only indicates the need for Social reforms across the globe, because of exactly what the fictional events in Mr Robot show, any form of a frontal attack on the social order has the exact opposite effect.

The Internet was supposed to not just lift millions out of poverty but also transfer wealth from the rich to the poor. However, the Fed expanding its balance sheet following the collapse of 2008, and other such schemes have ensured that the rich are insulated from the downsides of wealth erosion at the cost of the tax-payer; these bail-outs also have robbed the poor of the welfare funds meant for social upliftment. At the same time, the gains from the massive wealth generation - whether it is the Silicon Valley growth or that from cheap Chinese labour - are well protected in coffers of the rich.

The entire world today is moving towards a 'Zamindari system' where massive wealth is locked in hands of the top 1%, who also control governments, central bankers, mainstream media and through them, even the electorate. They use this power to secure the continuance of wealth in their hands. We've tried hacking the social order by revealing how the rich do what they do [WikiLeaks, Inside Job] - the manipulation of elections, media and people is virtually public information. With Social Media, social atrocities too are no longer hidden in plain sight. We've had epochal events - from 9/11 to 2008 crash to Covid-19. None of these have managed to dent the natural order of things!

What is lacking I believe is laws and regulations same as the abolition of the Zamindari system to uproot these inequalities and to give a fillip to the furtherance of equality for all of mankind. In India, the Modi govt has enacted a few laws in its first term such as the IBC which prevents large corporate borrowers turning into 'wilful defaulters', and forcing govt and regulators to rely on bailouts from Depositor's / Taxpayers money to keep Banks afloat.

But there's much more to be done here - recently Modi's own party has been a part of political shenanigans where lawmakers were traded from one party to the other to topple and form new state governments. It may be unconfirmed, but public perception is that massive money exchanged hands - allegations and accusations may not have been proven, but then how does one explain a series of such events happening across states? And where does the money used for horsetrading lawmakers come from? It comes from businesses, who then surely would expect qui-pro-quo from the Chief Minister who's government was saved or formed. Such events only make the inequalities persist longer because it necessitates the nexus between politicians and the rich and prevents creation of laws or policies to counter inequality.

And India is just about a sixth of the world's population - what about Canada, the US, Europe, China, Russia, Far East, Africa and South America? The problem of inequality is global and the rich are one-force globally. Globalisation means that rich investors own corporations (or parts of corporations) which span across nations and continents. Bailouts in the US have a massive impact on Indian markets and vice-versa. Until there are reforms globally, we will not be able to reduce or even prevent inequality from rising as it has, in the past several decades.

Yes, the problem of inequality is as old as human civilisation itself - and inequalities will exist until there is a human society. It isn't inequality but the unfairness of inequality which we need to fight. The phenomenon where the privileged remaining privileged for generations, while the poor suffer - the sterilisation of social structure from technological progress, is what we need to fight. As mankind progresses, we must make our social structures more malleable where it should become increasingly easier for the underprivileged to rise up and difficult for the privileged to protect their turf.

Global laws need to change for this to happen and this possibly is the biggest challenge that the post-knowledge-economy / post-globalisation generation faces.

Tags: Musings , Post

How will travel industry transform post-Covid

Unlike philosophers, journalists and teenagers, the world of entrepreneurship does not permit the luxury of gazing into a crystal ball to predict the future. An entrepreneur’s world is instead made of MVPs (Minimum Viable Product), A/B Tests, launching products, features or services and gauging / measuring their reception in the market to arrive at verifiable truths which can drive the business forward.

Which is why I have never written about my musings or hypothesis about travel industry – we usually either seek customer feedback or launch an MVPised version and gather market feedback. However, with Covid-19 travel bans across the globe, the industry is currently stuck – while a lot of industry reports and journalistic conjectures are out, there’s no definitive answer to the way forward. Besides there is no way to test your hypothesis since even the traveller does not know what they will do when skies open.

So, I decided to don my blogger hat and take the luxury of crystal gazing today – below are some thoughts on how the travel industry may see itself a few years after Covid bans end.

Sidenote: My general take about everything “post Covid” is that Covid will only exacerbate trends we have seen coming for last several years, in some cases, decades. Covid is not so much about a change of direction as it is about speed. Covid will accelerate hitherto hidden trends and provide velocity to existing transformations.

Dip, Slowdown or uptake?

While opinion is abound, most research suggests that with Covid, corporates may adopt Work-From-Home as a permanent situation even if not necessitated by environmental reasons. As work gets done for longer duration remotely, and people’s minds and schedules adjust to remote nature of work, several work categories will soon settle into a permanent habit of remote efficiency. When the world finally opens, this would mean that while many workers would surely throng to their offices to meet colleagues – businesses’ propensity to fund business travel would surely reduce.

On the other hand – and this is where I gaze into my crystal ball – as more people start longer-term remote work, their need for leisure travel may go up substantially. Travel is fundamental to human existence – if the first humans had not wandered out of the African continent, the history of human evolution would have been very different. Just like man is a social animal, he is also a wanderer – wandering is embedded in mankind’s DNA and it is impossible to take that away from us.

So, to compensate a long-drawn shelter-at-home / work-from-home fatigue, not only would leisure travel provide an immediate succour but the trends for leisure travel may see a permanent bump for times to come, may be even (over)compensate the reduction in business travel budgets.

Travel Agencies?

Many travel agencies have shuttered temporarily to brace the Covid storm. Almost everyone has administered a pay cut to employees, some have laid off staff, some have paused salary payments on a temporary basis. As the skies open up, many of these half-shut hibernating agencies will wake up and start again. There are many possibilities which await them:

Resumption of pre-Covid work schedules and load
Partial resumption with lowered transaction flow [owing to lower business travel]
Expectation of lowered costs / commissions from clients
Expectation of digital / remote experience in providing services earlier delivered in person

If I were to take a bet, I believe #4, followed by #3 are sure to happen; while either of #1 and #2 may transpire for agencies depending on how well they embrace #4 and #3. In the last few months, many people have tasted comforts of remote work / life, especially the otherwise digitally shy [boomers or equivalent generation] and become comfortable with using digital means. So travel agencies which relied on footfall from their presence in prominent commercial districts, may realise that a digital presence is as or more important to solicit customers. At the same time, agencies which already have digital presence, but low-profile physical presence may see a faster revival of business.

Expectations of digital experience may transcend the need to just have a website, customers may expect a deeper digital experience in terms of self-service/customer-service. Further, their expectations from their regular travel agency may be referenced based on their experience with other digital players like OTAs or Payment apps.

Another trend which Covid will intensify is a shift from fulfilment to customer service – already customers access the same travel information that agencies do. The travel agent’s value therefore is in ‘curating’ the travel plan as per the customer’s preferences and in providing value added customer service. Demonstratable value addition, coupled with digital delivery, will be key to survival and flourishing of travel agencies.

Destination Management Companies (DMCs)

Essentially the ‘suppliers’ of all services you consume when you travel, DMCs are the equivalent of ‘ancillary industries’ in manufacturing. Same as Small Scale ancillaries they thrive on lean cash flows and workforce – a lot of gig economy work, whether its taxi drivers or amateur tour guides depend on DMCs for their livelihood. DMCs have been hardest hit by the Covid-19 bans as regular cash flow has been disrupted and with their already lean model, they haven’t had much buffer to support their employees / contractors / gig workers.

While their regular cash flow will resume as Covid-19 bans lift across the globe, there are some fundamental shifts which will occur in the DMC world also. Just like travel agencies will need to digitise, DMCs will also need to feed into this digital supply chain if they want to stay relevant. This is no different than other gig-economy workers. Just like an Uber driver has a better chance of getting an on-demand booking, compared to a taxi which operates in the taxistand, DMCs who are already a part of a digital platform will recover faster than others.

Plugging in to the digital supply chain may be much harder than one imagines. Unlike an Uber driver who just needs to enlist his/her profile with the app and get started, a DMC will need to do a lot more work. It starts with digitising the ‘rate-card’ of services – many DMCs still work via email providing quotes based on ‘manual calculations’ done by staff. Having standardised services, rates cards, rate calculations [including tax considerations], they need to either customise them to fit the digital platform’s template or develop their own software to provide online feeds. [Full disclosure: Darwin’s solution provides potential solutions to DMCs in the in-between space also. Contact here to explore more]

Once the price determination / quotation is taken care of, DMCs will also need to explore opportunities of digitising the fulfilment cycle. DMCs shall need to use digital means such as Messenger apps, mobile apps and QR codes to make it easy for the traveller to avail the services they have booked or to reach out to the DMC for help.

Online Portals

This is a tricky one, because the Online Portals come in several shapes and sizes. More importantly they are simply the window to the existing fabric of travel service companies. While it is true that the offline travel agency has been hit hard over last several years with the rise of the Online Travel Portals, the offline world has also transformed itself to cohabit the ecosystem. Covid-19 has hit offline and online players equally in terms of revenue but unlike small offline agencies, who may have the luxury of laying off staff, online players may not be able to do so. Further, there are technology costs which are fixed and difficult to cut out completely.

I do not have any general prediction to make for the online portals except that the industry may see consolidation in the coming years, but also that innovation will remain key to not just survival but thriving in future. Players who embrace new realities, ideate, iterate, fail fast at lower costs are sure to reap the long-term fruits that the post-Covid-19 world begets.

Image Credits: Raja Patel via unsplash

Tags: Covid-19 , Digital Lifestyle , Post , Travel

A mundane interpretation of ज्ञान योग [Gyan Yog]

Today is International Yoga day - a day on which the whole world 'celebrates' the ancient practice of Yog / Yoga, albeit in a much-simplified form as a mere 'exercise' regimen. Unlike its popular format - the Hath Yoga - the term Yoga denotes a set of practices which can be used by a human being to take the path of salvation - Moksha [मोक्ष].

Background

There are mainly three pathways to salvation - Karm Yoga, Bhakti Yoga and Gyan Yoga. The three paths are not mutually exclusive. Karm yoga is the path of unselfish action without being attached to the fruits or consequences - the path taught by Lord Krishna in the Bhagwad Gita. Bhakti Yoga is about attaining salvation through extreme devotion towards a god - some examples are those of Meera and Varkari devotees of Bhagwaan Vitthal in Maharashtra. [You can look up more on these online - a lot of information is available on Wikipedia and blogs about these]

Gyan Yoga means that one can achieve salvation by gaining knowledge of God. A deeper exploration of Gyan Yoga, however, would indicate that it's not the knowledge of God but rather knowledge of reality which is being sought by the individual under the practices of Gyan Yoga. Knowledge leads to 'awareness', which ultimately leads to 'self-awareness' - which is the ultimate attainment of Moksha.

Conjecture

Apart from being the International Yoga day, today was also an Annular Solar Eclipse. As I watched the news coverage with a dual emphasis of how Astronomers and Astrologers were camped jointly under a tent on the banks of Brahm Kund to study the eclipse - I had a realisation that while spiritual awakening is a much complex ultimate objective, one could interpret Gyan Yoga in a much more mundane way. While spiritual awakening or Moksha is about 'self-realization', one can interpret 'Gyan' or knowledge as the pathway to mundane 'realisations'; and just like spiritual-awakening can liberate us spiritually, mundane realisations would liberate us from fear, uncertainties or doubts of our daily struggles.

Substance

Take the example of Solar eclipse itself - millennia/centuries ago when we humans didn't know much about the phenomenon of Eclipses, we feared them. Several superstitions were promulgated in the name of an Eclipse and other related phenomena. Rather than actively look forward to the opportunity to observe such seemingly rare celestial events, we feared its occurrence. Knowledge / Gyan however, has empowered us, liberated us from the fear and delivered us into this age of 'enlightenment' when we understand and appreciate the Eclipse - we marvel at the heavenly event unfolding right in front of us; we thank our stars for being born in a Solar System and an age when we can experience this phenomenon.

Another such example struck me when I was watching a web-series. As a child, adolescent or even until my 20s when I used to watch movies or TV series with graphic or disturbing content, it used to create havoc in my sleep sequence for days. No, I didn't get nightmares but my mind used to wander endlessly into the known / unknown possibilities, motives and outcomes that these sequences could have on the storyline. In some cases, though after a lot of mental deliberation I would realise that these events were avoidable and had little or no bearing on the plot or story.

Then, a few years back, I went through an online course about storytelling. It included a section on how movie makers and scriptwriters deliberately insert plot twists or shock events after the entire script has been written, to create a sense of jounce in their presentation. These shocks come in the form of sudden violence, sexual scenes or gory depiction of other excesses such as gluttony or greed. These shocks are created to make the viewer remember the plot, though these events could as well have been absent from the plot itself without changing the outcomes in any way.

So this time, when I was watching this web-series, I was conscious of this adulteration in the plot. Whenever such shock events occurred I sensed them instantly - I would even skip some of them forward [thanks to streaming!! :-) wouldn't have been possible on live TV]. I did not have the fear of 'missing out' some key detail of the plot so as to impact my understanding of the storyline because I knew now that these plot twists had been inserted for a different reason. So this knowledge, this gyan liberated me to watch the movie / web series in a peaceful and qualitatively better method.

Yet another example of how knowledge liberates you is when you start seeing the political upheavals through the prism of time. This is one reason why the young are more emotionally charged with political events than the old. The old people have seen the sequence of political manipulations umpteen number of times and they know how things turn up just fine or just as earlier irrespective of how microscopic events unfold. Knowledge gained through experience of being the audience to earlier political theatre liberates them from the uncertainty or doubt [and in some cases the hope] which the young often get swayed by.

Tags: Musings , Post

The good things about Covid-19 outbreak

Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus - Mumbai
Unprecedented Lockdown

Its been a month and 10 days of the lockdown here in India, an attempt to contain the outbreak of Covid-19; the deadly virus which has engulfed the whole world and caused the death of thousands - possibly the most deaths mankind has seen in a span of few months since the Second World War. [I mean this only in the global context though, locally we have had wars, calamities and similar viral outbreaks which have outnumbered Covid-19.]

As the founder of a travel startup, I was initially terribly shaken at how life has been thrown completely out of gear by this deadly virus. Travel is the worst affected sector; suddenly 2020 which we had planned to be the 'explosive growth' year for us has thrown us into an existential crisis. The situation has taken such a wild turn that I've grown comfortably numb only shifting the timeline of our 'explosive' growth to the next calendar year [or potentially even further] while we try to figure out how we will survive till we hit that point.

However, among all the bad news - there's a lot of positive stuff that's happening and some of that I wanted to record here today.

Consumerism has taken a backseat

India is a rapidly developing country and we Indians, and poorer Indians more than the middle class or rich ones like me were fast getting used to a wasteful westernized lifestyle. Everything from food to consumables to data to financial credit was becoming cheaper by the month, and easier to access. And we were wasting all this massively. I wrote a previous blog post about how dystopian it was all becoming where we were all overworking ourselves to afford luxuries which we possibly could not have afforded.

Suddenly, all these excesses have come to a grinding halt. Even for an upper-middle-class neighbourhood like mine, grocery shops are rationing supplies so that they can service all customers for a longer period rather than exhaust their stocks in a few days. For poorer Indians, the ephemeral prosperity has suddenly halted, in a treacherous way. Gone is the pull of TikTok videos on new-fangled mobile phones - their income is gone, survival has become difficult. It's not a pretty sight, it's not something to be proud of - many of these people are nowadays either without food or rationing on a day to day basis what they have, or living off on government-provided aid.

But the positive is, they've / we've all learnt to live within our means again, we are no longer over buying, overspending, overspending, and over-wasting. The garbage bin now gets full once in two days than half a day. I am not sure yet, but some of us may also stop buying the ₹500 Netflix and ₹300 extra data pack to watch content we watched only under peer pressure.

Cleanliness is the buzzword

Yes, India is Hot, Flat and Crowded - but it is also Dirty! Prime Minister Modi has been crying hoarse since the second year of his term about his Swatchh Bharat Abhiyaan - a program to clean up India. He has organized national competitions, given away grants and spent millions on advertising cleanliness to Indians. But Corona has finally taught people to keep themselves clean, wash their hands regularly, clean their apartments [on their own, without an army of house servants], clean public areas and stop spitting. Cleanliness which was earlier considered either a grouse of puritans or a fake tirade by Modi supporters is finally getting respected on its own.

Vegetarianism is back
India has been a largely vegetarian country due to religious reasons, but rising prosperity has social liberation has increasingly made vegetarianism fade away. But with Covid-19 having been linked to eating wild animals, people have generally let up on their non-vegetarian diet and moving towards vegetarianism. Globally too, Covid-19 may lead to reduction of the practice of eating wild animals and trade of animals, especially endangered species, may go down. Any reduction in the production of Livestock, which is a key contributor to global warming, will only help make earth a greener planet.

We are building public hospitals

Yes, this is indeed a boon of the virus for countries like India. For decades Governments have neglected their duty to build hospitals and left the healthcare sector to private enterprises. With the exception of few European countries [Britain, Spain, Germany, Italy] and Japan - most Governments of the world do not provide free healthcare to citizens.

But finally, as this video of Congresswoman Katie Porter forcing CDC in the US to make Covid-19 testing available for free, and this ruling by India's Supreme Court says - governments are finally being forced to spend on citizens health. This has a snowball effect because when governments realise that they anyway have to pay, they start spending on creating infrastructure. Military commissioned hospitals, though makeshift, is the beginning. The long term effect of Covid-19 will be governments finally realising that building public health infrastructure is cheaper than funding squarely for epidemic control. If we had more capacity in our hospitals, it would have been cheaper to offer Covid-19 treatment to citizens.

In a developing country like India, where public health facilities are often dilapidated, this would mean more money flowing into healthcare and hence improvement in the general level of public healthcare infrastructure.

Utilities and Healthcare are back to being respected - no longer a business
Yes - the doctor who lives next door is today risking his life and going to the hospital taking care of critical patients at the risk of infecting himself. He deserves to be honoured - so do sanitation workers, security staff and all those who have been providing 'utilitarian services' to us. I see a change in people's attitude towards civil service operators - whether its doctors, policemen, sanitation workers or housekeeping staff in their apartments. People are thankful for these people to work, they are providing them with food, extra pay and most importantly the much-needed respect.

Of course, I am not sure if this change of hearts will outlive the Covid-19 crisis or end with it, will doctors get back to becoming the money-making machines that private hospitals were trying to make them [I thankfully know many doctors who haven't succumbed even pre-Covid19], will sanitation workers get back to taking bribes to perform their duties - will people stop respecting these warriors? I wish this is a change for good and we continue this respect while professionals continue to do the selfless service which they've been giving last 40 days!

Focus is back on medical research and manufacturing
Related but not really the same as public funding of healthcare 'services' is funding of medical research. We need more funding for medical research and in the last two decades, that is one that has suffered.

In the last 3 decades, Venture funding has focussed microscopically on technology startups or companies which "look like technology startups" [WeWork?]. We fail to recognise that Medical "technology" is possibly the most fundamental of all. While pension funds would probably be happy putting billions into Pharmaceutical Stocks and while Pharma companies are funding research - there's much more that's needed.

Yes, the $500 ventilator is surely a money-spinner but then it's not just about cutting edge disruptive products; after all, the more you focus towards 'disruption' in healthcare, the closer you get to cases like Theranos. What is needed is hard-headed investments - venture investment, and traditional debt funding - into vanilla businesses like large scale manufacturing of medical equipment, consumables and accessories. It is an ignominy that a poor country like India, which prides itself on 'Information technology and electronics exports', imports more medical equipment than what it manufactures.

Covid-19, with its massive supply chain shocks, will finally bring the focus back into manufacturing of medical equipment locally or closer to the shore for all countries across the globe. And this is good - there is a need for manufacturing everywhere because society needs manufacturing jobs everywhere. The US needs manufacturing as much as China and India; so do Italy and Germany.

Jobs will be back
Yes, there will be a recession, jobs will be lost - business will cut costs and jobs. But for many poor, some Jobs will also come back. Everyone has realised the concentration risk of making China the manufacturing hub of the world and political pragmatism will dictate that many jobs which moved to China (and India) will move closer to the shore. One may see a rise of manufacturing growth in neglected regions of Vietnam, East Europe, and the Southern United States - places which offer labour at decent costs yet business environment far better than China.

The business world will see a new levelling; post Covid-19 will also be a post-globalisation business world. People will also travel less, having tasted the blood of remote work, companies will reduce their travel bills, people will also reduce their travel, to avoid unwanted health risks. And the psychological side-effect of less travel will be preference of executives to have their work done closer to where they live - this will especially be true of manufacturing and to an extent of services.

This is also a wake-up call to businesses which have been earning solely on wage arbitrage; providing quality, diversifying your business risks is now as important as cost control. If that means that an Indian company rather open an office in the US and Europe, or a Chinese company invests in setting up manufacturing in America - it will either be done, or they will lose business. If doing that makes you unsustainable, you were in the wrong business all this while.

People / Companies are realising the value of Insurance

I've been an Information Risk consultant early in my career - I remember that Business Continuity plans were things that only large multinationals did, because they had the budget or, for many, because the regulation needed them to. IT companies in India had BCPs because their client's asked for one in each RFP. With Covid-19, when 80-100% of the workforce was required to suddenly operate from home, all these companies realised the value of a BCP and their own preparedness for these BCP scenarios. Many who weren't prepared paid with the loss of contracts, a slowdown of work, loss of efficiency or simply increased discretionary spend on acquiring resources - to continue their business.

With Covid-19, many laggards who did not devote enough resources to enabling a better working life for their employees were taken in for a shock. In 2020, these organizations were operating with Desktop Computers keyed in to a traditional hard wired network cable and used antiquated Information Security methods because they wanted to see their employees chained to their desks. They did not extend work-from-home facilities to their employees even though they could because they had this bizarre notion that employees work only when the boss can keep an eye on them. As I tweeted here, CTOs, IT Infra SVPs & even CFOs of companies in this state, are guilty of keeping their employees in a productivity hell for almost a decade because work from home was possible 15 years ago.

The running joke is very true, that for several companies its neither the CIO nor the CTO or even the CEO who could drive the "Go Digital" Agenda - but Covid-19 has managed just that. And organizations are finally waking up to the need / benefits of real BCP, than a paper filling certifications seeking exercise.

We've found new respect for Humanity
Yeah! It's not just the doctors among us who are earning respect - we've found new love for all fellow humans. Now that I know how hard it is to mop the floor, I will possibly think twice before littering around just because the maid will clean it up tomorrow.

The second aspect is of Family time going up. Social media which had destroyed dinner table conversations is now going reverse - I am so fed up of the screen by the time I start my dinner that I'd rather listen to my daughter's chattering than stare away into the mobile. And if I still dare to look at my mobile, now that I am spending my entire day at home, my daughter knows that I was working all day and so she won't let me stare away into the last email on my phone as I munch my food. My work-life balance may be screwed (it always was!) but irrespective, I am indeed spending more time with family than what I used to.

We are discovering ourselves and our community
And Social Media - well, its finally connecting us back. We have daily video calls with parents who live far, we have family video call gatherings. We are also Zooming with school friends whom we haven't talked to in decades.

And people reopening their hobbies - someone I know started an Origamy class online. Another of my mentors is writing long Facebook / LinkedIn posts sharing nuggets of wisdom from his two-decade long entrepreneurial journey. My wife is busy destressing herself by drawing and painting; as I type this, the wall next to me has a half-painted unicorn sketch which will possibly be coloured tomorrow. And I am finally writing on my blog! :-)

The Climate is Healing

Since the last 1 week, I wake up to the cooing of a Koyal in my balcony. I don't know if its the absence of the urban whirr which is making me notice her cooing, or has she started cooing realizing that the city around her is quieter and noise pollution is low. But as twilight draws near, I notice more birds and more sounds around me for sure. May be this is just my own mind playing games with me, but there's scientific evidence that the planet is healing itself - at least Birds are back where they belong; in my balcony.

With no aeroplanes whizzing in the skies, 1% of cars on the road and a tenth of industries polluting the world for past 30+ days skies are surely cleaner. And Oil prices have crashed - hopefully Oil is going away, maybe for good, maybe low Oil prices are here to stay - and so are electric cars! Yes, cheap oil may make cleantech feel more expensive, but I believe the tide has turned over - oil is cheaper not only because demand has fallen due to Covid-19, but also because electric cars are here to stay. Markets anticipate that electric mobility may finally be making a dent and lower consumption of oil could be a new normal which is here to stay.

The healing of climate also makes me wonder, if even without Covid-19, should we make this 'stay-at-home', shut down factories, shut down planes, shut down cars - an annual exercise to keep giving climate change mini-breaks?

Another piece in the Martian jigsaw puzzle has fit
This one is a long shot - it actually would fit better in a blog post which is in draft mode since the last 6 months. The post is about how recent changes and innovations are preparing mankind for colonization and existence on a Martian station.

Covid-19 is actually the last piece of the Martian jigsaw puzzle because outer space is filled with many more deadly diseases than what we can imagine on the ozone-shielded cocooned atmosphere of the earth. Mankind is going to need large scale preparedness to deal with frequent pandemic calls if it wants to survive on a space station bereft of a conducive atmosphere. And Covid-19 is possibly the first of such pandemic shocks which mankind is going to get in the next few decades which will ultimately prepare us for setting up civilisation in worlds far far away!

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Tags: Covid-19 , Musings , Post , SocioPolitic

We are living in a dystopian world!

As I sipped my cutting cup of of tea at the tea stall, I couldn't but help notice the guffaws of the sabzi waala (vegetable vendor) sitting right next - from what I could overhear in the cacophony of street traffic, he was watching some Bhojpuri standup comedy. The chai waala (tea vendor) noticed my scrutiny of his neighbour, smiled and then said:

Jio ने सबको बीज़ी कर दिया है! ग्राहक आए या ना आए - ये अपना भोजपुरी इन्टरटेंमेंट में ही लगा रहता है! 😆

With the economic headwinds strong, and no sight of respite - it amused me to notice the scene I was in. The poor vendor was not disappointed or dejected; he wasn't looking forward to his job or future either - notably, food inflation has remained at its lowest levels in the last few years due to efforts of Modi government and the vegetable vendor has surely not had or expected higher earnings. Other forms of inflation - housing, transport (fuel) etc - are moderate and hence his savings, if he has any, would not have grown, rather would have been depleting. The only thing that may have improved for him is what his preoccupation thence - cheaper data speeds and thus access to cheap personalised entertainment.

Mulling over all this, I proceeded to board the metro train. It was rush hour and the metro was jampacked with people - most were texting or watching videos on their phones here too. Most of them would be midlevel executives going by their attire - I wondered why they were in a metro? I knew the answer because it was the same reason I was in the metro - the roads were worse than the jampacked metro - there were not only jampacked, they were worse in terms of commute time; Mumbai ranked #4 in traffic congestion and the city's roads saw 119% congestion in 2019.

Again, for the mid-level city executive, a look at the last 5 years was the same as that for the vegetable vendor - traffic hadn't gotten any better, commute times have only risen; so have fuel costs.

Interestingly, we've had two dips in international crude oil in these 5 years - but on both occasions [rather time periods], the govt has chosen to enjoy the gains of the lower pricing to fund its own deficit than pass on the benefits to the consumers/citizens. Not that cheaper fuel would have helped - it would only have made the terrible traffic woes even more terrible.

Food inflation has stayed low but real estate is so damn expensive that people have no choice but to rent/buy housing farther and farther from the city. Recession, or stagnation in the industry is not going away - Banks are stretched and hence credit is not flowing, so there is hardly any new investment and hence fewer opportunities on the horizon. Professional growth isn't something most mid-level executives are vying for - several, in fact, maybe just trying to keep their jobs and their salaries intact.

Back to the scene in the metro, a phone rang - given that there was no space when the co-passenger pulled out his mobile, I had no choice but to peep into this phone. I could see the Trucaller screen pop up the name of the caller - a telemarketing agency. He cut the call without bothering to pick it up and went back to the Netflix show he was watching. Had it been a friend, I would have lectured him on the HUGE privacy nightmare that TrueCaller is! On this occasion though, I kept quiet not to offend an unknown bloke.

I got down from the metro and started to look for an Uber - it took the usual 4 minutes of search and 10 minutes of waiting time for me to board one. The driver was estranged, almost as if he had resigned to the traffic which he stared at. I tried to make small talk asking him where else he had driven during the day and if traffic was any better.

D - सssब तरफ़ ऐसाही ही है साहब!! जहाँ देखो रास्ता खोदे रक्खे हैं!
Me - चलो कम से कम waiting का तो पैसा मिलता है आपको
D - कोई फ़ायदा नहीं साहब - २ साल से Uber वाले commission कम कर दिए हैं! और traffic में गाड़ी कम चलता है तो उतना कमाई भी नहीं पूरी होती
Me - पर पहले से तो अच्छा है ना ?
D - पहले मैं काली पीली चलाता था; Uber वालों ने पहले तो सपनें दिखाए, तो हम सबने नई गाड़ी खरीदी loan लेकर - अब commission कम किया तो हमारा गाड़ी का हफ्ता ही महंगा पड़ रहा है हमें | इस से अच्छा तो हम पुरानी काली पीली ही चलाते!

The gist of the above conversation is that he bought a new Car on loan in hope of better earnings when Ridesharing companies were offering better commissions. But now that the commissions have reduced, he is finding it difficult to even manage to pay off his EMIs for the car loan. But now that he was caught in the vicious circle of the Loan-EMI repayment, there is no way he can go back. He has to continue being an Uber driver in the hope that someday his EMI will be paid off and he will start earning money - assuming the maintenance costs of his vehicle do no rise by then.

I got home and a friend was already there waiting for our pre-planned dinner. He had flown in from Delhi for a day and we decided to meet for dinner. We compared notes - Delhi was no better, real estate was marginally cheaper but public transport was worse off. His preferred method in spite of traffic woes was driving his car and his commute time was worse than mine - almost 2 hours one way. Delhi had one more problem, acute pollution which gets especially worse in winter months; he was worried if his daughter would develop asthma with the kind of air she was breathing at a young age.

The entire day reminded me of the dystopian movie In Time, where people stop ageing past 25 so time has become the universal currency traded between people. When the time "bank account" on an implanted clock reaches zero, that impoverished person "times out" and is euthanized. So everyone earns so that they may live a little longer, and each luxury they enjoy reduces their time to live. In a heart-wrenching scene - the protagonist goes to meet his mother when the city bus fare rises from 1 to 2 hours, and she only has 90 minutes. She tries to run to meet her son, but times out at the last moment and dies in his arms!

It feels like we are living in a parallel era, where people pay with their Privacy, their time and their Health. The vegetable vendor gets his ₹300 a month entertainment - just like Opium to fulfil his desires, while his future remains suspended in his current state; the Uber driver is perennially under debt but yet unable to give up his profession; the mid level executive stuck in his day job and stuck in the traffic of the city; also a parent stuck with poor environment and constant worry about his offspring's health!

It is as if the Big Bad Corporation - the Mobile Operator, the ride-sharing app, the MNC corp, the Govt and the Carmakers have all managed to lock the common man into a vicious cycle of selling their time, their privacy and their lives for luxuries they cannot afford anyway. It is, as if, these citizens would have been better off without the luxury - without having to pay for it, and without having enjoyed it - but alas, they are paying for these luxuries by reducing precious hours from their lifetimes!

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Tags: Musings , Post

How entrepreneurs contributed to rise of the Indian freedom movement

Dadasaheb Phalke

Nana Shankarsheth

Many entrepreneurs, while opinionated about business issues, often tend to be apolitical or at least try to steer clear of making public their political leanings to prevent negative impact on their business interests. Some, of course, are fanatics, who also use their monetary success to defend and further their political interests. Some others are fanatic enough to declare the entire political class as useless and corrupt.

Nevertheless, for times immemorial, entrepreneurs have pugmarked the path of technological and social progress, albeit to further their business interests in the short term, but resulting in ultimate progress of society towards being more fair and equanimous. Some entrepreneurs who played a pivotal role in India's freedom struggle include G.D. Birla whose association with M.K. Gandhi is well known and his struggles against British & Scottish traders and his efforts to set up indigenous industry are well documented. There were other 'swadeshi' businessmen such as Ardeshir Godrej and Ramnath Goenka who in their own ways supported the growth of local businesses in India.

If you trace the strength of the final Indian Independence movement - the one led by Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Bose and other leaders - it was in the fact that it had a national appeal. Unlike 1857, when the British were able to defeat local rebellions in isolated skirmishes, in 1940s the freedom struggle was spontaneously nationwide. This nationally 'integrated' rebellion was a result of India having transformed itself from being a collection of princely states (as it was in 1857) into one nation. There were many reasons for such transformation - but two forces which played a major role in this were Railways and Cinema.

Indian Railways led to massive intermingling of populations across the length and breadth of the country; also since people could move they could assemble to one city by travelling from across the country creating the possibility of large gatherings that would be impossible for local administration of one city to dissipate or thwart. Of course, Gandhi's non-violent methods made it even difficult to stop such gatherings on legal grounds because no 'crime' was being conducted.

Cinema acted in two ways - one it helped people watch and "vicariously" experience cultures from other parts of the country; it helped the different 'communities' in India realise they weren't as different really as they earlier thought they were. They spoke different languages but had similar value systems, similar social issues, similar problems. In fact, as Cinema (especially Hindi Cinema which is now called Bollywood) spread, it created a common 'national culture' which acted like an umbrella over sub-national identities of Indians. Second, Cinema acted like a conscience awakener of the masses - as this Quora answer says:

Indian film industry (including regional films) before Independence explored a lot of social, moral, cultural, devotional, mythological themes, but refrained from an overt anti-British, pro-independence presentation. For obvious reasons.
However, they sometimes tactfully inserted the voice of the freedom seeking Indians in a manner which can escape the scrutinising eyes of the British sensor. The author mentions the song 'Door Hato O Duniyawalon Hindustan Hamara hay' from the movie Kismet (1943) as an example.

Movies created a mass sentiment in support of the freedom struggle, by profiling historical stories gave Indians reasons to feel pride in their nation prior to British Raj and finally, progressive themes also created conditions for Indians to aspire for modern values - independence and self-governance being two of them. Just like Twitter played a role in Arab Spring and other movements across the globe today, Cinema played a role in the Indian Independence movement.

The conjecture which I want to present is that both these elements - Railways and Movies weren't a result of any well thought out plan to 'awaken' the nation or get it independence but simply the hustle typical of entrepreneurs. It is well known that Movies came to India due to the efforts of Dadasaheb Phalke - the movie Harishchandrachi Factory - beautifully captures his journey as a typical slightly eccentric entrepreneur who is just mad about Cinema and bringing it to India.

Less is known about the fact that Railways were also a similar effort by an Indian financier Nana Shankarsheth who used to finance British and Indian traders. Shankarsheth was known for developmental works, but his main contribution was the formation of the Indian Railway Association which lobbied for and finally succeeded in getting Railways to India in the early days of Railway development in the world. It was his idea and efforts to start Railways in India according to which he had discussed the proposals with British Govt of that time. Eventually, the association was incorporated into the Great Indian Peninsula Railway, and Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy and Shankarsheth became the only two Indians among the ten directors of the GIP railways.

My ratiocination is that entrepreneurs are important for a society - even though they often don't directly participate in political awakening but they are the change-makers, the square pegs in the round holes who create tools and sometimes conditions which finally lead to changes that they themselves never imagined of!

Tags: Entrepreneurship , India , Politics , Post

Attitude vs Aptitude

Tags: Post , Reviews

Lal Bahadur Shastri - the original strategist PM

Tags: India , Post , SocioPolitic

Is Humanity Diverging into two civilizations?

The Fork

हिंदी दिवस के उपलक्ष्य में एक ट्वीटमाला

The natural order of things!

How will travel industry transform post-Covid

A mundane interpretation of ज्ञान योग [Gyan Yog]

Background

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The good things about Covid-19 outbreak

Consumerism has taken a backseat

We are living in a dystopian world!

How entrepreneurs contributed to rise of the Indian freedom movement

Attitude vs Aptitude

Lal Bahadur Shastri - the original strategist PM

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