Letter to a religious nation

Dear Fellow Indians,

Allow me begin with a fervent plea. Abandon your religion and all your god men. They mean nothing and are the bedrocks on which falsehoods are perpetuated. I am an atheist. Allow me reiterate. I am not secular. I am an atheist. I believe all religions you participate in humbug. If I were secular, I’d be compelled to treat all religions on equal footing. But I don’t think it possible. 

This is because the nature of religion demands the so-called truth as revealed in each of its sacred texts is the truth alone. And that all other versions will not stand up to scrutiny. I think that a rather offensive and puerile assumption to make. To the contrary, I think versions of truth as offered by all religions comprise lies and damned lies. 

Why? Because as Sam Harris, a neuroscientist and best-selling author puts it so eloquently in his book Waking Up: "Nothing that a Christian, a Muslim and a Hindu can experience—self transcending love, ecstasy, bliss, inner light—constitutes evidence in support of their traditional beliefs, because their beliefs are logically incompatible with one another. A deeper principle must be at work."

It is tempting then to ask what is so incompatible between all of these faiths? The fact that all of them originated from different parts of the world is the first that strikes me—Christianity from the West, Islam from the Middle East and Hinduism along with its various sub sects from the East. The proselyting natures of Christianity, the intolerance of Islam and the laid back, albeit hydra headed inclusiveness of Hinduism that seeks to embrace proselytization and intolerance as part of the “brahman” or universe; for that matter as an avatar or incarnation of the divine is a case in point.

Then there is the conquest of happiness itself. Every form of organized religion promises happiness. It is pertinent then to ask what is happiness, as we understand it? To the laity, happiness lies in gratification of desire. It could be something as simple as access to good food, or having loved ones within an arm's reach. 

From a philosopher's prism though, the question on hand is, is it possible to happy before one's desires are granted, in spite of life’s difficulties, in the midst of old age, pain, disease and death?

Christianity and Islam promise it in the afterlife. Hinduism demands a life of asceticism to achieve moksha or liberation from the cycle of life and death until happiness can be discovered. 

To my mind, this is asking for too much. I refuse to suffer in the “now” that I may rejoice in the afterlife; or that I renounce all of my “now” that I may be liberated. Fact is, I think these terribly, terribly, stifling. But fact also remains, these are the foundations on which religion in pretty much every form is built on. 

Not just that, Harris argues. The word “religion” is an artifact of language. It is just but a generic term like sport is. To draw an analogy, some sports are peaceful, but extremely dangerous like rock climbing. Some are safer but violent like mixed martial arts. And some like bowling mean you do nothing more than stand in a place like you would in a shower. Therefore, to speak of all sport in the same breath is an impossible discussion to have. We need to understand the nuances of what each sport involves. It is much the same thing with religion. Given these differences, I find it impossible not to laugh at secular shams like inter-faith dialogues to promote harmony.

Into all of this, add the lives we take for granted. Hindus have the gall to believe everything was known of before anybody else in the world knew of it. But truth is, Hindu scriptures know nothing of the biology of cancer, vaccinations, the human genome or aviation. Contemporary medicine and aviation is the outcome of western scientific thought. I am first hand witness as well to the violence blood hungry Hindu hordes unleashed in the wake of the Babri Masjid demolition.

But this does not exonerate Christianity or Islam. How can we forgive the Catholic Church for the trial and conviction to life of Italian astronomer Galileo because he proved the earth revolves around the sun? Contemporary history has it that the brilliant mathematician Alan Turing was prosecuted for admitting to homosexual acts in early 1952. He was subjected to chemical castration through hormone injections until he eventually committed suicide. 

How can any leverage possibly be given to Islam either? It contains the likes of nuclear physicists like the Pakistani Samar Mubarak Mand who told an audience in Balochistan that when he organizing a nuclear test in 1998, he discovered Allah had put a miracle chicken into the pot. Even after 183 people had eaten from it, the pot was still full of chicken.  

On the face of such pig headed assertions, my submission to you is cast religion and secularism in all its forms away. It is riddled with holes and more holes can be punctured into all of what it stands for. That is why I am totally with Sam Harris again when he argues the world’s religions are mere intellectual ruins, maintained at enormous economic and social cost.

Instead, embrace atheism. This is a way of life that understands what you are looking for. Happiness. In the here and in the now. It is what people call a spiritual experience. Allow me add a word of caution here. Religion and spirituality are two different things.

The quickest way to experience spirituality is through a party drug Ecstasy. Pop one of it and what follows is a spiritual experience. You feel a certain oneness with the universe. You experience contentment. You begin to understand what it is to love without expecting anything in return. The line: “I love you because….” holds no meaning then. It morphs into “I love you”. No caveats attached.

I am not suggesting here you pop Ecstasy pills because all of us know of the disastrous consequences that follow. But atheism is a way of life that places a premium on compassion and love. It believes these are skills that can be taught and acquired minus the baggage that accompanies organized religion. That way you engage with life.

Allow me sign this note off with a passage from PM Forni’s The Thinking Life: “The more you value life, the more you engage with it. The more you engage with it, the more you think your way through it. The more you think your way through it, the more effective you are as its trustee. It is then that you finally live out the elemental truth that in life there are no rehearsals and you only play for keeps.”

In anticipation,

An unapologetic atheist

Doctoral Dissertations from a tea stall

In Kerala, chaya kadas (tea stalls) are all over the place. They dot university campuses abundantly. These are hopelessly ingenious places as well—all thanks to a hugely literate population that cannot find suitable jobs to match their skill sets. What is this population to do but loiter around chaya kadas and hunt for younger folks who can do with their “wisdom”?

As a modus operandi, theirs is an interesting one. Assume you want a doctoral degree. But you don’t have the bandwidth or the energies to invest. So you visit one of these chaya kadas where you strike a deal with some highly literate, unemployed bloke. Deal struck, usually for chump change, they start working on a doctoral dissertation for you.

Their service includes everything from getting the primary research material in place to framing a thesis, writing it in the appropriate language, and even sitting in as part of the audience to ask questions when you defend your thesis. It is apparently a thriving business that works very well both for the seller and the buyer. The poor seller, in any case, stands no chance of finding a decent job in a hugely literate state. The buyer wants the prestige that comes with a PhD. But the business is under threat from altogether unexpected quarters and prices are being driven down.

To understand this first-hand, you ought to hang around with kids in their late teens and early 20s. Before I put that into perspective, may I suggest you start by reading the italicized text below—ad verbatim?

CapGemini will take over iGATE a New Jersey based Consultancy firm and also turned the spotlight on the future of mid-sized software services companies squeezed between cash-rich larger rivals and nimble start-ups.

With this Merger CapGemini became the largest Consultancy, the combined Group strengthens CapGemini’s position as a leading company in IT services, outsourcing and consulting, with an estimated combined revenue of €12.5 billion, combined operating margin above 10% and around 190,000 people serving clients worldwide.

With a 30% share in the North American Market, CapGemini can easily look to compete with all the big fishes in the pond. This merger gives the French IT Company a major foothold in the North American Market. This will help CapGemini to cross a 50,000 employee mark and earn an estimated $4 Billion.

This by far has been the biggest market for the French Company, and iGATE will help CapGemini fill the holes in its portfolio, most notably a more powerful presence in India, a stronger portfolio of US enterprise clients, and a deeper foothold in financial services.

Industry experts are also saying that merger of these companies will be crucial for the success. Integration will be challenging with two very different cultures. It has recent experience gained from the successful acquisition of Kanbay and a growing Indian presence. Over all this is a nice move but will require Capgemini to move quickly to successfully integrate iGATE and stem any talent losses.

Now that you’ve read it, pause and ask yourself: How different is this from anything you read in business newspapers every morning? For that matter, how different is this from the so-called research reports that come out of broking firms?

Now, allow me to put that in context.

Two weeks ago, I was in Delhi to conduct a writing workshop at a consulting firm. As part of the pre-workshop exercise, I’d asked all of the participants, mostly freshers, to write a piece of not more than 500 words on what they thought of CapGemini’s acquisition of iGate Technologies. The extract reproduced above is from one of the assignments that came in.

After having read it carefully, I passed my feedback to the young bloke who wrote it. I told him this is exactly the kind of writing that has commoditized wire services and business newspapers across the world. It’s driving into a funk editors across the world who want value-added material.

My argument was simple. As this kind of news breaks out, tickers and anchors on television along with those clued into social media belt news out by the minute. By the time it hits print, folks who follow news know all about it. So what they have on hand is a rag attempting to regurgitate what has already been said. But somehow, most journalists don’t seem to get it.

For a moment I thought he looked crestfallen. The cheeky fellow, fresh out of college and in his first job, looked me in the eye and told me I ought not to take a call on his capabilities on the back of this assignment. And why not, I asked him.

Because, he smiled vicariously, he didn’t write it. Not just that, he told me he doesn’t understand crap about business, doesn’t know what CapGemini or iGate does, and can’t tell an acquisition from his elbow. But because the workshop was thrust on him, and he had to complete the assignment, he copied and pasted a few keywords from my brief into Spinbot (spinbot.com)and had his assignment ready in a few seconds.

I looked incredulously at him. It’s pretty much routine practice in most colleges, he said as a matter of fact. Why work on mundane assignments when it can be outsourced to artificial intelligence? Thechaya kada economy is under threat.

For the uninitiated, Spinbot is an online tool that generates original content on the back of keywords. The algorithms that power it draw from the tonnes of content available online to create material that looks authentic and passes all plagiarism tests. Some looking up later, I discovered that if you’re willing to dish out a few dollars, hundreds of pieces of software exist to create compelling content around pretty much anything you can think up.

For instance, I stumbled on a tool called SCIgen (see here).

Developed by three graduate students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), it is a program that churns out academic papers on the computer sciences. The damn thing is so bloody good at what it does that some enterprising folks have actually used it to generate gobbledygook that got published in prestigious titles.

That such crock exists was made public last year when Nature, the international weekly that writes on all things scientific, reported that prestigious publishers of scientific literature like the Heidelberg-based Springer and the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) based out of New York were compelled to withdraw 120 papers generated by algorithms. This was after the pranksters who thought up the software thought it worth their while to admit what they were up to.

If you think that ridiculous, may I point you to the screenshot below with a paper generated in my name, citations and all?

My limited point is: We’ve come to a point where content of all kind is now a commodity. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a journalist, a scientist, or a mid-career professional in any business trying to work up the corporate ladder.

But there are people who place a premium on substance. They are the ones who make it to the top. Old timers at ICICI Bank speak of how K.V. Kamath, who built the bank into the powerhouse it is now, would blow his lid if somebody passed him a note with no original intent or content. His bullshit detector, they say, is on high alert pretty much all of the time. That is why mediocrity never gets past him.

More recently, I had the privilege of previewing a book by Arun Maira, former member of the Planning Commission. It is sharp, insightful and contains a voice and wisdom that is uniquely his. No algorithm or chaya kada professional could possibly have created it.

In sharp contrast to this, what I see at workshops I conduct and are attended by people half their age is writing that appals and thinking that is incoherent. Most of it is of the kind that, as the cheeky young man demonstrated, can be generated like sausages in a factory—or outsourced to chaya kadas. And that is precisely why most of theses mid-career professionals will not make it past the likes of Kamath or Maira.

Kamath is headed to a larger role as president of the $100 billion BRICS bank in Shanghai. (BRICS is short for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.) Maira has just put the finishing touches to a compelling new book that tells the story of an India in transition. Given where they are right now, both of them could well have chosen to play golf on a course of their choice at any place in the world.

But they don’t. They seek challenges. In doing that, they put into perspective how most of us are on the verge of extinction; why we ought to constantly reinvent ourselves; and why we must work our backsides off to stay relevant. Else, we might as well migrate to Kerala and hope to find sustenance at a chaya kada—which too, like I pointed out earlier, is under threat from algorithms of all kinds.

This piece was first published by Mint on Sunday. All copyrights vest with Mint

Launching a start up

Too tired to write what it feels like right now. But heck, launching Founding Fuel Publishing has been such joy. More to follow. For now, do take a look at the pages we collaborated on with Mint and our audio casts with Ping Network. The highlight of the day was a firecracker of a story by my friend and former colleague Rohin Dharmakumar on Micromax.

Confessions of a recovering junkie

Kuldeep Datay wears the calm of a man who’s been-there-seen-it-all. A Mumbai-based clinical psychologist affiliated to the Institute for Psychological Health (IPH), he often faces worried parents seeking help for their zombie like adolescents who’ve withdrawn from the mainstream. Intelligent, but socially inept, and aggressive, these kids behave much like crack or heroin addicts. There is no evidence though to prove they are on mind-altering substances as conventionally understood.

Conversations and evaluations with these kids later, Datay often times concludes, their behavior is a function of technology addiction. “There is a reason why it is called dope. When deeply engaged with with gadgets, social media, or just the Internet, you get a dopamine kick, much like you do with drugs. So they go back to it again and again. When denied access, they withdraw, or get aggressive,” explains Datay.

The problem isn’t an adolescent phenomenon. At the time of writing this article, RescueTime, a piece of software that resides on my laptop, tells me it’s been a little over 653 hours since I first installed it. What I’ve discovered about myself since then disturbs me.

• Of the 653 hours RescueTime has been around, the dashboard tells me I’ve been actively engaged with my laptop for 309 hours, or a staggering 47 percent of my waking hours.
• Of these 309 hours, 183 hours, just about 60 percent of my time was spent on productive work.
• The 126 hours that remained were spent on mindless, distracting tasks. Mildly put, I spent an obscene 40 percent doing nothing more than reading tweets, posting and arguing on social media, watching videos and everything else RescueTime calls “Uncategorized” stuff. “That’s it?” asks Datay. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it is around 70 percent,” he says. He’s right. If I sere to factor time spent on my smartphone on tablet, I know most of it was on random surfing, texting, following tweets, clicking links, and digging myself deeper into an unproductive rabbit hole.
• Now, if 309 hours were spent on the laptop, technically, I had 344 hours for myself to rest, recuperate, and engage in activities I enjoy.
• But FitBit, an activity tracker I wear on my wrist 24/7 tells me I am not rested. It informs me I slept on average 4:17 hours every night, just a little over half that my body actually needs. Worse, not all of these sleeping hours were deep. The graphs show I slip, on average, four to five times into interrupted or light sleep.
• If that isn’t bad enough, I didn’t use my waking hours to provide my body with at least 30 minutes of physical activity it needs everyday. If I did, FitBit would have logged it.

By every yardstick, I had turned into an Internet junkie, much like cocaine or heroin addicts. If you think that harmless, here’s a fact. The pleasure centers that tickle Internet junkies and drug addicts are the same. We know this because of recent advances in the neurosciences.

Susan Weinschenk, a behavioral psychologist explains in her blog post on Pyschology Today, “With the Internet, Twitter, and texting you now have almost instant gratification of your desire to seek. Want to talk to someone right away? Send a text and they respond in a few seconds. Want to look up some information? Just type your request into Google. Want to see what your colleagues are up to? Go to Linked In. It's easy to get in a dopamine-induced loop. Dopamine starts you seeking, then you get rewarded for the seeking, which makes you seek more. It becomes harder and harder to stop looking at email, stop texting, or stop checking your cell phone to see if you have a message or a new text.”

 “Interestingly brain scan research shows that the brain has more activity when people are anticipating a reward than getting one. Research on rats shows that if you destroy dopamine neurons, rats can walk, chew, and swallow, but will starve to death even when food is right next to them. They have lost the anticipation and desire to go get the food. Although wanting and liking are related, research also shows that the dopamine system doesn't have satiety built in….How many times have you searched for something on Google, found the answer, and yet realize a half hour later that you are still online looking for more information?” she writes.

 This phenomenon has also been described as the Compulsion Loop. It compels you to continually check email on your smartphone in anticipation of receiving good news. When kept away from smartphones, researchers discovered power users experience “phantom smartphone buzzing” which tricks our brains into thinking our phone is vibrating when it isn't. I confess to being a victim to this syndrome.

 The other interesting piece of literature originates from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York. They discovered spending two hours in front of a backlit electronic gadget like a tablet or smartphone suppresses production of melatonin by 22 percent. This hormone regulates sleep cycles. Any deficit in its production leads to delayed sleep, interrupted circadian patterns, and early waking times.

In the weeks leading up to writing this piece, I tried a few experiments on myself. I asked myself to watch what happens on days I disconnect from the Internet and all of my devices after 9:30 pm until 7:30 am. A few interesting things showed up right away.

 Without access to the Internet or my phone, anxiety levels, consumption of junk food and smoking cigarettes went up. Higher anxiety levels have to do with a drop in dopamine production. Junk food and nicotine, in cigarettes, incidentally, induces dopamine production. Perhaps, it was my body’s way of making up for the hit it was taking from being denied what it wanted.

That said, FitBit data showed on days I cut access early, I slept deeper, longer and with fewer interruptions. This ties into what I pointed out earlier on melatonin production.

It isn’t easy. But I’m trying. And I’m giving the Sabbath Manifesto  a shot—one day of the week, every week.

1. Avoid technology
2. Connect with loved ones
3. Nurture your health
4. Get outside
5. Avoid Commerce
6. Light candles
7. Drink wine
8. Eat bread
9. Find silence
10. Give back

Manifestoes of this kind, says Datay, can be aided by prescription drugs to control impulsive behavior. 

This piece was originally published in Mint. All copyrights vest with the newspaper and this article may not be reproduced without permission from the Editor.

The Essar Leaks

Since the time Indian Express broke the story on the Essar Leaks, everybody wants to get their hands on the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by Prashant Bhushan. This is the document. Feel free to download, read, and make your own judgements. I have nothing else to say