Finally I am moving back to India after many years of residence in California. Most of my well wishers have been asking “why”. Is this pig-headed ideology? To be honest, I too have doubts.
I too loved US and bay area in particular. For me, this place has magical memories and great thoughts associated. Here is the answer I gave to myself when my own doubts arise about moving back to India.
I need US more than I need India.
India needs me more than US needs me.
And the second is nobler of the two.
I signed up for the upcoming “Internet Identity Workshop” happening at Computer History Museum (Dec 4th-6th, 2006)
On the occasion of the workshop, I want to recall the power of identity from the famous “Stanford Prison Experiment” which I learned about from Peter Senge’s classic book “Fifth Discipline”.
There was this experiment done at Stanford University during 70s. A researcher named Philip Zimbardo wanted to setup a mock prison experiment. Volunteers played the roles of guards and prisoners and lived in a mockup prison. Though the experiment was planned for two weeks, it had to be called off on sixth day since the situation got out of hand.
They advertised in local newspapers for volunteers for a mock prison experiment. Out of the people responded (mostly students), they did a psychological profile and picked a very healthy bunch of youth. Then they split the team into guards and prisoners on a random basis. They created mock prison cells in the basement of psychology department. On the first day of experiment, the prisoner volunteers were picked up from their homes by police and charged with fictitious charges.
Both the volunteer prisoners and the volunteer guards took their identities seriously. The guards really turned sadistic towards the prisoners. Some of the prisoners turned violent and some of them were really depressed. Some of the prisoners were released on third itself because of mental break down. The whole experiment had to be abandoned on the sixth day.
Even though, this whole thing was supposed to be a mock up experiment, within few days of mock identities, people really became those identities. This experiment really showed the power of “identity masks” we wear upon ourselves. Some times this mask is tagged on us by the external world. Even though we have power to see beyond these masks, in reality we get overpowered by the “identity trap”.
Identity is a trap which even the sanest of people can not escape from.
Buddhism talks of illusion of a real core at the center of the self. The illusion of self is created by the various identity masks we wear upon. Even though they are just masks, the effect of the mask itself is so powerful that the illusion looks very real.
Next few years seem pretty critical for the development of identity abstractions on the internet. Identity is very deep concept. There are lots of good things happening in the identity space but there are lots of deep theoretical issues to understand. I am pretty excited to be at the workshop.
Currently in India, we are used to see the foundation stones on any public project exhibiting the names of the honorable politicians who laid the foundation stone for the project. My proposal is to erect a permanent signboard in cement on any public project (be it a road, be it a dam or be it a bridge) to name the contractor, architect, builders involved in the project. The contractor name has to be so prominently displayed on the projects. This has to be preserved forever for posterity.
Most of the public projects are so lousy because of corruption and unprofesssionalism of the contractors.
We want to celebrate the people who build great projects. At the same stroke, we want to give the incentive of discredit to the bad guys.
One could argue that the bad contractors have anyway developed thick skin for criticism and that they would float another benami company for another project. But my idea is to celebrate the good contractors more than punishing the bad contractors. By celebrating the good guys, we are setting expectations a bit higher for the future generations.
Inspiration one: Your tax dollars at work
While driving around in USA, I have seen huge signboards by the side of road construction projects: “Your tax dollars at work”. These boards explain the project details like timelines and costs. What an empowering idea? It is people’s money which is making these roads, not the grace of a politician.
Inspiration two: Reset your expectations
Rajesh Jain’s call to “reset our expectations” was an inspiring thought to my idea. Read his article at TECH TALK: Building a Better India: Prologue
Inspiration three: People who built the Great Wall of China
One inspiration for the idea came from a documentary on the Great Wall of China. During the construction of the Great Wall of China, certain sections of the wall mandated the bricks to be marked with the name of the army unit or village unit which contributed those bricks. By marking the bricks with a particular entity, they could trace back the manufacturer later when a section of wall collapsed. This is a wonderful idea.
Inspiration four: Dale Carnegie
Another inspiration was Dale Carnegie. In one of the books, Dale Carnegie tells the story of how a manager increased the productivity of two departments. By writing the production numbers on a black board outside the units, he set a competition between the two departments to beat one another in production numbers. It was a cool trick!
While inaugurating the Bhakra dam, Nehru commented it as the temple of modern India.
Going forward into new millennium, the temples of India are libraries.
The modern India is going to depend more and more on the knowledge of its populace to progress itself and to compete with the west. The libraries are surely the temples of India. But these temples are in dilapidated condition now and most of them don’t even exist. The government does not realize the significance of the libraries. Or sometimes, the corruption is so rampant that the funds for libraries go straight into the pockets of crooked.
Probably the schools & universities also would qualify as the temples on par with libraries. We have been doing reasonably good with the schools. But the universities are right now in such a bad shape because most of the research at Indian universities is irrelevant to current India; we seem to rather ape the west and look forward for an approval from the west.
One saving grace for these temples could be philanthropy. The philanthropy in the west has done some miracles. Why did not Dhirubhai Ambani leave his wealth to libraries (or some other philanthropy) rather than to his bickering children? Hope, at least the more modern thinkers like N.R. Narayana Murthy does that!
