Can we not think as a Nation for once?

The events over the last week have actually motivated me to put up another post. Yes, I am referring to the new state imbroglio that our Government has been dealing with. I guess we Indians have still not learnt from our own history. How many times have we fought among ourselves on ethnic or religious lines and each time we have ended up becoming a conquered nation or a colony for some foreign power. Yes, the world order has changed today but the mentality of human beings has certainly not undergone any change. We are surrounded by neighbours who would love to see up all broken up into pieces. And none of our neighbours would actually be willing to help us, in fact they might be the first to grab their piece of land in such a situation. The truth is we are precariously perched, on one side we have the muslim fundamentalist Taliban and on the other side expansionist China. And yet we are inside, unaware of dangers that we may face in future busy accusing each other fighting each other.

What is it that we want to achieve by this strife on regional, religious and even tribe and caste level. What do the perpetrators think?. That because they belong to a particular group, the invaders will not harm them? Well, they need to think again, all this groupism is hardly of any significance to others, for all invaders we are the residents of this land mass and they will kill or destroy without discrimination. Possibly then we would realise that we are all equal. When we will all be on the altar for sacrifice, this realization may happen but possibly will be too late by then. Can we not preent this catastrophe. Yes, we can but for that once we have to think like a nation, we have to think of ourselves as Indians and not individual groups, only then we can ever come close to doing some thing positive for the future.

The idea of a country called India is possibly new but we all share similar ethos and if we work towards being one we can do it. Are we all that different, as we project. A good example is provided by our movies in regional languages. If movies and their content is taken as an expression of social structure and issues we are all surprisingly similar. Only we speak differently and eat differently, is this so huge a issue that we cannot even tolerate another language or food. I dont think so, we are basically acting like foolish and immature people. We need to grow out of our phobias about people with different language, religion and cultures.

The process ahs to start from a young age. Schools, they need to emphasise this fact beyond any doubt that we are Indians first and then whatever we want to if we really want to be something. Let us eliminate surnames and titles from our names to begin with, let us assume a name like sachin bharti or sachin kumar for boys and geeta bharti or geeta kumari only for girls only instead of any other titles. I know this is a major problem but may be over the time we can come out of our self inflicted divisions and silos to undersatnd that we are all Indians and we need to work together, save ourselves and our land from others and that no one is going to come to our aid in the time of emergency. Once we realize all this we would have taken a birth as a nation in the real sense of it. Amen

Education Policy and cultural/social structure of India

The best part of being a part of good peer group involved in research is there is never a dull moment as you can often find sense in otherwise seemingly useless discussion. The latest debate that me and my mates Shounak da and Siddhartha have been engaged is the education policy.

It is known fact that we as a country harbour several cultural and religious beliefs which gives us a colourful interior but also leads to unending conflicts based on irrational thoughts and insecurities. Question is why should a particular community or a linguistic group feel threatened by the advent of another belief or certain new ideas. Certainly no culture or language is superior to other. This is most evident in case of language as it is nothing but a mode of getting your ideas through. Now what good is a language if it makes one go back to sign language for communication. Now let us analyse this b taking the example of a small group of people speaking language x. Suddenly a large group of people speaking language y arrive at the scene and start practicising y and their belief structure. Now what is the most logical response of these two groups, either they take to street to prove the superiority of their belief structure (which is nothing but a display of insecurity in my view) or they can amicably decide to create a market where people can at will acquire skills related to both x and y. This not only gives a fillip to communication but also ensures that the practitioners of new belief may actually swell from x to x plus delta and from y to y plus gamma (assuming some portions would be common to both) thus dispelling doubts and possibly increasing the probability of sustainence and longetivity of both the languages and belief structures.

Now how does education policy come in to picture in all this? Idea is simple, why can we not have all the Kendriya Vidyalyas and other central and state schools to offer each and every language to their students. That is apart from english and mother toungue they will need to learn another language from India and be proficient in that language. Even the private schools should be forced to follow this model. The students would need to display their proficiency by appearing in a language exam which will be necessary for them to obtain their passing certificates or say 10 th standard or even 12 th standard. In fact college education should have this eligibility built in their requirements. Above argument holds a lot more answers than just regional issues that I have discussed. The full potential of above argument can have strongly positive implications for the socio-political and economic fabric of our vast country.

PhD students and Jobs

Let us take a break from the usual and look at some worldly issues of interest. In India doing a PhD is looked upon as the task of individuals who could do nothing better in life. To add insult to injury after completion of PhD you get pathetic salaries which do not do justice to the fact that you spent a lot more time (at least five years) to reach an employable level as a faculty. Although the scene seems to have improved of late but then you are faced with an interesting question of how many good publications do you have. Certainly a very right question, after all you as a researcher are supposed to show output in the form of papers but the zealots of this theory forget a very crucial point. When the Professors you are working with have not been able to get publications in the top notch journals of their field how in this world can students working under them get the publications easily. Interestingly, professors are right in not getting publications in big journals due to resource crunch and other factors but all those factors don't apply to the PhD students working under same conditions!!! This is amazing hypocrisy.

Next important thing is, as a fresh PhD where do you look for a job, either you look for joining a big brand as a platform for future development with pathetic pay structure (imagine a salary of 28,000 in a city like Mumbai or Delhi with a family to support, and you are highly qualified or any other job !!!!!) or you look to join not so well known but well paying institutes which may be privately run. Again you need to make a trade off in terms of expected future cash flows that could accrue to you as a result of joining a good brand and doing good research in future or getting a decent pay in the short run and may be lesser chance of doing good research and getting drowned in the teaching load. This off course does not take in to account sudden changes in a specific institute's reputation or brand overnight which may change things. But given that average age of a post PhD student is around 30 years, it is likely that the person may actually choose to give a slip to big brand as immediate financial needs are very pertinent.

I hope people at the helm of affairs can realise these issues and decide their policies accordingly. In my personal opinion need of the hour is to get hold of bright PhD candidates as faculties and then incentivise and motivate them to do independent research and then motivate them to take up post Doctoral research after a gap of say 3-5 years. Such an effort will not only help in making teaching jobs more meaningful but also help in improving the research ecosystem in the country.

Ancient Astronaut Theory and Manu

Carrying our theme to the next level, my discussion with my research mate Shounak da brought to light new possibilities. As per the hindu mythology Manu was washed ashore on earth in a "Hiranyagharbha" or a golden colured egg shaped structure. Now the question is was this egg an egg in real sense or was it a version of certain kind of space capsule that dropped into ocean on the earths surface from space, much like the way Russian cosmonauts land on earth. Another important question to consider is, was Manu really the first man or was it that he was the first man to actually realize or identify that fact that he was a humanoid? He was possibly surrounded by several other humanoids who were not so evolved as he was which rightfully made him their ruler or guide in every sense. This would also mean that Manu would have passed on his knowledge or whatever he did know at the time of his landing on earth to his followers in which ever way possible. The idea of his being an alien from outer space with a well developed scientific and evolved culture seems to fit in well with the happenings.

Continuing the spirit of trying to connect philosophy, history and science in an endeavour to understand and separate early history and myth I and two of my mates Siddhartha and Shaounak have been discussing interesting issues. For example, why is it that every civilization has its origins connected to a massive flood. Be it Indian mythology or the Biblical accounts , are they all referring to same catastrophe. Or are the time periods being talked about are different. Further all these myths have a common theme in terms of lone survivors of different species. So question that arises is are the Biblical figures and Manu in Hindu mythology same with differences in interpretation or are they two different remnants of an erstwhile civilization that was well developed. This assumption would be of course possible only if the two floods being mentioned are one and the same. Continuing this line of inquiry could it be possible that, what these survivors of pre-historic civilizations carried with them was not just some animals but also sources of knowledge in the form of books or some other communicable form. That would mean that those knowledge sources could construe the ultimate knowledge lost to humankind. Is it possible that the Hindu vedas are nothing but a portion of that exquisite knowledge that was being passed by the survivors to the next generations. If all this is true that would mean that there is a body of knowledge that was somehow saved during floods but scattered across the world, which could together help us construct our early history prior to last ice age. The existence of sophisticated civilization prior to ice-age may not be completely wrong, bringing us to the idea of a possible lost world like Atlantis.

are humans nothing more than functions??

Dear friends,
Think for a moment that all you are is a function in this space time continnum, that is you can be fully described by a mathematical function and you behave like one with completely determinable trajectory. Although it is a eerie feeling but may be it is true. Now you can look at death as a possible change point of the function. Now to connect it with existing thoughts in philosophy imagine the idea mooted by hinduism about re-incarnation so is this re-incarnation a change point of this function? Taking this a step further what is Nirvana, according to existing beliefs it is escape from the cycle of life and death, or is it mathematically nothing but a discontinuity wherein the function stops abruptly. Add to this bit of multiple dimensions and we can possibly argue that as we move in space time we can be present anywhere in this multiverse. So is it that once we die we are re-incarnated in another dimension (assuming probability is the same for all dimensions it is simply 1/n of being in the same dimension). Possible the reason why it is thought in traditional philosophy that it is very difficult to be born a human is that the value of n is decently large.
Do let me know more about any such metaphor if you read this.