Why is India still developing?

When I was a kid (about 3rd or 4th standard), I remember asking my dad about how things are in foreign countries and if it was true that things were very good there. I don’t remember how I learnt the word foreign but I sort of had got this idea that "foreign" is like a fantasy land - maybe something like a cartoon. My recollection of dad's reply was something like - foreign is not one place ... there are many places ... some good ... some bad... etc. At a later point of time (maybe when I was in 6th or 7th), I remember we discussed how rich people in other countries are. And Dad told me that there are some countries where everyone has a car and many have more than one.  That there, a person was considered poor if he had only one car. I asked how it was that they could buy so many cars - dad had said that the amount of money people got was much more than in our country. If a person worked for a week, he could but a black and white TV (yep - in those days black and white TVs were still sold) and if he worked for a month, he could buy a colour TV.

As I worked my way through 10th, one of my cousins went to US and shortly sent back photos of a car that he had purchased. Later on when he came visiting, I talked with him about life there. The thing that struck me most was that everyone had a telephone - and calling people in the same city or town did not cost anything. Phones were a luxury at that time.

In 2006, I visited the US. There were many things that caught my interest. Firstly the number of cars - I had never seen so many cars before - the society seemed saturated with them. And then the roads, called freeways, where you had to go at about 100 km per hour! - A concept I had not encountered before. And these roads were wide - three or four lanes in one direction. And I found that there were special car pool lanes. I was very surprised to know that even just two people in a car qualified for carpool lane. That showed that most cars were carrying only one person. Some other things I noticed were that life there is dependent a lot of cars, a person not having one will find it very difficult. And I also noticed that there seemed to be far far fewer people around. For the amount of things they have built (homes, cars, roads, shops etc.), I felt that there were very few people. And they had adjusted to that - since people were few, any work that required people, was expensive - haircuts, food in restaurants (it has to be cooked by people). There are no domestic workers - so lot of machines are used- for washing clothes, dishes etc.

All along when I was growing up, I was curious about why is the place where I am not the best? Why is some other place better? And I had various ideas about it. I did consider if it was true that the people of that country were more intelligent - but it did not convince me. Then I thought it must be because of their hard working nature (work ethic). This seemed to make some sense - but was not entirely convincing. By working harder, you can be maybe twice as better and that did not explain the difference in riches. Then I thought that it had to do with the population densities. The advanced countries were cold in climate. To survive through the cold, a person had to have a minimum standard of living. So anyone living there had to come up to that standard or perish. This reason kept the population low and therefore the population density low. Because of this there was more land (and therefore natural resources) per person and that was the reason for their riches. But this idea also did not convince me. If cold climate causes richness, then there had to be many more places where this should have happened. And also there were places that were not cold - and yet this had happened.

Sometimes when you are searching for answers, you do not find it because it is in a place where you do not want to look. The answer is to be found in history. And history is a subject hated almost universally by students. Remembering all those dates and sequences of events is unrewarding at best. And also it is a rare history teacher who makes the subject interesting like a story. Also, I think that at school age, we do not have the capacity to understand it fully. Anyways, when I read a couple of books about history - especially economic history, I got an answer to my question that was convincing.

The Asian civilizations (India and China included) were equals of European’s ones (in some cases they were more prosperous) till the 17th century - thats just 300 years ago. Compare that to the fact that civilizations of Asia are much older - some about 4000 years old or more - and you will get the sense that the European societies getting richer (materialistically) is only a recent development. So what caused it? Two things - the renaissance and the industrial revolution. The early European societies around the Mediterranean had made advances in understanding the world. They knew that the earth was round, had made advances in maths etc. (So had Asian ones).  But about the 4th century AD - after Christianity came to Europe and established itself in Rome there was no progress for 1000 years. This period of European history is called the dark ages. And it was not like there was spiritual progress either - the atrocities committed in the name of piety were worse than what we hear about the Taliban doing in Afghanistan today.

The renaissance started out as a shift in in the arts of the times. The thinking till then was that there was no need for man to enquire into the world around him. God had created it for man's benefit and man's only duty was to worship God for it. Anyone who had "naturalistic" knowledge was considered a pagan and heretic. The women who had naturalistic tendencies were branded as witches and burnt alive. In short religion kept man's curiosity imprisoned and his nose to the grindstone of worship. In renaissance, the artists started giving more attention to world around them. This was soon followed by other people who rebelled against the authoritative church. Among them were some people who we today call scientists. The knowledge of the works of ancient civilization were partly with the Europeans and partly with the people of what is today Iraq and Egypt - this knowledge was available in the north of Africa and in Spain and Portugal. The people of Europe revived the rationalistic perspective and in many places it went counter to the divine. Some people (like Galileo) were punished for it. However the rationalistic perspective was used by people like Copernicus and Newton to explain the motions of planets and terrestrial objects. This gave a lot of credibility to the perspective and it began being used in a lot of other places. It was applied to making weapons, machines, medicines etc.

The industrial revolution was a successor of the renaissance. Through the renaissance, a lot of knowledge about the world was collected and studied and it was also applied to industrial tasks. The essence of the industrial revolution was the idea that work can be done by things other than humans and animals. Of course water mills etc. were present (in Europe and India as well) before the industrial revolution. But the idea that burning fuel like coal gives energy that can be made to do work in novel ways was at the heart of it. And already mastery over machines was at an advanced level - they were making watches to keep time! (If you don't appreciate what level of ingenuity and workmanship is required to make a watch out of plain metal, I encourage you to open an old style one and take a look) It is clear that machine making was at an advanced state - and the idea that machines could be powered by fuel was a combination that had a lot of opportunities. They could be made to do most of the work required. This was what the revolution was about. And it was this revolution that enabled fewer and fewer people to produce more and more industrial output. This in turn made the European nations rich. And this is the root cause of the present prosperity of the European and American nations.

So why did not India have an industrial revolution? The spread of technology happens mostly when people are in close contact. In Europe there was a quick spread of technology. This is because there was people to people contact and the engineers of a country generally knew about the advancements in other countries. And also these countries were often at war. This made it imperative that if a rival country had a technological advance that gave it an advantage in war, that had to be replicated at the earliest or there was a risk of being defeated in the next war. Indeed many of the advances were driven by the need for use in war. This process of competitive technological advancement happened over about three centuries and was in effect until recently (I am referring to world wars 1 and 2 and then the cold war). Indians being far removed from this arena where there was an urgent need for advancement and knowledge of technology was available, did not have the impetus or means to advance that rapidly. This is why India did not participate in the industrial revolution. When India later learnt about it, it was too late.

So, in summary, it is not because Indians were not intelligent, imaginative or creative, or because of India’s population density, or lack of adventurous spirit or risk taking mindset, or corrupt rulers, or "fate" that India is at present not as advanced as western nations. It is due to a quirk of history - that industrial revolution happened in Europe and India could not take advantage of it early on. In fact the historical perspective gives another insight. It is not just India that had to suffer a bitter period of colonization and exploitation because of not advancing early - every Asian and African society (Egypt, Iran, Iraq, China etc.) had to suffer it.

So now that we know what the root cause of India's low level of advancement, what should we do? I have my thoughts about it - but that is the subject of another entry.

Corruption in another form

As reported in several newspaper and TV channels, the Karnataka government has sanctioned Rs 17 crores to temples for rituals "for the welfare of people and cattle". As citizens of India, we should be very concerned. Why? Read on.

The government has sanctioned public money. That money belongs to the people - ordinary citizens like you and I.  How? Well remember the taxes that you pay? If you have a job, you get a form 16 at the end of the year. Generally you use this and file your income tax returns. This form 16 contains the details of taxes that the company you have worked for has withheld from your salary and paid to the government. Since it is now about the time when IT returns are generally filed, you probably will be having your latest form 16 with you. I urge you to take a look at it and see the amount that you have paid as taxes.

Even if you do not pay income tax, you still pay sales tax on most things that you consume - tea, coffee, petrol and service tax on a bunch of things - like to restaurants.

In sum, you pay money to the government in the form of various taxes. Now taxes paid to the government are different from the money you pay to buy things or services. In the case of buying things, after you paid the money, it is no longer yours after you have received the thing or service you paid for. The person or corporation you paid the money to can then decide how, when, where and in what manner to spend or use or invest that money. He, she or it (in case of companies) need not consult you or obtain your approval for it. This is not the case for taxes however. The money paid as taxes is still your money. The government is not at liberty to spend it according to its whims. It must spend the money for the benefit of the people. It has an obligation to the people. It does not own the money collected as taxes.  It only acts on behalf of the people for the benefit of the people. It should not waste money or use if for purposes that do not result in public good.

What has happened here is that public money (in effect your money) has been spent in a wasteful way. Praying for rain is no way for a government to deal with a situation where the people are suffering from drought.

So if the government is spending money in a wasteful way, who is to question and stop them? Well, who else but the people to whom the money belongs - that is you and I. It is up to us to ensure that our money is being spent for our welfare. If we are negligent about this, there will always be a set of people or organizations who will use it for other purposes that suit them instead of the people.

You may say - "OK well, you maybe right and all - but what can I do?" Admittedly a single person cannot do much by him/herself. But I think you will agree that small efforts from a large number of people can change things. So I urge you to do your bit. I have listed some things that I think may help. Read up a little to understand the basics about how the government should work in a democratic society. Spread awareness among your family, relatives and friends about why it is important to keep an eye on what the government is doing and what it is spending money on. Give your support and voice to the activists who are protesting against corruption. Also, do register to vote and cast your vote. While voting, strive to choose those candidates who you think are commited to the betterment of the society as a whole and not just themselves or their particular political parties or their group (be it whatever - caste or subcaste group, religious group, ethnic group or social group etc). I am sure that you will discover many other such small things that will lead to a more responsible and accountable government.

I thank you for reading this blog entry and hope you will lend a hand in building a better tomorrow for all.

India's Inferiority Complex

Yesterday (10-Dec-2011) was a day when the earth witnessed the celestial phenomenon of a lunar eclipse. In India this spectacle is met with trepidation. In some scriptures belonging to the literary heritage of the country, eclipses (solar or lunar) are considered to be inauspicious. Their cause is said to be the result of a fight between gods and demons. Therefore some practices such as seeing them, having food or stepping out of the house while they are in progress are forbidden. Furthermore rituals to eradicate the ill-effects of eclipses such as bathing, fumigation etc. after the eclipse is over are prescribed.

Now, one might think that people of India today know better about the cause of eclipses – they in fact being the result of the relative positions of the Sun, Earth and the Moon. And since the cause is known, presumably the effects are known as well and they are not at all as dire as was thought in the past. The effects are very few and temporary. The effect of the moonlight being blocked by the Earth is no different than it being blocked by a cloud (and the same goes for sunlight).

However the conservative opinions are still prevalent. They have grown weaker probably but tenaciously persist. Our cook asked us in the morning if she should cook food for the evening. (I said yes). I took time to explain the cause of the eclipse and that there is no need to fear it. She said that she worked at another house where they had asked her not to cook and she was merely confirming our feeling regarding the event. During the course of the day I heard of a communication from one quarter of my family to another instructing not to have food between 6 and 10 pm that evening.

My wife and I had stepped out to catch a movie that evening (Puss in boots – quite entertaining). While returning home, she was surfing through FM radio stations for some entertaining fare. She alighted on a station run by the government which was presumably running a program about the eclipse. Apparently this was a call in program where listeners could call in with their opinions. One such call was in progress. I asked my wife to hold the channel for a while. The caller not very coherent but was clearly in support of the conservative opinion. He was stating the ancient scriptures had held a certain opinion on the effect of eclipses. He then said that to ignore these opinions was a folly. After all our ancestors were not fools – they had produced great works and practices such as Ayurveda and Yoga which were presently being studied by the West for knowledge. Therefore we must not ignore their teachings. He further went on to say that presently what was happening was that the Indian youth were veering away from seeking knowledge from the scriptures and were attracted to a western education whereas westerners were now studying ancient Indian texts for knowledge and wisdom. This he termed as ironic and regrettable and concluded his opinion. The presenter thanked him for his opinion in honeyed words.

This set me thinking. I consider myself a liberal person. I am interested in the growth and development of my country (and the world as well). I am against practicing or spreading ideas just because their source is our heritage (cultural or literary). I prefer to examine the ideas afresh and take an opinion on them. However not everyone in my country thinks like me. So I thought about why that may be so. I have formed some ideas in this regard. Below I present my thoughts on the reason why the old ideas still persist, what is their effect and what in my opinion should be done.

Why do old ideas still persist?

In a large part of India, education levels are low. So it is likely that people hailing from those parts have not heard of the scientific explanations to many phenomena. But they do have knowledge of the old ideas because those ideas are present in the culture they grew up in and so imbibed them.

But the really surprising thing is that even people who have had education in the method of science and use it to earn a living still believe in the old ideas. I think that this is an aftereffect of the event of colonization of India.

Every person has an ego. Everyone wants to feel worthwhile, have a feeling that they are somebody. Everyone wants to feel respected and have prestige in the society. Everyone wants to be powerful and have control over their destiny. No one wants to be weak, trodden upon or humiliated. This feeling is extended to things that we identify ourselves with – our family, language and nation. Everyone wants their family, language and nation to be great. In fact this feeling even extends to history. Everyone wants to be part of an impressive history – of great crowning achievements, impressive literature, buildings, heroes etc. Indians are no exception. Every Indian wants India to be the best of countries – a superpower no less. (And this is the same for people of any country of the world).

However the colonization of India is an event that is very unpleasant to contemplate for someone who has a lot of ego invested in the idea of India and her greatness. It is akin to a proud person being enslaved. No doubt there are strong feelings associated with the event. It is painful to discover that someone else is better than oneself so comprehensively in so many areas of human endeavour. For some it is a shameful period and they are very angry that it should be part of their history.

India was colonized by the British. The British at that time were more advanced in science and technology than India. (“Why this was so” has got some interesting answers but that is a topic for another day). Indians found that they were no match for their colonizers in the important things such as military power, medicine and technology in general. In matters concerned with the material world, their colonizers were better. This combination of a proud ego on the one hand and a clear shortcoming in ability to sustain it caused two things to happen.

Firstly, Indians became desperate for anything that could support or bolster their ego. They found some things that could help them. The greatest balm they found was spiritualism. Ironically the thing that gave importance to spiritualism was the fact that some Europeans were interested in it as they were fascinated by the assumed mysticism of the orient. To Indians it was – hey Europeans are interested in it – and it is ours – so it must be something we must be proud of. Yoga was another such thing.

Secondly, Indians began to reject (largely indiscriminately) ideas (economic, educational, cultural and scientific) that came from the west and tried to find substitutes in our own culture for those ideas. Some of this was good for Indians (because there were a lot of ideas about eurpoean superiority that would have done Indians no good) – but in some cases it led to rejection of something good such as the method of science.The result of the above two reactions are visible today. Some things, usually having an Indian ancient origin, are held in high esteem with a fervour bordering on fanaticism that is quite unnecessary. Ayurveda and Yoga are in this list in addition to Spiritualism, the “Indian” family values, Vedas, Puranas etc. There is a passive aggressive rejection of ideas that emanate from or have a root in the west. The English language, science where it contradicts with the first list, the “allopathic” medicine system which is misperceived as a western idea instead of a scientific one are some examples.

I have also observed that there is a tendency to gloat gleefully at the west whenever a chance presents itself. A steady stream of scorn is directed at the lack of western family values, their obsessive materialism, lack of spiritualism etc. This too I think is a side effect of the passive-aggressive attitude.

What is the effect of the above?

The effect of colonization has introduced a bias in Indian discourse.

There are two basic effects. Firstly, Indians may put too much faith in ideas and practices that have come from tradition and are not fruitful (perhaps the practices are detrimental or do not yield as much value as other ideas). Secondly, Indians may reject new ideas that are good in case they come from the “perceived” west. There are some other interesting effects as well.

In those cases where India has had to accept ideas from the west, it soothes itself from feeling inferior by claiming that those ideas were part of ancient India’s knowledge and thus are usable by Indians without any acknowledgement to the west.

The combination of high esteem for ancient Indian works, coupled with claims that they contain knowledge of the best in the west, leads many people to proclaim that those works have all the knowledge available in the world and therefore our task is only to figure out how to interpret them correctly. Thus a large section of students is led away from experiments and discovering new things.

The above idea (that all knowledge is codified in ancient Indian texts) of course bolsters pride among many Indians but also leads to complacency. It leads to the idea that whatever the west may do, we are better than them in any case – because we already have the knowledge that the west is yet to learn. So there is no need for hard work to gain knowledge (except that of interpreting the texts). Spiritualism is the ultimate example of a mechanism designed to support Indian ego. If the west is not spiritual and Indians are, then Indians are superior to the westerners. If something that can be called spiritual arises in the west, it will be inferior because Indian Spiritualism in much older than – so Indians still remain superior. And if westerners embrace Indian version of Spiritualism, Indians are still better because Spiritualism originated in their land. This is a no lose situation for Spiritualism.

Anyways, it looks like India is still having a lot of inferiority complex (especially versus the west) in its national psychology. This could lead to inappropriate knee-jerk reactions in rational discourse. Also it skews the understanding of the actions needed to make the lives of Indians better and leads to a lot of human effort being misdirected and wasted.

What should we do?

India is closing in on 65 years of independent existence. The generation that acutely felt the humiliation of foreign rule is dwindling. India’s population now is formed largely of the two generations born in free India. And the third is coming. It is now time for us Indians to shed any feeling of inferiority and the consequent biases that come with it.

We should focus now on making life better for all Indians. India is in the middle of a transition from being an agrarian society to becoming an industrial society. There are many challenges. Health and medical care still does not reach a large part of the population. Good education is hard to come by – even for people who are willing to spend for it. Female literacy is low and education even lower. India faces a water shortage problem; the way we are using water is not sustainable. India also faces a shortage of power generation capacity. For now we are ok as far as food production goes – but the balance of people to feed and food produced is not comfortable. A couple of drought years can leave us in dire straits. Other issues are housing, environmental protection and pollution, an inequitable growth benefitting few at the expense of others, disguised unemployment in agriculture etc. In short there is no dearth of challenges.

One important thing that is needed to face a challenge is honesty and openness. Holding onto notions that give us comfort and a glow of pride but do not help us in dealing with the present and future is not useful. An old Indian adage which is in the form of a shloka in Sanskrit goes: “Just as when a swan is presented with a mixture of milk and water, it drinks the milk and leaves the water behind, so human beings should imbibe the best out of the experiences and learning presented and leave the rest behind”. I think that we should follow the spirit of the above saying and get to work on improving lives of all Indians. Ideas should be evaluated for truthfulness in general and usefulness to the task at hand irrespective of where they came from.

So, you might ask, should we forget our culture and ape the west? No, not at all. We should study each and evaluate the individual ideas within them whether they are true and if they can help us improve our lives. There are ideas that are true and those which are not in each culture.

But, you may ask, suppose we undertake such a task and critically examine and find that some ideas in our ancient texts are not correct and reject them, are we not insulting our ancestors (the great sages) and by implication our culture? Again the answer is no. The greatness of the people who wrote the ancient texts remains intact whether or not today we find they ideas correct. They too were people just like us who were trying to gather and organize all available knowledge they had so that the knowledge could benefit their future generations – which includes us. They had the wisdom that such an endeavour will be immensely helpful to society and they took great pains to compile the knowledge. Their wisdom to see the best path forward at their time and unrelenting effort are the things that make them great. Even if some of their ideas are found to be incorrect today, that is because we now have better ways of detecting the truth. It does not insult their intellect or effort in any way. And therefore there is no question of insulting our culture at all. In fact we will be adding to our culture and make it stronger.

In summary, I think that we should give up our inferiority complex and fear and the clinging to a supposedly pure and untarnished idea of our culture. We should become bold and wise. We should fearlessly proceed in the pursuit of a better life for ourselves, the people of our country and the world by seeking ideas that are true and useful.

A Clever Trap

There is a set of ideas in hinduism that I have been thinking about. Its the whole karma-papa-punya thing. Here's what I know about it.

1. All organisms are only a manifestation of their souls. When an organism dies, it is reborn either as another member of the same species or another species. The only exception is when that soul has attained moksha.


2. There is a score associated with every soul. That score increases when the organism does good and decreases when it does bad. This score is called karma. This score carries over from one birth to the next.


3. An organism has no direct way of knowing what its score (karma) is. (If it accepts the theory) It can only deduce its score by examining what species it is! (This is an implicit assumption - never stated as such).


4. When an organism dies, its score decides which species it is reborn as (assuming that it has not attained moksha). If it has low scores, it is born as a creature that is considered despicable (like a worm or pig etc). Better scores cause it to be born as better things - horse, dog, cow etc. Human birth means that it has the highest of scores.


5. Moksha is a threshold score level. If an organism has score more than that, it is not reborn.


6. After a soul has attained moksha, it will go to heaven where it stays forever.


7. If an organism does good, good things will happen to it. If it does bad, bad thing will happen to it.

The above postulates are what most hindu people generally have in mind.

There are some things that I am unsure about:

1. Is the score numerical? If so what values do all souls start with? Do all souls start at the same time? What is the moksha threshold? The theory is unhelpful - it uses vague terms as earning punya and incurring papa. What is the unit of measure of these things? no idea. The overall idea seems very much like that of money and bank accounts - but it is slippery enough to escape from that pattern.


2. There does not seem to be a lower threshold like the upper one. So I am not sure under what condition an organism goes to Narka (hell). But the concept of hell is there in hindu philosophy.


3. It isnt clear if there is a relationship between having bad things happening to you and your score. One thought is that if you do good - you have a choice - either you increase your punya or you experience good things. And likewise for bad things - either have you punya decreased and experience no bad things or let your punya remain the same and experience bad things. Or is it that if you do good things there is a double reward (increased punya and good experiences) and a double penalty if you do bad things (decreased punya and bad experiences)?


4. Is there a database kept somewhere which records every good and bad thing that a soul did - and what effect that had on its karma - and what good or bad happened to it as a result? Can an organism/soul see this database if it feels that justice has not been done to it?

I think that the above is a very clever mental trap. If you assume that it is impossible to track rebirth, then it is impossible to test the claim that the world works like this.

Lets say that we want to test if the world works like this within the limitation of not being able to track rebirth.

Any experiences of animals cannot be used for this testing - we cant ask them "what good or bad happened to you?". Even if we do, they may not understand us or we may not understand their answer.

So we must only consider human experiences. There are only two types - good and bad experiences. Lets consider them. For simplicity, lets assume the human is female.

1. She experiences good. She is not really going to question anything. She is going to assume that it must be because of her punya (of this life or the past)


2. She experiences bad. She is probably going to question why. If she has a consience and knows that she has done something wrong in her past in this life, she will assume that the experience is a result of that. If she feels very strongly that she has done no wrong in her current life, then the only possibility is the she had done bad things in her past life. Since we have assumed that we cant track rebirth, we cannot validate the assumption.

So, in the absence of rebirth tracking, no test can prove the claim wrong. Any and all observations can be claimed to be in conformance with the theory. Consider

1. A person does good and experiences good. no problem


2. A person does bad and experiences bad. as expected


3. A person does good but experiences bad. It is the effect of her misdeeds in her past lives.


4. A person does bad but experiences good. Again it is the effect of her good deeds in her past lives.

So the theory explains everything - every possible turn of events. In fact the theory explains anything! This theory is not falsifiable. No possible scenario can be imagined which where (in principle) the theory could be false.

So should we then accept the theory to be a scientific one and moreover as true? Well, not so fast. There was a philosopher called Karl Popper who said that a theory is scientific only if it can in principle be proved false. His ideas were paraphrased by another philosopher A C Grayling who said "A theory that explains anything explains nothing".

What it ultimately means is that the theory makes no predictions. By saying that anything is possible, it is not saying anything of value. Whatever happens, the theory will say - "so? Big deal. I have predicted that.". It does not say that the world works in a certain way and not in another.

And now notice how convenient all this is to the friendly neighbourhood temple pujari or the guy who comes to your home to perform the so called "good deeds" like 'homa's 'havana's and 'shanti's and what not. He is doing a *good* thing for you (and of course taking good money from you as well - and you also have to spend good money to buy things for the function he is performing). He is increasing your punya. Now if good things happen to you, you will not be worried. If bad things happen, he will say that you need to do more good deeds to overcome your 'dosha's (and he gets more money of course). As far as the pujari is concerned, he (notice its always a he) is not really concerned if the above mentioned theory is true or false. For him, what is important is that you believe it is true. If you do, then he is assured of a steady income. This theory is a meme (see wikipedia for what the word means) that acts as a parasite. Its effects are that it causes anyone who it infects to give money to people who claim to do good deeds on their behalf.

In September this year, I had a totally new perspective into computer science and software development.

One of the reasons why I like computer science is that it was all about machines. One does not have to deal with people. I have always been floundering when it came to matters relating to people. Being a bit of a recluse, I prefer things that have lesser degree of personal interaction. And I thought that software was a field which was highly impersonal. To understand what I mean by impersonal, consider mathematics. It is so precise and logical. A given statement either makes sense or does not. It is either true or false. The dichotomy is clear. Feelings play no part. You do not feel that 2 plus 2 may be equal to 4. Contrast this with fields like media, journalism, art, advertising, fashion, architecture etc where human perception and feeling matter a lot. The rules are few. Opinions form the foundation of issues. And things like influence, prestige, tradition, dignity, and all those mushy things matter a lot.
However a book that I read recently, Peopleware, by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister, changed that perception. They propound that software development is mostly about communication and not about complex algorithms. They have a term - the high tech illusion - to denote the fallacy that software development is rocket science. According to them, the success or failure of software development projects is determined more by the pattern of human communication within the team rather than the extraordinary analytic ability of the team members. it was such a fascinating perspective, that I made brief notes of it and am posting it here.

If you can find the time, I urge you to read the book itself. Agree with it or not, its a perspective that I think will serve you well.

Peopleware lessons
Part I Managing the human resource

Somewhere Today a Project is Failing

Projects usually fail not because of technology but due to other reasons (including team sociology).

High tech illusion: we delude ourselves into thinking that we are in the high tech industry - we are not - we are mostly in the human communications business.

Make a Cheeseburger Sell a Cheeseburger

Don't follow the managerial mentality from the production environment. project environment is different.

Vienna Waits for you

Life is not all about work - death awaits you one day. Don't pressurise people to put it overtime (it is not useful, it will be compensated by undertime later, and people get irritated) Using brute force techniques to improve productivity will increase people turnover. People do not work better under pressure they only work faster - for some time.

Quality - if time permits

dev teams want high quality (it is a matter of pride). management and clients are willing to compromise - lower cost and lesser time. A balance is important. take your bet with the dev teams.

Parkinsons Law Revisited

It does not apply in 95% of the cases.

Laetrile

There are no quick fixes - no silver bullet.

Part II The office environment

The Furniture Police

They have no idea what knowledge workers need. Give your people lots of space. Give them peace and quiet. improve workspace rather than common areas.

"You never get anything done around here from 9 to 5"

Very sad - you should be able to.

Saving money on space

You generally don't

intermezemmo - unidentified flying objects

Have some measure of productivity - something is better than nothing.

Brain time vs body time

Former is more important - uninterrupted hours of work are crucial.

The Telephone

Banish it.

Bring Back The Door

Protect people's privacy. Do not allow them to be interrupted easily.

Taking Umbrella Steps

Part III The Right People

The Hornblower factor

Any change improves productivity simply because of its newness - this explains the initial productivity surge of most techniques.

Don't insist on any kind of standardization. No uniforms or dress codes. Better to keep a high level of differences. No Methodologies (capital M) please.

Hiring a Juggler

Test thoroughly the new person's ability to do the job and also to jell with the team. Involve team members in the testing process - ask the candidate to give a presentation.

Happy to be Here

Grow a mentality of permanence. Invest in your people.

The Healing System

Human systems can change to do things not forethought - machines can't. Don't bring in Methodologies (capital M). That is another symptom of the high tech illusion.

Part IV Growing Productive Teams

The whole is greater than the sum of the parts

Corporate goals will always be arbitrary to people. Expecting them be loyal to the goal out of professionalism while the top management gets offered big perks to pursue them is hypocritical. You need to think of ways to get people to buy into the organizations goals.

The black team

Example of a jelled team

Teamicide

Ways to prevent team from jelling

a)defensive management

lesson: trust your people blindly - don't send out any signal that you don't trust them

b)bureaucracy

save your people from unnecessary paperwork

c)physical seperation

try to keep your team at a single place

d)fragmentation

avoid it - it is both a disguised waste of the persons time - it also does not allow the person to become part of any team

e)quality reduced product

don't allow higher management and clients to decide that the project quality is acceptable. allow your people to build in more quality even though it costs more time and money - they will be proud of it and become a team.

f)phoney deadlines

a team will never form if everyone feels that there is no hope of a win. they will take no pride in their work and work will be drudgery for them. some may even become fatalistic.

g)clique control

don't break up teams unnecessarily

A spaghetti dinner

Example of a team jelling

Open Kimino

Chemestry for team foundation

Build a cult of quality keep reassuring people of their work make the team members feel elite

Part V

Its supposed to be fun to work here

Hold war games and provocative training experiences.

Free electrons they are people who have enough knowledge and maturity to improve the organization - get out of their way.

Holgar Dansk

Protest against what is not right - people will join you.

Part VI Son of peopleware

Teamicide revisited

Plaques and posters aide teamicide because they demean the team members.

Don't allow overtime - it may be detrimental to an already formed team.

Competition poisons the team - another form of teamicide.

Process improvement programs

Improve the process - but don't be fixated on levels and certifications.

Making change possible

Change is difficult - if you want to make a change the people who are skeptical doubters are your best bet - the totally opposed will sabotage your efforts and the readily willing will jump right onto the next bandwagon when it comes. There are four steps to making change - old situation -> chaos -> practice and integration -> new situation. People's response to change is emotional - not logical - your logical arguements are useless.

Human Capital

Money spent on training is capital - not expenditure. replacement of staff is very costly - from 3 to 12 months salary. Companies who lay off people are publicly declaring their management failure - wall street is perverse in valuing them higher.

Organizational Learning

Bottom guys are busy in their work and don't have big perspective. Top guys are busy in takeovers or fighting off takeovers - they have no time to learn. Most learning happens at the middle manager level. The sad part is the middle managers have very little interaction between them - due to politics etc. The white space in the middle is where the space for organization learning is.

The Ultimate Management Sin Is...

Not utilizing your people's time effectively.

-> early overstaffing

-> status meetings (they are more about the manager showing his status rather than the subbordinates reporting the work's status)

-> time fragmentation (putting people in too many projects is bad - overhead is high - its a disguised form of wasting your people's time)

The time of your staff costs a lot of money - don't keep it idle.

The making of a community

Try it. it will be one of the things that you will count as the bigger achievements of your life. aristotle's noble sciences - metaphysics, logic, ethics, politics, aesthetics - follow aristotilian politics.

For all those who use laptops, are you satisfied with your laptop experience? No? Well, there are two new technological developments happening in the research centers and laboratories around the world which will change that.

The first is the ongoing improvements in flash technology. Flash memory is a solid state, random access, writable, non volatile memory. What's that? It means that it is a memory device which can be written to and read from just as the RAM that we all are familiar with. However it does not lose the information that is stored in in when the power is switched off. The interesting part is that thoughts are floating around about using it instead of a hard disk drive. If they manage to do this, it would mean lesser moving parts in the laptop. Less heat dissipation. Less power consumption. Less wear and tear. So what's stopping them? Cost per GB. Technical limitations. Hard disk capacities have reached well over 100 GB for laptops. Flash devices have a lot of catching up to do. Also manufacturing flash memory chips currently costs a lot more than manufacturing hard disks. Well, research in on ...

The second development is the organic LED (light emitting diode). The basic material behing this technology are chemicals (rather organic polymers) which emit light when an electrical field is applied to them. These are slated to replace liquid crystal displays. The potential is enormous. Display units manufactured from OLEDs are less power intensive. As the polymer's themselves emit light, there is no need for backlighting. This means thinner and lighter display units. Moreover these chemicals can be mounted on flexible plastic substrates. Which means that display units can be light and flexible. Demonstration videos of this technology are already on youtube. So what's the catch? Durability. The OLED polymers that have been synthesized so far have a limited lifespan. They emit light in response to electrical fields for a few thousand hours and then burn out. Again researchers are hard at work to remedy this flaw ...

I fervently hope that researchers apply themselves to the one biggest obstacle the is preventing a laptop from being a lap-top - hot processors. Anyone looking into this little problem...?

Computer Science

Preface: Originally written on June 28, 2007

During my engineering college days, there used to be an undercurrent of rivalry between the students of computer science and other branches. The subject of computer science was mildly disparaged. The computer was seen as a glorified calculator. Mechanical students used to ask their friends in computer science: "I dont see why you guys fuss all day over a 1.5 cubic feet box!". The more intellectual types quipped "Computer science is not a core subject like electronics, mechanical, electrical or civil. It is a secondary subject." There was a hint of jealousy too. The software field was (and still is) hot. Among the companies that came to the campus to recruit, a majority were related to software. The pay packets offered by the software companies to our senior batches were whispered incredulously and furtively throughout the hostel. Such was the structure of the "apple cart". (It is entirely another matter that many of those who indulged in such slander are today writing software themselves.)

Actually, now that I think back, I have encountered belittling of computer science at school as well. It was 9th grade. Computer science was introduced as an option for the SUPW period. I was delayed by a few minutes in reaching to the next class which was Hindi language study. The Hindi teacher, in all her arrogance, declared for the benefit of the students punctually present in the classroom and as a reprimand to me, that is was indubitably obvious that computer science was nothing more than an idle pastime and no good would accrue to a person who wished to spend time in front of a computer.

Since my inclination is towards computer science, I was mildly uncomfortable with such an attitude towards the subject of my interest. However, since the unfavourable opinion was omnipresent, I did not find the courage to challenge it.

But now I feel that it is proper to accord computer science the place that it deserves in the society. The fact that students and professionals of computer science produce no tangible product (as opposed to buildings, machines and gadgets) makes the case difficult. Nevertheless computer science has given many new kinds of wealth to humanity. We are able to accomplish a lot more today because of the use of software which would not have been possible otherwise. To the accusation that computer science is not a core subject, I am indifferent. The mere classification of it as such makes no difference to the amount of good it does. The list of utilities that it has created or enhanced is enormous. The benefits of computer science are only now being felt by the society at large (communications technology, easy banking, email, malls (oh yes, a lot of software goes into the operation of those supply chains behind them)) and I hope they would have altered their opinion of it for the better. Moreover the potential that it has to enhance the human condition further is greater. The amalgamation of medicine and computer science is still nascent. So is its alliance with the field of education. I expect that the comming generations would be amused by my Hindi teacher's (bless her soul) pronouncements.