The Public Intellectual in India by Romila Thapar - Book Review

"To Question or Not to Question? - that is the Question"


Romila Thapar is a renowned Indian historian with a number of excellent history and philosophy books to her credit. However, this book is different – it tries to examine the current status of the public intellectual in India. The origin of the book is a talk that she gave at the third Nikhil Chakravarty Memorial  Lecture (yes, I had also not heard of him but checked up on Wikipedia -  Nikhil was a respected journalist in India who founded the journal Mainstream) in Oct 2014. The lecture was titled “To Question or Not to Question, That is the Question”. That lecture has been revised and expanded in this book and five more essays added from other well known intellectuals – Sundar Sarukkai, Dhruv Raina, Peter deSouza, Neeladri Bhattacharya and Javed Naqvi, which were in response to Romila’s essay. The book concludes with a brief summary by Romila Thapar with her comments on the other responses.

In Romila Thapar’s lecture she laments the state of the current Indian affairs, the declining role of the Public Intellectual in India, the increasing communal polarization by religion, the rising Hinduvta extremism and trend towards increasing authoritarian behavior by the Indian Government. Surprisingly she downplays the economic development since the liberalization of 1992, and strangely believes that it has not made much impact. (I guess you have to be really living in an intellectual cocoon not to see how the last twenty years of development has brought millions of Indians out of poverty!). Other than that her essay is great and it brings out a large number of issues and points that all Indians need to think about, with her principal concern being about the legacy of colonialism that still leaves a significant mark on all major Indian policies.

Sundar Sarukkai’s essay focuses on nature of questioning and whether Thapar’s call to question needs to take into account certain fundamental characteristics of the act of questioning such as scientific rationality, knowledge/ignorance level, intellectual honesty, and ethics. Dhruv Raina’s essay focuses on Science and Democracy and argues that the institutional transformation of science over the last couple of years (a transformation in which the scope of criticism and skepticism is limited) has altered the relation between science and the public as well as the critical discourse on science and society.  According to him the world of ‘Big Science’ and dependence on large funding has reduced the independence of scientific thinking and thus reducing the effort to work for the good of society. Peter deSouza in his essay focuses on the definition of the public intellectual and his or hers different personas to examine the logic at work in the public intellectual. His essay is in three parts, with the first part covering the stories of three individuals (Priya Pillai in India, Yeshayahu Leibowitz in Israel and Avijit Roy in Bangladesh) which are tragic examples of what public intellectuals can face in today’s world. The second part examines the factors that prevent public intellectuals being more active and third part looks at how these factors work in Indian politics today.

The fourth essay is by Neeladiri Bhattacharya and it questions the framework of Thapar’s question and the type of public individual that she is referring to. He is more optimistic than Thapar on the state of Indian affairs and feels that the role of the public intellectual in India has not diminished much. I found the final essay by Jawed Naqvi, the best of the lot. Starting with a couple of examples where the Public Intellectuals have played an important role in recent developments in India, he still highlights the major challenges faced by questioning voices in the supposedly democratic fabric of Indian society. Urging us to look beyond the much-hyped Hindu-Muslim divide in India, he brings to open the caste consciousness still highly relevant in India.

All the essays are of very high quality and I salute Romila Thapar for this endeavor to bring them out in a single book format. This is a must read for all Indians who are concerned with the future of our country.

Walking Whales: The journey from land to water in eight million years by Hans Thewissen - Book Review

How Whales originated in India and conquered the Oceans!

Evolution provides countless of amazing stories as we look at how each species evolved.  But story of the whales  (which are mammals) ancestors that went from land to water about 40 to 50 million years ago beats the best of them. And in between for a few million years there were whales (much smaller off course than the ones we see now) that had legs and could walk on land as well as swim in the water!

Hans Thewissen who discovered the first ‘walking whale’ later called Ambulocetus in Pakistan in the early 1990s, tells this fantastic story in great detail. The science behind the discovery and the subsequent journey is meticulously explained and this book will be a great learning experience for any reader. Starting from what makes a whale a whale (it is the tymphanic bone in the ear), to the importance of teeth and the dental formula (just by a tooth an expert can tell you what species it belongs to!) is amazing. Other interesting facts such as the oxygen isotopes in the bones that lets you determine whether the species lived in land or water, makes the book so enjoyable to read.

Perseverance is the key to success and the author’s efforts in India and Pakistan over the last 20 years in searching for and discovering numerous fossils and his focused studies in understand the swimming, feeding, breeding activities of this species underlies that.  The deciphering of  the development of the brain, vision, hearing etc of the Ambulocetus and related species from different fossil fragments makes a large part of the book feels like a detective story. The author’s skill in explaining not only biology and paleontology, but also other domains like geology and plate tectonics is wonderful. I have not read a better explanation of plate tectonics anywhere else! The isolation of the Indian peninsula after it broke away from the Africa about 50 million years ago gave the walking whales an opportunity to evolve in isolation.

Many Indians spent considerable time worshipping their Gods in the Himalayas but instead if they had spent a fraction of that time understanding how the Himalayas were formed, they might be able to appreciate the forces of Nature better. And the story of the Whales and their journey to conquer the oceans should be inspiring to all Indians.

Gem in the Lotus by Abraham Eraly - Book Review

A Gem of Indian Literature!

The Indian Civilization goes back over 6000 years and is the most confusing among all the ancient civilizations. There is not as much grandeur in it as the Egyptian pyramids or the Greek heroes, but there is nothing anywhere in the world to match the Indian philosophies and thinking that are highlighted through the Vedas and great thought leaders like Buddha. However ancient Indian history is documented very little and the grand mythologies of Mahabharata and Ramayana eclipses actual facts to a large extent.

Good books that explain ancient Indian history are also very few; but Abraham Eraly with the ‘Gem in the Lotus’ has created a marvelous narrative that bridges the gap to a large extent. Starting of with a lesson in geology on how the Indian subcontinent and the towering Himalayas were created, Eraly provides a good background to the geography, climate and topography that played a major role in early developments in India. He then describes the Indus Valley civilization and explores the causes of its sudden disappearance. Eraly really excels when he explains the Vedas and takes us through a detailed tour of how they came into being and what we can understand of the social dynamics of that period through them. Intellectually the grandest period for India would have been from 500 BC to 100 BC when not only Buddhism and Jainism came into being, but also the hundreds of other philosophies that disappeared over the subsequent centuries.

Alexander’s invasion and its effects, the first Indian empire of the Mauryas and Asoka’s grand reign are covered in detail. The world’s first treatise in politics and economics – the ‘Arthasasthra’ is leveraged very well to provide us an understanding of the life and culture of that period.

Indians even now suffer from considerable cultural baggage – the most unfortunate of them being the easy acceptance of ‘fate’. Nowhere else will people accept unfortunate events with so much equanimity that Indians can. This might have stood them in good stead at some critical periods in the past, but it has seriously affected their ability for critical inquiry. Though Eraly does not address this directly, through his book one will get a good understanding of the various factors that must have led to such a condition.

Eraly used the title ‘Gem in the Lotus’ as a metaphor for the Indian civilization but I feel that his book itself is a glittering gem of Indian Literature.

Tomorrow's World by Clint Laurent - Book Review

Predicting the future through Demographics!



Clint Laurent, the founder of Global Demographics Ltd attempts to predict the socio-economic future of the world in 2032, through the lens of demographics. Along with that he gives the reader an insight into the dominant trends that are emerging across different regions of the world in terms of demographic profiles, distribution of households by income, expenditure patterns and labour force. Suddenly it become obvious to you that the most critical metrics to evaluate a country are through (a) the age of the population, (b) household consumption and (c) total income of the country. And then Clint shows that how these factors change over the next 20 years, is not that difficult to predict but its effects are very contrary to what most 'experts' have been forecasting. Now, in this perspective, China and India do not look that attractive for future business growth or investment. Many other common 'truths' such as 'China's GDP needs to grow continuously to keep its population employed', 'Japan's old age population is a big challenge' , 'the young affluent are the big spenders', 'India's young population is a big asset' are shown to be largely myths of our own creation. His projection that even after 20 years India contribution to the global spending will be only 5% , is something that we should all take note off.

Clint's advice : Though there is money to be made in the East, it would be advisable to make sure that you maintain a strong base in West where the riches already exist.

The book is very impressive due to the clarity of the thought processes, effective segregation of data, proper description of sources of information, simple frameworks, and clear articulation of assumptions. Some of the important conclusions are visually highlighted with easy to understand graphs.

Only on a couple of points I find myself not happy with the author's analysis. Firstly, though we can agree that Demographics is one of the fundamental criteria to forecast a country's future (maybe as critical as how the genomic code would drive the development of an organism) , many other factors like a country's economic policies, political structure, technological innovation and global events can create dramatic changes in very short time. For example if Clint had used this model in 1970 would he have predicted the fall of the Soviet Union 20 years into the future? Or in 1990 would he have predicted where India would be in 2010? What if China blows up due to internal contradictions in the next 10 years? Secondly many of the soft factors that many countries posses do not make it into Clint's analysis. I think India has a big strength of its diaspora spread across the world - with many of them in excelling in Business, Technology & Science. If they are leveraged well, the country can jump into a next trajectory of growth (maybe as an Indian, this may be my biased hope, but i believe that this is a possibility).

The book is definitely worth reading for any one interested getting a glimpse of the future, and should be a must reading for the political leaders of countries like India. I don't think that the Indian leaders articulate to their followers that the female employment in India is only 39%, while in China it is 79%. And while they continue to disparage China's single party system, they should look at what it has done to promote education, women empowerment and so on, while in India over 50% children are undernourished and its education system is unable educate properly even a small percentage of its population. Why is a democracy unable to deliver while a 'communist' dictatorship seems to be able to deliver the goods better to the common man?

I want my ‘Hindu law’ back……

                                                                                                                    (A Short Story)

I was in Kerala recently and came across an interesting news item in the front page of a local newspaper. All Muslim groups in Kerala had submitted a joint petition to the Indian Supreme Court requesting that the minimum marriage age for women be reduced from the current 18 years (to what age, was not specified), as per the ancient  muslim ‘Sharia law’. As can be expected this raised a storm of controversy with TV channels and the social media getting very worked up. All kinds of opinions were being aired and it was getting me very confused.

Luckily I have a good friend who knows everything – in fact we call him ‘know all’.  (He does depend on Google and always goes around with a phone or tablet in one hand – squinting with one eye on the screen while talking to you. Not that I have not tried to do the same but any search I try in Google results in millions of hits! I wonder when the folks at Google will be able to give you only what you are searching for). I got back to the U.S the following week and called my friend over to update him of these developments and get his advice.

My friend looked very thoughtful – ‘it does raise a lot of interesting possibilities’ he said.  ‘Do they say why they want this’?

‘That is not very clear’ I replied.  ‘But I think it is mainly to protect the women – the more you wait to get the girls married off, the more chances that they may not be able to control their natural urges’.

‘That is true’ agreed by friend. ‘I have also read that it is getting very dangerous in India for women to move around, without getting molested’.

‘But’ he continued, ‘they are asking this change of law only for the Muslims – right?’

‘Yes’, I replied – ‘that is why I can’t figure out why every one is so upset about this’. ‘Is this something we should fight against?’

‘Well’ said my friend ‘It is very difficult to fight against religion based demands – you will be criticized for being ‘anti-muslim’. It would be better to go with the flow. Why don’t you take advantage of the situation? Demand something based on your religion!

‘Wow!’, I was amazed at his brilliance. ‘That is very smart’.

‘I was born a Hindu – and our Hindu law goes thousands of years back’. Meanwhile my friend was squinting furiously at his screen.

‘Let me see – you used to have Child Marriage – getting the girls married off when they were 6 or 7….’

I was now getting very interested. Kids tuition bills are very high nowadays.

‘Wait – there are many strange things in your religion – caste system, untouchability – and here is something even more strange’ continued my friend  - ‘you guys used to have something called ‘Sati’ or ‘Suttee’ – widows jumping into the funeral fire of their husbands and committing suicide!’

‘Yes ‘, I agreed. ‘I remember – very cruel custom; it was originally meant to protect the women from invaders – you know India kept being invaded by many foreigners. Sati was later abolished by the British – who were also invaders.’

‘Protecting the women is off course very important.’ My friend commented.

I was now silent – a number of thoughts were rushing through my mind. I had been a little worried recently about how young my wife looked while I was looking and feeling much older. I could hear my wife in the kitchen – cooking my dinner. Though she had a full time job, she also took care of the cooking and all household chores. What would happen to her when I died? Who will protect her?.

‘What are you thinking’ my friend asked.

‘I think I want my Hindu law back’ I said. ‘We Hindus need to protect our women!’

I felt proud to be a Hindu.

The noise from the kitchen was getting louder. I wondered whether my wife had overheard our discussions.  ‘What is up my dear? Anything wrong?’ I shouted to my wife. ‘Dinner is ready, dear’ she shouted back from the kitchen. ‘I have made some special chicken curry for you – with some new herbs from Kerala’.

My friend quickly got up to leave. He was looking rather pensive as well. ‘Hey! – Not staying for dinner? ‘ I asked? ‘No – I need to go’ he mumbled. I walked him to the door. Just before stepping out, he turned back and whispered in my ear – ‘Watch out – I have read that some Kerala herbs are poisonous.’.

‘Ha, ha’ I laughed. ‘That is a good joke’. Why would my wife ever poison me? I saw my friend out and walked to the dining room with utmost confidence.

Interview in Future Medicine Magazine

http://www.futuremedicineonline.com/detail_news.php?id=78

‘Genome man’ of India

Sreekanth Ravindran | 10-March-April-2013

Sam Santhosh is the Chief Executive Officer of SciGenom, a genome company based in Kochi, which specialises in DNA sequencing. In an exclusive interview withFuture Medicine, he says that genomics will fuel the next revolution in medicine

By Sreekanth Ravindran

What inspired you to start SciGenom?

The completion of the first draft of the human genome by the International Human Genome Project in 2001 originally attracted me to this field. With my background in software engineering, I was intrigued by the opportunity produced through understanding and leveraging the genomic source code which is the language of life for all living beings. However, I had no connection with biology after high school and so it took a few years of reading and evening classes to get a thorough grasp of the subject. During this period, the DNA sequencing technology went through a revolution by exponentially reducing sequencing cost while increasing processing speed. For example, sequencing the first human genome took 10 years and cost about $3 billion, while, as of now, one can sequence a human genome in two weeks for $5,000.

With the advent of these new technologies called Next Generation Sequencing (NGS), I saw the opportunity of creating a company for genome sequencing and data analysis. Genomics can create dramatic changes in healthcare, agriculture, environmental protection, bio-fuel, and so on. Understanding the ‘language of life’ now is a momentous turning point just as the development of language itself for communication was a major tipping point in the history of our species about 30 to 40 thousand years ago. By deciphering the genome, humanity will be able to move to the next level of evolution.

This belief gave me the inspiration to start SciGenom– the name meaning ‘Science of the Genome’.  Though I have been living in the US for the last 20 years, I felt that with the changing global economic climate, I should start my new company in India and since I am from Kerala, I chose Kochi as the starting location.

How progressive and developed is the Indian genome industry and what are its advantages or shortcomings in comparison with the West?

The Indian genome industry is still in its infancy and has yet to fully develop. At the same time, we have many advantages compared to the West, includinglower manpower cost, strength in information technology and a growing economy which makes us unique. The disadvantages are lack of scientific leadership and research expertise, and unpredictable regulations driven by populist politics. The first can be overcome by attracting Indian NRI scientists back to India and by collaborating with other research institutions in different parts of the world. The second requires time and improvements in education throughout India.

What are the ethical issues preventing genome research companies from going the whole hog?

A critical issue is patient confidentiality and ensuring the individual understands what their genetic results mean. Another dilemma is ownership of genomic data. With advances in genetic testing for disease prediction, a major question arises over what becomes the information and who determines its use.

Tell us about your tie-ups with international companies, agencies and governmental bodies, and your areas of research. Are you faced with any policy bottlenecks?

We have research collaborations with Dr Schuster’s lab in Penn State College, Pennsylvania, and with the University of Toronto in Canada. Our areas of research are in molecular diagnostics, cancer treatment and metagenomics. In molecular diagnostics, our goal is to reduce the cost of genetic tests and make it affordable to all sections of the population. In cancer, we are looking at familial cancer and some forms of cancer that are more prevalent in India and hence have not attracted much attention in the West. In metagenomics, we are exploring the microbial communities in several water sources and soil samples to better understand the effect of bacteria and other microbes on human health and society.

Policy bottlenecks have not significantly affected our operations till date. However, some outdated rules like the restriction on sending human samples abroad as well as lack of regulations in medical diagnostics creates confusion in the field.

Were any of the Indian companies or individuals part of the international human genome project? How much of the research findings have made it to the mainstream medical practices so far and how far is India in making these solutions available to the common man?

India was not part of the original human genome sequencing project. However, CSIR sponsored Human Variome Project starting in 2003mapped variations in1,000 medically important genes across various groups in India.  Currently, India is part of the International Cancer Genome project where scientists from across the world are using sequencing technologies to understand cancer.

Research findings from the human genome project and the cancer genome projects are starting tomake personalised medicine a reality. However, given that such applications are in its infancy,it will be sometime before all the information is fully applied in mainstream practice of medicine. For those interested further on this topic I would urge them to read “The creative destruction of medicine” by DrEric Topol.

Is India lagging behind in streamlining genomic education and research? Do you have any suggestions?

India is definitely lagging behind in genomic education and research. In this regard, I have a few suggestions to make. When it comes to research, we need to follow the US model which has proved to be successful. The Indian government has already done well in the area of funding by providing large number of grants and creating public-private partnership schemes. What we need to do is attract not only NRI scientists to come back but also foreign scientists to set up labs in India and provide them sustained support with grants covering longer periods of time.

In education, we need to develop our own model. With the world’s largest youth population, poor infrastructure, lack of qualified teachers, etc we have significant challenges. One way to solve this gap is by leapfrogging over older models as we did with computers and telecommunications. We need to enable long distance learning, leveraging the internet and modifying the education system so that what the student learns matches the industry requirements. Furthermore, greater emphasis needs to be given to science – I would even recommend having a science track in MBA programmes like they have for Finance, Marketing, HR, IT etc. This will generate more business managers with a proper understanding in science who can lead our country into the next decade.

What are your future plans?

SciGenom will continue to build its current offerings in DNA sequencing, Bioinformatics and Medical Diagnostics. Later this year,we plan to spin off our medical diagnostics division (MedGenome) as a separate company with a CLIA certified central lab in Chennai and satellite labs in all major cities throughoutIndia. We plan to raise about $5M for this expansion.

Do you think India can emerge a leader in the area of genomics with its scientific manpower edge over others? How can we arrest brain-drain and make brain-gain in this field?

It will be difficult for India to take leadership in this field, but we can become a strong player if we play our cards well. At present, we don’t have an edge in scientific manpower– we lack expertise and leadership. However, brain-drain in the short term still works well for us, as we lack the facilities to teach them all, our youngsters can go out and learn in the best labs across the globe. What we need to do is to attract them back,along with already-trained NRI scientists,with advantageousopportunities in India.

We also have to have a realistic understanding of where we stand today. India, at present,has less than 5,000 qualified biology scientists in the whole country.The US, on the other hand, has that number in one of their largeruniversities and they have hundreds of such universities. Their spending on research is also astronomical compared to what we can afford. So we need to be clever in developing a strategy. It will be good for India to understand how smaller countries like South Korea and Singapore are contributing by focusing on a specific area critical to their national interest. For example, Singapore faces a shortage of fresh water – about 70 per centof it comes from Malaysia. Singapore has made it their goal to become self sufficient within the next five years. They aim to do this by achieving 100 per cent reuse of waste water, by using genomic technologies in waste water treatment. Arguably, they can achieve world leadership in that field. India can learn much from these approaches.

Do you think Indian hospital and healthcare chains are at par with their Western counterparts in the field of genomics? Is there a difference in the Indian and Western approach towards this emerging science?

Applying genomics to healthcare is new everywhere in the world. However, the Westis adopting it much faster than us but they also have their own challenges due to the more complex healthcare systems and role played by insurance companies. The problem with our approach is that we lack a clear plan. We have to make a cohesive approach taking into account our genetic heritage, diversity and challenges.

Is the common man in India aware of the real benefits of genomics? Do you think there should be awareness campaigns to generate more interest in this subject?

Even in the West, the common man has yet to become aware of the full benefits of genomics. In India, we definitely need to have awareness campaigns and other schemes for all sections of society to understand and take advantage of this knowledge. For example, farmers can breed better varieties of crops if they understand the genes that affect many of the traits that they are looking for.