It's a small world after all...

Some days ago, I was reading a post on Quora about emigrating to Canada. The person who had posted an answer was saying that she shifted to Canada a few months ago "in order to give a better life for her 2 year old son" and went on to describe the immigration procedures and protocols.  What caught my attention is the underlying justification behind her decision, which formed the basis for effecting an irreversible change in her life and that of her son.  Of course, it is quite possible that the author and her son were subject to oppression, persecution and unspeakable horrors from her family and society back in India, and emigration was the only option. But then, it is also quite unlikely that someone who has fled persecution would be writing so openly, and make no references to their trauma as part of their decision.  The more plausible explanation is that, it was her choice and preference to emigrate to another country in search of a better life. But something was pric...

It is common to see people lashing out against "communal" cultures, and at the same time swear by clubs, communities, farming collectives, open source, (un-)conferences, etc. Not realising, they are one and the same thing. Indian society has predominantly been "communal" in nature. Not casteist. Caste is a feudal construct, and the Indian "caste system" that is considered characteristic of Indian culture is largely a European import. Indian society had different kinds of communities that went with different names-- jati, mata, pangada, kula, gotra, varna, samuha, samaja, balaga, okkuta, sampradaya, etc. Of these, only kula and gotra pertained to blood lineage (dynasty and blood ancestry, respectively), while the rest were based on several other factors. A community is different from a formal organization, or an amorphous crowd. An organization has formal, contractual association of its members to the collective, that comes with a legal binding. A cr...

Yesterday, in two different conversations, I got to speak of my misgivings about current day currency markets. In one of them I was asked, if I were able to change something, what would it be? And I responded by saying that I would abolish currency markets in their current form. Currency, which is fundamentally supposed to be about trade, has today become a weapon of power. And at the centre of it is the current form of currency markets, which, rather than help facilitate global free trade, is actually exacerbating power dynamics across countries and civilisations. The current form of inter-currency trade has an interesting history. We will not go into detail into this-- I've explained the history of inter-currency trade, in my 2006 book The Power Law of Information . Currency today is predominantly tightly tied with nations and their sense of national sovereignty. There have been several exceptions to this, but with limited success. Some countries use or accept currencies...