Reviving Bharatiya Vigyan - 1: Getting the hermeneutics right

 सुखम समग्रम विज्ञाने विमलेच प्रतिष्ठितं  

Sukham samagram vijnane vimalecha pratishtitham

"All happiness is rooted in good science," says the Charaka Samhita-- the definitive treatise on Ayurveda, dating back to 8th century BCE. This belies the widely believed notion that science and "scientific temper" came to India from the West. 

Every form of scientific practice, rests upon an underlying hermeneutics-- or a way of thinking. The hermeneutics of current day scientific inquiry is greatly influenced by the industrial revolution, which in turn was fuelled by colonial expansion of European powers. I've called this form of inquiry as "machine hermeneutics" and also sometimes called the "clockwork model," where the universe is considered to be a giant, impersonal automaton, driven solely by causality, and indifferent to our existence. 

Hermeneutics affect how we interpret our observations and what models we build. As the physicist Werner Heisenberg once said, "What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of inquiry." 

Scientific inquiry happened all over the world, and ancient India, or Bharat, was no exception. In fact, Bharatiya science had made great, pioneering strides in many different fields. Today, thanks to more than a thousand years of relentless assault on  this civilisation, much of this science is lost or greatly appropriated. Today, when we talk of Bharatiya thought, we either refer to its popular culture like its festivals, costumes, rituals, food, etc. or to its spirituality and its different existential philosophies. These two ends of the society, were kept together by different forms of "Vigyan" or science, that addressed practical questions of everyday interest. 

Much of the hermeneutic elements of Bharatiya Vigyan, are given distorted meanings and religious colouring, thanks to flawed interpretations by scholars from occupying powers. For instance, the term dharma is variously interpreted as "religion," "ethics," "duty," "divine law," and so on. The term karma has come to mean some form of divine retribution. The term atma is called "soul" and the term vidhi is called "fate," and so on. 

All of these are incorrect interpretations, resulting due to a method of interpretation called "Syncretism" that draws parallels between terms from an alien culture, to terms from one's own culture. It is only in recent times. that there is an increasing realisation that the world's understanding of Indian thought is highly distorted. And we have seen several efforts to spread greater awareness and perform some corrective action. The book Sanskrit Non-translatables by Rajiv Malhotra is one such effort. 

"Digesting" terms from an existing hermeneutic framework into an existing framework, delivers a death blow to the knowledge and wisdom latent in the framework. But today's science, driven largely on machine hermeneutics is so powerful and dominant, that presenting anything from a different method of inquiry is deemed unscientific. 

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For those of us who were brought up in the Western paradigm of science (which includes most, if not all readers of this post), there is a need to represent the hermeneutic basis of Indian science Bharatiya Vigyan ("Indian science" perhaps refers to Western paradigms of science practiced in India, today). 

Here is an attempt towards this. 

Everyday we deal with "systems" of different kinds. Broadly, in current day science, systems are broadly classified into two kinds: linear and non-linear systems. 

Linear systems, of which most machines are a type of, are relatively easy to understand and build. These are also called "open loop" systems, where the input affects the output, and not vice versa. Such systems can be designed with high precision and its behaviour predictable. Non-linear systems on the other hand, are also sometimes called "Complex Systems" where the output of the system becomes part of the input at the next time step. Non-linear systems can be very unpredictable, even though their constituent dynamics are very simple. Even a small change in inputs, can lead to vast changes in its output. This is known as sensitivity to initial conditions, and is popularly called the "butterfly effect" that says that, our weather is so complex, that a butterfly flapping its wings in one part of the world, can potentially create thunderstorms in some other part of the world. The study of non-linear systems is also called "Chaos theory."

However, the transition between linear and chaotic non-linear systems is not abrupt. In between linear and chaotic non-linear systems are a class of non-linear, complex systems, that display properties of not sensitivity, but stability and resilience to initial conditions. Let us call this class of systems as "beings." All living beings are "beings" but several "non-living" systems are also complex and resilient, satisfying the definition of a being. The term jivatma (that. is sometimes translated as "materialized soul") is nothing but a complex, resilient system or a "being" as far as a Bharatiya scientist is concerned.  

Bharatiya Vigyan started understanding the universe, by representing it using "beings" rather than "matter" as we do today. The primary characteristic of a "being" is to "be" in a "state of being." Any minor perturbations would bring the being back to its stable state. The states of being that "hold" or are resilient or "sustainable" are called its dharma. Every being has its own dharma or its own resilient state of being. It is so ironic that this term today means "religion" or "duty" when it is actually a systemic property of physics! 

Any stable state of being of a complex system has its own energy and information content. This gives the being certain "capabilities" which is called prana. It is ironic again that we now associate the term prana with a narrow definition of breath. 

While all living beings are "beings" just about everything else can also be modelled as a being. Molecular structures that form solids are in a stable state of being. If they are perturbed a bit, they return back to their original form (which we call, "elasticity" in physics). Similarly atoms are in a stable state of being, with protons and electrons balancing out one another. If an atom loses an electron, it loses its dharma and becomes an unstable ion, leading to static electricity, lightning, and so on. 

Bharatiya scientists understood that just about all of life is a state of dharma. Our entire ecology is but a complex, resilient system, with its own stable states of being. The ecosystem hence, has its own dharma. And why just ecology? Even the solar system and perhaps the entire universe is nothing but a being. What appears chaotic (like say, thunderstorms) may just be a small part of a larger, resilient system of being (like the climate). 

While a stable state of being sustains for a while, we can also see that nothing in the physical world sustains forever. Life sustains for a while and dies away. Seasons sustain for a while, and change. Societies sustain for a while, and gets into turmoil. Even stars sustain for a (long) while and collapse. Even objects of the mind, like cultural practices, languages, and so on, do not sustain forever. Bharatiya philosophers hence started asking, what entity if any, sustains forever? The Sanskrit term for "forever" or "eternal" is Sanatana. The search for eternal sustainability came to be known as Sanatana dharma. This is what the "religion" of "Hinduism" is called in India. 

The notion of "religion" for the Bharatiya mind, is very different from what is conventionally understood as religion, in the West. It is not about commandments, nor about belief, nor about faith, nor about prophets and holy books. It is also not about rituals, norms, and specific forms of cultural practices. At its core, the practice of Sanatana dharma is about inquiry, search, conceptualisation, model building, hypothesis testing, argumentation, debate, and so on. Pretty much the stuff that "Science" is made of today. 

If we have to revive Bharatiya Vigyan, we should recover terms like dharma, karma, vidhi, etc. that have been give religious connotations, and provide them proper definitions using systems science. 

Yoga psychology - 3: Consciousness and Witness

In the third post in this series on Yoga Psychology, let us visit some of the core concepts of our sense of self and understand some of its nuances. The concepts presented here are not directly from Yoga Sutras. They stem from Vedanta, which in turn form the basis for the psychology of Yoga. 

In the first post in this series, we saw how our "sense of self" as an entity is different from our body, thoughts, emotions, and even our hard-coded genetic "nature". We can talk about all of them as if they were objects of inquiry while we, or our "self", is the inquirer. 

One of the postulates of Vedanta is that our sense of "Self" can never be the object of inquiry. It is always the inquirer. Just like the eyes can't see themselves, the "Self" cannot see itself. Our eyes can however, see an image of themselves (say in a mirror or a photograph) and realise that this image represents the very eyes which are doing the seeing. 

Similarly, we cannot "see" our self-- but we can become "conscious" of its existence. We become conscious of our self when we detach our sense of self from our body, mind, thoughts, emotions, nature, etc. 

Earlier, we also said that the universe is but an all-pervading consciousness. But now we are saying that the consciousness is not our "self" itself. Consciousness can make us aware of something. It is consciousness that makes us aware of objects in our vicinity. When consciousness is focused on some element of our surroundings, to the exclusion of others, it is called attention. When we become conscious of our thoughts, we enter into a state of meta-cognition, which helps us become aware of our own thinking. When we become conscious of our emotions, we become "mindful" and aware of how we are being driven by our emotions. 

In Vedanta, consciousness and our sense of self are distinguished from one another. Consciousness is called chitta, while the self is called the "witness" or sakshi. When we become aware of our "witness" we are indeed our own witness. Hence the witness cannot inquire about itself directly as it inquires about the world outside. It has to inquire about itself indirectly-- via our consciousness or chitta. The self needs to "project" some part of itself on the consciousness and witness the reflection it creates in the consciousness. 

Because of this, our reflection in our consciousness needs to be "clear". It cannot be smudged by our emotions, thoughts and delusions. A large part of Yoga psychology is geared towards how to make our consciousness clear, so that our self can reflect itself. 

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We now turn to other nuanced differences between Vedantic models and how modern science views these concepts. 

In modern science, consciousness is seen as something that emerges from the physical interactions of neurons in the brain. In contrast, in the Vedantic models, our brain (and body) can only "tune" into consciousness that is already all pervasive. Consciousness that lead to present-day science and mathematics existed during the time of dinosaurs too-- except that their brains couldn't tune into it. Consciousness exists on Mars and Jupiter too-- except, no physical device exists that can tune into it there and make an impact. We don't "invent" mathematics we "discover" mathematics from the consciousness that is already there. Any machinery that can discover mathematical truths on Earth, can also discover these truths on Mars or Jupiter, if it can only physically sustain itself. 

Hence, according to Vedanta, conscious AI (or what might be termed AGI or Artificial General Intelligence) is very much possible-- if only we can figure out the logic for tuning into the all-pervasive consciousness. 

Because in modern science, consciousness is seen as an emergent property of neural interactions, it is considered that when we are in deep sleep, we have no consciousness. This is another point where Vedanta differs from modern science. In Vedantic models, when we are in deep sleep, we have no witness, but all we have is consciousness. Even in deep sleep, our body and mind are kept alive by our consciousness-- but because there is no one to "witness" it, there is "no one" to be aware of what is happening. 

The "witness" is so important to our existence that, without the witness, our consciousness cannot take decisions and keep us functioning for long. If the "witness" is away for too long, we may never wake up from our sleep. 

Samkhya philosophy of Vedanta proposes a complete model of universal reality based on this duality between consciousness and witness. It is called Prakriti and Purusha. Prakriti refers to existential reality of the physical universe that functions by the laws of physics. Purusha refers to the eternal reality of the universal Self or universal truths whose presence is critical for Prakriti to keep functioning. 

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Coming back to Yoga psychology-- we had earlier noted that Yoga means "to unite" or "forge" or "harmonize". The ultimate goal of Yoga is to harmonise our consciousness with our witness. Our consciousness is our driving force, while the witness is our driver. Our driving force is very powerful and autonomous-- in other words, it is an extremely advanced form of machinery-- not seen so far in the machines that we have built. And as is with any advanced machinery, configuring it to function properly (in this case, to harmonise with the witness) is not an easy job. 

Hence, the need for a complete philosophy of Yoga.

Understanding our latent drivers

Ask someone from my parents' generation in India, if they have heard of ABBA. If they say yes, then, they would have also likely heard of Boney M and Man Machine.

Similarly, someone from my generation, if they grew up reading Archie comics, they would have also likely read Tintin, Asterix, and books from Mir Publishers. Of course, also Amar Chitra Katha.

 
But, someone analogous from Europe, would have likely heard about ABBA and Asterix/Tintin, but not about Archie or Boney M. Similarly, someone from the US would have either grooved to ABBA or Boney M, but would have likely not heard about Man Machine. And neither of them would have heard of Mir Publishers, let alone Amar Chitra Katha or Chacha Choudhury.

So what is happening here?

India was and is still a relatively poor country with a large population. In other words it is a vast "resource pool" of "human resources" that is of interest to several forces worldwide. And several kinds of interests wish to exploi.. er.. "tap into" this resource pool and exploi.. er.. "use" the potential it holds. 

In the 60s and 70s, Indians were still heady from their new-found freedom after centuries of oppression. We lapped up all these cultural memes without favour or discrimination. 

I remember once, sometime in the early '80s, we had visited a "Festival of Russia" in Cubbon Park in the afternoon, and from there, went on to see a James Bond movie in the evening. The fact that they both were coming to us from two different ends of the Cold War spectrum, and were competing with each other for pushing their worldview onto us, was completely irrelevant. Wonder how many of us even realised they were competing with each other. They both seemed to be eager to get our attention. 

I also remember buying a book on the history of aviation from the above mentioned festival, where it was claimed that the Russians had invented heavier-than-air flying machines before the Wright brothers. While we seriously considered the possibility of several inventors having experimented with heavier-than-air flying machines and not just Wright brothers, of course, for some reason the story of Shivkar Bapuji Talpade was something everybody laughed at. 

But sustained efforts from different fronts are finally beginning to yield results one generation later. Today the fault lines between the different camps are more stark. Each camp has several useful idiots who passionately espouse the worldview they have been indoctrinated with. 

Like this former KGB dude says, it takes 15 years of sustained effort towards indoctrination of a population, before results begin to show: 

Today, the results have begun to show. To understand ourselves, we use some alien terminology like political "left" and "right" that make no sense in traditional Indian worldview. We have reached a stage where it confuses people if someone were to participate in a gay parade, celebrate abrogation of Section 377 that criminalised homosexuality, and yet criticise the ban on fireworks for Diwali and are more or less happy with the way Covid was handled in this country. 

The original "being" that was India, is slowly dying and its worldview relegated to some meaningless "riwaz" while new categories and boundaries are fast taking root. 

The urgency for creating an Indian narrative of who we are and how we view the world, cannot be understated. It is fine to take inputs from everywhere, but these would be beneficial only if it serves to enrich our worldview, and not replace it, and leave us with a dissociative identity disorder. 

Yoga psychology - 2: Gunas

In the previous post in this series, we saw how our "sense of self" is different from our body, thought, emotions, and even our hard-coded emotional disposition. We can separate ourselves from all of them and inquire about them as if they were separate objects. 

We also introduced the model of universal consciousness that is central to Indian thought, and that our self is very much this all-pervasive universal consciousness. 

We also talked about "identity" and how our existential self (somewhat analogous to the "Ego" of Freudian model), called our "jivatma" has a lot of energy and cannot but identify with something or the other. A "enlightened" person would hence, manage this energy and carefully curate the set of identity objects to which it would attach to. 

In this post, we will talk about the "states of being" of our existential self and what does it take to curate its identity. 

The Mandukya upanishad talks about the story of "two golden birds perched on the self-same tree". It starts thus: 

We are made of "two golden birds" who are "inseparable companions" perched on the same tree. The jivatma or the individual self actively engages with the world outside. It wants to experience life and taste the fruits. The jivatma is the doer and the experiencer. Behind this golden bird is the universal self or the awareness, also called the "atmasakshi" (sometimes translated as "conscience") which is our own witness. 

This is a fundamental postulate of Indian philosophy, that we are our own witness-- and we can be both the subject (the inquirer) and the object of inquiry. 

The story goes on to narrate how the jivatma is tethered to the atmasakshi-- its inseparable companion. The more it tries to fly away, the more it comes back to rest in the universal self. 

A deluded jivatma fights its tethers and wants "freedom" from its own inseparable companion. But an "enlightened" jivatma does not consider this a state of bondage, to be tethered to the universal self-- instead, it realizes that all its awareness comes from the universal self, and actively seeks its guidance to engage with the world outside. 

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The jivatma may be deluded because it is in a "state of being" where it is unable to listen to or tune into the universal self. Swami Vivekananda gives the analogy of a lake at the base of which, lies a precious gem. But often, the waters of the lake are turbulent, or turbid, which masks our view of the gem residing underneath. It is only when the waters are calm and clear, is the gem visible. 

The turbulence and turbidity in the lake refers to the state of being of the jivatma. Broadly our individual self can be in three different classes or states of being, which are called: tamas, rajas and sattva respectively. These are called our gunas.

Before we explain the gunas, let us connect them with analogous concepts from Cognitive Science, so we can understand them better. Cognitive Science today, classifies our emotional state into two broad classes based on their "arity". These are the so-called "negative" and "positive" emotions respectively. 

An emotional state is a "psychosomatic characterization" of our being. What this means is that an emotional state, "primes" our body and mind, for a specific class of responses. The same stimulus can elicit different kinds of responses, based on the emotional state that we are in. 

For instance, suppose we are in a state of fear after seeing some dreadful news trend on social media, and we are walking alone in the darkness. A stranger suddenly starts approaching us. Our immediate response would be driven by this fear, and prompt us to avoid, flee or make ourselves defensive. On the other hand, suppose we are walking alone in the darkness after we come out from a party and celebration, where we had a great time with friends. In this case, we are much less likely to feel threatened by a stranger approaching us, and would more likely believe that the stranger is lost and may be asking for directions, or some such. 

"Negative" emotions like fear, sadness, anger, etc. primes our body and mind to disengage from the world, while "positive" emotions like joy, pleasure, happiness, etc. primes our body to engage with the world. In a negative state of mind, we build defenses, we disengage, we are distrustful, we avoid interactions, we are stingy, we are risk averse, and so on. While in a positive state of mind, we are proactive, generous, trustful, assertive, willing to take risks, and so on. 

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The state of tamas pertains to a state of being where we seek to disengage from the world. It is characterized by lethargy, lack of motivation, sluggish behavior and so on. The state of rajas seeks to actively engage with the external world. In a rajasic state, we are assertive, expressive, feel entitled, full of energy, and so on. As we can see, the tamasic and rajasic states roughly correspond to negative and positive emotional states, respectively. 

The sattvic state of being is where the mind is optimally tuned to awareness. It seeks to neither disengage from the world, nor to proactively engage with it. A sattvic state is where one is guided by awareness, rather than by emotion. 

Often, we come across moral posturing that calls sattvic state of being as "higher" and rajas as tamas as lower down in some of a cosmic, spirit hierarchy. This kind of moral posturing, in my opinion, only makes our mind's lake turbid and takes us away from really understanding these gunas. The moment something is regarded "holier" than something else, we get questions like, why did "God" create the less holy things, and so on. 

Note the copious absence of terms like "God", "Almighty", or any discourses on morality from the description of Yoga psychology. We are talking about consciousness, and positing that consciousness is something that is beyond our body, mind and emotions-- including intuition. This is a very specific postulate that forms the core of Indian worldview-- that there exists a universal consciousness that is the universe, and that is what gives us our sense of awareness. And that the core of our self is this universal consciousness that unbounded and eternal. 

Someone who claims to be in a sattvic state of mind all the time is either fully enlightened (in which case, others would be saying this about them-- not they themselves), or is telling a lie. A sattvic state of mind is very resource intensive. To be acutely aware and direct that awareness at will, requires a lot of energy and control. This is where the other states of being become important. 

A tamasic state of being is what we would typically experience on a lazy weekend. We need this "laziness" to recharge ourselves and bring some succor. This is when our mind and body relaxes, and our long-term (or subconscious) memory takes over and processes all that we have experienced. We need the tamasic state to prevent ourselves from burning out, and learn from our experiences. Disengagement from the world, is a fundamental survival instinct. Nothing "less holy" about it. 

Similarly, we need passion, drive and gumption to make an impact in the world outside. All these are part of the rajas guna. We need the rajas to bring enthusiasm and joy, and the drive to make things happen. 

However, tamas and rajas that are not guided by awareness, can get into an uncontrollable intensity, where they take our mind into a state of trauma. An uncontrolled tamasic state where we cannot come out of our urge to disengage from the world, leads to depression, suicidal thoughts, anger, frustration, and so on. Similarly, an uncontrolled rajasic state where we cannot control our urges to express and experience, leads to indulgence, lack of empathy, addiction, vice, and even psychopathic behavior. 

One who is guided by awareness, knows how much and when to engage and disengage with the world. Both tamasic and rajasic states of being are important aspects of our being-- and their optimal orchestration comes from a sattvic state of being. 

Yoga Psychology - 1: Self and unity

Over the last several years, I have had a growing interest in Cognitive Science and models of the mind. A chance encounter with some learned scholars, lead me to rediscovering the roots of Indian thought through a completely different hermeneutic framework from the machine hermeneutics that we study in school. I have documented my thoughts in several different ways-- Facebook posts, a series of posts on this blog with the label "Theory of Being", and a self-published Kindle book by the same name. My dream is to recreate a full-fledged theory of complex systems based on the theory of "being" with tools and methodologies to implement them in practice. 

More recently, I stumbled onto the theory of Yoga-- a practice spanning over several centuries, and which was documented and formalised by Maharshi Patanjali who is thought to have lived sometime between 7th to 2nd century BCE. This post is part of a series on my understanding of the human psyche based on the theory of Yoga. 

We start this series with the first post trying to understand the core of our existence through Yoga psychology. 

One of the fundamental things that Yoga psychology teaches us is that our body, mind, emotions, including our emotional dispositions hard-coded in our genes, are objective to our existence. We can separate them from our "self" and inquire into them as if it were an independent object. We can talk about our body as if it is something different from us; we can talk about our thoughts, beliefs and even prejudices as if they were different from us; we can even engage with our emotional dispositions and for example, say things like, "I am nervous by nature, and know why this is hard-coded into me and what evolution is trying to tell me, and I have also learned how to manage this nervousness"-- going on to show that, "my nervous nature" is something different from "me." 

Ordinarily, we "identify" with a lot of things-- including our body, thoughts, emotions, etc. This means that our "self" attaches itself to these objects, and acts as if it were these objects. When we identify with our body, we act as if we are our bodies. When we identify with our thoughts, we act as if we are our thoughts. Hence, when someone strongly identifies with an idea, like say, their gender, their nationality, their race, their ethnicity, etc. they act as if they are that object. Any reference by anyone to that object, is construed as a reference to them. Hence for example, if someone strongly identifies with their assigned gender, and say someone else rejects a gendered approach to life, it is construed as a rejection of their person. People with a strong sense of identity, actively work for the interest of their object of identity, expend time, energy and other costs to defend it from perceived threats, and do not ask what benefit they are getting from this association. 

Identifying with something is hence, fundamentally different from rational association. Rational associations are based on expected benefit versus cost. But identity is something that is beyond considerations of benefit and cost. We are what we identify with. 

Much of the upheavals-- both positive breakthroughs and human-induced disasters, in the world have been due to some core set of people strongly identifying with an idea. The passionate curiosity of Marie Curie led to the discovery of Radium and also radio-activity, when her discovery ultimately ended up killing her. Similarly, it is the passionate bigot who "becomes" her/his prejudice that create enormous conflict and crises. 

Curating our identity is hence a very fundamental and deeply important activity. We have a lot of "self-energy" (if there is such a term) within us, and we cannot but identify with something or the other, through our lives. We need to be very careful in choosing what we identify with-- what is that idea that we let become a part of who we are. Because, this is going to have irreversible consequences. 

The psychology of Yoga tells us something very deeply profound-- that our "self" is different from all the ideas and emotions that we possess, as well as our physical bodies. Yoga sutras teach us to objectively inquire into our body, thoughts and emotion by first disassociating from all of them. 

So, if we are not our body, nor our thoughts, nor our emotions, and not even our "nature", who are we then?  What is this "self" that is us? If we de-identify from everything-- from our bodies, our thoughts, our families, our countries, our genders, our communities-- what remains? Who are we? 

Indian thought has long since asked this question-- who or what is this "self" that is attaching itself to objects and driving our lives? The Upanishads in particular have long debates and discussions about the nature of our selves. 

Indian thought has long since maintained that the core essence of the universe is an all pervasive "consciousness" or "awareness" and our "self" is very much this indivisible, core, awareness that pervades-- or "is"-- the universe. 

The hermeneutics of machines that drives the study of modern physics, has no place for "consciousness"-- a term that is relegated to "mysticism" or "pseudo science" primarily because we cannot "see" or characterise it. However, science does work with several elements that we cannot "see" or "perceive"-- like radio waves, magnetism etc, and infer their existence and properties from how they affect the world outside.

The term "Yoga" means "to unite" or "to synchronise" or "to harmonise" our existential elements like our body, mind and emotions with the all-pervasive consciousness. The major impediment to bring about this unity is actually our sense of agency or "free will".  A deluded free-will or a will that is trapped in its thoughts and emotions, and strongly identifies with something or the other, is as much of an impediment to bringing about this unity, as an "enlightened" free-will is a catalyst to bring about this unity. 

Outcomes versus Outputs

 One of the common grouse among serious educators today, is the rampant "factory" model of education, that aims not to empower the student to think and act independently, but to create a homogenised pool of skilled labour, ready for consumption by industry. 

Despite several leading educators being critical of such an approach to education, the factory model is still very strong, and is the de facto model of formal education. One of the most vocal voices against such a paradigm is the Harvard professor Todd Rose. (Actually a lot of educators are against such a model-- but Professor Rose is from an Ivy League university, so our hope is to latch on to his name to get someone to listen to what we're saying 😅). He runs a research program on the science of "individuality" where each individual is modelled as a complex dynamic system, rather than an "averagian" model that is characteristic of the factory. This TED talk here, explains the motivations behind the science of individuality: 

While these developments are underway, there is yet another movement in education that aims to model educational processes based on "outcomes." This is called Outcomes Based Education (OBE), and any resemblance to a certain empire is purely coincidental. 

OBE has been adopted by several countries, India included, which has resulted in a vastly increased bureaucracy around how courses should be specified, taught, assessed, etc.  The entire system of learning now revolves around assessments, and there is even a slogan saying, "Assessments drive learning." And to think, all along, I've tried hard to never let assessments come in the way of my learning. 

The entire activity around OBE is centred around what visible outcomes the students can produce. And outcomes are equated to exam performance. When specifying expected outcomes for a course in the course description, teachers were (until recently) forbidden to say anything about students needing to "understand" anything in the course. Because understanding isn't "visible"-- only what is visible, matters, and nothing else. Kind of, reminds me of John Searle's Chinese Room Argument about what constitutes intelligence. A clerk who doesn't speak Chinese, sitting in a Chinese office, and strictly following a set of rules about how to answer questions, appears to the outside world to be understanding Chinese. But all that the clerk is doing is to follow well-defined rules to produce some visible "outcomes." 

OBE seems to be the factory model on steroids. Individual agency, empowerment, awareness, etc. doesn't matter. Only what the individual can produce, matters. 

This is all the more strange, because, OBE itself says: 

There is no single specified style of teaching or assessment in OBE; instead, classes, opportunities, and assessments should all help students achieve the specified outcomes. The role of the faculty adapts into instructor, trainer, facilitator, and/or mentor based on the outcomes targeted.

Something seems to be amiss in the way OBE is implemented.

 In my opinion, OBE, at least the way it is being implemented in India, seems to be confusing between "outcomes" and "outputs." The idea of outcomes is not unique to education. It has been used in management theory for much longer. And there are several articles written, explaining outcomes versus outputs. 

Outcomes pertain to how the collective system state changes as a result of some activity. The change in the systemic state may or may not be "visible" directly-- but can be inferred by observing certain outputs or evidence. And while individuals in a system produce outputs, the outcome is about the system as a whole, and the change in its state.

Let us take an example. Assume that a new car factory has been set up in a state, which adopts the latest state-of-the-art manufacturing systems. As a result, it produces a lot of cars. This is the output of the activity. The outcome of this output is that-- in the larger system, car prices may go down, more people may start using cars, there will be more demand for fuel, more garages may come up, and ecosystem like motels, drive-ins, etc. may start emerging. And so on. 

The outcome is about the system-- and about what systemic changes (operational, structural, latent, etc. changes) are brought about by the individual outputs that are visible. 

Outcomes are much more comprehensive, much more deeper, and manifest over the longer term-- in comparison to the immediate outputs. In order to see outcomes, we need to have an idea of what was the state of the system before our intervention, and how did it change subsequent to our intervention. 

To understand what outcomes mean in an educational setting, consider this analogy between "irrigation" and "harvesting."

Consider a barren area, where we are nurturing a wide variety of plants. We irrigate them, provide them with soil, air, manure, etc. and each plant goes on to become a tree and produce its own outputs. If each plant were different we end up in a diversity of outputs for the same kind of nurture provided. 

The outcome of such an activity is that, we end up in a vibrant ecosystem, where outputs from one tree becomes inputs for the other, or may in some sense augment one another, resulting in a rich, self-sustaining ecosystem. 

Education is supposed to be somewhat like that. The outcome of education is supposed to be the creation of an interdependent, harmonious, empowered and aware population, that can take on problems faced by the society, and provide credible solutions. 

But that is not what is happening today. Graduates from our educational institutions are even more insecure after their education than before. When placements start, everything else takes a back seat. Hardly anyone seems to be looking around and asking how can we solve this problem-- or that problem. No one wants to solve problems-- they only want salaries-- not even jobs. In fact, I'd even seen this cheeky slogan in the email signature of a student once: "All along I thought I wanted a job, but what I really wanted was a salary." 

The reason for this state of affairs is that, education today, is modelled more as a "harvesting" activity, rather than an "irrigation" activity. 

In harvesting, we are interested only in specific outputs, and the quality of the outputs. We evaluate each plant based on the output it provides, and inject them with boosters to increase their output. We discard "bad" plants which don't provide the output we desire, or the quality of the output we desire. 

The outcome of such an activity is that the ecosystem is greatly denuded because of the narrow focus of our intervention. There is no diversity of outputs to supplement, complement and augment one another. Because natural interdependencies are broken, the system depends more and more on our intervention. The soil loses its potency over time, insects and other parasites start thriving, and we will need more and more potent toxins just to keep our outputs coming. 

Currently, the way OBE specifies and controls pedagogic activity, it resembles more of a harvesting process, rather than an irrigation process. 

Educational outcomes can only be seen over the long term. The investment we make over several years, in promoting original thought and problem-solving skills, will only produce outcomes after a decade or so. These outcomes need not be in the form of Nobel prizes or Olympic medals (but may also be), but in the form of greater ownership from the population towards our society and country, greater involvement in its activities, better work practices, greater acceptance of other subcultures, etc. Nobel prizes and Olympic medals resulting as one of the outcomes of our society developing a scientific temper and a sporting culture is one thing. But targeting them as intended outputs loses the entire picture. If we make Nobel prizes and Olympic medals as our intended outputs (and call them outcomes), we will be creating a harvesting system that can make whatever supporting ecosystem we have, collapse under its own weight. 

Of course, institutions are jittery about their survival, and want measurable outputs to pitch for funds and support and ensure their survival. This is a very valid concern. But we risk a much greater collapse, if we remain focused on specific outputs and remain impervious to the larger outcomes. We need better models to understand how to recognise outcomes and design for outcomes, rather than for outputs.

Global supply chains and sustainability

(Acknowledgment: All images used in this post sourced from Google image search) 

As kids, whenever we were difficult, our grandpa used to scold us: "Don't be the dog in the manger!" We didn't know what it meant, at that time. This metaphor, coming from Greek mythology, talks of a dog sitting on a bale of hay and shooing away the cattle that come to graze on the hay. "Dog in the manger" basically refers to someone who blocks others from using some resource, and neither uses it themselves. 

This metaphor was made famous (notorious) by Winston Churchill, who used it to justify colonial domination based on a sense of racial superiority: 

What Churchill didn't (or didn't want to) realise was that the native communities weren't protecting a "resource"-- but a complex ecosystem of being of which they were a part of, and would have probably gladly accepted others who can enrich this ecosystem harmoniously. Sadly, Churchill was too deluded about his "higher grade" race, to bother about these nuances. 

Today, Churchill's philosophy still rules the world. Visit tea estates in places like Ooty or Assam, we see entire hill ranges denuded of their rich ecosystem, to be replaced by homogeneous tea plantations, most of which are slated for export. 

A complex ecosystem of flora and fauna had to be destroyed, just so that some folks can have a cup of tea on their breakfast table! 

If it is tea in India, in Africa it is cocoa and diamonds, the demand for which, have destroyed several ecosystems and even today are known to employ child labour and repressive work practices-- just so that someone somewhere can enjoy chocolates or jewellery! 

China's recent growth in construction was supported by raw materials sourced from several countries. India's granite exports to China for instance, far outnumbers its exports to any other countries. This growth in demand for "natural resources" has lead to several forms of illegal quarrying and mining, leading to several hills and forest regions getting literally torn down. 

And let's not even talk about oil and petroleum. 

This entire supply chain is kept running by a variety of structural interventions into the political, economic and cultural fabric of these societies that supply "natural resources." Their currency exchange rates are kept artificially high, by a coterie of currency traders, that create a huge disparity between their market exchange rates and relative purchasing power. For instance, what we can buy for $1 in the US, on an average, we can buy for Rs. 15 in India. This is the "real" exchange rate according to relative purchasing power. But in the market, one dollar fetches close to 80 rupees! This exchange rate is decided by the sentiments of a few thousands of traders in currency markets, whose knee-jerk reactions shape the destiny of the entire country! 

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Having said all this, I am not for one moment suggesting that global supply chains aren't important. Surely, it makes sense to procure raw materials from all over the world for say hi-tech requirements like building computers, airplanes, mobile phones, vaccines, life-saving drugs, and so on. 

So how do we distinguish between "good" and "bad" supply chains? Why is it so "bad" that people across the world can have a cup of tea from our tea estates or some countries can build great cities from the rubble of our hills and forests? 

The difference is that technology that addresses a global need, itself has a universal footprint. When raw materials are sourced from across the world, for building mobile phones, the output can be potentially enjoyed by the entire world. This does not of course, replenish the damage done to the ecosystem in procuring the raw materials, but improved technology carries a hope that we can move on to building better and more efficient systems and reduce our destructive impact on the environment, going forward. For instance, the carbon footprint of several office-goers has drastically reduced thanks to present-day video conferencing, cloud computing, and mobile payments-- catalysed of course, by the pandemic. 

For technology, the problem space is global, and naturally its solution needs to source elements from across the globe. 

In contrast, the problem space of tea and chocolate or construction, is local. On solving this problem, the beneficiaries are only the local population. But to solve this problem, elements of the solution are sourced from all over the world. This leads to a "linear" or "open loop" configuration, that just keeps tilting the balance in one direction, leading to an eventual collapse. 

Yet another example of such a linear, "open loop" solution is the way Bangalore meets its water supply requirements. A large percentage of water used by Bangalore comes from the Cauvery river, which is almost 70 kms away and 600 feet below in altitude. Every day enormous amounts of water are pumped up a gradient, to keep the city running. The "open loop" nature of the problem is literally visible in the water map below:

When water supply for a city is sourced from such far away sources, this only results in disruption of livelihoods and ecosystem of the river downstream, and the benefits that the city dwellers get, are not enjoyed by the ones near the water source. 

Most major cities come up next to major rivers, and that's the reason for it. Bangalore is an exception-- it is the third largest metropolis in India, and which has no natural source of water. Sustainable solutions to our water supply need to be very different from what we have today, which is not at all sustainable. 

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Global supply chains are needed for solving problems of a global nature-- not for local problems, regardless of how superior or "higher grade" the population consider themselves to be.

Knowledge Management in Oral Traditions

In one of the chapters of his book "Savarkar", author Vikram Sampath talks about the kinds of legends that went around in the Indian population about key figures of the Indian freedom movement. 

Mahatma Gandhi for instance, so meticulously planned and executed his strategy of non-cooperation that, the ruling British government could not keep him imprisoned for long. Among the population however, this understanding took on a rather literal form. There were legends of Gandhiji having "supernatural powers" that he could escape from any jail cell within moments of the jailor locking his door! 

Similarly, there was an account of a daring escape by Veer Savarkar at the port of Marseilles in France, where he jumped from the window of the ship in which he was imprisoned, and reached the shore. This episode, while resulting in his recapture, also lead to a major diplomatic controversy between Britain and France. Among the population in India, this episode took on dramatic forms, where Savarkar was thought to have swum across the English channel for several days to reach France! Savarkar himself recounts that when he told his prison guards in Andaman and Ratnagiri that his swim lasted only for a few minutes, he lost their respect and admiration as a hero! 

Those were times when there was minimal mass communication, and newspaper reading wasn't really a thing among the population. In fact, for much of our history, knowledge has been passed and diffused through the population by word of mouth-- and subject to distortions and hyperbole like the above. 

There are various reasons for this oral tradition of knowledge management, to have become the norm. Even though language and writing had developed greatly since ancient times, the technology for writing and record-keeping were crude and expensive to scale. Block printing did exist, but it was used mainly in the textile industry for fabrics, rather than printing of books. 

But more importantly, India also experienced several invasions where books, monuments and other recorded forms of knowledge were destroyed by the invading hordes. In just one example, in Nalanda University-- one of the world's oldest universities-- an estimated 9 million books were destroyed in the 1193 invasion of Bhaktiyar Khilji.

These invasions were followed by centuries of suppression and subjugation of the population, depriving them of opportunities to manage their collective knowledge and and understanding of their history. To counter this, the population developed a variety of oral techniques by which, common knowledge about our history and cultural values were sought to be preserved. These took different forms like stories, dramas, street plays, games, puzzles, harikatha (temple discourse), songs, etc. 

The challenge as we saw with oral traditions is that, it would be subject to great levels of distortions and subjective elements like the artistic freedom of the narrator. Over generations, these distorted accounts become established in the population and set in stone-- sometimes literally. 

For instance, in the Ramayana, Valmiki describes the tribe of Hanuman as Vanacharyah, which means "forest dwellers". But somewhere along the thousands of years of retelling of these stories, the term that has come to be associated with the tribe of Hanuman is Vanara, which means monkey! Not just that, there are even additional legends of Hanuman's tail setting Lanka on fire, and of Bheema from Mahabharata unable to lift Hanuman's tail because of his arrogance! In our temples, Hanuman is literally carved on stone in the face of a monkey, with a tail. 

Distilling and managing social and historical knowledge from such an oral tradition is a completely different ballgame, compared to how "mainstream" academic processes manage knowledge today. 

Take for instance, Wikipedia, that is supposed to offer a free (as in, freedom) way to aggregate knowledge from different cultures into a single melting-pot. 

There is no way we can incorporate social and cultural knowledge embedded deep within cultural practices and oral traditions, into Wikipedia. Wikipedia articles need to be based on "credible" sources, which in turn refers to knowledge constructs that are recorded in written form-- typically by third-party observers, who bring in their own biases and agendas in their narration, and are in turn ratified by other observers from the written tradition, with similar biases. 

It is no wonder then that, by and large, Indians find explanation of their history and culture recorded in books and on Wikipedia, to be so very different from their lived experience in this society and culture. 

On Wikipedia, a viewpoint published in a journal, written by an external observer, and peer-reviewed by a couple of other external observers with a similar viewpoint, carries more weight and credibility, than say a viewpoint expressed in a harikatha or a street play that has been witnessed and critiqued by hundreds or thousands of people, over several years! 

Clearly, we are not even aware of the biases and limitations in our underlying paradigm with which we strive to manage knowledge. 

As our formal education system relies more and more on written forms of knowledge (and by implication, on its aggregations like Wikipedia), we stand to lose out on the knowledge and worldview of our oral traditions completely. 

Although oral traditions contain a lot of distortion, the thinking population in the society had developed techniques to distill out a plausible essence from the narration, setting aside the hyperbole. For instance, regardless of the legends of a flying machine called Pushpaka Vimana in which Rama returned to Ayodhya after defeating Ravana, a quick search on Google maps will show us that it takes about 21 days to walk from Sri Lanka to Ayodhya-- which is exactly the number of days between Vijayadashami (commemorating the defeat of Ravana) and Diwali (commemorating the arrival of Rama in Ayodhya). Similarly, many would agree that Sita's Agni Pariksha  or "Trial by fire", was basically some form of intense cross-examination, like in a courtroom (which is no less demeaning), rather than a literal entry into a raging fire, to prove one's "purity". 

While epics like Ramayana are widely studied and also documented, they are just a small fraction of the body of knowledge that have been passed around through generations in our oral traditions. Many of these narrations contain rich insight into several matters, and many survival tactics. 

For instance, in most south Indian cultures, it is widely narrated and believed that a lone wild male elephant is likely to be extremely aggressive and would have been likely rejected by its herd. Many oral legends abound about "heroes" encountering a lone tusker and either escaping its wrath or fighting it valiantly. But my limited searches for documented knowledge about this, hasn't yielded anything so far. 

With our increasing emphasis on excluding anything other than written forms of knowledge documentation and dissemination, we may lose out on such important information, that may affect our survival someday. 

There is a need to not only preserve, but also reinvent oral traditions of knowledge dissemination for the connected generation of today, if we are to maintain our cultural connections with the past and learn from our history. 

The wonder that was India

 Once upon a time, philosophers-- men and women alike-- observed systems of interacting elements, and noted that the system as a whole, can be in different "states of being." They also noted that some states of being are more "stable" and "sustain" against perturbations. It is in these sustainable states, we can nurture life. The entire ecosystem of our planet, they noted, is just a sustainable state of being.

They called this phenomenon of sustainability against perturbations, as "dharma".

Sustainability is not a binary. Some states are more sustainable than others. They also noted that regardless of how sustainable was a state of being, every physical system eventually collapsed. Nothing in this physical world, they noted, is in a state of eternal dharma.

This prompted them to embark on a quest for "eternal sustainability" which is called "Sanatana dharma".

Physical systems are trivially not eternally sustainable. They hence called physical reality as "Maya." Eternal sustainability, if it exists, needs to be in the realm of prajna or consciousness, they noted. Even here, they saw that not every element of data, information and knowledge, represented eternally sustainable assertions. For example, an assertion that "summer is hotter than winters" is mostly true, except when there have been exceptions.

They then noted that, as long as assertions connected with physical reality, they can't be eternally sustainable. But then they saw that no matter how much they tried to go meta, some connection to physical reality remained. But some of them managed to get into a state of consciousness, that was completely unconstrained by physical reality.

They called this, the universal consciousness or Reality or Brahman.

They then went on to create a vibrant civilization that was based on this quest for experiencing the state of eternal sustainability. They saw that, when the core inquiry of the population is on eternal sustainability, we can derive notions of ethics, fairness, harmony, freedom, and other elements of humanities, fairly easily.

This in a nutshell, was the wonder that was India. Not the drivel meted out by Indology experts in high citadels today.