PhD needs a reset

World over, the PhD program is in a crisis, and there are ample amount of articles written about why we need to rethink our PhD programs. For example: 

• The Paradox of Doctoral Training - the Node
• The Reimagined PhD: Navigating 21st Century Education
• PhD Crisis: Oversupply or Mismanagement of Talent?
• PhD Education: 2025 Expectations and Transformation

This is yet another post about this topic-- but one that is hopefully, in a very different direction. There are major issues that are debated about PhD education today-- including funding and the industry relevance of the research carried out. 

But very few observers, if any, are addressing the fundamental reason why a PhD study exists in the first place. 

A PhD is a degree in philosophy-- not in technology or science or engineering. One does not think in terms of a Computer Science PhD, Data Science PhD, Mathematics PhD, etc. It is just a PhD-- a thesis communicating the results of a philosophical inquiry. 

A philosophical inquiry into the nature of reality is by definition, interdisciplinary. There is nothing that is "out of syllabus" for a philosophical inquiry. 

And in my opinion, this disconnect with the core reason behind a PhD journey, is the biggest crisis we are facing today. At a time when there is an acute need for people with philosophy skills, not only are we discounting this important skill, but we also actively mock and lampoon philosophers with stereotypes of being impractical figureheads living in their own ivory towers. 

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Philosophy is a term that is greatly misunderstood today. I remember some years ago, when a former colleague came to meet me and I was mentioning that I was mentoring a "philosophy club" among our students. After this, we went to the cafeteria and we both ranted about the troubles we are facing in our respective lives, talked about politics, history and anything that caught our fancy. And then, just before we said goodbye, the former colleague said, "There, I guess this was one more session of your philosophy club?" 

I just smiled and nodded, not having the heart to tell him that what we just had was a ranting session-- not a session in serious philosophical inquiry. 

Similarly, several ideological schools-- that make up the different -isms are called philosophies, and the respective ideologues of each school are called philosophers. Philosophy is not a specific ideology. Someone who embodies a ideological structure and lives it and advocates it, is an ideologue-- not a philosopher. 

There is an episode in Big Bang Theory where two physicists who are PhD holders are having a philosophical debate about Quantum loop gravity, and String theory. And their disagreement ends up breaking the personal relationship they have been having. That is not a philosophical disagreement-- that is an ideological disagreement. The PhD holders there were not philosophers-- they were ideologues, pushing their respective ideologies. 

A number of such so-called philosophical debates are just ideological debates. From the viewpoint of philosophy, they are all ill-posed philosophical problems. 

Take for instance, the debate between skepticism and faith. A scientific mindset is supposed to be characterised by skepticism, and a religious mind is supposedly characterised by faith. But it is not hard to see that one who staunchly advocates skepticism is actually practising "faith in skepticism" and one who staunchly advocates faith, is actually practising skepticism about anything else other than their object of faith! 

Or for example, the debate between "evolution" and "intelligent design". The philosopher only asks the evolutionary theorist "Was the process of evolution designed-- or did it evolve from a meta-evolutionary system?" (Arguing that it was the product of a random chance does not cut it because we can still ask the question whether the mathematical properties of that randomly chosen mutation that lead to evolution of life-- was that a product of design?) Similarly, the philosopher asks the "intelligent design" ideologue "Who designed the designer?" 

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In the name of Science, today we only have different hermeneutic ideologies, each in a territorial battle with others for occupying mind space and bringing new converts into its fold. 

Each hermeneutic ideology is blindly pursuing its interests pushing away anything that comes in its path. Be it AI or Mars colonisation, or genetic engineering, or whatever else, each hermeneutic universe wants to be at the centre of what is termed as Science. 

In my professional life, I often get very hostile vibes from others when I criticise the way the term "agents" are used in current day Agentic AI. Almost as if, I have committed a religious blasphemy of some sort. The idea of agency has been studied for thousands of years, and in computing itself, it has been studied for at least 40 years now. And what is called an agent in an Agentic LLM today is just a very sophisticated service that can break down an instruction written in a very high-level language (natural language) and converts it into actionable elements. Pretty much a sophisticated compiler. An agent on the other hand, has to display some kind of subjective self-interest and free-willed intentions. 

The research ecosystem today resembles an ecosystem of different ideological schools with many "believers" affiliated to each school, and each of which, are vying for market share and mind share. 

What we don't have today, are genuinely disinterested philosophers who are characterised by vairagya and samadarshana, who are not aligned with any ideology, and who are not incentivised by any kind of prestige or recognition, and are solely driven by philosophia ($φιλοσοφία$), or the "love of wisdom."

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Recently, I was arguing that the goal of philosophy is not to find a solution to a problem, but to find an epistemological grounding that leads to the dissolution of the problem. 

At its core, philosophy is about questioning the "obvious" to uncover the underlying structures of reality, knowledge, and value. Rather than providing a fixed set of answers within a hermeneutic framework, philosophy questions how the existing state of affairs came about in the first place. It needs to ask how we can justify our beliefs, what constitutes a meaningful life, and how can we navigate the complexities of human existence. 

A PhD in that sense, is not about outputs (or what it produces), but about outcomes (how it transforms the people who go through this process). 

A good thesis may provide an answer to a long-standing open problem-- but a great thesis is one that opens up new ways of thinking and new possibilities, by questioning the fundamentals of what we have taken for granted. 

If there is any time in history where we desperately need strong philosophers, it is today. World over, we are in a bizarre state of affairs in just about every sphere of human activity-- be it in geopolitics, technology, climate, society, business, etc. Much of what we had taken for granted until the end of the 20th century are getting ripped apart by current developments. 

We can't even start to imagine a society where everyone is constantly under surveillance by law, where weapons are autonomous killing machines, where we depend on AI to run our lives, and where climate is getting increasingly intense. Yet, we are entering into this reality at a fast pace. 

We need philosophers who can ask deep questions and reach a mental state that lies beyond what is causing our current day problems, and get a sound understanding of where we are going. We need guidance from those who have seen the dissolution of these problems in their minds. 

And yet, the only questions we are asking our PhDs are about Nobel prizes, citations, awards, prestige, etc. 

We are literally facing an existential crisis, and we are only using simplistic carrot-and-stick approaches to drive our PhD programs! 

PhD needs a reset-- and we need to bring the Ph back into the PhD!  

Currency markets and national sovereignty

In my job, I get to interact with bright minds of the next generation and I am often in awe about how much sharper and well informed each new generation is, compared to the previous ones. 

Yet, despite growing intelligence and awareness at an individual level, some core structural pathologies continue to ruin our lives, and most of us are blissfully unaware of this happening. And those who do have some idea of these pathologies, either cynically exploit this pathology for individual benefit, or have no recourse but to watch helplessly seeing their deepest long-term fears come true over a period of 10-20 years. 

The thing with structural changes is that they happen gradually, over a long period of time, leading to the parable of the boiled frog where we incrementally adapt every time circumstances change slightly, until it is no longer possible to adapt, and then, there is nowhere else to go. 

This post is a short primer about how structural elements of international currency markets affect the destiny of nations, and in turn, over its people. I have been studying and writing about this for more than 25 years now. 

One of the primary changes that the new century brought in is that it connected the world like never before-- using Internet, mobile and IoT technologies. A direct result of this is the many fold increase in cross-border transactions as compared to earlier-- a phenomenon called as "globalization". 

At that time, globalization was seen as a major, virtuous force that was argued, will break down local hierarchies and create a decentralized world of equals. Terms like "world citizen" were thrown about as a flex. 

But fast forward a couple of decades, and we see today, the very places that advocated globalization are now wanting to go back to their conservative past, and put all kinds of restrictions on immigration, and sanctions and tariffs on the rest of the world. 

So what exactly is happening? Is it just a pipe-dream to think of a truly global society where the world becomes one, large, happy family? Vasudha eva kutumbakam, and all that? 

Globalization has multiple dimensions-- cultural, financial, national, environmental, etc. At an individual level, people largely project the cultural dimension as their rationale for making their choices, but make decisions based mostly on the financial dimension. For instance, one would say that they that they are relocating to a new country in order to "open their minds" and "become a cultural ambassador" or some such corny line, while the primary decision that moves their needle is the amount of money they can make for the same or lesser effort. 

But why would someone make more money abroad, than they can in India? Is it because these countries are "developed"? Well maybe (whatever "development" means), but that is just part of the story. 

The main structural element that drives international trade today is not so much of demand and supply, but of currency arbitrage. This comes by the disparity between market exchange rates and the exchange rates due to purchasing power parity (PPP) between currencies. 

Market exchange rate is the exchange rate determined by the currency exchange markets, based on demand for one currency over another. On the other hand, PPP is the exchange rate based on what a unit of currency can buy in one country over another. 

Here is the market and PPP exchange rates between the Indian Rupee and some major world currencies: 

Currency	Symbol	Market Rate (INR)	PPP Rate (INR)
US Dollar	USD	92.80	20.34
Euro	EUR	110.32	33.90
British Pound	GBP	126.83	30.36
Chinese Yuan	CNY	13.67	6.18
Japanese Yen	JPY	0.60	0.22
UAE Dirham	AED	25.45	8.96
Swiss Franc	CHF	119.67	22.11

What this means is, on an average what one can buy for $1 in the US, one can buy for Rs. 20 in India. Similarly, what one can buy for 1 Euro in Europe, one can buy for Rs. 33 in India. 

However, when we exchange $1 in the currency markets, we get Rs 92, and when we exchange one Euro, we get Rs. 110, more than 300% higher than PPP! 

And this is what makes India very cheap whenever someone visits from the US or Europe. The Internet is full of reels that talk about the cheap and affordable healthcare in India, where a blood test costs less than $3, as one YouTube influencer once remarked. Well, the blood test costed Rs. 250, which is not exactly cheap for an average Indian who is living and earning in India. 

The following table shows what a salary of INR 1 lakh would translate to different currencies, when compared with PPP and market exchange rates: 

Currency	Symbol	Market Rate Salary (What you get)	PPP Equivalent Salary (Lifestyle Match)
US Dollar	USD	$1,077.59	$4,916.42
Euro	EUR	€906.45	€2,949.85
British Pound	GBP	£788.46	£3,293.81
Chinese Yuan	CNY	¥7,315.29	¥16,181.23
Japanese Yen	JPY	¥166,666.67	¥454,545.45
UAE Dirham	AED	3,929.27 AED	11,160.71 AED
Swiss Franc	CHF	835.63 CHF	4,522.84 CHF

For instance, if someone from India were earning Rs. 1 lakhs salary per month, their lifestyle would be comparable to someone earning approximately $5000 in the US. But if the Indian were to visit US, taking their hard-earned savings of INR 1 lakh, they would get approximately about $1000 in exchange, and would be able to afford much lesser than their counterparts earning $5000. Same thing for Europe-- earning in Europe gives 300% more wealth in rupee terms than having to transact with them directly from India. 

So where is this extra money coming from, whenever someone exchanges a foreign currency in India? Literally nowhere! 

Most money systems today are what are called "fiat" currencies, where money is printed based on the demand for the currency. So more money actually gets minted based on how much demand is there for the currency. So then does this not mean, that we should all be encouraged to live abroad and send more foreign currency back to India, so that the "demand" for Rupee grows? 

Not exactly. 

For an economy to be healthy, the amount of currency in an economic system need to correspond to the overall "capability" in the system-- which is an abstract term for the ability for value addition, or meeting demand with supply. Economic strength comes from building capability-- capability to conduct business, capability to manufacture, capability to build, capability to learn, capability to serve, etc. 

When we have too little money supply compared to the capability in the system, the economy undergoes a deflation, where despite existing capabilities, economic transactions cannot happen due to a dearth of currency. This is also called an "economic hole"-- a condition where capability exists, but money doesn't exist. 

On the other hand, if the money supply is more than the available capability of the system, we encounter a "hyperinflation" where the available money cannot get converted into value. 

I'm reminded of a movie where a group of soldiers who are lost in Amazonian jungles come across a crashed airplane that has was transporting a couple of million dollars. They are all very excited to find this huge stash of money and each one grabs whatever they can. But then, in that small "economy" that they have, they are unable to exchange it for any value. As a result, when one of the soldiers who has cigarettes with him, "sells" it to the others at $1000 a piece! The other one who has a matchbox sells each matchstick for $2000 since he knows that everyone who bought a cigarette will need a matchstick! 

Just blindly bringing in more foreign currency into the system will eventually result in an economy that has gone bonkers! 

(Our economy has already gone bonkers to quite an extent. Just look at the state of basic things like public infrastructure in a city like Bangalore that boasts of being the world's third biggest tech cluster. I remember when the roads in front of our house were left dug up for more than 2 years, and we used to get Whatsapp forwards to "feel proud" because India is now building high-speed trains for Australia or some such! We think we have the capability-- but we don't. We just build technology that has already been conceptualized and designed by others. When we are asked to dream big and create startups-- we only think in terms of food delivery apps, ice cream stores, etc.). 

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So why then is the market exchange rate so different from PPP? 

The answer is not economics, but geopolitics. 

Fiat currencies today are ideally supposed to print currency based on the available capability of their economy. But they print currency based on the demand for the currency. Both are not the same. 

Today, a large part of currency demand comes from the geopolitics of which currency is used by countries to trade among themselves. Most petroleum trade for example, needs to happen in US dollars. Hence, if country A has petroleum deposits, and country B has money to pay for it-- country B will first need to buy US dollars from their money, and then buy the oil from country A. 

And how is this enforced? Through sanctions, trade, diplomatic manipulations, and even military action! In that sense, whenever we pay Rs 94 for a dollar when its purchasing power parity is at Rs. 20, we are paying Rs 74 for the geopolitics of sanctions and military actions. 

If a country becomes largely dependent on foreign currency inflows for running its economy, it has basically compromised its sovereignty to external forces. This video about the sovereign debt of the US, and the sovereign debt of other countries dependent on the US dollar provides a lot of clarity: 

So at an individual level, what can we do to ensure that we are not contributing to this slow game that creates dependencies between nations? 

The principles are simple, really. Go abroad if you must, to obtain skills, knowledge and exposure. But come back when time is still on your side, and contribute to the economy by just living in the country (put your skin in the game). Work honestly and smartly in whatever you are good at, to add value. Invest smartly and strategically in the country. Participate by voting in elections, and by contributing your expertise where needed. Innovate to help reduce dependency of the country on external resources. Exercise vigilance to keep at least your surroundings safe.