Big Data and the India Story

Distance provides perspective. I figured that on the airplane back home to Mumbai earlier last week after a short trip through the Middle East. I was mandated to talk to a select audience behind closed doors about the India story. 

The reason I was among those invited was because for two years now, my colleague N.S. Ramnath and I have been researching the ecosystem evolving around Project Aadhaar. Between the both of us, we have been interviewing multiple sets of people and asking questions like what does this means for India, what may the geopolitical implications of it all be, how should people think about it and why does it attract such fierce reactions from people. One of the outcomes of this research is intended to be the first in a series of books that Founding Fuel has commissioned.

On the back of primary research and conversations with people who hold diverse points of view, I felt compelled to assert when on stage that it is true that multiple hiccups in the project exist. For instance, there is much political bickering over which party must be seen as the one that gave legitimacy to Project Aadhaar. Then there are government departments falling head over heel over to please those in power and make it mandatory that citizens link their accounts to this identity number, by a deadline that sounds out of whack, if they need uninterrupted access to services. 

It is inevitable then that civil society raise their voice. In any case, making it mandatory violates the spirit of Project Aadhaar. That is because it was originally crafted on the back of what technologists call a “consent architecture”. Simply put, it ought not to be imposed on anyone or made mandatory. That is also why I believe the judiciary will step in at some point. 

That is also what makes me optimistic about the outcomes of Project Aadhaar, and the precedents it can set for the world to follow on how must an individual’s fundamental right to privacy be protected in the longer run. 

Why? Because when examined deeply, Project Aadhaar combines, on the one hand, the idealism of people like Richard Stallman, whom I have had philosophical differences with in the past, and on the other hand, the pragmatism of Linus Torvalds. Between the both of them, they made open source software, collaboration and Linux palatable propositions. Google, for instance, has Linux at its heart and most mobile phones in the world are powered by Linux at their cores. 

Men like Stallman have always argued that some things like art, music and software must be “free”. Free like freedom, not free like free beer—as he likes to put it. It took me a long while wrap my head around his ideas.

It is much the same thing with Aadhaar and India Stack. That is why it was not difficult to figure why questions from the audience were fast and furious. While there, I thought it was because they were stunned by the audacity of attempting to provide a unique identity to over 1.3 billion people. If I were an outsider, I would have felt much the same way too. 

Before we dwell on the “India” story, what about the other story?

Most Americans I spoke to while in the Middle East—all of whom were from the diplomatic corps and CEOs of various entities—are terribly embarrassed about their president, Donald Trump. So much so that one of the key speakers who was part of the former president Bill Clinton’s administration, served as an advisor to President Barack Obama, and is now part of a global lobbying group, went on to paint a dismal picture of the US. That is why he said he is among those who are at work to initiate impeachment proceedings around Trump’s presidency. 

Then there is the China story. I continue to wonder: how does China continue to grow at a scorching pace? What can India do to catch up? Some Chinese officials and diplomats based out of Beijing condescendingly nodded their heads at my naivety for imagining all is well there. 

In conversations over dinner, and on the sidelines, they suggested the China story is a hyped one. And that the truth does not get reported. The stories we read are on the back of numbers vetted by the state apparatus. I pushed some, whom I thought may be amenable to open up, and asked what they think real growth rates are like. Nobody seemed to know—but in their reckoning, China is in a recession. But no one is willing to say that in the public domain in as many words. Instead, it is couched as a question on whether or not China may be headed into one.

As for those in the UK and Europe, they seem utterly devastated at how things have come to such a pass. British diplomats articulated their concerns over how wretched the economy looks. And those from Germany and other parts of Europe suggested they had never imagined a time would come when Europe would reach the impasse it has. Through their eyes, they cannot comprehend why Indians want to migrate to their part of the world.

In the Middle East, where we were having these conversations, local diplomats thought it a good place to have a picnic. But when heavy lifting is called for, the big boys from the White House swing into action and issue instructions on what is to be done. But everyone is acutely aware that they live in a filter bubble, and that the gleaming glass facades do not represent the political and economic morass the region has descended into. 

Multiple fissures between various kingdoms exist, power struggles between them have to be mediated upon, economic battles are being fought in the region, and new sources of revenues for each kingdom must be thought up because oil wells have practically dried up. 

That is why many seemed most curious about India and what I had to say. On the one hand, their newspapers are gushing about “this thing you guys are implementing called Aadhaar and India Stack”. Then on the other hand, reports emanating from India argue it is part of a larger conspiracy on part of the Indian government to “snoop on its citizens”. 

What sense are they to make of it?

My submission is this. That, much like my understanding of what a lovely place the US and Europe is basis rosy pictures painted on multiple media platforms, Aadhaar and India Stack as reported from India is also a badly reported story.

By way of example, many critics argue the system isn’t a perfect one because it excludes potential beneficiaries from the system. The most recent cases of pig-headed officials throwing the rule books at the underprivileged in Jharkhand to deny them subsidies is a case in point. But this argument must be scrutinized. 

Unlike most developed democracies where every citizen is conferred with a unique identity, like a Social Security Number (SSN), for instance, in the US, the Indian system is such that people can acquire multiple identities. 

If perspective may be needed, it is entirely possible to subvert the current ecosystem and tax assesses can acquire multiple Permanent Account Numbers (PAN). Incidentally, those who are taxed live at the top of the economic pyramid in India. They live in a country called India One with a population of 180 million people on the outside. But because those who live in this country can acquire multiple identities, one of the many outcomes in unreliable data. Add to this ingenious accounting practices and people can get away without paying taxes. An undesirable outcome of this is a low tax base. By the government’s admission, the latest numbers have it that a little over 22 million people filed tax returns in India. How, and where, did the others disappear? 

It doesn’t stop at that those living in the country that is India One get away without paying taxes, but exploit loopholes in the system to acquire multiple identities to appropriate benefits that may otherwise accrue to those who really need it and live in India Two and Three. 

It is entirely possible that somebody appropriated the identities of those in Jharkhand and kept the subsidies that were due to them. Our ground reporting has shown this is indeed possible. Officials on their part can go the extra mile and throw every rule book to cover their backside.

I can go on and on—but to plug leakages of these kinds, the surest place to begin with is confer every citizen with a unique identity that cannot be duplicated and that benefits be transferred directly. 

That said, it is also inevitable that when technology is deployed at such scale, some will get excluded. Those who have worked on the system ground up are cognizant of these issues and are at work to plug the loopholes and will follow Moore’s Law—that technologically-driven systems will improve exponentially every 18 months. This law has stood the test of time for 50 years now. 

Then there are those who argue that while Aadhaar may be a good way to deliver subsidies, what is the case to link it to PAN cards? I think both are connected. Enhancing state capacity to implement a progressive tax system gives it additional resources to spend on safety nets for the poor.

To that extent, the conversations Ramnath and I have had suggest that this is a model of development unique to India and one that is evolving. The significance of the data it generates must be looked at through the eyes of an underprivileged Indian citizen. 

As for the much-amplified debate around privacy, these are stories that come without an understanding of the technical architecture of the project. Here again, Ramnath and I believe the regulatory authorities and the Supreme Court will intervene and cut past the bluster. I’ll come to that in a bit and try to illustrate why they must do it urgently. Government departments must be reminded they are in office to run a marathon for the people of India—and not running a sprint to please those in power.

The economic case for data

The American model of wealth creation is capitalism. This is of the kind where winner takes all. But it is a brutal one that leaves those at the middle and bottom of the pyramid to fend for themselves. To give the system credit though, this economic system has created spectacularly successful entities like Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google (or the FANG quartet, if you will) and Uber. The problem with this system now though is that wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few. 

Then there is capitalism of the kind practiced in Western Europe. It tries to walk the middle path between naked capitalism on the one hand and social markets on the other hand. On paper, all of us like it. But it cannot be scaled. Basis trips through Western Europe and multiple conversations with friends with whom I spend time when there, I have witnessed first-hand the exasperation writ on their faces at the kind of taxes they pay. When past their prime, in their reckoning, what the state provides them by way of welfare isn’t in line with what they spent busting their backsides off. If they’d done as much time in the US, they’d have paid far less in taxes, and may have been better off. 

In Eastern Europe, on the other hand, a part of the world through which I have again had a chance to travel through extensively and interact with people, I have friends who live a brutal life. When looked through their eyes, the Western European model looks like a good one. Work five days a week, get paid leave, the state takes care of you when unwell, and life is good. On their part, the Americans who live at the middle and bottom of the economic pyramid seem to concur too.

But when looked at from the eyes of the Chinese authorities, models like these work in the US and Europe because the governments there deal with a barely a few hundred million people at most. They have no clue what it is like to manage a country that has in excess of a billion people. 

In their mind, to get things to work in China, everything must be imposed. That is why they issue orders without any qualms. The authorities there thought the American quartet of FANG and Uber are not good for China. And that they must create their own ecosystem and narrative to dominate the world. The outcome is a model that has created formidable creatures like Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent (BAT). It is now a trinity that is challenging FANG. 

As for Indians, another bunch of over a billion people, they seem to look like poor cousins who see the FANG quartet and the BAT trinity as creatures worth emulating. But like I said earlier, the FANG quartet was created in a free market where winner takes all. And the BAT trinity is imposed on the back of orders. 

Emerging evidence suggest both are flawed. In a country like India where the population is as dense as it is, inequality as high, and the political system is a democracy, neither will a winner-takes-all-model work nor can a top-down approach be imposed.

Consider the constraints, to begin with, from a geopolitical prism. The FANG quartet and Uber in the US are private enterprises. It is inevitable then that the winner keeps all. This includes the platforms they build, the data that emerges from it, all value that accrues out of it—including the money and the data that resides on it. It is a free market. In a BAT trinity, the state decides and the masses comply. So, both of these are options that don’t sound viable.

But India seems to be uniquely placed in that civil society is loud and vibrant. It is also uniquely placed in that it will not allow any private enterprise to dominate public discourse—nor will it allow the state to impose its authority on the people. 

Between these two stories, there is another narrative taking shape. It traces its roots to the idealism of Stallman, the pragmatism of Torvalds and lessons learnt from mistakes made in the US and China. The outcome of which is a model called India Stack, of which Aadhaar is one component.

To understand what India Stack means, imagine a lovely highway. If the government builds one, that development around it will happen is inevitable. But to drive a vehicle on it though, you need to have a license. In much the same way, India Stack is a digital highway. How you choose to build a business on the highway is open to your imagination. To use this highway though, you need a unique identity—and that is your Aadhaar number. 

The intent behind building his “digital highway” is because unlike other parts of the world where “highways” exist to deliver public services and goods to people, what exists in India is something that is either broken or non-existent. To get 1.3 billion people into a formal economy, plug leakages of all kinds, and deliver seamless services, smart solutions lie in adopting the digital route. 

Now, the thing with all platforms (or highways, if you will) built using digital technologies is that it is prized because it contains data about people. Minus data, it is worth nothing. 

What has gone unreported about India Stack is that this framework is a unique one. It allows citizens to own their data and port it to another “highway”, or from one platform to another—an idea that no private entity or government is comfortable with. Not just that, business models are being tested around this idea—all of which are uniquely Indian ones and can be exported to other parts of the world.

We, the people of India

What lends legitimacy to this platform now is that the Supreme Court of India has ruled that privacy is a fundamental right of every Indian citizen. If the architecture of India Stack, of which Aadhaar is the unique number you are identified by, is followed in letter and spirit, this is an easy order to comply with. 

By way of example, let’s say, you apply for a loan. The bank doesn’t know your name. Why does it need to know you name after all? All it needs to know is whether you are eligible for a loan or not. To do that, it needs to access some documents and your credit history. Convention has it that your presence is needed at the bank and documents be presented. 

In the proposed dispensation, only a number needs to be presented at the bank. This can be sent digitally and you may permit the bank to see the documents it may need to view to examine your credit history. If they think it good enough, they can go ahead and process your application. You have the latitude to offer your document to multiple banks at once as well so they can bid for your business. Process done, you can withdraw permissions for them to look at your data again.

What India has to now decide is that if privacy is indeed a fundamental right, then if I decide to move from, say Facebook, to some other platform, can Facebook retain my data from the past? If Indian authorities rule that Facebook (or any entity for that matter) cannot retain my data from the past, and that it belongs to me, the business models of these entities will have to be re-looked at. As things are, it is built on the back of what it knows about me from the past. 

To cite another instance, if you own a fitness tracking device and you stop using the device, the device will not just have to stop tracking your activities, but must hand over your data from the past as well to you. It will then know nothing about you. This is privacy in its purest sense.

On his last visit to Bengaluru, when Bill Gates heard of this, he remarked, “This can kill Facebook.”

When articulated in as many words, the idea sounded unsettling to the Americans, alien to the Europeans, and had those from the Middle East wondering whatever may the implications of all this be. 

I had to leave it at that as an Indian, I stand at an inflection point. Because the issue on hand here is, while the Supreme Court has ruled in favour of privacy as a fundamental right, there is no taking away from the fact that much work remains to be done.

By way of example, as things are, you and I live in the Wild West and much of our future depends on what call the regulatory authorities take. If some more perspective may be needed on why this is the Wild West, the other day, for instance, I saw an ad by a leading financial services company that has just gotten into offering personal loans as well. Until now, it has done very well for itself. The ad claimed if I share my Aadhaar number with them, it can check the backend and tell me in an instant if I am eligible for a loan or not. No paperwork. 

This sounded very disconcerting. All my research has suggested Aadhaar has a very narrow scope. It is a “foundational identity number”. All it does is to tell the other party “I am whom I claim to be”. 

It contains no other information. If they want more details about my name, address, gender and date of birth, they can ask me for those details. I may consent to allow them to view that data stored in an electronic locker called the DigiLocker for a specific period of time. But they cannot download the data, copy it, or disseminate it. That is the how India Stack is architected. So, if anybody suggests they can tell me I am eligible for something basis my Aadhaar number, either their promise is a false one or my research is off the mark. 

Curiosity got the better of me and I clicked the link. A page opened that asked for my mobile number. A one-time password (OTP) was sent to authenticate if the number indeed belonged to me. That done, a page opened up that prompted me to share personal details like where do I live, how much do I earn, and other such assorted things. I filled in some random details. 

When done with sharing, a minute or so later, a screen popped up to suggest I am not eligible for a personal loan. Fair enough. I’m not eligible. That is the company’s call. 

But the larger question here is: what happens to the data it collected about me, from me? It went beyond prompting for my Aadhaar number. Instead, it used my naiveté to use Aadhaar as a tool to willingly part with details about me it may otherwise not have access to. There was no caveat or fine print on what the company plans to do with the data. Will it trade in the data? 

Turns out, it already has. A few hours later, a direct sales agent (DSA) representing a large private bank called me on my mobile phone to pitch a personal loan. And ironically enough, another DSA representing the bank I have my primary account with called to offer me a personal loan and a pitch to open an account as well. The offerings they had was tailored basis the data I had shared a while ago. 

Surely this is proof that my data has been “traded” in violation of the spirit of Aadhaar and India Stack? Regulatory authorities must grapple with the issues on hand. Can I sue the firm that traded my data?

That is why I am keen to hear what the final report of the Srikrishna Committee has to recommend. Ramnath and I believe this report will find its way to the Supreme Court, which in turn may have to rule on the fine print. 

There is much at stake here and I desperately want to the Supreme Court of India to rule in my favour. I don’t want my fundamental right to privacy to remain just on paper. I want to have the latitude in a democracy to move the court and sue an entity that traded my data for a few pennies in the open market. It has compromised me.

Between the Srikrishna Committee and the Supreme Court, I hope they will protect my rights as a citizen of a free country. If they do that, it will have a significant bearing on not just protecting my fundamental rights as a citizen, but to business models that will emerge out of India.

Even as all of these conversations carried on, I had my eye on the gentleman who had delivered the address about Trump’s shenanigans. He was surrounded by many who wanted to talk to him. On his way out, I managed to follow him through the lobby, introduced myself and asked if I may have a word with him. He heard me out for a while, the implications of Aadhaar, the potential of India Stack as a threat to the FANG quartet and its potential implications on big American businesses. I thought I could hear something go off in his head. He got the import of what I was trying to say.

He gave me his business card with his co-ordinates on it, introduced me to his press attaché and suggested we speak on the phone at a later date. This is the kind of thing that has much at stake for too many people across the world. Fingers crossed, the Supreme Court will rule in favour of the people of India.

First published in Mint in December 2017. Copyrights with HT Media

Why hero worship matters

During one of our weekend meet-ups, my psychologist Kuldeep Datay asked of me what I thought was a simple question: Who is your hero?

I have two. Formula 1 racing legend Ayrton Senna and Christiaan Barnard, the South African doctor who conducted the first human heart transplant. From the time I was a boy, between the both of them, they epitomized everything I wanted to be.

Senna’s nickname was Magic. With good reason. He drove like magic. How could any human drive like that? I carried pictures of him everyplace with me. Car magazines that detailed stories of his exploits on the racing track against his rivals Alain Prost and the then upcoming Michael Schumacher filled my rucksack. My laptop had his image plastered as the wallpaper.

I would have given an arm and a leg to watch Senna go head to head against the clinical machine that was Schumacher. In the few races that they did get close, Senna’s driving prowess drove Schumacher’s crazy, and his car oftentimes into the wall.

Then there was Dr Barnard. I don’t think I will ever forget that one night I was up flipping through the pages of Reader’s Digest at my ancestral home in Fort Kochi. I stumbled across the story of how the first human heart transplant was conducted. As stories go, what a story it was. By then, it was clear in my mind when I come of age, I would grow up to be a surgeon in the class of Dr Barnard who worked magic like Senna.

Fate had other plans and led me to a fun pit called the newsroom. Here too, in my head, through all of these years, I tried to write and edit stories imagining myself to be somebody as crazy as Senna and Dr Barnard.

“Then” asked Datay, smiling. “Where is Charles Assisi? Have you found him?”

The question had me stumped. He went on to explain that people often latch on to a single personality or two. They idolize them and gloss over their own frailties. Why? Why not start on a clean sheet instead and find who you really are and what you stand for? Thought embedded, I went home.

It’s been a few weeks now. An exercise has begun. I haven’t concluded it. But I think I get the import of Kuldeep’s question. This exercise will last a lifetime. So, while Senna and Dr Barnard will stay in my head, more people need to be examined and added. Who knows? Some may have to be purged at some point as well as I go along. Senna and Barnard included. Now, there are no holy cows.

What follows is a list in no particular order. It is not a comprehensive one either. Just a few jottings around some people from my diary as I go about compiling traits I would like to cultivate and those that I want to cull out of myself.

Abraham Lincoln

The true measure of Lincoln’s greatness may well be known to most Americans. But to me, the magnitude of what he accomplished and the complexities he had to deal with were first revealed by K. Ram Kumar, who used to sit on the board of directors at ICICI Bank. He chose to give it up to pursue a personal passion.

Lincoln took over as president of the US at a time when the southern belt was opposed to his candidature for presidency. They threatened to secede from the Union and said a civil war would ensue on the back of a promise he had made if he came to office—that he would abolish slavery.

That Lincoln eventually managed to pull it off is one thing. But after he assumed office, he drafted the support of three cabinet ministers. The real story lies there. All of them had run against his candidature. It was political genius at its best and complexity at its peak.

Ram Kumar introduced me to the nuances of these settings through Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book Team of Rivals. Steven Spielberg made a movie out of it as well. It took Goodwin 10 years to research what could possibly have gone through Lincoln’s mind. How he managed the conflicts and put in place the foundations of what is now a superpower continues to keep me riveted and in awe of the man. While the movie is an outstanding one, may I assure you that the hours and days invested in the book will be time well invested.

Babasaheb Ambedkar

The more I read about him, the more I am convinced what an ungrateful lot us Indians are. Platitudes are mouthed in his name, but what has really come of his vision? Come to think of it, how does a man from the lowest strata of society—the Mahar community (or untouchables)—in 1891 grow up to earn doctorates in economics both from Columbia and the London School of Economics? How did he campaign and negotiate for India’s independence? How did he evolve into the statesman who drafted the Constitution of India in the finest traditions of democracy?

If Ambedkar had his way, India would by now had a uniform civil code in place. Article 370 of the Constitution, which he opposed so vehemently and which grants special status to Jammu and Kashmir, would never have been a contentious issue.

Way back then, he had the foresight to bluntly tell Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah: “You wish India should protect your borders, she should build roads in your area, she should supply your food grains, and Kashmir should get equal status as India. But the Government of India should have only limited powers and Indian people should have no rights in Kashmir. To give consent to this proposal would be a treacherous thing against the interests of India and I, as the law minister of India, will never do it.”

Sheikh Abdullah circumvented him and approached Nehru, the ball went into the hands of Sardar Vallabhai Patel, and between the both of them, they quietly acquiesced. Nehru, India’s first prime minister, and Patel, the so-called Iron Man of India, let Ambedkar down.

Worse still, while Nehru could see the merit in the Hindu Code Bill Ambedkar had crafted and that it held the potential to elevate the status of women in Hindu society, when the moment of reckoning came, he caved in to pressure both from the Congress and the emerging Sangh Parivar. Amedkar had the vision to see the fissures all of these issues could cause India. It was glossed over.

Nobody had the spunk then. Nobody among the current lot of India’s elected leaders has the spunk either. If only they had a fraction of what Ambedkar had!

Mohandas Gandhi

I am not a Gandhian. I refuse to be one. And I refuse to address Gandhi as Mahatma either. That out of the way, if my personal interpretation of him is correct, he was among the shrewdest men India has ever seen.

By the time the British had colonized India, Gandhi figured out that if India needed freedom, violent opposition was not an option. The British empire would have crippled the fight even before it started. That is why the non-violent movement. It was, for all practical purposes, guerilla warfare of the kind Sun Tzu would have approved of. The British, with all the arms and monies in their hands, hadn’t encountered opposition in this guise. They didn’t know how to deal with it.

And so, in spite of the ideological differences that existed between Ambedkar and Gandhi, much like Lincoln’s “team of rivals”, in a strange way, they worked towards the same goal. Like I articulated above, what I admire about Gandhi is not his so-called austerity or ahimsa as a principle, but the fact that he deployed it tactically.

Gandhi had the patience to frustrate the bollocks out of any army and the charm to beguile masses of people into following his perverted logic. I suspect, if in his reckoning taking up arms would have been a better way to go about things, he wouldn’t have hesitated to do that either.

Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris

I know it is terribly unfair to club all three of these intellectual powerhouses into one bucket. But I do it because between the three of them, they challenged all of the notions I was weaned on as a young boy growing up in a traditional Catholic family. They compelled me to question all of the Abrahamic gods I was taught to worship.

One thing led to another until I threw all of the texts I was weaned on. They compelled me to question authority—obnoxiously so if required—and put me on the path to freedom from the oppression that is religion in all its forms.

Elon Musk

I cannot help but watch this man and his crazy ambitions with awe. After a string of failures, including one where he was ousted as co-founder at PayPal, this man thought up Tesla, an electric car that is now part of the mainstream. But what gets my attention, and pardon my expression, is that he has the gumption to put his monies into a projects that can potentially help humans colonize Mars. Incidentally, he happens to be the 83rd richest man now and is a darling in Silicon Valley. His ambitions and audacity are to die for.

***

My list can go on and on.

But it’s time I pause and plant a thought. One of the most compelling lessons I learnt recently is that when somebody makes a point, imagine yourself to be a trial lawyer. Then argue against yourself to demolish your arguments. At the end of the exercise, does your position still stand? If you do, you got something to fight for. Else, go back and rethink.

If I were to do that, a few things emerge right away.

Senna died young. He needn’t have. What Senna fanatics like me think of as magic was actually reckless. Much the same can be said about Damon Hill, who was propelled into the limelight after Senna died and had to take Schumacher head on.

Their rivalry is legendary and I rooted for Hill. He was as crazy as Senna. Schumacher-baiters like me always thought of him as clinical. But it was actually a mind ticking away—learning from each failure. So much so that he thought Schumacher slammed Hill for “purely dangerous driving” while Hill laughed it off and claimed “I only made it hard for him to pass”. “Take that Schumi,” I would high-five with my pals.

In hindsight, there is no taking away that Schumacher is revered as among the greatest drivers that ever lived. A little after his retirement in 2012, a tragic skiing accident in December 2013 sent him into a coma and his fans sobbing with sorrow. And I confess to a lump in my throat now that we will never know if this man will ever walk unaided again. Since his exit, Formula 1 races don’t feel the same. His current condition is shrouded in secrecy.

Dr Barnard was a sex maniac. His personal life was miserable and he often used to taunt his third wife Karin about not being able to keep up with the prowess that Viagra conferred on him. He would go jaunting all over and bed as many women as he possibly could. He loved the limelight and the attention his exploits on the surgical table conferred upon him. He eventually dumped Karin for a 28-year-old Viennese medical student.

Lincoln had a penchant for dirty jokes and took his presidency a little too seriously. What popular history overlooks is that anybody who stood in his way was trampled over. So much so that he holds the record for any American president who shut the most newspapers, arrested political rivals, censored pretty much every mail and executed the most American citizens without trial.

As for Amedkar, in spite of his Dalit origins, he looked down upon Adivasi tribes. He thought them inferior beings. In his writings, his describes them as “the aboriginal tribes of India... Why has no attempt been made to civilize these aborigines to lead them to make a more honorable way of living?” These parts of history have been conveniently airbrushed. Surprisingly, he didn’t see any dichotomy in that.

While on Gandhi, like I said earlier, I refuse to call him Mahatma because he was plain stupid and perverse. He let his wife Kasturba die of bronchial pneumonia and adamantly declined to administer her with penicillin—but treated her with water from the Ganga and said “let god’s will be done”.

I would have forgiven him if he had applied the same principles to himself. But six weeks after she died, he came down with malaria and when wracked by pain, he didn’t let god’s will be done. Instead, he took the doctor’s advice and consumed quinine.

When it came to him, his “bankruptcy of my faith” argument did not hold. And how can we not deplore his shameful experiments when he slept naked with teenage girls to “test his chastity”? For that matter, how about his friendship with Hitler, to whom he wrote letters where he signed off, “Your sincere friend”?

As for the trinity of Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris, when looked at from a dispassionate prism, how different are they from any religious fanatic? Most recently, for instance, I tuned in to watch a conversation between Dawkins and Deepak Chopra, a New Age spiritual guru whom I personally despise as a charlatan.

I was hoping to watch a demolition. But to Chopra’s credit, for all of Dawkins’ aggressive posturing, he confused Dawkins with mumbo jumbo.

Waking Up, a book by Harris that I am now reading tries to explain why spirituality and religion need not necessarily be tied together. I am still to complete it—but whatever little I have isn’t impressive enough.

The problem with the trio is their posturing and is best exemplified in a tweet Dawkins once put out: “Religion is an organized license to be acceptably stupid.” What comes across as stupid to my mind is that the trio think it stupid that their ideas cannot be challenged. How much more arrogant can any human get?

I cannot speak for Hitchens now that he is dead. But Dawkins and Harris are certainly sexist and have on public forums implicitly stated men are more drawn to atheism than women—in language that is nothing but demeaning of women and their intelligence.

Then there is Musk. Sure, he now wears the crown of the next Steve Jobs. But he is as cranky as Jobs as well. Like most successful people, there are unsubstantiated stories of him leading a rather peculiar personal life. He takes criticism personally. When his stock prices take a hammering on Wall Street, it cuts him deep. He needs to be lavished with praise. When journalists who have test-driven his cars give it bad ratings, he comes out in the open and accuses them of having vested interests to drag his company’s stock prices down. Then there are other quirks that can fill a book.

Now that the trial lawyer in me has argued around the frailties of all these men, do they still stand to scrutiny?

Well, let me put it this way. They are human. They have frailties. I get Kuldeep’s larger point in that it would be rather silly on my part to revere or emulate one or two of them. Instead, what if I were to pick a few traits from each of these people that appeal the most to me and reject everything else they stand for? What if I were to stay at work on those traits and keep adding to my repertoire as I meet new people, and subtract the undesirable as I travel the distance that is life?

Eventually, I may just find the Charles Assisi I want to be. Or maybe I might just die trying. But at least it’s worth giving it a shot.

I know one thing for sure—the day my wife stops reading these pieces I write, at the end of which she shakes her head, looks at me and mutters “dongi” (fraudster), I will stop work on this series.

This piece was originally published in Mint on Sunday. All copy rights vest with Mint and may not be reproduced without permission from the Editor

The Spotlight on Incest

That the 2015 movie Spotlight, a taut thriller that recounts the story of an investigation by the reporters of the newspaper The Boston Globe into the sexual abuse of children by clerics of the Catholic Church is a front-runner for the Oscars is secondary. What is primary is the accompanying shame that hits viewers in the gut.

And that is because contrary to what you would imagine, this isn’t a movie about journalism in its finest traditions—but about looking at truth dispassionately, leadership against the odds, the gumption to question fondly held notions, acknowledging frailties and acquiring wisdom to set all of what is wrong, right. These are traits that aren’t acquired easily. That the setting is the newsroom of a popular newspaper is completely incidental. Think of it as a metaphor if you will of how countries, organizations and individuals behave instead.

The film is yet to be released in India but most cinema aficionados perhaps already know the plot. The Boston Globe is a hugely successful and widely respected newspaper in a predominantly Catholic community. The rolls of the newspaper include Spotlight, a team of four reporters who spend all of their time and energies on investigative journalism. They are hugely successful at what they do.

When the editor retires, everybody at the organization takes it for granted somebody from the system will be elevated to take his role. But the management in a moment of epiphany thinks it may just be appropriate to bring an outsider. Marty Baron, a man brought up in the Jewish faith and a rank outsider to Boston, finally gets into the system. Liev Schreiber powerfully and subtly etches the role.

As is the wont in most organizations, when a new leader takes charge, they look at what their predecessors have done, evaluate it, and try to figure if there are better ways to do things. In any which case, that is what good leaders intend to do. And as is often the case, their intent is met with hostility—overt at times, covert at others.

When the new editor gets down to the job on hand, a sparsely reported news item catches his eye. Buried in the pages of the newspaper, he sees sporadic reports of children being sexually abused by priests in the Catholic Church. Why, the “outsider” in the new system wonders, and asks that in as many words to the “insiders”.

The first response is that the newspaper has already reported on it, the concerned authorities at the Church have taken appropriate action—and that these are perhaps one off episodes that don’t need further investigation. He declines to buy the argument.

Some moments of debate and tension later, the argument resonates across the room and the team galvanizes into action. It is pertinent to pause here for a moment and ask why did the new editor turn to a small four-person team to lead change? Why didn’t he mount a frontal attack on the larger system that was in need of an even bigger overhaul?

When looked at from a thoughtful leader’s perspective, it makes sense in the longer term to go after potential areas where the chances of acquiring wins are higher. Most leaders, who come in from the outside, in desperate attempts to make their presence felt, go into slash and burn mode. This is the kind of thing that can backfire dramatically and is very often a point of no return.

That is why, with some convincing, a team most likely to buy into his ideas seemed the wisest thing to do. Months of meticulous investigation later, they blow the lid off one of the Catholic Church’s darkest secrets—that it actively connived to protect the worst kind of offenders.

Boston Globe Tony Fischer  Creative Commons

The story got The Boston Globe many accolades including the much-coveted Pulitzer Prize for Public Service Journalism in 2003, exposed a series of child abuse scandalsin churches across the world, and it eventually took a man like Pope Francis, the current head of the church and an outsider to the system that is the Vatican, to muster the courage to apologize. “Before God and his people I express my sorrow for the sins and grave crimes of clerical sexual abuse committed against you. And I humbly ask forgiveness,” he said at a private mass in Vatican City.

That is one among the many reasons why Spotlight is a movie not just every journalist, but everybody in leadership positions ought to put on their list of mandatory viewing. It begs that we ask of ourselves where our moral compass lies.

Let us consider a set of simple questions. Why does pretty much everybody believe Indian media houses are compromised entities? Why does everybody think Indian businesses get to where they are because they are inherently corrupt? Why does every Indian believe business cannot be a force for good?

Spotlight offers an answer: Incest.

When the team at The Boston Globe finally got down to investigating the scandal, what stunned them initially was that their findings weren’t new. The Church knew about it all along. A medieval code of honour though compelled its leaders to deny any wrongdoing. Instead, they went out of their way to not just eliminate traces of incriminating documents, but protect the perpetrators as well. From an editor’s perspective, this was as damning as it gets. It was an astonishing story to be told.

When the publisher got wind of what the editor had in mind, he paused. Perhaps, he was wondering what the consequences could be. After all, 53 percent of the newspaper’s readers were Catholic—just the kind of audience advertisers in the newspaper reached out to. If a story as damning as this were carried, it could antagonize readers and in turn advertisers on whom The Boston Globe depended for sustenance. Marty Baron, though, is one of the rare editors that holds his ground and insists on having his way.

And the only reason he can do that is because he is an outsider who has the advantage of distance to understand a story like this will not alienate the community it caters to. Instead, it addresses the reader’s unstated need that they know the underbelly of the system they blindly believe in.

Turn the gaze now to India. Speaking off-the-record, business tycoons of impeccable pedigree talk disdainfully of the media houses and journalists that feature them. They make no attempt to conceal the contempt they hold journalists in; who are grateful for having gotten a sound byte or an exclusive interview on a good day; and their counterparts on the business side for having wrangled some money in advertising spends. They speak disdainfully of people in the government as well. That said, they have the gall as well to believe they are demi-gods whom the masses worship because of the monies they control.

Those in government think of business people as obliged objects. Behind their backs, they speak disdainfully of their “ill-gotten” wealth that accrued to them on the back of pleas for favours.

As for Indian journalists, when the day’s job is done, often they congregate to exchange notes on how aware they are that they are being used as tools both by the publishers of the title they work in and the folks whom they deal with in desperate attempts to get stories that may please their editors.

Journalist Hartosh Singh Bal in the most recent issue of Caravan magazinebrilliantly captures these incestuous relationships. Writing on the relationship between the current finance and information & broadcasting minister Arun Jaitley and journalist, he recounts an anecdote that sums it all up:

“I can still remember a story he related at one of the evenings I attended. Jaitley was explaining why he felt India Today, under its then editor Prabhu Chawla, was gunning for him. The story, that involved columnist Swapan Dasgupta and Chawla was scurrilous and unprintable. But I do recall being taken aback by the ease with which Jaitley could betray the confidences of even those such as Dasgupta—who continues to be considered close to him—to a complete stranger. Four years later, I met Jaitley again at the BJP office in Ahmedabad where I had gone to cover the 2007 Gujarat Assembly elections. As I spoke to Jaitley, Dasgupta sat at his feet taking dictation for a press release. By then I had spent a few years in Delhi, and nothing that Lutyens’ insiders put themselves through in their need to be close to power could surprise me.”

As much as all of these creatures think of each other as spineless, nobody has the spunk to rock the boat. Because at the end of the day, everybody needs the other. They are all insiders locked in with each other.

Kavi Arasu, a leadership and talent development professional and a professional certified coach with the International Coaching Federation has an interesting hypothesis on the insider versus outsider debate.

“There is a certain rhythm, or cadence, to how we think and how we behave,” he says. So long as the both of these are in synch with each other, it is a comfortable place to be in. For any individual or organization to develop though, this rhythm ought to be challenged. But development in any form is painful because the rhythm they are used to work in comes under scrutiny. The most convenient thing to do then is to turn a blind eye and imagine there is no problem.

But disturbing a rhythm is only one part of the problem.Pretty much everybody gets it that if they are to be better at what they do, they have to seek development out proactively. That explains the clamour to get into programmes that promise to change lives or how an entity works. Having gone through the programme and when the initial euphoria wears out, everybody settles back into the rhythm they are accustomed to.

This is because the psyche of every entity is such that after having gone through a development programme, it compels them to look at the past. When done honestly, often it repudiates all of what was in the past. Almost overnight, you begin to look silly. That becomes one more reason to go back to the familiar cadence.

Pope Benedict by Rvin88 under  Creative Commons license

Then there is wilful blindness. To understand this, consider Pope Benedict XVI, the predecessor to the current Pope Francis. He was the classical insider. Of European descent, when he was known as Cardinal Ratzinger, he issued a secret edict in 2001to all bishops in the Catholic Church, that the interests of the church be put ahead of child safety. When he finally resigned, many were relieved because he was accused of not doing enough to contain the damage. Instead, critics insist he led the charge to protect those who ought to have been prosecuted. As some people put it, “I see it, I know it, but I hope somebody else will manage it.”

This raises another question. If it was so blindingly obvious to everybody Pope Benedict was practicing wilful blindness, why didn’t anybody who believes in the Catholic faith raise a red flag? Sacha Pfeiffer, one of the four persons in the Spotlight team at The Boston Globe, summed it up succinctly: “When you have powerful, beloved institutions, it’s possible it can be too powerful or too beloved for people to want to ask them questions. And I think you have to.”

Into all of this, an insider is impeded by the fact that a large part of their actions are embedded in the past they come from. When challenged, they carry the burden of having to explain why they did things in a certain way. In Spotlight, the brilliant Michael Keaton essays the role of Walter "Robby" Robinson, who heads the Spotlight team. He was part of the system and knew it inside out.

Marty Baron, the outsider, does not have to carry the burden of history. He is inherently oriented to plant new flags and change things. This is not to suggest that insiders cannot do the job. There was this one instance at one of India’s most respected firm’s when a member of the senior team was elevated to the CEO’s role. It was met with much applause internally.

Overnight though his persona and actions changed. It was only a matter of time before all of the insiders in the system rebelled against him. They argued that they were doing things as he had envisioned it would be when he was part of the senior team. Why, then, was he compelling them to change? “Because my role as CEO demands that,” he shot back unapologetically. Such leaders who emerge from the inside are rare.

That said, it is not easy being an outsider either. This is because they see things differently. When insiders to a system see the kind of changes like Baron brings in to the newsroom, it has a bearing on the insider’s past as well. It makes sense to some people. In Spotlight, there are those like the intrepid reporter Michael Rezandes, played by Mark Ruffolo, to whom the changes make sense and are willing to transition.

But to others, like Michael Keaton in the movie, they are willing to play along because they see an end point to the change. They reckon it may last a year or two, the changes will be pointless, and the cadence at which they worked at in the past will come back to normal. So they’re willing to give it a shot.

But when people embedded in the system don’t see an endpoint to the changes on hand, the system they represent and the world they operate in, gets violent. To give but one more instance from an Indian context, a large Indian professional firm got in an American executive with a mandate to create a charter for change. It was made obvious to everybody in the organization that he is here to question assumptions and bring change. Almost immediately, he ran into hostility—not vociferous because everybody knew he had the management’s backing. So each time a meeting was called for, everybody in the room would confer in Hindi just so that they may make the new man in charge uncomfortable.

Manu Joseph, a novelist, columnist and the former editor of Open magazine is another case in point. Journalistic circles have it that his exit from Open was on the back of differences between him and the promoter Sanjiv Goenka, chairman of the RP Sanjiv Goenka Group. Apparently, Goenka insisted on having his way on a key hire in the editorial team who would report in to the editor Joseph.

Joseph thought it his prerogative to decide who stays on the team and who doesn’t. Goenka had his way eventually and Joseph chose to exit from the magazine. When contacted, Joseph said, “This, is true. This is why I quit. It is an episode I have not spoken about to anybody in detail. Sanjiv and I continue to be friends.”

But Joseph is seen as the consummate outsider in Delhi. “To be fair Delhi was very welcoming, Delhi did reach out. But I could not respond as graciously as I wanted to because I wished to spend all the time I could on my novel, and often chose to miss late nights to wake up early for a run. Also, I wished to have the freedom to write whatever I wanted to, to get involved in toxic stories that are taboo if you wish to be co-opted into Delhi’s networks.”

When probed on why, by way of example he brings up the curious case of Tarun Tejpal. Tejpal has been accused of raping a former colleague in an elevator in Goa.

“The general opinion in Delhi’s media circle was that Tejpal was guilty. I got access to the footage of CCTV cameras in the hotel where the incident occurred. And I believed it was a genuine journalistic story. The contents of the footage disputed some of the things that the young woman had said. Some people thought my story favoured Tejpal. By touching toxic stories like the one on Tarun Tejpal, I became the outsider. By looking at the CCTV footage, it embarrassed the campaign in the media and I became an outsider by doing what I did,” says Joseph.

But, Joseph wrote in his investigation on L’affaire Tejpal: “For most of his adult life, Tejpal was celebrated as a journalist and a writer by a network of Delhi’s influential cultural elite who transmitted that sentiment to the vast public.”

Does being an outsider extract a toll on you?

“Yes, a writer needs the goodwill of his peers and many times I feel I don’t have it,” says Joseph. “But most days I don’t care.”

Being an outsider takes its toll on the soul as well. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is an outsider to Delhi. Barack Obama was an outsider when he was first elected to office. “But these men have something brazen about them. They couldn’t care less,” says Kavi Arasu. The moral then is that to be a successful outsider you need one of two things: Either a benign system that is willing to tolerate you or a thick skin.

In a benign system, if the outsider comes in and doesn’t do much to shake things up, the system will stay benign. If the system isn’t benign, a thick skin is essential. But above all else, outsiders have to take the effort to build an ecosystem around them that they can converse with. The headwinds that come with being an outsider isn’t easy to handle. It is only human then to feel fragile. The only way out is to turn to the ecosystem and draw from internal resilience.

Pope Francis by  Alfredo Borba under  Creative Commons

And that brings us back to the Vatican and what is it about the incumbent Pope Francis that makes him different from his predecessors. He comes across as a gentle soul who perhaps doesn’t have it in him to take on a powerful system.

“There has to be means of self-renewal,” offers Arasu by way of explanation. “For renewal to happen, you need a certain degree of self-awareness.”

Pope Francis perhaps doesn’t have a thick skin. But he can do things differently because he is an outsider in more ways than one. All of his predecessors were European. He comes from a South American background and grew up in the slums of Argentina.

Has he encountered opposition? He has.

Among the first things he did was to start work on a complete overhaul of a long-standing hierarchy. He asked that bishops be pastors “who smell of the sheep and not be airport bishops that buzz around the world padding their resumes and develop the psychology of princes.”

He has demanded “A poor church, for the poor!” That also means a huge clean up of the Vatican Bank, the machinations of which are shrouded in mystery to most people. But he wants to overhaul the place and make it accountable. It’s a slog. But somebody’s got to do it.

And if all this weren’t enough, he is the first pope to have taken the issue of climate change head on. “We need a conversation which includes everyone, since the environmental change we are undergoing, and its human roots, concern and affect us all,” he said in a speech in the US. Conservative Republicans and devout Catholics were horrified. Why is the head of the Catholic Church getting into things he ought not to be meddling in? Isn’t his mandate a spiritual one?

Jeb Bush, a runner in the race to be American President in 2016, dismissed it with: “Put aside Pope Francis on the subject of any political conversation.” But there is nothing the system can do either to keep him out because systems have their own sets of challenges. The machinations of the Vatican can only be speculated upon. But it is entirely possible that after Pope Benedict XVI resigned, there were a few cardinals who wanted to be the pope. It is entirely possible as well that they could not arrive at a consensus on who takes over. The only palatable option then was to settle for an outsider like Pope Francis and wait it out until the stalemate lasts.

That pretty much explains the sequence in Spotlight when the cardinal at Boston calls on Baron to suggest he stay away from the story for the damage it can inflict on believers. Baron goes back to his office and recounts the encounter to the team at work on the investigation. When they vocalize their concerns around the potential fallouts, Baron quietly shoots back: “I am not asking you to do this. I am telling you to do this.” 

This article was first published simultaneously in Mint & Founding Fuel. All copyrights exist with the publishers