Thursday, December 27, 2012

You've Come A Long Way, Baby!

YOU’VE COME A LONG WAY, BABY!

By Ajit Chaudhuri – December 2012


Returning to management school after 22 years offers opportunities for longitudinal comparisons. What has changed from the late 1980s? The short answer is – two things! One, communications! Computers, cell phones and the Internet have revolutionized research, assignment writing, and people to people interaction. And two; there are more women students on campus (to those ascribing my return to this factor, let me quote the statistical adage ‘correlation is not causation’)! In fact, 2012 is an inflexion year for IRMA – the first time that an incoming batch of prospective MBAs has more women than men. The proportions can only partially be attributed to IRMA’s policy of positive discrimination (yes, the admission criteria for women is lower), this trend is seen in most institutions of professional education and is more a testament to women’s increased access to education, their intelligence and concentration levels, and their capacity for hard work (but don’t worry, my dear male readers, we will always reign supreme in class 8 mathematics).


IRMA is coping admirably with this change. Men’s hostel blocks have been converted into women’s ones (I wonder what happens to the piss-pots and graffiti), north Indian type behaviour in common spaces (comment-passing, testicle-scratching, et al) has been clamped down upon, and courses on gender attitudes introduced. Even the evening football game welcomes women participants. But will the world that these highly qualified women (HQWs for short – caused by my reluctance to type and not my eagerness to typify – and by HQW I mean only the achievers among them, and not those passing time between college and marriage) enter upon graduating be as kind? This paper looks at this world, at the difficulties these young women will face in converting their potential into achievement, and offers some advice.


HQWs entering the job market today have much to thank previous generations of HQWs. Many battles have been fought (and won); glass ceilings smashed, and stereotypes broken. Critical decisions and discussions now happen in office (and not in golf courses and bars), and most modern recruiters are gender blind. But some remain! The first is the conflict between getting ahead and raising a family? The fact is that most achievers follow a similar career path; they are identified in their late 20s and early 30s, and are provided with serious opportunity soon after – usually a position in which all functions converge, like a cost or profit centre, or managing country operations in Kazakhstan or somewhere, where the buck stops at their desks. This is a 24/7 position, with little scope for distraction or a full night’s sleep. But this is also when their career paths deviate from that of their peers, leading to senior management, directorship, and even top management – while others languish in the middle and contemplate early retirement and organic farming or whatever. HQWs with young families tend to refuse this opportunity for obvious reasons, possibly expecting that it will knock again when they are better able to manage the strain. By doing so, however, they wave goodbye to the corner office – forever. Another trap is that of flexi-time, tele-commuting, and part-time work – no matter how attractive they are, and how much a woman needs them to balance demands on her time, taking these options in most organizations is an effective way of communicating one’s unsuitability for the trials and tribulations of senior management.


If you do manage to negotiate these traps, or if you don’t have children and can afford to give your career everything, you will find that the fast track is more than about being brilliant, hard working and strategic. You also have to be ruthless – a trait that cannot be acquired or learnt – and you have to build relationships with mentors and mentees to give yourself an edge. Unfortunately, HQWs are at a disadvantage here; the socialization of girls in India as participatory, care giving and communitarian is difficult to rub off (despite management school’s best efforts), and mentor-mentee relationships are close and intense ones that discourage the crossing of gender lines (and lead to all sorts of rumours, and often the real thing as well, when they do).


The other battle is that of finding suitable life partners; men who will be a positive factor in one’s career and its advancement. At one level, this is easy – most men are similar, and one merely has to avoid the future wife beaters and the mentally ill (easily said, but they are ten percent of all men and these traits only show up about a year after marriage), and see that he is fed on time, that there is no conversation when sports is on TV, and that one doesn’t shout at him in front of his friends, for marital relations to be clement. This, however, does require the management of expectations – and HQWs often go wrong here, there is this vision of the perfect man waiting for them; high income, handsome, educated, sensitive, supportive, blah, blah, blah, a vision that is played up to by the genre of films known as chick flicks (in real life, if such men do exist they usually already have boyfriends). Coupled with this are the facts that the office, where HQWs spend most of their time, is not a good place to hunt, the Internet is full of perverts, and the combination of intelligence and a fast track career is not exactly an aphrodisiac to most men.


What is the likely outcome? Well, by their mid-30s they become desperate (it is now or never regarding having children), they find that the laws of supply and demand are not in their favour (there are few single straight men in their age group, and they are invariably having such a good time that they are loath to change their status), and they end up as fodder for otherwise unsuitable men. How can the coming generation of HQWs circumvent such a scenario? One, be a little nicer to your admirers in management school, and accept a few flaws (male students, I want a kickback for this nugget of advice) – the known devil is often better than the deep blue sea! Two, if you have to run around with older (married) men, they should drive a Ferrari. And three, if two converts into marriage, have a kid quickly – this is actually an unwritten rule for all second/third/etc. wives, it locks the guy in and makes treating you like he did your predecessor an expensive (and, to you, lucrative) proposition.


To conclude, welcome to the world, ladies! May your battles be different from those of earlier generations, may you find an appropriate balance, and may you change the world! And yes, may you stay, as Dylan said, forever young.


Some additional reading for those particularly interested in HQW issues:

Slaughter, Anne-Marie; Why Women Still Can’t Have It All; The Atlantic; July/August 2012 (available on-line)

Hewlett, Sylvia Ann and Carolyn Buck Luce; Off Ramps and On Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success; Harvard Business Review; March 2005


Friday, December 7, 2012

The Proximity of Greatness

THE PROXIMITY OF GREATNESS

Ajit Chaudhuri – November 2012

‘Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them!’






My first tryst with greatness was in 1978! I was watching Brazil play at the World Cup (in those days, one did that on a small black and white TV a few days after the game was played), when Roberto Rivelino came on as a substitute and was referred to as ‘the great Rivelino’ by the commentator whenever he touched the ball. Wow, I remember thinking, and what must one do to earn that sort of respect? I got an answer at a discussion about the Indian footballer Inder Singh in the early 1980s – this was among spectators in the cheap seats during a football game at Ambedkar Stadium in Delhi, long after Inder had retired, when a guy said – ‘Maine Inder ko jeet-tey dekha, maine Inder ko haartey dekha, lekin maine Inder ko kabhi bey-imaani kartey nahin dekha’ (roughly translated as ‘I have seen Inder win, I have seen Inder lose, but I have never seen Inder do something dishonest’). And that, I thought at the time, is how I would like to be remembered – assuming that people are willing to overlook the matter of a missing ashtray from the Maurya Sheraton Hotel that somehow turned up in my hostel room back in college days.


But, I digress! This paper is not about either honesty or football – it is about ‘being great’! There is something pathetic about monarchs who have ‘the great’ appended to their names (Peter, Catherine, Frederick, et al), it being unlikely that their subjects had much choice on the matter – a mere ‘His/Her Majesty’ or ‘Royal Highness’ would no doubt have ensured that their heads faced a separate existence from the rest of their bodies; in that respect, I always preferred Ivan the Terrible on his choice of moniker. Modern day greatness is a little different in that it is conferred by hagiographic biographers upon anyone with money and a penchant for PR , and there is a veritable raucousness all around from the multitudes clamouring for the title. I’m not sure how many people actually merit ‘greatness’, more so in their own lifetimes, when time has yet to put their achievements into perspective and smoothen memories of the chaos they have caused. The living great are few in number and, except possibly for Nelson Mandela, difficult to recognize.


Dr. Verghese Kurien was already great when I entered IRMA in 1987 – Operation Flood had happened, and the enormity of the achievement, that households across the country had reliable access to that most basic of products, and the subsequent recognition of it, had set in. One got the occasional glimpse of him in the two years that I was there, mostly as a chief guest to IRMA functions, and one saw the unbridled power that he held, as also his ruthlessness, charm and sense of humour. An occasion I remember was some function in the IRMA auditorium that the students were invited to, presumably to put bums on seats, and Dr. K introduced the chief guest (the then central minister Margaret Alva) by saying that they had met before and that she had called him a male chauvinist pig. So when Ms. Alva came on to speak, we were spared the usual politician monologue about how much the government was spending on this, that and the other and how grateful we should be to it for our existence; she devoted all her time to communicating that she had in fact not called Dr. K an MCP, she had merely wondered why the National Dairy Development Board’s emblem was a bull (and not a cow).


The difficulty for young students at the time was that Dr. K’s achievements were not up for question – which was fine – but neither were the cooperative principles that enabled them. There was no space for dissent or scepticism, (Dr. K didn’t share Sir Karl Popper’s belief that something is best proved by focusing on disproving it and succeeding by not succeeding), and there was an Orwellian bombardment of the ‘Anand Pattern’ down our throats. Needless to add, we grew allergic to the word ‘cooperatives’ while we were there, and those who saw value in them did so in spite of, rather than because of, IRMA. It was only later that one grasped the enormity of his achievements and the possibilities for poverty alleviation that cooperation provided; when one had a better understanding of the scale at which Dr. K worked and of the barriers he faced in a country that incentivizes inactivity, obsequiousness and slime.


What can the wannabe ‘greats’ of today learn from Dr. K about greatness? In this paper, I hazard to venture some simple guesses.

One, the great give meaning to the terms ‘values’, ‘vision’ and ‘mission’ – they are not mere buzzwords ticked off on some strategic plan – and they communicate this successfully to others. This trait separates the ‘great’ from other competent leaders, institution builders and administrators. And it is this that is missed most when they go, when a vision vacuum sets in in their wake.

Two, all good leaders share the traits of brilliance, self-belief, drive, attention to detail, the ability to work extremely hard and to communicate well, and ruthlessness. The great, in addition, use these traits for public benefit and the larger good – personal pecuniary matters tend not to have obsessive allure.

Three, the great are scrupulously honest and they ensure that the institutions they set up share that characteristic. Dr. K had no shades of grey regarding integrity – he used to say that it was like pregnancy and virginity in that you either were or you weren’t, and if you weren’t you were not going to survive with him. New entrants to NDDB were told that the institution did not pay bribes, and also that it did not accept not paying bribes as an excuse for work not getting done – one had to get the work done without paying off anyone.

Four, the great recognise greatness in others. Visitors to his home in his later years were invariably shown his proudest possession, a large photograph of Mount Everest (or was it a painting?) that had been personally signed, at different times, by Tenzing and Hillary. This had the pride of place on his wall, and was given far more prominence than his own respective Padma awards.

Five, greatness rarely ends well; the great have an innate inability to fade quietly into the sunset. Those that don’t get assassinated or taken away by more natural means early enough tend to stay on their thrones until they are prised away, finger-by-finger, kicking and screaming all the way.

And six, and to conclude, the great live on in the people they have touched – more so than the institutions they have created. My father visited Anand earlier this year and dragged me off, against my will (irreverence and scepticism being somewhat ingrained in my character), to meet him. I was surprised later by how sentimental I was during this visit, when the enormity of what I (and so many others) owed this old man and how much we are what we are because of him kicked in. So thanks, Dad, for forcing that visit!




Acronyms
IRMA Institute of Rural Management, Anand
MCP Male Chauvinist Pig
NDDB National Dairy Development Board
PR Public Relations

Friday, September 21, 2012

QUEENS

QUEENS

By Ajit Chaudhuri, September 2012


Life as an unemployed bum (oops, sorry, mature student!) is tough – I’m broke, the light at the end of the tunnel is not discernable, the journey from where I was 18 months ago has been long, hard and, by most rational indicators, steeply downhill, and, by virtue of moving back to the bright lights of Delhi, these facts are thrown at my face often. But, before you, dear reader, start reaching for your handkerchief, let me tell you that if one has to be a bum, then the summer of 2012 was the time for it – with one sporting extravaganza after another, Euros football, Olympics, Para-Olympics, et al, combining fantastic performances with wonderful TV coverage.


For me, the standout Indian sporting performance of the summer was one that did not hit the headlines – not the medal winners at the Olympics, creditable though that was, and not the footballers who won a third straight Nehru Cup. It was the Indian women finishing fourth in the August/September Chess Olympiad in Istanbul (the men finished 35th). The team consisted of D. Harika (who is one of only 27 women in the world who are men’s Grandmasters) on the first board, Esha Karavade on the second, the glamorous Tania Sachdeva on the third (who also won an individual medal with 9 out of a possible 11 points), and Mary Ann Gomes and Soumya Swaminathan sharing the fourth.


Now, I have a confession to make – I rarely watch women’s sports. Why did I make an exception here? I wish I could impress you by saying national pride, or an abiding interest in chess, but that would be stretching it. The fact is that there were some beauties out there, the quality of play (in my semi-educated opinion) was pretty good, and the combination of the two, to me, is irresistible.


Yes – women chess players are good looking! Now, I can already hear a collective and simultaneous ‘what?’ and ‘bullshit!’ and the composition of scathing responses that suggest an ocular check-up and question my medication! So, this note attempts to present my case in a logical manner.


I could begin with a list of beauties who play chess – Alexandra Kosteniuk, playing fourth board on the winning Russian team at the same Olympiad, a men’s grandmaster, and the 2008 women’s world champion, is also a swimsuit model, and Sachdeva herself could set any catwalk alight. But what would that prove? At best, we would be able to agree that the listed players are beautiful – the ability of the list (or the sample) to speak for women chess players as a whole (or the population) is debatable, and the conclusion would be considered as having ‘low external validity’. Sceptics would correctly suggest that this is a case of ‘cherry picking’, or selection of data so that a study provides a desired result that could be misleading or even contrary to actuality – acceptable for a defence lawyer in court, or for my kids (who use the politicians’ and industrialists’ children in their class as a benchmark) when making a case for more pocket money, but not for a wannabe academic looking to glamorize women’s chess. And contrarians would come out with a list of extremely ugly chess players (they exist!), use my own arguments to draw the opposite conclusion, and thereby render my findings as nonsensical.


I am bothering you with a long criticism of this method because it is frequently used to draw dramatic conclusions and make dumb policies. A series of case studies, with each describing the benefits of some development project on a particular individual or family, actually say very little about the efficiency, effectiveness and impact of the project as a whole. That many terrorists on the USA’s watch-out lists are south Asians should not mean that Homeland Security feel me up with extra vigour when I enter the country. That some white Toyota Qualises are used as taxis should not mean that beggars ignore me (yes, I do drive one) at Delhi’s crossings. But hey, what do I know?


So how, instead, should I make my case? I will attempt this by falsifying the opposite argument, by attacking the two critical assumptions that drive the presumption that women chess players are ugly – that chess players are brainy, and that brainy women are ugly. I will list the best women chess players using robust criteria – have to be among the top ten women players as per the September 2012 FIDE rankings AND have to be men’s grandmasters – as per the assumptions, the best are the brainiest and therefore should be the ugliest. And I will judge them on the basis of pictures taken while playing chess (not while modelling, or while getting married, when photographers are kinder) so as to be consistent. Now, if this sample isn’t particularly ugly, what can we conclude? One, that the women are possibly exceptions or, in statistical parlance, ‘outliers’ – an acceptable argument if there are one or two lookers among them, but not more – by definition, we can’t all be exceptions! And two, that the assumptions don’t hold, which in turn renders the conclusion, that women chess players are ugly, as untenable!


What does the research say? Here are descriptions of the 8 women who meet the criteria, in the order of their September 2012 FIDE rankings.

No. 1 – Judit Polgar of Hungary – a true role model! Though by far the best woman player in history, she doesn’t play in women’s tournaments. She was the youngest ever men’s grandmaster when she first became one, in 1991, beating Bobby Fischer’s record by a month. She has been a top ten men’s player (best ranking was 8 in July 2005, currently 48), and she played third board on the Hungarian men’s team at the 2012 Olympiad. She has cracked every gender barrier in chess. And looks-wise – she is a stunner!

No. 2 – Anna Muzychuk of Slovakia (Ukrainian origin) – another stunner!

No. 3 – Hou Yifan of China – this child prodigy is the reigning women’s world champion and played top board for the 2nd placed team at the 2012 Olympiad. The Chinese were leading until the penultimate round, when a shock draw with lowly Kazakhstan paved the way for a Russian win. I am bypassing my appraisal of Hou – can’t look at her ‘that way’ as she is just 18 years old.

No. 4 – our very own Koneru Humpy of India – she decided against taking part in the 2012 Olympiad (which makes the 4th place finish even more of an achievement), with her confidence low after a battering from Hou Yifan in the final of the women’s world championship. She is another who prefers playing in men’s tournaments. Looks-wise, ordinary (but by no means ugly)!

No. 5 – Zhao Xue of China – she played second board on the Chinese team at the 2012 Olympiad – looks-wise, cute!

No. 6 – Nana Dzagnidze of Georgia – looks-wise, a beauty!

No. 7 – Katerina Lahno of Ukraine – she played first board for the team that pipped India to 3rd place – looks-wise, also a beauty!

No. 8 – did not make it to the sample, as she is not a men’s Grandmaster!

No.s 9 and 10 – Nadezhda and Tatiana Kosintseva respectively of Russia, sisters, and playing third and first boards respectively for the winning Russian team at the 2012 Olympiad – looks-wise, both of them are stunners!


I rest my case!


A concluding thought – should oomph-ey Hindi films, beauty pageants and mujrahs be worried at these findings, and time releases, events and performances so as not to clash with women’s chess tournaments? Well, maybe not! Being able to reject a hypothesis (the hypothesis in this case being that women chess players are ugly), as I hope I have convincingly done, is significantly different from proving the alternative (that women chess players are beautiful). There is little to suggest from this analysis that ornithologists and high-end prowlers need to re-think their prime locations.

Friday, August 31, 2012

Book of Lists

THE BOOK OF LISTS


A 2-Pager by Ajit Chaudhuri: September 2012


This note traces its origins to a conversation with a pretty young thing at the IRMA students’ mess – she was late for breakfast (and therefore not surrounded by her admirers), I was at my usual time (scheduled so that I avoid the deluge of students trying to grab a bite before class), and we decided to eat together. Now, what does an old codger (I turned 49 in August) talk to young ladies about? They know zilch about football, my been-there-done-that stories are boring even to me, and a discussion about development economics and public policy would have led to indigestion. Well, it turned out that she had an interest in reading – so we talked about the best books we had read, had our respective breakfasts, and went on with our lives.

The encounter had me thinking, ‘what were the best books I had read?’ Here is a final (and heavily culled) list – 42 in total! I include the year of publication and the approximate time of my life that I first read it – which may account for why some of them made such an impression. And there are some with an author I have extensively read and enjoyed, in which case I include my second-favourite of that author. The list is in alphabetical order!


Animal Farm – George Orwell – 1945 – a satire on socialism – read in my late teens – I also recommend ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’ (1937)

Battlecry – Leon Uris – 1953 – a story of a Marine battalion in the WW2 Pacific theatre – read in late teens – I also recommend ‘Armageddon’ (1963)

The Call of the Wild – Jack London – 1903 – a story of a domestic dog’s survival in the Canadian north – first read in mid teens

Changing Places – David Lodge – 1975 – British professor switches places (and other things) with an American one, a story of academic life set in two universities as seen by the outsider – first read in early thirties

Cider House Rules – John Irving – 1985 – a long-winding love story set in Maine that challenges accepted values – first read in mid-thirties – I also recommend ‘The World According to Garp’ (1978)

The Clan of the Cave Bear – Jean M. Auel – 1980 – pre-historic novel of a girl migrating with a group of Neanderthals – read in mid-thirties

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time – Mark Haddon – 2004 – family life as seen by an autistic kid – read in early forties

The Devil’s Alternative – Frederick Forsyth – 1979 – the cold war powers reach a precipice and a British ex-spy and his Russian lady ex-love coordinate to bring them back – first read in late teens

The Eagle Has Landed – Jack Higgins – 1975 – WW2 novel about a crack German paratrooper unit looking to kidnap Churchill – first read in mid teens

Eaters of the Dead – Michael Crichton – 1976 – Arab guy moves with a group of Vikings back to the North and fights their enemies – read in late thirties – I also recommend ‘Rising Sun’ (1992) and ‘Congo’ (1980)

Eye of the Tiger – Wilbur Smith – 1975 – roguish fishing boat captain is forced into violence and finds love – read in late teens

The Far Pavillions – MM Kaye – 1978 – love between an Indian princess and a British soldier who grew up as an Indian orphan – first read in mid teens

Flashman – George Macdonald Frazer – 1969 – a British villain manages to become a hero in Afghanistan and yet retain his villainy – read in early thirties

Flint – Louis L’Amour – 1960 – a western in which a gunfighter moves east to become a successful financier and then comes back west to rediscover his past – first read in early-teens – I also recommend ‘Shalako’ (1962)

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – Stieg Larsson – 2005 – a depraved Swedish novel about women and the men who hate them – read in mid-forties

The Godfather – Mario Puzo – 1969 – turf wars between mafia families – first read in early teens

The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck – 1939 – the westward movement of depression affected people in search of work – read in late teens – I also recommend ‘Tortilla
Flats’ (1935) and ‘The Moon is Down’ (1942)

Half of a Yellow Sun – Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie – 2006 – a novel of life and times set around the Biafran War in Nigeria – read in mid forties

Hook Line and Sinker – Lynn Turner – 1986 – rich boy meets, falls in love with, and grovels to win beautiful girl – an M&B I read in early thirties – another I recommend is ‘The Widow and the Wastrel’ by Janet Dailey (1977)

How Green Was My Valley – Richard Llewellyn – 1939 – the story of a Welsh mining town – read in early twenties

The Hunt for Red October – Tom Clancy – 1984 – a cold war story of a top end Soviet nuclear submarine defecting to the West and almost setting of another world war – read in early twenties

King Rat – James Clavell – 1962 – a story of power and domination in a Japanese prison – read in late teens – I also recommend ‘Shogun’ (1975)

The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini – 2003 – a story of relationships set in Afghanistan – first read in early forties

The Ladies of Missalonghi – Colleen McCullough – 1987 – women’s empowerment Australian style – first read in mid thirties

Lord of the Flies – William Golding – 1954 – a group of boys lost on an island turn into a bunch of vicious beasts – read in early twenties

Moscow Twilight – William E Holland – 1992 – a complicated Soviet romance in the times of perestroika – read in early thirties

Mr. God This is Anna – Fynn – 1974 – philosophy on life by a five-year-old abused orphan girl – read in late teens

Norwegian Wood – Haruki Murakami – 1987 – a coming of age novel set in Japan – read in late forties

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey – 1962 – a story of power and domination in a lunatic asylum – read in late teens

The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver – 1998 – reluctant daughters’ version of life as a missionary family in 1960s Congo – read in early forties

Polar Star – Martin Cruz Smith – 1989 – a whodunit set in a Soviet factory ship during the cold war – read in early thirties – I also recommend ‘Gorky Park’ (1981) and ‘Havana Bay’ (1999)

The Prisoner of Zenda – Anthony Hope – 1894 – love and intrigue in a fictional minor middle European kingdom – first read in mid teens

The Range Robbers – Oliver Strange – 1930 – a western in which ‘Sudden’ gets the girl – first read in early teens

The Razor’s Edge – W. Somerset Maugham – 1944 – traumatized American searches for the meaning of life in the fleshpots of Paris – read in early twenties – I also recommend ‘Of Human Bondage’ (1915)

Running Blind – Desmond Bagley – 1970 – an about-to-retire British spy is given a hospital pass assignment in Iceland – read in early teens

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian – Marina Lewycka – 2005 – old man wants to marry buxom gold digger woman who already has a husband and son, and his daughter doesn’t like it – read in early-forties

Snow – Orhan Pamuk – 2004 – a story of love, life, clash of values, and women’s empowerment in eastern Turkey – read in mid forties

A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth – 1993 – don’t remember the story but I read 1349 pages in one sitting, so must have had something – read in mid thirties

Tara Road – Maeve Binchy – 1998 – troubled Irish woman switches houses temporarily with troubled American woman – first read in late thirties

Tiger By The Tail – James Hadley Chase – 1954 – the best JHC – first read in early teens – I also recommend ‘The Vulture is a Patient Bird’ (1969)

To Kill a Mocking Bird – Harper Lee – 1960 – a lawyer stands up for what’s right in a racially tense part of southern USA – read in early twenties

War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy – 1869 – a fictional account of events in Russia around the Napoleonic invasion of 1812 – read in early twenties

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

THE FALSE NINE

THE FALSE NINE

And Lessons Learnt from Euro 2012

By Ajit Chaudhuri

“22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and, at the end, Spain always wins”


Another European football championship is over, and life goes into a limbo until mid-August, when the leagues begin again. What have I learnt from those three weeks that I was (mentally) in Poland and Ukraine? This note attempts to list these down, and to make sense out of them. Non-fans, please don’t disappear – being up to date on the nuances of football has positive externalities – zap your friends, your children, and their friends by pontificating on the terms ‘4-6-0’, ‘tiki-taka’ and ‘false 9’, and rise in their esteem.


Lesson 1: Eastern Europe can hold an important football tournament! There was some nervousness around this, given that the last major sports event in Eastern Europe was the Moscow Olympics, and the general feeling is that this was one of the better Euros. There were some screw-ups (the lottery of the draw had Russia play Poland in Warsaw on Russia Day with obvious consequences), some petty theft (including soccernet.com’s editor’s computer, about which the site’s readers were subjected to a whiny editorial) and some non-events (including an eagerly anticipated topless protest by the Ukrainian feminist group Femen – google it – at the final in Kiev that didn’t happen), but on the whole the locals were friendly, the racists were mostly visiting fans, and the main complaints were on mundane matters such as hotel prices. Sadly, I have to add that Eastern Europe cannot play football – the Poles and Czechs were an insult to great teams of the past, Russia was typically pathetic, and the best that could be said of Ukraine is that there were three players who could possibly ply their trade in better leagues.


Lesson 2: UEFA are bozos! We Indians think we have a monopoly on un-accountable fiefdoms masquerading as sports bodies, but we have much to learn from FIFA and UEFA. Goal line technology is yet to be introduced (and yet another critical goal was disallowed because of this), and the fine for Denmark’s Nic Bendtner flashing his underpants (and, with it, the name of an Irish bookie firm) after scoring a goal was more than that for the Croatia fans racially abusing Mario Balotelli. PS – don’t feel too bad for Nic – the bookies have very kindly agreed to pay the fine. IPL – take pointers from the masters!


Lesson 3: Respect and familiarity are not essential ingredients of teamwork! I always believed that defending in football requires teamwork, and teamwork requires mutual respect and familiarity. This has taken a toss – Spain’s defenders are aligned along the Real Madrid – Barcelona fault lines, and they actively dislike and disrespect each other (especially central defenders Ramos and Pique, right back Arbeloa, and defensive midfielder Busquets), but this didn’t show in a tournament in which they were collectively awesome.


Lesson 4: You have to evolve to keep winning! The only downside of winning is that personnel and tactics get set in stone, and football is replete with defending champions making fools of themselves. Spain is an exception – it has won the Euro 2008, the World Cup 2010, and the Euro 2012, and lost only one game across the three tournaments. What is it doing differently? I have watched all three finals that Spain has played, and one pointer is that only 4 players (Casillas, Ramos, Xavi and Iniesta) have started all three games. The tactics, too, have changed considerably. Allow me to expound!

In 2008, Spain played a 4-1-2-3 formation, with a traditional centre forward (Torres) flanked by a striker (Villa) and a winger (Silva) in front. In the midfield there were two creators (Xavi and Iniesta) and a man (Senna) protecting the back four in defence. In 2010, the formation changed to 4-2-2-2 – with two men shielding the defence (Busquets and Alonso) and no traditional centre forward. 2012 introduced the highly controversial tactic of a forward-less 4-6-0 – no strikers, no wingers, a ‘false 9’ up front (basically a midfielder taking the position of a traditional centre forward, or no. 9, at critical moments in the game), and ‘tiki-taka’ in the midfield (a system of short passing, slow movement towards the opposing goal, and focus on retention of possession).

The system has worked – opposing defences do not know who to mark when confronted with a ‘false 9’, more so because the ‘false 9’ keeps changing. Though Fabregas was the designated ‘false 9’ for most of Spain’s games, unimpeded headed goals by Silva (in the final) and Alonso (against France) in the ‘false 9’ position point to the success of the tactic. Importantly, Spain was able to change tactics when it wished – introductions of Torres and Navas brought the cut and thrust of a traditional no. 9 and winger respectively into the game, and its marauding wing-backs were also able to generate attacks.

Is ‘tiki-taka’ going to be the way of the future? I doubt it – it requires the personnel, and by a statistical fluke Spain has an exceptional generation at the helm. The critical Xavi – Iniesta combination is not going to happen again, despite the hype about production lines at the Barcelona youth academy (old timers like me would remember similar eulogies in the mid-90s about the Ajax academy, and we all know where Ajax is today). Enjoy it while it lasts!


Lesson 5: The ‘deep-lying playmaker’ has returned! This involves creating attacks from far back, and the position has only two exponents at the world stage at this time, but what exponents – Andrea Pirlo of Italy and Xabi Alonso of Spain. The advantages of building attacks around a ‘deep-lying playmaker’ were most obvious in Italy’s semi-final against Germany. Germany has a brilliant young team, but a suspect central defence – Badstuber is a moron (I concede that Bayern Munich’s and Germany’s coaches don’t share my opinion) and Hummels has never played at this level before – and even the Greeks scored two goals from one opportunity on goal. This doesn’t show too often because they are protected by one of the best defensive shields in the business (Schweinsteiger and Khedira). In this game, Pirlo rendered the German shield ineffective by creating the attacks from so far back that he could not be marked – thus leaving the German defence to deal with Italian forwards Balotelli and Cassano by themselves. I hope that coaches and tactical systems will now encourage players in this almost extinct position.


Lesson 6: There are no Maradonas! Great players need good players around them to be effective. The description of Portugal as a one-player team was simply wrong – there was great support for Ronaldo all around; a defence that played to potential, and a midfield that created and defended. This was the best Portugal team that I have seen (and I have seen the so-called ‘golden generation’ of Figo, et al) and it was no accident that they were able to play Spain through to penalties – the only lacking was a good centre forward.


Lesson 7: Rethink singing national anthems before games! There were no Borat moments (Euro 2008 had the Swiss hosts playing a 1930s German national anthem, with all its Nazi connotations, for a German game, and the world shooting championship in Kuwait played the spoof national anthem from the film ‘Borat’ for a gold medal winner from Kazakhstan), but there were plenty of mutterings. TV cameras and on-field mikes focus on the players during the rendering of the national anthems, and make who sings (and who doesn’t – usually players with ethnic minority, immigrant or refugee backgrounds) obvious to audiences. The German line-up had only the Germanics singing – the Poles (Klose and Podolski), Africans (Khedira and Boateng) and Turk (Ozil) didn’t, to much discussion on German TV on issues such as patriotism, gratefulness, and willingness to fight for the country. Did the Spaniards, with their deep divisions between Castilians, Catalans and Basques, sing? They can’t – the Spanish national anthem has no words!


Lesson 8: It’s the midfield, stupid! Games are won and lost in the battle for the ball at the centre of the park – this enables ball possession, and possession enables a team to do things. Good teams have strong, well-balanced and diverse midfields, with attacking midfielders, defensive midfielders and wingers along with variations such as deep lying playmakers, trequartistas (playmakers who operate ahead of the midfield, like Ozil and Modric), and media puntas (who operate between lines, such as Lampard and Silva). The opposite of possession football, absorbing pressure and hitting on the counter, is the preferred tactic of B-grade teams (such as Greece).


Lesson 9: My beloved England will have to change to compete! England did not do badly – it won its group, it didn’t shame itself while losing to Italy on penalties, and it left the tournament undefeated in open play. And yet, the takeaway is similar to that from those two games in 1953 and 1954 (3-6 and 1-7 losses to Puskas’s Hungary) that led to widespread changes in tactical nous, coaching systems and footballing philosophy. As an astute old lady apocryphally observed ‘doesn’t being technically superior mean that you play better football?’ And vice versa! There is only so far that you can go with the combination of 4-4-2 and old fashioned grit. Changes have to take place from the grassroots upwards. Else, English players can continue to book their holidays to coincide with the end of the quarters at major tournaments.


And finally – the big question for the World Cup 2014 – how should a team play Spain? A pointer to me was a Champion’s League match in October 2009 at the Camp Nou between FC Barcelona and Rubin Kazan that the latter won 1-2, in which the defensive midfielder for Rubin, Sergei Semak, had the game of his life – you have to fight for the midfield. Else, pray for ageing legs, Barca-Real divides, and Brazil’s beaches and nightlife to do some damage.

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

HALF MARX

HALF MARX

A 2-Pager by Ajit Chaudhuri – March 2012


A pleasant consequence of being an unemployed bum (oops, sorry, mature student) is the possibility it affords for erudite but pointless discussion. One such was about which author was most known more than actually read. The champion was, you guessed it, Salman Rushdie. I for one have made many assaults on his books and don’t think I have survived more than twenty pages on any one except ‘Shalimar the Clown’, which I managed to plough through thanks to an avid interest in Kashmir. The reason, according to one of the discussants (who claims to have read Rushdie), is not that I am too stupid but that I don’t have an understanding of ‘magic realism’, whatever that is.


But, I digress! This note is actually about the runner up, Karl Marx, possibly the most divisive figure in the history of humankind. We all know him and have our opinions (and I have no intention of attempting to change them), many of us can quote him, and some can even expound on him, but few of us have actually read him. Knowing something about Marx’s work, and being able to discuss it, has its uses. It can convey a dimension of intelligence and/or sensitivity to one’s personality – useful as a means of blindsiding women/men one is looking to impress. It can also irritate – I managed to make myself unpopular at a World Bank training (the kind you want to be unpopular in – full of paternalistic assholes who’ve never faced a community and who’ve divided the world into the enlightened ‘us’ and the unwashed ‘them’) by quoting the line ‘unemployment is the luxury of the bourgeoisie’ – I was later informally informed that Marx is an unmentionable in those haloed quarters. And it can help to advise young people who don’t want to become software engineers or MBAs and have a bit of revolutionary fire in their eyes – that what’s said about Marx and Marxism may not be what Marx said.


So, what did Marx actually say? I will confine this note to his writings in his younger days, in his twenties, mainly because of the sheer volume and variety of his output and the difficulty in pigeonholing him into any particular subject. He is seen as one of the three most influential sociologists of all time (along with Max Weber and Emile Durkheim), but his writing spanned economics, and political science as well, and his PhD was in philosophy – a subject upon which he famously said ‘the philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it.’ And also because his thinking changed as he grew older, from the young radical on the run from the authorities across Europe to the older radical bringing up his family in penury in London.


A short word about the Europe of Marx’s time, a world of Kings and Tsars and Kaisers looking to ruthlessly protect and preserve class and national interests against those of a burgeoning business class and a teeming proletariat. It reads a bit like Mubarak’s Egypt, or Assad’s Syria, or the Uzbekistan of today.


A little about the young Marx himself, as well! He was born in 1818 to a prosperous family in Trier, a beautiful little town in the wine-growing Moselle valley in Germany that I happen to have cycled through in 1991 (and imbibed a fair bit of that wine). Trier at that time was part of Prussia, and Marx’s father converted to Christianity in order to practice law, which as a Jew he was forbidden to do. The family also owned some of the vineyards around Trier, and Marx’s mother was from a rich Dutch-Jewish family that later went on to found Phillips Electronics. Marx himself received a secular education and was sent off to the University of Bonn where he wanted to study philosophy and literature and where his father insisted he study the more practically oriented law. He was fond of boozing and socializing, and joined a drinking society in Bonn (and later served as its co-President), and his poor grades had his father force him to transfer to the far more academically inclined University of Berlin, where the excursions into philosophy and history began. Somewhere along the way, he fell in love with a beautiful baroness of the Prussian ruling class, Jenny von Westphalen, described as ‘the most desirable young lady in Trier’, who broke off her engagement with an aristocratic Prussian Army officer to marry him. His doctoral thesis of 1841, “The Difference between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature”, a daring and original piece of work that suggested that theology must yield to the superior wisdom of philosophy, was controversial among the conservative professors of the University of Berlin. Marx decided to submit it to the more liberal University of Jena instead, whose faculty awarded him a PhD based upon it. He then looked for an academic job, didn’t find one , and turned instead to writing.


I will now focus on four works that he wrote before the age of 27, i.e. when he was at the age of many post-graduate students here at IRMA.


On the Jewish Question – 1843: In this text, Marx introduces the distinction between political emancipation (or the grant of liberal rights and liberties) and human emancipation. He argues that political emancipation is insufficient to bring about human emancipation, and it is also a barrier towards this. Liberal rights and ideas of justice are premised on the idea that each of us needs protection from other human beings; liberal rights are rights of separation, and freedom is a freedom from interference. Marx suggests that real freedom is to be found positively in our relations with other people, in communities, not in isolation. Insisting on a regime of rights encourages us to view each other in ways that may undermine the real freedom to be found in human emancipation. Marx did not oppose political emancipation, seeing it as a great improvement over the prejudice and discrimination of the Germany of his day, but did feel that it must be transcended on the route to human emancipation. Marx does not, in this text, say what human emancipation is, and we can only assume that it is related to the idea of un-alienated labour of future texts.


Contribution to a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right Introduction – 1843: This is the one that describes Marx’s views on religion in most detail, and is famous for the remark that religion is the ‘opiate of the people’. It also considers how revolution might be achieved in Germany, and sets out the role of the proletariat in bringing about societal emancipation.

An earlier viewpoint (Feuerbach, et al) opposing theology was that human beings had created God in their own image, and that worshipping God diverted humans from enjoying their own powers. Marx criticised this, saying that religion is a response to alienation in material life – alienation of labour from their work and alienation of people from their communities. Religion deviously promotes a false idea of community in which we are all equal in the eyes of God, and the state offers the illusion of a community in which we are all equal in the eyes of the law. Both state and religion can be transcended when a genuine community of social and economic equals is created. How can such a society be brought about? Marx suggests that it has to be through self-transforming action by the proletariat. Indeed, if they do not create the revolution for themselves (if enlightened philanthropy, for example, brings about change instead), they will not be fit to receive it.


Economical and Philosophical Manuscripts – 1844: This text is most famous for its description of the way labour is alienated under the capitalist system. Marx suggests four forms of alienation. First, from the product, which is taken away from the producer upon its creation. Second, in productive activity (or work), which is seen as a torment. Third, from their own powers, as they produce blindly and not in accordance with their skills and inclinations. And fourth, from other humans, with a relationship of exchange replacing the satisfaction of mutual need. Non-alienated labour, on the other hand, comes about when the immediate producer enjoys a product as a confirmation of his/her powers, and with the idea that production meets the needs of others so that both parties have a human essence of mutual dependence – individual human powers and membership in the human community.

For Marx, alienation is not merely a matter of subjective feeling, or confusion. And there is a sense of inevitability about it, given the tenets of capitalism. As long as a capitalist intends to stay in business, he must ruthlessly exploit his workers to the legal limit whether or not he is wracked by guilt. The worker must take the best job on offer; there is no other sane option. By doing these, they reinforce the very structures that oppress. The urge to transcend this, and to take collective control of destiny, is important in Marx’s social analysis.


Theses on Feuerbach – 1845: This is a compilation of Marx’s reaction to the philosophy of his day. He compliments materialism for understanding the physical reality of the world, and criticizes it for ignoring the active role of the human subject in creating it. And idealism is said to understand the active nature of the human subject, but confines it to thought or contemplation – creating categories upon which we can impose the world. Marx combines these insights to propose a view that human beings do indeed create, or at least transform, the world they find themselves in, but this transformation happens not in thought but through actual material activity. This historical version of materialism is the foundation of Marx’s theory of history.

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Let's Talk About Sex, Baby!

LET’S TALK ABOUT SEX, BABY

By Ajit Chaudhuri – May 2012

“Our youth love luxury! They have bad manners, contempt for authority, they show disrespect for their elders, contradict their parents, gobble up their food, and tyrannise their teachers!”


First, a disclosure! This note is about sex – the use of the word in the title is not a ruse to get you to read it. It is also about postmodern philosophy, and about making sense, for relics of my generation, of contemporary society. Most of us have relatives, friends and colleagues from subsequent generations, and most of us struggle to understand them; the sense of entitlement, the priority of the immediate, the importance of image over substance, the trivialization of relationships, and the lack of a sense of future consequences for today’s actions. This note covers sex, eroticism and love and relates them to changing times, attitudes and behaviour. It is based upon the paper ‘On Postmodern Uses of Sex’ found, of all places, in the reference material for the course on ‘Philosophy of Science’ at IRMA’s PhD programme.

So, let’s first talk about sex! This is a natural, and not a cultural, product that we share with most non-human species, and in its natural form it is always the same. To quote another author that struck a chord on this matter, ‘there has been more progress in cooking than in sex’. Its basic function is reproduction, and since this function is critical to the perpetuation of the species, nature has taken no chances – it has erred on the side of wastefulness by providing reproducing species with sexual energy and a capacity for sexual encounters far in excess of what the reproduction function would require.

Eroticism is about recycling that waste – filling the sexual act with surplus value over and above its reproductive function. It begins from reproduction and then transcends it, and reproduction turns into a constraint, simultaneously an indispensable condition and a thorn in the flesh of eroticism. There is a constant tension between the two. And the history of sex, according to the paper, is that of strategies to manage this tension.

In the modern era, two strategies vied with each other for domination. The first was of imposing the limits of the reproductive function of sex upon the freedom of erotic imagination, and relegating surplus sexual energy to the culturally suppressed and socially degraded spheres of pornography, prostitution and illicit liaisons. The second was the romantic strategy of linking eroticism to love and cutting its ties to sex, with love legitimising eroticism. Both strategies saw eroticism as needing a functional justification, and sought to anchor it in something other than itself – reproductive sex or love.

And now we come to the contemporary postmodern era, where eroticism becomes its own reason and purpose – it has lost its links with reproduction and love, and acquired lightness, volatility and the freedom to enter and leave any association of convenience. This emancipation of eroticism from sexual reproduction and love has been termed as ‘the erotic revolution’.

Now, your cynical minds at this stage would be telling you that all this is probably a marketing stunt concocted by some MBA-types to sell sex toys. Join the club! The paper, however, begs to differ with this view and says that it takes more than market forces, slick advertising, and a greed for profit to bring about a cultural revolution of this scale and depth.

So, how did this revolution come about? The author cites two causes, both relating to changes that came about with the advent of postmodern culture.

The first is that the earlier modern era had institutions charged with the responsibility of instilling discipline into and obtaining socially desirable conduct from people, institutions such as industrial factories and conscript armies. Most males passed through them and acquired habits that guaranteed obedience to social rules and societal order (and enforced them on females and children via the home and school). Contemporary society has no such institutional disciplining treadmills – it needs neither mass industrial labour nor conscript armies. The loss of these institutions led to a generational gap in the understanding of and adherence to traditional social mores, and therefore to the development and establishment of new mores.

The second relates to one of the features of postmodern culture; the condensed perception of the flow of time into ‘a series of self sustaining episodes, each to be lived in the fleeting moment, cut off from its past and its future consequences, with immortality to be lived instantly and enjoyed now, not hostage to the uncontrollable flow of objective time’. This tendency to cut the present from both the past and the future is paralleled by the tearing of eroticism from reproductive sex and love. Erotic imagination and practise, like all postmodern life practices, has acquired the freedom to experiment – to sail freely under the banner of pleasure seeking, and to negotiate its own rules.

The effects of the erotic revolution are many, and the author describes two of these. The first relates to the construction of postmodern identity. In traditional societies, identity was a given – it was based upon ethnicity, class, caste, race, etc. – you were born with one, and you were stuck with it. In the modern era, identity was a life project – you built up and worked towards a desired one, and stuck to it. Postmodern identities, however, are flexible, light, and rearrange-able at short notice. Solidity, permanence and commitment are seen as dangerous maladjustments to an unpredictable world, to the opportunities it offers, and to the speed with which it transforms yesterday’s assets into today’s liabilities. And eroticism, free from amorous and reproductive constraints, fits this well; it is made to measure for the multiple, flexible and evanescent identities of postmodern men and women. Sex can be framed into an episode, gender and other aspects of identity can be chosen and discarded, and sexuality need bear no relation to its reproductive role.

The second is the way all human relations are being vigilantly re-assessed for sex. In the home, with children, one has to be careful of overt and tangible expressions of parental love – children are now seen as sexual objects, and potential victims of parents and other adults who are sexual subjects. In the office, a casual remark can be construed as sexual provocation, and an offer of coffee sexual harassment. Sexual undertones are sniffed out in every emotion, and a threat suspected in every smile, gaze, and form of address. Every act can be seen as an act of sex, and every act of sex as a form of rape. This leads to human relations sans intimacy and emotionality, and the wilting of the desire to enter into them and keep them alive.

So, what do I think about all this? Well, though this paper pertains to western societies, and though the postmodern society in India coexists with traditional and modern ones, the points made do strike a chord. Young people are different in the ways described, and it is heartening to know that they are merely products of their times. The changes in homes, educational institutions and offices have taken place – speaking for myself, I am a regular recipient of dirty looks for holding doors open for ladies (and I promise you I had no intention of sex with any of them), and my wife recently fired me up for waking up the children (who were late for school) with a threat to pinch
their bums.

But, how does one develop as a sexual subject without committing the sin of treating another as a sexual object? In a sexual encounter, are participants not simultaneously required to be subjects and objects of desire?

And, what about love? Is it an outdated human construction, dreamed up as a way to absorb excess sexual energy and to give eroticism space and respectability in an era gone by, as the paper suggests? Or does it have a role in human relations, irrespective of the era? As one who has experience of its pleasures and pain, I personally have difficulty subscribing to the former view. And those of you who have read ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ would remember the confusion the protagonist Lisbeth Salander, that poster girl for postmodernism, underwent when she experienced an emotion that she was unable to recognize or categorize – an emotion called love. It still exists! Yippee!!

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

GERIATRIC STUDIES

GERIATRIC STUDIES

A 2-Pager by Ajit Chaudhuri, March 2012


A consequence of enrolling in full time doctoral level education at my age is that one is inundated with variations of two questions. The first, in the beginning, is ‘why?’ This one is like being asked, when I was a kid, what I wanted to be when I grew up – I didn’t quite know, but I could spin a good yarn depending upon the audience. The second one, now that I am 9 months down, is ‘what’s it like?’ The short answer is ‘Great! All the day to read, lots of football, no day to day worries or distractions, and a wonderful library BUT wife and children far away, the rapid depletion of one’s life savings, and no combination of cold beer, cigarettes, kebabs, and gossip with old friends!’ And the less short answer, the subject of this note, is a little more nuanced.

I now know that doctoral level education is not an extension of post-graduation. It cannot be done in ‘project mode’, wherein you sit through eight semesters, submit your assignments, pass your exams, and hey presto, you have your degree. It is a lonely journey, a relationship between you, your supervisor, your subject, and the institution – a journey without a cohort of batch-mates to draw support from (and to peg yourself against). It is also a long journey, longer than graduation and post-graduation (and often longer than them combined), where the light at the end of the tunnel is both far away and dim. Signing up is not a ‘rational’ decision in economic terms, more so when one does not intend to go into full time academics. And nobody (except Saif-al-Islam Gaddafi) has got a genuine PhD without pain and sacrifice.

The first indication that I was going to be in over my head was while filling the application form, specifically the section requiring details of my guardian. I had to fill something, and there was no option like ‘I’m 47 years old – what the hell is a guardian?’ – so I nominated my wife of twenty years for the role. This is a bit dicey, with the possibility of her receiving letters from the institution beginning with “Dear Mrs. Chaudhuri, are you aware that your ward a) has failed, b) is short on attendance, c) has been drunk and disorderly, d) has not struck an appropriate balance between academic pursuits and cavorting with members of the opposite gender, etcetera” with a tick mark against one (or more) of the options. I still live in dread of the consequences of this one.

The doctoral programme of an academic institution is a form of public service for the institution. It gets no fees for the not inconsiderable effort that goes into converting an assortment of wasters and misfits (who also have to be paid a monthly stipend) into PhDs, and the gains accrue to academia as a whole (in the form of research and writing) and to other academic institutions (institutions don’t often recruit their own PhDs). As a consequence, the doctoral student is lowest in the caste hierarchy of an institution – well below the much more numerous (and fee-paying) Master’s students. If you come from a position of authority and responsibility, the move from one end of the food chain to the other takes getting used to. This is not entirely unpleasant – one discovers that no authority and few responsibilities is a lot better than one without the other, and often also better than the combination of plenty of both.

Sitting in class again turned out easier than I had expected. Some classes were with the Masters students, and in these one sat with a group of 45 or so 20 something’s, most of them engineers, all of them bright and ambitious. I had planned to replicate tactics of 25 years ago, of hitting the back row and being anonymous – unfortunately, as the saying goes, the more things change, the more they remain the same – this row is still always full. I survived the gamut of quizzes (surprise and otherwise), 3-hour written exams, and having my marks up with everyone else’s, I contributed my mite to in-class discussions, and I obtained grades that did not necessitate packing up and going home. Doctoral level classes were very different – two or three of us to a class, with no way to hide inadequate preparation or a wandering mind, but also with a pace that is adjustable for one’s ability and capacity.

In this, I have been lucky in my professors (conflict of interest alert – some are on this reading list and are still grading my assignments), who have without exception been patient and encouraging. A professor is a category of person one does not meet in professional life – the nearest is an expert service provider (chartered accountant, development consultant, etcetera) without an obvious principal-agent relationship. I see it now as a position of considerable responsibility; a good professor, one with a passion for a subject, can enable it to unfold upon you and gradually take over your mind space. S/he is just as important at this stage as s/he was back in class VIII mathematics.

I have also been lucky in my fellow students. Despite being two generations apart (I’m a fag end baby boomer and they’re mostly Gen-Y – or, to put it in plain English, they haven’t heard Dylan sing, they haven’t seen Maradona play, and they think they’ve invented sex), they have made me comfortable around them and welcome in the students’ mess. I have observed some restraint myself – following my wife’s orders of being reasonably attired in the students’ areas (ensuring that her own memories of an unshaven slob in the late 1980s, clad in a torn vest and a shorts, are not inflicted on another bunch of delicate minds), and trying to veer towards the ‘good example’ rather than ‘horrible warning’ category of personality. I will leave them to figure out somewhere else, at another time, that age is not linked to respectability.

A major lifestyle change has been on the football field. In Delhi, I was playing once a week with a group that has made a mark or two over the years in the local amateur circuit. I now play almost every day, but a kinder, gentler, slower version in which I am forced to behave better. I miss the occasional crunching tackle, the feel of body on body vying for the ball, and sometimes letting my opponents know what I think of their mothers. And I worry that, when I return, I will have difficulty adjusting back to football with my old group.

What lies ahead? I don’t know! For me, it is a race between completing and going broke – whichever happens first gets me back into the job market (and the expected time of the latter is mid-2013). What sort of job does a broke 50-year-old get, or even compete for, with or without a PhD? Your guess is as good as mine. I’m just glad that eating in a students’ mess has led to some loss of weight – just in case I have to do something unconventional.

And finally, my advice to those of you contemplating doctoral level education yourselves and falling within a similar age category! This is a great time to study – one doesn’t have the same distractions and anxieties that one had in one’s 20s, one can focus much better, and one can connect academics with the real world that one has experience of – unlike the other doctoral scholars, for you there will be little that is abstract. Journeys into philosophy, mathematics and policy can be fascinating and addictive, as can having a library at one’s disposal, long discussions on a variety of esoteric topics, and the company of young people. But, you have to really (and I mean really, from deep within) want to! Because, as I have mentioned earlier, doing a late PhD is not ‘rational’! The effort to returns ratio is not good - it neither increases your market value (I assume here that you are not a complete loser) nor your ability on the job – if anything, it works in the other direction. And the mental conversion from a tax-paying citizen to a broke student can be traumatic.

If you do decide to go ahead, it is important (unless it’s Harvard) to find an institution and a supervisor you trust. Don’t be rigid in your choice of topic – this can change during the journey. And have your family on board. And yes, don’t be surprised that your children have grown up in between your visits, and your wife has taken over your cupboard space at home. All the very best!

Sunday, February 12, 2012

THE FIFTH OF EUCLID

THE FIFTH OF EUCLID

A 2-Pager by Ajit Chaudhuri – February 2012


Six months down the PhD road, and the only thing I can claim to have learnt is the unwelcome art of living alone. This is no minor matter for someone who is generally useless at all things that require an element of practicality and/or pragmatism. How have I survived? Well, I have someone coming in to clean and wash clothes, and I have outsourced all gastronomic requirements to the institution’s students’ mess. In fact, the only thing that I have had to actually learn is ironing clothes. And I have been spectacularly unsuccessful at this.

The reason for this is that I have yet to figure out two inter-related things – stuff that my semi-educated neighbourhood ironing-lady has probably known from childhood. One, how do you project a curved surface onto a flat space? And two, how can something that covers a three dimensional figure (like clothes for my upper body) be reduced into two dimensions?

Looking for answers has been a journey (conducted while supposedly studying public policy and local governance) through geometry and abstract mathematics that touches upon issues such as the philosophy of science, the possibility of a fourth, or fifth, or even an infinite number of dimensions, and the likely shape of the universe. And I have just begun! This note is an attempt to suss out some of this, and to share the wonder and bewilderment that I feel. And let me assure those of you on the verge of closing this, there are no mathematical equations, there are no formulas, there are no graphs, and this is in plain and simple English from beginning to end. So please don’t!


Let me begin with flat spaces, curvature, and the shape of the Earth. The ancient Greeks were the first to wonder about these matters without ascribing every mystery to the presence of God. They had figured out that the Earth’s surface was curved and had even worked out a possible circumference (on the assumption that it was a sphere) that has since proved stunningly accurate. They also drew maps, depicting the parts of the Earth’s surface that they knew on to two-dimensional charts. But there was no way of knowing the shape of the Earth – land and sea seemed to go on forever, in every direction. The Earth could have been shaped like a pear, or an idli (the equivalent would be a flying saucer), or an infinitely long dosa (cylinder) or a vada (doughnut) or even two vadas joined together as sometimes happens in the cooking pot before the chef cleaves them apart. And as for the maps, what happened when one went, say, beyond the top right hand corner? Did one fall off into infinity? Or come back on the bottom left hand (or another) corner?

Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition around the world, much later in 1519-22, showed that if one headed continuously in one direction one could ultimately return to where one started. So even if the Earth’s surface was continuous, it was also finite. But what did that say about the shape of the Earth? He could have made his journey around the narrow part of a pear-shaped object, or along the surface of the circular cross-section of a dosa, or around the inside ring of a vada. It was only with the advent of space travel, and therefore of man’s ability to move outside the boundaries of the Earth to look at it, that one could confidently say that it is a sphere with slightly flattened poles.

As my ironing lady knows, the simplicity of flat two-dimensional spaces does not apply in curved three-dimensional ones. There is nothing like a straight line connecting two points – lines curve as they move along the surface of the Earth. The shortest distance between two places is not as per the line connecting them on a map – it is along a curved line (called the geodesic) running along the circumference of an imaginary circle that touches the two places, whose centre is the centre of the Earth. Which is why, you would have noticed on planes in which one channel on your armchair TV displays route and location, inter-continental journeys take seemingly elliptical directions.

This leads to interesting controversies. For example, Islamic convention decrees that all mosques be built facing Mecca. Now, in which direction should a proposed mosque in New York be built? Would it be the southeast, the shortest distance on a map and the direction New Yorkers know Mecca to be? Or would it be the north, as per the geodesic connecting the two places?

Complicated? Let’s merely agree that the laws of geometry that we learnt in school tend not to apply when the two-dimensional plane we are working upon (such as a map, or my ironed clothes) is actually a depiction of the surface of a three-dimensional curved object (such as the Earth, or my body).

Let’s go back to the ancient Greeks for a bit, and to their search for answers to questions regarding the Earth. Scientists today are asking similar questions of the Universe. Does it continue forever, or is it finite? What is its shape? What lies beyond it? If we move in one direction continuously, for a long time, where will we end up – in some form of infinity, or back where we are now?

We are also trying to map it, just as the ancient Greeks did of the Earth, using accounts of our travels, our powers of observation, and our mathematics. But, in addition to our telescopes being seriously powerful and our mathematical tools considerably more developed, there is a critical difference. The Greeks mapped out the surface of the Earth, a three dimensional object, on to a two dimensional chart. And we are working one dimension higher, using a three dimensional space (a cube, or a shoebox) to map the surface of the Universe.

We are able to say, so far, that the Universe is a finite space that exists in multiple dimensions, and that it possibly expanded from one single point. The space that we know is possibly a curved three-dimensional surface of a four-dimensional Universe, much as the Earth’s surface is a curved two-dimensional boundary of a three-dimensional sphere. Parameters such as time, distance and speed become much more complicated when one moves from the three dimensions of a cube or shoebox (such as our map of the Universe) to a four-dimensional space with a curved three-dimensional surface (such as the Universe itself), just as they do on similar switching between two and three dimensions (as my ironing lady and I can confirm).

Most sciences, like our senses, can function in up to three dimensions. Abstract mathematics has no such limitation, and mathematicians have shown that there are limited possible shapes for curvaceous four-dimensional objects with a single point of origin, all of them being spherical in some way.


What does all this mean? I hesitate here – I am out of my depth. But I do know that it means something from recent churnings in the field of mathematics. One of mathematics’ greatest and longest unsolved problems, and the subject of a Millennium Prize (immense prestige plus $ 1 million), was the Poincare conjecture about multidimensional spheres, which is critical to speculation on the shape of the Universe. The conjecture was solved in 2003 by a reclusive Russian mathematician, Grigori Perelman, who just put his proof up on a public website on the Internet and left it there. It took three years and much controversy before the proof became accepted (some Chinese mathematicians tried to claim credit). Perelman was awarded the Fields Medal, the mathematical equivalent of the Nobel Prize, in 2006 for his work despite the facts that the proof was not published in a prestigious peer-reviewed mathematical journal as per rules and that the authorities knew that he would refuse it, which he duly did. He also refused the Millenium Prize (and the money) in 2010. Perelman’s proof of the Poincare Conjecture was honoured by the journal Science in 2006 as the breakthrough of the year, the first time ever that it has been bestowed upon the field of mathematics.


Why is this so important? It took 23 centuries from when the Greeks posed questions to when humankind became able to move out of the Earth, look at it, and confirm its shape. The recent ability of mathematics to make sense of possible shapes of curved four-dimensional objects, of which Perelman’s proof is a critical component, may just be an important step in obtaining confirmatory answers to similar questions regarding the Universe.


For those of you still here, I would like to conclude with something on the joys of mathematics. Mathematics, like single malt whisky, is an acquired taste – few of us are born with mathematical ability, and even fewer with an innate distaste for it. It is mostly that some of us are fortunate with our middle school maths teachers, and others are not. Mathematics is the only science that does not require expensive laboratories and complicated equipment to be able to practise – a pencil and paper, and a mind, are all one needs. And as for whether mathematics makes you a boring dullard – let’s look at some mathematicians. Pythagoras of the eponymous theorem fame was also the head honcho of a secretive spiritualist cult. Descartes, who built the foundation for understanding physical objects as algebraic equations, was a mercenary soldier who often fought both sides of the same war (depending on who was paying more money). Poincare was from a famous political family (his cousin, with the same surname, was a French Prime Minister), born with a silver spoon and a love for the good things in life. And, last but not least, Perelman himself is an unemployed bum who stays with his mother in a run-down St. Petersburg apartment and lives on her Soviet-era pension. It is entirely possible that he, too, would have difficulty ironing his clothes.