The horrendous space kablooie !

Now i know why i instinctively wander once in a while into popular science section of my local library. Because, a good popular science book is like a mind relaxation pill . In pure science, there is an element of certainty, orderliness and objectivity. Either something is proven or its not. Although, the brain needs to work a bit to understand the science, its not in a state of making decisions and judgments. I find that to be quite relaxing ! On the other hand, when iam dealing with topics like economics and environmental philosophy, there is a lot of speculation and subjective value calls to be made. There are a lot of normative questions to be handled .. how things should be, what is right or wrong, etc. In recent times, i had been dealing mostly with issues which require subjective opinion. Reading solid science has been a good antidote and a breath of fresh air. Perhaps, another strong reason i liked reading ‘Big Bang‘ by Simon Singh, is that the immensity and beauty of the universe has so floored me, that all our day-to-day “issues” seemed insignificant, and hence the high .

Anyway, the book ofcourse is all about the horrendous space kablooi. It was fun reading about the progression of science leading upto the eventual proving (well .. the most accepted theory currently) of Big Bang. In the beginning, ofcourse, there was the Earth at the center of the universe, and everything doing pradakshina around us. Then we realized we aren’t so special after all and its we who do the pradakshina. Maybe Sun is special ? Tough luck, there too. Suryanarayana is just another star among billions in the galaxy. We tried to comfort ourselves that the milky way, then, has surely gotta be special and the only galaxy in the universe. Oops. Those pesky nebulae turned out be full fledged galaxies in themselves ! Atleast, we hoped, there must be some stability in the universe ! Those galaxies must surely be floating around in space, forever. Then ofcourse, Hubble spoils our comfy view of the universe and says galaxies are moving away from us at thousands of kilometers a second ! The universe is expanding with every second ! And if its been expanding, the previous second or yesterday or last year, it must have been smaller than now. And if we run the clock backward enough, Bang ! Simon Singh walks us through this whole journey from flat-earth to big-bang, explaining all the science and peppering with anecdotes and behind-the-scenes events. Great job. Hats off, Simon !

Reading about the universe, as always, has been humbling too. There are so many places where our normal three-dimensional space / independent-time notion simply cannot get around some of the ideas. For example, the fact that the universe is still expanding at tremendous rate. Expanding into what ? Its not that galaxies are shooting out into existing space. How can space itself be created / stretched ? Can someone please explain this to me ! I can’t get my mind around it. Maybe it can be comprehended only as mathematical equations.

As if all this science is not exciting enough, it got me thinking about some stuff not discussed in the book per se, but kind of related — what about the elephant in the living room we have been conveniently taking for granted ? The nature of observer ! The person trying to understand the universe. The consciousness. We have been conveniently separating the two and studying the world in an observer independent fashion. I think the standard assumption is that this consciousness thingy is a secondary principle in the universe. That is, its derived from primary matter by some accidental combination of molecules. The big question — is consciousness really a secondary principle ? Or, is consciousness a “non-reductive primary” in the universe like space, time, matter. How cool would that be, if consciousness is somehow a permanent feature of the universe, instead of a random emergent property ! For which a yogi might say, “Permanent feature ?! Friend, you got it all backwards. Consciousness is the only primary feature in the universe. Everything else .. matter, time and space is secondary derivative”. But i digress .

A quote from Gandhi

This photograph is from our local VSPCA animal shelter. A friend of mine called me up a few days back and said he’s going there. I joined him. One of the boys over there took us on a short guided tour of the shelter, and then we spent about an hour talking to Sharada (the person incharge there), who kindly gave us an account of her experiences being there for the last decade or so. One of the factors, as usual, is the money needed to fund the operations. These are the kinds of services that we as a society should spend our capital on. They provide a valuable socio-environmental service and provide employment too (they employ some 40 people). It reminded me of my previous post on voting with money, and how powerful and important capital reallocation is. The services are useful and already there. The people are there willing to do more. We just need to divert the capital to increase the scale of these services.

Closer home, i had an opportunity to work on a situation. For about an year now, a street dog has been living in our apartment complex parking lot. Some of us in the complex used to give some food occasionally, and he used to forage on the streets also. He seemed to be pretty happy and made our complex his home. I personally did not have a problem with the situation as Blacky seemed pretty harmless, but some residents felt threatened and i have to respect their wish if they wanted to drive him away. Recently, a new watchman was appointed and some of the residents apparently told him not to allow the dog in the complex. He took their words rather seriously, and started giving the dog a big whack with a stick whenever it entered the complex. Dogs are quite attached to a place though, and they don’t leave comfortable places so easily. When i approached the watchman and told him that beating was not a good idea, he said he actually did not want to beat the dog either, but felt compelled to do so as some residents insisted on keeping the dog out. But when i talked to couple of folks who apparently ordered the dog out, they seemed to be unaware of the situation, and also agreed that beating was no solution. So, no body wanted to actually beat, but still the dog got beaten !! communication errrrrors could indeed be costly ! Anyway, instructions went out not to apply force, and thats where the story stands now. Who knows where it ends. I suspect Blacky will continue to just hang-out around the complex, and enjoy the occasional snack from kind residents.

vote with your money - part 2

(continuation from part 1)

Apparently, the trend now-a-days is to look at things from the perspective of the “whole” , and the representative mantra of this wisdom seems to be “The whole is more than sum of the parts”.

So why not we look at economic systems from this point of view ?

The message of this diagram is quite simple. The individual is part of a larger whole — a social community and a wider natural environment. Both are important realities. The whole cannot exist without a collection of individuals. The individual cannot survive when the whole is chronically unhealthy. A healthy economic system is one that recognizes and nurtures both the part and the whole.

So how do the popular economic systems fare in this aspect ? The communists ignored individual freedoms and rights, and were too tilted towards the “community” aspect. It was due to over-zealous altruism and in most cases, it was really for dictatorial control over economies, under the guise of altruism. Individuals had very limited property rights. Decision making was all centralized. It was a deadly combination — individual freedom and creativity were not nurtured and at the same time community sense was forced involuntarily onto the people. Under the weight of this serious mistake, economic communism collapsed.

On the other side of the spectrum, we have capitalism where individual rights are sacrosanct and any community wellbeing is an after-thought. Infact, it is based on an express principle that when individual rights are perfectly taken care of, community automatically gets all-right. Take care of the part, and whole will be all-right. It has proven to be only partly right. The economic pie definitely got bigger, but how is that pie shared within the social community ? There is certainly some trickle-down of wealth, but there is much stronger force of trickle-up that naturally seems to operate in a capitalist economy. This is evident from the frequent news bits we see about “top-x percent of people having y percent of wealth”. ‘x’ generally being much less than ‘y’. Thats the social aspect. On the environmental community aspect, capitalism as-we-practice today has been disastrous. The chief reason being that we simply failed to recognize and assign an intrinsic value to the natural environments. When little or no value is assigned, our economies simply converted the natural capital into goods that are valued. Conversion of natural capital to consumer goods and man-made capital. (I’ve discussed this aspect more here).

Anyway, coming back to our point, a healthy economic system is one which nurtures both the individual and community aspects .. because one could not survive without the other. Communism failed because it failed to recognize the individual and forced community responsibility onto the people. Capitalism does recognize individual rights, but has failed to formally recognize the community responsibility .. and so the social community is weak with massive inequities and environmental community is extremely unhealthy.

The whole problem with capitalism as-we-practice today is that it doesn’t directly address glaring economic inequities and is also leading to a serious deficit of natural capital. My solution is pretty simple. Lets preserve capitalism with its protection of individual rights, but let there be a voluntary trickle-down of capital into building social and environmental capital. As i’ve discussed in part-1, this would be achieved by cutting unnecessary personal consumption, and consciously investing in programs which build social and environmental capital. Ala, sage of Omaha Warren Buffet, who donated significant wealth to charity. Buffet says he was “wired at birth to allocate capital”. Precisely what we need. Voluntary reallocation of capital. I just gave the most glaring example, but as i said in part-1, this principle applies to everyone of us and not just Buffet’s of the world.

I must admit that all the fifteen hundred word discourse above is a fancy way of saying that people should spend wise and give more :). All this is fairly obvious and makes sense without invoking any mysticism and philosophy. But whenever there is talk about individual vs universal, i can’t resist putting up a plug from Yoga. So, here’s a relevant and weighty quote from Sri Aurobindo’s work “Synthesis of Yoga”:

“The acceptance of the law of sacrifice is a practical recognition by the ego that it is neither alone in the world nor chief in the world. It is its admission that, even in this much fragmented existence, there is beyond itself and behind that which is not its own egoistic person, something greater and completer, a diviner All which demands from it subordination and service. Indeed, sacrifice is imposed and, where need be, compelled by the universal World-Force; it takes it even from those who do not consciously recognize the law, — inevitably, because this is the intrinsic nature of things. Our ignorance or our false egoistic view of life can make no difference to this eternal bedrock truth of Nature. For this is the truth in Nature, that this ego which thinks itself a seperate independent being and claims to live for itself, is not and cannot be independent nor separate, nor can it live to itself even if it would, but rather all are linked together by a secret Oneness. Each existence is continually giving out perforce from its stock; out of its mental receipts from Nature or its vital and physical assets and acquisitions and belongings, a stream goes to all that is around it. And always again it receives something from its environment gratis or in return for its voluntary or involuntary tribute. For it is only by this giving and receiving that it can effect its own growth while at the same time it helps the sum of things”.

Pretty strong words from the sage of Bengal. To my mind, the massive reallocation of capital away from needless consumption, into social programs and towards environmental sustainability, may be considered as an aspect of Yoga itself. Whether individually and societally we engage in this Yoga, is going to be important in the next few decades, as scientists warn us that we are fast approaching limits to mindless consumption.

vote with your money - part 1

I wanted to do a post on economics of spending for a while now, and i’ve finally found the catalyst in this discussion at Atanu’s blog on Mukesh Ambani’s home. So brace yourself for a crash course on chaitanya’s economic philosophy.

Start with a question. Whats the surest and easiest way to get your voice heard … your opinion really counted. Voting in a public election ? well, you may be on the losing side, in which case, your opinion isn’t really implemented. Camp at a busy intersection with a loud speaker and make your voice heard directly to janta ? well, who knows, for most people, your sermons might be going in through one ear and coming out through the next, with the three pound gray matter busy processing more mundane concerns. Whats to rescue ? Is there no universal justice to afford an individual with the right to be heard ? There is. Remember the good old detective line .. “follow the money” ?

Yes, me thinks, your money is the surest and easiest way to get your voice heard. Courtesy, an invisible super computer known as the “Market”. No matter how small or how large the amount you spend, the market faithfully includes this choice in the supply-demand equation, and spreads the signal ever so silently through the market-o-sphere. The signal is never lost. And surely, the message gets to all the right places, and depending on the strength of the signal, will affect future production, pricing and demand.

Our spending signals are a reflection of our values and priorities, and our signals collectively taken, have a major impact on our economy, society and environment. With his billion dollar home Mr.Ambani is sending a signal into the market-o-sphere, that the best way he can think of to spend this money is on such things as hanging hydroponic plants, crystal chandeliers, man-made snow flurries and LCD monitors. Oh well, its his money, right ? But for arguments sake, lets note the “opportunity cost” here. By choosing to spend money on trivia, we are implicitly letting go of the opportunity to spend it on useful social programs, say an education program. What an opportunity lost !

My way of thinking about this is rather simple. At any point of time there’s limited amount of monetary capital in the world. We can either spend it on personal consumption or invest in programs for collective benefit which build up long term social and environmental capital. Its a question of consumption vs infrastructure spending on a societal level. The more we use for personal consumption above and beyond necessities, the lesser we allocate to programs that are good for long term health of society.

Some would argue that any consumption is good, as it generates jobs for people and keeps the economy going. Sure. But again, one has to look at the opportunity cost. The choice is not between employment of LCD makers versus un-employment. The choice is between employment of LCD makers versus (say) employment of teachers and fountain pen makers. Over the long term, sending the proper signals will simply shift employment and production patterns, reflecting our priorities.

What does this all mean to us personally ? My personal spending logic is pretty simple. Before i buy something, the question i ask is not just “can i afford it” ? . But also,

(1) Do i really need it ? If i don’t really need it and still buy it, i am wasting precious capital and sending a wrong signal into the market place that there is someone who values the product.

(2) Is there an alternative option that can provide me similar service, but at the same time is environmentally and socially responsible. Lets say i need to travel from Vizag to Mumbai. Why wouldn’t i reject air travel for train, and at the same time (a) spare the air of some co2 (b) contribute my share towards delaying peak oil (c) avoid sending a part of my money to the Saudi’s and so keep the money circulating within India where its definitely more needed. (oh.. i hear you. And my answer is that i doubt 90% of air travellers are really that “time constrained”).

But what about people who choose to spend on such things as man-made snow flurries , and personal jets ? Its their money, right ? Or should the big brother tax away the money and spend on social programs for collective benefit ? This brings us to broader questions about right to private property, right to spend, taxation etc. All these questions have been debated to death in the last few centuries, but i will try my level best to bring out a slightly unique perspective. Over to the next part.

A tale of two books ..

Sorry, couldn’t come up with a better title . This is just a not-so-brief note on two books i read in the last few weeks:

(1) ‘Ayurveda and the mind’ by David Frawley : There is a very interesting philosophical difference between how Ayurveda views health matters, and how western medicine views health matters. I feel that Ayurvedic science is “holistic” and “qualitative”, whereas, western medicine is “reductionist” and “quantitative”. Let me explain what i mean. In western medicine we find great reductive analysis .. down to the elements. It is highly “data” oriented. The emphasis is on precision and measurement. Blood pressure, heart rate, precise anatomy of body parts, chemical compositions, molecular structures, ion balances etc etc. The body is studied fully as a complex bio-electro-chemical machine. In Ayurveda however, things are much more qualitative and abstract (and it is understandable why .. because material science was not advanced in those days, people had to rely on observation, intuition and synthesis). The Ayurveda vocabulary will sound abstract to a modern science trained person. There is talk of “panchabhutas” (five basic elements .. ether, air, fire, water, earth) and “dosha” that a person has a natural inclination towards — vata, pitta, kapha or some combination of these. The “dosha” (”biological humor” as Frawley calls it) to which you belong, is determined by looking at various characteristics from body weight to skin texture to sleeping habits to pulse movement to quality of nails to your psychological profile. Once your characteristic is determined, keeping in good health becomes a matter of adopting a life style which “balances out” that particular “dosha”. Adopting foods, exercise types, climatic conditions, cleansing therapies, and even massage oils which suit your body type. For example, my natural characteristic is of “vata” type, and so i need to adopt a life style which takes care of that. I was surprised to find that many of my likes and dislikes simply reflected those of vata types. For example, i love tropical, humid weather, and hate cold, dry weather. Voila ! Tropical humid weather is exactly prescribed in Ayurveda to “calm” the vata ! Now i know why i’ve instinctively chosen to live in a beach town with humid weather. Another interesting point — vata people have too much “air”/”ether” element dominating in them (among panchabhutas). To calm the vata, we need “water”/”earth” element to ground us. Is this another reason why just sitting at a beach calms me ? Even my psychological profile (overactive mind, quickly changing interests etc) reflected those of vata type. The ideal exercise mentioned for vata types, is calming exercises such as Yoga and Tai chi. On the other side of the spectrum, a person in whom “water”/”earth” element is dominating (kapha type), the ideal balancing weather is given to be airy mountain region, and ideal exercise mentioned is activating aerobic exercises such as jogging. It is really fascinating to look at one’s health from panchabhuta point of view and see how balancing the elements improves ones wellbeing.

Anyway, coming back to the point, even though Ayurveda looks a little abstract when looked at from purely reductionist point of view, i feel it has a good contribution to make as a complementary to western medicine. Ayurveda takes a long term and more broader view of health including life style and mental health, and focuses more on prevention. Western medicine, i feel, is great for quick fix targeted solutions. So, when you have a broken bone or blocked artery, better run to a western doctor . But if time is on your side and would like to explore alternative health systems, i would recommend Ayurveda.

(2) ‘The Evolution of higher consciousness’ by Gopi Krishna : This book’s content falls under the general category of ‘yoga philosophy’, but the discussion is fairly advanced and esoteric. It is well known that Yoga philosophy is about the evolution of human consciousness .. but the main thrust of Gopi Krishna’s work is that this evolutionary process is accompanied by physiological / biological changes, predominantly in cerebro-spinal system. He suggests that the evolutionary energy is present in a dormant state in all human beings, and whose awakening marks an important phase in the evolutionary process. Gopi Krishna also suggests that sacred Hindu symbols (Lord Vishnu sleeping on serpent Ananta sesha, or the Dance of Lord Nataraja etc) are representative of this evolutionary process, and discusses the meaning behind the symbols in great detail. All in all, a very potent book, but should not be taken up as an introductory work.

Blue gold

Did you know that March 22nd is world water day ? Recently, i got a chance to visit my alma mater (Gitam, where i got my bachelors engineering degree), to attend a conference on water related issues. The agenda is mostly technical in nature — water treatment and sanitation technologies, industrial waste treatment, water quality case studies, rain water harvesting, etc etc. Although i wasn’t very interested in specific technical solutions, it was an opportunity to study our general philosophy in solving a problem which fits into the broader theme of sustainability. Thankfully, the speakers were from a wide ranging background — students to academics to NGO’s to civil servants to industry. All in all, a satisfying day of learning for me (and worth the 300 rupees i shelled down ).

Just a few tidbits:

- One of the speakers was T.Shivaji rao, a veteran academician and environmentalist. In all his wisdom, he chose to focus on the broader sustainability theme, and on the spiritual aspects of the issue rather than on the technical. He spoke of “plants and all life endowed with universal energy”, “natural resources as embodiments of divine” and asserted that one needs an “awakened mind and a sensitive heart” to understand the deeper issues underlying environmental problems. Like five blind men touching different parts of an elephant, we will not get to the heart of the issue as long as we don’t taken an integrated philosophical approach.

(Source Gutenberg)

- Prakasam Tata, of NGO Bharathi Theertha, spoke passionately about importance of water to civilizations, and our duty to protect it. The energy that he displayed at young age of 72 is amazing. He’s a native of neighboring vizianagaram, and settled in Illinois, USA., but continues to work on water related issues in his native place.

- Phyto technologies: Using plants and micro organisms to remove toxic metals and industrial chemicals, or to treat saline water for irrigation purposes. From what i understood, some plants just naturally absorb certain chemicals, or salts. So you just plant them at appropriate locations to get the desired effect. This was interesting “green” technology from plant sciences field. Related quotes from my notes: “plants absorbing arsenic”. “Genetic engineering of rice to withstand brackish water”.

- A study was presented on amount of fluoride in ground water in coastal areas of vizag city (my neighborhood). I got a chance to catch the presenter during tea break and ask him if fluoride in water is natural or from industrial effluence. Its natural, he said (atleast in vizag) . water catches fluoride as it travels through the rocks to settle at the water table. ( For what its worth, I drink boiled municipal tap water).

- Another study to measure Iodine in ground water in vizag city. Iodine content in some areas is more than (WHO ?) recommended and less in some areas. One of the discussion points was, why then iodized salt recommended to everyone ?. People should consume iodized salt depending on their ground water iodine content.

- Rep from Byrraju foundation talked about water purification plants they setup in tens of villages. You can read more about their process here.

- Ram Koderu (from Illinois, USA.., representing some NGO) talked about sustainable development in general. One of his ideas was that if people in India are afraid to complain about dumping of toxics in waters, for fear of retribution, we should setup webcams to monitor waters and outsource the monitoring effort to USA. So, a person sits in Tuscon, Arizona and monitors water pollution in India. I initially thought he was joking, but then i realized he was serious !!! Sigh … over engineering.

- An idea presented towards decreasing pesticide pollution in water, is to need lesser usage of pesticides by “enhancing immune systems of plants” so that plants resist pathogens through “systemic acquired resistance”. From the paper abstract: “It has been observed that the legume seeds and rice seedlings treated with salicylic acid not only showed higher root and shoot growth but also resistance to several bacterial and fungal pathogens. The strategy has great potential in inducing disease resistance in plants and can be integrated into IPM (Integrated Pest Management ?) programmes minimizing the use of pesticides thereby reducing water pollution”.

- “Think global. Act local”. We all heard this. Exnora international is further zeroing in on the starting point. “Do domestically”. Exnora founder M.B.Nirmal gave a looong presentation about their activities starting with home solutions. What you do with solid waste .. both organic and inorganic. What you do with water waste. rain water. growing garden on terrace ! lots of good practical stuff for home and community.

- The guy from local Vizag steel plant gave a presentation on how the plant is meeting its water requirements, treating waste water etc. I did not know making steel required so much water. Vizag steel plant itself gets water from Yeleru river, a tributary of Godavari, from some 150 km away.

- Nice quote i picked up from one of the presentations: “The trees are Gods great alphabet. With them He writes in shining green. Across the world His thoughts serene” — Leonora Speyer

- Biodegradation of plastics and polythene’s from Mangrove soil. Apparently, mangrove soils are rich in bacteria and fungi which are capable of degrading plastics. Scalable solution ?

- I got a chance to talk to a few people. Over lunch, had a chat with an engineering student from Vellore, who is interested in energy issues. We discussed about wind energy pros and cons. He wants to work as a generic “energy consultant” , and insulate himself from specific technologies, as they are still evolving. He plans to be on the services side just deploying whatever technology is successful in the market. In the city bus on the way back home, i caught up with an engineer who works in a private power generation company. We talked about cap-and-trade mechanism and the need to set the bar at the right level for this solution to work.