There is an interesting piece of history, not about kings and empires, but about land and life itself. Much before human life started on planet Earth, all the land on the globe was a single, giant landmass called Pangaea. In the age of dinosaurs, about 180 million years ago, Pangaea cracked up into two parts that drifted away from each other. Gondwana became the Southern and Laurasia, the Northern Hemisphere. Some 40 million years down the line, Gondwana split into Africa-South America and India-Australasia-Antarctica. Breaking further after floating for another 100 million years, India collided with Asia, raising the Himalayan mountains. It is interesting to see the borders of South America, Africa, South Asia, and Australia like matching puzzle pieces.

For me, the transition from 2022 to 2023 has been marked by meeting two scientists from Australia and Africa – Rajeev Varshney, a world-renowned geneticist and John McChlery, an agronomist in South Africa. Prof. Varshney was on a visit to ICRISAT (his previous organization where he worked for 17 years) for signing an MoU, his first after taking over at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia. McChlery, third generation Zimbabwean now working as Regional Manager, Export Trading Group (ETG), a global conglomerate encompassing Agricultural inputs, logistics, merchandising and processing, was visiting to study how sunflower cultivation in Africa can bridge the perennial demand-supply gap of edible oils in India, currently at 14 million tonnes a year, spending ₹1.56 lakh crore, or 20 billion dollars. Dr. M. S. Chauhan, a well-known biotechnologist, and the new Vice Chancellor of G. B. Pant University, met Prof. Varshney on the sidelines of the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS) meeting in New Delhi, to start an Indo-Australian University exchange program in seeds. 

Food is a fundamental need of life. The countries that ignored this truth suffered immensely. The memories of the horrible 1960s are still alive when I had to stand in queue at a ration shop, foregoing my school to collect wheat donated by the United States – a reddish variety much inferior to the Indian wheat – but there was no other option. The efforts of scientists led by Norman Borlaug (in collaboration with M. S. Swaminathan) in shortening the height of the wheat plant and thereby increasing grain volume, eventually saved the day for India. India is self-sufficient in producing grains and is feeding 1.4 billion people without imports. But the same can’t be said about pulses, where there is a supply deficit of 3–4 million tonnes, and the situation in oilseeds is even worse. 

Availability of affordable food in sufficient quantity with all macronutrients is an existential challenge before any government anywhere in the world. They do whatever is great in all other areas but fail here, and they are gone! The population is steadily increasing, and it is imperative to increase productivity under sinking natural resources and declining ecosystems. With rampant urbanization on a roll, there is no scope for more land being available for cultivation. Whatever land is used for farming will only shrink. Climate changes are also having an adverse impact on crop productivity and animal health. No one has a clue why Delhi was cooler than Dharmshala this winter! 

The issue of increasing yield involves seed genetics, which has been embraced by China and the United States with open arms to great effect. In India, however, it remains a politically sensitive issue. There are powerful lobbies that oppose the cultivation of genetically modified seeds, pretending to be blind to the fact that 70% of the edible oil imported is already coming from genetically modified seeds. The issue of the fully indigenous mustard hybrid “DMH-11” for seed production was dragged into court for years before, to the great delight of farmers, the Supreme Court ruled in its favour, but the rumblings of discontent have not yet gone away. 

Finally, a middle way has been found. In May 2022, the Government of India released guidelines for genome-edited plants and laid down clear regulatory pathways for their cultivation. While the insertion of any gene from another species remains prohibited, scientists can now carry out genome editing, called site-directed nucleases (SDN) in scientific parlance. There are two possibilities – editing is done without using a DNA sequence template or with an externally supplied template sequence of the naturally occurring mutations in the same species. These are called SDN1 and SDN2, respectively. The use of foreign gene(s) in a specific location of the genome, conferring new/ novel trait(s) remains forbidden. It is designated as SDN3. 

Things have already started happening. Researchers are deeply engaged in the development of genetically edited seeds for crops, including rice, wheat, and sugarcane to improve their yield and quality. Students in our agricultural universities are acquiring skills, like knocking out a target gene; adding a fluorescent or epitope tag; inserting, deleting, or replacing bases; and carrying out a germline substitution of a single nucleotide at a specific position in the genome, called SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) and pronounced snips. This blessed tribe is increasing every year and the gene editing era has already begun in India with gusto. Like we say BCE/ CE, hereafter, agriculture history would be designated as BGE/ GE.

The good news is that an improved crop variety, which is free from foreign DNA, need not go through a complex regulatory regime, and farmers can use the fruits of the labor of their scientists without the complexities and controversies that have been applied to them, while the produce grown outside, for example, edible oils, is sold in the market, making great profits for traders. 

The work of scientists like Prof. Rajeev Varshney in the area of genomics leading to high-yielding legume varieties in India and Africa, and the enthusiasm of university leaders like Dr. M. S. Chauhan, is auspicious and a harbinger of India leading the world in food sufficiency. I see the vibrant ICT sector in India stepping in sooner than later to help predictive design with artificial intelligence (AI) tools and providing blueprints for the new gene-editing tools that can make multiple edits in a single genome. Once gene editing, called CRISPR in scientific parlance, becomes a more favorable regulatory situation and becomes like plant breeding, India, with its vast network of agricultural research will lead the developing world, starting with its “lost in childhood at a fair” Gondwana brother, Africa. 

Going beyond higher yield, it is now possible to genetically engineer crops that require less water, fertilizers, pesticides, and land. In the United States, soybean and corn yields have been enhanced by 20% while lowering water usage by 40% and reducing corn’s nitrogen needs by 40%. And the story does not end there. A genetically edited tomato in Japan, called the Sicilian Rouge High GABA, is already in the market as a product of choice to reduce blood pressure. This is a huge benefit and ignoring it would be no different than being an ostrich burying its head in the sand. There will be 10 billion mouths to be fed, and science is the only way to grow enough food with whatever land and water the world would spare. 

The utility of sleep is undeniable and of late, there have been excellent books emphasizing it. Matthew Walker, professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, has published in his 2017 book, Why We Sleep, declaring beyond ambiguity the impact of sleep on the human brain. The book, while teaching the basics behind how sleep works neurologically and biologically, cautions against cognitive impairment along with brain damage due to sleep deprivation. 

Sleep is inseparable from dreams. The whole night, we go through the cinema of dreams, mostly fulfilling our wishes and living out our fantasies, but also suffering scary nightmares and feeling a high degree of anxiety and terror in the process. There are hundreds of books about the interpretation of dreams, starting with Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams published in 1899, to The Complete Book of Dreams by wellness consultant and modern mystic Stephanie Gailing, published in 2020. Gyan hi gyan hai!

I have been an avid reader of books on dreams and could get rid of my chronic migraine headaches in the mid-1980s by practicing insights from Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality, written by psychiatrist and psychotherapist Frederick “Fritz” Perls with two co-authors. The book taught me to enhance the awareness of my mind and bodily feelings in the present moment. Later, I read about mindfulness and tried to practice it, without much progress. Bad dreams continued to trouble my sleep and I, by and large, failed to decipher their meanings. 

But recently, triggered by Chade-Meng Tan’s book, Search Inside Yourself, I read almost a dozen books, including two celebrated books by the psychologist Daniel Goleman – Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence, and two books by Jon Kabat-Zinn – Full Catastrophe Living, and Coming to Our Senses. Kabat-Zinn is a professor emeritus of medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and has been running a Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program to great success, since 1979. But the climax came after I read Dream Yoga by Andrew Holecek. 

First and foremost, the book aptly defines yoga as “that which yokes or unites.” To make what is fragmented a whole again is yoga – synchronizing body and mind at the least, and eventually, the conscious and unconscious mind with the cosmic mind. Then it introduces the scientific term for the study of dreams as oneirology and exhorts readers to explore their inner space like astronauts explore outer space, by becoming “oneironauts.” Rooted in Tibetan Buddhism, the Vajrayana branch, the book brilliantly succeeds in taking the reader from the familiar to the unfamiliar, from the exotic to the esoteric, and from the easy to the more difficult. 

There was a hugely successful film, Inception, released in 2010, about dreams. The hero, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, is a professional thief who can steal information by infiltrating the minds of people. He takes up an “assignment” to get into the dreams of the heir to a Japanese business empire, by his competitor. The plot thickens when the hero enters the dream world and is confronted by his deceased wife who had committed suicide, and the hero feels guilty about being the real cause of her death. The unconscious mind protects itself by weird imagery in dreams, and skills are needed to uncover its secrets. The point the film made is that the dream world and the waking world are entwined.  

Andrew Holecek’s book turned the tables by declaring that it is not that our sleep in the night depends upon what happened during the day, but rather, what happens during our sleep decides how we flair up the next day. Holecek writes, “When you fall asleep every night, you are actually falling awake. You just don’t know it yet.” Taken at its face value, how do I benefit from this knowledge? It is here that the book delivers. 

Simple tips are provided to induce “lucid” dreams, which means dreams in which you are conscious of dreaming. I like the advice to lie down in Buddha’s famous Loin Posture – the right hand is folded and placed under the head, with a finger gently closing the right nostril, the left-hand rests on the left thigh, and the legs are very slightly bent. Then bring your awareness to the breath going inside and coming out, while the mind dissolves in a “hypnagogic” state – you are still aware of the world and yet images are floating – and finally dipping into a deep sleep.

Dreams are only a part of the total sleep, which happens in 90-minute cycles – about 5 cycles every night. Initially, the sleep is mostly deep, without dreams (called Non-rapid Eye Movement or NREM sleep), and later, towards morning, it is mostly full of dreams (Rapid Eye Movement or REM sleep). The book calls our ability to be conscious in a dream, Dream Yoga, with the purpose of confronting what is scary and fearful, and changing the dream. For example, if someone is chasing you, just stop running mindlessly, turn back, and confront the chaser. Or, if you are locked, or trapped in a maze, find an opening, and emerge out. If there is a fire, enter it. If there is water, walk into it; if there is a height, a cliff, jump without fear – because after all, it is only a dream. 

Holecek invokes the majesty and fearlessness of a lion and asks us to be like one in the dream. He writes, “The lion is the king of the jungle, fearless and uncontested. His gaze is set in contrast to the gaze of a dog… if you throw a stick out and away from a dog, the dog will chase after the stick. But if you throw a stick out and away from a lion, the lion will chase you. The lion’s gaze is set upon the thrower, not on what is being thrown. We all have the gaze of a dog, forever chasing the sticks thrown out by our minds. We’re constantly running after the thoughts and emotions that are endlessly tossed up from within… And that’s the basis of our suffering… it takes a fearless gaze to look deeply within the jungle of our own mind.” 

My take on Dream Yoga, of what all it may mean, is to take a “cinematic view” of day-to-day life. Be like a spectator watching a film and living the events around – seeing people around you as actors performing their roles – teachers, helpers, masters, drivers, traders, doctors… even “friends” and “enemies.” Centuries earlier than William James, Sigmund Freud, and Carl Jung, the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad declared:

अत्र पितापिता भवति, मातामाता, लोका अलोकाः, देवा अदेवाः, वेदा अवेदाः। अत्र स्तेनोऽस्तेनो भवति, भ्रूणहाभ्रूणहा, चाण्डालोऽचण्डालः, पौल्कसोऽपौल्कसः, श्रमणोऽश्रमणः, तापसोऽतापसः। 

In this state, a father is not a father; a mother is not a mother; the worlds are not worlds; the gods are not gods; the Vedas are not the Vedas. In this state, a thief is not a thief; the killer is not a killer; there are no high castes, intercastes, or outcasts; a monk is not a monk; a hermit is not a hermit. (4.3.22)

So, imagine while retiring to your bed every night that you are resting in the embrace and wisdom of the Cosmic or Universal Self, which is free from desire and without fear. With practice, you will wake up in a state that Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore called Chitto Jetha Bhoyshunno – Where the mind is without fear. 

The sense of “I” is the greatest deception that mankind is condemned to. Talk to anyone and you hear the story of obsession with money, power, name, fame, attachments, achievements, love, and dependency. We live a life driven by our likes and dislikes. Every moment we are moving “towards what we like and love” and “away from what we dislike and fear.” We put ourselves in the center and look at the world as a great circle, disappearing into the unknown beyond a point. The more we think about it, the scarier it gets. Is the situation so bad, or there is a problem within our own selves? 

When I was writing Wings of Fire with Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam in the late nineties, when he would go down memory lane, his eyes would as if stare into the horizon. He never appeared scary and almost always peaceful. He was most grateful to his parents, teachers, and especially to Dr. Brahm Prakash, the first Director of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), who indeed mentored him. Dr. Kalam writes, “He had always been my sheet anchor in the turbulent waters of VSSC. His belief in team spirit had inspired the management pattern for the SLV project, which later became a blueprint for all scientific projects in the country.’ (p. 52) 

Recently, I assisted D A Prasanna, my senior and friend of more than two decades, to put together his memories as a book. Prasanna had been the first CEO of WiproGE Healthcare, and a pioneer of the Indian MedTech industry, which now in the 2020s, is a more than 10-billion-dollar enterprise. The book, Innovate Locally to Win Globally, was released in a glittering ceremony at the Bangalore international Centre, on December 12, 2022. It was as if the “stars” of the Indian MedTech industry had descended there. It was indeed a celebration of the transformation of MedTech from a 100% import dependency in 1990 to the dominance of India-made ultrasound machines and CT scanners in the global market and crossed $10 billion in size.

The book carried a picture of Dr. Kalam, then the Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India, arriving at the John F. Welch Technology Centre in a “Made in India” Tata Indica car in 1999 to discuss the outreach of cardiac diagnostic services.  Of course, the book has many “superstars”– Azim Premji, who hired Prasanna while starting the Wipro computer business in 1978; Prasanna’s colleague at GE, Omar Ishrak, now the Chairman of INTEL Corporation; and Ramdas Madhava Pai, the incumbent Chancellor at the Manipal Academy of Higher Education, who opened the Manipal hospitals to GE. Prasanna remembers them with gratitude. 

So, if there is no “I,” what is this mentoring, this gratitude? Why build this entire basket of memories? I consider the autobiography of the Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung (1875-1961), with the title Memories, Dreams, Reflections as perhaps the best “story” about human life. All three words in the title of the book are intangible, nowhere to be found except in one’s mind. And yet the words of writers and poets, paintings, and sculptures of artists, inspire people after they have gone, and that inspiration leads to many other great works and noble deeds. There is something unseen and unexpressed that clicks and creates the seen and felt world that is lived. 

In his famous book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, published in 1949, the American writer, Joseph Campbell (1904-1987), describes the “plot” of human life. Every hero belongs to the normal world, living an ordinary life. A mentor arrives on the scene. The mentor takes the “hero” into unfamiliar territory and leaves him alone. Hereafter, he is tested, faces ordeals, and meets both friends and enemies. There comes a time of “a brush with disaster,” which must be “survived” and then the hero returns to the ordinary world with a great boon. This is the “story.” In some cases, it does not take off at all without a mentor. In most cases, people do not survive the trial, mistake friends for enemies and vice versa, and fail. Very few people return, but these are all heroes.  

The point is, we are all heroes, unfinished products mostly, stuck up at different levels. How do we know this? I recently read a little difficult-to-read book, “The Embodied Mind.” It is written by three specialist authors – Francisco Varela (1946-2001), Evan Thompson (b. 1962), and Eleanor Rosch (b. 1938). I have read the Silver Jubilee edition, published in 2016. The two surviving authors have written new introductions, capturing the advances made by cognitive science in the meantime. The book offers the key to making the best use of one’s life, in three simple steps. 

First, know yourself as a product of your “present situation.” There is no other way that it could have happened. That you are alive today is a “survivor story, even if you hesitate in calling it a success story.” Second, your future is embedded in your “present moment,” maybe like seeds buried in the ground, waiting for water to sprout and emerge. Third and finally, the decision whether to continue to act as per your habits or change, rests with you. No one is responsible for your success or failure other than your decisions of staying with your habits or stepping out of them. The three actions are summarised as enactment – to achieve, execute, depict, discourse, do, and perform – by living mindfully. 

Defining mindfulness as the opposite of mindlessness, the book mentions the principle of co-dependent origin in Buddhism – originally called Pratītyasamutpāda – where pratītya is the Sanskrit word for dependence and samutpāda means originating conditions. We are all caught in a closed chain of cause and effect. Each moment is created from its past and our action at that moment creates the future. Except for one crucial step – this present moment – nothing is in our hands. At this moment, I must be awake, and out of my sleep – the conditioning by my feelings and thoughts – and act, not on my impulses but on my reason.

It is declared loud and clear in the Shrimad Bhagavad Gita:

एवं बुद्धे: परं बुद्ध्वा संस्तभ्यात्मानमात्मना |

जहि शत्रुं महाबाहो कामरूपं दुरासदम् || (3.43)   

Using Intelligence, control your own life. Your desires are your invincible enemy; kill them. 

And how do I know about my desires? How do I differentiate between the Supreme Intelligence and my own stuff? Again, the answer is very crisp and straightforward. Each one of us is endowed with completeness – learn to be satisfied in yourself, by yourself, at every moment and allow life to unfold. 

प्रजहाति यदा कामान्सर्वान्पार्थ मनोगतान् |

आत्मन्येवात्मना तुष्ट: स्थितप्रज्ञस्तदोच्यते || (2.55)

Gives up all desires in your mind, O Parth! One who is satisfied with himself in himself alone is called steadfast in intelligence. 

In this non-acting upon your desires, lies the key to all further actions of your life. Jailbreaking is the popular name given to the process of accessing locked electronic devices, like cell phones. Jailbreaking allows one to gain full access to the root of the operating system. In life, however, there is no lock on the outside of the prison door. Open the door from the inside and you are free. The event concluded with a determination to make Indian MedTech a $100 billion Industry by 2030. 

I have immensely enjoyed reading Full Catastrophe Living by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn (b. 1944), a very readable and practical book on mindfulness, published in 1990. I have read the 25^th anniversary issue, published in 2013. The more than 600-page book presents the details of an 8-week course known as Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR) offered through the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester, Massachusetts that Kabat-Zinn founded in 1979. It dives deep into explaining the fundamentals of mindfulness in an impeccable scientific manner.  

“Catastrophe” in the title of the book does not have the usual meaning of disaster but conveys what Kabat-Zinn calls “the poignant enormity of our life experience.” He explains that he chose this title from the Academy Award-winning 1964 film Hollywood film Zorba the Greek. There is a young Greek young man in the film who seeks guidance from a mysterious elderly man Alexis Zorba, played by Anthony Quinn (1915 –2001). In one scene in the film, the young man asks Zorba if he is married. Zorba says, as if growling, “Am I not a man? And is not a man stupid? I’m a man, so I’m married. Wife, children, house – everything. The full Catastrophe.”

Kabat-Zinn says that every life is a catastrophe – struggle, hardships, uncertainties, failures, betrayals, and wrongs done – and every person on the planet has his or her own unique version. Making the acceptance of this fact the cornerstone of one’s life, according to the book, one must assume full responsibility for whatever has happened and respond rather than run away with excuses and pretend that all is well by living in a bogus manner, a sham of a life. Historically, mindfulness is related to Buddhism, but Kabat-Zinn presents it as “cognitive therapy” providing a powerful theoretical rationale and citing clinical validation over decades of its application. 

In Chapter 12 of the book, titled Glimpses of Wholeness, Delusion of Separateness, Kabat-Zinn brings in the famous problem of nine dots. The task is to connect all nine dots by four straight lines without lifting the pencil off the paper. Most people are stuck after drawing three lines. The solution lies in extending the lines beyond the 3×3 matrix. Kabat-Zinn writes, “The problem of the nine dots suggests that we may need to take a broader view of certain problems if we hope to solve them. . . the problem of nine dots teaches us that we may have to expand beyond our habitual, highly conditioned ways of seeing, thinking, and acting in order to solve, resolve, or even dissolve certain kind of problems.” 

What a beautiful message from a stunningly simple example! We are all prisoners of our nine dots. Our minds are hardened due to fossil ideas, dogmas, and obsolete definitions, and scales and measures that are no more valid. Who among us is not a puppet of our habits, our hunger, and drives – cravings, likes and dislikes, egocentricities, and so on? Kabat-Zinn writes, “Rather than penetrating through problems to the point where solutions are reached, when we get stuck there is a tendency to make more problems, and to make them worse, also to give up trying to solve them.”

I will now present these nine dots as a universal pattern of the problems in life. The three rows of this 3×3 matrix are – personal, family, and workplace. The three columns under “personal” are health, inner peace, and satisfaction. The three columns under “family” are harmony, happiness, and prosperity. The three columns under “workplace” are name (power), fame (status), and wealth. All of us are stuck in this maze – the moment we connect a few dots, unconnectable dots stare at us. 

There are very powerful people with horrible family lives. Very famous people are drowned in addictions and die young, even by suicide. Wealth brings its own collateral damages – from scheming by partners and colleagues to regulatory probes topping the normal business risks, it is common to see wealthy people living tormented lives. So, what the solution to this problem teaches – get out of this prison of “I,” “me,” and “mine” and take a broader view of your life. 

We were born in a certain family, grew up in certain circumstances, and got into certain livelihoods; most of us are married, but even those few who remained single are facing Zorba’s full Catastrophe. What is elusive is good health (which my mentor Dr. APJ Kalam would define as sound sleep and regular bowel movement), peace of mind, and your children and mentees flourishing in their lives and careers. You have everything but because these are missing, despair clouds your mind, and your heart slips into melancholy. 

Albert Einstein (1879 –1955), whom I consider the greatest visionary of modern times who could see beyond the solar system, beyond gravity, and even beyond the straightness of light rays before anyone. There are three authentic sources of what Einstein said: The World as I see It (1934), Out of My Later Years (covering the years 1934-1950), and Mein Weltbild (1953). Ideas and Opinions, based on Mein Weltbild and other sources, is the most popular book in English. I share two of Einstein’s thoughts here, taken from the book (Three Rivers Press):

The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained liberation from the self. (p. 12) 

To see with one’s own eyes, to feel and judge without succumbing to the suggestive power of the fashion of the day, to be able to express what one has seen and felt in a trim sentence or even in a cunningly wrought word—is that not glorious? (p. 17)

So, connect with your real self, feel your emotions, and use your rational mind. Kabat-Zinn writes, “Our real job, with a capital J, is to find our own way.” And your way goes out of the nine dots. You are not the hero in the drama – not even in your family – forget about the community, company, or the world. You are one among the billions – appearing for a brief period of some decades, that too as a work in progress – now wise, now foolish, now brave, and now craven. Like a pendulum, our mind is driving us between likes and dislikes, moving shadows under the sun of a pole that even does not exist. 

Look at the people around you, observe them, feel their problems, empathize with their feelings, resonate with their aspirations, and you will find yourself connecting all the dots without even trying. Still doubtful? Observe your breath. Are you exhaling something different than the others around you? Do you drink different water? Eat different food? Have a body with different anatomy and physiology? Know yourself as a dot and ride upon the line. 

The Australian writer and broadcaster, Clive James (1939–2019), curtly defined modern times when he said, “It is only when they go wrong that machines remind you how powerful they are.” While we are all amused living in an internet-connected world, it is important to look at the braggadocio of both, our past and future and have our moments of doubt. As a technologist, I find technology as an enabler of both, good and bad. As Bill Gates put it, as automation applied to an efficient operation magnifies the efficiency, when applied to an inefficient operation, magnifies the inefficiency as well.

I recently read Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin is Changing Money, Business, and the World, written by the Canadian father-son team of Don Tapscott and Alex Tapscott. The book was published in 2016 and updated in 2018. I found the narrative to be a brilliant mix of history, technology, and sociology and feel it is a must-read for all young people who are preparing to face the Web3 metamorphosis.  

The transformation of the financial technology sector in India is indeed phenomenal. The way the Unique ID project survived a long-drawn disruption and finally embraced more than a billion people is an example for the entire world. The governmental financial assistance and subsidies are directly transferred to beneficiaries. Tax collection is automated, and many government services are done automatically and efficiently. India, as a nation and with its human resources, is best positioned not only to lead the blockchain revolution, but to become a leading nation in the process when it reaches 100 years of independence in 2047. 

As of now, blockchain is not understood by many people outside the computer science sector. It is typically reduced to mere cryptocurrency, which is akin to comparing the Internet with email. Rubix, for example, is a global green blockchain with the ability to solve some of the world’s greatest problems, from climate change to property ownership, to implementation. And this new technology is also being passionately promoted and developed by two Indians, K. Chakradhar Reddy, and Mahesh Ramanujam. 

What I find most striking is that for the first time in history, people who hold the ground – farmers, artisans, and factory workers – have a real chance of asserting their rights and being paid directly for their work. Natural assets such as water, carbon, and air are essential for life on earth, and cannot be converted into commodities by clever businesspeople. Each water bottle sold for Rs. 20 per liter must declare from where the water was drawn and how it was paid for. 

Who is making the new wealth and how? The American ecologist, Garrett Hardin (1915–2003), called a situation where shared common resources are depleted, a tragedy of the commons. Not very long ago, Mumbai was spread over seven islands, and Bengaluru and Hyderabad were cities dotted with lakes. Systematically, water bodies were encroached upon and sold as properties by a collusion of politicians, bureaucracy, and banks who doled out loans for the buildings constructed on lands of dubious titles and sold at inflated rates. Most people living in high-rise buildings are indeed lifetime debtors. 

As the regular reader of my blog knows well, I do not consider indicators like GDP or Sensex, or even the $ value of our currency as guideposts to development. Even inflation is a much-misunderstood term. The issue is of people over natural resources, sanctity of the right of people traditionally living over common lands, which includes the poorest and the tribals, and enforcement of the law so that the rich and powerful cannot evade its provisions while the poor are punished in the absence of legal help. Technology is now available to fast-track the judicial process and punish the guilty without harassing the innocent. Not making use of it is a mistake. 

For India to be a developed country, every citizen must have equal access to public services, namely healthcare, education, and social security.  Writing in the context of the United States, the Tapscotts called technology and democracy “not a happy story.” They write, “In the spirit of the saying, ‘The future is not something to be predicted, it’s something to be achieved,’ let’s reinvent the government for a new era of legitimacy and trust. It’s time to stop tinkering and launch transformation.” 

India has adopted many traits of the US society and the manners of its democracy, and not all are good. Take, for example, the TV debates. Every evening an assemblage of speakers, mostly from a band of some 20-30 people, shout at each other. Even the anchors use a tone of inciting quarrels rather than moderating a debate. Public discourse is fragmented. Intellectuals have organized themselves into warring groups that are uncooperative and even hostile to whatever action or initiative is taken to change the status quo. Democracy needs a reasoned opinion, not just any opinion. Democracy needs legislative assemblies to debate, refine, and resolve issues. There must be decorum in these bodies. 

Could blockchain technologies help improve our democracy? 

The Tapscotts write, “Imagine the board of elections (commission in India) creating digital wallets for each candidate or choice, with approved voters allocated one token or coin each for each open seat. Citizens vote anonymously through their personal avatar by sending their ‘coin’ to the wallet of their chosen candidate. The blockchain records and confirms the transaction. Whoever ends up with the most coins wins. . .  DEMOS, a new end-to-end (E2E) e-voting system. . . uses a distributed public ledger like the blockchain to create a digital ballot box that citizens can use to vote from anywhere in the world.”

Our technology institutions must come forward and make India lead the world in blockchain technologies and in the process, improve and prosper our own systems. When our own experts will demonstrate that blockchain is regulated by mathematics and is neither up to the whims of the governments nor to the wishes of the anarchists, people will agree. The book concludes by saying, “Like the first generation of the Internet, the Block Chain Revolution promises to upend business models and transform industries. But that is just the start. Blockchain technology is pushing us inexorably into a new era, predicated on openness, merit, decentralization, and global participation.”

Can India make a historical choice to use technology to change the status quo in terms of ownership of natural resources, and the real estate business, and make people vote from wherever they are rather than turn up at a particular booth and prove their identity every time, which can be a big put off for many people to vote? These three changes can be brought in by blockchain technology, for which the precursors are all available. What is needed is the political will to transform India into a developed country by including all its people in the process. The view through technology glasses is a bit unsettling, but certainly not dark.