There is widespread dissatisfaction about the service sector. Complaints about bad plumbing, shoddy repairs, incompetence and rudeness of workmen are commonplace. Coaching centres and competitive exams make up the new education model. In hospitals, treatment is structured around packages. Skills are evaporating from work and courtesies, from social life. It is all about doing a job and being paid, buying and selling, zero-sum game, this is what I got, this is what I can give. In a civilization that talked about excellence in skill as a way to reach God – योग: कर्मसुकौशलम् (Shrimad Bhagavad Gita, 2.50), the fall is phenomenal. 

When I look back to my childhood, I recollect the respect that people commanded for their skills. Their skills gave them a status. Teachers were guardians. Workmanship was honoured. If the right workmen were not available, work was halted, or even postponed. Even a product like curd had made a shop famous. People were connoisseurs of fine taste. Everyone who was a vendor was addressed by a relation – uncle, brother etc. depending upon his age. The fabric of society was rugged as well as crafted – every yarn was well woven and in a pattern. 

Then middlemen started arriving – first in government services, then in business, in finding houses on rent, and finally in the services. Now, when you go to salon for a haircut, an employee attends to you. You don’t even ask his name. Neither is there a personal touch to his services, nor the sharing of experiences as he works. In condominiums, there is a clubhouse where you occasionally meet your neighbours – no one has time for personal exchanges because everyone is either watching TV or online. Food is more ‘ordered’ than ‘cooked’. Supply chains have become so long that you can’t see from where they start. We eat fruits coming from New Zealand and no one sheds a tear when one more guava orchard is cleared to build another suburb.

When I visited China in 2002, my host Ji Ping, who later translated Wings of Fire into Chinese, told me that Beijing is truly a great city. I asked him what makes it so and he shared with me a profound truth. He said, a city is great if these five are accessible by walking – provision store, barber shop, doctor, school and park. Beijing may have a population of 2 crores, but these five services are still available at walking distances. How many of our cities provide this ‘luxury’? UKG-LKG children riding school buses is the new order. There are no more family doctors taking care of fevers and bowel irritation. For everything, there is a specialist. Even Cardiology has multiple super-specialties within itself.  

So, instead of coming together, as I was imagining in my first blog post in the new year in a good mood, we are indeed fragmenting ourselves. Joint families have long broken down into nuclear families. Now the model is – individuals living together. Because reality is biting, we are living more in the virtual – a world where there are only ‘likes’, chat rooms which are more of echo chambers, and we hear back only what we say – I am OK? You are OK! I love you! I love you too! We watch only those channels that talk about our political tastes. No one cares about the truth anyway! We go by opinion polls. If a greater number of people talk about something, it must be really good! How do I know? I am not even sure if I can think properly. 

Where have we lost track? It is a very serious question which ought to be asked because if not asked and answered now, fixing it later will not be possible. 

First, we degraded our poor people. The rich have coolly withdrawn from social welfare. No more charitable colleges, hospitals and hostels have been set up off late. Then crafts were gone. Our darjees our halwais are all replaced by brands. Then we degraded our teachers. This led to the degradation of what was being taught in schools. An education app has become the ubiquitous teacher and the mobile phone – a part of the human soul. Every emotion has become a smiley – you don’t even have to feel fully; just choose one from the list. 

The cost of this is going to be enormous. What goes out, returns. Most of us will not be allowed to even die properly. Life will be extended somehow every time you fall sick. What if your life savings go to the hospitals? Every chronic disease will be treated up to 100 years or more, further adding up the treatment of the side effects of the medicines. Our minds seem to be hacked and our bodies are commoditized, and the worse part of it is that we seem to be fine with this. 

So, we really need to take a pause. Let us switch off the TV and mobile phones one evening and cook together, sit together and eat together with the entire family, and make everyone speak for 10 minutes – tell a joke, a story, recite a poem, sing a song or narrate an experience. Let us have just one session to know what is going on in the lives of our loved ones. 

We came into this world through our parents. They did the best for us in their conditions. We also did what we could to raise our children well. The problem is the increasing loss of control. Our children are losing control over the way they raise their children. Invisible forces are raising herds, folks, zombies, little consumption machines, whose preferences are being defined like ice-cream flavors, so that things are mass-produced and sold online. The education that is being sold to our children will neither help them get jobs, nor make them good citizens, nor even make them smart. The healthcare that is being sold to us is to extend our life somehow so that we remain customers of pharmacy and diagnostic labs and not to make us healthy. 

So what can one do? Let us inculcate some basics. Ensure that you sleep for eight hours every day, come what may. There should not be any electronic gadget in your bedroom. Eat only the food for which you can see the starting point of the supply chain. Go for alternative medicine for treating chronic diseases. Live where the five things told by my Chinese friend are available within walking distance. Spend time with your family and meet your friends in person and not through social media. Look more into the mirror on your wall and not into the dark mirror of your computer, TV or mobile phone. Your life is your biggest asset. Your soul is your real identity. Serve your soul and the world around you will change for good. 

Year 2020 is bringing with it a feeling of déjà vu. In the 1990s, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam was writing a book on how India could become a developed country and how long it would take. We estimated a time frame of about 25 years. When I took him to L. V. Prasad Eye Institute for an ophthalmic examination, while testing his eyes, Dr. Taraprasad Das shared with Dr Kalam ‘20/20’ as the term used to describe perfect sight. “If you have 20/20 vision, you can see clearly at 20 feet what should normally be seen at that distance,” he said. And sitting there, Dr Kalam decided to name his book India 2020: A Vision for the New Millennium. The book became a bestseller and today, when 2020 has finally arrived, I am reminded of this great visionary.

What I learned under the tutelage of Dr Kalam is that waiting for conditions around you to change is a futile exercise, a real waste of life. The challenge is not to change the outer conditions, but the inner conditions; not the society, but the community; not even the community, but family; and in the family, your own self, your day to day experience. This is where everything begins. Dr Kalam was very fond of a saying of Chinese philosopher Confucius (551-479 BCE) and made it very popular through his speeches. 

If there is righteousness in the heart, there will be beauty in the character. 
If there is beauty in the character, there will be harmony in the home. 
If there is harmony in the home, there will be order in the nations. 
When there is order in the nations, there will be peace in the world.

If you are paying attention to the God essence, living, ticking inside you, you will be able to make sense of all that is happening around you. Nothing is random, unnecessary and irrelevant. Every single experience, especially the unpleasant ones are there to be experienced and done away with. Running away from them, avoiding them, and reacting to them are wrong choices. We must respond to whatever life brings before us, every moment. It starts with sunrise – everyone must be out of bed before the sun appears on the horizon and welcome the source of all life on our planet. Procrastination is the original sin; all the muck gets build up around that. As you humbly attend to what a day brings, you grow and evolve every day. 

I see cognitive surplus as the biggest problem mankind is facing today. In the name of information, garbage has been littered everywhere, defiling even the purest and youngest minds. Through electronic media, people are being turned into desire machines – hungry ghosts, to use a Buddhist term. Unsatiated desires are making people angry. Angry people resort to violence – both inwardly as depression and self-inflicting addictions and outwardly as rage. Violence creates suffering – both for the doer and the victim. Modern society has accepted violence: films are glorifying gory fights and killings, sports involving violence like boxing and wrestling have become popular. Stored already in the unconscious mind, violence, then gets expressed at the most insignificant stimuli and trivial provocation.  

So, what could be the 20/20 vision of your life? See yourself as a fragment of the Supreme Consciousness that runs this universe. Your thoughts are the way to operate upon this consciousness, to tap into the energy of the cosmos and bring it into your life. Everything is on the move, changing every moment, especially your inner being. With every breath, with every heartbeat, your life is extended. With every thought, you are creating your future and, in that manner, assuming responsibility and liability for your decisions. 

Also, let me share with you the 20/20 vision of God. God is not out there, but inside us. We are all living in God. We are all guided every moment of our lives. Our problem is our insensitivity towards receiving the guidance. The distractions, a little too many off late, due to Internet-driven mobile phones among other things, shield us from this guidance. The purpose of life is to experience life, to respond to it openly as it presents itself, and put our best efforts into making it meaningful not only for ourselves, but also for the whole of mankind. 

I consider the 47th Shloka of the 2nd chapter of the Bhagavad Gita as the ultimate code of life.

कर्मण्ये वाधिकारस्ते, माफलेषु कदाचन।
मा कर्मफल हेतुर्भू, माते सङ्गोऽस्त्व कर्मणि।।

There are four operative statements embedded here: (1) Attend to what life presents before you, perform; (2) Don’t worry about results, they depend on something beyond your comprehension most of the time; (3) Never consider yourself to be the cause of the results of your activities; and (4) Inaction is not an option. 

Your health is first and foremost. Eat healthy food, get enough exercise, think good thoughts and keep your body and mind clean. Feel and express your emotions; never repress them – cry, laugh, jump, shout, sing, dance, whatever, do not hold back. Attend to your duties, towards your own self, your family members, colleagues, and all those people, even strangers, who cross your path in life. Never worry about results, gains and losses. What is yours can never be withheld by any power on earth; what is not yours, even if you do get it somehow, will be lost. Oneness is not a characteristic of life. Life is the characteristic of Oneness.

In India, we see Telecom as a money machine entangled with scams and schemes. Those who walked into free 4G are now being asked to pay. It is a zoo where one enters free of cost to see the lion, finds it out of the cage, and runs to the exit only to find a fee to get out safely. The Indian government never allowed BSNL to have 4G, thus making it obsolete and fit for closure. So, when the U.S. and China stake billions of dollars of trade over 5G, one in India wonders what the fuss is all about. 

It is not commerce for which the U.S. has taken a tough stand against China on 5G – the fifth generation of mobile communication – it is the revolutionizing military potential of this technology – significant enough to make China a world power challenging the United States. Also, there is a lot of heartburn about the way China has stolen the best technology developed in the U.S. and is now offering it in the global market as a competitor. Let there be no doubt about it that for India, a Chinese 5G will amount to a total surrender of sovereignty to China forever. 

For the people in general, 5G will be at least 20 times faster than the best 4G network today, enabling faster downloads of movies or smoother streaming. But on 5G driven phones, loaded with Artificial Intelligence, companies would know not only about your today but also about your tomorrow – your plans, your risks and where you are heading to – even before you decide on your next steps, which would be based on your temperament and conditioned patterns already known to your phone. 

The situation will become more complex and precarious as 5G will not only eavesdrop on people to people communications but also hook them to the vast network of sensors, robots, and autonomous vehicles through sophisticated artificial intelligence. You will know if the shoe you bought is transmitting your location at every step, or your watch is hearing what you are talking and your emails are being read by a machine that will ‘design’ a future for you, that will be worse than any fate that you may fear. 

With the ability to carry much more data, much lower network latency (network response time), energy consumption and much better stability than the previous generation of technologies, 5G is expected to transform digital communication. Using 5G, data can be transmitted at up to 10 gigabytes per second, much faster than using a 4G network, and the latency is reduced to under a millisecond, or 1 percent of that of 4G. Most of the things would be voice-controlled with no need to even look at your mobile phone as, after 4G, one doesn’t type any more; one just touches the screen and eventually, even that will go. 

5G will finally bring all human beings online. Artificial intelligence, with the capability to imitate human intelligence, will perform a wide range of tasks starting from thinking to learning, reasoning, problem-solving and much more! It will initially seem fun and exciting, as was free 4G, but eventually, it will not only control you but also manipulate you for sure. Even if American 5G will not be different, it will not destroy Indian businesses by forecasting and flooding cheaper Chinese products in the market, which would be a fait accompli if Chinese 5G is used by India. Concepts like liberty, freedom, and democracy do not exist in China, so how do you expect them to be honored? 

When Mark Zuckerberg says, “We’re at a point now where we’ve built AI tools to detect when terrorists are trying to spread content, and 99 percent of the terrorist content that we take down, our systems flag before any human sees them or flags them for us.” What Zuckerberg left unsaid is that everyone – the businesspeople, professionals like doctors and engineers, politicians and their clients; and individuals and families – can be tracked to know their future plans based on their present steps and moves. 

AI is the new electricity and 5G is the invisible wire that will carry it. Just like electricity changed everything – manufacturing, trade, agriculture, healthcare, education, transport, and communication – so will AI. It is important to return to the basics. None of us can escape 5G taking over the world, but we can always refuse to be snared into it. Start forming habits of not keeping your mobile phone with you always, not talking to people over the phone but meeting them in person, writing letters by hand and above all, knowing your feelings, before machines take over and decide how you should feel.

India is celebrated as a democracy by large numbers of Indians. We are the world’s largest democracy. We place ourselves in the company of the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Germany and many other democratic countries. There are problems in Pakistan but there is fully functional democracy in Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. In many ways, our democracy has its own defects, the recent drama in Maharashtra being testimony to this. 

The history of democracy can be viewed in two ways. The Indian view is that the Indian Mahajanapadas were democratically governed by the people. The Western view is that democracy was born in the Greek City States of Athens. However, both in the West and the East, democracy did not flourish as kingdoms and empires prevailed over people. The real birth of democracy in the modern world happened in the United States, in the latter half of 1700s. The Constitution of the United States of America is the world’s first formal blueprint for a modern democracy.

In the words of Abraham Lincoln (1809 – 1865), “The story of America’s birth should be read of, and recounted, so long as the Bible shall be read. The Founding Fathers’ noble experiment—their ambition to show the world that ordinary people could govern themselves—had succeeded.” Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address immortalized the definition of democracy as “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” which he borrowed from John Wycliffe (1328 –1384), who wrote it in the prologue to his translation of the Bible as the God-inspired way of living together.

Indian democracy passed its acid test in the 1970s. The people of India endured the Emergency and large-scale confinement of political leaders and press censorship and voted out Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s government, when elections were held in 1977. People once again voted out the inefficient and squabbling government of the Janata Party in 1980. The massive mandate for the Congress after Indira Gandhi’s assassination was squandered and the country hit rock bottom before turning itself around in 1991. There has been no going back since then. Democracy is on the roll. But where it is rolling to?

I personally consider leaders as the products of their times. Individuals rise to the demands of their times, deliver and fade away after doing their bit, passing on the baton to the new leaders to solve the new challenges posed by the new times. Ten years is a good time for any leader. It can be stretched to fifteen, but after that, it is all about sticking to the position and solving things rather than inspiring and leading. 

It has happened world over and is now a proven pattern. When a great leader is ruling, another great leader is in the making in the crucible of changing time from a lot of many. And if this is not so, there is a problem. These leaders will rise from the society, from the communities in the society, and the families in the community. Leaders coming from broken families will not be able to hold people together. 

India is a pluralistic society, a very vast nation, and has a wide spectrum of political thoughts. All thoughts – left, center and right are gloriously present. In the history of independent India, we always took a center position – mixed economy – and swung to the left initially to socialism and off late, to the right towards capitalism. The nation today faces some serious questions: what is to be done with the vast public sector industry, which is inefficient, badly managed and a drain on the overall economy rather than being an engine to take it forward? Can the private sector be trusted to safeguard the interests of employees and the people of India, specially the farmers, artisans, shopkeepers, laborers and service providers in the informal sector, and the vendors on the roads?

The rise of the BJP is as phenomenal as the fall of Congress is spectacular. The Left is mostly absent in our legislative bodies but very much alive and active on the ground, and in the minds of the people. The caste-based parties still exist, and family-centric parties have not gone away either. British political scientist and historian Archie Brown (b. 1938) in his book The Myth of the Strong Leader, published in 2014 and revised in 2018 writes, “strong leaders often propagate a myth that obscures their weakness while putatively weak leaders may leverage hidden strength to accomplish great ends.”

It is time that all the political parties of India, which are required for the good of our nation, groom their new leadership. It is a pity that no inner party democracy is functional in most of the political parties of this democratic nation. If this is not changed, those parties will fade away with time. And it is incorrect to find this leadership in universities because they are already conditioned by politics and there is nothing new there. New India needs new leaders coming from its working people, entrepreneurs, strugglers, inclusive in their hearts and tolerant in their minds. 

And finally, the spirit of service is the key. Most of the young leaders are already arrogant, flashy in their styles and aggressive in their tones. Democracy does not like such leaders; it packs them off on the first opportunity, even if they manage to rise and hold on to power. Democracy is a system. It rests on its institutions. The institutions can be both great enablers and constraints for their leaders. A leader can’t cherry pick them in a democracy. Let us not allow our institutions to be compromised. New leaders must learn the art of working with them and not against them. 

It starts with the family. Does the family respect its aging and non-earning elders, give equal rights to the female spouse and the female child, treat the maid with dignity, give the children a balanced childhood, and earn its living without corrupt means? It is stupid to keep flaunting the Vaisudhiava Kutumbakam heritage of Indian civilization and seeing our family system disintegrate, driven by the arrogance of new wealth (or the frustration of its absence) and addictions amongst young people. 

Let us give to the world a robust and exemplary democracy, starting with democratically enabled and flourishing families. Let us lead our lives with purity of the heart and the mind and not follow the herd and advertisements. Failure to do this shall turn us into fodder for the global consumer machine in full run to devour our present and future as well. 

Until a few years ago, it was called fog, when the cold moisture hung in the air reducing visibility. Flight and train delays in the morning time were the norm. Then as pollution worsened, it was not simple fog anymore, but also suspended solid particles in the air trapped in the moisture of the dense cold air all the time. So, it is nowcalled smog and for the last few years, it has become an annual season of outcry and commotion during the winter months. 

When there is a problem and that too a regular and chronic one, a wise way to deal with it is to go to its roots and remove it. Crop burning, after the harvest, in nearby areas brings smoke to Delhi and the neighboring densely populated cities like Ghaziabad. Diwali celebration with firecrackers also adds its own pollution. Particulate levels go beyond 20 times higher than the maximum recommended by the World Health Organization as safe.

This year, the situation has been worse than earlier. Millions of people have started their day choking through ‘eye-burning’ smog. Restrictions on the number of private vehicles on Delhi roads amid an air pollution crisis led to angry fights. Pollution levels are so high that schools have been shut, and a public emergency declared as experts say the air in New Delhi is similar to smoking up to 50 cigarettes a day!

This is outer pollution. But what about the inner pollution? What about the heedless development of cities, the unmanageable number of vehicles on roads and air conditioners in almost every house throwing out toxic exhausts into public air, and perennial construction activity under the booming real estate sector? What is expected of the farmers in Haryana and Punjab if not burning Parali, the local word for dry plant residual, to prepare the field for the next crop? For how long are our national scientific and industrial research laboratories going to stare at burning of agro waste instead of solving the problem by bio -digesting it and producing useful fuels and products?

The outer pollution is creating a social crisis. Three most conspicuous indicators of this crisis are: (1) respiratory diseases amongst children and early onset of cancers in adults; (2) crowded cities as increasing number of people are leaving villages as agriculture remains a no-profit enterprise; and (3) rampant hedonism among people who have tasted new wealth, the unmanageable number of cars on roads, air conditioners in every middleclass home and commercial buildings. There is rage on the roads and drug and alcohol abuse in breaking families. 

Long ago, Dr S Radhakrishnan (1888-1975), the Vice Chancellor of BHU for 10 years and later, theVice President and President of India, had observed,“The historic destinies of people cannot be dismissed so lightly. British rule is a much deeper phenomenon, reflecting the serious organic defects of Indian society. It is the outward symptom of an inward crisis, of loss of faith, of the hideous weakening of our moral life, our indiscipline and disunion, our violence and vulgarity.”

It is not that there has been no effort. Numerous legal, regulatory and institutional measures have been initiated, and schemes implemented since early 1980s. However, it is the inner pollution – the arrogance of new wealth, the desperation of migrants, and systemic pollution by industries – that no government couldever control till date and neither is it likely to happen in the future.

Public offices are occupied through a complex process wherein all compromises have already been made. When the city booms, it digests every natural resource – forests, hills, surface water bodies – that can reduce the spatial spread and distribution of pollution. Delhi’s Ghazipur garbage dump is just few meters lower than that of the Qutub Minar and is rising. Mumbai’s Deonar dumping ground is so big that it can accommodate 300 football fields. It rises like a 20-floor building!

It appears improbable for any government to control or regulate the pollution-producing factors in any real sense. There will be speeches, demonstrations, declarations, and assertions, like there have been for the past many years and again, we will be discussing Diwali crackers, Parali and odd-even regulation of cars. When outward problems are continuously tolerated and accepted, they become inward defects of the body and soul.

Why don’t we start by shifting the massive government apparatus out of Delhi to a new location, more efficient and secure, like in the case of Washington DC in the United States? The same logic holds valid for spreading out financial institutions and the film industry in Mumbai and IT companies in Bangalore. Urbanization as it happened so far has created more problems than solutions. Growth has to be both equitable and comprehensive, not only in one direction and not only for some sections of society at the cost of the rest of the people. How can we be ‘New India’ without sorting out our old problems?