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.

On October 15, 2022, the nation observed the 91^st birth anniversary of Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam (1931-2015). I was invited by BharatTech Foundation, primarily a group of overseas engineers of Indian origin, but also with a good base within the country, to give the keynote address. Sridhar Vembu (b. 1968), the CEO of Zoho Corporation, presided on this online event attended by more than 100 participants. 

I spoke on India@100, as if to extrapolate on Dr. Kalam’s vision of “India 2020” as a developed country. To achieve this vision, Dr. Kalam had identified in 1996, five sectors, namely, 1. Agriculture and food processing; 2. Education and healthcare; 3. Information and communication technology; 4. Infrastructure development; and 5. Self-reliance in critical technologies. Later, in 2001, he added PURA – Provision of Urban Amenities to Rural Areas.  

Dr. Kalam showed the right path for the nation, and it was spontaneously pursued. I feel we have done well on all fronts, but more is needed on the education and healthcare front. We need modern education for children at the bottom of the societal pyramid and a National Medical System backed by a world-class medical college in every district.  We also need urgent judiciary reforms to clear the backlog of petty cases, and to mitigate litigation using modern technologies such as AI, public blockchain-based contracts, and consensus-based justice delivery.

The tribal and poor have endured centuries of injustice. Natural resources – forests, mines, rivers, and so on – belong to them. India can never become a developed country without restoring the ownership of its resources to where it belongs. Emerging technologies have made it possible to enforce tamper-proof land records and financial transactions. These technologies must not be a cause of fear but must be mastered and embraced. If there is one way for India to become a Vishwa Guru, it is this road.

When I contemplated on “India@100,” which is in the next 25 years from now, I visualized technology already having taken a grip of world affairs. Futurist Raymond Kurzweil (b. 1948) predicts Technological Singularity running the world by 2045. The world is entwined with the Internet, money is moving around across national boundaries, and system science takes us to wider bands of focus that define and constrain our place in the world. It would be a pity of the gravest order if the 1.5 billion Indians are treated by this New Force as passive spectators rather than stakeholders. It is rather imperative that India@100: 

1. Leads the world in climate change mitigation and allied technologies

2. Achieves energy-independence through thorium-based nuclear power generation

3. Becomes a high-tech manufacturing hub and R&D powerhouse 

4. Facilitates the South Asia Union of “One Visa-One Market-One Currency”

5. Emerges out of the ambivalence about its cultural heritage

Dr. Homi J Bhabha (1909-1966) presented a uniquely Indian three-stage nuclear power program based on a closed nuclear fuel cycle. The three stages are: Natural uranium-fueled pressurized heavy-water reactors (PHWRs); fast breeder reactors (FBRs) utilizing plutonium with depleted uranium from the first stage; and advanced nuclear power systems for the utilization of thorium, available in abundance in India. This ought to be done.

India is importing to the order of 50 million tons of petroleum products every year. There is a worrisome four-fifth of import dependence for crude oil and almost half for natural gas. India spent over 12 trillion rupees in the financial year 2022 buying oil and gas. This situation is like a hole in the boat. The remarkable progress made by the Indian economy has been perniciously burdened by this dependency. There is almost a revolution on the roll in new and renewable energy but unless this import is mitigated, nothing will suffice. There is a need to secure ownership of oil fields across the globe. A long-term treaty with Russia on this seems to be a realistic solution. 

Investing in clean technologies such as hydrogen fuel cells is not only imperative, but a commitment for India to meet the target of net zero carbon emissions by 2070, and that transition and R&D should be happening now, if not yesterday. We cannot keep importing new technology into our economy incurring enormous costs and time lag; rather, we must leap-frog and lead this technology shift.

A format of 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) to transform our world is in place from the United Nations. There are two imperatives before the countries in South-East Asia – starting from Afghanistan in the west to Indonesia in the east – to become a union of One Visa-One Market-One Currency and become a trade bloc with the rest of the world. The entire region had enjoyed Indic culture in the ancient times and there is an innate similarity in the way people think and feel in this region. Why must there be boundaries between similar people? The unreasonableness must be negotiated or eliminated.  

For the five initiatives to become a force multiplier, the country requires positive energy in the society. Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) articulated it as Chitto Jetha Bhayshunyo, where every mind is without fear and every head is held high. Vested interests in the West and their funded agencies inside the country have successfully created a doom and gloom scenario in the Indian society.  

We must learn to first take pride in ourselves, celebrate our marvelous architecture, yoga, indigenous medicine, and healing practices. We must revamp our education system to teach children to take pride in the Indic civilization and prepare them to defend ourselves with valid, scientific, and documented evidence against any Western mockery. We must create a society where religion and caste become private details and value addition to society becomes a competitive concept. 

But what is even more important and urgent is a change of mindset from within. People must qualify to become the citizens of a developed country. This is not some appellate that would come from outside. Each person must prepare and contribute in this. There are no entitlements, but responsibilities that must be accepted and discharged. 

The three divine foundations of Dr. Kalam’s life were imagination, piousness, and faith in God. These three modes of living or qualities drove his conviction of making India a developed country by 2020. It is time to embrace these three qualities and dedicate our lives to making India@100 a developed nation, where every mind is without fear and every head is held high. The time starts now!

Confusing the temporary with the permanent, happiness with pleasure, continuing to search for vague things rather than appreciating what has already been given, and trying to change conditions instead of changing oneself, almost always lead to suffering. There are always signs and signals provided by the higher intelligence of the world to avoid this confusion. Sometimes such cues are received but mostly ignored, and when reality bites, it hurts. Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, under whose tutelage I matured, was very sensitive to such signals, and promptly adjusted his life to the rise and fall of fortunes. In hindsight, I feel that he was even aware of his departure from this world when he wrote in our book, Transcendence, released a month prior to his death, “No maneuvers are required any more, as I am placed in my final position in eternity.” 

It was a sacred moment, when I met the “founding father of the Republic of Zambia” and “Gandhi of Africa,” Dr. Kenneth Kaunda (1924 –2021) on November 30, 2018, in his house on the outskirts of Lusaka. A heavily built man but frail in his mid-nineties, Dr. Kaunda stood up from his seat, raised his hand, carrying his signature white handkerchief, to my head, and murmured a prayer of blessing. I instantly knew that it was one of those times, when a phase ends and another starts, like the summer solstice, when sun moves farthest to the north in the sky and then start returning from the very next day, or the point of contraflexure, when the bending moment changes direction in a beam, or allotropic transformations in metallurgy, when a metal changes from one of these crystalline structures to another while remaining solid.

Besides Zambia, this tour of Africa included Kenya, Ethiopia, and Uganda, and turned out to be my last international travel. I had a cardiac complication in February 2019 and after that, stopped traveling altogether. I adjusted myself to a home-confined life with structured reading and diving deep into books that I would not have dared to earlier, like Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil’s Aeneid, Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and the ultimate novel ever written by anyone, Les Misérables by Victor Hugo. Excellent English translations are available for all these books and can be accessed on the Internet even without buying the books. And then I realized the truth that we all are basically minds, mistaking ourselves as bodies. And at the mental level, we can connect to even those who have lived before us in faraway lands. 

Recently, I enjoyed reading a short, beautiful book, Search Inside Yourself by Chade Meng-Tan (b. 1971) and his talks on YouTube. Meng, as he is normally called, is a software engineer, born and educated in Singapore, and worked at the Google campus in Mountain View, California (2000-2015), spending the first eight years in Engineering and later starting “mindfulness training” courses at the company. After quitting Google, Meng started the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute, and a movement called One Billion Acts of Peace. There is nothing new Meng is presenting, but his take on the traditional Buddhist technique of mindfulness is scientific, and the way he blended it with the famous concept of Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman (b. 1946) is both, brilliant and practically useful. 

Meng defines “mindfulness” as paying attention to the basic fact that you are alive by feeling your breath – the air going in and coming out. This is not as simple as it sounds. Thoughts arise in the mind, the body distracts us by itches, muscular twists, and even the sensation of pain here and there. Meng tells us to return to keep feeling the breath, ignoring these interruptions, and keep expanding these “mindful of breathing” spells by practice. Meng writes in the aforementioned book, “The good news is that mindfulness is embarrassingly easy… the hard part in mindful practice is deepening, strengthening, and sustaining it, especially in times of difficulty… All you have to do is sit without an agenda for two minutes. Life really cannot get much simpler than that. The idea here is to shift from “doing” to “being,” whatever that means to you, for just two minutes. Just be.”

Meng kept the book simple – no complicated terms, or jargons – but included simple examples that anyone could relate to. Meng compares meditation with exercise. “When you are weight training, every time you flex your biceps in resistance to the weight of dumbbells, your bicep muscles grow a little bit stronger. The same process happens during meditation. Every time your attention wanders away from your breath, and you bring it back, it is like flexing your biceps—your “muscle” of attention grows a bit stronger.”

After enhancing the attention on our breath, or rather, bringing it back to our breath when it wanders, Meng asks us to extend it into every part of our life. Meng quotes William James, the father of modern psychology, “And the faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention over and over again is the very root of judgement, character, and will.  No one is compos sui if he have it not. An education which should improve this faculty would be the education par excellence.”

Meng now integrates the emotional competency concept of Daniel Goleman. Once you start living in mindfulness, you become more aware of yourself. Three emotional competencies are cited – to be aware of your emotions, knowing your strengths and limits, and a sense of your self-worth and capabilities. Meng writes, “Eventually, we reach a point where we are comfortable in our skins. There are no skeletons in our closets we do not already know about. There is nothing about ourselves we cannot deal with. This is the basis of self-confidence.” 

Meng compares mind and mindfulness with a pole and the flag hoisted upon it. Meng writes, “In the presence of strong emotions, the mind may be turbulent like a flag fluttering in the wind. The flagpole represents mindfulness — it keeps the mind steady and grounded despite all that emotional movement. This stability is what allows us to view ourselves with third-person objectivity.” 

My favorite part in the book is where Meng writes, “Thoughts and emotions are like clouds — some beautiful, some dark — while our core being is like the sky. Clouds are not the sky; they are phenomena in the sky that come and go. Similarly, thoughts and emotions are not who we are; they are simply phenomena in the mind and body that come and go. Possessing this insight, one creates the possibility of change within oneself.”  

And what is that change? Allow life to live through you, instated of trying to waste your life in trying to manipulate it. Meng closes the book with a poem.

With deep inner peace,
And great compassion,
Aspire daily to save the world,
But do not strive to achieve it.
Just do whatever comes naturally.
Because when aspiration is strong
And compassion blossoms,
Whatever comes most naturally,
Is also the right thing to do.

I traveled when opportunities presented themselves, taking me to distant places and meeting great human beings. When my cardiac situation halted it, I replaced traveling with reading books, not disturbing my meeting with great minds. In addition to traveling to faraway places, through books, I can even visit the past and dive into the future.  

Worldview and self-view are the two poles between which the mind oscillates. What these poles mean to an individual is of vital importance. The difficulty is that these poles evolve throughout life – they initially develop and then grow, depending on the work and the people around, and eventually become fixed, so much so that people become restricted and even dysfunctional in their lives. I share here my worldview and self-view – what these are and how they were formed, with the hope that it triggers you to articulate yours. =

I will start with the worldview. It starts with chauvinism. Every child is a prince/ princess. The ego is the axis around which everything else must revolve. Children in poor families learn coping and adaptation a little earlier than those who are born in affluent families. But many people, rich and poor, never learn to deal with reality and live deluded lives, trying to change things and the people around them as per their likes and dislikes, wasting almost their entire life force in vain. Most addictions are rooted in this false sense of importance that people give to themselves.

I was born in the inner city of Meerut, the new world for the “old city.” I was the first child of my parents, with a doting paternal grandmother in addition. Even my maternal grandmother and her sister were kind to me, and I grew up as a pampered child. My illusions started breaking as I went to school. I was bad at sports – even the normal hand-eye coordination required to hit pebbles on target and fly kites was missing. I learnt cycling post high school, more out of shame than any enthusiasm. 

Academically, I excelled. Studying in the Hindi medium, I cleared every class in the “first division,” which meant 60% marks in the 1960s. I got admission to Engineering on merit, but my handicap of not studying in the English medium burst in my face without delay and with full force. My first year was more of a survival – I was quick to learn subjects, but spelling mistakes would mar my answer sheets like food stains on a tablecloth. It was only in Machine Drawing that I could secure my first ‘A’ Grade, because there was no language involved. I captured the first and third angle views of objects without difficulty.

Determined to learn English, I started reading novels – my first one was The Vulture is a Patient Bird by James Hadley Chase. I bought a second-hand copy for two rupees. It took me more than a month to finish the 160-page book. I had to consult Bhargava’s English-to-Hindi-dictionary at least once every page. It was the story of a safe-breaker, a beautiful lady, an expert young hunter, and an ace pilot with a shady past, who formed a team to steal a priceless antique ring from a millionaire’s closely guarded fortress in a remote place in Africa. 

As the story built up, my need to consult the dictionary came down. New words started looking familiar as the events unfolded. The team succeeded in stealing the ring, but three members died one by one, as the millionaire had laced it with poison. Whoever wore the ring, died. By the time I read The Godfather written by Mario Puzo, a year later, I replaced the English-to-Hindi dictionary with a Merriam-Webster English-to-English one, sold by the University library at a 50% subsidy.  

After graduating in mechanical engineering, I was hired as a Teaching Associate with an option to do Masters. I consider those the golden years of my life. I had a 1 BHK house given by the university, rode a bicycle, and spent a minimum of three hours in the sprawling university library. There was some esoteric attraction in the form of the books in the Humanities section and I would read about ancient Greek and later, Western philosophy for no rhyme or reason. As soon as I completed my Masters, I got selected to work in the DRDO and relocated to Hyderabad. 

I was fascinated by the large corridors of the Missile Laboratory where I was posted. The fortress-like gates, security guards, the pomp of the Military rank-holding officers moving around, and heavy-duty armoured vehicles, some of them with wheels as big as my height, were surreal. But I was not intimidated. I could speak English fluently and with a natural flavour of wit and sarcasm that I never knew when and from where I acquired. Maybe it was latent and finally manifested? I used to speak my mind, not very common for Junior Officers. I was spotted by Dr. A.P.J. Kalam, the director there, perhaps for that. 

He assigned me the task of developing a titanium air bottle for a surface-to-air missile. During this work, I interacted with metallurgists, visited the Bharat Heavy Plate and Vessels Limited in Visakhapatnam, the IIT, Madras, and finally, in August 1985, the Aérospatiale in France. This was my first air travel. One week in France, visiting Paris, Clermont-Ferrand, and Bordeaux, opened my mind. No one spoke English there. French people speak French and excel in their lives in every aspect without any difficulty, or rather, with ease. Later, when I went to China, Japan, Kyrgyzstan, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland and Italy, no one spoke English there either. 

So, I learnt that, in the world, strength respects strength. And all strong people, or nations, are proud of their language. Our biggest handicap is our disrespect for our mother tongue. Because English gives people a ticket to success in India, it is seen as a mark of superiority. In some families, parents converse with their children in English. The tragedy is that even the best education in English will not make you think in English, articulate feelings, and thoughts, and capture your intuitions. Your DNA will communicate to you through your flesh and impulses using the mother tongue and not in English. So, this is a tragedy of modern India that we think, feel and work in different languages while discarding our mother tongue, more out of necessity.     

The purpose of life is expanding your consciousness. Reading books and traveling play a very important role in this regard. Some fortunate people have mentors in their lives. I had Dr. Kalam mentoring me and consider it as my biggest blessing. Know yourself as your DNA. Live in sync with the environment around you, and eat food that is fresh, simple, and inexpensive. All exotic food that reaches you through long supply chains, processed with preservatives is, indeed, an assault on your autoimmune system. Oily and spicy food colour your temperament. And above all have an open-mind. 

The German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), famously wrote in The Critique of Practical Reason these words, also engraved in German on his tombstone, “Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.” Let your mind be anchored to the idea of your divine essence inside and your connection with the immense universe outside. Keep using your mother tongue as much as possible and read its literature, for it would resonate with the experiences of your ancestors embedded in your DNA. And be mindful that life is not about thinking alone; life is about feeling. Feel life and respond to the tasks it assigns to you and it will guide you to glory! That is what enlightenment is, if such a word must be there. 

Every decade has its own flavour. When I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, poverty and mismanagement were accepted as the norm. I spent many hours standing in queue at ration shops, which would not open regularly, and their operators blatantly sold sugar and wheat in the black market. Ballot boxes were “looted” in the elections, news about dacoit gangs striking towns and villages were common, and movies were made about the lives of smugglers. India was seen as a backward and laggard nation.  

Things struck rock bottom in July 1991, when India was forced to mortgage 46.91 tonnes of gold with the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan to raise just $ 400 million. The false pride of a Sone ki Chidiya burst in its face! Although different leaders got the credit for what was called economic liberalization, the truth was that the Indian economy was forced open by the World Bank and the IMF, for foreign entities to operate in Indian markets. The rupee was devalued. Markets were flooded with imported TVs, refrigerators and cars, and the middle class rejoiced.  

The share market boomed. But it also unleashed large-scale corruption. New words like “scam” entered the lexicon. Over the years, while the rich became richer, the spirit of philanthropy evaporated. Privatization of health and education eclipsed charitable hospitals and colleges, earlier a hallmark of Indian society. The policy of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) was created as a fig leaf to hide the nakedness of profiteering. But even this was misused for tax evasion more than it was used for doing good on the ground. The “India Shining” campaign was rejected by people. The neo-rich and corporate honchos were not trusted by the people. There was uneasiness amongst the poor. 

Things were not good at the global level too. American companies were rushing to China to manufacture their goods at lower costs and abandoning their factories and firing their own workers. The term, ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance), was popularly used first in a 2004 report titled, Who Cares Wins: Connecting Financial Markets to a Changing World, which was a joint initiative of financial institutions at the invitation of the then United Nations Secretary-General, Ghanaian diplomat Kofi Annan. Eighteen financial institutions from nine countries, with total assets under management of over 6 trillion USD participated in developing this report.

Since then, the idea gained traction that the way that environmental, social, and corporate governance issues are managed, is part of companies’ overall management quality, and needed to compete successfully in a more globalized, interconnected, and competitive world. More importantly, a consensus was created for financial institutions to commit to integrating environmental, social and governance factors in investment processes. Someone must pay for the collective good of humanity and the wealth generators themselves would be the best people to make it a part of wealth creation. 

As the idea built up, a variety of organizations and financial institutions devised ways to measure the extent to which a specific corporation was aligned to ESG goals. In what was nothing short of a miracle, ESG turned out to be a great success. So much so, that in 2015, the United Nations (UN) adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a worldwide call to action to eradicate poverty, protect the planet and improve the lives and prospects of everyone, everywhere. A 15-year plan was made to achieve the goals.

The SDGs are universal and thus, apply to the entire world – developed and developing countries alike. They are integrated and indivisible, calling for coherent and integrated solutions and multi-stakeholder partnerships to address the complex development challenges we face. And they call for systematically and explicitly reducing inequality and focusing on those left behind on the path to sustainable development. Everyone in the world is now aware of the top three SDG priorities of no poverty, zero hunger, and good health and wellbeing.

Gradually, an awareness swept across the corporate world. Why not align the new investments to the SDGs? Why not refine HR policies so as to achieve human resource development, rather than mere management? A small army of business executives worked on Agenda 2030, deciphering the fundamental importance of reliable, timely and disaggregated data and statistics. India joined the mainstream and much of the country’s National Development Agenda is mirrored in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Dr. Nirav Mandir, the young chief of HR at Shree Ramkrishna Exports (SRK), Surat, a diamond business house with an annual turnover of more than a billion dollars and employing more than 6000 people, was amongst the first in India to embrace the SDGs into their management.  As if prodded by the hand of Providence, when the SRK leader, Govind Bhai Dholakia, decided to create the new building of his company, Nirav was tasked to pursue the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification for green buildings. 

Nirav blended into this assignment that spread over six years, awareness creation about sustainability, not merely as a building standard, but as a way of life. Very active in HR parlance, he mobilized his peers in measuring progress achieved and making decisions supporting the SDGs that were based on evidence, without which change remains superficial and temporary. Fully supported by Govind Bhai, and mentored by Mahesh Ramanujam, the Indian-origin CEO of the U.S. Green Building Council, Nirav developed a unique model of HR policies in the company transcending the workplace, where “free from addiction” is a norm and families are invited in business success celebrations. 

Govind Bhai writes in his autobiography, Diamonds are Forever And So Are Morals, “Nirav Mandir, looking after HR in our company led hundreds of employees to work tirelessly as the backbone of the green building movement where they found common ground was the belief that success in life and business is all about our willingness to reimagine the way we treat each other. We decided to go for Gold Rating certification, which implied 60-79 points earned on the ‘Green building’ criteria and became the pioneers in the Indian diamond industry in this regard. With further improvements, we would later achieve the highest Platinum Rating.”

I have always been an ESG enthusiast, even when this term was not articulated. In 1993, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam tasked me with developing civilian spinoffs of Defence technology, in what was, perhaps, the first example of channelling organizational resources for the larger good of people. The impact of this ideology was so transformative that I resigned from my secure job at DRDO to pursue interdisciplinary and multi-agency projects of societal importance. I might have missed out on some honours and rewards by stepping out of the might and glory of the missile world, but developing a low-cost coronary stent, or setting up telemedicine connectivity in the 1990s when even 2G telecom did not exist, was no less satisfying. 

I was recently going through the findings of a Gallup 2021 report – The Will of the Workplace for Environmental, Social and Governance. It mentions, “In September 2020, the World Economic Forum published a report with inputs from CEOs of 120 companies, in collaboration with the big-four accounting firms (Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC). The report outlines a path for creating consistent metrics and reporting for sustainable value creation. Based on four pillars — principles of governance, planet, people, and prosperity — the report presents 21 core metrics and 34 expanded metrics.”

So, no business can be just making profits anymore. It must also do social good. That is the trend and flavor of the present times. High-sounding words like charity and philanthropy have been replaced with heavy-duty terms like responsibility and commitment. Companies must invest in the larger good of making the lives of people a little better, preserving the environment, adopting cleaner energy, and supporting local over global commodities and products. I see in my lifetime, the beginning of a new era of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG). As such, ESG can’t be a popular name for the era, but as things change for the better, a catchy name like “humanization” will also appear. 

The world over, sighting dolphins is considered as a good omen and a great symbol of good luck. That capitalists will take care of the progress of humanity is more of a wish, rather than a reality on ground. I see ESG as a dolphin and dream of it with a rainbow for the progress of humanity. The proverbial dolphins have not yet jumped out of the waters to give a sighting; they are still in the seas.