Aloke Kumar's Blog

Art, Science and Dharma- The Indic triad of education The most strident criticism of the Indian education system is that it stifles creativity and bores the students to death through rote learning. One tech guru even went public so far as to say that Indian culture lacks creativity [1]. In private, the criticisms are even harsher. This issue is recognized by several educators and industry leaders and unless it is stemmed, it will become a roadblock for growth and prosperity of Bharat. This is not a mere academic coffee table issue or fervid paranoia. Lack of creative juices can not only stifle long term growth but also imperil the long-term dividends of important strategic initiatives such as ‘Make in India’. Without inculcating creativity, India’s demographic dividend will soon turn into a deadwood nightmare. A perfect trap of stagnation. In fact, few countries have managed to get out of the vice-like grip of long-term growth loss before fully reaching their potential. For a ci...

Jugaadism – An Infantile Disorder Neils Bohr once said that prediction is difficult, especially if it is about the future. Yet, engineers, generals, planners and ruling classes are expected to predicate their actions based on calculated expectations of the future. Jugaad hinders this process in many ways and threatens to make our society a collective myopic failure. It should not be admired and we must not descend into the culture of jugaadism 1 . Like many seductive, but ultimately disastrous, isms of the last century it needs to be buried into an unmarked grave. Jugaad is a neologism arising from the indic ‘to gather’. When the bar is set low, even gathering ingredients is fait accompli . In touting it as a laudable achievement, we not only hold ourselves back from the final finished product but, more dangerously, the very process of seeking the solution. It is the seeking, the manthan ( मंथन ; churning) , that is the backbone of irreversible positive development in a suc...

Assassinating Jugaad: The case for rigor - I Last fall the colloquial Hindi term   jugaad  was included in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) update - an event that was widely celebrated 1 . But, what does  jugaad  truly mean? The OED defines  jugaad  as "a flexible approach to problem-solving that uses limited resources in an innovative way" and it is this conflation of  jugaad  with 'innovation' that has brought the term into popular use. Wikipedia states that "Jugaad is increasingly accepted as a management technique and is recognized all over the world as an acceptable form of frugal engineering at peak in India”. So today, jugaad is much like the two faced Roman god Janus, where one face symbolizes a struggle against adversity, while the other symbolizes ‘frugal innovation’. India’s souls yearns to be a  jagat-guru  once again, and it has embraced the concept of ‘ jugaad ’ with open arms. But,  jugaad  is al...

Should Dharmic Fiction get married to Science Fiction? Second essay of a series. Read first essay here. Have you seen the latest Star Wars movie - The Last Jedi? Do you remember the scene, when Luke Skywalker explains to Rey what the 'Force' is? Rey realizes that the 'Force' is an energy field that exists between all living things; it also exists within her and that through meditation she can learn to unleash and control the Force. Did a part of you recognize the old wine of Vedanta in a new bottle? I did. When I discovered the movie’s premiere showing earned $45 million US, I could not help but feel that themes such as these should be basic precepts of India’s movie industry. Yet, it is not so. Is it because of our inexperience in the art of story-telling? Obviously not. Many Indian movies can shine as bright as any other on this front. Where we are lagging behind is in story-lines that involve futuristic/technological themes. Hollywood movies such as Matrix, ...

Our recent Cover Art in Soft Matter I am not a worshiper of Large-N . Large-N worshipers refers to those   scientists who believe that scientific output is proportional to the number of published manuscripts, Hence their ambition is simply to publish as many papers as possible.  As an experimental research group, we believe   experimental repeatability and robustness   are sacred cornerstones of research. In this yagna 1 of research, we believe that our tapasya 2 cannot be measured by the quantity of publications, but rather by the quality of our manuscripts. So, as 2017 draws to a close, let me tell you the story of our only peer-reviewed manuscript published this year. Our research group works at the intersection of physical and biological sciences, and over the last few years we have concentrated significant research effort on a class of biophysical problems related to bacteria. As you may already be aware, bacteria represent one of the most an...