Corruption: What is different now.

Corruption reporting and handling has changed in India, I think for good. Do not despair at all the finger pointing and large scale corruption or scams.

Back to the Future: 1982
We had Doordarshan, a government run TV station that provided news and reports in Hindi and English at the national level. At the regional levels, some of the major cities, had their own regional Doordarshan. For rest of the country they relied on the National Doordarshan. And of course, plenty of radio stations at the regional levels.

We had national and regional newspapers in Hindi, English and regional languages. As far as periodicals, we had a few major weeklies, monthlies and bi-monthlies.


The aam admi in 1982, never was that gullible to believe the leaders and politicians were not involved in corruption. People bribed officials at all levels to get their work done - because bribery was the system. What is fees in the West, is bribes in India. Everybody knew corruption and scams existed. Even getting a gas cylinder or telephone connection required bribing somebody. Forget the issues at ration shops, RTA, banks etc etc. An 1982 citizen would have laughed at anybody who proclaimed there was no corruption or scams in India.

Back to the present: 2012
We have countless private TV & radio stations; and the reliance on Doordarshan keeps climbing down. While newspapers and magazines have consolidated or split at various levels, we have more 'foreign' money flowing into these with their own agenda and priorities.


While the numbers in 2012 is astonishing, as one scratches the head to just get the right number of zeroes in these lakhs of crores, it is not troubling from one perspective. The numbers are large, because the liberalized India has ushered in progress and economic prosperity. Rise in middle class, FDIs and inflation takes these numbers to Himalayan proportions. I say 'Big Deal'. Hey my underwear now is larger than what I wore when I was a toddler. Size is directly proportional to growth :-)

The biggest change is that we have the internet, mobile communications and social media. Any report of corruption in even a remote corner of the country, has the ability to become a national frenzy. Valid regional concerns become national concerns and sensation. People sit up and notice, then talk about it. We were never shy of waxing eloquent. But, changes happen only when people talk.

In 1982, people talked about the corruption while buying vegetables, in buses, in trains and at work. Now they can discuss this on live media, watched by lakhs. They can ramp up the amp by just using 140 words, sitting on their easy-chairs. All these have the ability to bring people down to the streets. There will be mobs and flashes in the pan, however changes take time - unless one desires violent and radical changes in a short duration.

The system is fighting these new forms of communication. I believe, these modern age tools will usher in more reporting of scams, more discussions resulting in better citizenry and country. A well informed people and churned ideas are necessary for a stable and strong democracy. India is marching on the right track.

On the flip side, humans have their biases and prejudices; and it becomes easy to make a mountain out of a mole hill. It would take good journalism to understand if protests are being carried out at the behests of 'foreign' powers, business men or simple politics. The aam admi does not have the time to dissect the causes. There in lies the challenge for Indians to ensure these mediums are not used to control and arm-twist them.

Predicting 2062

IEEE, the flagship body of professional electrical engineering societies, has run a recent edition in the Proceedings on predicting the technological trends in 2062 to commemorate its 100th anniversary celebrations. I spent much of the day trying to glean insights from custodians of the society on the various aspects of electrical engineering and where they will stand in the near- to far-future. With the caveat that "anyone trying to wish to predict the future will surely only make a joke(r) of oneself," it was indeed a brave attempt by many folks to predict the future. Sadly, I saw a lot of self tom-tomming in these future predictions as well as equations (!) and technical definitions. Of course, that did nt impress me much.

Now noone is going to ask a nobody such as me on what the trends would be/could be. Nevertheless, there is ample space in this world for nobodies to divine the future, even if they are laughably insane. With the further caveat that technology minus sociology is arrant nonsense, here we go:
1) Ability to communicate a very complex range of thoughts, ideas and emotions without an active effort such as talking, writing, etc., and the consequent near-vestigeality of many human body parts.
2) A telecommunications landscape that is a patchwork of fixes and solutions with legacy solutions of different eras hugging the terrain with whatever jargon fancies the engineers that day and age. Signal processing solutions that closely mimic the DNA and evolution-based ideas minus the blackboxes of the neural kind. More sophisticated use of chaotic/unreliable parts to make a reliable whole that somehow magically aids the crossing of technical barriers and stumbling blocks.
3) Information that scales at an astronomical rate, yet the near-easy ability to keep up with this scaling although a near-soporific nature on the part of people to keep up. Part of the solution to conquering this seemingly indomitable barrier is to detect and identify data replication and redundancies at multiple levels.

4) A single universal device core with many components that are exclusively used under different circumstances with easily upgradeable/replaceable/removable resources/parts. A back to the past journey where one man/woman is defined by one device rather than a gazillion.
5) Increased use of higher dimensional lifts to solve lower dimensional problems because elegance is not necessary when brute shall suffice. Increased use of high overheads in multiple engineering solutions leading to an exasperation on the inefficiencies that define the feasible solution space.
6) A very complicated and diverse ecosystem of people with gaps between any-capability haves and the capability have-nots reaching astronomical highs. Almost all the information sources of all the eras can be searched in a jiffy, but the affordability of the price tag for this capability will define the class warfare of tomorrow.

7) Solutions that are individualized -- health, devices, education, food and services -- at ever-more affordable prices, yet a very fundamental and indivisible dichotomy that creates, builds and sustains strife on a low- and medium-intensity scale. Abandoned classrooms and lecture halls as common education is correlated with more strife resulting in individualized care.
8) The ongoing war for resources supplanted by theories of optimal utilization of resources. Fundamental dichotomies of greed at the small scale and lack of greed at the large scale explained by newly developed theories of irrational player game and self-contradictory games.
9) Quantitative scientific methods in almost every field studied hitherto qualitatively leading to sociological twists/lessons that sweep through the world quickly. A cat and mouse game between spread of information and prevention of its misuse.