The Manali Leh Meanderings

We just got back from an amazing, exhausting trip to the Manali-Ladakh region - endured AMS of some form, Priya was diagnosed with COvid after we returned, and now getting out of it,. Manasi had AMS (Acute mountain sickness for sure).

The logistics - We thought we would gracefully ascend from Manali to Leh - 7000 to 11000 ft by road and be all set, but about 6 hrs of that journey was at 15000 to 17500 ft.  Starkly beautiful - but enough to get you into AMS in-spite of the preventive medication and the 3 to 4 liters of water which each of us had - I was quite OK.  But oxygen levels for family ranged from 73 to 83 at 16500 ft and that had an impact.  We skipped other halts at 15000 feet and drove to Leh at 11400 ft and were all set.

The look and feel - compared to the early 2000's which was my first trip to Manali, one can clearly see signs of prosperity - tourism has had an impact But there is construction everywhere - roads 4 laned from Mandi to Manali, rocky faces blasted, tunnels bored, landslides as common as sink-holes in Bangalore  - can't imagine this being done to Western Ghats - the protection lobby is too strong here.  The microcosm which is India is still seen - a family in burkha enjoying dosas in a breakfast place near Chandigarh, a Gurudwara which is a universal halt, Hippies from Israel living a life of weed and austerity in Manali..  And the SUVs small and large that have colonized the mountains north of Manali - license plates from Kerala, karnataka, Tamil nadu, Maharashtra, Gujarat.. Interesting indeed.  Once one leaves Jispa - 11000 ft and continue to climb northwards - the traffic thins out - it is largely heavy duty Indian trucks - Leyland and Tata - multi-axled that manage 16 to 17000 feet braving the roads.  The dhabas enroute are a place for decent food, tea, even beds to sleep in - the rugged hospitality is so evident. Indians seem to be enjoying India in a way that was not quite common a decade or two ago.  The transition from Mandir to Monastery starts around Manali - by the time one reaches Lahaul and then on to Ladakh it is all Buddhism - a heritage which is lost to the vain unbridled commerce and uniformity in China.

Got a chance to visit many monasteries - masterpieces in terms of aesthetics, location, architecture and spiritual power perhaps.  But is it like the most intricate of pieces in Carnatic music - grasped by only a few - nodded off as must be good by the masses?  A Gurudwara that I visited surely has its mystic layers if one chooses to unpack it all - but in its form of practice it is so open and warm - interesting indeed to visit the patharwaala Gurudwara - a boulder that turned to sand when pushed towards Guru Nanak by a demon.

There is army everywhere once one enters the Ladakh valley - largely unobtrusive - no individual checks except for the RTOs. Among the sights and sounds - we visited the hall of fame museum in Leh - chronicling the various wars that the army had to fight - from 1947 to Kargil (2018-21 at Ladakh was yet to be featured).  Plenty of pride for sure - for the jawans who were hosting some of the show and tells - such as the Kargil recap - the enemy is Pakistan.  That there is a larger bear to the north has not quite sunk in.  Which is unfortunate - from two counts - all wars are unfortunate, and if an enemy to the west is synonymous with a group of people within India it is a big problem.  That said, defending the border in Himalayas is really arduous - and the conflicts over the last two decades are all too real.  China is too cynical a country to wage peace.  Pakistan and India will have an axe to grind for ever..  We are stuck with people from all parts of India defending these borders - the museum cafe was supposed to have Momos - there were Tamil soldiers who were manning the counters - sorry sir - Momos innum ready yaa illai - he replied, when I asked him in Tamil.

Ten minutes later we stop at a cute little restaurant.  The owner took the order and asked me to sit down while I waited for the Momos to be packed.  A group of young men and women were seated at the next table - a guitar being strummed while they sang.  The door opened and a group of women - some with head-scarfs,  others well dressed in western clothes - looked around and picked a table out in the open - my momos came.    Got into the car, went past the army cantonment to our very cute hotel.  Our taxi driver and friend Harnam was tipped handsomely - one of the best drivers I have seen - on road and off road - at the hotel a Mr. Abdul shook my hands and said he will drop us at the airport the next day.

A holiday was complete - In spite of our glorious treks - we had AMS.  The sights and sounds of Himalayas are too magnificent to be put in words.  A microcosm of India was enjoying the country and living in peace - while those protecting the borders do what they have to do to ensure that we remain this way.

Can we honour this in letter and spirit - respect and cherish what we have - and just live in peace.

I sign off with a quote from the Hall of Fame museum..

 "It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell." The message has a very deep meaning and conveys one of the most important lessons for mankind.

 

India’s  Imperatives vs Immediacy of Actions

 

India’s economic independence, after several scattered attempts, came to fruition in 1991.  While the trigger was India’s plunging forex reserves and impending default with IMF, the malaise was clear for many.  India’s socio-economic policies locked the poor into poverty and stifled the middles class from bettering themselves and generating surpluses for the country which could in turn more opportunities for the poor.  1991 changed much of that.  After the initial shock in the form of a depreciated rupee, and a spike in interest rates, as well as austerity measures, the policies to stoke the private sector began to bear fruit.  India began to see GDP growth rates approach 6 to 7% per annum through the 1990s.  The market for cars grew from 1 lakh (100,000) per year in 1990 to 1 million in 2000 and to 3.6 million by 2012.  Similar explosive growth was seen in the two-wheeler industry.  With cheaper cell phones, greater employment opportunities in the formal and informal sectors, widening of the social net through programs like MNREGA, more than 140 million people grew out of poverty.  The traditional bugbears for the upper middle class in the form grungy airports, poor shopping options, dirty public transport systems became history, with even Tier 2 towns having airconditioned shopping malls, modernization of most airports by 2010, and functioning of metro in several cities by 2015.  The question that was being asked at the cusp of the new decade in 2010 was whether India could break free from poverty within a generation.  With Tata Motors offering the Nano for One lakh, it looked like India was going to deliver for all – the poor to find their way out of poverty, the aspirational classes who could  stretch their wallets a bit and get a car and for the upper middle classes too.  The Lokpal movement in 2011 took on corruption and brought in new political players.  While a new leader who had been making waves since 2002 from Gujarat, apparently shaking off the communal baggage assumed centre stage in 2014, with the promise of governance and a laser like focus on economic growth.  With the foundations laid in 1991 for economic growth, and the surge from the 2000’s with dividends form liberalization, and  socio-economic programs, and the promise of governance in 2014, India could take off emerging as a nation without poverty and run-away economic growth.

 

The truth is that the promise of 2014 remains just a promise.  India’s vehicle sales in 2021 has slid back to the levels seen in 2014 (18.5 million in 2014 to 26 million in 2019 and back to 18.5 million in 2021).  The textile consumption in India peaked in 2015 and has started to slide down again.  India’s per capita GDP after having increased by 300% between 2000 and 2010 ($443 to $1358), has increased by only 40% from 2010 to 2020 ($1358 to $1912).  With plummeting interest rates for savings and deposits, and an unavoidable surge in fuel prices, stagnating wages, and disruptions to the economy from 2018, and most notably since 2020 due to COVID, India is getting stuck.  India went through a slow-down in growth (we still grew at 5% and not decline) in 2012 and 2013.  When India was faced with a growth blip the entire media was focused on the growth slow down – decision paralysis became a watchword, and the government quickly tried remedy the situation, with notable results.  Poor economic growth translates into poor Human Development Indices.  The HDI of states such as UP, MP, Bihar remains below several Sub-Saharan African counties such as Kenya, Ghana, or Gabon, today in 2022.  If one were to view India today from the promise of 2010, when it seemed to have learnt how to show rapid economic growth between 2000 and 2010 and poised to fix its governance issues from 2014 from a leader who could get things done, the truth is that India has not lived up to its promise.  The disruption caused by COVID to livelihoods, income, poverty levels is barely captured.  There are pressing reasons to fix the economy and ensure that the tens of millions of Indians are climbing up the economic ladder every year while providing continued growth and security to the middle- and upper-income groups. 

 

India is faced with this situation while it is negotiating some pressing challenges – both internal and external.  India’s biggest internal challenge apart from poverty, poor HDI of several states and growing inequality is combating climate change.    Emissions from developed nations such as USA and Europe have already started to drop.  India’s emissions per capita has gone up by 150% between 1990 and 2018 and continues to rise.  India’s emissions per square kilometre is higher than USA.  India is losing old growth forests to mining, power projects and highways, and getting increasingly replaced by monoculture plantations.  While India has correctly embarked on an aggressive capacity addition in the form of renewable energy, barely 13% of its energy comes from wind and solar.  India’s reliance of thermal power is nearly 70% and comprises of ageing power plants with outdated carbon inefficient technologies.  India is faced with extreme rainfall events and scorching summers, milder winters which can adversely impact its citizens.  India’s neighbourhood continues to remain hostile.  While India is well equipped to deal with Pakistan, the borders with China remain contentious .  The disparity between China and India in terms of economic might has widened over the last 6 years, which China’s economy being nearly 6 times larger in size of India compared to four times over a decade ago.  As recent world events have shown, such a status quo is hardly advisable, and India needs to double down on economic growth.

 

Given the gravity of challenges facing India, one would think that the country and its populace are focused towards facing the future with a laser like focus.  Unfortunately, the political parties, significant sections of the country and the media are utterly distracted.  The excessive focus on religio-cultural issues has skewed the debate in several parts of the country.  Kerala and Karnataka are in the frontline combating climate change in the form of extreme weather events that have hit the state three years in a row.  Portions of northern Karnataka are significantly underdeveloped compared to southern Karnataka.  States like UP have remained largely agrarian.  As a result of new rules on how bovine cattle are handled, a seamless rural economy has ben impacted, while stray cattle roam the streets and raid the farms.  With a per-capita income which is one third of that of Maharashtra,  and limited investments in manufacturing and services, UP could remain poor for years to come unless policies change. 

 

The government is making earnest attempts to propel the economy forward.  Its tax collection machinery is very efficient.  When the crude prices were low, the government refrained from passing the benefits to the common man; rather it used the resources to drive infrastructure spending and keeping the safety net for the poor in place.  The government needs to realize that the large infrastructure projects are not yielding the results anticipated.  Large corporates have been the only ones to benefit.  Economic policies would need to be reconfigured.  Ways need to be found to leave more spending power in the hands of the common man – starting with better minimum support prices and covering more crops under the MSP scheme.  Agro-waste needs to be converted into fuel and energy while rewarding the farmers more handsomely.  By allowing ethanol blends to rise to 20% at the fuel pumps and ensuring at least 20% of agro-waste ends as thermal power, the nett emissions footprint can be improved significantly, while enhancing rural incomes significantly.    The country recognizes that at least 33% needs to be under green cover.  Ecological restoration of degraded forests needs to become a government program.  These are unchartered territories.  The government needs to enlist NGOs and academia in ecological restoration efforts.  With over 50,000 square kilometres of degraded forests, and at least another 65000 square kilometres of agricultural lands lying fallow, the opportunities to green are tremendous.  If this is handed over to the forest department and corporates a golden opportunity to convert this into an economic opportunity would be lost.  Greening the country could arguable employ at least 25 million people across the country and add to the economy.  Reducing the carbon footprint of the energy sector and greening the country could be the next major economic activity.  The surpluses generated would clearly boost GDP growth, improve India’s coffers, help it strengthen its defence and help it counter the might of its northern neighbour by standing up.

 

The question is are the citizens, politicians, and the media truly aware of the challenges and the opportunities ahead of the nation and the need for everyone to step up.  Or are we so distracted that we are only focused on the divisions that we have created in the country.

 

Can restoration of Eco-Systems become a fourth pillar in our economy

 

Restoration of Eco-Systems a fourth pillar in our economy
 – A National Perspective

 

We know by now that zoonotic diseases such as COVID 19 can take a heavy toll on human lives and economic activity.  Living in crowded cities, commuting in trains and buses, working in offices and factories now come in with a considerable element of risk.  But urban India is the engine of economic growth, the economic surplus that is generated from the urban middle class, generates demand and work across India.  While the privileged in urban India are adapting to Covid, the quest for livelihood remains the central challenge that India needs to face as it strives to improve standards of living for its citizens.  While the government and the private sector are providing jobs through agriculture, manufacturing and services, there is a fourth pillar which is barely being tapped today.  This is Ecosystem Restoration both as a means to secure healthy livelihoods and as an important investment for a sustainable future.  Restoration of eco-systems that clean up water bodies, create urban green spaces, bring abandoned quarries and mines back to life, restore degraded forests and wilflife corridor, reclaim shola-grass lands and evergreen forests from exotic plantation forests.

 

So, what does eco-system restoration entail?  How much does it cost per acre?  What are the most opportune / important areas of restoration one needs to focus on?  And can this really become a major economic pillar?

 

We know that eco-systems when left alone reach their climax stable state – such as shola-grassland systems in upper western ghats, evergreen forests in Silent Valley and Arunachal Pradesh, the moist-deciduous forest grassland complex in Kanha/Bandhavgarh.  But when the rate of human exploitation exceeds nature’s ability to repair itself degradation is set in motion.  Sometimes landscapes with heavy soil compaction, topsoil erosion, barren patches can take generations to recover.  But judicious human interventions to augment moisture retention through trenches, saucers, stone overflows for assisted natural regeneration, check dams, and ponds to allow for larger scale water percolation and needs for wildlife, along with seed broadcasting and seedling plantation to address species imbalance can turn the tide.  If the landscape is ridden with invasives such as Lantana Camara or Juli-flora, they need to be removed carefully and selectively to ensure that native vegetation is undisturbed, and dormant invasive seed bank is not exposed or activated.  Our efforts in Lokkere Reserve Forest – a 2000 acre degraded forest adjacent to Bandipur (www.Junglescapes.org), in a rain shadow belt gives me the confidence that restoration can work, and once we place the landscape in a trajectory where natural cycles take over (microbes, nurtients, moisture) multistory vegetation will come back abetted by native wildlife.

 

What resources does it take?  Not more than Rs 10,000 to Rs20,000 an acre, sometimes even lower.  And this is spread over a 3-to-5-year period and supports about 50 to 70 families full time for nearly a decade’.  These are healthy occupations – which leverage their knowledge of the lay of the land, which bank on their expertise and knowhow and local decision making.  We have seen that the net result is a restored eco-system, and pride within the local communities that they created a home for the wildlife.  The relationship changes from one of exploitation of nature to custodianship.

 

Which brings us to next question – what are the opportune areas for restoration?  In urban spaces, having a cleaner lake has a multiplier effect on health and sanitation.  Closer to cities, where hill sides have been ravaged by quarrying restoring quarries through topsoil augmentation, seed broadcasting and assisted natural regeneration can bring positive changes to the water table, and soil stability.  Our country has over 50 Project Tiger Reserves – being protected regions they typically have healthy ecosystems – though invasives have become a major issue in some forests.  But typically, adjacent to tiger reserves there are reserve forests – such as Lokkere Reserve Forest and Heggaewadi block next to Bandipur, Segur plateau next to Mudumalai, Reserve forests betweeen Sariska and Ranthambore, reserve forests and corridors that connect Pench and Kanha, the list is long.  But as we bring back the wildlife population, our tiger reserves are reaching their carrying capacity.  Strengthening reserve forests that connect to tiger reserves must be of the highest priority.  With 65000 square kilometers of tiger reserves, and a targeted 35000 sqkm of reserve forests that are contiguous to tiger reserves, restoration in such belts can have a multiplier effect for both wildlife and livelihoods in such remote areas.

 

A second priority area needs to be the watersheds of rain fed rivers.  The shola-grassland forests and dense evergreen/moist deciduous forests feed all the major peninsular rivers in India.  The Narmada – Tapti and Mahanadi rivers are completely dependent on forests in Vindhya’s and Sapura’s, and the Eastern Ghats.  An immediate requirement is to bring back native forests instead of exotic plantation forests in Nilgiris, Palani hills, and the Malnad – Sirsi belt in Karnataka.  This is a harder task.  Exotic mature plantations have to give way to native forests.  The native seedbank is largely absent in hundreds of square kilometers.   The methodology for restoration is not clear or known. We have to learn through action.  But if we succeed, we can improve rainwater harvesting, improve capture of moisture from clouds that waft by, and augment runoffs by 20%, and make a huge positive dent on carbon capture.  This will entail about 20% of western ghats – an area of 10,000 sq.km. at least.

 

We talked about restoration providing alternative livelihoods for local communities.  We talked about scale – more than 40,000 sq.km or nearly 10 million acres that needs to be restored.  At 20000 rupees an acre, restoring 25% of our degraded forests becomes a Rs 20000 crore economy (about $3 billion), directly spent in implementation of restoration activities on the ground every year.  This will require more than local communities pitching in.  We would need NGOs or local organizations to plan and work with stakeholders, academics to train the next generation of students and researchers, we need an expanded forest department which would have to work more closely with local communities to restore, rather than just protect current forests.   And if we add water bodies in urban areas, quarries to cater to the construction industry, mined areas, we are creating at least a Rs 60000 crore ($10 billion) restoration pillar which starts to look like the consumer durables sector in scale.  I am bringing in these figures, only to highlight the employment potential this sector brings.  The benefits are of course in the carbon we sequester, the eco-system services it provides, in the form of drinking water for urban cities, irrigation needs for the farms in the plains.  And the wildlife that find a home, and the human wildlife conflicts that are avoided in the process.

 

In India this opportunity has largely gone untapped.  The conservation space is dominated by iconic figures who have worked against all odds to save our keystone species from extinction.  The government has stepped in to provide the much-required legal protection for the existing protected areas to thrive. While India is congratulating itself in saving itself from the brink of species extinction, the fact is that the work has barely begun.  Conservation organizations, corporate donors, the ministries that allocate funds need to wake up to a Rs 60,000 crore socio-economic segment – with figures stated very conservatively – that needs to be created and sustained.  Almost in tune with the United Nations declaration that 2021-30 is the decade of ecological restoration.

Contours of a Sustainable Green Economy

 

 Contours of a Sustainable Green Economic Growth

Part 1: Energy

 

The last year has been some of the difficult for India since independence.  Urban Indians, used to working hard, and seeing steady improvements in income, are fearful of heading out of their homes and faced with an uncertain future.  The unorganized sector consisting of an estimated 100 million people who have moved from impoverished rural hinterlands to urban clusters across the country are rendered vulnerable to COVID 19 related lockdowns.  Consumption has been reduced to the essentials, borne out by the fact that except for agriculture and its products, and low-cost fast-moving consumer goods, the rest of the economy is now on a tailspin.  That the pre-COVID19 era was successful in lifting large sections out of poverty, especially since 2004 cannot be ignored.  This has come with considerable collateral damage in in the form of rampant increase in emissions greenhouse gases and pollution.  At 2650 million tons of CO2 per annum, India emits 50% more greenhouse gases per unit area compared to US, while the percentage area under forest cover is 50% lower in India compared to US.  India’s urban spaces are now among the top 10 polluted cities in the world.  Much of its water from rivers and ground are not potable.  India’s progress has come at the cost of sustainability.   India’s challenge as and when it overcomes COVID19 is to mitigate poverty through better livelihoods and economic growth, in an equitable manner, while veering away from its emissions and pollution heavy past.  To accomplish the above, generating enough energy, finding sustainable transportation solutions, and generating new green jobs will be the central challenge.

While renewables constitute nearly 37% of installed capacity, the percentage of energy generated in the final mix was lower:  about 140,000 gigawatt-hours (GWh) – or only10% -  came from the solar and wind plants. 

 

This is primarily because of the dependency of solar and wind on natural and manmade factors including cloud cover, smog, and wind flow patterns which are seasonal in nature.  While India would have to augment  power generation in manner that is commensurate to the targeted GDP growth, banking completely on renewables is unviable with the technology mix available today. 

India needs to therefore develop smart strategies which include generating renewable and thermal power more efficiently while decarbonizing the energy economy.  Fortunately, the technologies required to make much of this happen is available or within reach.  If due attention is given to improved efficiency and reduced emissions from the power sector, India can take decisions which will serve to preserve its natural capital rather than destroy it.  The strategies for India to find solutions in the short and long term to reduce carbon dependence while augmenting power generated are outlined below:  

Short Term:

Improving Efficiency of Power Generation:  Most of power plants are over 20 years old and rely on subcritical steam cycles where the efficiency entitlement is about 35%, while the realized efficiency is only in the range of 30% realized efficiency today.  This is largely because of degradation in boilers, turbomachinery and other balance of plant equipment.  The knowhow to fix this exists, and India needs to source the best available technologies to bring back the efficiency to its entitlement value, which can help in reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 210000 tons per year from a 100 MW plant.  In the medium term India needs to convert its coal based thermal plant to super critical and ultra-super critical steam turbines, with the efficiency ranging from 42 to 46%

Gas turbine based power plants with combined cycle  that use the exhaust energy to drive steam turbines can drive efficiency to 62 to 63% as against the 30-35% efficiency prevalent today.  In other words, thermal power can operate at half the CO2 emissions per unit power produced with combined cycle gas  turbines.    Depending on the technologies used India can generate 5 to 100% more thermal power without increasing its total emissions footprint.   Therefore  frenetic pace with which more coal blocks are being added for mining at the expense of centuries old forest cover is unwarranted.

While India’s solar power plants are less than a decade old, the first wave of wind farms that were installed in Tamil Nadu and Gujarat in the 1990s -  amounting to nearly 14000 MW, uses technology that is now outdated.  New wind turbines with longer blades, shaped to maximize energy conversion from low wind speeds can improve efficiency by 25% or more.  In addition, data analytics solutions to improve micro siting within a wind farm can further improve power generation.   Repowering old wind farms needs to be an active strategy.

Improving Availability of Renewable Power:  Wind farms lie idle for months together and operate at their peak only during monsoonal flows.  Most of the wind farms are situated in fallow lands and the space between wind towers, about 6 acres per MW capacity lies vacant.  Targeting new solar power plants in such locations with the idea of sharing power electronics and evacuation technologies could make renewable energy a bankable solution for about 12 to 14 hours per day especially because wind power is driven by thermal gradients which increase in the evenings.  If efficient aeroderivative or diesel driven internal combustion engines could be added one could deliver a bankable 24x7 renewable power solution that uses current infrastructure. 

With falling lithium battery prices and availability of offerings that exceed several MWh for a few hours, battery storage needs to be evaluated as part of the energy mix.  But there are several concerns; rain forests get decimated to mine lithium and cobalt, and our dependence on imports would skyrocket   There could be other homegrown inclusive solutions that must be considered.

 

Longer Term:  

Energy security in the long term must to include hydrogen and biofuels from agro waste as key sources of thermal power.   Hydrogen generated through electrolysis, using energy from offshore windfarms is a vision that finds an echo in many countries.  The hydrogen is burnt in a gas turbine or fed through fuel cells to to generate power.   Gas turbines with hydrogen in the fuel mix have been tried and tested and the know-how exists among the major OEMs.

However, the greatest opportunity to develop a renewable 24x7 power source is a hybrid that consists solar and wind farms working in tandem with biofuel-powered thermal power sources that provide the required base load power into the grid.  These can be micro grid installations or run into 100s of MW depending on the specific contexts.  India generates more than 10 times more agrowaste than foodgrains.  This translates to 2.70 billion tons of biomass, with a potential of 270 Million MWh of electricity assuming very conservatively  that the heat rate of the biomass is just one tenth the calorific value of conventional carbon-based fuels.  There are two technology options: digestion and gasification / combustion-based solutions.  

Digestion-based technologies in a silo capable of handling 100 acres of harvest with the right feed of enzymes and microbes can generate biofuels which would be refined in a biorefinery with fuels cut for multiple uses including energy and transportation.  The residues from the digestion process are often rich natural fertilizers.  These technologies are not yet on the finish line and require government support.

Direct combustion and gasification based technologies operate at a larger scale and require extensive transportation logistics which may prove to be complex.; however in the short run these technologies are being explored to redress the endemic stubble burning to produce thermal power in the country.    With the above technologies,  the farmer becomes a part of the energy and fuel supply chain, with an additional and valuable revenue source.  Making the above happen needs to be India’s vision and mission.

India needs to seize moment; it needs to stop looking at Climate Change obligations as a drain on the economy.   Instead it needs to understand that opportunities to upgrade technologies in thermal power, and reconfigure its renewable portfolio in the form of PV-wind hybrids are opportunities to drive economic growth.  In the longer run it needs to move towards green hydrogen, and biofuels for 24x7 thermal power based on renewable fuels along with renewable energy to meet its growing energy needs.

Acknowledgements:  Author would like to thank Mr. Gopakumar Menon, Navgati for his inputs.

Photographs and schematics are courtesy Google.

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

  

Sriramajeyam

Sriraramajeyam

I had a string of aunts and cousins who had their little notebooks with unruled blank pages.  As a kid I would watch them sit quietly, focused on their writing.  It would read in Tamil, possibly in No. 4 font, Sriramajeyam.  More than half a dozen columns, about fifty lines to a page, filled with Sriramajeyam.  It would take them half an hour or more.  They would look at me and smile and say it is good for you.  The exercise resulted in the cleansing of the mind; an affirmation of the sense of discipline and obedience that Rama must have surely shown when he was banished from his palatial home with Sita and Lakshman.  An affirmation of the fact that he had strength and power, but that could be used only for extenuating reasons, ensuring that punishment is meted out only to those directly responsible for the crimes.  Sriramajeyam became a metaphor for both devotion and restraint.

Over the last three decades, Sriramajeyam in the south has been replaced by a more truculent Jai Shree Ram – a bullying war cry that has emanated from the north, finding the occasional echoes in the South.  While we cringe at these sounds, and long for the solace that Sriramajeyam brings the question that needs to be addressed is how did we get here.  How did what was essentially a tussle for street and muscle power between two communities assume gargantuan proportions of a theologically driven hate campaign, something that could not find any sanction in the scriptures.   Was it just the Parivar prodding the masses or were there deeper undercurrents at play.

The answers probably lie in how we read the past, in the South and the North.  The hinterlands of Tamil Nadu which are a huge draw for domestic tourism are replete with temples for every God; most of them are centuries old, magnificently conceived and constructed, cherishing a lore which is unique to that temple.  While the devotees come in clearly stratified by birth and wealth, those differences seem dwarfed by the power the temple holds – so much so that even the poorest of the poor come out feeling special and blessed.  The South sees the past as a heritage that continues to thrive to this very day.   Our freedom was special not because we attained it, but more so because of the methods of ahimsa that was used.

However in the north, freedom got mixed up with partition, a scar that one would have hoped would have disappeared with the passing generations but refuses to do so.  Even liberals have it.  I still remember a casual post on social media about the Birla Mandir in Delhi, constructed barely 100 years ago, as the oldest Hindu temple in Delhi.  Is that true?  May be not grammatically, but much of the heritage that existed is gone thanks to centuries of conquest and plunder which inevitably followed.  One could ask similar questions about the grand Angkor Wat temple in Borubudur.  Did something else exist undernneath?  Was a culture put to the sword to build the grandest of the grand shrines?  Can we go beyond the wounds that our ancestors suffered that we never did, and hold out a hand in peace and say enough is enough.  May be build a museum for conflicts and erase the past.  In the culture that we grew up in this could be called Sriramajeyam. 

The 2020 D-Virus

Our world is now being rocked by the COVID 19 Pandemic, threatening to wipe out 5% of the population in one go unless we lock ourselves down and wait for the viral tsunami to pass.  A century after the Spanish flu, the medical technology has only palliative answers to such epidemics.  Over the past decade the world has been hit by dozens of extreme weather events – the unprecedented bush fires in Australia, the inexorable melting of the ice cap in the Arctic, mind boggling rain fall in a span of a few days in western ghats, western Himalayas, while concentration of green-house gases has been rising towards the precipice year after year.  Ah we have Renewable Energy we say and point to the Giga-factories with hope; the truth is that while the capacity of renewable energy is 30% of total in many countries, what is delivered to the grid is barely 12% of the total energy needs, and why?  - the best sunlight for solar power is for 5 hours a day, the wind blows the way it should for a few hours every day.  While the smokestacks smoke, species extinction under anthropogenic pressures is an occurrence that takes place week after week.  Imagine trillions of virus and bacterial looking at humans getting obliterated saying ah that is a blip..  In the engineering world, a major aircraft manufacturer is faced with issues where boundaries of a legacy design have been stretched to a point where it could not work that reliably under certain conditions; getting to such a point would have been unconscionable a decade ago.  But it is a new normal across life.   In the nitty gritties of the brick and mortar engineering world, flyovers have collapsed because of a welding defects. roads have become sinkholes, wind turbine towers have collapsed, boilers have blown up.  The automotive world is replete with failures in the middle of nowhere of trucks that should run for a million miles break down in highways because of a differential pinion or a broken axle, all because we could still cast and forge a metal free of defects, that show up like a hidden cancer years later; while digital operators think all of this could be predicted by big data.

Is there a common thread that links all of this?  I think there is. We don't focus on the problem.  We are distracted.   While we have Terrabytes of memory, we can command only a few bytes of rigor.  The rigor that goes into the very foundations of our thinking – as engineers, scientists, economists, ecologists, sociologists, administrators  – has given way to the DISTRACTIONS of the modern world.   These distractions are all pervasive. 

I would define distraction in our context as follows:

1. A distraction is a problem statement that is neither real nor has real world solutions.
2. A distraction is also a learning moment, where an avenue gets pursued to find a solution which became a dead end for a valid reason.
3. A distraction is a buzz world that the working core of an organization could smell from a mile away.
4. A distraction is turning ones head away from the issue at hand to respond to stimulus that could be done later.
5. A distraction is a nugget from the external world, processed and stored, to be harnessed by thinking laterally.

Not all distractions are bad, but there are some we need to think about.

Techies Distracted: 
We need to put food on the table, which means grants to buy equipment, fund research staff or students, recruit more bright minds and the works.  A substantial focus is on the here and now and that is how the system works and I respect that.  The challenge begins when we start thinking about research ideas which are a bit more out on the horizon.  The question is are we focused enough on addressing the world’s problems or are we creating a virtual universe at work which will never fix the real problems of the outside world.  The automotive market is about 100 million vehicles, consumed by a fraction of the 7000 million humans who inhabit he world.  The rest can’t afford it, and view success as simply holding on to their dignity and livelihoods doing back breaking work that brings food to our table, keep the streets clean, lay the roads for us to drive and build houses for us to live.  But the best minds across the world are hell bent on automation because of the challenge it brings, of computing and sensors on the edge, backed by AI that allows for autonomous decision making, backed by programs and decision making algorithms that envisage every possible scenario encountered by a driverless car or a fruit picking robot.  The world ‘s best parallel computing chips are now being harnessed for VR Games that kids and adults can play on their smart phones.  While the AI enabled big brother watches every text you type and click you make to entice you with products that could be home delivered tomorrow.

In the meanwhile, the worlds critical problems go abegging.  Epidemics, non-communicable diseases, mental illness, climate change, carbon sequestration, species extinction, agro-waste, dying forests, life limited metals, brittle ceramic coatings, turbomachinery and IC engines that seem to be plateauing out in efficiency and performance, performance degradation, unexpected breakdowns – in boilers, power plants, rolling mills, Aluminum smelters, computers.  The list is mind boggling, yet we distracted techies of all hues seem to be just skimming the surface, chasing the what ifs that never address the crux of the problem.  And right now, it often goes like this. the real (engineering, biological, microbial) world is too complex and will require hundreds of PhDs and dozens of years to wade through.  so, the secret sauce lies in fusing enough of the incompletely understood physics with big data to predict behavior in the engineering or microbial world to leap frog in product capability.  It sounds seductive – and so organizations start chasing data analytics letting go of the physics which often needed only the last mile funding to get to the goal post.  We were chasing a problem statement that may be real, but the solutions were a mirage.  Did we get distracted?

We need to look to the medical world that is focused like a laser beam in trying to find solutions, backed by time tested rigor of hypothesis, establishing feasibility, and testing to get products and solutions right – whether it is a stent that saves us from open heart surgery or drug delivery systems that target the diseased organ and bring it back to life.  We need to take cues from the success stories all around – if millets can become wine, and beer can become alcohol and flowers become liqueur, surely agrowaste can become fuel – it is renewable – a headlong rush to find the best digestion and gasification technology can make farmers sell their waster and become part of the energy and fuel supply chain.  The possibilities are endless if we can collaborate across disciplines and address problems that are real and critical, rather than chase ideas that benefit the top 1% of the world.

Organizations Distracted
We are talking about the “d” word because our eco-system is vastly different from what it was two decades ago.  A typical day starts with reading newspapers online and TV and browsing through social media posts on whatsapp, facebook, twitter, a barrage of information clustered around polarized opinions, nuggets from the world of science and engineering – as my daughter pointed out, flashes of deep peer reviewed papers tweeted into our cellphones and one off experiments fleeting through and occupying an equal Mindspace, nuggets from who is where – with where typically being associated with the best  - the Silicon valley, MIT – the cradles of technology as is seen today.   Some of these nugget clusters transform into idea clusters – the aspirational what ifs that are exchanged between us and the virtual peer group of academia and thought leaders.  Some of these concepts snowball into buzz words – becoming that body of potentially transformational science or technology that can help us get some funding, go to the next one, maybe solve some real world problems and create new products along the way – and if not… who knows a decade or two later it could hit the shelfs.  We forgive the wild goose chases even before it begins.  The modern workplace understands and often encourages the impingement of ideas socialized in the social media to make its way into workplace.   I can’t think of a single contemporary organization that is not thinking about, exploring and acting on today’s buzz’-word.  The test they could have to put it through was – “what real world problem statement does it solve, is the solution real and plausible?” , or  “in getting into this what did I stop or undercut in my world” and equally importantly,  “what other product could I have created which is more useful and critical for the world than the buzz word being explored”.  These distractions packaged as growth engines, but really buzz words that give a growth path for the millennials have found a way to hijack the some of the best minds in the best corporates to a career path which creates no real products or value for the organization they work for.  While the corporates and the millennials live on the possibility that it could all work out, the experience and rigor, they could have brought to an existing product is lost.  The synapses we trigger through the stimuli from social media, combined with just that right whiff of science and technology, creates ripples, across the engineering world and academia that can potentially kill rigor in our ecosystem.  It is the D virus.  Distraction Virus.

Nations Distracted.  For a nation state a distraction is chasing a problem that is neither real nor has real world solutions.  In the 1980s, the most genial and one of the best Presidents Republicans had produced – Ron Reagan dreamt of Star Wars ..  an array of lasers or something mounted on satellites looking for Russian missiles and shooting them down, with pinpoint precision with enough firepower to destroy 200-ton missile, and intelligence to know that it is not a civilian aircraft or a satellite but the Russian nuke.   A complete eco – system to make Star Wars feasible on a pilot scale boomed –  while surely Star-wars funded lasers and AI and a success theater was created around Patriot Missiles, 40 years out we watch helplessly when North Korea pushes the launch button, or when an Iranian soldier and a Russian maverick launch a surface air missile that took down two  civilian aircrafts, and even worse look on helplessly when MH370 evaded every radar and satellite to disappear.  The billions that went into Star Wars could have funded a million more ventilators today.  Or get us closer to finding cures for debilitating illness such as MS and Parkinsons.  If there was rigor at the top someone could have told the President the purpose of defense is to keep the citizens alive.  Star Wars is best done by Steven Spielberg..  That is rigor in thinking, that is rigor in setting the agenda.  Back home in India the leadership at the top is obsessed about hoisting India up as a developed country, while setting a cultural agenda to reclaim our civilizational glory.  If it looks like a duck, smells like a duck it must be a duck goes an old saying.  And so, we have embarked on the Bullet trains and glittering airports and the Hyperloops to show that we are developed, while we are clumsily trying to recreate a chauvinistic and aggressive India where Hindus ruled over a thousand years ago.   These are distractions.  What India needs is an engine that continues to create socio economic growth, while ensuring sustainability and inclusion.  And where individuals and corporates can pursue their passion – whether it is art, literature,   religion and philosophy, science, sports, enterprise – business or social – and excel.  When they do that, they will bring enough laurels, and recreate contemporary history.  But every now and then we can find ways to transcend the clutter as our Prime Minister did last week to heed advise backed by rigor and hard data and the science of epidemiology to order a lock down avert thousands of deaths.  If only the marginalized people could go home or live the next month with dignity.

I see hope in the small experiments that combine rigor and inclusion.  Social enterprises that are restoring degraded forests by combining livelihoods and local know-how to cost effectively bring back habitats, organizations that have found ways to take a small pot full of seeds to create dry land crops that provide food on the table, enough hay to feed two hefty cows for a year, and milk on our tables while that one home lives in dignity.  I see hope in surface science that can stop aircraft wings from icing up and stop that one in a million chance of an accident.  I see hope when aircraft engines and gas turbines today produce 400% more thrust at 25% better efficiency through years of product development involving advanced materials.  I see hope in the rigor and speed with which scientists from all hues in Indian Space Research Organization could launch the mission to Mars at a cost which is less than what a fortune 500 CEO makes in a year. I see hope when a 88 year old could wheeled into the emergency room with an aging heart, flooded lungs and a failed kidney and the doctors take stock, and chart a course of action where everyone smiles again.

Rigor lurks everywhere..  COVID 19 tells us that we need to pay heed to the science..  AND while we find ways to kill the Corona Virus we need to  overcome the D virus..  without being distracted.