Tagged: philosophy

On the role of IITians


Yesterday I got into an all-too-familiar argument with one of my roommates.

I just made a comment saying that I don’t approve when people make comments like “oh all the IITians should be made to stay back in India and then we would be doing great”. My roommate disagreed saying that he strongly felt that all IITians **should** stay back in India, and he was fairly convinced that this would have made India a much better place to live in.

I beg to differ.

I have so many points against that viewpoint that its almost difficult to list them all down. But I’ll try nonetheless.

Let me first state the common argument of supporters of this view, which would go something like this: well you know, the government is spending millions of dollars in training all these bright people. But all these IITians run off to foreign lands and “so called” greener pastures right after graduation or soon after. Its as if the whole motivation of getting into the IITs is to leave India. But they have no right to do so! After all the Indian government has invested in them, and it should get back adequate returns. Whats even worse, these smart folk go to the US and do research for them and make industries for them and create value for them. What are they doing for their country? This will be followed by a bunch of arbit figures (such as: the top 40% of NASA’s scientists are Indians, the topmost executives in a large number of US firms are Indians and so on) to demonstrate that indeed, the Indian executive holds water in the US. A lot of water. Thus, they will conclude with a triumphant smile, “there you go, they’ve eaten up India’s money and paying back the US for it!”

I’ve to take a shower now, so I’ll leave this here. But I’ll get back to it soon, to present my side of the case.

Happyness and Greatness


Often times, I dream of doing something great some day. You know, etch yourself a page in history, do something people can remember you by. That sort of thing. And everytime, I end up thinking whether its possible to achieve greatness and be happy both at the same time.

Of course, there’s a whole debate on how you define greatness and how you define happiness. But for now let me just avoid those issues and proceed with the “general notion” of what we perceive to be great and to be happy. Personally, I find happiness to be closely tied with peace and contentment, which in turn I find closely tied with a good, quiet, family life. But thats just me. I also strongly feel that to achieve greatness, you have to be really passionate about what you’re doing. And I mean really really passionate, like the single love of your life, something you would put in front of everything, even your family.

It seems to me then, that in pursuit of greatness, somewhere the family life will take hit. Surely, you can get great support and cooperation with your family, but I don’t think thats what I would call a good family life.

So thats the question… is it possible to achieve greatness and be happy at the same time? Highly subjective, but still worth a thought I think. Ultimately, its the choices we make. At some point of career, greatness seems more important. At others, happiness. I guess my notion of happiness here has been closely tied to family life, and that might certainly not be the case. But somehow I strongly feel that eventually thats what it boils down to. You can either devote yourself to the pursuit of a passionate goal, or busy yourself in a complacence, content life.

To blog or not to blog


So this dates back to a night when we were driving back from PSU to New York (during the spring break trip). Vibhore and I got into a very interesting discussion (as usual!) on blogging. Apparently, Vibhore had this stereotyped image of a blog as a “personal” diary put out on the web. Not surprisingly then, he found the concept of blogging a bit uncomfortable. He wondered why would anyone want to put up their personal diary out on the web for everyone to read. Not only did he feel that doing this was “not quite right” for the person publishing it, but it was “not quite right” for the person reading it too!

When I realized that he had this stereotypical notion of a blog, I explained to him that a blog is a much more general notion. Different people have different concept of a blog, and for some it may very well be their personal diary. As far as I’m concerned, the right to publish some personal or non-personal is solely the authors’. Further, no one is “forcing” you to publish a blog or even read someone else’s. Of course, responsible bloggers realize that the information they put out is often public and they should be fully aware of its implications. If they publish any “private” information, again that is solely by choice since no one is forcing them to do so. Things get complicated, however, when I start divulging personal information about a friend on my blog, or vice-versa. What happens then?

Another interesting aspect of the discussion was the sudden surge in the number of blogs on the web. My argument was that more people are blogging these days because there is more commercial interest in blogs. True, a whole lot of blogs out there are completely free of charge. So where IS the commercial interest? But think of what happened with email. There are so many free email providers, yet there is a plethora of businesses woven around email. I feel that blogs are also going the same direction, except that the money involved in blogs is much, much more. This is partly because of the “information-intensive” and “public” nature of blogs, which makes them amenable to data mining in ways emails never were.