Notion of War

Recent history has seen plenty of violence. Wars have been a staple fixture with incrementally evolving conflicts. Hollywood, history books and television have painted an image of wars that portrays the romance of soldiers, weapons and their physical effects. With these concepts in mind and the idea of victory defined by boots on ground, the militaries have mechanically been preparing for the same. 

Well, defence planners do think about how wars will manifest in future and try to stay with the curve however, constraints ensure that the gaps are seldom bridged. Leaderships are comfortable in reaping the past, managing the present, and bidding for the future. But with great vision comes great budgetary constraint coupled with the political prudence of balancing constitution with constituency. So what does become of war and how do we fight them?

Imagine a scenario of war, where the military of men & weapons has no means to engage the attack against itsnation. It is not a thing of the future; it is a case from the now. The COVID-19 is nothing short of a biological DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack. There are already analysts drawing the origin and the identity of the attackers, but those semantics do not change the reality where the whole world has been reduced to collateral damage. 

Could this have been imagined? The “I told you so” aside, serious predictions are limited to international boundaries and countries mostly commit national resources to protect their geographical masses. So to blame someone, for not seeing something smaller than the wavelength of light, would at best satisfy opinion, but not reason. 

The logic of predicting such non-conventional threats has already dawned upon us. This may partially take away the glamour of legacy security structures, but is more of a case of mental flexibility than hardware reorientation. Conflicts may change fast, combat follows slowly. As a national resource, military structures during non-war times are also the redundancies available with a country to mitigate crisis requirements. Thus, at home, there is farsightedness in strengthening military logistical structures while balancing combat elements in the kinetic and non-kinetic genres. Benefits of military doctors, transport aircraft and sturdy support services are all there for us to see.

To strengthen ourselves, we need to practice social distancing from each other and economic distancing from China. After this situation stabilizes, having to choose again between life and livelihood will be criminal. I have written how a strong domestic manufacturing is vital to our future (http://tiny.cc/gigtmz). However, a doctrine of expanding capacities is not as straightforward as producing more. We also need self-sufficiency in critical fields like energy, health care, agriculture, supply chains, storage, distribution and most importantly the last mile connectivity. The crisis has exposed how fragile these aspects are with invisible cogs like migrant workers and the rest of the unorganized economy.

A reluctance is seen in owning up the need to protect our way of life. West has been stripping people of shoes at the airports for 20 years because of one attack in 2001. It is time we take allowance for protecting ourselves after centuries of invasions and subjugations. We need to stop thinking about warfare as only lines on a map, firepower and territory. A shock to our way of life, a disruption of normal and a question on our tomorrow is war and we are in it.

Opportunity, Innovation, Delivery and Crisis

Canned food, Velcro, Water purifiers, Camera phones and Infrared thermometers, just a few of the innovations that came out from a necessity crisis and are today routine household inventory. We today are living in interesting times. I might sound overly optimistic while the world is stewing in the COVID-19 Manchurian, but after transitioning to the fifth stage of grief, thinking ahead is the only logical option.

I have written before how this current crisis will end up changing how we define ‘normal’ (http://tiny.cc/m58emz). Still, we will survive and continue to flourish. Life with this new virus will warrant changes and our success will depend on how we adapt. There is probably nobody whose personal or business life has not been affected, at least to some degree, by the current crisis. Indeed, in the time between writing this and you reading it, I suspect a some more would have changed. 

Lockdowns have offered us the opportunities to surf the web in plenty. Social media and info-sharing websites are ripe with many innovations being showcased to offset the limits imposed by the situation. From low cost, hands free washing setups, in-house non-contact thermometers, PPE etc. Human creativity is taking on the deadly virus and its widespread effects. But there is more to the fertile nature of a crisis that leads to innovation than simply the opportunities to solve issues. Difficult times present unique conditions that allow people to think, manoeuvre & rapidly create, impactful solutions. For learning minds, these conditions provide the opportunity to re-engineer processes incorporating changes by reducing variance and promoting incremental innovation.

The Indian story today is intertwined with the global narrative, however the solutions we need require a design harmonisation with our unique conditions of both geography and demography. The scale of the problems and the unavoidable need of isolation have today made nations inwards looking, leaving limited scope for collaboration. This has presented the need for up-scaling integral capacities and ensuring that basic sustainment is confined within the national borders.

 Innovations in life essential fields are vital and are today at various stages of development. The trick now is to ensure how these are engineered into successful products with the Make-in-India pride and the affordability, effectiveness & desirability pushing consumer demand. This, once mass scaled with distribution and revenue prudence, will truly make the lifestyle changing ideas a reality. It is easier to predict technology than predicting societies. Most likely we will see habit changes, changes in short and mid-term spending patterns and even changes in our notion of security.  We may also see an increase in behaviours like flight to the familiar, loss aversion and risk aversion, which are textbook responses to risk, fear and uncertainty.  How long this lasts remains a question, but there will be short and medium and long term opportunities if we can reorient innovation streams towards value, risk reduction, familiarity, psychological safety, and even nostalgia.  

The way ahead, with inputs as on today goes through increased government orders on indigenous industry with the industry delivering world class products and services and not just enjoying the glory of protectionism. The complete production, procurement & consumption ideals needs overhaul. This, whether we like it or not, will happen because of the changes in the consumer behaviour, however whether we are able to emerge stronger as a nation or this leads us to yet another increase on foreign imports will be our defining moment.

The normal entrepreneur will always be ready to quickly modify his processes and engage the short and medium term needs. But it takes a Statesman like vision and Spartan focus to see the innovation pipeline through in the long term, modulate the convergence of global supply chains and navigate the economic matrix involving people and governments. Populations will need to change but will urge to hold on. Let us hope to see the rise of Indian brands with Indian solutions to Global problems. Let us start. No seed ever sees the plant.

Namaste: Importance of Integral Capabilities

As the only topic of discussion on the media platforms, COVID-19 has become a basis of creating narratives. Some valid, some debatable and some, even outlandish. Now since the situation is so fluid that anticipating the end state is difficult, the adjectives to be used with the plans or the narratives will remain open to revision, as time progresses. Still, the urge of, “I told you so!” will ensure that a prophylactic barrage of prognosis will keep appearing in media, trying to fill the info space.

Recent reports in the media have been written on the idea that the Indian military should be “mobilised and deployed” in Aid of Civil Authority, to help in managing the situation. Undoubtedly, the defence forces are a unique national resource and can give a catalytic effect in management of any threat to the nation’s ‘way of life’. However, worst case scenario and doomsday predictions are not responsible journalism and beat experts need to graduate the reportage within realms of reason and not seek click-baits with tabloid type mongering.

The military has resources and capabilities that can be used in Humanitarian Assistance & Disaster Relief (HADR) challenges. What makes them effective is that the logistics and services are integral and co-opted in all plans. However, for governance, the optics of military deployment is also an indicator of the other non-military resources crossing critical point. To optimally utilize the complete spectrum of national resources it is prudent to integrate them and then deploy the correct resource-to-task, achieving efficiency and accruing the maximum benefits. Let the national leadership work.

The bigger take-away from this is also the importance of a strong internal manufacturing strength. Globalised supply chains work towards cost effectiveness, which may be rational in ‘normal times’ but are limiting in situations like today. Fission propagation of the Chinese Virus has highlighted how centralizing a majority of global manufacturing within the Chinese mainland is not only monopolistic but even weaponisable in asymmetric warfare.

Till now, it remains economically irrational to ask corporations and nations to shift away from the Chinese juggernaut. However statesmanship, bereft of myopic auditor counsel, will surely see the value of intrinsic capacity. Recently media reports emphasized on the benefits of even outsourcing the military logistics and services, for ‘cost cutting. Coming from years of relative peace, the thought process is mathematically correct but troubled times prove that while capacity is expensive, a lack of capacity is even more expensive. It was recently commented by an industrialist that he did not intend to take on the manufacturing of medical ventilators, as when it will come to procurement, the government will go for the lowest bidder (L1), which in all cases will be Chinese. Thus, he saw no merit in setting up capacity and investing in human capital. This case is not one-off. The concept is applicable to the complete manufacturing sector. No one expects a 100% in-house reality, however ‘Make in India’ has to genuinely be pushed beyond a mere slogan.

Like all before them, the ruling Xi Dynasty will do everything for holding on to power, but the elephant needs to preserve it’s heritage. Especially now when the world is doing Namaste, with folded hands.

The New Normal

COVID-19 is a topic on which everyone has an opinion but hardly anyone has an idea. Theories on its origins to prognosis on its behavior, the info space is full of chatter. While comparably it is like driving in the dark, we can only see as far as the headlights go. However, the appreciable impact this scenario will have is just an analytical seesaw swinging between the bad and the worse.

The global integrated market derives its fundamentals from the demand-supply equations. The need and ability for consumption mainly drive the demand segment pulling manufacturing and services along. A pandemic like the current one has forced a fall in the natural demand. It is not that the people don’t want the goods and services or don’t have the capacity to buy them, the isolation has ensured that they cant have anything by impacting everything from the last mile connectivity to the factory assembly lines. The primary sector being impacted, the services and derivatives stand no chance of any exponential piggybacking, as was the normal.

Morpheus, in his famous monologue asks Neo,” What is Real?” We today may like to introspect and ask,” What is Normal?” If normal is the way we live under the harmony of all variables life has to offer, then Normal is just our equilibrium to the world we get to live in. COVID-19 has changed this normal, for everyone. Crashed economies, lockdowns, broken supply chains, medical panic & reverse migration are defining the new normal.

Earlier when plagues used to strike, countries went to war or natural calamities struck, it used to effect only a geographically enclosed population. This Chinese Virus has globalized fear and anyone assuming isolation is just experiencing a temporary bliss of ignorance. The blame seekers are demanding answers from the middle kingdom, which are hardly likely to come and I would not like to mistake aggressive action for effective action.

The earth has been facing a lot of bad since time immemorial. I am not saying that the universe is evil, but it surely has a nasty sense of humour. The same manifests in the arrogant-ignorance of people. With a majority of the world confined to homes, the prominent action, by the powers, today is still perception management. And the narrative is lapped up as the convenient truth and the domino effect takes on from there. The primal instinct of survival thus makes people disconnected as long as they are not directly affected. Capitalism in such times also gives debatable decisions. To understand such capitalism, it depends on whether you are onboard a Boeing (737 Max) or on the board of Boeing.

This blog, unfortunately, comes at such a transitory phase that it is best to avoid conclusive assertions.  Nobody can see beyond the choices they don’t understand and when front yards become frontlines, the notion of choice becomes an illusion.

The Cost of Lies

The Cost of Lies

In India, diversification of media was started by ‘The World This Week’. A short roundup of global news that was well compiled, well produced and had a peppy ‘tabla’ performance as the opening score. Till then, Doordarshan had the monopoly over dissemination of news on TV and AIR ruled the radio waves. While print media did have an impact, the news was always a day old and the editorial remained the niche of a few.

It was proliferation of TV news channels that truly triggered the rise of the counter narrative or soon thereafter multiple narratives. These channels & networks created islands of information by creating options in terms of the ‘points of view’ available to the audience. Though this evolution eroded the credibility & effectiveness of the state media, initially, it did bring openness and accountability and established media as a pillar of democracy. However, like all fires, the system started to become self-consuming and the TRP battles paved way for greater commercial success at the cost of editorial erosion.

While the private TV channels had just begun changing the game, internet exploded and the wise ‘cookies’ democratized how people consumed information. Soon after, web 2.0 came and the net users became content generators, democratizing the way we interacted with news and generated content reflecting our opinion. 

The event horizon was crossed when social media integrated the human mind with the internet and interactions became opinion, became narrative and became the truth.

The noise of these multiple mediums, exploding with Moore’s Law, has today left us in a haze of question marks. Less the few universal truths, all news today is peppered with opinion, perspectives & even lies. Media has modified its approach and seeks refuge behind the concept that they cover both sides of the story. This is the biggest deviation of the news system. The news was supposed to be the truth and the facts, but it has been evolving into the realms of opinion and perception, giving paramounce to covering what is happening over analyzing what is happening.

While it is not as simple, but there are either facts or lies. Compounded with the ills of social media and community messaging services like Whatsapp, the social engineering and narrative management today is pushing the society on a downward spiral. In the beginning, when the same was commercialized, it allowed economics to influence opinion. Now, when the same is being weaponised, binary code has become the secret of starting protests, agitation, violence & unfortunately justifying the same.

As a current example, with very little public clarity on issues like CAB & NRC, the discussion, the debates & the violence is primarily manufactured and effecting mainly the lower strata for whom this is just another issue to tackle in survival. Media, in this, instead of covering the dissent covered the events which spiraled into who is participating instead of what is the concern and how should it be addressed. So much is the media’s assumed right of covering both sides of the story that it has forgotten its duty of extracting the truth. The pedestal of being a pillar of democracy is high, the cost of lies may soon accumulate into a lack of faith and a loss of credibility, a bigger loss to the society than to the institution of news media itself.

There are a few, principle based news organisations who are trying to survive the clouds of commercial & social demands. I just pray that with ever increasing technology and socialization of internet we don’t end up using artificial intelligence made from natural stupidity. Can we please just have news.