CSR, Charity, Dharma and the Gold standard

Note: Life always has lessons for the perceptive. I believe this is one such conversation and hence have documented it . This took place in February 2018 when i visited Bengaluru. The other person, whom i call B is a relative, a good friend and is of my age. The free flowing conversation has been structured and edited for presentation and details not needed removed. 

B: X told me that one of your ideas got selected for the top 400 in the competition. what is it about ?

RJ: Our team of friends who work in different organisations submitted two ideas. Both got selected for top 3000 out of some 16000 ideas and 1 got selected for top 400.

B: What is this top 400 idea about ?

RJ: We want to map trees in urban locales and help maintain them by bringing in local community. Once the tree info is there, it can be tied up with other important data points that matter for human life.

(I just went on to explain how many trees were lost in the vardah cyclone and how they could have been saved with scientific pruning.)

B: Sounds interesting. We in Bengaluru have lost so much green cover over years. Did you get a good reception for the idea ?

RJ: No. It was not well received. People just look at the money making potential of such ideas and are also very near term. The panel thought that we didn’t have a revenue model that was of interest and also suggested that we should keep business and social responsibility separate.

B: Why so ? In my organisation, as part of CSR, we had tree planting drive some time back. Lot of money was spent. We even had a DJ to cheer up people. We ended up getting lot of attention within the organisation. No one knows what happened to the saplings or how many survived.

RJ: Is there no follow up ?

B: Not so sure how much of a follow up we have on such activities. we are a big organisation and out of our revenue , a percentage has to be spent on CSR and the budget is quite sizeable. We even have a separate team to oversee how the money is spent. and he mentions the money in USD.

RJ: That is lot of money. 

B: Yes , lot of money. But these doesn’t seem to be much systematic happening in the way the money is spent or on the follow ups. It seems to be more on individual discretion.

People are more interested in photo ops, sharing photos on social media and getting some visibility within the organization. Rather than doing something that is long term and show actual results on the ground.

RJ: May be that is what CSR has become in many places. Real giving is not that. We all know that in Mahabharatha, Karna was known for his dhaan. There is this story involving Karna, Krishna and Arjuna and it goes like this.

Arjuna and Krishna were walking and Arjuna kept asking why Karna is so famous for his dhaan. To answer him, Krishna created a mountain of gold and told Arjuna to give every bit of it away. Arjuna advertised about his giving to nearby villages and started giving the wealth on this own. But how ever much Arjuna gave it away, the wealth never diminished. After a couple of days, Arjuna told Krishna that he is giving up.

Krishna then called Karna and laid down the same conditions. Karna called the villagers and told them that the wealth was all for them to use , requested them to take it and walked away. 

Seeing this Arjuna was stunned. Krishna told Arjuna that even while giving, Arjuna was still attracted to the gold and wasn’t giving away with all his heart and mind. That was the reason the gold never diminished. In case of Karna, he wasn’t attached to the wealth and so easily gave it away with all his heart.

My dad always used to say that what the right hand gives away shouldn’t be known even to the left hand. You have to be so discreet about giving and it shouldn’t impact the self respect of the receiver in any manner. He was very critical of people who donated with lot of advertisement and called them the kind of people who would donate a tube light, but would block half the light with their painted name.

B: That reminds me of an incident. I was late from office today because of work that had piled up due to two days leave. I was away in Mysore to play for the annual concert of the old age home run by my teacher. 

When my teacher retired, his guru told him to start an old age home. Now my teacher comes from a typical middle class background and no where close to what we can call rich or some one with lot of surplus income to give away. He was hesitant how we could take such a huge financial load on his shoulders and run the place, with whatever money he had. 

But respected his Guru’s words and started the old age home. It has not been an easy journey. But the home gets just enough funds to run, through well wishers. It has been 25 years now and the home is doing well by god’s grace.

RJ: Wont your CSR group help fund the home ? 

B: No the rules are different and we dont fit the rules.

RJ: What your teacher started is a selfless act . He didn’t do it because he had the money. it is obvious he didn't have and he didn’t do it for any fame or to be in limelight.He followed his guru’s words.There was a need and he did and continues to do his best to fulfil it.

This reminds me of the lesson taught through the golden hued mongoose, again from Mahabharatha. The greatness of charity lies not in the mass of wealth but the spirit of generosity and Universal love in the heart of the donor. I think your teacher's act qualifies for the gold standard.

This is dharma. This is very different from the western idea of charity/giving or CSR. Dharma is a very indian concept and it can’t be defined but only explained. Briefly we can say that dharma is something that contains or upholds the cosmic order .

The person who receives alms and gives away a part of it to crows and dogs or the person who retains a small portion of the food in the banana leaf he uses to eat, for other living beings to consume are all doing dharma. 

It is not that i am against CSR or Charity. And i can’t deny the advantage of the scale it brings, but just pointing out that we need to bring in the true spirit of dharma for it to be effective.

and we just moved on to other topics of interest and it was time for me to catch the train and the conversation came to a close.

Note1: The word Dharma is used to mean nyaya (Justice), what is right in a given circumstance, moral values of life, pious obligations of individuals, righteous conduct in every sphere of activity, being helpful to other living beings, giving charity to individuals in need of it or to a public cause or alms to the needy, natural qualities or characteristics or properties of living beings and things, duty and law as also constitutional law. Dharma is the law that maintains the cosmic order as well as the individual and social order. Dharma sustains human life in harmony with nature. When we follow dharma, we are in conformity with the law that sustains the universe. 

For more on the topic , http://veda.wikidot.com/dharma 

Note2: Also check out the term Rta - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ṛta

Note3: The story of the golden mongoose - https://www.speakingtree.in/blog/stories-from-swami-vivekananda-the-golden-mongoose

Note4: The story of a biker and how the poor tea seller didn’t charge him for breakfast , but only for the tea is another example of dharma . - https://www.indiatoday.in/fyi/story/rider-stops-at-a-village-tea-shop-for-breakfast-gets-stunned-when-the-old-couple-charges-only-rs-5-find-out-why-306684-2016-02-02

Issues with Current Day Discussions/ Narratives

What follows is a mail exchange with a friend and i have reproduced it with his permission. The topic of discussion was on the issues with current day narratives and what we need to know to improve the quality of the discussions in general. 

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The issues that I find with the current narratives is that:

1. Issue of idiotic conflation: Just because one considers oneself good in something (may be it could be true also) - he/she thinks that she can transfer that perceived capability to other related or TOTALLY unrelated fields. No homework whatsoever.

2. Issue of non-scholarly, skimming studies: Between 1991 and 2011 I refused to write anything in public in tamil (I wrote a bit in english from 2006 to 9 I think, though) but read, took enormous notes and digested. So there was time for one to assimilate, revise, finehone, collect data, correlate, regress etc etc. Reason why am mentioning this is - I think I benefited a lot from this going-underground. But nowadays, what is happening is - I read a couple of pages on the browser and consider myself an expert on that. Oh the illusion.

3. Issue of authenticity: Many of the experiences that many people writing about (including JM) are from intermediated experiences or worse still secondhand ones - and not based on lived/experienced/reflected realities, therefore they are hollow and leave the reader wondering.

4. Issue of superficiality: Am a sincere believer in doing. Of course you also have practically experienced this - definitely in the case of farming; the attention to details and sticking-to-itiveness while course corrected by the vision; the doggedness of the pursuit. But, without this internalized model of excellence, all we have is sham.

5. Issue of polemics: When I am tired, I get into polemics and laboured humour, but this is my issue, I think. Things get lost. But at least one escapes getting stereotyped.

Unfortunately all of these work together. There could be more such issues. Societies and cultures lose out in the process. It is very difficult to be that mythical anna pakshi. But at least we can work towards that.

Reading 2017

Books

 

0. Curse of Cash by Kenneth Rogoff

Why: The authors premise is that paper currency is the root cause of many evils and advanced country governments should do away with it as much as possible and limit currency to smaller denomination and coins. The book is divided into three sections. the first section talks about the evolution of paper currency, currency circulation, currency demand in underground economy, the concept of seignorage and the need to do away with most of the paper currency. The second section discusses in detail the idea of negative interest rates. The third section talks about the global implications to phasing out paper currency and how the governments will look at digital currencies and he doesn’t have good news for Crypto currency lovers.

Quoting from the book "With all due respect to promising security advances offered by public ledger technology and the ingenious algorithms embodied in some of the new “currencies,” the view that Bitcoin— or any other cryptocurrency— is going to replace the dollar anytime soon is quite naive. As currency innovators have learned over the millennia, it is hard to stay on top of the government indefinitely in a game where the latter can keep adjusting the rules until it wins. If the private sector comes up with a much better way of doing things, the government will eventually adapt and regulate as necessary to eventually win out. Even if (for argument’s sake), cryptocurrency technology proved unstoppable, the winner (say, Bitcoin 3.0) would only end up being a precursor to a government controlled “Bencoin” (after Benjamin Franklin, who now adorns the US $100 bill)."

I would say a provoking book, and people are free to agree or disgaree with Mr Rogoff. Afterall, he has been the Chief Economist of the IMF. He also happens to be a Chess Grandmaster :-)

1. 'When Breath Becomes Air' by Paul Kalanithi
Why:This book is the most moving book I have read . :-( 

I know many won't get through this book.It impacts you at different levels . The prose is just beautiful . For me , It just reminds us how vulnerable we are and helps appreciate better, what(ever) we have .

2. The Phoenix Project - A Novel about IT, Devops, and helping Your Business Win - by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford

Why: Wanted a non-technical read on DevOps. 

3. 'A Man for All Markets' by Edward O Thorp

Why: If you are interested in logical thinking and if you want to be rational in an irrational world , if you are interested in investing and want to learn from a person who not only had his skin in the game , but was also extremely successful in wealth generation, do read this book.

4. The Little Book that beats the market by Joel Greenblatt

Why: It is the book on value investing and a must read for any value investor

5. " The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes' Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy " by sharon bertsch mcgrayne

Why:This book provides an excellent introduction to the history behind the evolution of Bayes Theorem. People's struggles to just use the theory, the opposition it had to face, the famous personalities, prominent role played by Bayes in cracking the Enigma code, for e.g. and lot such information is available in the book. We understand how much opposition it had to undergo before reaching a position of pre-eminence that it enjoys today. 

This is how the book ends "Talking of religion, I am reminded of a strip of cartoons about Bayesians that appeared some time ago. They showed a series of monks. One was looking lost, one was dressed as a soldier, one was holding a guide book and one had his tongue stuck out. They were, respectively, a vague prior, a uniform prior, an informative prior and, of course, an improper prior ..." :-)

6. Tell me the odds - A 15 page introduction to Bayes Theorem

Why: Because i wanted to brush up on Bayes and found this book to be good and more importantly free on Amazon.

7. The Lessons of History by Will Durant

Why: Good knowledge of history is very important for good decision making. This is a condensed work from the authors books and is eminently readable. The kind of book that if you start underlining the important paragraphs, you end up doing it for the whole book. i would call this one of the most important books read in recent times.

8. Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers by by Alexander Osterwalder (Author),‎ Yves Pigneur (Author)

Why: I was given this book when i worked on a business model for a hackathon. I read the book , found it extremely useful and used it in my presentation. It covers everything about a business model that you have to know of. May be this needs a separate blog post :-)

Books Started and planned to be finished in 2018 ( Hopefully)

1. The Great Unknown: Seven Journeys to the Frontiers of Science (Hardcover) by Marcus du Sautoy
2. The Island of Knowledge by Marcelo Gleiser
3. The Most Important Thing Illuminated: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor by Howard Marks
4. Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio

Articles

1        

2  1.Scientists, Stop Thinking Explaining Science Will Fix Things http://www.slate.com/articles/healt...

An interesting conversation on how to communicate science to the so called non-scientific people. conversations on this can be found here - https://www.facebook.com/lalgudi/po...

2. Simple math is why Elon Musk’s companies keep doing what others don’t even consider possible

For me the key take aways are realizing the 'limits of incremental innovations' and the need to go back to the basics to bring newer perspectives to the problems that we face and not being constrained by the status-quo.

And this article starts with #Feynman, "Feynman didn’t mean all human knowledge must be distilled into an introductory college course. His point was that we need to build our grasp of science and technology from the ground up if we are to master it, not to mention reimagine how it works."

3. A Path Less Taken to the Peak of the Math World

Inspiring story of a person who took to mathematics quite late and famous for his proof of rota conjecture. at the age of 34, he now is a member of the IAS Princeton, New Jersey.

He is also a fields medal contender.

A poor maths test at elementary school that made him lose interest in maths and try his hand at poetry, a failed attempt which made him look at journalism as a career and how a chance meeting with a 1970 fields medal winner from Japan changed his life for ever is well narrated.

The more interesting part is the comments section where a reader identified a mistake in the article. :-)

4. After 100 Years of Debate, Hitting Absolute Zero Has Been Declared Mathematically Impossible http://www.sciencealert.com/after-a...

Cooling to absolute zero mathematically impossible. Third law of #Thermodynamics on firm footing now.

When i read in school that diamond burns at 690 C, my question was whether we will get diamond if we cool carbon to -690 C. The answer was a No and that reaching colder temperatures wasn't easy. It was only later that i learnt the concept of absolute zero.

5.Why religion is not going away and science will not destroy it https://aeon.co/ideas/why-religion-...

"Religion is not going away any time soon, and science will not destroy it. If anything, it is science that is subject to increasing threats to its authority and social legitimacy. Given this, science needs all the friends it can get. Its advocates would be well advised to stop fabricating an enemy out of religion, or insisting that the only path to a secure future lies in a marriage of science and secularism."

6. The FBI’s Hunt for Two Missing Piglets Reveals the Federal Cover-Up of Barbaric Factory Farms https://theintercept.com/2017/10/05...

The hypocrisy of treating certain animals as pets and certain other animals as food and the ill treatment meted out to intelligent animals.

Warning: Article contains images that are disturbing, but i would still suggest you read to understand the perils of industrial farming of animals.

7. DeepMind’s AlphaZero crushes chess https://chess24.com/en/read/news/de...

“The DeepMind team had managed to prove that a generic version of their algorithm, with no specific knowledge other than the rules of the game, could train itself for four hours at chess, two hours in shogi (Japanese chess) or eight hours in Go and then beat the reigning computer champions – i.e. the strongest known players of those games. In chess it wasn’t just a beating, but sheer demolition.”

8. Seeking the Lost Art of Growing Old with Intention https://www.outsideonline.com/22678...

The story of Bernd Heinrich who is 77 years old and the author of 21 books.

This paragraph should provide an idea about the person "When I began adding up Bernd’s septuagenarian streak, I realized that here was a rare man—a throwback. We live in an age that affords little time and space for communing with nature. We’re busy. Our days are fragmented. But Bernd has dug in his heels against this collective drift. He has recognized where he wants to be in old age and settled in, with purpose.".

Books referred to or went back for selective reading

• .     Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
• .     Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson
•       Bharathiar Kavidaigal
•      Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Why are Finland's schools successful? - An Article and a few points to think about

I read an interesting article on Finland's school system and its success.  The article presents an overview of the system, it's evolution, the changes that took place to bring it to it's present state and compares it to the (failure of) American Education system. 

"This is what we do every day," "prepare kids for life." 

Following points stood out for me

• Children spend far more time playing outside, even in the depths of winter 
• Homework is minimal
• Compulsory schooling does not begin until age 7
• 3rd language ( mostly english) from age 9 
• Lesser focus on exam results and more focus on what the students become in life
• The concept of vocational high schools
• No compartmentalizing of students based on learning abilities ( other than the very challenged)
• Policies that ensure that teachers got respect (not salaries) on par with doctors and lawyers
• There is no top down approach on what should be taught

For anyone interested in education, what is taught in schools today and their relevance to life around us, there are quite a few takeaways.

The complete article  ' Why are Finland's schools so successful? ' can be read here.  I also recommend going through the comments section.