Vijay Kumar Gaba: Rahul Gandhi

Showing posts with label Rahul Gandhi. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 5, 2024

Cognitive dissonance- 4

Continuing from last week

The development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is still in the early stages. How many more job losses shall we witness in the coming years due to automation?

Last week, one of the popular viral videos on Indian social media was about the views of Mr. Rahul Gandhi, Lok Sabha MP, and Mr. K. Annamalai, Tamil Nadu State President of BJP, on the challenges of artificial intelligence (AI). In the video, Mr. Annamalai is seen eloquently explaining the challenges of AI to young students, while Mr. Gandhi is seen doing some whataboutery to hide his lack of proper understanding.

Discussing the matter with many people who chose to forward the video to me, I found that the key reason for their forwarding this video is to show Mr. Gandhi in a poor light and not bother about the challenges of AI. They deliberately chose to ignore that both Mr. Gandhi Mr. Annamalai may not be in a position to make policies, at least for the next five years; whereas Chief Ministers of the largest populated and most industrialized states in India, and even some of the top leadership of the country, may be equally lacking in understanding about the challenges of AI, as Mr. Gandhi. Many of these may even fail to spell Artificial Intelligence correctly. That ought to be an issue these people should be worrying about and discussing.

Until a few months ago, India’s IT minister rejected the threat of AI to jobs in India as “nonsense”. Recently he reluctantly acknowledged that “AI may result in automating some routine jobs but will also result in job creation in various data science, data curation, etc.” This is in total contrast to what the global IT leaders believe. For example, Elon Musk insists AI will get humans to a point where “no job is needed.”

In a recent famous interview with Trucker Carlson, President Vladimir Putin expressed fears that the developments in AI and genetics could potentially be a threat to humanity as a whole in the future. He said, “When there arises an understanding that the boundless and uncontrolled development of artificial intelligence or genetics or some other modern trends, cannot be stopped, that these researches will still exist just as it was impossible to hide gunpowder from humanity... when humanity feels a threat to itself, to humanity as a whole, then, it seems to me, there will come a period to negotiate at the inter-state level on how we will regulate this.”

Notwithstanding the state of denial by politicians, the campus recruitment by Indian IT companies in FY24 was just 75000, the lowest since 2002.

The Viking expansion during the 8^th – 11^th centuries reshaped the history, culture, and commerce of the world, by laying the ground for global colonial imperialism. It was aided by the first industrial revolution (1760-1820). The Second Industrial Revolution (1870-1914) redrew the contours of global strategic balance. The atomic attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945) established a new world order that was dominated by trade and commerce rather than military power. The development of Artificial Intelligence is a similar event in world history. It has the potential to redefine how people procreate, live, think, work, interact, transact, entertain, and die. AI could pose a much bigger threat than nuclear weapons; and could be a bigger service to humanity than any medicine or healthcare procedure.

Confining the discussion on AI to job losses would be beyond ridiculous.

On a lighter note, let me share a recent anecdote. An acquaintance (56-year-old) was running a 110-seater call center in Delhi for 24yrs. He had to shut the operations as his major clients automated their processes. He has converted the facility into a stock market jobbing facility by retraining all 110 operators. He is making 2x more money than the best years of call center business. Employees are also taking home 25-50% more. He told me, “Let Nvidia and Musk do whatever. We will make money trading their stocks. If we cannot compete with Nvidia, and Microsoft, we will own them!”

The point is that unemployment due to AI is a worry only for those who refuse to adapt, retrain, and reskill. For others AI is a major opportunity to move to higher orbits. The real damage due to AI could happen in social, personal, and emotional spheres.

Tuesday, July 25, 2023

Battle Ground 2024 - Forces are alligned

In about ten months from now, Indian citizens will vote to elect a government that will govern the country for the next five years. The general elections that would likely be held during March-May 2024 are widely recognized as the largest carnival of democracy in the world. About one billion voters would be eligible to exercise their franchise in 2024. Even a 60% participation would mean 600 million voters casting their vote; more than 4x the number of eligible voters cast in the 2019 US elections.

The election carnival in fact begins six months early with some key states holding elections for their respective state legislative assemblies. Historically, the correlation between the results of state assembly elections and the subsequent general elections has not been significant. For example, in 2018, the ruling NDA lost all four state elections (Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, and Telangana) but went on to win the 2019 general election with a huge majority. Regardless, these elections would be contested and watched keenly.

A large majority of the population in India mostly depends on government policies for their basic survival needs like food, education, healthcare, etc. It is, therefore, natural that elections attract keen interest from the people. The political parties do their best to present an agenda that would appeal to the immediate needs, desires, and/or aspirations of people, in their endeavor to influence voting preferences of the electorates. On the flip side, a part of the population, which does not avail of direct public benefits like free food, education, medicine, old age pension etc., is seen to be avoiding active participation in the election process. This makes the voting percentages low – ranging between 55-65%.

In the forthcoming elections, ideally, the voters’ preferences ought to be influenced primarily by—

1. Comparative evaluation of the ten-year (2004-2014) performance of the Dr. Manmohan Singh led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government with the ten-year (2014-2024) performance of the incumbent prime minister Narendra Modi led National Democratic Alliance (NDA);

2. Agenda for the 2024-2029 terms presented by the incumbent and the challenger; and

3. Confidence in the capability of the incumbent and the challengers to deliver on their respective promises.

In practice, however, it is seen that the voters’ decisions are often influenced by the latest popular narrative and rhetoric. Many a time, the strongest narrative and loudest rhetoric win, regardless of the actual performance, vision, programs, and capabilities to deliver.

In preparation of the battle for power in 2024, the battle lines have been drawn. As per the latest reports, 38 political parties have joined hands to contest 2024 general elections as part of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) led by the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP); while 26 political parties have come together to form a new alliance christened the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (I.N.D.I.A.). Apparently, the new alliance shall be contesting the 2024 elections under collective leadership and a common agenda.

In the course of this week, I shall share my views on the agenda, narrative, and rhetoric that may be used to influence the voters’ preferences by the two sides; and how the smaller parties who have not yet aligned with the two main groupings may influence the final outcome.

Wednesday, February 22, 2023

The great Indian carnival

Festivals are quintessential to the idea of India. No one can imagine India excluding the hundreds of festivals we celebrate. There is hardly any day on the calendar that is not marked with a religious observance or a social celebration. As a community we are so addicted to festivities that we even celebrate sporting events as festivals. Not surprising, political events like elections, local level political appointments, conventions of political parties, etc. are also celebrated as major festivals in India.

The largest festival in the world, Indian general election, is scheduled to be held in about one year from now. All political parties, like the troops participating in the annual carnival in Brazil, have already started preparing for the quinquennial event. The potential 950million voters are also looking forward to it; though one third of them may actually not bother to exercise their franchise.

In most major democracies in the world, the incumbent leadership and/or party seeks reelection on the basis of its performance in the current term and proposed agenda for the prospective term. However, in India the elections are mostly about persons rather than policies and programs. The caste and religion of the candidate is assigned more importance than their views on socio-economic policies; commitment to political ideology; or past performance.

There are many examples of one person contesting and winning as candidate of political parties subscribing to completely opposite socio-political ideologies. There is no limit on the number of times a person can represent a constituency (or different constituencies) in the parliament. There are numerous examples of candidates repeatedly winning from the same constituency despite dismal past performance and inadequate agenda for the future. In fact, many notorious candidates facing serious criminal charges like murder, rape, dacoity, kidnapping etc. not only get repeated nomination; they get elected with overwhelming majority.

In my recent trips to the hinterlands and various large cities, I discussed the current political scenario with people from various sections of the society. There appears to be unanimity on the point of the quality of politicians. Everyone appears convinced that the quality of politicians in India has deteriorated over the past 3 decades. Senior citizens recall that politicians in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s were highly educated and held impeccable character. The quality started deteriorating in the late 1980s and the rate of decline accelerated sharply from the 1990s.

Surprisingly, the decline in the quality of Indian politics and politicians coincided with the structural improvement in the Indian economy. The socio-economic parameters like growth rate, occupational structure, urbanization, globalization, literacy rate, access and connectivity (roads, media, telephony, TV, internet etc.), higher education, gender equality, etc., have indubitably improved materially in the past three decades. The worst part is that the primary driver of popular mandate is no longer socio-economic upliftment; but the regressive agenda of aggressive social divide.

The points to ponder therefore are: (i) Why the empowered, enabled and enriched citizens are not aspiring for a cleaner, ethical and progressive political system; and (ii) Does socio-economic growth and development in India have any correlation with the political set up in India?

….to continue