The wonder drug SutoL

This indigenous drug has been around for quite long and tall claims have been made by its inventors about its efficacy for curing a wide variety of ailments - many of them peculiar to India.  However there was always a dearth of willing subjects in adequate numbers to participate in a trial that could establish the claims.  Quite a few patients also claimed to be allergic towards it.

Later on, somehow, the number of willing patients rose to a statistically very significant number in a state that is known for its enterprise.  The trials there have been claimed to be a resounding success that established all the claims of the inventors and then some more.  The competing firms, however, kept pointing out that the observed effects were more due to the disciplined lifestyle of the participants rather than the drug itself.  One newly established firm conducted its own research and maintained that though there were some improvements in the musculature and skin tone, functioning of the internal organs continued to be at sub-optimal levels.

In the meantime large number of patients throughout the country were getting disillusioned with established drugs from the best-known brand in the country.  Complaints were made of loss of general vitality accompanied by impaired vocal chords.  Moreover rising prices were making the drug very unaffordable.  There also was a suspicion of huge profits being siphoned offshore by this firm.

A sizable number of these disillusioned patients in another state, decided to try a drug that had been invented very recently.  The response was very good but the patients were too impatient.  To make things worse, the firm stopped production claiming that its competitors had blocked the supply of a vital input.

In the meantime inventors of SutoL claimed to have found a very potent molecule that they have named O-maN.  The addition of this molecule has significantly enhanced the potency of the old formulation.  Some of the ingredients in the earlier formulation have also been dropped as they were found to be interfering with the efficacy of the new molecule.

Left with no choice and with reports of the new formulation under the old brand name SutoL, the patients have shifted en masse to the indigenous drug.  The trials have begun with much fanfare.  The market share of competitors who had a near monopoly in the market has seen a sharp plunge.

The latest entrant in the market who had to stop production because of non-availability of a critical ingredient, are sticking to their claim that this new so-called wonder drug is essentially similar to the brand that it has displaced.  Unfortunately they find few takers.

The newly begun trials have evoked keen interest all over the world.  We offer our very best wishes to the participants in the trials as also the makers of this drug.

A Neurosurgeon's Encounter With Death

Just finished the book "Proof of Heaven" by Eben Alexander, M.D.

Most people are familiar with the near-death experiences (NDE) of many who claim to have had a glimpse of the beyond.  The subject of NDE was popularized by Raymond A Moody when he published his book Life After Life in 1975.  As Alexander points out new medical techniques enabling better rescue efforts from fatal conditions have produced a breed of trans-earthly voyagers in millions by now.

Alexander, a practicing neurosurgeon, claims to have strongly held, like others in his profession, that brain was merely a machine, howsoever complex, that produced consciousness.  He had seen and treated patients with altered consciousness and that strengthened his beliefs.  He quotes a case where he could diagnose a complaint of diminished consciousness as the result of a tumor.  He removed the tumor and, sure enough, full consciousness reappeared!  He discounted all NDE as mere fantasies.

He himself suffered meningitis from an unknown strain of E-coli and remained comatose for a full week.  The spiritual experiences that he had while in coma form the subject matter of the book.  The book is in the form of two intertwined strands - one about his family - biological and adoptive - his medical practice and his illness as told to him by others, and the other about his experiences in the "beyond."  His experience changed his long held beliefs about consciousness and he felt duty bound to share his experiences and insights.

Alexander's NDE was a little different from the most common ones that start with going into a dark tunnel and emerging into the presence of a living light. He remembers being in a muddy darkness with a pounding metallic sound and things that could be roots or blood vessels reaching down from a place far above and going down to a place far below,  for an eternity.  He terms this place as the Realm of the Earthworm's Eye View.  He describes it this way - "I was simply a lone point of awareness in a timeless red-brown sea."  He also saw grotesque animal faces emerging from the muck, groaning or screeching and then going back into it.  He also had awareness of a biological smell of blood and vomit that reeked of biological death.

Next came divine music and white light that obliterated the surreal dark gloom.  As he saw through the light he was rocketed into that colorful, stunning and vibrant world that many of the NDEs describe.  Gradually he realized that he was escorted by a girl and they were riding on a magical and beautiful surface that was like the wing of a butterfly.  He didn't encounter any of his dead relatives and would figure out the identity of the girl after recovering and returning to the earthly existence.

He experienced direct communication without the limitations of a language, higher beings whose joy was audible, and finally, accompanied with an orb of light, landed into the shimmering darkness of the Godhead.  Yes, darkness was how he experienced the ultimately reality.  He refers to It as Om because he experienced that sound associated with it.  The accompanying orb of light mediated between him and everything else like a placenta connecting a baby to a body.  He quotes a seventeenth century poet who said - "There is, some say, in God a deep but dazzling darkness ..."  While in the presence of Godhead he imbibed knowledge that remains with him even in this world.  Only that it has become much difficult to process through a limited human mind.  Like all NDE subjects he emphasizes that language is grossly inadequate to describe the reality that he experienced and what he is describing is only a best effort attempt subject to many limitations of our language.

He imbibed a strong message that love underlies all of the multiple universes.  And that evil is necessarily present because free will would be impossible without it.  To quote from the book - "Horrible and all-powerful as evil sometimes seemed to be in a world like ours, in the larger picture love was overwhelmingly dominant, and it would ultimately be triumphant."

Then at one point he returned to the Realm of the Earthworm's View.  He discovered that he could again go to the gateway and beyond merely by recalling the divine music that had opened it the first time.

Alexander recalls that his NDE was also different in the sense that, unlike most others, he had totally lost his earthly identity.

He also describes how he was found to be behaving like a zombie when he woke up from his coma.  He says that this was typically like a patient recovering from anesthesia.

Like many other NDE subjects, Dr. Alexander keeps emphasizing that the experience was not dreamlike but ultra-real and that human language is ill-suited to describe it and human mind has limitations in comprehending it.

Dr. Alexander now believes that brain does not generate consciousness but acts as a filter "shifting the larger, nonphysical consciousness that we possess in the nonphysical worlds down into a more limited  capacity for the duration of our mortal lives."  He insists on this because while he was having these ultra-real experiences, his brain was not working at all.  And he vouches for that as a trained neurologist and gives reasons.

It is indeed a very interesting book and I would recommend it to you.  After all, you had the patience and interest to read this blog to the end!

A bizarre solution for the continuing recession.

My Facebook friend, Hemant Shah, was thoughtful enough to share a video of an interview with Steve Keen, an Australian economist, that featured on the Hard Talk show of BBC.  He asked for sharing it with other bankers as also economists.  He also sought our views in the matter as if we could make out more of it than Hemant himself, who is a very keen intellectual.

Instead of giving you a link of the video alone, I am giving a link here that has both the video as well as a transcript of the interview.

The subject matter of the interview lies in the domain of central banking rather than commercial banking, and yet I feel inclined to share a few thoughts.

Banking, capital adequacy norms notwithstanding, is the most highly leveraged business in the world.  It essentially uses funds from public at large.  And this is reason enough to subject it to the most stringent regulation.  And hence any argument for deregulating this sector can not be sustained.  Engaging in or financing speculative activities to swing various markets in the hope of milking them is very likely to be the first result of deregulation.  And this is precisely what has happened.  Presence of a few players with huge funds at their disposal in any market, spot or future, financial or commodity or real state, is sure to distort the working of the market to the detriment of large number of normal players first and finally the rogues themselves.  It is indeed surprising that, amongst others, pension funds, of all the institutions, were allowed to invest in the newfangled and little understood derivative instruments engineered by clever and brilliant bankers who were motivated entirely by their own bonuses and had little concern for the possible fallout of their actions.  Perhaps the deregulation prevented the regulator from stepping in in time.

Though Prof. Raghuram Rajan has another different explanation too in his book, The Fault Lines.  He says there was a political motive too behind the subprime crisis.  The political motive coincided with the greed of the banking sector and the resonance led to the resonating crisis.

Obviously a crash of the banking system necessarily means a huge blow to large number of depositors and the economy as a whole.  And hence the governments are obliged to step in.  What Steve says is that the intervention should not be in a form that condones the sins of the bankers and penalizes the common man.  Though, his ideas are close to impossible to put in practice.

I tend to agree with the view expressed in the interview that use of capital for the sole purpose of growing it through speculation must be discouraged.  Capital must be allocated only for economically productive activities and to a small extent to facilitate consumption.  I also have a gut feeling that the toxins left in the global financial system by the sins of the banking system are going to take some more time to get purged.

Politics and CMM

There is a lot of vigorous debate going on about the current choices that emergence of leaders like Arvind Kejariwal and Narendra Modi have thrown up.  Like everyone else, I also have my views in the matter and would like to share them with everyone else with a few explanations.

But let the disclaimers come first.  I have lived in Gujarat for over a decade and I simply love the state and its people.  I must add that my familiarity with the state was limited to the cities of Ahmedabad, Vadodara (Baroda), and Gandhinagar.  The people seem to be so mild,  peace loving and business minded that the recurrent riots used to come as a surprise to me.  And though the riots peaked in 2002, mercifully it has put paid to the annual ritual.  Coming from UP, I found the government departments, in a quite small number of encounters with them, far more responsive and much less corrupt.  When in Gandhinagar, I was very impressed when Mr. Modi had a Sai temple razed to the ground.  It was said to be an unauthorized construction and it was reported that a couple of hundred more temples scattered over Gujarat that were unauthorized met the same fate.

I saw Gujarat as a state that had all the right ingredients built into its DNA and a good leader could take it to great heights.  I believe that Modi did so.  And yet I had doubts whether he would be able to deliver on the same scale if he were to be transplanted to UP.  The northern states seem to have a DNA that is quite different from their southern and western brethren even though many common strands do exist.  If one could use, somewhat loosely, the terminology from Capability Maturity Model (CMM), the northern states persist at the lowest CMM level while those in South and West have climbed a step or two up the ladder.

So in Gujarat we had a good leader leading a great state and the results could not be otherwise than what we have seen.  But then the country as a whole is different and much too complex.  It is at a CMM level that cannot guarantee consistent great outcome.  It may give an acceptable outcome in combination with the personal heroics of a good leader, or it may not.

The burning need is NOT so much to get a great hero who can bulldoze the system but to move the system up on the CMM scale.  And how can that be done?  By creating institutions and structures that can prevent all the devilish acts that have been going on for decades.  We need to create Lokpal, we need to carry out police reforms, we need to make bureaucracy accountable and responsible and we need to amend Representation of People Act to ensure better parliamentarians and legislators.  In short, what we need most is not personal heroics but a more mature institutional framework with Acts and rules that enhance the capability maturity of the country as a whole.

It is indeed surprising that few politicians are talking in terms of enhancing the framework itself.  Most are busy praising the virtues of this leader or criticizing the weaknesses of that leader.  There is little debate on the issues that we have highlighted in the last paragraph.  And though Modi is talking of governance all the time, he is not talking about how that will be brought about: perhaps he is too sure of his personal heroics.

Under these circumstances, AAP comes in as a gust of fresh breeze.  It is not talking about personal heroics but about the extremely urgent need to repair and enhance the framework of governance in the country.

I also dare say that unless the higher level CMM framework is created, a strong-headed leader may even pose a risk to the system.  For he / she, in his / her impatience to deliver, might further damage the existing rickety framework.  And that will be like a medicine that alleviates your symptoms temporarily but paves the way to a much greater problem.  Many of the readers must have had an experience of emergency in 70s.  Things improved dramatically in government offices and elsewhere.  And we also know what followed.

The people are impatient now and they want all the symptoms to be overcome at the earliest.  Few have the patience for the kind of changes that are the crying need of the hour.  And this is the essence of the BJP-AAP debate.

They say great organizations are those that can consistently get extraordinary performance even from average people.  And that happens when you have a great framework of processes and governance.

I know that Modi Sarkar is well on its way.  I welcome it too, for we desperately need Congress out.  But let us keep AAP - the voice of sanity - alive.  I must also add that BJP's victory may even be seen by the great System as its own victory against forces trying to change it for the better.