Unlimited Hassles

There's been a huge churn within the telecom sector in India over the last couple of years. These were precipitated by the laws and taxation policies in force, along with some rampant noncompetitive predatory practices, rock bottom pricing, m & a, essential upgrades to technology and infrastructure and so on, alongside a high growth of mobile phone & internet users (100+ crores) in the country.

The last factor helped bridge the connectivity and digital divide between the rural and the urban parts of the nation. Users of all age groups from all over came on board and got hooked on to social media sites and chatting apps. Online meetings, business communications, schooling, banking and payments, etc. went the mobile apps route.

While things were good for a while, a flip side to the story emerged soon. The large scale adoption was brought on by unsustainable predatory pricing by the players, esp. the new entrants. Which was closely followed by lowering of prices by the rest of the players. This race to the bottom, as expected, led to sinking of all but the most financially solvent ones. While some exited, others merged, the rest continue to struggle to stay afloat. An upward revision of prices therefore seems like the only way out of this mess.

On the other hand, a rise in prices will likely result in a drop in the number of users, particularly from the marginalized and weaker sections of the population. Perhaps a study is in order (or already done) which shows the impact per thousand (or lakh) users for every rupee (or ten) increase in prices. This mobile inclusivity for the citizens gained at long last must not be lost at any cost. Incorrect policies, corporate practices, profit motives, etc. of the past should not result in the nation regressing on the digital inclusivity front.

A sure shot Catch-22 for the policy makers from the sector: 

- To save the telecom players (via upward price revisions), or

- To preserve/ promote digital inclusivity for the citizens (particularly for the vulnerable).

One option that can be considered is to relook at the telecom pricing model. Telecom players these days offer various "Unlimited Plans". These have bundled unlimited data and call time (with daily sub-limits of a few gigs, minutes, etc.). These are therefore among the most popular plans and have led to an explosion of daily usage. People no longer care about the usage, while calling or using the internet/ data packs. As a result mobile bandwidths are practically choked all through the day. Poor quality services including frequent call drops, false rings, slow data connections are a menace for everyone. Plus there is also the adverse impact on the environment due to constant energy wastage happening at the level of the devices, network, switches, mobile towers, and so on.

The telecom pricing model in the past was the much more sensible "Pay-As-You-Go" model. Just like other shared basic need utilities available in a limited supply such as water, electricity, etc. telecom bandwidth (service) should also revert to the standard pay-as-you-go. This prevents wastage and allows a much fairer distribution of constrained resources.

There is a flat/ fixed nominal monthly subscription charge, and a variable usage cost billed per unit. Additionally by having separate consumption slabs, heavy/ corporate users can be made to pay more (as per a high cost slab), while the normal/ light users allowed to pay less. Thereby, making it easy on the pocket of the normal user and yet profitable for the telecom players.

The allied benefit of pay-as-you-go pricing will be that the number of mindless forwards, fakes, misinformation/ disinformation will go down, if not entirely disappear. Most people would be averse to spending even a few rupees daily towards the barrage of forwards and fakes. Resulting in a socially better and environmentally healthier world to live in!

Finally, to ensure inclusivity for the needy segments of the society and so that nobody gets left out, a separate "Janta (Citizen) Mobile Plan" could be introduced & a direct-to-account bill subsidy constituted. These little changes along with other significant ones on the corporate policy, laws, taxation and fair trade practices sides will ensure that India regains its lost ground in the telecom sector.

Flip side to Technology - Extractivism, Exploitation, Inequality, Disparity, Ecological Damage

Anatomy of an AI system is a real eye-opener. This helps us to get a high level view of the enormous complexity and scale of the supply chains, manufacturers, assemblers, miners, transporters and other links that collaborate at a global scale to help commercialize something like an Amazon ECHO device.

The authors explain how extreme exploitation of human labour, environment and resources that happen at various levels largely remain unacknowledged and unaccounted for. Right from mining of rare elements, to smelting and refining, to shipping and transportation, to component manufacture and assembly, etc. these mostly happen under in-human conditions with complete disregard for health, well-being, safety of workers who are given miserable wages. These processes also cause irreversible damage to the ecology and environment at large.

Though Amazon Echo as an AI powered self-learning device connected to cloud-based web-services opens up several privacy, safety, intrusion and digital exploitation concerns for the end-user, yet focusing solely on Echo would amount to missing the forest for the trees! Most issues highlighted here would be equally true of technologies from many other traditional and non-AI, or not-yet-AI, powered sectors like automobiles, electronics, telecom, etc. Time to give a thought to these issues and bring a stop to the irreversible damage to humans lives, well-being, finances, equality, and to the environment and planetary resources!

996.ICU

About time the revolution reaches our shores. Concerns from the 996.ICU movement most certainly apply here. There's additionally the grind from the 3+ hours of daily travel time between workplace & home in the typically over-crowded metros.

The demands for a well balanced work life (wbl) are totally justified. 955 schedule, flexi-hours, work from home, are not concepts to be just spoken of but to be put to practice. Let's work smart, live healthy & be happy!

Human Design

"What a blessing (mercy) it would be if we could open and shut our ears as easily as we open and shut our eyes. - Georg C. Lichtenberg"

So true. Many an offensive situations could be diffused by simply dropping down the earlids. In a hyper-noisy nation like ours where the chatter never dies down, earmarked (sic!) noise free zones (around hospitals, schools, etc.) wouldn't exist. There could even be earlid-downed marches to protest against the high decibel rants pushed at us from all nooks & corners of the planet.

Perhaps Kikazaru/ Mikazaru, the first macaque who prescribed to us hear no evil, would be seen jumping around like never before. Only to be reminded the very next minute by his two wise buddies of its futility. And how their respective advices have been largely ignored despite there being lids for the eyes & the mouth. Finally, we would perhaps be able to truly experience the world in the way that people who can't hear experience it, even today. So yes, I agree with Mr. Lichtenberg that it would be a real blessing!

In that same spirit, we could also do with another design change, one that might already exist in a parallel universe somewhere. Would be nice to shift humans from a 4-hourly hunger cycle to a more pragmatic 4-monthly one. No getting hungry every few hours, no snacking, no gorging, no fun (seriously)?

There'd instead be a triannual feasting day for the individual. That would be the day to celebrate, bigger than any birthday or anniversary combined. The person concerned would probably down a few hundred kilos of their favorite gourmets. Gastronomic desires fulfilled like there's no tomorrow. There really wouldn't be one for the next four months. Guests meanwhile, would be making merry - singing, dancing, & everything else - awaiting their day of feasting. 

There are stories about Indian mystics & sadhus who achieved a state of being, or were just built differently, where they didn't need any food for days together. But they seem to have gone extinct, save for some hunger artists. On the other hand, many animal species are known to feed in cycles with long fasting breaks in between. The camel for instance carries a special biological organ (the hump) to store food (fat) reserves, & can go without food & water for weeks together. In nature the concept is not so rare, a few hundred genes at play that's all.     

Yet, the impact from a triannual feeding cycle to our social structures would be unimaginable. For instance the movie screenplay where the protagonist is complaining about the paapi pet (evil stomach) would simply be gone. Hunger, malnourishment, perhaps even poverty would be over. Or is that taking it too far? Newer enterprises would no doubt emerge that would work their way to profitability around the altered version of this fundamental base human need for food. In any case, there would be a paradigm shift on our social, economic & policy frameworks all over. Our entire existence would be markedly different, & hopefully better.

Professional

Almost all definitions of the word professional have an ethical component mentioned in the definition. Yet, we are flooded by news of frauds and malpractices from organizations across sectors and geographies, run by professionals mostly having top of the line credentials.

The article "Star-studded CVs and moral numbness" provides some interesting insights, esp. from an exercise with a batch of budding professionals from a top tier management school. The authors were perhaps dealing with a relatively young lot of individuals having less exposure (typically with <3 years work experience). Had the exercise been done within the walls of the corporate war-rooms, with hardened professionals clued into the ways of the real world, the outcome would have been totally different. Forget remorse, there would be no realization of any wrong doing. Voices of protests would be snubbed or worse, shown the exit door.