Compared to all other life forms in the known universe, our species can be characterized as the one that consciously solves problems. There appears to be – at least in some specimens of our kind – an inherent drive to not only solve problems but in fact to seek out new problems to be solved. Of course, some would argue that many of our attempts to solve problems in turn create new problems. That in itself is probably not such a bad thing because otherwise we would have little to occupy ourselves with. Confronting challenges – natural as well as artificially created – exercises our faculties and makes us feel alive and lends purpose and meaning to our existence.

I think that a simple taxonomy of problems would be useful. Type I class of problems are the ones that we are confronted with naturally and which we need to solve as a matter of practical importance. Examples of this class would be: how do we build a more efficient light source, how can we avoid global warming, how do we discover a vaccine, etc. In contrast to that, Type II problems are of no immediate practical importance and we ‘invent’ these problems for various reasons, primarily curiosity and the drive to comprehend the universe around us. To be sure, down the line, the results of Type II problems could have practical implications; but to begin with they are not motivated by a desire to change the world. Examples of this variety: is there is a largest prime number, why is the sky dark at night (Obler’s paradox), do neutrinos have a zero rest mass, etc.

Type I problems (building a better light source) arise from the way the universe is (it is dark at night), while comprehending why the universe is the way it is leads to Type II problems. Therefore, Type II problems are more ‘fundamental’ in that they exist irrespective of whether we exist or not. Type I problems are meaningful only in the context of our existence.

Then there is the Type III set of problems, a set which I call “meta-problems.” Examples of this type: why is there something rather than nothing, does the universe come into existence only if there are sentient beings capable of perceiving its existence, etc. This type belongs roughly to philosophy. Type II lies in the domain of physics, and Type I to engineering. Therefore, Type I problems are related to technology, Type II to science, and Type III to metaphysics.

Here is how I try to understand the types in the context of a single life-time: as a child, one solves Type I engineering problems (how do I reach the cookie jar and open it without being detected); as a young adult, one solves Type II science problems (what makes an apple fall); as an older adult, one solves Type III metaphysical problems (what is the meaning of life, the universe, and everything.)

Civilizations can be categorized with respect to the type of problems they solve. A stone-age civilization, for instance, is only concerned with Type I engineering problems (how to develop the technology to make a sharper flint edge). It is not sufficiently sophisticated to comprehend, leave alone confront, Type II science problems. Our current global civilization is one which is capable of tackling Type II science problems, and naturally is fairly good at the Type I engineering problems which are comparatively simpler. I think that till about 1600 C.E., the global civilization was Type I. Since then, we have graduated to a Type II civilization and I feel that this stage will last till 2600 C.E. After that, if the species has not committed suicide through its own technological excesses, we may move on to become a Type III civilization.

I write “globally” above to imply that on average we are one type or one of the others. But at a finer level of detail, different nations on the globe are at different levels. Some nations are stuck at the Type I problems (how to feed its population, how to supply electric power to its cities, how to avoid being run over by barbarians); some others have moved on to Type II problems (how to build detectors for gravitational waves).

Currently no nation is involved with Type III problems. That does not imply that no individual or a small group in the world has grappled with (or is grappling with) Type III problems. In every age and every nation (broadly speaking), there have been people of all types. Not everyone in a Type II nation is capable of comprehending Type II problems. So also, there are people in Type I nations who have successfully addressed Type III problems. Or, even when globally we were a Type I civilization, there were have been people who posed and solved Type III problems.

Although in general there is a monotonic progression of types, in specific instances, some people can go directly to solving Type III problems even though the civilization is stuck in a primitive Type I stage. How do they do that, one may wonder. I conjecture that there are people with advanced intelligences who have an intuitive grasp of the nature of the universe. What justification do I have for this? Because I recognize that different minds have qualitatively different abilities. The mind of an Einstein, for example, is fundamentally different from that of a mentally retarded person. Or the mind of a parrot is qualitatively different from that of a human being. What is available to the average human’s mind is inconceivable to the mind of a parrot. So also, I believe that there are human minds which are as far removed from the mind of average humans as human minds are removed from that of parrots.

All minds are not created equal, just as all bodies are not. A bug’s body is puny compared to that of a whale. There is no democracy in the natural world. If bodies (and consequently brains) can occupy such a range of diversity, surely there is no fundamental reason why minds cannot span an equally wide, if not an immensely greater, range.

It is important for me to name those who have minds that transcend the average human mind, minds which can by-pass the ordinary natural progression of stages and go directly to a more acute comprehension of the universe. To that end, I would like to borrow a word from the Buddhist tradition. The word is “Bodhisattva”. I am merely borrowing the word and not its various meanings in the Buddhist traditions. I would like to use that word because I believe the Buddhist bodhisattvas share some essential characteristics with what I am attempting to define.

I am conjecturing the existence of bodhisattvas. Can a mind which is not a bodhisattva conceive of a bodhisattva? I suppose it can by a process of induction. Most certainly one cannot fully comprehend the mind of a bodhisattva if one is not a bodhisattva. But perhaps one can get a partial understanding of some vague outline of what a bodhisattva is by a process of negation.

Let me try an analogy here. We do have a somewhat good understanding of what finite numbers are. While we do not fully understand what infinity is, we can negatively define infinity to be that which is *not* finite. In a sense, the definition of infinity accessible to a finite mind is that infinity is something that which cannot be defined by the finite mind. In Taoism, the Eternal Tao is defined as “The Tao which can be named is not the Eternal Tao.” The ‘neti, neti’ (meaning “not that, not that”) with which the bodhisattvas of ancient India responded to the question of the nature of the ultimate principle (“God”) is another way of defining the ineffable.

I think I should pause briefly here to explain where I am going with this and what this has to do with economic development. Economic development is a problem that occupies us. We need to fully understand the nature of the problem to be able to solve it. The need to understand the problem arises because the solution to the problem is sensitive to the nature of the problem. That is, for the solution to be effective, it has to match the nature of the problem. An engineering problem does not admit a philosophical solution. Besides the issue of effectiveness, there is the matter of efficiency: if we know the nature of the problem, we can more efficiently solve it if we already have known solutions that apply to that particular class of problems.

[This is a work in progress. No doubt any feedback will contribute to the progress.]

I don’t think renunciation and self-sacrifice is necessary for a nation to prosper. What is required is the exact opposite — a strong avarice and ambition to promote one’s well-being.

India’s problems are not due a lack of “leaders”. It is due to a lack of people not being allowed to lead themselves. For all your insightful thoughts, you do not seem to be cognizant of this.

I think the comment was in response to the quote from Swami Vivekanand which said:

“Even the least work done for others awakens the power within; even thinking the least good of others gradually instills into the heart the strength of a lion. As you have come into this world, leave some mark behind. Otherwise, what is the difference between you and the trees and stones ? What our country needs are some young men who will renounce everything and sacrifice their lives for their country’s sake. Only such men can do some real work. I too believe that India will awake again, if anyone could love with all his heart the people of the country – bereft of the grace of affluence, of blasted fortune, their discretion totally lost, downtrodden, ever-starved, quarrelsome, and envious. Then only will India awake, when hundreds of large-hearted men and women, giving up all desires of enjoying the luxuries of life, will long and exert themselves to their utmost for the well-being of the millions of their countrymen who are gradually sinking lower and lower in the vortex of destitution and ignorance.”

Swami Vivekanand was no idealistic fool. I think it is worthwhile to read what he actually says very carefully. He is not saying that every person renounce everything. He is not advocating communism. He says that some need to sacrifice for the society as a whole to awake. He says we need hundreds of large-hearted men, not hundreds of millions in a country of hundreds of millions. I will argue here why I agree with Swamiji.

Let me start by asking how many brilliant scientists does a nation need? A few hundred in a nation of a few hundred million would suffice. You really don’t need millions brilliant scientists to meet the needs of the society. Would it not be great if the society of a few hundred million people had a hundred million brilliant scientists? Not necessarily, because a society needs other sorts of people, not just brilliant scientists. Besides brilliant scientists an economy needs brilliant engineers, doctors, business people, actors, authors, programmers, poets, authors, artists, … the list goes on.

A society which consists of millions of poets would be as impoverished as a society of millions of scientists. It is the mix of a lot of small numbers of people brilliant in their respective fields producing whatever that they are good at producing that makes a good society. It is the work of the relatively few brilliant people in their fields that makes the labor of the rest of us non-brilliant people more productive.

Which brings me to the point that Swamiji was making. He says that for the awakening of India, what we need is a few hundred leaders who could dedicate their lives to doing what leaders are supposed to do – to inspire and lead by example. Everyone does not have to be a leader, any more than everyone has to be a programmer. But we do need a bunch of programmers who are so dedicated that they would do what mere mortal programmers cannot do. So also, we need a bunch of leaders that would be capable of doing what thousands of run-of-the-mill leaders cannot do.

It would be silly to advocate a nation full of self-denying ascetics. No one with any bit of sense would do so. But while the vast majority of the citizens should be concerned with their own narrow self-interest, society still needs those handful of men and women who would excel beyond the capacity of the average. And in all fields we need these exceptional people, not the least of which is the field of political leadership.

The works of geniuses in every field – especially in science and engineering – is very useful because the benefit of their work can be widely disseminated through the economy. You do not have to invent the laser or the microprocessor to enjoy their benefits. In a similar sort of way, what a genuine leader does is to inspire people in ways that ultimately benefit the society as a whole. By example, they raise the moral fiber of the people. All else being the same, a society that is composed of ethically handicapped people will fare much worse compared to a society of people who have values that go beyond narrowly selfish goals. A finite multi-person prisoner’s dilemma game’s outcome can lead to a very sorry outcome.

I totally subscribe to the proposition that if everyone of us looked out for our own interests and did so without harming others or preventing others from looking out for themselves, the system will work out what is called a Pareto optimum. But I also believe that it is possible to transcend that if there were a few who were not so narrowly selfish and set an example for others to aspire towards.

India’s leadership sucks. That is not a very sophisticated analysis of Indian leadership but I am sure that it is succinct and accurate. A bunch of narrow-minded bigoted corrupt idiotic people at the top does not inspire very much good in the hundreds of millions of grunts to push themselves. The corruption at the top inspires pervasive petty corruption at the lower levels. This impoverishes the economy. Conversely, a bunch of obviously principled scrupulously honest totally dedicated leaders would inspire us to put in a little more effort, all of which would add up to something good.

Where are they who would inspire? Where are they that when we hear of what they have achieved, we feel a surge of inspiration and become resolved to be better than we are? Where are they that when we hear of their sacrifice and their nobility, we ourselves become more of what we are ourselves capable of?

I long to hear of a story regarding our so-called leaders that would send a chill down my spine and exclaim, “Wow, how amazing that this should happen in my own land and time?” What I read about in the press, instead, is yet another story of unspeakable corruption and moral depravity of our political bosses. I have not come across a single uplifting incident associated with the leaders of this country. Please tell me it ain’t so.

Let me tell you one that is unfortunately not of this place, and more unfortunately, not of this time. It relates to the 30th President of the United States of America, Mr Calvin Coolidge (1923-29). Here is an excerpt from his autobiography:

My own participation [in the campaign] was delayed by the death of my son Calvin, which occurred on the seventh of July. He was a boy of much promise, proficient in his studies, with a scholarly mind, who had just turned sixteen.

He had a remarkable insight into things.

The day I became President he had just started to work in a tobacco field. When one of his fellow laborers said to him, “if my father was President I would not work in a tobacco field,” Calvin replied, “If my father were your father, you would.”…

We do not know what might have happened to him under other circumstances, but if I had not been President, he would not have raised a blister on his toe, which resulted in blood poisoning, playing lawn tennis in the South Grounds.

In his suffering he was asking me to make him well. I could not.

When he went the power and the glory of the Presidency went with him.

The ways of Providence are often beyond our understanding. It seemed to me that the world had need of the work that it was probable he could do.

I do not know why such a price was exacted for occupying the White House.

The fruit does not fall too far from the tree. Calvin junior’s statement tells you who Calvin senior was parsimoniously. Every time I re-read that passage, I can feel the pain of a father who has lost a son who he cared so deeply about and yet is beset with doubt that perhaps if he had not been elected president, his son would have been alive.

President Coolidge inspired more than just his son, I am sure. Read what he has to say about persistence:

“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”

I want to read about the amazing sacrifices that our leaders have done, about the valuable thoughts that they have penned. Instead we have uninspired uninspiring mediocre people making insipid statements and acting like the petty money-grubbing power-hungry morons they are. These are the leaders we have and it is their names that are plastered on every institution and landmark. It is more than a little dispiriting when the person who is the chair of the National Commission on Higher Education is one who did not attend college even. Let’s just go the whole hog and make an illiterate idiot the chair of the National Commission for Nuclear Power Research.

Yes, Seven Times Six, people need to lead themselves. But they also need a few guiding stars to navigate by. And that, dear ladies and gentlemen, is what in our case we have not got.

Goodnight, thank you, and may your god go with you.