Blog

There seems to be a consensus on the idea that all problems that we face in our governmental system is due to corruption. This anecdote might help you see some other complicated and routine sides of the “efficiency” issue of our offices.

My dad is a medical officer, and he told me this story last night.

If you go to his Community Health Centre (a small hospital with a few doctors, in-patient facility and operation theater, and just over 20 rooms) you’ll find 3 rooms fully filled with old tablets.
To know where these came from you need to know a bit about the way tablet distribution works. The government orders a huge amount of tablets from companies, and distributes it to each government hospitals of the state according to their need (mostly freely). This need is calculated by multiplying the number of doctors working there with the number of tablets they prescribe. So, in dad’s CHC it’d be, say, 7 * 300 per month (like for ORS, 10 packets are easily given away per day). And the government gives 2100 ORS packets. Now, 3-4 doctors go on leave. And so, no matter how many people get diarrhoea, there’d be an excess of at least 1000 packets in stock. And then these get expired. Laws are that 6 months before expiry date the pharmacist must distribute these to needy organizations like orphanages. But there’s so much of about-to-expire tablets that when he asks the organizations whether they need tablets, they ask the same question in reply. And the pharmacist keeps them with him safely. Let’s assume this kind of loss is minimized by asking only around 1000 packets from the government.
But there’s another problem. If in any hospital of the state any tablet is found sub-standard, a committee sees to it and blocks the distribution of tablets of that batch number throughout the state. And these kind of sub-standard batches occur every year. Since the tablets are costly, the pharmaceutical company is written a letter informing the defect and reimbursement is asked for. After a month, the company doesn’t send any reply. Another letter is sent as a reminder. No reply. (And sometimes these letters are not sent at all. Companies could bribe clerks at the office to prevent the letter being sent) Now, a registered letter is sent. No reply to that either. And then, everyone forgets about the matter. And back at the hospitals, the pharmacist is left with a whole batch of tablets that he can’t distribute because they’re of low quality, can’t burn/dump because he needs to return them in case the company decides to reimburse and asks for the tablets.

Thus, hospitals get filled up with tablets.

Whom do we blame now? If the Lokpal bill had been introduced whom would we want hung?

This is just that kind of a cumulative error which Nedumudi Venu points out to the court in the movie Anniyan and gets laughed at. Errors for which you cannot blame a single person.

And it happens because human beings are not machines. Human beings are, well, humans. They make mistakes. And our rules do not make a differentiation between humane errors and human greed. It doesn’t matter whether you do something slightly wrong because you’re stupid or because you’re corrupt. In fact there’s no “slight” wrong before the rule. And that’s machine logic. 1 or 0. Corrupt or pure. That’s not how human beings are. Human beings can  be something in between.

No, I’m not blaming the legislature. Because to codify the various processes, the algorithm by which we decide what is right, what is wrong and what is in between, is equivalent to designing artificial intelligence. You can’t do that.

And that’s why we have courts! Courts are rules with a human interpreter. In fact judges are allowed to interpret rules. They decide who’s wrong, who’s right and who’s slightly wrong, by applying human intelligence.

So, why do we have corruption though we have courts. Because courts are slow. Not all cases reach courts. Not everyone gets to present their cases fairly before justice.
And if we try to hasten, the decisions could become inaccurate. If we try to expand, the average intelligence of the judiciary might go low – it takes years of experience to become a judge, that’s because you learn to apply non-extremist, non-digital (non 1 or 0) logic to questions, and it takes people years to learn that (or for others to be sure they’ve learned that).

But it’s not just the courts that are slow or inefficient. Offices, officers, administrators, organizers, chairpersons, presidents. Anyone could be inefficient. Because just occupying a government seat doesn’t automatically make a man superman. He’s the same adolescent turned young man turned adult who has all the follies, imperfections of a human. He will make mistakes when work becomes tedious for him. He will make the wrong choices when presented with too many choices.

And where we go wrong is when we think that forcing them to do the right, putting pressure on them to perform will make them do the right. It may or may not. But I know something that has a better chance for working. And that’s technology. Sure there are things that cannot be modernized. But still, we’ve not yet achieved that much which we can. The GoI is definitely taking the right steps by implementing UID and related projects. That’s just a start. Everyone, every office, could benefit from technology. And it’s the software engineers, IT professionals, etc who can identify these areas. Funny that I didn’t start writing this post with this intention. But I suppose, if you’re an engineer, and you’ve been told that a career in medicine or administration is the best way to serve the people, well you’ve been misinformed. You have the key to the solutions of our 20th century problems.

And I’m just trying highlight human imperfections that need to be corrected not with stricter rules, but with productivity tools.

I remember asking one of my computer science friends a few months ago when he was coding a small game “When your program plays the game, does it actually know the rules, or does it just act as per your algorithms as to how to proceed at each imaginable point that comes up during the game? Is the program conscious of the game?”

Now, I think, that question of mine was invalid.

We go inside the mind of a human baby, an infant.
It knows nothing – a blank slate. Very importantly, what we call consciousness, or the awareness of the self is absent. Somewhere along the line, it becomes conscious and begins thinking of itself.

[I’m gonna be putting seemingly random thoughts throughout this post, just make sure each one of them are agreeable]

How do we learn something?
As small kids, we are shown or we see everything around us. Cats, people, stones, toys, moving things, immobile things, living things, non-living things, this, that, everything.
Right from the delivery bed there’s a training process that begins. Mom points at a moving thing and says “DAD”. Then, “CAT”, “DOG”, “PEN”, and so on…
There can’t possibly be any understanding as to what “dad” or “pen” means at that time. BUT, very importantly there are memories, or conditioned reflexes formed. [Remember Pavlov’s dog? After Pavlov repeatedly struck a bell before feeding a dog for a few times, just striking the bell brought about salivation].
So, the next time you see the same pen or the same cat, you, as a baby, remembers to associate with the sound “CAT” or “PEN”
That’s initial variable declaration kind of memory formation.

Then, you learn categories, methods, activities, etc.
This is a cat. This doesn’t move. This is not even 3D. This is just a “PICTURE” of a cat. Cats in pictures can’t move.

Then you go school. Teachers tell you:
Cat is an animal. Dog is an animal.
Cat can change its position. Cat can move. Animals are those things that can move.
And then, all your memories of cats, of movement, and of cats moving surfaces in your mind.
Of dogs too.
And then you learn what it takes to be an animal.

I repeat. A baby knows nothing.
How does it learn? By conditionally associating words that it hear with the visual (or tactile in a blind person) stimuli that is accompanying the sound always.
Not just objects. Methods like motion, fall, rise, rolling, everything is associated to the words for it.

I do mean LANGUAGE IS THE BASIS OF INTELLIGENCE

Then there are categories. And there are inherited methods, inherited properties.

A baby learns to categorize things. It learns that if a rat is an animal, it’ll move too. (Even this is taught. You’ve got to remind her “Idiot, it’s an animal. Animals move”)
So, the baby now learns to identify, categorize, etc.

Now, we move on to the hard problem of self awareness.
It’s not really hard.
The baby is taught about the existence of self.
It’s taught that whichever part of the universe is under its direct control is called “self”.
And there always is the unconsciously learned skills like moving own hands, feet, etc. which leads to an image of the body being formed in the brain (cerebellum).

(I say, if we were to keep something contiguous with the body 24×7, 365 days for a non-leap year, it’d finally form a part of the body image.
In fact when we grow up, and we start using mobile phones, we get addicted to it, then it becomes so repetitive that even the mobile handset forms a part of the body image. But this is usually prevented by the fact that we keep the sets down at times. But what I mean to say, is that if we were to associate, consciously as the mobile being an extension of our body, it’ll finally become a part of our self. Maybe this is true with prosthetic limbs and all. No, they will tell you it feels alien, but that’s because they have not tried to consciously associate with it, nor do they get sensory stimulus from the prosthetic)

Thus, the baby begins to identify itself. (Even this is just an information stored in the neurons)

Now, consciousness.
The fact that there is something that’s observing my thoughts.

I am thinking hard.

It’s hard to solve.

Emotions, etc can be explained with hormones, and the sense of well being. Like negative words are associated with bad memories, bad memories bring on the be wary mode, leading to release of be wary hormones, which would bring about a bad mood – negative emotion. Vice versa with positive emotions.

But who is feeling this well being?
That, is really hard to solve.

And I go back to the question I asked my friend. He should have retorted with this question: “What do you mean by ‘conscious’ness?”

Had occasions when you wonder what you should do and what you should not?
Ever felt out of the group in a party/dinner/function?
Had to ask/listen to somebody’s lecture on friend/couple/family/stranger manners?

Not any more.

Wherever you go, whatever you do, there is only one rule you should know – “be comfortable”.

And that refers just to you. You be comfortable. And do everything it takes for you to feel comfortable.

People are always gonna tell you you should not have done this/that/itlikethat because they are confused what to do.

You’ve got an identity, you hold onto that. Never ever feel the urge to be someone you’re not.

Because trust me, you’re the king!

“2011 is the only year I studied both in a school and a college.” ~SMS forward

January – Started studying seriously for entrance examinations. Carefree to careful.
February – Turned 18. Minor to major.
March – 12th standard board exam is over. End of English as a subject.
June – All exams done. Time to commit to one very big life decision – college.
July – Enjoy, wait eagerly for college.
August – Join MBBS, marvel at the size of textbooks. +Start the challenge of living without a computer for an year.
September – Make friends.
October – Sleep.
November – Loose sleep studying for internal exams.
December – Rejoice at the failure. Learn from it. And start afresh. This time, it’s a happy new year!

—

I have some serious ideas about studying medicine subjects, especially anatomy. It’d be worth another post after I finish the experiments.