India's Politics And Academics: Chicken/Egg (People/System) Problem

Both Indian politics and Indian academics suffer from the same fundamental problem: the chicken-and-egg problem – or the people-and-system problem. Good people are not there in the field. Why? Because the system is not good. And why is the system not good? Because good people are not there. That is: Good people will enter the field only when the system becomes good – and the system will become good only when good people enter the field.

Of course, this is a fundamental principle of the universe. And as per this principle, there should be no progress in the world at all. But the history of the world is nothing but the story of progress. So how does progress happen – in spite of the chicken-and-egg / people-and-system principle? There are two reasons. The first reason is that the principle is not 100% rigid/watertight. Especially with regard to the egg-to-chicken part – ie, the relationship between the quality of a system and the entry of good people. Some good people (who are fools) enter a field even though the system is not good.

The second reason is that luckily for us, human/social systems are not 'digital' but 'analog'. That is – they are not binary/discrete (bad vs good; 0 vs 1) but continuous (a gradient/spectrum from bad to good; 0 to 10). So a few good people (fools) enter a bad system and make it better – which attracts more good people – who make the system even better – and so on. This is nothing but the upward spiral / virtuous cycle of progress. Of course, the critical factor here is the speed of the process – especially when we are in a dynamic environment / competitive world. We can only hope that both our academics and our politics get on to a self-sustaining path of improvement (good systems + good people) as soon as possible – and move on it as fast as possible. Aum . . .