Journey to the Heart of Geek Nation: India

‘Down these mean streets a man must go who is neither tarnished nor afraid‘

Raymond Chandler

I have just finished Angela Saini’s new book ‘Geek Nation: How Indian Science is Taking Over the World’ and I loved it. Not only is it a rich and fascinating account of the progress of Indian science in many fields and of the conflict between science, modernity and traditional society. It is a sort of road movie as Angela travels India seeking out the truth, very much like a Raymond Chandler private eye. She has the same sometimes dark, ironic sense of humour, particularly when confronted by some evidence-free assertions on the certainty of some far-out scientific hypothesis being true, or that the Vedas show that ancient Indians flew around in early far from aerodynamic aircraft. But I never sense any condescension in her stance. She has an open mind and a great sense of curiosity, which she follows all over India into biology,  genetics, IT, nuclear power, agriculture, wherever the thread leads her.

She also catches what is unique about the sheer size of Geek Nation. The number of qualified scientists, the relatively low cost of doing business, but also the paucity of resources in many research facilities run almost literally on a shoestring, but producing impressive results in many cases. She also shows some of the cultural differences around science in a less individualistic, less legalistic culture. In particular, her piece on open source biological research on the possible cures for Tuberculosis (neglected by western medical companies because only poor people tend to get it) is fascinating, and opened my eyes to new, creative ways to overcome the cost/benefit dilemmas of other infectious diseases similarly cash-starved by the  global inequality of suffering demographics.

Ultimately, though at the heart of this road movie is a strong moral sense. This is no journey of mere curiosity, but a quest for some answers as to how much science can help solve India’s huge problems of corruption, poverty, inequality, power shortages, food shortages and related issues. She has a keen eye for what is performative bullshit, and what really offers some hope. Ultimately, she left me cautiously optimistic that India indeed can help lead the world in solving some of the tough problems. I loved her quote from Chintamani Nagesa Ramachandra Rao:

‘ I really want India to become great in science. All other things will shine when science shines’….Good science takes passion…..’We need real nutty guys doing science’ 

Angela’s book was generative for me in other ways. Firstly, I have heard it said that India and the USA are similar in they represent a combination of resurgent nationalism and religion that is not found in Europe or China. And so I would love Angela to take her detective skills, and explore American scientific and religious culture with the same powerful lens and curiosity: the interaction of modernity with traditional sometimes anti-scientific religion in the USA. The USA often does not look at itself in the mirror in the way Angela has looked at India, and it probably needs an outsider to do so: a scientific De Tocqueville? It will not get better until it does.

And then I took Angela’s notion of Geek Nation and thought in terms of conflict model of this blog. Simon Baron-Cohen in his book ‘The Essential Difference‘ has suggested that a systemic view of the world and an empathetic view of the world tend to be inversely correlated. He sees males as somewhat skewed towards the systemic and female towards the empathetic. Indeed he suggests that autism or lack of ‘theory of mind’ of others is a form of ‘extreme male brain’. Leaving aside the gender implications, systems builders do test rather lower than average on the ability to form a ‘theory of mind’ of others on Simon’s tests.

So my question is how far India, which has an enormously powerful spiritual tradition can balance the slightly Asperger’s syndrome (high functioning autism) of much science (it’s called objectivity) with some better ‘theory of mind’ or empathetic understanding to couple with systemic understanding, so core to the notion of the Geek?

In India’s case the focus for such ‘theory of mind’ might be threefold (and Angela’s book touches on the first). Firstly, on India’s own poor so far removed from the emerging scientific and wealthier middle classes. Understanding the real needs of the poor, their world view, and meeting the most desperate needs collaboratively. Secondly, the world of gender relationships as they become more equal, but where, if society is to bond in new ways, then empathy is vital between people at the individual  level in their relationships.

And finally, a subject close to the interests of this blog: empathy towards Pakistan. It will take a major leap of understanding to see just how terrifying the emergence of India as a scientific and economic super-power is to its neighbour Pakistan. Helping unpick the resulting distrust will need a combination of scientific systems thinking AND an empathetic ‘theory of mind’ of ‘what would it feel like to be Pakistan?’. That is not to say that Pakistan does not cause a lot of its own problems by spending so much more on nuclear weapons than education, but root-cause analysis asks: why is this? And India needs a combination of Geekiness and empathy to change the situation. But I digress, though prompted by the generative nature of Angela’s journey.

Footnote: This is Angela, and I suppose having read her book, I think of her as one of the heroines in Japanese Manga graphic novels setting about the forces of ignorance, with her sharp questions, or, perhaps more realistically, like Cayce Pollard in William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition. She meets Raymond Chandler’s test above.