Small Man, Big World

  The futility of life is difficult to accept. Many of us are troubled by the fact that our actions and our very existence is meaningless in the bigger scheme of things. We turn to creative ways to mollify our bruised egos and battered souls. Some of us turn to religion, an archaic institution that should find no place in a rational scientific society. Religion helps us feel that each life has a direct connection with a supreme being, and is therefore part of a cosmic plan. Others turn to little acts of kindness, and try to make a difference in the lives of those immediately around us - friends, family, the downtrodden etc.

The latter path is certainly appealing, but it runs into a dead-end when one realises that the primary determinants of their lives are systemic issues like the economic models countries follow, or the level of freedom and liberties it guarantees to its citizens. Of course, little act of kindness can make a material difference to the lives of the beneficiary, but can individual action ever fully compensate for systemic failures or oppression?

My profession takes me to the core of the problem. For years now, I have been working on social protection and digital rights. The very foundation of these issue is the nature of the citizen-state covenant. Both are determined by the nature of government we created, how this government views its citizens, whether it trusts and empowers them, and how it deals with perceived threats to its existence.

When working on these issues, I cannot but feel overwhelmed by the enormity of the forces I'm encountered with. Let's take the example of India. The nature of the Indian state was determined by the cataclysmic events during partition, and the need felt by our founding fathers to create a strong government to hold the country together. Therefore, they created a constitutional architecture that borrowed heavily from colonial-era laws, and which provided the government significant freedom to impinge on human rights. This led some like Constituent Assembly member Somnath Lahiri to remark that the fundamental rights have been 'framed from the point of view of a police constable.'

Over the years, there has been a steady and gradual accretion in the power of the state. This process has been further accelerated by the advent of technology and the ability to place digital leashes on an individual's behaviour and even thoughts.

Therefore, every time I think of where my work is really headed, I experience feelings of despondency and anxiety. Despondency because I feel that my work cannot really make a difference, and that forces that are exponentially larger than me are at play. Anxiety because of the fear that those who feel threatened or offended by my thoughts might retaliate.

Quite ironically, then, I think I might find refuge in what the Bhagwat Gita says - "कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन, or that you have the rights over your actions, but never over its results. Therefore, perhaps my limited role in all of this is to keep doing what I think is the right thing, without worrying about whether it leads to anything at all.

Perhaps the collective strength of thousands like me, each chipping away at that elusive goal, might mean something substantial in the larger scheme of things. And even if it doesn't, perhaps I will end this lifetime with the satisfaction that I tried my best.

Taking a break

Let me start with a confession. I think I am a workaholic. That doesn't mean that I work all the time. In fact, I regularly take out time to go to the gym and meet friends. But even when I'm doing those things, I'm usually obsessively checking for emails and thinking about work. The next major meeting I have, or the documents I'm working on, or the feedback I've just received on my work. In fact, I meet most of the 7 signs and 3 character traits of workaholics that this Forbes article enlists.

Because I don't really work long hours, my physical health continues to be unaffected. I get time to eat healthy, work out and sleep well. So far, so good. But the mental stress and exhaustion from constantly thinking about work takes a toll. Every 4 months or so, I find myself completely disengaged from work and unable to carry on. Then I take a few weeks off for a vacation. But even when I'm on vacation, I refuse to stay away from work. I check emails and work on flights, during breaks, at nights and any other time. Research published in the Scandinavian Journal of Psychology found that workaholism is correlated with higher prevalence of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), anxiety and depression. Many of the findings are behaviour patterns that I observe in myself. Compulsively checking emails, sometimes every 2-3 minutes, is one. Trying to organise my workday and fretting over irrelevant deviations from schedule is another.

Vacations can be an excellent way to unwind and rein in your workaholic tendencies. Over the past two years, vacations have become an integral part of my life. But these vacations weren't always what they were meant to be. I still remember my first vacation after joining Omidyar Network. Nico and I went to Thailand and Cambodia, but I used a lot of that time catching up on work. The next trip to Japan was even worse. I signed myself up for an investment committee meeting, constantly read work-related documents, and stressed non-stop about an investment proposal that I had been championing internally. I came back from these 'vacations' slightly refreshed, but experienced burn out within a few months.

I then thought a lot about how I can make my vacations work for me. I took inspiration from the four rules of an effective vacation that writer Chidike Samuelson enlisted - pause everything that suggests work, treat your mind, treat your body, and catch up with your life. So, this time that I'm in Australia, I successfully kept myself completely cut-off from emails for a week. I tried to replace the phone with a physical book. I tried to spend my meals either having a conversation, or reading the book. I take the time to sit and ponder, without feeling the pressure to do anything. Not all of that has been successful, of course. I still go on twitter, which has become a major part of my workday. On Friday, a Government committee released a report on a topic that I had been following closely. That led to a few days of disequilibrium.  But the general upward trajectory is encouraging and gives me hope that the next vacation would be even better.

But vacations will only come once every few months, if not years. It is important to keep the body and mind healthy in the meantime. That will help me avoid the kind of brain-splitting burnouts that I experience every few months. There is plenty of advice out there on how to deal with work. I found these seven tips especially useful - eat nutritiously, exercise, uni-task, breathe, schedule non-work stuff, take tech time-out, and know that balance is constantly evolving. The one that I find most challenging is uni-tasking. One of the most important differences between management consulting and my current job is the explosion in the number of things I need to work on. At any given point, there are 8-10 major streams of work that are screaming for attention. Some of my days are spent just jumping from one to the other, addressing the most urgent things in each. That leaves me very dissatisfied because my brain doesn't feel particularly challenged, and I start wondering if I'm even contributing anything. Uni-tasking could therefore be something I focus on when I go back to work.

Incase you're wondering if I'm all negative on workaholism, I'm not! Being in love with my work has helped me tremendously in life. I look back at the frenetic pace of things back at college and I wonder where I got that energy from! But now that I'm in a slightly comfortable position in life, and possibly at a mid-20s crossroads, I need to think about where to go from here. The sprint is over, and the marathon requires a different set of skills. Writer Jessica Stillman has talked about five differences between workaholics and high performers - having specific goals, setting targets, varying level of effort, being proactive, and not seeking external validation. As I head back to work from my two-week vacation, these could serve as useful goalposts to keep in mind.

Humility in Venture Capital

Those who've followed my blogs for a few years will know that humility has been a recurring theme. Ever since the high scores in Grade XII exams and the resultant media exposure catapulted me into a position of local prominence, I have struggled to balance my feeling of having 'achieved' with the need to remain humble. As reflected in this post from 2013, I tried to argue that humility is important for a process of continuous learning. Lack of humility, I ruminated, would cause me to filter out uncomfortable discussions and contrarian viewpoints. However, as my professional and personal journey increased, I realised that it was an inadequate behaviour. I came across several self-assured and rather aggressive people whose display of supreme confidence in themselves caught the attention of people around them. Those who were meek and reflective simply didn't seem to have the same gravitas. That's when I started distinguishing between internal and external humility and wrote about it in this post from 2015. The idea was simple - I exist in service of an idea and, sometimes, I would need to demonstrate external arrogance, so that my idea can propagate. However, internally I should always be humble so that the process of continuous learning doesn't stop. In 2016, at the cusp of beginning my journey in philanthropy and venture capital, an incident that I talk about in this blog made me think once more about the qualities that I really value, and humility came up on top again.

Which brings me to the point of this blog, i.e. my continuing reflections about humility. As a funder, especially one backed by the generosity of a single individual rather than just financial returns-oriented investors, it is very easy to get carried away. Even though every such organisation (including mine) has many checks-and-balances and, in any case, I'm at a junior level, such organisational details are mostly unknown to those I interact with. Therefore, the perceived power I have to determine what we fund creates a strange (and unsettling) power dynamic in many conversations I have. A colleague put it well recently - in every conversation, both you and the grantee know that there's a hammer on the table and you can use it any time you want. The key is how to have an honest conversation despite that. There is a lot of hubris in what is called 'the investor community'. For example, a relatively junior peer at another firm gloated that entrepreneurs would "such my c**k" for funding.

The problem with such hubris is that it is only illusionary. Our perceived power comes only from our membership of a particular organisation; that power is as fleeting as our membership of the organisation itself. Our membership itself may be due to several extraneous circumstances that we can barely take credit for. In my own case, my entry into Omidyar Network was because of an internship posting that a friend forwarded to me. There might have been many others, far more deserving of the job, who just didn't happen to see such postings. I happened to be in the right place at the right time - that's very little to gloat about!

Second, I continue to see entrepreneurs as people to look up to. It would be very easy for them to do what I do. In fact, many entrepreneurs I know started their careers in similar organisations as mine. However, I continue to believe that I can't do what they do. Therefore, if I believe that I can turn up at a meeting and tell an entrepreneur how she should be running her business, I'm only fooling myself. At best, I can serve as a knowledge agent, using my networks and wider view of the market to suggest ideas to her. If I really knew so much about what makes a successful start-up, shouldn't I be an entrepreneur myself? Any arrogance, therefore, is merely a delusion.

Finally, I go back to my earliest thoughts around filtering out different viewpoints. Much of investing is to get a grip on different sectors. That is particularly true in my situation because I'm working in a nascent sector where the 'template of success' has not yet been established. Therefore, I need to treat every conversation as a learning opportunity. For that to happen, I need to approach it with humility. Anything else would make me a partially blind investor at best and an unsuccessful one at work.

My Year Back in India

October 8, 2016 was the day I returned to India after spending two years in the UK. To be fair, I had visited India frequently even while I was at Oxford. However, the experiences of seasonal visitors and residents are very different. While I was gone, things had changed in India – for better or for worse – and I returned to a country that seemed far more divided than the one I remembered.

While the UK provided a very nourishing environment for me and helped me grow in many ways, the feeling of being ‘othered’ constantly bothered me. The colour of my skin had never occupied such centre-stage in my life before. Therefore, even as I made friends from different countries and learnt new skills or life-lessons, there was a yearning to go back home. Funnily, the place where I chose to return was Bangalore. The city is, at the surface, just like the cities I grew up in; and while the feeling of being ‘othered’ reduced substantially, it didn’t quite disappear. I under-estimated language as a factor that divides individuals. However, I share with Bangaloreans the underlying values that I have come to embody. Therefore, the relationships I have formed here have been much deeper than the ones I formed in Oxford.

The highlight of coming back has been the re-engagement with my friends. While I would meet them even when I was visiting from Oxford, I can now meet them for more than a few hours a year. Not only do I meet my friends more frequently, I get to spend a lot more quality time with them. Friends have visited and stayed over at my little place in Bangalore, some friends live in Bangalore and others have been co-travellers. I had feared that I will miss out on the weddings of many of my friends. But as the marriage engine cranks up, I have enjoyed sharing with my friends their lives’ special moments!

On the work front, I found myself in the middle of a maelstrom. As part of the Digital Identity team at Omidyar Network, I was working on Aadhaar-related issues. This was a topic that soon emerged as a polarising one with very little space for neutrality. In this situation, trying to be a voice of reason has been personally very exhausting. Yet, I feel that we’ve started making a difference. The State of Aadhaar Report and Digital Identity Research Initiative that we’ve funded will hopefully fill a vacuum of data that exists in this debate. Personally, it has been a steep learning curve, which has allowed me to have a well-informed discussion on this topic.

Therefore, as I look back at the year that I’ve been in India, it has passed by very quickly. Working on an issue that is central to the country’s future has been a highlight. It has motivated me to work harder, late at nights, over weekends and even while waiting in hospitals! I also realised that work doesn’t feel like work when you’re working on something that excites you.

My journey to Oxford started with me saying in my Rhodes interview that helping people is not something that I see as a distinct task, but a part of everyday life. Relatedly, while coming back to India wasn’t motivated solely by a burning desire to make a change in the country, I’ve been fortunate to get that opportunity and have tried to run with it.

A response to this article that was circulated on the Rhodes Scholars google group:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/03/city-corporates-destroy-best-minds

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Thanks for sending this article, Vivek, and for recently encouraging me to reply on this thread. As someone who already worked at McKinseybefore getting the scholarship, I have been amused at how the firm has, within the Rhodes community here, come to represent a particular kind of corporate culture. We are supposed to 'fight the world's fight', and that might explain our discomfort with these firms.

I believe, however, that if we end up believing that there is a set path to create a better world, and that these jobs are far removed from that path, then we risk falling prey to the kind of dogma that will prevent us from reaching that aim. There are different ways and approaches to improving the world, and people can and should be free to contribute in ways they want to. When we stop making sweeping generalisations and look within these firms to find individuals, I think we will realise that it is the individual who decides what to do with their life, and finds the best way to do it. 

1. Is consulting 'pointless', 'destructive', 'soul sucker' and 'useless': These are some of the adjectives Monbiot uses for jobs such as management consulting. Many Rhodes scholars have also expressed such apprehensions, albeit in more polite ways. Now, there are things that one would universally consider 'useful' or 'constructive', and then there are things that would may find useful depending on their values. I worked for several months on a report* that advised the government, among other things, to have a re-look at the abysmally low official poverty numbers, to increase spending on basic services such as healthcare and sanitation, to keep a strong role for the public sector and to improve governance to enable the poor to participate more fully. I also remember the days I spent in one of the poorest districts of India, working on a project that would bring electricity to a fraction of the ~ 400 million people in India living without any access to electricity. I fail to see what is 'pointless' or 'destructive' in what I did. Working in a plant to increase output might not seem like it contributes to making the world a better place, but then when I interacted with the (contracted) labourers, it was most obvious to me that what the economically weaker sections want is growth and jobs and all of that. Management consulting firms, therefore, are a pareto improvement over status quo.
   
   
2. We have but one life. However much money we make, we cannot buy it back: Firstly, I might not agree with someone who seeks to make lots of money, but that doesn't in any way make me right and him wrong. Just makes us different. Simple. The good thing about places like McKinsey is that they are secular. For thousands of people in countries such as India, they provide us an opportunity to live the life that we could never dream of. For example, it might be easy for scholars from first-world countries to imagine just packing their bags and leaving for foreign shores, but for me, McKinsey was the first time I stepped outside India. The entry barriers (visa procedures) set up for us are rather high, and take a lot of money (and time) to scale. And to be honest, I probably wouldn't be a Rhodes Scholar if it wasn't for my time at McKinsey. Because the lavish settings in which the Rhodes interviews are conducted intimidate anyone who isn't born into a modicum of privilege. We need to reflect on how many of our institutions, including our scholarship, are truly secular in the way a McKinsey is. Like those organisations, do we create opportunities based purely on merit (however it may be defined), or do we reward privilege with even more privilege? One needs only to go to Gurgaon, once a dusty suburb of Delhi but today the richest district in India, to witness this story of hope. Hope that isn't restricted to the corridors of privilege.
   
   
3. Is consulting a 'cult': Monbiot starts with saying that the purposes of humankind is to seek enlightenment, intellectual or spiritual; to do good; to love and be loved and to teach. I completely agree, but I fail to see what about management consulting prevents one from doing that. I found lots of love from people at McKinsey when I was there; some of them have, in fact, contributed to making me whatever I am today (for good or for bad). When I had typed out the email withdrawing my Rhodes Application after clearing the first round, it was a McKinsey Associate who prevented me from doing so by writing to the Partner on the study who convinced me over the next several interactions to give this experience a chance over the private equity offer I had. An Engagement Manager at McKinsey taught me to stand up for what I believe in, and to not mince words, in the face of disagreement from those 'senior' to me. These are skills one can also learn outside McKinsey - which is my point. These firms are reflections of the world. One will find the good, the bad and the ugly. Just need to learn how to deal with it. It isn't a 'cult' and certainly didn't trap me, neither did it try to.
   
   

The point around recruitment practices is one, as Natalya pointed out, something that is the most worthwhile to discuss. Some of it is justified because these occupations are unknown commodities and hence these firms need to make an effort to make themselves visible in a way academia or civil services don't need to. Where do we draw the line? How do we redistribute resources? And if we make an effort to level the playing field at university recruitment, what about later in life? Certainly those willing to 'sell out' to these firms after University would also tend to 'sell out' to them later in life? Brings me to my final question - are these students really our best graduates?

Regards,

SB

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* India's Path from Poverty to Empowerment: http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/asia-pacific/indias_path_from_poverty_to_empowerment

Bandhan Microfinance Field Visits

Just as the failure to get a summer internship was getting severe, a sliver of hope emerged in the form of Micro Home Solutions - a start-up, associated with microfinance institutions, that I really wanted to work with. But I always knew it was kind of tough, and it turned out it was. But that was when I think I kept my cool and moved ahead and applied to Bandhan. It was my last resort - had it not succeeded, I would've been spending the summer vacation sitting at home. However, now when I look back at it, I truly accept the saying "What happens always happens for the best".

Through this internship, I have fulfilled some of my longest-standing desires in life. I visited villages and talked to their inhabitants. I saw poverty first-hand, and this experience was life-changing. Whether it was cycling 50km on the first field visit, and consequently suffering a heat stroke, or having my feet sink into the soil after the rain, or even interacting with poor children attending Bandhan's schools, it brought me closer to India's villages. I talked to a lot of Bandhan's THP beneficiaries. THP stands for Targeting the Hard-Core Poor, and is Bandhan's program to bring to microfinance level those households that are too poor even for microcredit. This was where I saw the transformational role that Bandhan and microcredit is playing in India's villages. These THP beneficiaries are the ones who earlier couldn't eat two square meals and their houses were dilapitated, but with Bandhan's aid, they have progressed to microcredit level, live in good quality houses now, and eat reguarly. The best thing is that Bandhan achieves this by setting up businesses for them, rather than giving hard cash, so that income generation is sustainable. Many of them have now started taking loans to expand the business that bandhan set up for them. I talked and videotaped many of them, and in talking to them I came up with the idea of my next novel - the struggles of people in India's villages.

The next major impact that this internship had for me was having me travel alone around Kolkata, from the Bangladesh border to the Bay of Bengal. I travelled in the Kolkata suburban trains, sometimes in such crowd that could squeeze the life out of people. I woke up at 4 AM reguarly, and sleepily made my way from my house to the Baghajatin station, from there to Sealdah station, from Sealdah to Howrah by bus, and from Howrah to my destination. It was amazing. By the time I ended my 3 hour journey to my destinations, it would be 7:30 AM, a time at which I, and most of my friends, would not even have woken up on regular days. And here came the solution to my life's biggest regret. When I had to board buses, i'd be clueless - after all, all the buses carried information in Bengali and I cannot read Bengali. So, I had to get back home and start to learn how to read Bengali. And the necessity of doing so ensured that I learnt Bengali fast. Now, I am in a relatively comfortable position as far as reading Bengali is concerned, and all thanks to this internship.

But more was to come. I went back to office with all the primary data I had collected (I'd pushed myself to touch 109 samples, instead of the designated 90). And there I explored the wonders that MS Excel hid. And that inspired me to go ahead and learn these things so that I can use that in future. My thing for computers, which I had lost mid-way, has been reignited again.

The hardest part was, in the midst of all this, the 'personal problems' that I went through. Yes, the common teenage problems - dil, dosti etc. But this internship made me realise how trivial all these problems were. There are people living a daily tighrope between life and death, and I'm worried about this. And by the end of my internship (actually, by the end of the field visits), I find myself in a situation of much greater mental peace. And I've started enjoying my internship in ways that I am sure nobody else enjoys his/her internship. Because I love going to office, meeting everybody there, talking to them, doing my work, learning new things and everything that comes along with them. Yes, my last resort of an internship is now the best internship I could have hoped for.