Tiger and The King…. New learning

The other day I was telling a story (as usual, making it on the fly) and when I ended the story, I was surprised at the way I ended it.

Once upon a time, there was a King, one day he went for hunting in the jungle. There he saw a tiger. But the tiger was lying down and not moving, his eyes were open. King looked into Tiger’s eyes. King felt that the Tiger was asking for help. So he got down from his horse and went near the Tiger. He found one arrow pierced into Tiger’s body. He went near to him and took out the arrow and cleaned the wound. Tiger started feeling better. When Tiger tried to stand on his feet, King helped him a bit. Tiger stood up, stretched his legs and felt better. King was standing there, looking down upon the tiger, feeling proud that he helped a tiger and was happy with himself. Tiger roared and before King realised jumped upon him, putting him on the ground. King was surprised.
He said ” Hey, I saved your life and now you are going to kill me?”

” Thank you for saving and I appreciate your efforts.” The Tiger said, “saving other’s life is your Dharma (your nature, your duty), you felt good about it, you felt proud about it. You got your returns. My Dharma is to kill and eat. You did you Dharma and now I am doing my Dharma, If I don’t eat you, I would starve and I would die”.
And Tiger killed the King.

Moral this story for me is that before you decide to help someone you should know his “Dharma” or nature and be prepared to face it. Helping with just good heart is not good enough, you need to know that other person/ animal does not have the same heart as yours.

Contrast this with what my grandmother or mother or even I myself would have ended this story just 5 years back. I would have ended up telling that the Tiger and the King became friends forever etc – very similar to Lion and the Mouse story I have heard since childhood.

Side effect of Trust – efficiency

Travelling on a subway/ local trains in Singapore, Hong Kong, Kolkatta, Delhi, Bejing the most common thing that you take for granted is the entry point/ checkpoint automatic doors. They come in different forms – “snap” doors or “lever” doors. Your instinct tells you to tap your pass or push the ticket through, door will open and you go through to the other side. This is the standard operating procedure at almost every subway station and every country I have visited.

Now imagine the contrast. You tap your ticket or pass on the ticket checking point and you look for door to open – either “snap” sound or the levers to push. But there is no door. It it a wide open “Pass through”. This is Tokyo.

You know what. I thought I was busy in tapping the ticket and hence might not have noticed opening of the door. And hence I moved passed the doors and looked back to check if the doors are snapping back to close. But no such thing. I was zapped. Being in a hurry I went and boarded the train. While coming out of the station I decided to keep a closer watch on the doors. Again I realised the doors were open all the time.

I was waiting for the opportunity to know it better and I got it on 3^rd day. My pass had run out of money and I tapped the pass on the entrance of the door. It beeped, flashed red light and doors closed. Oh..so there were doors. And in the instance I understood the logic.

The doors are open all the time and they close only when something goes wrong.

Wow.. I liked the logic, made for efficiency. Faster movement of people in the given time.

While I was admiring this efficient mechanism, I wondered why other cities have not implemented such logic. And that is when I felt that this mechanism or logic is not just the efficiency consideration. I felt that it reflects the social mindset as well. To me “keeping the gates open all time time, till some problem” is reflection of “trust” based society. Can you trust your citizens and design the systems just to stop the offenders? In most places we find the systems are designed keeping in mind that the people are going to cheat and checks are implemented accordingly.

Here in Tokyo I found that the system was ready to trust the people. Probably the society was trustworthy. This has helped to create so much efficiency. Trust has so many benefits.

My respect for that society grew multifold.

Opensource – IT Policy – Impact on the society

I am very happy to note that one of the key political parties in India- BJP – has unveiled a comprehensive IT policy. Reference to the use of open source software is even more noteworthy.

It is very nice to see that a political party acknowledges the role of open source software in innovation. (as it mentions on page 23 of the IT vision document). I am just hoping that BJP’s IT policy making team has much more in mind about the use of open source. I am listing how open source software can be leveraged for building good society and  good governance :

Use of open source software and open standards create the level playing field and helps to bridge the gap between haves and haves not. It also helps to bridge the gap between developed and developing nation by making the knowledge available without boundaries. Today’s era is all about access to knowledge, leading to faster innovation. The era of developing knowledge in a the closed door and then try to use it as an edge over the other part of the society or other nations is gone. It is a matter of faster innovation and access to all.

Use of open source software creates empowerment. Today government can not be seen as the only force that offers jobs. Youths and businesses have to come forward and create employment. Through the use of and encouragement of open source software governments can empower youths and students that would make them ready for the jobs. The empowerment is possible because tools needed in today’s knowledge era are affordable and accessible through open source software.

Use of open source software creates open and proud minds. It is like in the poem of Rabindranath Tagore “Where the mind is without fear and head is held high…”. The use of open source software helps to create “made in my country ” feeling in the globalised economy. By developing more software and more applications in the country, making those applications world class the proud feeling of “made in my country” get bolstered.

Local services industry : The use of open source software leads to creation of local service industry. Open source software commoditises the products and thrives on excellence in services, which is a boon to creating more jobs and more opportunities.

Impact on the education segment : When governments want to make the education and knowledge available to the poorest of poor children through the use of laptops, only the use of open source software can make it affordable. Besides that it is not just giving the laptops or software through the government scheme, but it is also about using the legal software on your home computer. Think of the very real issue. Governments make PCs /Laptops along with  the proprietary software available at the subsidized rates.  When the children want to use the PC at the home, they can not afford to buy the costly proprietary software for it. They end up using pirated software. Is this what we want our children to have the feeling? By encouraging the use of open source software we can give them the feeling of use of legal software. That is the way of developing “Free minds”.

Also one important aspect of digital education is availability of contents in local languages : It is very important to have these contents based on open standards and open source technologies. For the proliferation of contents and lowering of their costs, this is a crucial factor. If these vital contents are based on proprietary and costly software, their use gets restricted or becomes unaffordable.

Going further the impact of open source can be harnessed in developing the right mindset in the society. The open source software is based on the principles of “Collaboration”, “Sharing” and “Community Building”. These are vital ingredients of a good and progressive society.

There is more to write about each of these issues. We all can collaborate to turn them into concrete actions and build stong communities.