Loving and hating the spookiness of Quantum Physics

Raju Korti
A recent article at pains to establish how Quantum Physics and Consciousness can come together to help us understand the true nature of reality has set me back by at least 47 years. That was the time when the likes of Max Planck and Albert Einstein had just begun to stir and torment my abstract imagination. Quantum Physics, true to its spirit, took me -- and I suspect many others of my ilk -- on a long journey of love-hate relationship with the subject. The simplicity of the theories I had been grappling until then was getting shaken at its roots with the advent of these two gentlemen along with co-conspirators like Satyendra Nath Bose, Englert Brout  and Peter Higgs. From the apparent simplicity of Newton's Laws of Gravitational Forces to the multiple conundrums brought forth by Niels Bohr, Warner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrodinger, not to speak of many others who contributed in queering the pitch, it was a wave that encountered several troughs and crests dotting this love-hate saga. There is an inherent paradox with Quantum Mechanics. You love it and hate it for the same reason but then that is its USP.

While referring to the Bible of Applied Physics by Robert Resnick and David Halliday when pursuing my Engineering, Quantum theory fascinated me no end. I found the underlying theoretical constructs riveting and I would often marvel how it was driving modern scientific discovery and delivering tangible, life-saving applications in the world. This love was partly jilted because of the now-I-understand-now-I-don't Heisenberg and Schrodinger. Heisenberg was still within the physical grasp of the mind but Schrodinger took my breath away with his theory that had more mathematics than theory in it. I particularly liked Heisenberg because his understanding that "Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think," gelled with my confused mind.

When you change the way you look at things, the things you look also appear changed. It is absolutely impossible to read any popular account of Quantum Physics without running into the words "probability" or "uncertainty". That makes it a tricky cud to chew on when you know that probability is a human concept that has no real application in Mother Nature. May be that makes it an even more interesting fodder for thought.

Until Physics explained to me the nature of the particles that make up matter and the forces with which they interact, my boundaries of wisdom were restricted to the three physical dimensions of Mass Length and Time. The fourth dimension of Time-Space Continuum began to upset the apple-cart. It compulsively took one to the Einstein's later theory, the General Theory of Relativity which describes how gravity affects the shape of Space and flow of Time. My rather flimsy understanding of the subject notwithstanding, I was propelled into the surreal world of Higgs Field which hypothesized the field had a carrier particle called Higgs Boson. All the consternation over this particle being named as God particle vanished when it was learnt that Nobel laureate Leon Lederman had actually poked fun at at it calling it as Goddamn Particle because it was too difficult to detect its existence. If it was beyond Lederman, what could someone like me do than to give it up as a bad joke?

The beauty or trouble with Quantum Physics, depending on the way you look at it and how much of it is within your comprehension, is there is no single theory. There is Quantum Mechanics, the basic mathematical framework that underpins it all which came from the stable of Bohr, Heisenberg and Schrodinger. It made out a case for how the position or the momentum of a particle or group of particles changes over a period of time. The handicap of the Quantum Mechanics got crutches from Einstein who established that to understand how things work in the real world, Quantum Mechanics must be propped up by other elements of Physics. Multiple quantum theories made it more interesting, esoteric and befuddling at the same time. It took years to realize that these theories in their ramshackle condition were given a semblance of order through a "standard model" of particle Physics held together with a make-shift tape but giving a comparatively much accurate picture. The God particle emerged from a tumult to give all other particles their mass.

At a basic level, Quantum Physics predicts very strange things about how matter works that are completely at odds with how things seem to work in the real world. How they appear seems to depend on how we choose to measure them. Only that before we measure them, they seem to have no definite properties at all. That leads to the fundamental conundrum about the basic nature of reality. I am inclined to think that there must be some better or more intuitive theory out there that humans are yet to stumble upon. The world is at some level quantum but whether Quantum Physics is the last word about the world remains an open question. 

If you find the Quantum Theory hard to swallow, you are not alone. Schrodinger himself did not like it and was sorry he had anything to do with it. You may hate it or love it but you can't ignore it. In a book gifted to me by a researcher, Einstein has been quoted as saying " If it (the Quantum Theory) is correct, it signifies the end of Physics as a Science." And how I would hate that. I would rather let Quantum Physics remain in the realms of a relentless ferment and its romantic abstract. The book also quotes Max Planck, the father of Quantum Physics: "I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness. To me that's the real Planck's Constant.  

Some thoughts about Adv Bhushan's "voice of conscience"

Raju Korti
The problem with over-reach of activism is it makes people lose sight of rationale. Adv Prashant Bhushan, considered by a lobby in the country as a legal luminary, is a stark example. The public interest lawyer has in the past often got away by cocking a snook at the decisions of the apex court but this time nemesis has caught up, although I would like to believe that he has scraped through with a token Re 1 fine. True to his nature, he has made an absurd and strange statement saying that he has paid the fine but that does not mean he accepts the verdict. He has resolved to file a review in the same court that he has derided earlier in his considered wisdom.

Anyone who has a fair hang of the law should know that Adv Bhushan is trying to make a virtue out of necessity and has actually no choice. The fact that he has ended up paying a fine itself can be interpreted that he has accepted the verdict. Even if he were to be sentenced to imprisonment, he would have had no choice but to enjoy hospitality of the state that he so abhors. The climax is the public interest lawyer wants to file a review petition with the same institution that he has been at loggerheads all along. Having said that, it makes little sense to stop him from practicing law when he actually doesn't do much of it. Activism doesn't leave him with any time.  

Adv Bhushan is three years younger than me. I completed my post graduation in Constitutional Law before he did and with better marks. While he chose to become a practicing lawyer, I chose to leave my legal knowledge by the wayside to pursue a career in the media. I haven't seen Bhushan argue any of the 500 cases that he proclaims to have taken up for "good causes". However, I do know for sure that he expends little time on paid cases while branding others of his ilk as "amoral".  His real stake to fame is his relentless activism that has pitchforked him into situations that have done little to enhance his standing.

As someone who has tagged with social activist Anna Hazare, Adv Bhushan has been advocating vociferously for judicial accountability, and to be fair to him, it was because of his crusade that the judges of the courts had to declare and post their assets on the court websites. But somewhere in this over-zealousness, Adv Bhushan took upon himself the cause of "cleansing the Judiciary" and began to transgress the boundaries of law.  In one of his interviews, he openly called as many as 16 former chief justices of the Supreme Court as corrupt. It resulted in an expected backlash with Adv Harish Salve filing a contempt plea against him. The Supreme Court ordered him to apologize but Adv Bhushan instead launched himself into a lengthy harangue why he felt the judges were corrupt. It didn't occur to his mind that there was little or no way of getting any documentary evidence because the judges are immune to investigation.

Adv Bhushan then decided to strike at the very roots of what he believes is the malaise. Since then he has trained his guns on certain provisions of the Contempt of Courts Act, which comparatively is a recent law compared to most of the antiquated laws framed during the British rule. He has just stopped short of scrapping the act that the Supreme Court will never do as the Constitution leaves the sanctity or merits of any law to the discretion of the Judiciary. It is like handing over a razor to someone and asking him to cut his own throat. To expect that any Tom, Dick and Harry will be allowed to file an FIR against any judge without the permission of the Chief Justice of India is surreal to say the least. His fight for the Jan Lokpal Bill had some merit but what gave away was his penchant to file PILs in what he believes are cases that call for government accountability. The gloves were off with his open defence of Naxals where he even embarrassed the Congress.

A couple of years back I had posted, more in jest than any seriousness that there was one way Bhushan could wriggle out of the spate of contempt pleas against him. All he had to do was to tell the Supreme Court that he was absent when the Contempt of Courts Act was being taught in the class. He did nothing of the kind. His run in with the top court ended when he was found guilty of contempt for two tweets he made. One where he criticized the role played by previous four chief justices, and two, where he made a snide remark on the Chief Justice of India posing on a motor-cycle without a mask. The tweets were thought of "shaking the public confidence in the Judiciary."   

It is not for me to comment on the merits of Adv Bhushan's opinions on the conduct of courts and judges but he has certainly ruffled feathers with his political beliefs. He calls it as voice of conscience little realizing that each individual is open to define conscience as per own understanding. His conscience doesn't seem to match the conscience of the courts. Yet, it tells him to fight the Supreme Court decision by filing a review plea in the same court. Some optimism and dichotomy that!  

I studiously avoided writing about Adv Bhushan's controversies because it was all too evident. So this evening I ended up writing another wisecrack, saying he reminds me of the line from an old Mukesh song: "Jalta hua diya hoon magar roshni nahi."   

 

Some thoughts about reforming India's Babudom

Raju Korti
Whether you like it or not, you got to concede that Prime Minister Narendra Modi enjoys taking the bulls by the horns. Midway into his second consecutive term he has devolved upon himself to mutate the country's notorious, euphemistically termed famed, Babus into Karmayogis. In India, Babudom refers to the executive arm of the government and the backbone of the administrative machinery of the country.

The common man, however, has a diametrically different take on the country's Babudom. The general perception is they are a self-serving, elite clique that works in silos and are not accountable to anyone except their political masters whose bidding they are generally known to do. The Indian Babudom has been conventionally known to focus more on the process than bringing about positive outcome. To make matters worse, they have stonewalled change and reforms. The Modi government has quite an ask on its hands to make this rather privileged class shed the arrogance and superior-than-thou mindset it is besieged with.

There is an archetypal story in mythology about Walya the dacoit reforming to Walmiki the sage with the only difference being this fabled character undergoing transformation through enlightenment, penance and penitence. These characteristics are alien to India's bureaucracy which has always been more firmly in the saddle than their political masters who come and go. I have first-hand of experience of some high-handed bureaucrats daring aggrieved people to go and complain to the ministers. "They are here today, gone tomorrow. I am permanent," is the disconcerting but true response.

One simple way of knowing what is wrong with the Indian bureaucracy is to see the way they draft their circulars. They have an unmatched talent for making what is simple and straight into a convoluted maze of gibberish. Initiative is not something that you associate with the Indian Babudom. There is little that bureaucrats hate more than innovation, especially innovation that produces better results than the old routines. Improvements always make those at the top of the heap look inept and who enjoys appearing inept?

I am not painting all bureaucrats with the same brush. There are sterling exceptions, but then exceptions only prove the rule. I have seen bureaucrats strike a sensible balance while running the administration, working within the framework of government rules. I have also seen competent and honest bureaucrats standing up to the political class and rewarded by being tossed around with transfers. That is a price they pay for being loyal to their duty rather than being loyal to the political dispensation. Most bureaucrats conveniently skip that they serve at the "pleasure of the President of India" and their service is protected under Article 311 of the Constitution from politically motivated or vindictive action. The pandering to the political class is deeply entrenched in their psyche.

To say that Indian bureaucracy needs an overhaul is an understatement. None of the prime ministers before has dared to convulse an institution that has wielded more power than most civil services anywhere across the world. It remains to be seen what impact will the government's move to induct lateral entry of professionals into the bureaucracy have. It is rather premature to guess the ramifications of the move to parachute private sector experts in the present algorithm of Indian bureaucracy.

"Mission Karmayogi" aims at capacity building of the bureaucracy to make them more "creative, proactive, professional and technology-abled". Implicit in this initiative is the tacit admission that the bureaucracy has not performed to the strength and competence expected of it. The sanctimonious cover sought to be provided to this apparently lofty exercise, however, becomes suspect when you learn that union ministers, chief ministers, eminent HR practitioners headed by the prime minister will serve as an apex body in providing "strategic direction", whatever that means. No prizes for guessing that these will be PM's hand-picked men. In essence, the bureaucracy will still be navigated by the political class. If so, this so called biggest human resource development program in the government, costing over Rs 510 crore, looks like flogging a dead horse.

The much avowed purpose of Mission Karmayogi to assign "right person to the right role" and align the work allocation of civil servants by matching their competencies to the requirements of the post sounds good in theory but suffers the compelling risk of breach in practice. Given the expediencies of the political class this sounds Utopian despite some of the most attractive words used to promote the concept.

Bureaucracy, inflation and dandruff can never be addressed completely.

If there is a Tharoorosaurus, there will be a Kortictionary

Raju Korti

There are high wages attached to being a celebrity and if it is someone like Shashi Tharoor there are other perks as well. Before you jump to conclusions which you think are obvious, let me tell you it is not about the man's reputation with or purported weakness for women. It is more about his penchant for words that he so tellingly sums up in his book "Tharoorosaurus". I am tempted to believe that he derives a sadistic pleasure in making people scurry to the dictionary or a Thesaurus by deploying obscure and complicated words. Devil he may be, but he deserves some due nevertheless.

Much is being made of Tharoor's propensity to charm and sweep women off their feet but that's not being fair to his decrepitude for words that have become harem to his imagination. Tharoorosaurus as we predictably realize is a word play of his name mixed with the word Thesaurus and it ostensibly seeks to find synonyms for words. Published by the Penguin Random House India, it is a veritable inventory of 53 words, one for each letter of the alphabet. Dubbed the Wizard of Words, he shares these examples from his parallel vocabulary  -- unusual words that are more Latin and Greek than Latin and Greek actually are -- from every letter of the alphabets. All of five vowels and 21 consonants. You do not have to be a linguaphile to partake of their novelty, you just have to souse in how he marinates them. Perilously disposed as I am to my perennially penurious condition, I cannot even nurse the chance finding Rs 373 that the book costs but I can indulge fair guess work to know what the book subsumes in its denouement.

Having made the preamble of my harangue so luxurious with not so expansive words, let me come to the precise reason what prompted this impromptu blog. The will of my conscience here has been single-handedly forced by two reasons, both of which have their footing in two branches of Science -- Physics and Mathematics. I will skip expounding the Newton's Third Law of Motion or what is understood as Contrapositive in Logic. The intelligible point I am making here is if there has to be a Tharoorosaurus, there has to be a Kortictionary too. It is all so elementary, my dear Watson! If Tharoorosaurus owes its existence to Tharoor, Kortictionary owes it to Korti. Names do matter and words spelt by either Tharoor or Korti, are words at the end of the day.

Those who know me even peripherally, will bear me out. I have sweated in litres browsing and studying Thesaurus and the Dictionary for ever since I can remember. The words, their substitutes, homologouses, equivalents, usages, figures of speech, idioms, synonyms, antonyms, homonyms and what else have you of from the labyrinthine macrocosm of Wren & Martin. Like Tharoor, I have jealously and steadfastly guarded my paintbrush while celebrating words and treating them like clay. It amuses me no end that the permutation and combination of 26 alphabets spin a complex ecosystem of words that can be moulded, shaped, chiseled, crystallized, kneaded, polished, carved, built, embodied, minted, modeled, framed, forged, fashioned, cast, sketched, whittled, roughewed and fabricated in becoming the edifice of Literature.

People who are lesser endowed with words than I am -- and I don't say this in my self-arrogated wisdom  -- grudgingly tell me all the time that I am too overbearing with them. Their refrain: Do you have to be so extravagant and grandiose with mentally taxing words when simple words could have got your point through. My riposte is as simple as it can get. Why not make the dish more appetizing by garnishing it well! Words don't drill holes in your pockets. Kortictionary will be my tribute to words. Since it incorporates my name, my copyright is guaranteed by default. What Tharoor is to Thesaurus, Korti will be to a Dictionary. Hope you get the essential drift here. The similarity between Tharoor and Korti ends here. I do not possess the other talents which Tharoor is generously accredited with.

I have spent a part sleepless night yesterday fretting over whether it should be Rajucon (as take off on lexicon) or Kortictionary. The second finally made it because carries its trade mark, which is my surname, and sounds more weighty unlike the first that has the misleading "con" to it. Words have to be reined in and cannot be allowed to become their own masters. Once they become subservient to you, sentences have no option but to fall in line. 

Kortictionary does not aim to give Tharoorosaurus a run for its money. It only seeks to complement it and live in harmony with what I earnestly believe is a very limited edition. I have a much larger court to play on even if that means patting my own back. That indulgence makes sense when your head is full and pockets are empty.

Some day I plan to write Vocabulary Chalisa. It will take you an unending game called Word Play.