Homo sapiens have dominated the planet earth for millenniums as they kept evolving in to an incredibly rapacious species. But that dominion came with disastrous consequences. As we progressed, we left behind a trail of destruction, anarchy, disarray, that would keep us at the helm of the food chain but with little consideration for the enormous life forms that the planet sustains.  Nature nurtures all forms of existence, living and inanimate, without discernment. However, we humans who form a mere 0.01% of all life forms have annihilated innumerable living species and exploited natural resources with utter disregard for nature. We brandish our superiority (sic) with the belief that our rise to the top of the food chain is divinely ordained. But if I were to contemplate eruditely, I find the many other life forms that inhabit the earth to be highly evolved as the list of infamy that I am to relay below is not of their doing.  

We are inherently cruel, violently self serving. Blood and gore come naturally to us. Brutality and viciousness forms the core of our DNA. We are the only species that slaughter, exploit and abuse for sheer unadulterated pleasure. Humans have monstrously slayed more of their own species than any other living being would have done harm to their own. We have harnessed nature and all that it has to provide for our selfish gains. Our greed has dictated the course of this planet’s trajectory for millennium’s. Our hands are washed in the blood of the innocents !  Our history is replete with our Machiavellian streak of ignominy.  

We call ourselves intelligent and have an exalted opinion of ourselves. We believe that we have made the planet a better place for habitation. Have we ? We call ourselves scholarly, the repository of wisdom and sagacity? Are we ? We call ourselves spiritual with reverence for imaginary celestial beings and mythology,  whilst we exterminate planet earth of its varied life forms with a viciousness that is raucous. We call ourselves moral and righteous!  Are we ? we call ourselves just and considerate ! Are we ?  We have harnessed technology and science but we are ensconced and surrounded by superstitious, irrational, unreasonable and unempirical beliefs. We call ourselves creative, humble and benign ! Are we ?  Have we created a just society or a rampantly exploitative life that epitomizes slavery, racial prejudice, tribal allegiance, jingoism and misogynism? We have labelled all life forms that inhabit planet earth as wild, untamed and savage. And call ourselves civilized ! However, it is we who are barbaric, feral, unrestrained and uncivilized. Planet earth is for our singular benefit and for that we go to any lengths to decimate and eradicate. All in all, we remain a non-inclusive society.

If the planet earth were to be absorbed by a celestial black hole and vanish without a trace, the universe would hardly notice. Negligibly trivial as one would say. To the ever expanding universe the existence of planet earth is inconsequential. Similarly, if the human race vanishes from planet earth, it would be inconsequential. The remaining life forms would evolve and nature would in a few million years become pristine. Existing life forms would evolve hopefully in to wise beings who would then discover the monstrosity of the human existence. In the millenniums to come, the many species who would roam planet earth would contemplate in disdain as to how intensely violent were humans. They would shudder, that such a species ravaged this lovely planet ! 

January 13, 2022

The world that we have bequeathed from nature has now come to war with it! As humans attempt to overpower and rein in the primordial force of nature that created the universe, we are slowly but surely becoming more and more arrogant. With great power comes great responsibility, an adage much used by super heroes. But the super-rich and super powerful of our times appear to behave contradictory. For them, great power accompanies, greater arrogance. Each of these demagogues be they in politics or business, vie with the other to establish their supremacy. They crush dissent, ridicule the weak, deny justice, punish the rebel, mock the meek, oppress their subjects, create behemoths that glorify monopoly, repudiate the truth, gag the press, encourage violence, uphold racial inequality and are misogynist, and remain perpetually insecure; crushing the liberal and spread malice amongst the proletariat. Every form of governance; be it democracy, dictatorship, monarchy, welfare socialism, communism and oligarchy to name a few has failed people and nations. Each form of governance gives birth to nationalists who harp on the virtue of the right leaning anarchists, now that the left leaning anarchists have been subdued. Crony capitalism and malicious nationalism has become the agenda of those in power. The masses fed with the unassailable dream of their country’s greatness in the comity of nations, follow like lambs. They have crushed the very soul of freedom and chained our imagination.

We have to battle to get back our soul and breathe the air of freedom. We need to iron out friction and become our own messiahs. Collective will and collective conscience of the people is a weapon that has seldom failed. It will usher in a thousand years of peace with no oppression or violence. More than us, Mother Earth needs rest from the violence we have unleashed on creation. We have annihilated many living species in our quest for self-indulgence. It is time we allow her every creation to breathe and replenish all that we have raided from her womb and body.

Can we for once have no allegiance to any nation, religion, creed, tribe, caste, color, race or gender but to humanity alone. Is this possible or merely a dream? Martin Luther said, “I have a dream”. Let the women, men and children in the comity of nations make that dream come true not merely in America but in all nations across the world.

Mufaddal Khumri

October 2018

An epoch is in the making as we move ahead with technological advancement and are faced with the choice of plenty to deal with. At the same time we have to face the increasing instance of monopolies that could rule our lives. We are consciously losing our right to choose and support small businesses. We are dictated by global entities who outprice, marginalize and muzzle smaller players in the name of economies of scale and bizarre management jingoism in the name of liberal business ethos.

An instance in the making are the technology and e commerce giants who have spread their tentacles in our lives with such devastation that we are losing our ability to imagine, enquire and question. E commerce giants have grown with unhindered pace muzzling out small retailers and dictating terms to manufacturers. Online commerce has taken away the human touch in shopping, the family outing, the neighborhood grocer, the limited availability of goods, the pleasure of living with less. Computer operating systems, applications, data storage are dominated by domineering large entities. Uninhibited use of data has imprisoned us and our actions. The strangle hold of the powerful corporates is bedazzling.

Social media influences us such that we are slowly fading in recognizing ourselves. We are fed feeds and opinions that has robbed us of our imagination. Our very character and individuality is being obliterated. Search engines dominate our ability to comb for information and reading is synchronized to reflect dominant opinions. Information is available so easily that reading elaborate books and referring to bibliography is outdated, rationality replaced by herd mentality and imagination has been countered by dictatorial homogeneity of inquest. We read but do not question. We have slowly forgotten the art of imagination. Fine arts are being replaced by pure technical knowhow. The very essence of poetry, literature, sculpturing, music and painting is being replaced by a mechanical urge to follow technological advancements. A kind of social inquisition has been unleashed on the human mind! Free thinking and free acting humans will soon become an endangered species. Allow not our minds and imagination to be colonized and molested.

At the beginning of the twentieth century most nations were colonized by the European powers. Slowly they became independent and today we have more than 200 nations. New nation states are emerging. The days of large nation states are becoming more and more unviable as small nations and city states are emerging and able to much better chisel their destinies. Similarly, we need many small corporates, none to be marginalized or taken over by the technology or corporate giants. Colonization of sovereign states has been replaced by an equally alarming colonization of commerce and economy by corporate titans. This has to stop as we should breed more avenues of equal opportunities. Small is beautiful. Inhabiting a world full of small and medium businesses is more enriching and breeds variety and diversity. Regulators and governments globally have to step in and promote the concept of small being rational and viable. Big is arduous, takes away mobility and leads to creation of behemoths. Remember, the age of the dinosaurs, they became extinct as they couldn’t harness mother nature, nor could they adapt themselves to an external celestial collision. Let us not create dinosaurs amongst our businesses, economies and commerce. Let the sparrow breed and thrive, the chirpy nature of a small world is much more beautiful, all-encompassing and more compassionate. Most importantly we as individuals have to support and promote small businesses through our buying habits so that we create a thriving ecosystem that would allow them to prosper.

The greatest gift nature bestowed us was diversity, the range of flora, fauna, animal life, resources, food, cultures, natural resources, traditions etc. However, we humans have since long tried to muzzle out other lives, we have plundered resources, pillaged without mercy and taken away the heterogeneity from the soul of nature.

Today we are aping it in business, by allowing the rise and domination of behemoths. Just the way we have realized that bigger the financial institution, the greater is the risk of systemic failure, so also any corporate, if it outgrows beyond a certain level becomes so dominating that it controls every element of human lives. The monopolistic restrictive trade regulatory authority was formed to check the unhindered growth of businesses. It is time to enforce it globally and restrict the unhindered ambitions of big corporates. Uninhibited power leads to corruption of a different level, it leads to encircling us in an unending game of slavery, as we are forced to live and die on terms dictated by others.

It also creates mammoth wealth and resources in few hands, on account of scrip valuations that far outstrip the company’s net worth and assets. The stock markets create billion-dollar companies, now edging to trillion-dollar corporates and billionaires slowly dreaming of becoming trillionaires. And then we have many of them becoming overnight philanthropist and the doctrine of charity becomes their slogan. An image makeover makes them benign, compassionate and caring.

It is astonishing and amusing that people are linking charity to good character. Charity is a blemish on humanity. it is a result of a disastrous system that has created an uneven society of unequal’s. A society where the distribution of wealth and opportunity has been centered in the hands of a few. Today’s promoters and management rob employees of their rightful paycheck and hoard wealth for themselves, supported by a system that makes a few ostentatious and the vast majority underpaid. The immensely rich obtain immense pleasure in returning back to society a portion of their wealth. I call it the evil and besmirched pleasure of the opulent to show off their generosity.

Charity cannot and will never build society and nations. And no self-respecting man or woman should live off it. Civilization is to set man free from man, but charity draws you in the clutches of perpetual misery. ‘ If any civilization had to survive then society has to reject the morality of altruism. Charitable acts are of social notoriety cloaked in the garb of a well-orchestrated motive. They aim to create an image of sobriety for the rich in society backed by deeds of kindness to gain public sympathy. Instead, let us question the very obvious! Why not an opportunity to live with dignity instead of charity! Why do we not question the system that makes people so rich, the grant of stocks in unabated proportion to a few and the meagre grant to many. Society has to rein in unabated hoarding of wealth.

Questioning the obvious is not to stop or molest technological progress, but rather create a munificent atmosphere for human progress and survival of our race.

Mufaddal Idris Khumri, April 2018

Money has remained the primary medium of exchange allowing us to monetize goods and services in to a common denomination. So in other words, currency has been the great leveler. It has allowed us to ascribe a value for all our manufacturing output, human services, natural resources, industry and life itself.

As we progress to a highly intermediated and disruptive financial services industry, at some point in the not so distant future, currency across nations would lose the nationalist appeal and get homogenized. It would bring its own challenge to calibrate growth levels of different economies, contain inflation, decision to print currency and so many other exciting economic variables. We can learn from the experiences of the EURO, not that it has been an ideal currency but at least it has been a largely successful attempt. If the world uses one currency then foreign exchange risk would be replaced by a set of more manageable and not so volatile and manipulative risks. This could actually turn out to be a handsome reward for nations, who can contain inflation, restrict population growth, limit climate violation, restrain subsidies, maintain fiscal discipline and introduce social harmony by progressive taxation and limiting disparity in distribution of wealth that would enable them to offer competitive pricing for goods and services.

Currency has new competition in cryptocurrency and if today we deride the principles behind their working, tomorrow we would worship them. Are not our equity, foreign exchange and derivative markets beset with our wagering instinct. We speculate with gusto in the name of containing risks and have invented a variety of risks and to contain them have invented an equally fascinating range of products. The value of the derivative industry is many times larger than the global economy; naturally it cannot be backed by real assets as we don’t produce those many assets so why can we not have a new regime of currency not backed by any real assets! It’s all possible as the nature of disruption is to create a new normal. To create what doesn’t exist and then to sustain it!

Similarly the payments industry is witnessing a new kind of disruption as non-financial services entities are introducing technologies that make them intermediaries in the payments space. They cover the entire value chain of money transfers and merchant payments largely through the use of phone/mobile wallets and online wallets. Today we have innumerable examples of how telecom players, mobile manufacturers, online shopping giants and their ilk are replacing traditional payment methods. And all of these interesting developments are not merely happening in the so called advanced economies but right across all economies from Asia to Africa and from Latin America to Eastern Europe.

Some of the most eye dropping innovations have happened in some of the poorest economies. The digitization of currency has come with intermediaries, accompanied by a massive technology upheaval that has just begun impacting the financial services industry. It has begun with payments, but will slowly spread its entrails in to every sphere of consumer and corporate banking. The financial intermediation has benefited billions of consumers and merchants as many of them earlier could not participate in the banking fraternity. The lethargy of banks to innovate and reach out to consumers and merchants has led to technology players unleashing the rebellious wave of unmatched convenience with low cost alternatives.

The payment intermediaries are akin to the new French revolution that promises Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (liberty, equality, fraternity) to all participants. In financial parlance liberty stands for the freedom to choose alternative payment platforms, equality is the ability for people from all strata of society to access the platform and fraternity is to create an ecosystem of consumers and merchants who thrive in the usage of the payment platform.

The lofty ideals of the French revolution were soon forgotten when the French became colonists as they kept the subjects of their colonies under a repressive regime. One sincerely hopes that once these intermediaries become behemoths in their own right after displacing banks, they wouldn’t turn oppressors, like the existing banking system that treats their customers with excessive charges, high lending rates, low savings rates and the not so credit friendly policies for the not so privileged sections of our society. The conundrum of charging higher interest rates to low income earning segments/merchants has been the harbinger of the banking system, all in the name of risk and return. There couldn’t be a more unequal, discriminatory and bourgeois method. Banking hasn’t changed much from the days when the messiah Christ drove away the money lenders form the temple of Solomon. These money lenders and dispensers of credit still occupy the highest offices in the corporate world, whilst the proletariat awaits their Fintech messiahs to unseat and banish them in the wilderness of impoverishment.

Now coming to the question of displacing banks, is that viable or even remotely possible or do we foresee a future where banks would not remain as we see them today. It is for certain that the near future will witness a series of epoch making events that would distance banks form consumers and merchants increasing their dependency on intermediaries.
Most payment intermediaries today do not possess a banking license and so need banks in the background to maintain their accounts where money or credit is stored. So what do they rely upon to garner customer confidence; a dynamic combination of functionality (ease/experience of usage) and trust (security and dependability)! Cyber security remains the biggest concern as we get more and more technologically oriented and dependent on Artificial Intelligence. Every application has to be robust else hackers would compromise consumers and merchants alike. Hackers operating on the dark web are soon becoming the new terrorists, exploiting security breaches and scooting away with stored value credits.

Functionality and Trust will determine the future of payment intermediaries, it will distill the chaff from the wheat and many unworthy aspirants will fall off in the journey. One can visualize this journey in multiple stages. The first stage is already in witness as more consumers and merchants enroll themselves in the ecosystem created by the payment intermediaries, as digitization of currency gains ground. This is the stage of accessibility and ease; applications are populated by basic functionality to facilitate recurring payments. From Bangladesh to Kenya, and from China to the United States, we have numerous examples of payment intermediaries that have become the new messiahs. It would be futile to name them. A casual hunt on any search engine would list numerous names. As they slowly and surely gain the confidence of their consumers who become loyal users, they would graduate in to providing value added services akin to what a bank account offers today. Globally, these are providers of such services like Revolut, N26 and Nickel. Some with or without a banking license and those without a license will have a bank supporting them. However, the advent of mobile device manufactures, telecom providers and application support providers in the realm of payments is going to be massively disrupting for banks in the future. Aided by the astounding sale of mobile devices, a shift in our habits and the commanding penetration of internet connectivity, these behemoths are eyeing the financial services sector with gluttony.

The launch of Samsung Pay, Apple Pay, Android Pay and the numerous wallets by telecom providers and online shopping colossus’s is threatening the banking system similar to how the barbarians led by the Germanic tribes and Visigoths threatened the Roman Empire. Rome eventually fell, it remains to be seen how long would our financial system hold on to these rampaging players.

It is a long way yet as these wallets are too simplistic when it comes to functionality and cannot match the agility of the mobile banking applications of banks. But we are on the cusp of change and a rebellion is brewing. The advent of artificial intelligence combined with the speed of implementation wouldn’t take time for these players to integrate banking services and functionality in their wallet applications. I see them evolving as the Ubers of banking, where they would connect with multiple banks through APIs and route transactional traffic to these banks through their wallets. The wallets would provide high level of functionality matching to what banks currently provide their customers. Customers would rather chose to log in to these wallets which would have integrated with multiple banks thereby offering customers a single sign on access to their multiple banks accounts within or outside the country to carry out their financial transactions. This comes with its security nightmares but it can be overcome. But as a whole the concept is thought provoking!

Customer allegiance is to the mobile phone they use and so they would rather prefer to use the wallet which they see and experience consistently more than their banks accounts. Skeptics may argue that although wallets have been in existence for long consumers have still not started excluding usage of physical cards so what I state above is far-fetched and imaginary romanticism. I would rather link this to the philosophy of existentialism propounded by the likes of Jean-Paul Sartre and Friedrich Nietzsche to name a few. Just as each individual is uniquely responsible for providing meaning to life, living it passionately and sincerely, so also the technology market players will evolve the wallet to its next many levels displace what we have today from a standpoint of consistent evolution. Consumers will follow suit and habits will change.

Wallets and fintech applications started as stored value credit to support recurring and regular payment transactions. New customer acquisition through IBAN and then inching on to satiating credit demands of customers. With easy availability of credit scores, KYC led by biometrics, access to national IDs and online assessment, instant gratification for credit would become the norm. Wallets would pre assess, obtain bank credit confirmation and pass on multiple options for customers to choose from, thereby mitigating the need for customers to go hunting for credit. For banks there is a huge reduction in acquisition cost as costly sales resources get replaced by online sourcing.

All loan details and transactional data would be enabled and made available from these wallets. Then comes the sale of insurance and investment products, savings plans etc. With individuals accessing emails, social media and website for their day to day living through mobiles, mobile manufacturers have access to all these through their application. This opens up a world of pre-determined actions, one would literally be able to influence consumers and prompt them for engagements. A receipt of a bill from your utility provider would automatically generate a payment request or in future it would simply notify that payment has been made without any manual intervention. Every conceivable predictive behavior can be understood and executed with finesse. Banks may eventually decide not to invest in their own applications rather focus on instant disbursal and product enhancements etc. There is an endless possibility of this intermediation that has become possible on account of the mobile revolution. Much of this is already happening through multiple applications, it just needs to be integrated on to a single platform.

And it doesn’t end here. With the experience garnered by these players and shifting regulations, there is a possibility that some of mobile device manufactures, telecom providers and application support providers in the realm of payments might apply for a banking license, ultimately becoming banks themselves leading to the displacement of the existing financial services providers.

Maybe something more disruptive may happen, we cannot predict technological changes and the rapid intrusion of artificial intelligence in our lives. But would banks remain lame ducks and easy targets? Surely not! It wouldn’t be surprising that many might merge with mobile device manufactures and telecom providers or even start buying them out.

The landscape is bound to become rebellious and a brave new world is about to emerge and it may just not be dystopian!

Mufaddal Khumri

October 31, 2017

Our lives are full of blemishes and contradictions. They galore in every action of ours, yet we have developed a fine art of suffusing them with explanations that support them. One such area is the corporate world. In our personal lives and those of the nation’s we live in, we all support democracy and believe it is rightful. Democracy is the right vested in people to choose elected leaders and representatives. Aimed at providing equal opportunity to all citizens so as to ensure that no single ideology nor any one human being can influence the course of life of a nation or people based on his whims and will. It will not be a sacrilege to state that one of the hallmarks of civilization is the proper enunciation of democracy. It is aimed at curtailing demagogues. To ensure accountability, responsibility shifts on a periodic basis between capable citizens. Nations globally champion democracy and swear by it, stating that too much power for too long in a hand of one woman or man can cause ruin, rain havoc and lead to hero worship. Power breeds such ills whose effects remain in perpetuity and creates a halo around the hero whose worship is mandated by the state.  Even Gautam Buddha upon attaining salvation was fearful of its halo around him, he wanted nirvana to be a bliss that would be attained by many, else he feared a few liberated souls would be corrupted by its predominance amongst them. Hence renunciation was devised as a principle to uphold values and not many statesmen or corporate chieftains have had the courage to pursue this path. Attain nirvana and renouncing it, for in this lies the glory and greatness of humanity. Remember the legendary roman general Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus! He practiced what Gautam Buddha preached. More importantly he also did not accumulate wealth!

Each CEO considers himself to be too critical to practice renunciation, rather they want their legacy to be there until long. The lure of power that comes with the chair is too strong to let go. If we believe in the constitution of our nations which is aimed at restricting power in the hands of a few or one, so also should the constitution of companies limit the term of the CEO. If one compares the corporate world to the working of a country, the employees are the bureaucrats, and the shareholders are the plebian who vote. Similar to how elections are held every five or six years, so also the term of the CEO should be restricted to three years, with a maximum of two terms. Our corporate world should mirror the democracy we so cherish in our countries affairs. A vibrant opposition is required in a democracy to check corruption and limit the influence of one man. So also in the corporate world there is a need for an in-house opposition. This can be achieved by voting of employees who would vote to place an appropriate set of leaders at the helm. These in turn can be voted by shareholders or the board to occupy the post of CEO and other senior positions. These positions would be taken up by new members in every term so as to bring in opportunity for all. Similar to how bureaucrats run nations with any political party at the helm, so also do employees run corporates. The current outlandish thought we have is that replacing CEOs at short intervals thwarts continuity of progress and line of thought. I find this in continuation of the human penchant for longevity and after life, we just cannot accept death without immortality. Rather death is what gives life to the universe and brings in new ideas and continuity of innovation. If life would be immortal, nature, humanity and life around us would have never evolved to what it is today! So, it is time to let go the chains of thought that slave us in to bondage.  If not for the benign aura of death human existence would be meaningless!

Replaced CEOs can be offered other positions in the company. It is most unfortunate that our society considers it to be demeaning that once a CEO, the incumbent cannot occupy a position lower than the CEO in the same corporate! Such archaic thoughts have to be let go off in a world which faces herculean changes on account of technological advancements. We have started accepting CEOs and leaders of nations at young ages, so too we should start accepting a change in the chair periodically so as to bring in opportunity to all. All around us from fortune 500 to small, medium or large corporates, none practice democracy. Each company is the fiefdom of the incumbent CEO who like the maharaja doesn’t want to step down! Many have succumbed to the narcissus syndrome, becoming a nemesis in their own rights.

The way most of our modern corporates work, is on a dictatorial diktat, where the CEO becomes irreplaceable as if without his presence the company’s fortunes would slide. This is most wrong to assume and is the effect of a capitalist mindset which places incredulous importance in one man or woman. Our remuneration is directed to please one man or a set of workers keeping the rest at low wages. Studies have been conducted to ascertain the variance in income levels between top management and middle/low level employees. The disparity is unfair. The gargantuan pay scale variance is reflective of our penchant to practice corruption in a legal and sanctified manner.

Talent should be adequately compensated and corporates should practice differential compensation to retain and attract talent, but surely not at the expense of creating tribes of yonder rich. Corporates have to be run on welfare capitalism and not crony capitalism that accrues wealth for a few. We need urgent steps to rein in disparity in wealth distribution, else we will create a world of unequal’s, a world where the gap between opportunity or the lack of it will be governed by the wealth possessed by the family one is born in.

In the not so distant past, communism rose to challenge the evils of the bourgeois. It failed as it bred corruption in the hands of a few power brokers who became despots and dictators, accumulating wealth for themselves by robbing the proletariat of the nation’s riches. It is no surprise that many communist lovers came from well to do families where they had hardly experienced starvation or poverty. Communism rose and fell very swiftly but artificial intelligence will not fall so swiftly, it is evolving and will become the biggest threat to challenge human domination of this planet.

If we do not work towards a more equitable world we will lose out to machines and their evolution will bring in unimaginable changes in our lives! It will be difficult to imagine them becoming corrupt, but they would surely look down upon our limited analytical abilities and start considering us as inferior beings. If one were to stretch one’s imagination we too could have been some manner of artificial intelligence who after eons of evolution have come to occupy this pace today! Just that the evolution of machine intelligence that we are creating will move with such rapid ferociousness that will leave us far behind in the race!

The sustained practice of democracy in our corporate world, regular renunciation by CEOs and a much more palatable and refined progressive income sharing will lay foundations of a more humane corporate world with opportunities for all. It will promote the rule of civility in public office, maintain checks over unfettered power and create a better world for all inhabitants.

Mufaddal Khumri

October 27, 2017

We love to be unequal and to justify this boastful slander; we say that’s the only way to reward genetic differences, enterprise and risk. Of course as we stand today in our evolutionary stage, we are restrained by our dwarfed intellect to support this logic.  We have established a human civilization that values individual enterprise and makes it more rewarding than collective endeavor. As a race we have wanted leaders to lead our business establishments, somehow we have never believed that collectively the human race can function without leaders. Although we claim to be highly civilized compared to other species that inhabit the planet earth, we remain primitive when it comes to our thoughts about human ability and enterprise. Why do we need to be led like sheep? And what cost have we paid for this folly. An enormous cost, yet we refuse to recognize this loss. Why? Because we cannot and will never be able to question archaic beliefs that have formed the basis of our society since the time we were hunter gatherers. No matter how much we claim to have civilized, our instincts remain more primitive than other species. Herded in cages and led to believe in hero worship we have created a society of slave workers led by masters in the realm of business. We remain fascinated by and fantasize about an authoritarian business regime under a “strong leader” rooted in a people with tightly regimented minds, where every form of dissent is deemed as, “seditious’’. New names have adorned the corporate feudal set up as we love being led, for we have little faith in collective decision making. Now let us reflect upon our progress as human society over the ages and then dissect the extant world of business.

As hunter gatherers man had to collectively hunt, for no single human was match to the more agile species who rubbed shoulders with them. However, individual feats of bravery began to outshine the group efforts and soon the strong and mighty led the hunt; the first seeds of leadership were decided by brute physical force. No wonder that our fascination for the warrior class and violence has withstood the ravages of time and our penchant for blood has outlived all advances in our so called civilized evolution. However, there has been a marked difference over the ages; machine violence powered by artificial intelligence has far outshone and much intimidated the feats of physical human violence. Machines have killed more men over the last century or so and if this saga continues, then not so far in the near future, we will be ruled by Artificial Intelligence (AI). The evolution of AI will be the offset by the devolution of the human race. Let us not get carried away by the potential futuristic ravages of AI, let me return to the core discussion of our agenda.

As humans settled to an agrarian life, the herdsmen with the largest herd who acquired more land holdings had people anointing him as the leader. More land holdings came his way and his stock began to rise. Tribes, languages, cultures and habits began to be defined. In geographies where humans lived, diversity began to flourish and in this milieu the leadership cult began to take roots. Land holdings became dearer. Plunder with pillage was used as advancement for land gains. Feudal societies took shape and slavery of the defeated people was established. Such and many more abominations drove our feudal societies, as land holdings of the feudal lords made them bolder and the conquered people became submissive of the rulers might. The conquerors became rulers and divinity was ingrained in their autocracy. Nobles, Lords and Dukes and many such titles were ordained by the clergy to support the claims of a particular class. The proletariat and bourgeois were well defined and social classes became too entrenched and the vicious cycle of exploitation of masses took shape. Wealth and power rested in few hands and society was herded in to submissiveness. Greed for power led by a ravenous appetite for money established a voracious society. Colonialism and subjugation of the defeated class became the hallmark of human civilization. Exploitation of man by man became the norm. We sank deeper and deeper in to a self created abyss of slander and putative hope, as dynasties came and went. The poor became poorer and the rich became richer, the rulers became all powerful and the defeated slaves led lives of misery. At times the tide changed, slaves became masters, poor became rich, established their rule and the vindictive nature of man never ebbed. So on and so forth went the wheel of time; history was written and intertwined by religion, blood and economic interest.  Rulers became kings and then emperors. Might became hereditary. The children of kings were anointed as kings and the progeny of slaves remained slaves.

Somewhere man lost the virtue of collective leadership which had thrived briefly in some areas of the world like the republics of India (called ganas), ancient Greece and republic Rome. But here again these leaders came from hereditary families and the common man who wasn’t of noble birth or stock couldn’t become a part of these trials and tribulations. Yet in these times there lived a man called Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, twice granted supreme power, he held onto it for not a day longer than absolutely necessary. But these instances were far and few and man could not learn from them. There were others who came, messiahs, saints, prophets and men of wisdom and learning, philosophers who yearned to establish a more democratic and republican way of life. They professed simplicity and in their sermons called upon their brethren to give up the lust for power, pelf and self embellishment. They were seldom listened to when alive, some were martyred, some admonished, many of their sermons and words convoluted and interpreted to suit the ruling establishment, whilst many were forgotten in the annals of history. These zealots remain the true heroes of human history who gave up their lives to encourage man to think and act differently. Many lives came and went by, as ages passed on our collective covetousness for power never allowed us to rise up the social ladder of justice, equality, fraternity, freedom and republicanism.

Then came the age of industrial revolution and with it came a new feudal order, that of the merchant princes, who rivaled the kings and emperors in their accumulation of supremacy, pelf and wealth. They set up institutions that became hereditary and became the new slave runners. Pitiless economic exploitation combined with the colonial phase of the European powers created an unequal world. National boundaries were redrawn, tribal affiliations were re created, ancient cultures wiped out, native races exterminated, their religion obliterated, their ways of life pronounced and denounced as barbaric, and whimsical European rulers, civil servants and military establishments created notions of racial superiority thereby casting havoc amongst the people and kindling non-existent hatred. The flame of this intentional carnage is still being witnessed in Asia, Middle East and Africa. The sins of the European powers far outweigh all that they do today to re establish their image as a caring and humane civil society. Colonial powers cannot purge the sins of their barbarity. The ravages of time alone shall punish them as future generations will disown hold them, holding them accountable for their inhumanities.

From this carnage, the many revolutions that followed and the destruction caused by the two world wars came a new era, heralding the birth of democracy and the death of the feudal class. New republics that were born in these tumultuous years were ruled by heinous military dictators, communist despots and fascist dictators. The world of today has come a long way from these notorious and riotous years as the balm of democracy backed by power to the people through suffrage has seen many governments fall and rise. Democracy has calibrated the concentration of power in politics and representative to masses has become more profound. By restricting the term of governments and those of the men who administer them we haven’t allowed power to reside in a few hands. However, a lot more has to be done to achieve more inner party democracy and to restrict the cult of hero worship. Democracy can function in a two party political order like the US, UK, multi party democracy like India, a single party functioning like China and in many benign monarchies that give voice to people through legislative assemblies. Our societies have evolved to accommodate dissent; and tolerance is now the hallmark of a vibrant democracy cum political system. Political systems have evolved to limit the influence of charismatic leaders through a combative opposition, and democratic checks and balances through legislative and judiciary. This has been done since human societies realize that an evolved social order should give an opportunity to every citizens to rise to the pinnacle and that one man or his ideas alone cannot revolutionize the system, country or the world. The purse strings of political leaders have been pruned, and their remuneration linked to provide them a comfortable life whist they remain in power and outside when they function as a citizen of a state. Excessive wealth for politicians is checked and charismatic leaders lead frugal lives to set an example of austerity. Democracy in our political establishment recognized the value of collective decision making and the need to limit power. Such that we don’t get to be ruled by the same set of people who then become dictatorial in their regime when their term and power goes unchecked. Having said so, in many countries inner parry democracy has not fully evolved as the same leaders get elected, leading to a dictatorship in guise of elected democracy. To get over it some countries has restricted the term of leaders as in the US where the President can serve a maximum of two terms.

Now for a moment let us juxtapose democracy in to the realm of business. Do we practice democracy in its fullest sense when it comes to business enterprise that dot our world? We have in all our wisdom allotted a very high risk reward premium to the entrepreneur who sets up the business. In this we fail to recognize the efforts of the many people who toiled to create the eco system and environment in which the business was set up. The corporate czars of today have replaced the feudal lords of the yester years. Corporate feudalism has rewarded the entrepreneur/CEO such astronomical sums of money that today we remain no different from the feudal era where the emperors, lords and dukes had accumulated vast sums of money at the expense of the slaving masses. The capital markets of today have replaced the vast land holdings and the workers akin to the peasants who toiled to make the master richer and richer.

Do corporate chieftains deserve such differential wealth accumulation when compared to the millions who work for them? We justify this by an incredulous argument of “individual excellence”; as it takes women and men of special caliber who can lead groups to perform. This argument is as archaic as it can be and keeps the corporate workers hoping that I too may one day reach that position and hoard such absurd wealth. We apply equanimity to human society and talk about lowering income differences to create a just society that would boast of low levels of wealth polarization. But how often do we talk about this at the corporate level. How often do we compare the standard deviation of the salaries earned by workers and management and how regularly do we want corporate to lower this differential. Of course individual brilliance has to be rewarded so as to retain talent and groom them. Adding to the work responsibility and accountability is one such way which corporate does; but to create massive income disparities in the quest to reward talent, we have created a corporate order of unequals. No talent can justify such massive income disparities that we are witnessing in today’s world. Our ordeal of corporate voyeurism has created emperors of unfathomable wealth who rule the roost and are the new age feudal lords. These emperors rule transcontinental corporate abetting wealth accumulation and helping create a disorderly society of unequal humans.

If we expect to limit the rule of political parties and leaders then should we not apply the same yardstick to corporate CEOs and entrepreneurial chieftains who at times rule their corporate fiefdoms for decades and at times lifelong? Such lust for power does no good for the corporate. As new ideas get throttled and dictatorial tendencies tend to creep in, we create megalomaniacs. Imagine the loss of dreams and thoughts on account of lack of opportunity when CEOs refuse to vacate their positions. There is a limit to the individual’s imagination and motivation. He has to leave aside the mantle of leadership to others who may bring innovation and change that sometimes cannot be adopted for deference and fear to the long serving corporate dictator.

Corporate chieftains including CEOs and Chairmen of boards should have a limited tenor after which they have to be replaced. Why is it not possible for the CEO once he has relinquished his post after serving his term to return to work in another unit? Our current corporate culture would term this as demotion but it should be treated as a collaborative effort to further the interest of the corporate. If we do not challenge the present order we cannot create a social order that shall be truly remarkable and revolutionary. In our current megalomaniac corporate culture vast discriminatory amount of stock options to a few people creates competition to aspire for the management post. But in doing so we are creating a corporate culture of greed rather than performance, the risk reward prejudice we have built is shockingly disparage and prone to financial misdemeanors.

Entrepreneur who set up companies or invent technologies (this is most susceptible since the initial technology undergoes a sea change and a lot of minds create the eventual product and eco system that help the entrepreneur mint billions), love to become perpetual lords of the corporate. We have founders as CEOs and Chairmen of companies who remain lifelong CEOs and never retire or just cannot remain out of the limelight. How different are these men and women compared to emperors and feudal chieftains who latched on to power or different from dictators who ruled the masses eternally. The stock options and powers they provide themselves through an acquiescent and subservient board is legendary. Their wealth and ostentatious lifestyle would put the mythical Midas to shame. We have to put an end to this overtly discriminatory system and drum up a more equitable corporate culture. Regulations have to be built to regiment income disparities within the corporate world. The yardstick of democracy and regulations that we apply to our political establishment has to be applied ab initio to the corporate world. We should not create denizens of the corporate world who rule political establishments and are larger in size than the leaders who run nations. If we do not act now, we will leave behind a world of anarchy and mayhem. Our civil society will become disorderly as wealth resides in few hands and disparity creates disparage on the masses.

Nature never deemed us as unequal’s! It is we who have nurtured inequality. We need more Cincinnatus and less of Neros. Our attempt should be to democratize the corporate world and limit the unabated reign of CEOs and Boards. Corporate governance should promote laissez faire but stop abetting hoarding of power and wealth. If we initiate the change today, our future generations would look upon us with pride as each of us becomes a Cincinnatus, only then shall the conundrum of “To be Equal or not to be Equal” be resolved and human progress remain righteous and unrivalled.

Mufaddal Idris Khumri

To Think or Not to Think

Imagination, the domain of every living species, yet dominated by one species, man. It is precisely this virtue of humans that has made them superior to other living species. What ignites our imagination is the very essence of what makes us dream. We wonder and are amazed by all that surrounds us. Our precocious asset of questioning all that occurs has made us rise like a Phoenix over the last many millenniums. We dream to create and destroy to create. Similar to how we die and then live on in the next generation and so on! Death is the very essence of our creativity. Knowing that we are mortals keeps us going, an insatiate hunger to appease the voracious need to progress with time before we meet our destined end.

As man settled down to an agrarian life from his years as a hunter gatherer, his intellect was drawn away from the toil of gathering food. The weapons he developed made it easier for him to kill the prey, cultivation of plants and domestication of animals made it easier to obtain food. As a result his mind was left free from the vicissitudes of physical labor. Death on account of foraging for food became less frequent and humans evolved in to a species who vowed to rise up from food gatherers and procreators to being creationists. Man was able to take on the mantle of his evolutionary role, to tame nature and wonder in amazement at the vastness of the universe.

With time our progress was thwarted by human greed for territorial ambitions. We craved for power and began to enslave our own race, superiority of race, ethnicity, color; religion and culture enslaved our minds. For the next many millenniums we fought and killed our own race, we became our worst antagonist. The progress dreamt by our ancestors when they began a settled life was overtaken by rampaging conquerors. The age of empires thwarted much of scientific progress and industrial advancement; man became ritualistic and lost the verve to see beyond the essence of conquests. Then came the age of the machines, to aid the conquest of man and transport wealth from geographies. Superior conquering civilizations used the vast differences of the conquered people to rule them. Colonies were ruled by the colonizers with the aid of the natives. The age of colonization annihilated many of the heterogeneous races in our cult to create a homogeneous man with homogeneous beliefs. The newly acquired wealth and relative peace enjoyed by the western civilization, made them achieve scientific progress and advancement. Weapons of mass destruction were manufactured. The gun and then the machine gun and their many ilk’s in various forms were the single most dastardly inventions, that made killing a sport; from the combats that enshrined human ability to use the sword and shield and other benign weapons. Physical strength was no longer a pre requisite to be a combatant. Civilians who were largely shielded from rampaging warmongers became casualties. Death became mass extinction and very easy to inflict. The invention of modern weaponry made man a merchant of death in its very real sense. The wars from the 17^th till the 21^st century and even today never are tales of bravery or swordsmanship or chivalrous conduct, they are tales of sordid death inflicted by machines that has crumbled the very spirit of man and made life so very tenuous. But humanity didn’t perish in numbers as we invented drugs to combat ailments and disease. We conquered diseases that lengthened the average age of man, aided his survival and the age of procreation began, where humans began to live long and their progeny outlived the pang of child mortality. With a burgeoning population, we began to enslave them in the age of industrialization. Untold miseries were wrought upon salves and indigenous people and their beliefs, most were exterminated and many forcibly changed to aid and suit the likes of the conquerors. During these tumultuous years of our civilization, philosophers and men and women of learning imparted wisdom to their fellow beings. But most of their messages were warped by us in needless philosophical bundles; the dubious interpretation of their compassionate wisdom became a devious tool for justifying our ends. A bevy of interpretations to suit our immediate needs began to overwhelm human thoughts. The freedom of thought always suppressed was further endangered.

In the 21^st century our zeal to imprison humanity has not dwindled. The new slave master is technology and its rampaging whiplash, the social media. We have created self sustaining prisons where we remain glued to the addiction of social media and the internet. The opium war of the 19^th century was an attempt to kill the imagination of masses; by getting them addicted to the narcotic. In similar vein social media has become a narcotic that shapes our conduct. We have become less social on account of social media. New friends and acquaintances are so easy to obtain, contacts with old friends and acquaintances has become a reality. And all of a sudden our need to be heard and expressed has found a fountainhead of excitement. Our innate need to have an opinion and express our innermost thoughts to the world has found an outlet. But let us take a step back and question whether special media is indeed as liberating as it sounds or has it further endangered out spirits and chained our imagination and thoughts. Our addiction gives us less time to be social animals. We feel connected to the universe when in actuality we are not. We impersonate the many characters that fire our imagination and that gives rise to a completely new personality on the social media; it aids the birth and sustains many complex traits within us. Our uncalibrated thoughts have found takers and we unwittingly fall suspect to propaganda and warped ideologies. We have finally found an outlet for our boredom. Books, poem, literature and debates have been substituted by inchoate ramblings and lectures by uneducated folks. The guidance of a teacher no longer felt necessary and access to so much information has made all of us knowledgeable. Really! Our knowledge travels with our access to the internet. We have allowed the internet and its vast archives of information to replace our thoughtful mind. Machines store our knowledge; do our calculation whilst our mind revels in its freedom having relieved itself from the burden of thought and imagination. Imagination and creativity is a very strenuous practice and takes a lot of energy, access to so much information has made us intellectually dormant. Thoughts no longer excite us, our memory no longer strains and we are educated that it actually makes little sense to remember all the burden of some much knowledge. What we aren’t told is that the ability of our mind to judge and process a decision is only possible if our conscious and sub conscious mind stores all what we learn. That storage bin is not the mind any longer; it is the social media and the internet. Hence our benumbed mind becomes a slave to deviant ideologies and we become besotted by evil. Evil and dark thoughts prey on an unsuspecting mind and completely rob it of its ability to question and fathom ideologies. The doctrine of freedom of thought has become endangered by the spread of social media. Our imagination has met its grave yard as plagiarism replaces an inventive mind.

The ache of creativity and the struggle that an imaginative mind undergoes has chiseled humankind in what we are today. Our penchant for questioning the obvious and not following the masses has given rise to prophets, philosophers, scientists, statesmen, benign leaders and statesmen. Much of human literature and poetry was at its most excellent when we had no access to the internet and social media. Our creative juices flowed to write, draw, sculpt, invent and discover before the dawn of the internet and social media. We explored and conquered the known world and created works of art that till today remain a hallmark of excellence.

The internet and social media has robbed us of our free time as we get influenced and straight jacketed by what we read. Our mind is getting plagiarized by the excessive availability of propaganda and doctrines. The very essence of the mind remains not to be influenced but to chart its own course of creativity. This precocious faculty is under threat. We are under the yoke of thought slavery and soon will be dominated by an age of machines more powerful than humans who will think for us whilst we would merely be cattle fodder for them, who will procreate and slave for them.

Future generations cannot become slaves to machines of our own invention, humans have to walk and co-habit this world with other humans. Cohabit not the internet, and social media but the physical world. The allurement of the internet and social media has made us voyeuristic and far removed from the reality of life.  It is time we self regulate and restrict our uninhibited access to the internet and social media to less endanger the human species.

Many would contradict what I wrote and state the positive impact of the social media and internet. I do not deny that this invention has helped mankind. But every invention if not used judiciously tends to become a tool that becomes a harbinger of destruction. Knowledge without guided discourse is mere information. It requires a discerning and imaginative mind to dissect information and question beliefs, customs and notions.

To think is liberating and not to think is tyrannical. The choice is ours!

Mufaddal Idris Khumri

The choice of a vegan as a good habit is respectful, but hopefully one will appreciate a viewpoint that aims at questioning human actions and beliefs. As we achieve scientific progress we have become less imaginative and curious. Machines and automation have made us pusillanimous to challenge age old beliefs. We refuse to even hear people since the deafening roar of our orthodox beliefs have made us less approachable. Even a compelling argument doesn’t evoke our intelligence. Allow me in all humility to put forth my views on life. As vegans tend to talk about cruelty to animal life, one can similarly talk eloquently and quite furtively about plant lives.

Let me make it clear that I do not justify the consumption of meat since I believe that consuming any life form is unjustified. It’s just that we humans are passing thorough this phase of our evolution where our food habits haven’t evolved to contain cruelty to life forms.

Human beings consume life, to survive, and that includes any form of living organism. However, we do not see a compelling case for cruelty to lives other than those of animals. Since we have less empathy to all forms of non animal life. We humans are a part of the animal kingdom so many of us see life juxtaposed in our blurred and rather biased vision towards animal life. We do not emphasize with life forms which cannot see, feel, move, speak, display emotions or enact any behavior which is non human. So we tend to be humane, provided, that form of life is animal life. And here again, our inherent loathe of non mammalian animal life is pretty damning and obvious.

Plants don’t cry out loud and complain and since we do not hear them we remain oblivious to their plight. We consider them to be lower forms of life, so we don’t feel bad or create an outcry when we pluck a fruit or flesh out a corn or cut a tree or clear forests for industrial development. This nihilistic argument that which form of food is better for mankind is injurious and pretty egregious for our intellect. We humans have to kill life forms to survive , life gives energy and life when taken gives life ! Plant life is equal to human life or animal life , it’s just that you and I refuse to hear their pain or cry. Let’s not argue that eating plant life is less violent than eating animals. The red color of blood alone doesn’t resemble life. Similar to how we clone animals, inject them with hormones to enhance growth, artificially inseminate them, biologically alter their genes so also we do that with plants. However, we don’t sound sympathetic to the genetic cause and mutilation of plants as we tend to do with animal life.

A time will come in future when humans shall get energy from non life forms but for that human evolution has to reach a different stage. We may completely stop consuming any life form and get energy from some source similarly to how plants obtain energy from the sun.

We should stand and sound philosophically less divisive and jingoistic on this issue . I fail to comprehend how eating plant life is less evil then consuming animal life. Both are equally obnoxious but essential for the survival of our race. To take this argument in to the future, maybe, when we may encounter extra terrestrial life form during our galactic sojourns, we will show no empathy if that life form doesn’t resemble animal form. Even Hollywood with its many space oriented movies has always stuck to an extra terrestrial life form which resembles animal life. One may call it paucity of imagination amongst script writers or unwillingness to accept other forms of life. It is time to shed our legacy of bias towards life forms and be humane when we slaughter and butcher animals or plants or come across a life form in the future that we cannot imagine or comprehend as of today.

Humans have been gifted with free will and intellect and so cannot be pliant to inferior reasoning. Reason is the sole motive for our survival. An argument if done with logic should be tolerant and appreciative. I simply aim to bring reason to our thoughts and belief which have become adrift in this era of derisiveness and homogeneity.

With respect towards all.

Mufaddal Idris Khumri