Missing the big picture on Big Data | G Sampath

Why is the government so anxious to make the ownership of an Aadhar card, which is officially voluntary, practically mandatory? Why did the online fashion store Myntra.com recently turn app-only, which means you can’t shop on it through the website or mobile browser but only by downloading the app?

Why is Facebook developing solar-powered drones to beam Internet from the sky? And why do both Facebook and Gmail keep badgering you for your cell phone number?

What is the need for something called internet.org when there is already an Internet out there? Why does our government want to invest in ‘Smart Cities’ when it is unwilling to invest adequately on education?

The answer to all these questions, as Bob Dylan might have said, is flowing in optic fibre cables. If not, it is definitely stored in a non-meteorological cloud somewhere. Its name: Big data.

“Big data is no different from gold; it is firstly, and ultimately, a commodity”

The UID-Aadhar project will be the largest such citizen database on the planet. The reason Myntra wants its customers to transact only from apps is that consumer data is most valuable when tied to specific individuals, as it enables a closer tracking of user behaviour. It is also why Google, Facebook, and other tech companies want your mobile number.

It is because Mark Zuckerberg does not possess a search engine like Google does — which, as the entry point to the Internet for most people, is the ultimate instrument for generating consumer data — that he wants to start another, smaller ‘internet’ for those who cannot afford the full-size one.

As for Smart Cities, it is a blatant scheme to ensure that every citizen is dragooned into a digital grid at all times, so that she secretes a non-stop data trail from birth to death. This data trail, or big data would be continuously captured and processed for optimal value extraction (read monetisation).

If a world governed on the basis of big data is indeed the future, then what does this bode for humanity? The dominant consensus right now is overwhelmingly positive. But if we delve deeper, the use of big data and what it would entail for the future of human lives will unravel a problematic picture.

ILLUSTRATION: SATWIK GADE

According to the optimists, big data — in combination with what is described as the Internet of Things (IoT), a world where the vast majority of gadgets, machines, and humans are connected to the internet and to each other — promises a future where all important decisions about business, life, and society would be taken purely (and happily?) on the basis of data.

Human judgment, which is typically partial, flawed, and conflicted — and often distorted by factors that are not measurable, and do not compute, such as moral qualms, or empathy — need never come into the picture. This, they believe, would make for greater efficiency, higher productivity, and the optimal utilisation of resources for the greatest good of the greatest number.

There is a name for such decision-making driven purely by big data analytics. It’s called ‘evidence-based decision-making’. Its semantic twin is ‘actionable information’. Evidence-based decision-making can and does pay off brilliantly in business operations — this is what enterprise software solutions do, and they were indeed the tech precursors of big data analytics. It is ideal also for, say, predicting the weather, or earthquakes, and for identifying bankable talent in team sports, as the bestselling book/ film Moneyball showed.

Besides, big data already plays a major role in the management of infrastructure and industry, not to mention security, military affairs, health, and geopolitics, as the Snowden leaks made amply clear.

Purveyors of technological determinism like to argue that, with the advances in cloud and mobile computing, the non-stop generation of data on a never-before scale is bound to change how humans think, and therefore act and live.

“The graver threat is a digital replay of colonial era exploitation, with data replacing mineral resources and raw materials as the source of value”

This was the contention of Chris Andersen, the former editor-in-chief of Wired magazine, in a widely debated piece titled “The End of Theory: The data deluge makes the scientific method obsolete”. Andersen’s logic is simple: since processing of big data can give us correlations that can predict accurately, causation is no longer relevant. So theory, or explanations of the world based on the model of cause and effect (which is how humans have traditionally made sense of the world), are now obsolete.

In other words, we no longer need to think. Collect data, feed them into the maw of analytics, and wait for solutions to emerge. In Andersen’s words, “With enough data, the numbers speak for themselves.”

Well, this is no longer solely the chartered accountant’s motto. It is the article of faith among the world’s movers and shakers.

The World Economic Forum, an annual gathering of the global power elite, notes in its 2014 Global Technology Report that data is “a new form of asset class”, adding, “data are now the equivalent of oil or gold. And today we are seeing a data boom rivaling the Texas oil boom of the 20th century and the San Francisco gold rush of the 1800s.”

In his foreword to this very report, John Chambers, the chairman and CEO of Cisco Systems, points out that, with the number of app downloads growing from 10 billion in 2010 to 77 billion in 2014, there is “a $19 trillion global opportunity to create value over the next decade.”

As per industry estimates, in India alone, it is set to touch $1 billion in 2015.

Will politics surrender to analytics?

No doubt, there is overpowering business logic to the rise and rise of big data analytics. But does this mean it should get a leading role in the domain of politics and public policy?

The answer to this question may already have been decided, going by the frequency with which “evidence-based policy-making” and “actionable information” pops up in government documents and the reports of bodies such as the United Nations or the World Bank.

India, too, is well and truly on board the bandwagon. On the one hand, the large pool of English-speaking engineering/ mathematics graduates makes India an attractive destination for the off-shoring of big data analytics, which Indian tech entrepreneurs are well placed to exploit.

On the other hand, with several citizen-to-government transactions, such as passport applications and tax payments migrating online, and the state unwilling to relax its grip on Aadhaar, and plans afoot to digitise medical records, it is clear that Big Data will come to play a major role.

Besides, many examples have been cited to prove that big data can be harnessed for social good. We have been told that cellphone call logs can help locate survivors during a natural disaster. Online searches can yield data to predict a disease outbreak (the principle behind applications such as Google Flu Trends).

And given the billions of dollars — the preferred term is ‘value’ — riding on the so-called ‘information economy’, it is unlikely that the raw material for data manufacture (also known as ‘people’) will have much say in the matter. We are already beginning to see this in India, with ‘evidence-based decision-making’ being trotted out as an argument against the precious few welfare schemes still left for India’s poor, such as the public distribution system (where data show that it is leaky), or the rural jobs scheme (where data show it is riddled with corruption).

A policy determined by such evidence alone would seek to scrap both schemes and replace them with cash transfers, as the incumbent government seems keen to do. But big data, by definition, is the wrong tool with which to understand the social consequences of giving cash instead of food grains — a critical policy input that can come only from politics, not analytics.

Where is big data taking us?

The exponential growth of big data analytics, and its increasing utilisation in government policy, is premised on many things, including growth in IT infrastructure, the digital inclusion of those hitherto excluded by poverty, and an overarching colonisation of the analog universe by the digital.

But what it needs above all is the erasure of the very concept of privacy. Many of us have already voluntarily surrendered our privacy, either for the sake of convenience or to save costs — by ticking the ‘I accept’ box when we sign on to a social media or email service.

But privacy — while critical for a functional democracy – is not the only casualty of big data. The graver threat is a digital replay of colonial era exploitation, with data replacing mineral resources and raw materials as the source of value.

We already have a bizarre scenario in several developing countries (including India) — a scenario that is somehow no longer perceived as bizarre — where people don’t have toilets (an amenity with tremendous public health consequences) but own cell phones, and their mobile data is being captured for ‘actionable information’ on the status of their health, and for ‘evidence-based’ framing of health policy.

“It promises a future where decisions about business, life, and society will be taken purely on the basis of data”

It is in the context of such anomalies that a term coined by a Tanzanian health minister becomes relevant: data colonialism.

The expression gained traction when Najeeb Al Shorbaji, Director, Knowledge and Management at the World Health Organisation (WHO), gave a speech in 2013, titled ‘Data Colonialism’. Shorbaji used the term to describe a scenario where the West has been mining African nations for health data without the Africans benefiting in any way.

He uses the same data-as-gold metaphor used by the WEF report to draw an analogy between the flow of raw materials from the colonies to Europe, and the flow of data from the erstwhile colonies to the developed West today. The objective in both cases is the same: extraction of value.

Today, useless data (or ‘data exhaust’ as it’s called) has to flow from the developing markets to the West (via Google or Amazon or their equivalent) in order to be commodified as information. Shorbaji illustrates the social dynamic of data-driven exploitation with an example from a domain that is usually touted as a poster boy for the benefits of big data analytics: healthcare.

He describes how impoverished Africans, who are not even aware of the concept of informed consent, living as they do in countries with no legislative framework for data collection and usage, agree to become guinea pigs for risky clinical trials in exchange for a little money or free medical treatment.

The animating logic of big data

This brings us to the philosophical basis of big data, which is rooted in the abstractions of statistics. It is well known that statistics grew as a discipline to address the needs of the modern state, which had to administer populations on a big scale. In big data, the post-modern state has found a fitting collaborator for monitoring, and pre-emptively controlling, sections of the populations that, in circumstances of prolonged deprivation or injustice, can be prone to unseemly eruptions against those who control the levers of the state.

Typically, the ‘big’ of big data is construed as a reference to the sheer volume, velocity (of generation) and variety (of sources) of the datasets involved. But perhaps the real reason why ‘big’ data is big is that it seeks to decisively appropriate human agency and transfer it to data and algorithms.

Even the term ‘actionable information’, often invoked in the context of big data, suggests that it is not humans who have to decide what is to be done, and therefore take responsibility for the choices being made, but somehow the data or information itself which decides (for humanity) the action to be taken. This, finally, is the inescapable social cost of big data analytics.

And so, finally, we come to the big question about big data: Can analytics find solutions to humanity’s problems? Yes, but not to the problems that human beings choose not to address.

Many global problems have their origins in deprivation. We don’t need big data analytics to tell us this. It is common sense that if such widespread deprivation is addressed – which requires solving the problem of extreme inequalities in wealth and income – a lot many problems, such as hunger and disease, can be resolved.

In fact, there already is ample data, including an OECD study, which confirms that reducing inequality boosts economic growth. But this has hardly prompted a corresponding change in government policies anywhere. While evidence-based policy-making may be good for business and the tech industry, it is only politics-driven policy-making that can make a positive difference to people’s lives. For, as data evangelists never tire of pointing out, big data is no different from gold — it is firstly, and ultimately, a commodity. 

The writer is the Social Affairs Editor of The Hindu. Email: gsampath.thehindu@gmail.com

India’s eye on universe ready for tests

Astrosat launch in October, to provide useful data for country’s astronomers

An artist’s impression of Astrosat, with various instruments mounted on it.— COURTESY: ISRO

A fully assembled Astrosat, India’s first space observatory, is ready for intensive tests here before its launch around October.

The Indian Space Research Organisation said on Tuesday that the 1,650-kg spacecraft would orbit Earth equatorially at 650 km and study distant stars, galaxies, black holes and other cosmic objects.

Elite status

The space-based observatory was built at the ISRO Satellite Centre here to operate for five years and will provide useful data for the country’s astronomy community. It will put India in an elite orbit with the U.S., Europe, Russia and Japan.

“Last week, the spacecraft was fully assembled and switched on. All the [six] payloads and sub-systems are integrated into the satellite. Mechanical fit checks of the satellite with the PSLV [polar satellite launch vehicle] payload adaptor were performed successfully,” the space agency said on its website.

One of ISRO directors said Astrosat would be the first such satellite to scan simultaneously the sky in most of the frequency spectra from ultraviolet to optical and low- and high-energy X-ray bands.

Large scale

Although previous national satellites carried small astronomy-related devices, “Nothing on this scale, with a dedicated satellite, has been done before [at ISRO]. It should be of immense benefit to our scientists, who have depended on inputs from other agencies and sources like the Hubble [US-European space telescope],” the official said.

In the coming days, Astrosat will undergo a host of environmental tests — electromagnetic interference, electromagnetic compatibility, thermal vacuum, vibration and acoustics and so on.

Later, the satellite will be shipped to the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota, for launch.

ISRO developed the six payloads in partnership with the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai; the Indian Institute of Astrophysics and the Raman Research Institute, Bengaluru; and the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune.

Two payloads were developed with the Canadian Space Agency and the University of Leicester, U.K.

Source: www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/indias-eye-on-universe-ready-for-tests/article7225181.ece

तुम्हारे बगैर

तुम्हारे बगैर
मैं किसी जकड़न से अलग सा महसूस करता हूँ,
बेड़ियों से छूटा सा.
सोच पाता हूँ खुद को
और किसी रौशनी में चलने लगता हूँ.

तुम्हारे बगैर कई ख्याल, कई लोग
सीधे मिलने आते हैं.
पाश, लेनिन, काफ़्का से लेकर
नेहरू, कबीर, गुरुदत्त तक
पता नहीं कौन-कौन.
और कई दफे पिकासो, हलदनकर मिलकर
मेरे सर पे रंग उड़ेल जाते हैं.
जैसे 'ब्लू फेज़' की कोई पेंटिंग गढ़ गये हों.

तुम्हारे बगैर मैं असीमित होता हूँ.
तुम्हारे बगैर ज्यादा खुश,
आज़ाद और प्रफुल्लित.

तुम्हारे बगैर मैं बस 'विवेक' होता हूँ,
'सिर्फ तुम्हारा विवेक' नहीं.
खुद के सपने देखता हूँ,
खुद की समझ बूझता हूँ.

फिर मैं तुम्हारा साथ क्यों चाहूंगा?

सपने / पाश

हर किसी को नहीं आते
बेजान बारूद के कणों में
सोई आग के सपने नहीं आते
बदी के लिए उठी हुई
हथेली को पसीने नहीं आते
शेल्फ़ों में पड़े
इतिहास के ग्रंथो को सपने नहीं आते
सपनों के लिए लाज़मी है
झेलनेवाले दिलों का होना
नींद की नज़र होनी लाज़मी है
सपने इसलिए हर किसी को नहीं आते 

Modern Painting

Contemporary Indian art has travelled a long way since the days of Ravi Verma, Abanindranath Tagore and his followers and even Amrita Sher-Gil. Broadly, the pattern followed is this. Almost every artist of note began with one kind of representational or figurative art or the other tinged with impressionism, expressionism or post-expressionism. The irksome relationship of form and content was generally kept at a complementary level. Then through various stages of elimination and simplifications, through cubism, abstraction and a variety of expressionistic trends, the artists reached near non-figurative and totally non-figurative levels. The 'pop' and the 'op', the minimal and anti-art have really not caught the fancy of our artists, except for very minor aberrations. And, having reached the dead and cold abstraction, the only way open is to sit back and reflect. This copy-book pattern has been followed by a great number of artists, including senior and established ones. As a reaction to this journey into nothing, there are three new major trends: projection of the disturbed social unrest and instability with the predicament of man as the main theme; an interest in Indian thought and metaphysics, manifested in the so called 'tantric' paintings and in paintings with symbolical import: and more than these two trends is the new interest in vague surrealist approaches and in fantasy. More important than all this, is the fact that nobody now talks of the conflict between form and content or technique and expression. In fact, and in contradiction to the earlier avowal, almost everybody is certain that technique and form are only important prerequisites to that mysterious something of an idea, message or spirit, that spark of the unfathomable entity that makes such man a little different from the other.

Modern Architecture

Source: http://www.ccrtindia.gov.in/modernarchitecture.php No doubt we have a great architectural heritage of temples, mosques, palaces and forts. So much so that whenever architecture is thought of in conjunction with India, images of the Taj Mahal, Fatehpur Sikri and South Indian temples are conjured up in our minds. The question that comes to our mind is: Do we have anything today as representative of Modern Architecture which could be compared with our old buildings? Or in even simpler terms - 'what represents Modern Architecture in India'? The question which is difficult to answer - demands more than skin deep analysis of modern architecture in the context of India. The answer to this question also depends on the spirit behind it. If the curiosity behind the question concerns the quantum of construction done in post-independence years, the answer can be one impressive list of statistical figures, a fine achievement for building science and technology. But, if on the other hand the questioning mind is concerned about new architectural and planning thought generated in the same post-independence years, which have resulted in buildings and cities suited to our socio-economic, cultural and climatical circumstances, our achievements are not very impressive so far. But considering the fact that formation of thoughts and ideas, in this relatively young field, has been going for only the last quarter of century and with the limited resources that we have, it is evident that we are on the verge of making a break-through. It is not out of context here to go into details how things have been happening in the field of architecture in years preceeding the following independence. Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, Mumbai, Maharashtra

North and South Block, Delhi

Architecture traditionally, i.e., before the arrival of British on the Indian soil, was from the social point of view, a creation of spectacular sculptural forms hewn out of stone. Architectural material was stone; tools, chisel and hammer, and the aim was glorification. In contrast, the every-day needs of a common man were ruthlessly neglected. Then the British arrived on the scene, it was through them that the first introduction to elementary modern building construction and planning was introduced into India. Their aim, however, was to house their organisations, and their people and whatever was necessary to control an empire as big as India. Apart from self-serving military cantonments and civil lines, they also left the basic problems well alone. It was no intention of the British to educate Indians in the art and science of architecture. Consequently Indian minds, during the British reign, were completely out of touch with the progressive thinking taking place in the rest of the world. The most significant architectural phenomenon that took place during the first half of this century in this country was building of Imperial Delhi. This was an anachronism of the highest order, because, while at that time contemporary Europeans were engaged in most progressive thinking in architecture, Sir Edward Lutyen's was a masterpiece in high renaissance architecture, the result of a way of thinking typical of the early nineteenth century in Europe. It is interesting to note that at the same time as the construction of Delhi, Europe was having "Heroic period of modern architecture" in such schools of thought as "Bauhaus". Independence woke us to a changed situation. "Time had moved on. In place of religion or royal concern with architectural immortality, this situation demanded attention to those problems that had so far been ruthlessly neglected. The ordinary man, his environment and needs became the centre of attention. Demand for low cost housing became urgent.

Industrialism that was to follow in India, spawned its own problems of townships and civic amenities for workers. Fresh migration from rural areas to existing cities also strained already, meagre housing capacities of existing cities. The very scale of the problem was and still is unnerving. 8,37,00,000 dwelling units needed throughout the country and the demand rises annually at the rate of 17,000 dwelling units, not to mention rural housing. To face staggering problems of such magnitude, twenty-five years ago, there were few Indian architects in the country and practically no planners. There was only one school of architecture in Bombay. But there was the will to build, with the limited resources and technological know-how at our disposal. We marched ahead and built an impressive number of houses and other buildings of utilisation nature. In the process we made mistakes and learnt from them. Each fresh attempt was a step closer to building of forms more suitable for the Indian climate and socio-economic conditions. In this process, architects also became aware of the need for a certain amount of research work in new ways of building and planning if we were to face the problem squarely as they say. Since government was the agency with the largest resource, it had to carry the heaviest responsibility for construction. Need for various kinds of organisation on the national and regional level was felt. Following is the list of governmental bodies that we have today, which in some way or the other are responsible for building industry in India. (1) CENTRAL PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT (C.P.W.D.) This is a national organisation with affiliated bodies at state level called Public Works Department (P.W.D.). It looks after all the construction of government office buildings, residential accommodation for government employees, institutional buildings like the I.I.T., hospitals, public auditoriums, conference halls like Vigyan Bhavan, and hotels such as "The Janpath" and "The Ranjeet". etc. A number of other buildings, like Libraries, research institutes, airports, radio and T.V. Centres, Telecommunication building, factories and workshops are also looked after by the C.P.W.D. Activities of the C.P.W.D. are not restricted to building construction alone. The department also looks after engineering, construction of granaries, warehouses, bridges and canals that have helped the country in its fight against food shortage. The Horticultural wing of the department has involved itself with the creation of environmental comforts, like Parks such as Buddha Jayanti Park and Mughal Gardens. Activities of the department at present have extended beyond the borders of the country. The Sonali-Pokhra road project in Nepal has been completed and a hospital for children in Kabul had just been completed and the department had been appointed as consultant for work of the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Institute at Mauritius.

Rashtrapati Bhawan, Delhi

Connaught Place, Delhi

(2) TOWN COUNTRY PLANNING ORGANISATION A planning organisation is responsible for physical and land-use planning on a national scale and then detailed land-use planning on regional scale. In other words this organisation is responsible for earmarking National land for various uses, such as Towns, cities, industry etc., considering factors like economy, ecology, communication etc. thereby ensuring balanced and planned physical growth of the whole nation. Apart from this the organisation is engaged in preparing development plans for existing cities such as Delhi to ensure controlled growth of these cities. (3) HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION : HUDCO was set as a fInance operating body to deal with a revolving fund of 200 crores. Its main objectives are :­ (a) To finance Urban Housing. (b) To undertake setting up of new or satellite towns. (4) CENTRAL BUILDING RESEARCH INSTITUTE C.B.R.I. conducts research into various methods of economical construction and various other aspects of the building industry. It is a research oriented organisation. (5) NATIONAL BUILDING ORGANISATION : N.B.O. is an organisation which acts as interface between all incoming technological information and practising architects and builders. (6) HINDUSTAN HOUSING FACTORY : H.H.F. concerns itself in encouraging the technology of prefabrication throughout the country. (7) STATE HOUSING BOARDS TO DEVELOPMENT AUTHORITIES : Apart from all these, are state housing boards in all the mentioned above bodies which are responsible for implementation and designing of the housing needs, and general controlled growth of the existing cities according to drawn up master-plans for development. For financial help they depend on agencies like HUDCO. Together with the help of all the organisation, by no means an exhaustive list, government performs various roles, from public works to deployment of financial resources, from research to distribution of fundings to building industry. Much has been done, much remains to be done. On the architectural horizon today find us with a new generation of architects and planners. Today we have nearby fifteen architectural schools throughout the country and certain equipment and knowhow of naturalized building science and technology and a growing experience with new material and methods and large scale planning. All this had not been easy. However, it was not huge, building institutions, but individuals that have been responsible for evolving a new aesthetics bridging the hiatus between traditionalism and modernism. Painstakingly these individuals have worked, over the years, learning both from abroad and our experiences with traditional architecture, to bring about various schools of thought responsible for the spirit of modern Indian architecture. The emphasis now lies not on awesome monumentality, but factionalism with accompanying virtues of economy, simplicity and utility. It is relevant here to go into the development of these ideas. As a matter of fact some ideas of modern architecture were not to come to us until 1950, when Le Corbusier at that time was a leading figure in architectural circles created Chandigarh, one of his most ambitious projects. This had a tremendous impact on the mind of Indian architects, who had so far only seen-either glorious temples or forts of the past or the Imperial British capital of New Delhi in the name of modern architecture. Overwhelmed, they found this expression of modern architecture quite acceptable. It was grand and sensational and at the same time was based on rational basis of climatic analysis and planning freedom. In the years to follow, buildings spring up all over India which had similar expression and the same materials. But ideas of Le Corbusier had to be crystallized before they could be adopted in India. Some realized that concrete and plastic forms were after all not the solution for all Indian architectural problems, howsoever sensational they might be.

There was another parallel phenomenon going on at the same time which was to influence the course of modern architecture in India to come. Indian architects were going to Europe and America to seek higher education and cultural inspiration. The Indian architectural community took its inspiration from ideas developed in the western world. During the sixties these architects who received their education in the western countries commanded high positions as professionals as well as teachers. They taught, practiced and experimented with what they had learnt in the west against the harsh realities of India. The process of fermentation of ideas was turned on. There were many realizations that were to form the rational basis for architecture to come. First of these realizations was that if we have to do anything worthwhile in India for Indians under Indian socio-economic and climatic conditions, the west was no place to look for inspirations or solutions. We will have to evolve our own patterns of development and physical growth, our own methods and materials of construction and our own expression of foregoing. This realisation created a sense of vaccum and because of the poignancy of the feeling of vaccum, the search began, and architects started looking in different directions for various answers. In each direction partial perception of truth was declared as the total truth. The fact however, remains that in each direction we have moved closer to rational basis of modern architecture. One of the first places where Indian architects looked for inspiration for expression of total architecture of India, is our own village and folk architecture. Architects studied with keen interest the way people solved problems long before western influence was felt in India. From desert settlements of Jaisalmer, to village developments of hills, plains and sea-coasts, all became the focus of study. Complex planning were analysed and looked into for inspirations. There are some daring architects who have gone as far as to study the human settlements in the heavily populated areas of existing metropolitan cities, built without the help of architects, looking for solutions of high density, low rise economical housing; a challenging problem for India. It is the contention of these farsighted architects, with a hard nosed realism, that in such kinds of dense developments, with simple methods of construction and conventional low cost materials, when laid out in a planned manner, that we will find the answer urban housing for our really poor masses. While some of these architects were busy looking for answers in what we already have in our traditional settlements, others were exploring how industry can be made use of in solving the aspect of building problems. Prefabrication has potential in large scale housing, large span structures and industrial buildings on anywhere were repetitive units can be employed. But so far in India, industrialization of the building industry has not made great headway for lack of technological infrastructures to support it, therefore its influence is only limited to fascination of imagery. However, one aspect of technology that can be successfully applied in architecture is invention and manufacture of new building materials from industrial waste to replace the traditional building materials like steel and cement of which there are tremendous shortages.

Supreme Court, Delhi

There is the growing realization among architects that just to build visually beautiful buildings will be useless, unless it is backed by infrastructure of services, such as water supply, electrical supply and communication system of rapid mass transit, etc. In other words it is not an individual building but the total environment that matters. All this calls for serious attention on patterns of physical growth that will take care of layouts of all these services in an organised manner.

...क्या आप पांचवी पास से तेज़ हैं?

हमने बनाये ईश्वर, ईश्वर के दूत... हमने बनाये ‪#‎आसाराम‬... और उन्हें दे दिया हमने हमें ईश्वर तक पहुंचाने का ठेका.
फिर उनके ‪#‎कुकर्मों‬ पे कुछ सिर पीटते रह गए कुछ कुकर्म ढांपते.
कुल जमा दो साल में आठ में से कुल छ: गवाह मार दिए गए... आज एक पे हमला हुआ... क्या तुम बताओगे बाकि बचे दो को ईश्वर तक पहुँचाने में कितना वक़्त लगेगा? ये गणित तो प्राइमरी का लड़का भी लगा सकता है... क्या आप पांचवी पास से तेज़ हैं?

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तुमने जगनमोहन पैलेस देखा है? #मैसूर आने वाले लोग अक्सर वहां नहीं जाते, बस मैन पैलेस देख के चले जाते हैं. आर्ट गैलरी है जगनमोहन, और 'ड्यूड' और 'कूल' लोग आर्ट गैलरी और म्यूजियम नहीं देखते. मैंने कई-कई दिन, कई-कई घंटे वहां बिताये हैं. चुगताई की आँखे ले उसकी पेंटिंग्स देखी हैं. राजा रवि वर्मा से एक दफे पूछा भी था कि सिर्फ देवता ही क्यों, और ये खूबसूरत अर्धनग्न देवियाँ...?
उसने कहा था कि उस वक़्त यही चलता था. धार्मिक पुनरुत्थान का वक़्त था वो.. सबको देवता चाहिए थे... देसी देवता. लेकिन सबको अपनी स्त्रियां चाहिए थीं मेमों से ज्यादा सुन्दर. रजवाड़ों को चाहिए थीं मेमें हरम में सजाने. मैंने पहले देश घुमा फिर ये चित्र बनाये.

बेवकूफी लगा था उसका ये कहना. लेकिन अब लगता है वो सही था. देखो मैं भी तो वही लिखता हूँ जो तुम्हें पसंद है... और जब किताबें लिखूंगा तो अवाम की पसंद की.

कला पे खुद कलाकार का हक़ कब रहा है...?

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इन सड़कों पे चलके कभी आने-अकबरी लिखी गई होगी, तब ताज न होगा यहां और शायद न रहा हो लाल-किला. यमुना रही होगी दौड़ती भागती, लेकिन इतनी गन्दी न रही हो शायद.. और आगरा #आगरा न रहा हो. पेठा खा के तुम सा गोलू होना चाहता हूँ और अगली ट्रैन पकड़ गोल गुम्बद तुम्हारे संग देखना चाहता हूँ. ख्वाहिशें बहुत हैं, शहर कई... बस सेंटर में तुम हो हर जगह. मेरा फोकस है कि किसी भी शहर तुम्हें खोज लेता है. फिर वो शहर अपना बना लेता है, तुम्हारी तरह.

छोड़ो, तुम नहीं समझोगे... हर अक्स में इश्क़ का होना.

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जो वर्षों बाद भी अतीत में हों और उनका भविष्य अनसर्टेन... उनके साथ ‪#‎ख्वाब‬ नहीं सजोंये जाते... आपकी ख़ामोशी में ढेर सारे लफ्ज़ होते हैं जो कानों में गूंज जाते हैं... जिनके मतलब मैं जानना नहीं चाहता. बस कभी-कभी कहते-कहते आपका खामोश होना अच्छा लगता है. जैसे आप नदी हो कोई, यकायक से हो गई हो शांत और मैं चुप-चुप ही वादियों के बीच धीमी सी कल-कल सुन रहा हूँ... गुपचुप-गुपचुप.
मैं सागर हूँ, किसी दिन मिलना ही है नदी को... शायद किसी और नदी के रस्ते... यमुना का गंगा से हो सागर तक पहुंचना या झेलम का सिंधु के रस्ते.. लेकिन नदी को मिलना ही है सागर से. फिर भी, जो वर्षों बाद भी अतीत में हों और उनका भविष्य अनसर्टेन... उनके साथ के ख्वाब नहीं सजोंये जाते...
‪#‎लप्रेक‬