Insights from Martha Kessler on strategy analysis

My last job was that of a Strategy Analyst in a business unit during 2005-06. It didn’t take long to realize that my primary responsibility was to create a data-backed case justifying senior management decisions, a kind of reverse engineering. The leaders were privy to a much bigger context, travelled extensively meeting CXOs in client and partner organizations mostly abroad, and were aware of investor expectations.  In contrast, I was an armchair analyst synthesizing traffic from the meetings and the Internet. I didn’t know at the time that the “damn analyst”, as Henry Kissinger’s called him, in an intelligence department does pretty much the same, even if the decision involves going to war in Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein. What should a strategy analyst be careful about? In this article, I would like to summarize the 3 tips Martha Kessler gives in a panel on “1973 Arab-Israeli War: An intelligence analyst perspective” in 2013 (Martha's speech starts at 30:50)

Martha Kessler was in her mid-twenties when she was deputed as an analyst to the Office of Current Intelligence (OCI) in Libya and then moved in the Arab-Israeli Office branch after Libya merged with Egypt for a short time months before Arab-Israel Yom-Kippur war in 1973. In the panel, she describes 3 things she learned from her career in the CIA spanning four decades from 1970 to 2010.

For weeks leading up to the war that started on October 6, 1973, Martha was reading both the Libyan and Egyptian traffic. The Libya-Egypt country merger was a distraction for analysts as policy-makers were very much interested in it. Soviet Union had withdrawn its support for Egypt the year before (1972). A seven-page report came in from Cairo on its implications. It was a well-written, seemingly well-reasoned argument as to why Egypt was not going to go to war. It would have been extremely difficult for a Washington-based analyst to go against an opinion from the Chief of Station on the ground. When the war started, Martha got a call in the middle of the night. She and other US citizens were evacuated through Libya. The war was quite a shock to her, and its impact made Martha rethink her career because she realized a mistake of this sort could have huge consequences. What was she missing?

Context creates a filter: Years later, when Martha was deputed again as an Egyptian analyst, she reflected on her experience. She realized that she and many others were missing the context. The first aspect was that the legitimacy of the Sadat regime was disintegrating by the day. He was living with the legacy of the 1967 disaster. And he was running out of time. The Egyptian economy was under stress. They also had the burden of the Yemen war. The Egyptian population had been asked to sacrifice for a very long time. There was exhaustion in the military. There was humiliation in the eyes of the Arab world, and among Egypt’s supporters in Europe and the Non-Aligned world. The attitude of Israelis was extremely arrogant; they haunted the Egyptians. US and Soviets were negotiating cooperation agreements, and Sadat was the loser. Sadat had to do a begging bowl operation to survive militarily. Martha says, “If there had been this construct of context through which intelligence information had been filtered, we would have had a much stronger case in our own minds about whether Sadat was going to go to war or not.” Perhaps a similar contextual filter was at play – that Hamas won’t attack Israel – fifty years later.

Deception as distraction:  There was a hostage crisis created by As-Sa’iqa, a Palestinian organization created and controlled by Syria. On September 28, 1973, members of As-Sa’iqa took Jewish emigrants from the Soviet Union hostage while they were traveling through Austria. Similarly, on October 4, Egypt announced demobilization of some reservists. There were a number of military exercises near the border. This was part of a broader deception effort. Martha says, “Deception, and this was very very good deception, is very hard to uncover.” Perhaps awareness of the fact that there could be deception is a good first step.

Role of biases and competing hypotheses: Martha highlighted tools like assumption checks and analysis of competing hypotheses. She says, “Think what it would have meant to be able to uncover our feelings that Israelis always win wars, Arabs always lose them. And we had a clearer idea of our biases and assumptions.” Another tool she highlighted was “analysis of competing hypotheses”. Keeping competing hypotheses alive and seeing how incoming information strengthens or weakens them. To me, it looks like a Bayesian belief update mechanism.

In my case, after six months into the job, tracking various assumptions behind the business plan and validating them with the internal and external data, I concluded that the business was not going anywhere. Of course, nobody believed me. It was one of the triggers for me to leave. It took a couple of years before the decline started reflecting in the annual reports, and the business unit was eventually disbanded.  

On March 26, 2003, six days after Bush announced the invasion of Iraq, Martha Kessler gave a public speech at the University of Delaware titled “Intrigue of the Mideast Bazaar”. She said, “There may not even be an Iraq after the war because there is a real danger that the region could descend into chaos. Reconstruction may take considerably longer.” When asked how long it would take to establish democracy in Iraq, she said, “Perhaps never.” Damned analysts sometimes see things clearly.

image source: youtube.com

Ford-Bezos vs Gandhi-Schumacher: Two paradigms of frugal innovation

This is the last slide from the “Frugal innovation” session I delivered last month to a cohort of executive MBA students from the University of Sidney at IIM Bangalore. I gave this talk for the first time at IIMB when a similar group from HEC Paris visited a decade ago, and I've taught it from time to time. This slide presents two dominant paradigms that enable frugal innovations that benefit masses, especially the bottom of the pyramid. For simplicity, I call the first paradigm “Ford-Bezos,” as these two entrepreneurs epitomize the creation of efficient large-scale production systems that made goods like cars and online shopping available at low cost to the masses. The second paradigm, which I call “Gandhi-Schumacher,” named after Mahatma Gandhi and Fritz Schumacher, is also concerned with making goods available at low cost but with appropriate technology where production is distributed, and the machine feels like an extension of the human body. One could call the former technology-centric frugal innovation and the latter human-centric affordable innovation. One question that often gets raised is: Is the Ford-Bezos paradigm the clear winner right now?

Ford-Bezos paradigm: Most of us are familiar with this paradigm. It is a response to the question, “How do we build a large-scale, efficient production and distribution system that offers goods and services to masses?” Centralized production and automation are at the heart of this paradigm. In India, Amazon claims to deliver to every serviceable pincode in the country. Since 2013, it has partnered with India Post, tapping into more than 150,000 post offices in towns and villages with no other reliable courier coverage. By 2024, it was using 120 trains operating 130 intercity routes connecting 91 cities. Amazon globally employs 1 million robots in its warehouses (as of mid-2025) and 1.56 million people. Workers at warehouses across the US, UK, and India have complained about restrictive bathroom policies. As articulated in books like “Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the invention of Global Empire”, employee/worker-friendliness is not what Amazon is known for. Thus, the paradigm delivers low-cost goods but comes at a cost.

Gandhi-Schumacher paradigm: While Gandhiji is often considered the “father” of a movement later called “Appropriate technology”, Fritz Schumacher, the author of “Small is beautiful”, is considered its founder. In 1955, following a stint as an economic advisor to the government of Burma (now Myanmar), Schumacher published a short paper, “Economics in a Buddhist country”. A revised version was later published as "Buddhist economics" in 1965. In addition to Buddhism, Schumacher credited his ideas to Gandhi. 

Appropriate technology involves technological choice and application that is small-scale, affordable by its users, labour-intensive, energy-efficient, environmentally sustainable, and locally autonomous. By 1980, the number of organizations involved in development and promotion of appropriate technology had grown to 1000 worldwide. However, in 2010 Paul Polak announced, “The appropriate technology movement died peacefully in its sleep ten years ago.” The title of the essay is, “The death of appropriate technology, if you can’t sell it, don’t do it”. Of course, ideas don’t die easily. So, let’s look at a couple of organizations exhibiting this paradigm in India today.

Selco and Aravind Eye Care: Selco was started in 1995 by Harish Hande to create inclusive, adaptable, and enduring solar solutions. In its labs in Kalahandi in Odisha, Williamnagar in Meghalaya, Guwahati, and Bangalore, cross-functional teams that include an architect, a doctor, an engineer, a finance person, and sometimes an anthropologist and a Yakshagana artist meet to design new programs that address the question, “Is the energy solution affordable in the long run?” For example, a solar-powered sewing machine may enable a woman to produce 8 shirts a day instead of 2. However, if she is not able to find a market for her products, then there is a danger of creating technology debt, says Hande. Hence, financing, maintenance, and support are important parts of solutioning. In the past few years, Selco revenue ranged between ₹90 and ₹140 crore (USD 10- 15 M), and it has been mostly profitable and self-sustaining.

Dr. Venkataswamy, the founder of Aravind, had a vision of making eye-care delivery as efficient as McDonald’s. When it started as an 11-bed hospital in 1976, five beds were for the paying patients, and six beds were for non-paying. FY24 activity report of Aravind says that out of a total of 729,187 surgeries, 363,330 (50%)were in the paying section, 250,349 were in the subsidised section with walk-ins to the free hospital, and 115,508 were done through free camps organized by its seven hospitals. In FY24, Aurolab launched 7 new surgical products, doctors at Aravind published 180 papers, and a conference for Mid-Level Ophthalmic Personnel (MLOP) and admin staff had 319 submissions, 200 presentations, and 55 participants winning prizes. When Aravind celebrated its golden jubilee last month, my guess is that the original question Dr V asked, “How to eliminate needless blindness?” was raised again.

Aravind seems to combine the scale and efficiency of the Ford-Bezos paradigm with the compassion and empowerment of the Gandhi-Schumacher paradigm. Aravind is a not-for-profit organization and is still run by a set of dedicated people groomed by Dr V.

Fortune at the bottom of the pyramid? When C K Prahalad wrote the book “The fortune at the bottom of the pyramid: Eradicate poverty through profits” in 2004, Aravind figured prominently in it. Within a couple of years, Prahalad’s colleague Aneel Karnani, at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, wrote a rebuttal, “Fortune at the bottom of the pyramid: A mirage”. Karnani argued that the BoP market is generally too small monetarily to be profitable for most multinationals. What is the verdict after two decades?

Large multinational FMCG companies like Hindustan Unilever, Nestle, and Colgate have been serving rural India for half a century. And now Amazon is taking it to the next level. And yet, Blume Ventures, an early-stage venture fund headquartered in Mumbai, puts it bluntly in the following slide from their Indus Valley Annual Report (2025). It calls India-3 the market with the bottom 1 billion people unmonetizable. Perhaps it is saying that unless you are selling soap, shampoo, toothpaste, noodles, and cigarettes, don’t bother selling to BoP.

Gandhi’s talisman test: Gandhi left the following quote in 1948, which was published posthumously. "I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man [woman] whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him [her]. Will he [she] gain anything by it? Will it restore him [her] to a control over his [her] own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to swaraj [freedom] for the hungry and spiritually starving millions? Then you will find your doubts and your self melt away."

People like Dr V of Aravind and Harish Hande of Selco seem to be genuinely concerned with the BoP. They don’t start with the pursuit of making a lot of money for themselves. Without compassion, the Gandhi-Schumacher paradigm is a burden. This is where Gandhi’s talisman test – to check how big the self has become – turns relevant. Self-awareness puts “self” in its proper place in relation to other people and the planet. This dimension is sometimes referred to as the spiritual dimension. As Prof. Kasturi Rangan of Harvard Business School said of Dr V, “This man’s spirituality wasn’t incidental to the story. It was what everything else hinged on.”

To summarize, Ford-Bezos is the dominant paradigm worldwide today. It is playing an important role in making goods and services available to the masses at low cost. In many places, it is delivering at the expense of the environment and by undermining the human spirit. Unlike Paul Polak, I think the Gandhi-Schumacher paradigm isn’t dead. Actually, even Polak pointed out in his essay that “new movements for the design of technology for the poor are emerging from the ashes.”  He referred to Design for Extreme Affordability at Stanford and D-Lab at MIT. In fact, due to shifting institutional priorities, the Stanford program is closing this Fall (2026). In India, IIT Bombay’s Tata Centre for Technology and Design and IIT Madras’s Rural Technology Action Group (RuTAG) are active in this area. And Polak is right: marketing and selling are an integral part of the sustainability of the model. Moreover, like Harish Hande, it is important to ask, “Is this solution affordable in the long run?” So long as there are people who see themselves as deeply connected with other people and the planet, the Gandhi-Schumacher paradigm will persist. 

Catalign Quarterly - Sept 2026

 

📝 Quote of the Quarter

Human mind does not deal well with nonevents. The quarter began with my wife Gauri returning from Kailash parikrama in early July. In the background was the nonevent: something that could have happened but didn't. It was to occur two months later. As I continue with life, taking tomorrow for granted, Kahneman's quote is a great reminder (see My favorite Daniel Kahneman quotes)

𖣯 Strategy Corner

The progress of AI is surprising to me, like most of you. And yet it feels like a deja vu. In this context, it was wonderful to revisit the chapter on creative destruction by Joseph Schumpeter written in 1942. For him, "Every piece of business strategy acquires its true significance only against the background of that process (of creative destruction) and within the situation created by it." For more, check out: Joseph Schumpeter, creative destruction, and the significance of business strategy.

🏃‍♂️ Innovation Stamina Corner

Prof Rishikesha Krishnan organized an innovation workshop in July as a parting event at IIMB where his friends and collaborators came together. I gathered three kinds of challenges from the workshop: Measurement, management, and mindset. What should we measure to assess the innovation capacity of a firm/sector/country? How are R&D and innovation managed in Indian firms and at the sectoral policy level? What cultural barriers hinder the growth of innovation capacity in India? Hope to write more on this in the coming months.

🚀 Deep Tech Corner

It was an honor to have Prof. Satynarayanan Chakravarthy, co-founder of The ePlane Company as a guest speaker in my course "Strategic management of technology and innovation". Over the past three decades, Satya has done something remarkable at IIT Madras. He set up a world-class laboratory on combustion, bet on a technology (electric air transport) that is challenging combustion, and built an eVTOL startup that will fly us from airport to home in 20 minutes. Hats off to Satya and team!

🎨 Design Thinking Corner

It was a pleasure to interact with a diverse set of people like school principals and real estate developers and explore design thinking as a participative problem-solving approach. I think I was successful in communicating why we have poor designs like the SIR citizenship enrollment or public space crowd management in temples. However, the spirit of fail fast was harder to communicate. Participative problem solving was alien to both school principals as well as to the real estate developers. In fact, one of the key challenges was that people were turning to the person at the top for solving problems, making him/her the bottleneck.

🧘‍♀️ Mindfulness Corner

I continued with the "confusion to clarity" theme in my mindfulness workshops. Confusion is better than false clarity. Acknowledging that I am confused and awareness of the challenge is an important starting point for the journey from confusion to clarity. And sometimes false clarity expresses itself in odd places like while having samosa and chai. And we start arguing over whether "Ram was real?" This is where I remember Nagarjuna and his two truths perspective. Sometimes confusion turns into a black cloud and pushes us into odd corners. The recent student suicide in IIT Bombay prompted me to ask, "What are the key dimensions of mental health?"

🤔 Question of the quarter

"How do I get rid of the fear of failure?" asked one participant during the tea break. He was a business owner running his business successfully. But a past failure haunted him. Aren't success and failure two sides of the same coin? With a strong desire to be successful, are we sure we are asking the right question?

📚 Book of the quarter

Technological progress implies human progress, sooner or later. That is a dominant assumption of the modern society. Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson challenge it in their book "Power and progress: Our 1000-year struggle over technology and prosperity". In India around 1750, spinning a hundred pounds of raw cotton took 50,000 hours of labor. By 1825, with industrial automation in Britain it was down to 135 hours of labor. But the real income didn't move much. Acemoglu & Johnson say, "The spending power of an unskilled worker in the mid-1800s was about the same as it had been fifty of even one hundred years earlier." In contrast, the second half 19th century, British railways increased productivity both in transport and across several other sectors, and also generated new opportunities for labor. In India though, "The railways became an instrument of oppression both by commission and omission," adds Acemoglu. AI seems to be going along the textile automation trajectory, the authors warn.

⛺ Trekking Corner

Moonsoon hike while in Mumbai was hard to resist. A day hike to Peb Fort (Vikatgad) in the Matheran region on a weekday means you don't see any human being for 6-7 hours. It was just the two of us and the lush green misty forest, Harry Potter style. This was the first time I used a GPS trail file (KML) and it was a big help.

Student suicides in educational institutes: A multidimensional perspective

Disclaimer: I am an adjunct faculty member at the Desai-Sethi School of Entrepreneurship (DSSE), IIT Bombay. The institute is currently at the center of attention for student suicides on campus. I visit campus for two months during Jan-Feb to teach a half-semester course and have very limited access to students’ inner world as well as to the implementation of the institute's initiatives, especially on student affairs outside academics. The views expressed are personal.

Earlier this year, on Wednesday, February 4, 2026, I began my class on “Problem solving approaches” [1] at 9:30 a.m. at IIT Bombay. I traveled from Dadar for the class. Most students were second-year, with the rest from third and fourth year across various engineering disciplines, plus a few from Industrial Design and Economics programs. I didn’t know that a second-year student had committed suicide by jumping from the terrace of a 9-storeyed Hostel-4 the night before. I could feel the heaviness in the class. After I came to know the cause of the mood, I admitted my ignorance about what goes on in the mind of a second-year student. “Is it the academic pressure?” I asked. Most of them nodded, “No”. Over the years, there was a conscious effort from the institute to increase academic flexibility and reduce pressure, they said. Then what could it be? “Perhaps peer pressure, wanting to be an all-rounder, earning different badges in organizing events on campus, the struggle to stand out,” some suggested. Of course, none of us knew the details as to why someone could take such an extreme step.

The class discussion wasn’t significantly off-track from what I had planned. The lesson plan was to teach the different problem-solving approaches by using “Reduce exam anxiety” as a challenge area [2]. I had been doing the same exercise since 2023. Students were most comfortable with a system-centric approach, which involves dividing the system into various subsystems and then optimizing it. That is what engineering is about. We came up with questions like “Can we subtract the exam?” and “Can we give multiple attempts at the exam to improve your score?” and “Instead of the teacher setting the exam, can students set the exam?” When we applied a solution-centric approach, we asked questions like, “Can writing an exam be as stress-free as chatting in a cafe or watching a Netflix series?” A solution-centric approach also involves identifying internal bright spots and learning from them. In this case, it would mean identifying students who in the past carried exam anxiety and now don’t see it as an issue. And then asking them, “What changed?” The mode of problem solving with which the students felt most uncomfortable is called a sensing-centric approach, and it needs a state of mind that says, “I don’t know why students are anxious; let me listen and observe”. Most students would say, “Why bother? I know it already.”

Applying the wrong method to solve a problem creates bigger problems. When Elon Musk applied the optimizing techniques of Tesla and SpaceX to make the government more efficient through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) program, it was a disaster [3]. When the element of social complexity is high in a challenging situation, a sensing-centric approach and a solution-centric approach, especially internal bright spots, should be given priority. I interviewed Shireesh Kedare, the present Director of IIT Bombay, in 2019 because he had done work (jointly with Dr. Vijay Honkalaskar) on a systemic approach to participatory development in solving farmers’ suicide in Yavatmal, a drought-prone district of Maharashtra [4]. A lot of the work involved just going, sitting, and listening to farmers exhibiting tremendous pessimism. It takes months, sometimes years, before there is mutual trust and the real issues begin to surface. I feel the Naga reconciliation movement is a great example of how long it takes before warring tribes make peace with each other [5]. The point is that listening to each other and listening to internal bright spots is an important part of solving socially complex challenges.

Many years ago, I was also a student of the same institute, living in a hostel, sometimes doing badly in exams. While I don’t recall anyone committing suicide during my four years, I met a few of my batchmates years later who said they went through severe depression and/or severe drug/alcohol addiction. At least one of my batchmates lost decades going in and out of rehab. One admitted he developed a caste-related inferiority complex. In the 21^st century, India remains deeply caste-conscious. So the overall problem of student distress is not new. Perhaps social media has amplified its intensity. But aren’t students just responding to social expectations?

We are a society obsessed with success and status, and I am sure we are not alone. IITs and IIMs are looked upon as golden tickets to success. In my student days, it meant going to the US. Today it means placements with high salary packages. We are not willing to ask, “What do I really like?” I took computer science because it was the most promising then in terms of job opportunities. I had no prior experience with computers. I was lucky; it took years, but I learned to ask, “What do I really enjoy?” and then “Can I make a living by doing what I enjoy?” Many are not that lucky. The race for success and status can easily occupy a lifetime. So the problem is clearly not just about students.

I first became aware of the multiple dimensions of mental health when I read Peter Chadwick’s autobiographical account of psychosis leading to a failed suicide attempt. The first dimension is brain biology, its structure and function. In the case of Chadwick, a medication change “worked magically”. The second dimension is social context. When Chadwick shifted from Glasgow to West London, it meant a new job, new friends, and a life partner who were more accepting of his transvestite nature, and a neighborhood renowned for its liberal sexual attitudes. “This change of social scenario was immensely therapeutic,” says Chadwick, and also says, “The importance of my relationship with my wife could not be overstated. Love, both given and received, does turn one away from a chronically negative mindset such as I was given at home and at school.” Psychotherapy, especially group therapy, also works as an intervention on the social dimension. “The psychotherapy and the combined medication also helped me integrate thought and feeling better,” says Chadwick. The third dimension is self-awareness, the ability to observe one’s bodily and mental state, especially the train of thought while it is moving. This also includes awareness of one's capability - what one can achieve in a given situation. Chadwick calls this the reflective stance. “To develop an attitude where one is the agent of one’s beliefs and to retain a critical reflective stance toward them is undoubtedly a pathway out of psychosis,” says Chadwick. Keeping a diary-cum-journal can also help cultivate this dimension. Chadwick refers to this as the spiritual dimension.

Thus, suicide is an outcome of a multidimensional process breakdown. Brain structure and function, social interactions and expectations, and self-awareness are the three dimensions that I could identify. Among these, the brain structure and function dimension remains the most difficult to treat with confidence. As Andrew Scull notes in “Desperate Remedies: Psychiatry’s turbulent quest to cure mental illness”, “Accumulating evidence published during the last quarter century indicates that large fractions of those diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression are not helped by the available medications, and it is difficult to know in advance who will respond positively to drug treatments. For many patients, a further major problem is that such relief as the pills provide must be set against the serious, debilitating, and sometimes life-threatening side effects that often accompany the ingestion of these medications.” There are people like Chadwick for whom a drug works like magic, and there are many who don’t respond positively and/or get severe side effects. Hence, Scull says, “Contemporary psychiatry is in crisis”.

To me, the social context and the self-awareness dimensions appear more accessible. But I could be wrong. They are extremely challenging and involve dealing with deeply embedded beliefs. I feel listening, which is a scarce and valuable currency, should play an important role. Perhaps mixed group circle time involving students, teachers, and parents should be considered. But then solutioning is not the main objective of this article. My primary objective is to show the multidimensional nature of mental health and highlight that listening to and learning from internal dark and bright spots might offer clues about the way forward. It takes years of unwavering focus. Do we have the time and energy?

Sources:

1. Four approaches to problem-solving, August 31, 2014

2. 4 modes of problem-solving applied to “reducing student anxiety”, April 20, 2023

3. How did DOGE disrupt so much while saving so little? Emily Badger et. al., New York Times, December 23, 2025

4. A systemic approach to participatory development: A short primer by Prof. Shireesh Kedare, December 19, 2019

4. The long road to Naga Reconciliation: A personal reflection, by Aga Rengma, Nagaland Tribune, March 29, 2025

5. Peer-professional first-person account: Schizophrenia from the inside-Phenomenology and integration of causes and meaning, Peter K. Chadwick, Schizophrenia Bulletin, vol. 33, no. 1 pp. 166-173, 2007

6. Schizophrenia: the positive perspective, explorations at the outer reaches of human experience, Peter K. Chadwick, second edition, Routledge, 2009

7. Desperate remedies: psychiatry’s turbulent quest to cure mental illness, Andrew Scull, Harvard Univeristy Press, 2022

image source: istockphoto.com

Why do we have poor designs?

We marvel at the design of houses, town planning, and the water & sewage management system of the Indus Valley Civilization, which is at least 3,500 years old. At the same time, we are alarmed by looking at the state of our metros such as Mumbai and Bangalore, shocked by the design of public space crowd management in temples and stadiums causing 100+ deaths last year in the country, and express disbelief at the NEET exam fiasco affecting 20 lakh students. After several thousand years of designing various artefacts, why do we still have poor designs?

Designers have become a dangerous breed: Fifty-five years ago (1971), Victor Papanek began his influential book, “Design for the real world,” with the following observation. “By designing criminally unsafe automobiles that kill or maim nearly one million people around the world each year, by creating whole new species of permanent garbage to clutter up the landscape, and by choosing materials and processes that pollute the air we breathe, designers have become a dangerous breed.” He was talking primarily about industrial designers. However, we can easily extend the “dangerous breed” argument to strategy, policy, intervention designs as well. So, the question is, why do we have poor designs?

Here, I suggest three fundamental causes. Perhaps there are more.

1.       “I know it” syndrome: Outgoing IG(Prisons) at Tihar Jail had advised Kiran Bedi, “There is no work there! I was IG (Prisons) many years ago; I received just two files a day. So, I used to clear them from my home.” Perhaps the biggest challenge for a designer could be overconfidence. When I have decades of experience, why waste time listening to various stakeholders? Kiran Bedi managed to overcome this bias by deciding to go for a round of Prison no. 1 on day one of her posting. It is not easy to listen, but like the title of Kiran Bedi’s book on Tihar Jail experience, “It’s always possible”.

2.       Personal agenda dominates: When Microsoft Co-founder Bill Gates was asked about his association with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein last June in Congress, he said, “I was so focused on the possibility of raising funds for global health that I allowed that goal to override my better judgment”. Most of us carry several conflicting impulses or agendas simultaneously - make money, generate profit for the company, push a political ideology, accumulate more power or control, help the poor and needy, live sustainably, make the world a better place, etc. During our decision-making, one agenda dominates, without us being aware of it. Jay Forrester, the father of systems dynamics, says, “Sustainable development is an oxymoron.” 

3.       Don’t see the danger: All Indian citizens, including those with a passport and a voter ID, are now doing their best in proving that they are indeed Indian citizens. The Election Commission of India (ECI) initiative to revise the electoral list is called “Special Intensive Revision (SIR)”. Both online and offline submissions are allowed. In Karnataka, India’s one of the most advanced digitalizer state, the online voter registration “has struggled to keep pace, with its rigid interface, resulting in an abysmally low registration rate even among tech-savvy applicants,” noted a Times of India article last month.  Out of more than 1 lakh online registration attempts, only a tiny fraction (0.2%) has successfully sailed through the portal. I know the challenges because I am one of those tiny fractions. Why is SIR enrolment design so poor? I feel one important reason is that the designers don’t see the danger of the poor design. The danger of denying voting rights to some citizens or the danger of designing leak-prone exams.     

Unfortunately, Papanek was spot on more than half a century ago. Designers have indeed become a dangerous breed. Overconfidence bias, personal agendas, and inability to see the real danger make it hard to do good designs. In an AI world where a rogue AI agent is hacking your computer, is there any hope?

image source: frontline.thehindu.com (photo credit: Shashi Shekhar Kashyap)

Designing robust interventions

Some ideas don’t leave you, even if you lose track of them. The idea of robust intervention is one such idea. I first encountered it when I read Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz talk about it in a 2011 interview. It became my theme of the year in 2011, and I presented my thoughts at TISS, Mumbai, that same year. Last April, I got an opportunity to interact with K V Raghavan Fellows, changemakers, at Agastya’s Kuppam campus. Here is what I presented on “Designing robust interventions” on April 8, 2026. These are preliminary thoughts, and I hope to build on them. I am aware that nothing in life is black and white. And classifying interventions into robust vs non-robust is just for understanding purposes.

Joseph Stiglitz's definition of robust intervention: “interventions that are simple enough that you don’t have to very fine-tune to make them work, even if you have a bad president like President Bush.” from Times of India, 2011

Examples of non-robust interventions: The presentation mentions the Iraq intervention by the Bush administration in 2003 and Atal Tinkering Labs (ATL) as non-robust. Iraq war was estimated to last 3-4 months. It lasted 8 years and 7 months instead, creating a mess in the region. 457 Atal Tinkering Labs were launched in 2016; now around 10,000 labs nationwide are supposed to be operational. There is no official data on how many are functional. Anecdotal evidence suggests that a significant portion could be either severely under-utilized or non-functional. The centralized NEET exam this year is also a good example of a non-robust intervention. A typical non-robust intervention severely underperforms in achieving its objective, incurs heavy cost-overrun, and leaves most stakeholders weaker than when it started, except for a few in power who derive immense benefit.

Examples of robust interventions: Two interventions in India that stand out as robust are Aadhaar authentication and Tihar jail reforms initiated by Kiran Bedi. Aadhaar wanted to create a nationally portable unique identity for people in the remotest parts and marginalized sections of the country. And it succeeded in creating such a system and enrolling people into it. Kiran Bedi began her Inspector General (IG) Prisons term in May 1993 with a vision of transforming a jail into an ashram. She initiated ground-up initiatives to gather grievances and to systematically address them. Bedi demonstrated how a jail can run small factories successfully, enable education, and run a meditation program. Most of these initiatives are still running twenty years later.

4 characteristics of a robust intervention:

1. Understanding all stakeholders: Understanding anxieties, aspirations, and biases from all stakeholders, including the designer(s).
2. Framing based on the crux: Framing should be based on the most critical issue that is hindering any movement towards a better state.
3. Response to crux based on the strength: Is the response based on the resources, skills, and technology that are strengths?
4. Iterative learning & improvement: Fail fast, learn fast at low cost

Between discovery of the crux and iterative improvement, which is more important? I think it is the latter. In complex situations, such as farmers' suicides or poor foundational literacy (grade 4-5-6 students unable to read simple sentences), it may take time to discover the crux. In fact, it may be uncovered through iterative failures. The faster we learn, and the lower the cost of each pilot intervention, the better. 

These were my thoughts behind the April 2026 presentation. Note that these characteristics don't capture the simplicity Stiglitz talked about in his definition. I feel it is important. Unless it is simple, its adaptability gets limited. A robust policy/strategy/intervention needs to be tweakable based on changing context. When a COVID vaccine is taken to tribal communities, it needs to consider their inhibitions. Perhaps this follows automatically if we move from robustness to antifragility, as the first step is to reduce fragility.

Was Ram real? A Nagarjuna's two truths perspective

One evening last week, I was enjoying chai-samosa with friends, and the mood was jovial. And suddenly the discussion turned to "Was Ram real?" Within no time, two camps got created, volumes increased, and the atmosphere grew tenser. To one group, Ram was a historical figure, while the other group believed he was a mythological figure. I tried unsuccessfully to divert the topic. Eventually, it subsided on its own. Perhaps because jalebi arrived. But the episode reminded me of how the second- to third-century Buddhist teacher Nagarjuna responded to a fictitious opponent who asked, "Was Buddha real?" in his famous work, the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (मूलमध्यमककारिका, MMK), translated as "The foundational verses on the middle way". For this article, I have used Mark Siderits and Shoryu Katsura's book, "Nagarjuna's Middle Way," as the primary source.

Before we explore Nagarjuna's response, which comes in chapter 22 of MMK, let's briefly look at what Nagarjuna says in the preceding chapters of MMK. The first thing to note is that Nagarjuna begins and ends MMK by saluting Buddha. In fact, in the last verse of the last chapter (27.30), Nagarjuna says, " I salute Gautama, who, based on compassion, taught the true Dharma.” (यः सद्धर्मम् अदेशयत् अनुकम्पाम् उपादाय तं नमस्यामि गौतमं, yaḥ saddharmam adeśayat anukampām upādāya taṃ namasyāmi gautamam).

Nagarjuna's key contribution in MMK is to bring out the significance of śūnyatā (शून्यता) or niḥsvabhāvatā (निःस्वभावता) or lack of intrinsic nature of all phenomena. He is particularly addressing a school of Buddhism called Sarvastivāda, which was a sub-branch of the Sthaviravāda school, which had branched off from the orthodox Sthavira school around the second-third century BCE. According to Sarvastivādins, the smallest irreducible constituents of reality, called dharmās (धर्म), are momentary but real. Each dharma has its own intrinsic nature (svabhāva), for example, a sensation, a feeling, or a momentary atom etc.

Nagarjuna begins with the Buddha's teaching of dependent origination (प्रतीत्यसमुत्पाद, pratītyasamutpāda) and shows that all phenomena are empty of intrinsic nature. Some of the things that he shows as sunya are five skandhās (स्कंध) (five aggregates: sensations, perceptions, feeling, volition, and consciousness), dhātus (धातु) (constituents of the process of cognition), kartā-karma (subject-object), dukha (unsatisfactoriness), bhāva-abhāva (existence-non-existence), dharma (things with intrinsic nature), kāla (time), self, nirvāna, and kleśa. In fact, Nagarjuna says even sunyatā (emptiness) is also sunya (13.8).

One can see that Nagarjuna has already laid the groundwork for addressing the question, “Was Buddha real?” by the time he comes to chapter 22. All the key attributes, five skandhas, are shown to be śūnya in chapter four.  And, dharmas and the self are also shown to be śūnya. In this chapter, Nagarjuna says that Tathāgata, another name for the Buddha, is just as empty as all the other things he has shown in the previous chapters to be śūnya. For example, in the first verse (22.1), Nagarjuna says:

 

स्कंधा न नान्यः स्कंधेभ्यो नास्मिन् स्कंधा न तेषु सः ।

तथागतः स्कन्धवान्न कतमो Sत्र तथागतः ॥ 22.1 ॥

skandhā na nānyaþ skandhebhyo nāsmin skandhā na teùu saþ .

tathāgataþ skandhavānna katamo ’tra tathāgatah (22.1)

The Tathāgata is neither identical with the skandhas nor distinct from the skandhas; the skandhas are not in him nor is he in them;

he does not exist possessing the skandhas. What Tathāgata, then, is there?

 

And in the last verse (22.16) says:

तथागतो यत् स्वभावस् तत् स्वभावम् इदम् जगत् ।

तथागतो निःस्वभावो निःस्वभावम् इदम् जगत् ॥ 22.16॥

tathāgato yatsvabhāvas tatsvabhāvam idaṃ jagat  

tathāgato niḥsvabhāvo niḥsvabhāvam idaṃ jagat (22.16)

 What is the intrinsic nature of the Tathāgata, that is the intrinsic nature of this world.

The Tathāgata is devoid of intrinsic nature; this world is devoid of intrinsic nature.

 

In all this process of proclaiming everything, including the Buddha empty of intrinsic nature, one verse from this chapter (22.11) stands out like an odd one. It says:

 

शून्यम् इति न वक्तव्यम् अशून्यम् इति वा भवेत् ।

उभयं नोभयं चेति प्रज्ञप्त्यर्थं तु कथ्यते  || 22.11 ||

śūnyam iti na vaktavyam aśūnyam iti vā bhavet  

ubhayaṃ nobhayaṃ ceti prajñaptyarthaṃ tu kathyate (22.11)

“It is empty” is not to be said, nor “It is non-empty,” 

nor that it is both, nor that it is neither; [“empty”] is said only for the sake of instruction.

What is Nagarjuna up to? After writing twenty-two chapters where he is trying to show every phenomenon to be empty, he says we should not say, “It is empty, or it is not empty. I am saying it only for the sake of instruction.” What does he mean? The crux lies in understanding the two truths Nagarjuna introduces in chapter 24 in three verses 24.8-10. Let’s look at them:

 

द्वे सत्ये समुपाश्रित्य बुद्धानां धर्मदेशना ।

लोकसंवृतिसत्यं च सत्यं च परमार्थतः ॥ 24.8 ||

dve satye samupāśritya buddhānāṃ dharmadeśanā  

lokasaṃvṛtisatyaṃ ca satyaṃ ca paramārthataḥ (24.8)

The Dharma teaching of the Buddha rests on two truths:

conventional truth and ultimate truth.

 

ये Sनयोर् न विजानन्ति विभागं सत्ययोर् द्वयोः ।

ते तत्त्वं न विजानन्ति गन्भीरं बुद्धशासने ॥ 24.9 ||

ye ’nayor na vijānanti vibhāgaṃ satyayor dvayoḥ  

te tattvaṃ na vijānanti gambhīre buddhaśāsane (24.9)

 Who do not know the distinction between the two truths,

they do not understand reality in accordance with the profound teachings of the Buddha.

 

व्यवहारम् अनाश्रित्य परमार्थो न देश्यते ।

परमार्थम् अनागम्य निर्वाणं न अधिगम्यते ॥ 24.10 ||

vyavahāram anāśritya paramārtho na deśyate |

paramārtham anāgamya nirvāṇaṃ nādhigamyate (24.10)

The ultimate truth is not taught independently of customary ways of talking and thinking.

Not having acquired the ultimate truth, nirvāṇa is not attained.

Conventional truth, or customary ways of talking and thinking, is that knowledge which works while navigating the world. Conventional truth includes the embodied knowledge that enables us to breathe and walk, the recipes for our dishes, cultural beliefs that keep the society relatively friction-free, science and technology that create cars and computers, religious beliefs that support us in challenging situations, etc. One conventional truth is that a person such as the Buddha is a fiction constructed based on skandhas, and skandhas themselves are conceptual constructions, which are useful in realizing the ultimate truth. Ultimate truth cannot be acquired as a form of knowledge; it is the dissipation of all strongly held views about what is real. Nagarjuna says, “Sunyata is the dissipation of all views.” (13.8) (शून्यता सर्वदृष्टीनां निःसरणं, śūnyatā sarvadṛṣṭīnāṃ niḥsaraṇaṃ). Siderits & Katsura put this paradoxically as, “The ultimate truth is that there is no ultimate truth.”

Was Lord Ram real? If you believe he was and if this belief helps you navigate life better, then that is as good as truth for you. On the contrary, if life works just fine for you with Ram as a mythological figure, then that is as good as truth for you. Alternatively, if you can have a productive discussion in the morning with archaeologists about the lack of evidence for the Rām-Rāvan war, and enjoy the evening singing devotional Tulasidās bhajans praising Lord Rām, why not?

Related article:

"Nāgārjuna’s śūnyatā through Mūlamadhyamakakārikā verses," October 19, 20222

Sources:

1. Mark Siderits and Shoryu Katsura, “Nagarjuna’s Middle Way,” Wisdom Publications, 2013. All the English translations in this article are from this book. For each verse, the book also gives key elaborations from the subsequent commentators of MMK like Buddhapālita (5^th-6^th century), Bhāviveka (6^th century), and Candrakīrti (7^th century).
2. Joseph Walser, “Nagarjuna in context: Mahayana Buddhism and Early Indian Culture,” Columbia University Press, 2004. This book goes into why Nagarjuna says what he says.
3. Dilip Loundo, “The ‘two truths’ doctrine (satyadvyaya) and the nature of Upāya in Nagarjuna,” Kriterion Revista de Filosofia, April 2016, 57(133):17-41. DOI: 10.1590/0100-512X2016n13301dl

Joseph Schumpeter, creative destruction, and the significance of business strategy

Artificial Intelligence (AI), the way it has progressed in the past few years, has surprised me, like many of you. And yet, it feels like a dejavu. It feels as though I have been here multiple times before. It felt uneasy to see many people in my neighborhood lose their jobs in the 1980s as cotton mills in Bombay (now Mumbai) shut down. Both my father and father-in-law were either forced to retire or lost their jobs. Today, we have super-tall buildings in their place in the Prabhadevi-Parel area, including one Trump Tower. Then came PCs and the Internet in the 90s. In 1991, Bill Gates announced that "Kodak is toast" at the Buffett Group gathering. It took time, but slowly most Kodak film studios in my neighborhood vanished. This was followed by the mobile revolution, and the landline monopoly of BSNL crumbled. Gone are the days when one could wave a hand and an auto/taxi would stop. The person who said that this phenomenon, which he called "creative destruction", is at the heart of capitalism is Joseph Schumpeter. A study of capitalism that ignores creative destruction is like "Hamlet without the Danish prince," said Schumpeter in the closing line of chapter 7 of his most famous book, "Capitalism, socialism, and democracy" (CS&D), published in 1942. What was Schumpeter trying to say in this chapter titled "The process of creative destruction"? And how does it relate to business strategy? Let's explore this in this article.

Schumpeter wrote CS&D from 1939 to 1942 while he was a faculty member at Harvard. He had just finished writing a massive treatise called "Business Cycles". It was published in 1939 in two volumes totaling 1095 pages. In 1941, he was invited to The Lowell Institute in Boston to deliver eight public lectures on "An economic interpretation of our times". This is where he first presented the ideas he had been working on that became CS&D. This was a turbulent period in Schumpeter's life. He was disturbed by the war in Europe. Moreover, in 1941, he was under investigation by the FBI for possible espionage, and he was ostracized in the social circles of Cambridge. He had begun to scrutinize his life and felt he was "worthless", "frivolous", "vain", and a "snob", and his life had been "a failure". It is remarkable to see someone produce such a marvelous book under such circumstances.

Who was Schumpeter responding to when he wrote CS&D, particularly the creative destruction chapter? This chapter is in Part II of the book entitled "Can capitalism survive?" In the first few chapters of Part II, Schumpeter is presenting his view of how contemporary capitalism works. He felt that most economists treated the economy as static and competition as perfect. Schumpeter felt that the economy is an evolutionary process. He says, "The essential point to grasp is that in dealing with capitalism we are dealing with an evolutionary process." He gives credit to Karl Marx for emphasizing this aspect. Thus, he is primarily responding to the economists who treat the economy and capitalism as a static entity. Schumpeter says, "The fundamental impulse that sets and keeps the capitalist engine in motion comes from the new consumers' goods, the new methods of production or transportation, the new markets, the new forms of industrial organization that capitalist enterprise creates."

Schumpeter says due to this process of creative destruction, competition is an "ever-present threat" even though a business may be a monopoly or a part of an oligopoly. He illustrates his point with the example of retail trade. "In the case of retail trade the competition that matters arises not from additional shops of the same type, but from the department store, the chain store, the mail-order house and the supermarket which are bound to destroy those pyramids sooner or later."

One implication of this evolutionary process undergoing "industrial mutation" from time to time is that "there is no point in appraising the performance of that process ex visu of a given point of time; we must judge its performance over time, as it unfolds through decades or centuries." The second implication is that "since we are dealing with an organic process, analysis of what happens in any particular part of it - say, in an individual concern or industry - may indeed clarify details of mechanism but is inconclusive beyond that." Schumpeter is saying that we shouldn't be analyzing the impact of AI on one company or sector; the effect is likely to spread to the entire economy over time. 

This is where Schumpeter brings in the role of strategy. The term "business strategy" wasn't as fashionable then as it is now. Schumpeter says, "Every piece of business strategy acquires its true significance only against the background of that process and within the situation created by it. It must be seen in its role in the perennial gale of creative destruction; it cannot be understood irrespective of it or, in fact, on the hypothesis that there is a perennial lull." The primary purpose of business strategy, according to Schumpeter, is to watch out for strong winds or waves - technological, regulatory, fashion, demographic - that are likely to disrupt the business and to prepare the organization to ride them with appropriate responses. 

I found the chapter "The process of creative destruction" both readable and quite significant for today's context. Eighty years after this chapter was written, many of us still feel ill-prepared to face the strong winds of AI and automation.

Sources:

"Capitalism, socialism, and democracy," Joseph Schumpeter, Routledge, 1994 (chapter 7)

"Prophet of innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and creative destruction", Thomas McCraw, Harvard University Press, 2007 (chapter 21)

Related articles:

A century of innovation economics: Schumpeter's 5 types of innovations, April 6, 2010
Joseph Schumpeter and the principle of indeterminateness, December 9, 2013

Catalign Quarterly - Issue #1 - June 2026

After a two-year gap, I am restarting Catalign Quarterly, a newsletter that doesn’t have a good track record of running quarterly. The motivation is twofold: it nudges me to reflect on my work, and it creates an opportunity to keep in touch with clients, friends, and well-wishers.

Crux of the challenge-based strategy: The quarter began with a day spent with the managers of Broadridge India at Lahari Resorts on the outskirts of Hyderabad. During the workshop, we explored what it means to identify the crux of business challenges, develop a response based on an internal bright spot, and design low-cost experiments to validate the response's assumptions. Thanks to Krishna Kumar of ISEC for the opportunity.

Strategic innovation: It has been fifteen years since I began teaching in the executive education programs on management of innovation at IIM Bangalore, thanks to the break given by my friend Prof Rishikesha Krishnan.  This quarter, I had the opportunity to teach in the Strategic Management of Innovation program run by Prof Sai Yayavaram in April. With the trade war and the US-Iran war in the background, it wasn’t too difficult to communicate the significance of building technology-based innovation capacity.

Designing robust interventions: I became curious when I read Joseph Stiglitz talk about robust interventions, “interventions that are simple enough that you don’t have to very fine-tune to make them work, even if you have a bad president like President Bush.” That was fifteen years ago. It became the theme of the year for me in 2011. I also gave a talk on designing robust interventions at TISS, Mumbai, the same year. Ideas don’t leave you easily. I facilitated a 2-day workshop on the same topic last April in the beautiful Kuppam campus of Agastya International Foundation for the K V Raghavan Fellows.

Design thinking: It was a pleasure to introduce design thinking to women entrepreneurs of the Goldman Sachs 10K Women program at IIMB’s incubator. And also, to the executives of Mann+Hummel and transitioning Defence officers at IIMB.

Confusion to clarity:  Thanks to the encouragement from Prof Vasanthi Srinivasan, I got an opportunity to combine two of my favorite topics - innovation stamina and mindfulness to offer sessions on “Confusion to clarity: a work-life alignment exercise”. It was well received by the executives of ComputaCenter and the participants of Tanmatra, IIMB’s flagship program for women leaders.

Young entrepreneurs in deep-tech: Last year, I wrote about my feeling that India just woke up in 2025 to realize its lack of deep-tech capacity. In January, I invited young entrepreneurs, in their teens and twenties, to talk about their deep-tech venture experiences during my course on “Managing technological innovation” at IIT Bombay. I summarized their talks recently: Dr. Darshit Parmar of Flash Cryogenics, and Khushi Chandak on her electrochrome-based startup journey. I also got a chance to interview my nephew Neel Redkar, 21, who is doing exciting work on foundational video-action models at Standard Intelligence in San Francisco (summary of the interview, Spotify podcast).

Reading & writing: While reading was scattered this quarter, I managed to finish the first part of the Ibis trilogy “Sea of poppies” by Amitav Ghosh and “Disloyal: a memoir” by Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s fixer and personal attorney for a decade. I enjoyed both books and hope to write about them. I wrote my takeaways from “The Dark Side of Camelot”, a JFK biography by Seymour Hersh, and My 3 takeaways from Richard Gombrich’s “What the Buddha thought”. My reading in the next quarter will be influenced by my preparation for the upcoming course at IIMB, “Strategic management of technology and innovation” starting in September (8^th year). But I hope to finish “Power and Progress” by Daren Acemoglu.

Trekking and retreat in the Kumaon region of Uttarakhand: During the trek to Pindari glacier last month, what struck me was the adoption of solar everywhere in the mountains. In contrast, we could also see the opportunity Jio is trying to tap – that of satellite-based phones; even Pindari Baba is waiting for it at 12500 ft. We also spent 3 days at the serene Krishnamurti Foundation India (KFI) retreat at Jalna near Almoda and did a group reading-cum-reflection on his Colombo talk in 1980, “The book of life”.

My 3 takeaways from Richard Gombrich’s “What the Buddha thought”

I used to think that saying anything about what the Buddha taught two thousand five hundred years ago was bold. But people like Walpola Rahula, Thich Nhat Hanh, Bhikku Bodhi, and others have attempted it and done a good job. However, I have been highly sceptical about anything said about what the Buddha thought. That requires the knowledge of pre-existing ideas on which Buddha might have built his ideas, apart from, of course, his own contemplative insight. That looked formidable to me. Hence, I kept avoiding Richard Gombrich’s book “What the Buddha Thought”. One day in 2023, YouTube recommended that I listen to Gombrich’s talk on the same topic. YouTube recommendations are like a God-sent message of the day, isn’t it? So I listened to his 2013 talk at the University of Hyderabad. My scepticism didn’t go away after listening to the talk. However, I was impressed by his command of Pali, Sanskrit, and ancient Indian texts like the Vedas, Upanishads, and the Jain practices, which either preceded or co-existed with Buddha. I was even more impressed by his methodology. Gombrich begins by saying, “I only have fifty minutes to speak to you. And the Buddha had many more thoughts that can be expressed or explained in fifty minutes.  So if you would like to hear or learn about more of them, please read my book.”  So I turned to the book during my sojourn in coastal Karnataka at Kalyanapura and Gokarna last December. 

Main objective of the book: Gombrich's main objective in the book is to illustrate that the Buddha’s main ideological opponents were brahmins, and he used their metaphors with new meanings to attack them. In such an endeavour, understanding the historical context is very important. For example, Gombrich shows that the Buddha was familiar with the Bṛhadāranyaka Upanishad (BU) and he built upon and modified the ideas of karma and rebirth found in BU.

Here are my three takeaways from the book:

1. Asking the right question: Upanishads, the texts that carry the essence of the Vedas, emphasized the question, “What exists?” The answer to which goes into the notions of Atman and Brahman. Gombrich says, “The Buddha said that this is the wrong question.” He feels that the Buddha was primarily concerned with what we can experience, what can be present to consciousness. To Gombrich, the doctrine looks like pragmatic empiricism.

I searched to see if the Pali canon contains Buddha explicitly saying “wrong question”. I couldn’t find one. Instead, what I found were Buddha’s responses to questions related to existence or non-existence. For example, in Kaccanagotta Sutta (SN12.15), Buddha says, “‘All exists’, Kaccana, this is one extreme. ‘All does not exist’: this is the second extreme. Without veering towards either of these extremes, the Tathagata teaches the Dhamma by the middle.” 

2. Ethicization and universalization of karma: I must admit that I was completely ignorant of how Buddha innovated the karma doctrine until I read this book. And I got even more intrigued when Gombrich mentioned, “Karma is my favourite point of entry to the Buddha’s worldview”. He adds, “It is not only fundamental to the Buddha’s whole view of life, but also a kind of lynchpin which holds the rest of the basic tenets together.” The suspense deepened.

Indian society, even today, is fairly ritual-bound. As I was growing up, there would be a Satyanarayan pooja at home once every few years, and especially before or after a major event like a wedding or recovery from some illness. A religious ritual is supposed to accumulate merit (or puṇya). That was the case during Buddha’s time as well. However, the accumulation of merit depended upon the correctness of ritual, sacrifice, and ceremony, and the type of ritual varied by gender and caste. Buddha said, “It is intention, monks, that I call karma." (Cetanāhaṃ bhikkhave kammaṃ vadāmi) (AN 6.63). Buddha said the state of mind (with what intent) matters more than the correctness of the action itself. Gombrich called this ethicization of karma – i.e. karma depends on moral intention rather than ritual action.

Gombrich also says that the Buddha universalized karma. Once you say karma is moral intention, it applies to everybody and everywhere, whether you are helping, insulting, cursing in your mind, or praying for someone. Buddha said that this process of karmic merit/de-merit accumulation continues through rebirth and breaks only when one sees reality clearly, and called this cycle-break nibbāna or liberation. Gombrich shows in the book how this process of ethicization and universalization of karma had begun in Brahminism, specifically in Brhadāraṇyakā Upanishad, which predates the Buddha, and in Jainism, where non-violence (ahimsā) is paramount.

3. Fire as the central metaphor for experience as a process: What is Buddha’s most important philosophical idea? People would have different answers. Gombrich feels, “What we can experience is only process. This may be his most important philosophical idea.” And Buddha used fire as the central metaphor to communicate this.

The most popular fire-related sermon is the third, known in English as “The Fire sermon” (SN35.28) or sometimes called “The all”. In Pali, it is called A̅ditta-pariyāya, ‘The way of putting things as being on fire’. The sermon begins: ‘Everything, O monks, is on fire.’ Then Buddha explains what ‘everything’ means. It is all our faculties – the five senses plus the mind – and their objects and operations and the feelings they give rise to. And Buddha refers to three fires. Everything is on fire with the fires of passion, hatred, and delusion. Why three fires?

Fire had a major significance in the Vedic tradition. The brahmin householder had the duty to keep alight a set of three fires, which he tended daily. Buddha assigned a new meaning to each fire. In the second fire sermon (Dutiya Aggi Sutta AN 7.47), he says the brahmin should abandon the three unwholesome fires of greed, hatred, and delusion. And cultivate the three wholesome fires of one’s parents, one’s household and dependents, and holy men (renunciates and brahmins), suggesting taking care of the people around oneself.

In the first sermon, known as Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta (SN 56.11) (Setting in motion the wheel of dhamma), Buddha defines dukkha as pañcupādānakkhandhā. This is generally translated as the five aggregates of grasping. Gombrich gives a different interpretation of the Pali phrase upādāna khandhā. He feels that the Buddha is employing the metaphor of fire here and trying to communicate the same message as the Fire Sermon. Upādāna, Gombrich argues, means that which fuels an active process and keeps it alive. He translates upādāna-khandhā as ‘blazing masses of fuel’.

According to Gombrich, Buddha is suggesting that life experience is not a thing but a process. It is a causally conditioned process. Our experience is like burning bundles of firewood to feed the fires of passion, hatred, and confusion. And the moment the fuel is over, the fire goes out. This is the literal meaning of the Sanskrit word nirvāna, where the verbal root vā means ‘to blow,’ and with the prefix nir, the meaning is ‘cease to burn, go out’ (like a flame). It was a pleasant surprise to see Gombrich bring out the significance of process, something I wrote about almost a decade ago, without much understanding of Buddhism.

Richard Gombrich’s “What the Buddha Thought” is not light reading. It demands delving into the meanings of Sanskrit and Pali phrases and seeing the Buddha’s context through Vedic rituals, the Bṛhadāraṇyaka and Chāndogya Upanishads, and Jain texts. The book offers a glimpse into the scholarly work of Joanna Jurewicz, the Polish linguist, and Sue Hamilton on early Buddhism. I enjoyed reading it and will keep going back to it.