Mohnish Pabrai's Q&A session with students at the JNV Lucknow on December 27, 2022
  
  (00:00:00) - Introduction
 
  (00:00:51) - Usain Bolt; The Bolt Factory
 
  (00:11:09) - Khushwant Singh
 
  (00:14:59) - IIT vs. MIT
 
  (00:25:29) - Start specialising at the age of 11
 
  (00:35:31) - Why is Brazil great at football?
 
  (00:43:31) - If I was the education minister in India
 
  (00:46:42) - Delhi school system
 
  (00:56:50) - Avoid looking back, focus on looking forward
 
  (01:01:35) - You are who your friends are
 
  (01:03:17) - Dakshana scholar: T. Ashok Kumar
 
  (01:07:16) - Handling family expectations

And I haven't been to the Lucknow Center for a long time.

It's been normally I try to come see the batch at least once.

But I think COVID said it's already late.

My name is Praveen Kumar from JNB, Manipuri, Uttar Pradesh.

My question to you is, even after having 140 crore population, the performance of Indian sport is very disappointing.

There was a book I read maybe like 2, 3 years ago.

So Usain Bolt basically came from Jamaica.

So Jamaica is part of the West Indies and it's in the Caribbean near the US.

And the Jamaican population probably is no more than a few million people.

It might not even be more than the population of Lucknow and Kanpur combined.

Jamaica produces a lot of sprinters and general track and field and also they have basically dominated sprinting.

So basically the United States has a population which is almost 70 times the population of Jamaica.

In the United States, we have very good sports facilities and very good infrastructure to train athletes and sprinters.

But when the Olympics takes place, Jamaica dominates, right?

So it does it does even better than the US does.

You know, so 1 of the things I have been doing with my family since 2004 is we have gone to all the Olympics.

So in 2004, We went to Athens, 2008, went to Beijing, 2012, went to London, 2016, went to Rio in South America.

And the 1 I couldn't go to was during COVID 2020 was Tokyo.

And when I go for the Olympics, I only get tickets for track and field.

Because track and field is the most exciting.

And 1 time, I think, when I was in Beijing, we had really good seats.

And so when they were going to have the 200-meter final, Usain Bolt is getting ready to run.

And I'm screaming at him from the stands.

So I said, I don't know what's going to happen to his sprinting.

But when you read the book, The Bolt Factory, so what happens, there's something unusual about the way humans get specialized.

Like cricket is popular here, baseball is popular in the US.

So all kids, since they are really small, they are all playing baseball.

And just like we have IPL in India, we have professional baseball leagues in the US.

Jo players hai baseball ke US mein, more than 50-60% have come from other countries.

And they have come from very small countries like Jamaica.

So like Dominican Republic is a very small island where baseball players are coming from.

So, there is such a large population in the US and top players are coming from these small countries.

Why does Jamaica produce such great sprinters?

Why does Dominican Republic produce such great baseball players?

Why does Brazil produce such great soccer players?

You know, Brazil produces great football players.

So if you look at the example of Jamaica, what happens in Jamaica is that from the age of about 10 or 11, in the whole island, in all the schools, they are running a lot of competitions for track and field.

And what they do is they have coaches in Jamaica who have gone to Olympics, they have done well in the past.

So world-class coaches are going to schools when the kids are 10, 11 years old.

And they are identifying particular kids who they think could have potential.

And what they're doing then is, it's kind of like the Dakshina system.

They are gathering these best kids who are 10, 12 years old from the whole island.

The guy who's coaching, Usain Bolt, himself was a sprinter in the Olympics before.

So What happens is that when these kids are 13, 14 years old, they have now been getting 2, 3 years of very strong professional coaching for sprinting with the best coaches.

And what happens in Jamaica, that when there is a track and field meet, jaise aapka Lucknow mein track and field meet hoyega.

Jamaica mein jab even 14-year-old high school students ke track and field meet hota hai, it is in a stadium of 50, 000 people.

So the whole country is excited to watch the best 14 year old sprinters.

And so these kids who are just emerging, they are treated like rock stars.

So 14, 15 pay the kids who are doing really well, then they are further separated into 1 on 1 coaching with particular coaches.

So no other country in the world has this type of a system specifically for sprinters.

And if you look at a place like India, so if Dakshina had done for sprinters, what we have done for JEE coaching in India, bohot saare medal aajate hain.

Lekin woh kehte hain na Ghalib, yeh na thi hamari kismat.

But basically the same system that we are using in Dakshina, you can actually use in any sport.

And so what happens is that when I used to go to New York, when I first went to the US, saare taxi drivers sardar their.

So New York is not part of India, it is a separate, you know, it's part of the US.

Why were all the taxi drivers in New York sardarjis?

The reason they were Sardarjis is, first they were very few Sardars who were cab drivers.

Then some more Sardars came, they looked at what should we do, what kind of work can we do?

So the existing Sardars trained them, explained how it works, and then more Sardars started doing taxi driving.

And then Over time, basically it became so that more and more Sikhs went into driving cabs.

Similarly, in New York, all the laundries, almost all the laundries are owned by Koreans.

It's not that they are better at doing laundry.

There were a few people who were doing it before.

And when more Koreans came, they were just looking at what can we do.

They looked at what other Koreans were doing and they started to do the same thing.

And so you end up in the world with all these kind of specialized things everywhere.

And these specialized things everywhere happen because humans are driven by peers.

So what happens in Jamaica, Every parent in Jamaica, when they have a 10 year old boy or girl, they are very keen ke ye sprinter bane.

Wo 5 saal ki umar se baat kar rahe hain apne pachon ke saath, ki aap sprinter bano.

And the role models, all the Amitabh Bachchan of Jamaica are all sprinters.

So basically there is a very deep interest the kids had.

So even Usain Bolt, Usain Bolt was very interested in cricket.

And he could have been a very good cricketer.

But he said that in Jamaica, people don't care about cricket so much as they care about sprinting.

And we see that we have this very large population, 140 crores.

And I remember there was a journalist before you guys were born, there was a journalist, some of the people in the back might know him, Khushwant Singh.

Some of you may have heard of Khushwant Singh.

So Khushwant Singh used to be the editor of Illustrated Weekly of India, which doesn't exist anymore.

And I remember when I was a kid, I was maybe 10 years old or something, and I was looking at this Illustrated Weekly that had come.

And the title was at that time, at that time India's population was maybe 70 crores.

So the title of that article was 70 crores and not 1 bronze.

But what he was saying is a 70 crore population is there.

Forget track and field in any field, we didn't even get a medal.

So it is actually very easy for India to become powerhouse in any sport it wants to become a powerhouse.

And the only thing that has to happen is Dakshina has to shift from JEE to sprinting.

And shifting from JEE to sprinting is not a big deal.

If we wanted to do it, it's really easy to do because all we have to do is, like JNV system, sports are happening here, you have a sports day, you have all these things going on.

And then we have to bring that talent, give the infrastructure, give the coaching.

And so what happens in India is the parents, they are very happy when their kids are going for JEE coaching or NEET coaching because they feel that life will be made.

Now if we tell the Indian parents, we will take your kid and make them a sprinter, they will not be interested.

So there would need to be some change in mindset.

Like, you know, there is a lot of interest in cricket, right?

And, but the funny thing is that If you look at a place like Sri Lanka, or if you look at a place like Bangladesh, or even if you look at a place like Pakistan, these are much smaller countries than India.

So when India plays Sri Lanka, we should beat the hell out of them in cricket.

But again, the reason they beat us is, so if you look at a place like Sri Lanka, They have a system for cricket in high school, which is just like sprinting in Jamaica.

Logon ko bahut interest hai, ke achche cricketer banne.

So there are some schools in Sri Lanka where the school team, just 1 school team, may beat the India U-19 team, because they are so good and they have come from all over and all that.

So actually, your question is a very good question.

Humans can get very good if there is a kind of a critical mass that comes together.

Like I think what has happened in India, so if you look at, let's say, the IIT system, If you look at the IIT system, the IIT system actually does not exist anywhere in the world except India.

So what I mean by that is that If you go back to the very first IIT, which was being created, I think IIT Kharagpur was the first 1.

So when the first IIT was being created, India needed a lot of help because we didn't have anything.

So basically, they went to a few US universities, like MIT and a few other universities, and those universities basically provided the initial faculty.

So MIT, Stanford, a bunch of US universities, they sent their professors here.

So actually the IIT system is a mirror of the US education system and it looks very different from other colleges.

So I'll give you some examples of how the IITs are different and that came straight from the US.

Indian education system by and large does not trust the teacher or the professor.

So what happens is, let's say 10th standard has a board exam.

That board exam paper is not set by the school.

The grading of that paper doesn't also happen in the school, central body.

And everything is being controlled by the central body.

So the reason they are doing all that is because they don't have a trust that if they give it all locally, it will happen properly.

If you look at US universities, like if I look at MIT for example, the trust has been given to the professor.

So what happens is if I take a class in computer science at MIT, let's say programming 101, there's a class.

The professor is going to set the curriculum.

The professor is going to decide how the grading will be done.

So first day, what will happen in the US is, the professor will come to class and he'll say, okay, there is out of 100 marks that we will judge you on at the end of the year, at the end of the semester, 10 marks is for attendance.

If you attend all the classes, you get 10 marks.

Every time you miss 1 class, you miss 1 point.

Then they'll say your final exam will weigh 30%.

And then he'll say there will be 2 quizzes during the semester, which may have 20% weight each.

And then he'll say that 4 times there will be a surprise test, each 1 having 5% weightage.

He says that suddenly 1 day in class, I will give a surprise test.

You don't know when that test is going to come.

All of these rules are being set by that professor for that class.

If you take the class the next semester with a different professor, he will have different set of rules.

So the power has been given to the professor and the system is trusting the professor.

So when IIT system came to India from the US, they completely imported that system.

So when you go to IIT, exactly the same thing happens.

Whatever class you take, the professor is going to decide everything.

The professor is going to decide what book he's going to use.

He's going to decide what he's going to teach you.

So if you take the same class with a different professor next semester, everything may be different.

And so the trust has been given to the professor.

And so the IIT system, so it's really interesting to look at the IIT system.

So what happened is that if I look at, so let's say if I look at a place like MIT.

So MIT is the number 1 technical institute in the US.

But their admission criteria, there is no such thing as JEE in US.

The way you get admission to IIT is 3 or 4 things.

So high school GPA means the same thing is happening in high school in the US.

If I am going to some high school in California, the teacher in the high school is setting the curriculum, he is doing the testing, he is giving the grades, there is no central body.

The system that we have in IIT in the US exists even in the high school system.

So, the GPA of the high school, if I go to 1 high school in California and someone else goes to another high school in Texas, you cannot compare these 2 directly.

Because 1 teacher may be easy to give high scores, the other teacher may be hard.

But they take the high school GPA, then they take a standard test, the SAT, Scholastic Aperture Test, and then there is an essay.

So what MIT does, If your parents went to MIT, let's say your father went to MIT, they will give you some preference.

They will say, thoda kam bhi hoega toh hum le lenge.

Toh agar main MIT ko bada donation deta hu, they will make it easier for my children to get admission.

So you look at the way MIT is admitting the students.

High school ka GPA le rahe hain, SAT le rahe hain, essay, you have to write an essay, which means it's writing skills that come in.

Then you know, did your parents go there or not?

If you compare this to IIT, it is just JEE.

There is no other criteria, there is 1 criteria, the JEE criteria, That's it.

And so actually the funny thing about the IITs is, we took the system from the US, and inside the IIT it looks just like the US system.

But they wanted to create a system which was more rigorous and trustable in the Indian context.

So they changed the admission format to be based on a single test.

And so actually what ended up happening is that when IIT is admitting someone and when MIT is admitting someone, the IIT system of admission is a better system.

So we end up with higher quality students in IIT than you would end up in MIT.

And because we have higher quality students coming in, you have great quality students going out.

So the IITs, so MIT for example, if I look at a place like MIT, the professors are very good, the infrastructure is very good, everything is really good.

If you look at IIT, I was just looking the other day on TV, I turned on TV, 40% of professor positions are empty.

I think I forget, it was like 600 or 800 faculty positions across the IITs are not even filled, which means that when you go to IIT Bombay and they need, let's say, 15 or 20 professors for computer science, There are only 8 over there.

That means that what classes will become bigger or they will have some teaching assistant or something else like that going on.

Part of the reason MIT doesn't have a problem filling the roles is they don't have to pay people a certain amount of salary.

Like India, all the salaries are very precise.

So the reason why the IITs have all these openings is that they need very advanced skills to become an IIT professor.

Industry companies will pay you more than that.

And so the people are not opting to become professors.

So basically what I'm trying to say is that what happened with IIT in India is exactly what happened to sprinting in Jamaica.

We created a system in India which is creating great engineers.

And we created a system that is creating better engineers than anywhere in the world.

In fact, what happened is a system that was copied from a great system, the copycat has become better than the original.

The Indian engineering system, so quality of IIT professors is not that good.

But incoming student quality is much higher.

And there's another thing that is happening about why the IITs are doing so well.

So the physical setup of humans and the way we are designed as humans, when a baby is born, the birth canal is very narrow.

And so when a human baby is born, the brain comes out very underdeveloped, because the birth canal is so narrow, you cannot have a big brain, you cannot deliver the baby.

So the human brain goes through very rapid growth in the first 5 years of life.

So the first 5 or 6 years of life, the size of the human brain is growing a lot.

And it's expanding a lot because it could not do that when the woman is pregnant.

And that's why in the case of humans, the infancy and amount of care a baby needs early in life is very high.

You know, both parents are required, a lot of care is needed because the baby has arrived very undeveloped.

So human brain goes through a lot of growth in the first 5 years.

Then from the age of 11 to 20, in this age, what happens is that the brain starts specializing.

So the synapse connections actually start getting cut.

So what that means is that the human brain is perfectly set up only in this window of time.

So if you look at the entire human lifespan of 80 years or 90 years, it's only in this 10 year period that the brain is completely open to specialize in whatever you want.

So for example, if Bill Gates starts programming at the age of 11, for example, what will happen is that by the time he's 20 years old, he will become such a good programmer that if someone else starts programming at the age of 20, it will take more than 30 years for them to even get the same level of skill.

So what someone can do in 10 years over here, later in life will take even 30-40 years to have the same amount of expertise.

Because whatever you are exposed to, what will happen is the brain will put more of the real estate into that area.

Now what happens in the education system around the world is from the age of 11 to 20, or at least from 11 to 18, we are not allowed to specialize.

Now what happens in India is after 16, they start separating commerce, art, science.

But for the most part, you are required to study all subjects.

So if you look at a person like Michelangelo, Michelangelo was a great sculptor and painter and so on.

He started sculpting statues when he was 9 or 10 years old.

He was working full time doing statue sculpting from the age of 10.

So what happened with Michelangelo is that by the time he became 20 years old, he became a really good sculptor and painter.

Nobody else can match that because that's all he has done.

He has not gone to school for that period of time.

And so basically, and if I go back to the Jamaican sprinters, what they are doing is they have told those kids, ke padne ki zyadha zarurat nahi hai.

See all Chai with Pabrai transcripts on Applepodcasts

Mohnish Pabrai's Q&A session with students at the JNV Lucknow on December 27, 2022