He was a physician, and then an IAS officer, and then a universally-respected politician. Jayaprakash Narayan joins Amit Varma in episode 334 of The Seen and the Unseen to describe his lifelong quest to complete our task of nation-building.  (FOR FULL LINKED SHOW NOTES, GO TO SEENUNSEEN.IN.)  Also check out:

 1. A Life in Indian Politics — Episode 149 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Jayaprakash Narayan). 2. The State of Indian Politics — Episode 50 of The Seen and the Unseen (w JP Narayan). 3. The Myth of Sisyphus (Amazon) (Wikipedia) -- Albert Camus. 4. Factfulness — Hans Rosling. 5. The best stats you’ve ever seen — Hans Rosling. 6. What’s Consolation For An Atheist? (2008) -- Amit Varma. 7. Barun Mitra, Philosopher and Practitioner -- Episode 264 of The Seen and the Unseen. 8. Caged Tiger: How Too Much Government Is Holding Indians Back — Subhashish Bhadra. 9. Subhashish Bhadra on Our Dysfunctional State -- Episode 333 of The Seen and the Unseen. 10. India’s Greatest Civil Servant — Episode 167 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Narayani Basu, on VP Menon). 11. We Are Fighting Two Disasters: Covid-19 and the Indian State — Amit Varma. 12. Rajesh Jain and Dhan Vapasi -- Episode 94 of The Seen and the Unseen. 13. Team of Rivals — Doris Kearns Goodwin. 14. The Tragedy of Our Farm Bills — Episode 211 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ajay Shah). 15, The Indian State Is the Greatest Enemy of the Indian Farmer -- Amit Varma. 16. Fixing Indian Education — Episode 185 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Karthik Muralidharan). 17. Education in India — Episode 77 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Amit Chandra). 18. Understanding Indian Healthcare — Episode 225 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Karthik Muralidharan). 19. The Importance of the 1991 Reforms — Episode 237 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Shruti Rajagopalan and Ajay Shah). 20. The Forgotten Greatness of PV Narasimha Rao — Episode 283 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Vinay Sitapati). 21. The Life and Times of Montek Singh Ahluwalia — Episode 285 of The Seen and the Unseen. 22. India’s Lost Decade — Episode 116 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Puja Mehra). 23. Narendra Modi takes a Great Leap Backwards — Amit Varma. 24. The Double ‘Thank-You’ Moment — John Stossel. 25. Whatever happened To Ehsan Jafri on February 28, 2002? — Harsh Mander. 26. Metrics of Empowerment — Episode 88 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Devika Kher, Nidhi Gupta &amp; Hamsini Hariharan). 27. We Should Celebrate Rising Divorce Rates (2008) — Amit Varma. 28. South India Would Like to Have a Word — Episode 320 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Nilakantan RS). 29. Animal Farm -- George Orwell. 30. Guns, Germs And Steel -- Jared Diamond. 31. Yuval Noah Harari on Amazon. 32. The Economic Government of the World: 1933-2023 -- Martin Daunton.  Check out Amit’s online course, The Art of Clear Writing.  And subscribe to The India Uncut Newsletter. It’s free!  Episode art: ‘Build’ by Simahina.

Where does your sense of purpose come from?

In my case, frankly, it's mostly from ego and self-interest.

I want things for myself, whether it's success or fame or maybe some creative accomplishment.

Sometimes, yeah, I want to make the world a better place in some way or the other, and I'd do things to that effect.

For example, I could cite altruistic reasons for doing the seen and the unseen, improving the quality of the scores, creating an important historical record, especially when it comes to the lives of people, and so on.

But even these could boil down to conceit.

And ultimately, when I think of waking up happy and looking forward to the day ahead, it's for personal reasons.

But with some remarkable people, It is clear that they think way beyond themselves.

My guest today has devoted his life to a higher cause.

He has not let setbacks temper his resolve.

He has energy and optimism and also the humility that we all must have to accomplish anything.

Every time I meet him, I end up feeling a little more idealistic, a little more energetic, and always much smarter.

Maybe that's the best selfish reason for me to do this podcast.

And maybe by doing that I expand yours as well.

Welcome to the scene and the unseen, our weekly podcast on economics, politics and behavioral science.

My guest today is Jay Prakash Narayan, 1 of the people I most admire in modern Indian politics.

JP started off as a physician, was inspired by the original JP in the early 70s and repelled by the emergency and joined the IAS to try and make a difference to the nation.

He soon realized that in his words, quote, the public sector is a private sector of those in public office, stop quote.

He decided to enter politics, started the Lok Satta movement.

He was an MLA for a while, he was a driving force behind much reform such as the RTI Act and was an influential and respected figure in national politics.

I see him as an elder statesman today, a man of immense wisdom we can all learn from.

My last episode with him, A Life in Indian Politics, is 1 of my favourites.

And when we got together for this recording, I decided not to repeat anything from there, but to add to it, to explore the gaps, to discuss higher order questions, and also to chat about what has transpired since we last recorded in 2019.

So please listen to both episodes together to get a complete picture of JP's life in times.

But first, let's take a quick commercial break.

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It's always wonderful to have a conversation with you.

You know the last time we spoke was in 2019, I think in November we spoke, the episode was out in December 2019.

And this time, in a sense, is even more momentous than any stretch of 4 years would normally be because there have been 2 years of COVID.

I think that in different ways change the way people look at themselves and the way people look at time.

And I actually want to ask you about a subject I've been thinking about a lot, which is how 1 looks at time differently with the passage of time, right?

Because when we are young, like when I was 20, it seemed to me like 25 was unbearably old, who would wait that long?

I wanted everything now, you know, 50 seemed like, Oh, my God, so far away and old man and all of that.

And I'm looking back and you kind of 1 of course in your in terms of your personal life, you look at time differently, you realize the importance perhaps of trying to live every moment of trying to live in the present because you realize so much is past and you didn't really engage with it as deeply as you could have.

But I also look at history in the world differently.

Whereas, you know, a span of passing of 50 years no longer seems as deep as it would have when 1 was young.

And, You know, in your case, you were born practically in the middle of the century, a few years after, you know, India got independence.

And so much has a way that you looked at time changed, especially since you embarked upon endeavors that we've discussed in our last episode.

And by the way, I'll try my best not to repeat anything from the last episode but you've spoken so vividly about your entire life there and it's been a life of striving and trying to get things done and trying to bring about change and all of that but any change if there has been has been glacial.

So at both a personal level and the level of kind of looking back at this nation and with an understanding of political currents and economic currents and so on and so forth, do you look at time differently?

I think it's a very interesting question.

From a perception point of view, how you perceive time with age, I actually read somewhere that there is a formula.

Let's say there's a 16 year old, as opposed to a 64 year old, That means you're 4 times older.

I believe time moves twice as fast, square root of the multiples.

I don't know if it's accurate, how they measured it.

I thought it's an interesting perspective, but unquestionably, almost everybody who has lived some years, they recognize that time seems to fly much faster.

In terms of the work that we do, our perception of society and our perspectives, I was a very desperate young man, probably a very desperate not so young man also.

Because when I left the government and embarked on this journey, I thought in 5 years time, we will transform the country.

And my God, if it's not transformed, what will happen?

I remember vividly the chief secretary and others, very affectionate and very concerned, pleading with me, don't take too many chances, stay clean, or at least wait for a few more years when you're compensable and so on and so forth.

I said, my God, in a few years is too late.

So there's a desperation that if India doesn't change in a few years time, my God, what will happen?

1, as you hinted, a realization that great societies just don't change, you know, in a few years or so, however much you wish.

Though in some respects, some changes do come suddenly.

Sometimes technology accelerates the changes and so on and so forth.

And I think with age, recognition that it probably doesn't matter as much as you think it does, except a few issues.

They are so seminal that if they don't get corrected quickly, there could be a very serious long term consequence.

Most others we exaggerate the impact of either the good things or the bad things.

You tend to become a little more careful.

I used to work 30 days a month, travel most of the days, writing 3 or 4 columns a week or 10 days, even while traveling without the aid of this modern technology and internet and so on and so forth.

Travel, research, conferencing, studying, writing, you know, life was full of activity every minute, every hour.

As you grow older I think you tend to have a strategic sense.

You marshal your energies, identify the most important areas.

As they say, the wise general chooses his battlefields very carefully.

So I think it's a very interesting thing.

In our last conversation, you spoke about reading Sathru and Kamu and how they no longer are so much of an influence on you.

But you mentioned Kamu's myth of Sisyphus as something that does resonate and I didn't double-click on that in that conversation but I want to double-click on it now because it seems to me to almost be a tragic metaphor of the futility of caring too much about change.

I'll go a little beyond that, take it in a more metaphysical plane.

My daughter at the age of 8 asked me, Dad, if the universe is going to be cold, lifeless 1 in the long term, what's the purpose of it all?

Not necessarily about human society or in the short or medium term, but about the existence of humanity.

I always tell her, look, we are incapable of looking that far beyond.

We can look at 25, 30, 40, 50 years and think of a society which could be more humane, more sensible, which could give us more happiness and more sense of purpose.

If you think beyond that, all life loses meaning.

Maybe the solar family or Milky Way galaxy loses meaning.

So I think at some level you must suspend your disbelief.

You must forget too much of a knowledge of astronomy.

It's interesting intellectually but if you are too much into astronomy all life becomes meaningless.

But as much as Camus' essay itself I was struck by the actual myth of Sisyphus which of course is about Sisyphus being condemned by the gods to roll a stone uphill and when he gets to the top it goes back down and he goes back down and starts again.

And that almost sense of futility that for the rest of eternity, he's going to try and do something that fundamentally cannot be done.

There I disagree with Camus in terms of human history, human society.

Since of course, there's a lot of unfinished tasks all over the world.

But if you take a broad historical view, not even hundreds of years, even a generation or 2, how far we have traveled is quite remarkable.

Because our ambition is much greater, we always think of what is not done quite rightly.

But we sometimes forget what we have done.

No, Hans Rosling, for instance, the Swedish physician who passed away some years ago, maybe oversimplified things, but the broad point he made, 1 thing struck me, when he was born in Sweden, Sweden at that time was roughly where Egypt is today.

But in a lifetime, we can see the difference between Sweden and Egypt.

So we forget the remarkable change that at least in modern era we are bringing about.

I think that should give us a lot of hope.

So I don't agree that It is really a myth of this person.

This is really sparked by something that you just said and I was kind of taking notes.

And I think that there are 2 kinds of perspectives we can have and 2 kinds of views we can take on them.

And 1 perspective is a big perspective, where you look at society and country and nation and democracy and all of those.

And the other is a small perspective, so to say, without putting a value judgment, which is my own life, the things I want to do, and so on and so forth.

And equally, there are 2 views we can apply.

And 1 is a long view, where we think of something 20, 25 years in the future, and we are focused on that, and we are aiming for that.

And the other is a short view, where we want things quickly and want to get immediate gratification.

And here I'm thinking aloud, and I might change my mind within 10 minutes of this.

But it strikes me that as far as the big perspective is concerned, the nation and society and all of that, we have to play the long game where we have to realize that immediate gratification is not going to happen.

We've got to have that sense of purpose and just focus on processes and doing the right thing and maybe 30 years later there will be change.

And as far as a small perspective is concerned our own lives.

I actually now think that we need to have the smaller view, where you focus on the small joys.

You don't get too ambitious about something happening 20 years later, 30 years later.

But you live in the present, you embrace the present moment, you focus in the small joys.

And of course, you do plan and you do work for the future.

But in my life, and I look back, I think what young people tend to do, and I might be guilty of it as well, is that when you're young, you look at the big picture of nation and society and you want to change everything in a hurry.

And you look at the project of you and you have big dreams that are very far off, but you don't do anything in the immediate term to bring them closer and it should really be the other way around.

About the big perspective, I agree it's a long game.

There's no way you can go and you're going to transform very swiftly and thank God actually if you can transform that swiftly and that easily maybe sometimes it's a very wonky idea, a very dangerous idea.

With 2 caveats, sometimes technology brings about profound changes, we underestimate its importance.

And 2, sometimes unique opportunities present themselves.

Therefore, a reformer must be a unique opportunist, in the best sense of the term.

I always believe in the power of the context.

Great things happen not so much because somebody made valiant efforts, but because they seized the moment and they're ready.

You know, a prepared mind, meet in the context kind of a thing, What some people think is luck.

With those 2 caveats, I think it's a long game.

Otherwise, every tin pot dictator, every dangerous demagogue can destroy our lives collectively.

I don't think we should allow that to happen.

Insofar as the personal perspective is concerned, I'm 1 of those lucky ones where my...

The things that I always thought mattered a great deal by the age of 17 or 18, I came to that conclusion.

And the kind of life I wanted to lead, they are indistinguishable.

But at a deeper level, I think each of us, particularly if there is no God for us, those who really have faith, true faith, they're very fortunate human beings in my view.

You know exactly what it's all about and you follow the commands of the God or whatever.

But if you're a skeptic, if you're an agnostic or an atheist, an agnostic I suppose is a cowardly atheist, so it's okay.

I think you have to figure out what it's all about at a personal level.

Each of us, I think, have our own sense of that.

The first is universal for all life forms, the survival of the individual and that of the species.

Therefore, your own survival instinct and your own reproductive instinct and so on and so forth.

The second unique for human beings is unless there is harmony in society, because human beings alone being large societies, beyond kinship and so on and so forth, unless we have harmony, life is a living hell.

And unless there is harmony in nature and increasingly we're realizing because the disharmony is very evident, life again is living hell.

Therefore, the second big goal is this harmony of 2 kinds.

And the third is even that does not satisfy us.

Unless the freedom can be exercised in full, freedom again in 2 forms, the political freedom of making choices and doing whatever pleases you, but the intellectual freedom required, intellectual adhilism, if you have that genetic endowment or your ability or passion or the brain power, if it's not fully harnessed, I don't think people are happy.

And I think an individual's quest essentially is that.

These 3, the hierarchy of needs, as Maslow said, I'm only trying to put it in a different way.

Once you're clear about that, the rest of the life is pretty easy.

If you simply have a very typically Indian ambition, I suppose, I don't know if it's universal, but certainly it's very Indian, that I want to be something, not to accomplish something, but I want to be a district magistrate, I want to be a minister, I want to be a millionaire.

Each individual is entitled to her role in dreams.

But to me, it seems to be purposeless because once I accomplish it, you are never satisfied.

Yeah, I love what you said about an agnostic being a cowardly atheist, though I would also point out that actually people have the misconception that there's a continuum from where you go from believer to agnostic to atheist and I keep pointing out that atheism has to do with belief and agnosticism has to do with knowledge.

So an agnostic is someone who believes it is not possible to know whether there is God and an atheist is someone who doesn't believe in God because there's no evidence of it and it's an absence of belief not a belief per se.

So it is possible to be both agnostic and atheist at the same time as I am because I don't believe there is a God and yet I believe the larger questions are fundamentally unknowable.

And from that notion of epistemic humility that comes with talking about agnosticism.

I also want to talk about a related subject of how through life 1 develops humility, right?

Like when we are young, we think and again, all of this in a sense is a form of self-reflection because I am guilty of all of these.

But when 1 is young, you imagine you know the world and you can grok everything and you've kind of figured everything out.

At the same time you might have great ambitions when you are young and time tempers those 2.

And my feeling is that the good way to sort of deal with that is to develop humility when it comes to knowledge to what you know, but to at the same time have a certain arrogance of the will and believe that no, I can do all of the things I want to do.

No matter how bold and daring I will not give up, I can do them.

So I want to know about your journey through these 2 different kinds of domains of developing that humility and realizing the limits of your own ability, the limits of your own knowledge and also despite that, despite knowing how the system is so much bigger than you imagined and so on, despite that having the will to kind of keep going and keep you know hammering away.

Humility combined with confidence and perhaps also a desperation that needs to be done.

You can't sleep, You can't enjoy good things in life, you're breathless on occasion.

If you don't have that, I think you've not lived a life.

But humility, I think there are 3 things that happen in life.

1, As you see more and more people, in the small little pond, you are the big fish and you think that the whole universe you can control and command and so on and so forth.

But as the pond becomes bigger and bigger, you realize that you are just 1 small fish.

That is 1 inevitable thing and therefore, limits of your own knowledge and your own capacity and so on and so forth.

The second is perhaps a sense of mortality as you grow older, a recognition that ultimately it's much bigger than you and your lifetime.

In my case, I have a very special ability.

If they actually accomplish something, if they think something, if they really have a wonderful message, I love them, I admire them.

Even when I disagree with them on some issues, I rejoice in somebody's accomplishments because I treat them as our accomplishments.

And I think each of them is a foundation for our next work.

So luckily, I'm not particularly perturbed with envy or something else.

And that makes it even easier to be both humble and confident.

That's quite remarkable because you know I remember some 24 years ago a friend of mine who's a well-known novelist now and we were friends and we were both unknown and we were walking through the streets of Bombay and at 1 point he turned to me and said that you know every time a friend of mine does well, a part of me dies and I just stopped in horror because I realized he was serious

But his honesty in communication is remarkable.

And but I was sort of pretty stunned by that.

And what I have realized is that he was being honest about it.

But that's an attitude of so much of the world, like on so much of social media, I just see people tearing each other down.

And, you know, never like in every interaction, my rule is always assume goodwill, unless you have reason to believe otherwise assume goodwill, go towards it optimistically assume the best in the other person and so on and so forth.

And so much social media is just the opposite of that a few months ago.

In fact, I quit a lot of WhatsApp groups because I was like, I don't want negativity in my life.

know, my my group of writing students is 1 with which is full of positivity.

Everybody really cares about everybody else's success.

My next question is this, you know, in our last episode when you spoke about your trajectory from, you know, being in 1 village, being in another village, then going to, you know, Vijayawada to college, then Guntur for medical college and then getting involved in the 70s with first JP's movement and then what happened to the emergency and all of that becoming politically aware and that early decision which you mentioned you came to at 17 that you want to make a positive contribution to the democracy.

Now I was thinking about this and I was thinking that at that time for someone with your energy and passion and intelligence and exposure also because like you pointed out you were listening to the BBC all the time and getting news of the world through there and all of that.

That arena, the arena of the nation must appear to be the obvious arena where a grand difference can be made.

But if a young person is growing up today, there are many other things you can be ambitious about.

You could look at the world of technology and say that I will solve this massive problem at scale.

Or you could look at just entrepreneurship and saying these are the holes in the market, this is where I'll get in.

You could look at the intellectual universe and say that this is what the discourse is missing and I can really play a part here.

And there are so many other things to sort of be passionate about.

And I guess in your time with limited access, and there's no private sector to speak of technology isn't available to everyone at that extent.

You know, if you are an enthusiastic entrepreneurial person, 1 natural outlet for that is to say, okay, what problem do I solve?

Like if we boil it all down to, I want to solve big problems, all the big problems that you faced would have been problems with the nation or with society.

And you've jumped in that, you know, trying to figure those out.

1, I would postulate that a JP of today would not necessarily have only those problems to contend with.

There are many other problems worth solving.

And I would argue many of them actually have a far greater possibility of coming to fruition in a short span of time and therefore changing people's life at scale.

I believe any good business venture can do that.

So if this is something that you can think about and tell me what you feel like, I know it's an impossible counterfactual to imagine yourself in the in a current time with a lot else to do but do you are there other directions you could have gone down on?

No I completely agree with you in fact I would tell young people today all power to your elbow.

There are a hundred things whatever really appeals to you there's so much you can do.

The notion that it's only about the nation and the government and policy and the grand themes is a nonsensical 1.

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Ep 334: Jayaprakash Narayan Wants to Mend Our Democracy