Sanjeev Sanyal: “In most countries, educated youth in the early to mid-twenties tend to have somewhat higher unemployment rates than others. It evens out, by the way, by the time they are 30 (years of age). But there is a phase when they tend to be somewhat more unemployed. In the specific case of India… there are many reasons this happens. One of them, of course, is that this is a phase where many, many educated people take time out to write various kinds of government and other exams like UPSC, etc.”
David Dunning: “One of the reasons why people are overconfident in general is that they tend to look for reasons supporting their ideas. In fact, one of the pieces of advice we always give is: If the decision is important, stop and ask why you might be wrong. In planning, one of the procedures that’s recommended for a group is to project yourself into the future and imagine your initiative failed spectacularly. What happened to make it fail? And say, “OK, what can we do to prevent those stories from happening?” That’s called a “pre-mortem.” Doctors do this as a matter of course. They have a different name for it. They don’t diagnose you; they do a “differential diagnosis.” They may have an idea, but they have to think about what else it can be. OK, you might have Lyme disease, but what else are your symptoms consistent with? We’re going to test you to rule out everything that we can. That’s core to medicine, thinking of alternatives, thinking how you could be wrong.”
Adam Mastroianni: “We should try to get our incentives right, but also—incentives be damned, do the right thing. If we seek an end to our permanent problems, we must cultivate in ourselves the same three things Charles Sumner said we should look for in a leader: “The first is backbone, the second is backbone and the third is backbone.””
FT: “IT services have played a crucial role in driving India’s economic growth and expanding its middle class. But many of the formulaic tasks that underpin the industry, which employs 6mn people and contributes about 7 per cent of GDP, can now be performed by generative AI. If the sector cannot pivot to higher-value work, that could spell more trouble for a government already struggling to create enough jobs for India’s huge workforce. After years of headcount growth the sector has begun to shed jobs; a July report from rating agency S&P stated that by March this year Infosys and Wipro had reduced staffing by 5-6 per cent from 2023 levels, with similar trends evident at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Tech Mahindra Ltd. Investors are also turning bearish on the sector’s prospects.”
