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Keynote Address
Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology,
Alexandria, Virginia
Graduation Ceremony, 18 June, 2016
Kaushik Basu
It is my great honor and pleasure to give this graduation address at
a very fine school, the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and
Technology in the state of Virginia.
Graduation ceremonies are occasion to give advice on life and
career. While I get lots of opportunity to give advice on fiscal deficits and
monetary policy, I don’t get enough of a chance to hold forth on life and
career. So thank you for taking the risk of giving me the floor.
Dear graduating students, Congratulations. You are graduating
from a great school. This is reason for you, your family and friends to be
proud. But this is also reason to realize you have a special responsibility
to yourself and to the world. You have had the good fortune that many
others will never have; and you just have to put it to good use.
Given the reputation of your school, I am guessing that many of you
will go into creative work—from business startups, fundamental
research and teaching, to mathematics, science and literature. The world
today is an exciting place with opportunities for careers that are so
diverse that it is strange that we call all of them work.
As Bertrand Russell once noted about mathematics, this is one
profession where you cannot even tell the difference between a person
at work and a person asleep.
I begin by quoting Russell because he was, alongside the
philosopher, David Hume, and the poet, Rabindranath Tagore, among
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my biggest intellectual influences. I was born and spent my early years in
old Calcutta, in a traditional household. It was a decaying and denselypopulated part of the city, with garrulous and friendly neighbors, and,
judging by the high occupancy of the balconies, people who did not
believe in too much work. I went to a wonderful but traditional Jesuit
School.
It was in my last years in school that I discovered Russell. It was
from him that I learned that it is fine to question everything; and not to
accept any doctrine, as the final doctrine, any word, as the final word.
We must use our reason and judgment to reach conclusions, and be
prepared to modify and change them as new evidence and new analyses
become available.
Dear students, you are lucky to be educated in a school with some
of the finest teachers and be introduced to the art of reason and inquiry
so early in life. You are also lucky to have classmates from all over the
world. We live on a small planet and it is important for us to celebrate
and embrace diversity. This was the repeated theme of the poetry and
writings of Tagore; and it is a message that is close to my heart.
One of the joys of being at the World Bank is the exposure to
diverse nationalities, cultures, and norms. This leads to a lot of learning
but also to laughter and fun.
I recently heard a lovely story of an American economist lecturing
somewhere in remote sub-Saharan Africa, and wondering if he should
tell his audience a complicated, very-American joke. He decided to try it
out anyway, and was gratified when the audience burst out laughing.
At dinner that evening he asked his local friends how the translator
managed to covey such a difficult joke, and learned that the translation
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was roughly as follows: “Now the American economist is telling you a
joke. Please laugh.”
I have had not that experience but many delightful experiences
from around the world.
Turning to more serious matters, graduation is a watershed
moment, a transition with which will come many joys but also
disappointments. When that happens and you feel the blues, I have one
piece of advice for you. Try to realize that life is full of uncertainty, and
what appears disappointing and a bad outcome today may turn out very
differently when you look back some years later.
I have had experience of this. From when I was a child, the plan was
I would be a lawyer, which is what my father was. After finishing my
undergraduate studies in Delhi, I was packed off to London to do a quick
degree in economics, and then to take the bar-at-law exam, and come
back and take over my father’s practice.
But after a taste of economics, and, in particular, discovering the
sheer joy and power of deductive reasoning, I decided, quite suddenly,
that I would not do law and stay with economics instead. My father was
disappointed but we were very close, and he took it in his stride.
Some of his disappointment was assuaged soon after that when I
applied to the World Bank’s prestigious Young Professional Program and
made it to the final list. I was called to Paris for the penultimate
interview. With the brash confidence of youth, I was sure I would get the
job, and with the confidence that parents often have in their children,
my parents celebrated the news. But the selection committee made a
bad decision: I was rejected in the final interview.
I was plunged into despair. I had given up the career in law on a
moment’s impulse; I had failed to get the job that would have set me up
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for life. What would I do now? The following one or two years, as I
struggled half-heartedly, were among the worst years of my life.
At that time, if someone told me that I had just experienced two of
my luckiest breaks in life, not becoming a lawyer and taking over my
father’s legal practice, and failing to get the World Bank job, I would have
laughed that person out of court.
But within a few years, as my research picked up and I started
getting papers accepted by international journals, I realized that I had
discovered my true passion, which is for abstract reasoning, puzzle
solving and research. And I also loved teaching. Today I feel blessed and
lucky in what I do and I am acutely aware that it was the pure luck of
rejection that got me here.
Make no mistake, World Bank’s Young Professional is a fantastic
career, and I would recommend it to almost anyone. But, given my
temperament, which I did not know then, it would not have been right;
so it was fortunate that I did not get the job.
It was, likewise good luck, when in 2012, out of the blue, I got a
phone call in Delhi, from Washington, asking if I would have an interest
in being the Chief Economist of the World Bank. I had spent a lot of time
in research and teaching, and was excited at the prospect of global, realworld engagement, and said yes.
My last three years have been a phenomenal experience, traveling
to unusual places and conferring with political leaders, central bankers,
and finance ministers about diverse and many unusual economic policy
challenges.
Let me take this opportunity to give you, graduating students, some
advice. The choice of career and how you do in your professional life has
its challenges but there are other, bigger, and often-unpredictable
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challenges that many of you will have to face. There will be anxieties
about love and rejection, depressions to cope with, and the pain of loss.
There are few words of consolation you can offer to people who have
suffered these. But, nevertheless, I have some advice.
When we are depressed, we go for counselling and medication. In
some situations these are inescapable. But one weapon that we all have
but do not utilize enough is the power of reasoning. Not all, but a lot of
life’s blues can be battled and mitigated by reasoning clearly in one’s
own head; by trying to understand the world better and by trying to
understand other people.
When we get angry with others we must realize that others do
what they do because of their own histories and genetic make-up. We
have to reason, strategize, and deal with other peoples’ bad behavior,
but being angry and fretful is not a useful emotion.
Second, intelligence and cleverness are great assets, but goodness
and kindness are much more important. As you go through life, keep up
these qualities no matter how hard it may seem. In the end, there is a
benefit to yourself. They give you a satisfaction and resilience as you go
through tough times.
I do not want to belittle tragedies and sorrows one feels in life. And
all of us at some time or the other will have to face some of those, where
nothing will seem to help. But even through the worst of times, keeping
up compassion for other human beings is not just good for other human
beings but also for you. Compassion is something we owe to others and
also to ourselves.
Finally, an advice from my own experience. I am a natural skeptic;
I cannot help it. I take all knowledge with a grain of doubt. I allow for the
possibility that the world as we see it may not exist. I have an affinity for
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the Greek philosopher Pyrrho of Elis, the ancient Indian philosophy of
Maya, and some early Chinese skeptical thinking. My favorite is the
masterly musing of Chuang Tzu, Chinese philosopher of 4th century BC, a
rough contemporary of Socrates and a little older than Pyrrho. I am
quoting him:
“Once upon a time, I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and
thither. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly. Soon I was
awaken, and there I was, myself again. But now I do not know whether I
was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a
butterfly, dreaming I am a man.”
I believe, skepticism, and doubt are good intellectual qualities but
also ones that enhance happiness. They teach you not to take life too
seriously. To be certain about what you know is, in the end, arrogance
and arrogance is not an emotion that gives long-term happiness to the
person who carries it.
But in all this there is luck. I am aware that a part of my own
optimism comes from my mother. I remember when she was 90 years
old, very frail and weak, one of her favorite cousins, much younger than
her (around 70 years old) came to Calcutta to see her. My mother was
thrilled and chatted a lot with her. When she left, my mother was sad,
and told me and my sisters, “I wonder if I will ever get to see her again.
Life is uncertain, and we are getting old; the next thing I will hear is she
is dead.” My sisters and I laugh even now remembering our mother’s
resilience. She died the following year after a wonderful, fulfilling life.
I have been speaking to you, the students. Let me close by speaking
to the teachers and other staff of the school. I simply want to say, thank
you, for giving to the world the best gift you can give, that of education,
science, and learning, and that of kindness and compassion.
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ENDS