 Very good morning Mr. Yogeshji, first of all I warm welcome to AICTE and also to this flash edition of higher education capsule on happiness. This is about happiness in education. As you know AICTE has signed an MOU with YOL in 2022 itself to spread the message of happiness to all the engineering community. I would like you to tell more about this in today's interaction with you. Thank you very much for having me over and it is a pleasure, it is a privilege in fact to be here with you and be able to address all the entire educational community here. The Prime Minister in his recent lecture has also taken cognizance of the fact that the average screen time of an individual today on the phone is six hours. The studies that have been sort of carried out and the studies revealed that these six hours are actually slicing, dicing and tossing their attention spans. So the retention of education in their mind is becoming dismal and very poor. We are a progressive country, we need creativity, we need to create situations and solutions and do so much more out here. As a three trillion dollar economy we are one eighth the size of America which is one fourth the size of our populations. The gross development product is produced by the hands. How come we are four times the population of America and yet one eighth the size of their economy? That happens because we have to be creative and in order to be creative we have to get away from this habit of consuming mobile phone. So that is what we try to do sir, that is exactly what we try to do. S.G., you talked about our young people spending more time on their mobile phones. Sir. More than almost you said six hours. Six hours. Can you kindly expand what do they do, why they are so addicted to this kind of a attitude? I have personally visited the Menlo Park campus of Facebook sir. The entire story of digital engagement is driven by algorithms. Into the algorithms that drive us, you know they are the one that go ahead and they sort of feed us something and then we start chasing that something and then we start suffering from what is known as FOMO or the fear of missing out. In pursuit of the fear of missing out all psychological sir, it is all psychological it is all neuro linguistic programming NLP in a way and there are NLP experts that are hired by these large shall we say social media companies. In the good old days the story was all about market share. Everybody said what is your market share if you are selling tires or you are selling watches or you are selling ghee or whatever it was that one was selling what was my market share. That situation changed several years ago sir. People started talking about mind share because they realized that they now need to go ahead and sit in your mind because I take my mind to my bedroom, I take my mind to my workplace, I take my mind everywhere. So if they can go ahead and puncture my mind and live there then I will live with them in a way it is the tail that ends up wagging the dog. So it is all algorithmically driven and these companies then go ahead and take our mind share out for instance and just to this is alarming sir. The prime minister has taken cognizance of it in another aspect but I would like to elaborate for instance, Facebook's valuation today is about 1 trillion dollars that 1 trillion dollars is split about across 2.5 billion users which means every user today to Facebook is worth 400 dollars. We have 1 billion people using Facebook that is 400 billion dollars of Indian mind share which is selling on the New York Stock Exchange. We need to reclaim back that mind share sir. So that is exactly how I have gone ahead and developed an algorithm that reverses the order, reverses the optics, reverses the way people look at it through the telescopes. Mr. Kudai, can you tell us little more about on the minds for our viewers? What do you really mean by minds and how does that relate to the you know the screen time what our young people are spending more and more? So what is happening sir is that the screen time has become has become sliced. So the good old days you had a 5 day cricket match and everybody enjoyed it. Then it became a 1 day cricket match and everybody still enjoys it. Then it became a 20 over cricket match which finishes in about 3 hours like that and everybody enjoys it. Not realizing that it is our attention spans that have gotten sliced. When our attention spans get sliced we suffer from and there is a huge study that is being carried out on this that this is called bunny minds which is brittle, which is anxious, which is non-linear, which is incomprehensible. These are brittle, anxious, non-linear, incomprehensible minds that have been randomized because I have now as a student started using and the it is not my study sir it is a study which is available on the internet which which will tell you that the students are actually consuming 6 hours is the average which means students are consuming between 8 to 10 hours also of their screen time all split through these short videos. When they see these short videos their attention spans are splitting sir it is neuron activity neurons are nothing sir but they are just proteins. So every time I am looking at something and then I want to look at something else my neurons disconnect and reconnect. My proteins get exhausted when my proteins get exhausted my ability to assimilate anything that is being taught to me in the classroom is getting exhausted. So it is the short videos that are slicing, dicing and tossing our minds that is what is happening to the mind. IOL is planning to do in this direction before before you answer you are you look likes to me you are on a mission mode for happiness. Okay that is wonderful to know. So what is your message for our viewers connecting this to happiness. So first and foremost I must sincerely, sincerely thank AICT what an amazing organization it the entire journey started with Professor Sasha Budhi who was who gave me this opportunity and you know we were able to convince the council I must sincerely, sincerely express my gratitude and thanks to you that you are giving me this Philip and this Booster Dose now you know in your current role out here. What we have done sir is that we realize that hey if the problem is in the knee I could not be addressing people's minds right I have to address the knee. So the problem is the phone technology is a good thing sir by telling people to go off the phone is impossible in the world that we are living in today. Technology is a good thing same E is equal to MC square went ahead and created energy but the same E is equal to MC square then went ahead and created the atomic bomb that is what is happening our minds are exploding our minds are exploding the 6 hours 8 hours cut, cut, cut, cut, cut our minds are just simply exploding. So what we have done is that we view the same phone and created an app on the phone which is exactly like Facebook but every time you want to update your life it says hey what do you want to update so it has gone ahead and taken 6 aspects of the left brain and 6 aspects of the right brain and then it says ok go ahead and update whichever aspect you want to update now as the student starts updating and the aspect that the student updates every once a week that aspect remains green. The student does not update an aspect for 1 week or 2 weeks or 3 weeks that aspect becomes yellow red or gray. So this is actually taking him back nudging him suggestively nudging him intuitively to come back into looking at his life aspects there is something called dominant mind sir. Now dominant mind is all in the prefrontal cortex the dominant mind says let me understand whatever is happening around me so what is happening around me is Amazon oh I like this what is happening around me is Amir Khan oh I like this I like this I like this new cloth I like this new shirt I like this new car I like this hoarding I like so we randomize ourselves and our mind so my prefrontal cortex or the crown on my head becomes covered with all this all this very frugal very very very what shall I say brittle kind of stuff that has no relevance or meaning to myself this is becoming even more acute sir in the wake of the AI now people's mental faculties to engage in any activity will further go down because AI if AI has to do everything and that is why sir. How does this YOL app helps and you call this is a solution. Yes sir. What would you tell the our institute and also our children about how this YOL app would be useful and how do they use this can you elaborate on that. So this is an interesting question sir I'll I'd like to refer to this through the medium of a story because that is understood easily by everybody yes so Arjuna and Krishna went for Arjuna's family the Rupadi had to be married so King Janak said let me get all the princes he got all the princes and Arjuna went there now the task given to all the princes was that they had to pick up a bow they had to string the bow then they had to take the bow to a place where there was a boiling the cauldron of boiling water placed out there on top was a was a was a fish that was swinging on a fan so they said that you know now you have to pierce the eye of the fish by looking into the reflection of the fish in the water so Arjuna said that's okay how do I do it Krishna so because Krishna was also his friend and his advisor so Krishna said Arjuna very simple you've been trained by the master himself and you are a master sir you are also a guru so he said you've been trained by Guru Dronacharya so you'll you can do it he said but how he said this is how you take one step forward one step back right and then you raise your bow above your head and string the string the arrow upon the bow string and look down carefully into the eye of the fish in the water and just let the arrow fly you will get he says if every single thing I've got to do what are you going to do so he says what I'm going to do my dear Arjuna is that I'm going to keep the surface of the water still so you can see the eye of the fish clearly that is what an education such as you are trying to do sir the challenge however is this that we've got students today who got the left side and the right side of the mind which has got these jumping frogs and it is becoming increasingly difficult now to weigh that mind so whether a student is learning chemistry or biochemistry or mechanical engineering or electrical engineering or electronic engineering he still got jumping frogs now in the situation the mind has become very porous we realize that this this can only be corrected through the medium of designing another app an app countering another app so in the app what we've done is that when the student updates the app as I explained to you also the last question the student updates the app it nudges the student to engage with oneself what is needed today is in this melee of AI everybody is being taken out of their bodies into an out of body experience allow me to elaborate this also sir people take selfies a selfie is a subtle indication of self denial because they take a selfie they dress it up using 15 filters when they dress it up using 15 filter they become somebody else when they become somebody else that means I have self denied myself my own personality I'm unique God created me as unique but I've denied myself my personality I've become that leads to trust issues those trust issues manifest first between me and myself then they manifest between me and my colleagues then they manifest between me and my teachers and my general environment that is why people are becoming very unicentric in the good old days you had joint families then you have a nuclear family now it's becoming unicentric and you've been very kind you've given us even the permission to to sort of give credits on account of that app which will make it very important for the children to sort of start using it it's very interesting you guys see you talked about YOL app and but how are you going to introduce this to our engineering students in higher education instructions so post the permission that we've already obtained from your August institution which is the eminent all-india council for technical education now we've started approaching universities and there are several universities that are extremely forthcoming because they realize that their minds are fractured and the students are not able to focus on on any one aspect or any one subject etc that is being taught to them assimilation is becoming a challenge so most universities that I have visited sir and I undertook a national happiness Yatra last year which was flagged off by eminent professor Sastra Bodhi himself from the Netaji Subhash University of Technology and we went to we went north south east west we went to nearly every region every state of the country and I must have visited over a hundred universities all hundred of them accepted the fact that the students minds are not where they ought to be teaching them is becoming a challenge etc so what we are proposing now to the university this to adopt this as a as a part of the curriculum either as a blended course or as an audit course or as a one credit course or as an elective so the the whole thing is open for them to decide how they want to do it once they start doing it then people will automatically start gravitating towards this because it requires no faculty requires no infrastructure so the universities also love it and we also do the grading and assessment sir so that is the good part for the university the good part for the student is he's in any case not interested in the classroom so let him go or let her go and sit down and do his or her own introspection and his or her own it's very significant you know the steps we have already achieved but what what is next so what next sir is that now I think we need to encourage participation and to do that we already organized the first happiness awards the first edition of the happiness awards last year and we're looking forward to do the next edition of the happiness awards this year around the month of October shall we say so now we're calling for registration and I'd like to request you sir to send out a notification also to the colleges so that they participate wholeheartedly in this in this event and then you I've also made a request to you sir if we can also start releasing the happiness rankings of every institution because happiness ranking of an institution is extremely important sir with the minds that have become short we've been hearing about suicides for instance suicides happen in a state of trauma a state of trauma is the lack of situational awareness what is situational awareness the situational awareness is that I know the precedent and I know the successor the the successive step when I do when I disconnect from the precedent and I do not know what is the successive step then I'm in a small bracket and in that window I pull out a weapon and I kill myself or I take an action the repercussion of which is very bad but I am not aware of the repercussion so because of unawareness of the repercussion because of unawareness of the situation I go ahead and do all that so happiness is extremely important and we are recommending and requesting sir if you can also support us with respect to sending out a notification and requesting institutions to participate in the happiness rankings instead I think I even request you to say here right here kindly make an appeal to all the audience about your happiness ranking and also would like you to little elaborate on no is it very similar to the happiness index being used to even the rank the countries you know where I read somewhere in the newspaper Bhutan being the most to the happiness country in the world right can you little elaborate on this so one first I will address the happiness index story that is a farce that has been pulled on India sir India today ranks on the 136th position in the happiness rankings worldwide the entire survey is conducted by Gallup Gallup conducted survey based on only 3000 interviews conducted in any country of any size irrespective of the size of the country so you know they've gone ahead and got they've got warped optics Bhutan last year went ahead and recused themselves from the survey they said we've got nothing to do with the survey please don't come to us they did not do Bhutan this year sir India also we are recommending you know we've requested the eminent Niti Ayog last year also under Professor Sastra Buddhi's leadership we requested them and we once again requesting that we should recuse ourselves from this survey which is based on 3000 interviews conducted in a in a country of the size of 1.4 billion people for 1.5 billion people I mean you know in a house if a person has to just step out you'll see 3000 people there so one that is incorrect sir on the happiness rankings I'm grateful to you sir that you've given us permission and granted us the permission to now institutionalize happiness rankings and look forward to your support sir in terms of sending out yet another notification whereby we inspire colleges to join this happiness ranking all colleges that join the happiness rankings program will be absolutely free they just have to give the app to the students and the students can use it however if they want to use the app for grading and you know assessment etc then there is a very small cost of some 30 rupees per month kind of a thing sir and that is that is all that we are doing so it is not as if it's a very big thing all the very best for spreading the message of happiness to the world thank you you guys see all the very best you thank you very much sir thank you very much it's a pleasure and a privilege to be interviewed by you thank you sir