He's right, and if you're not built for it the country grinds you down quietly.
So much of what happens here, the job, the promotion, the bank loan, the school admission, moves on the strength of whose uncle made a phone call at the right moment, whose wedding you bothered to attend, which chacha you remembered to touch the feet of at the last family gathering.
Extroverts find all of this natural and even enjoyable, so for them India genuinely is jannah. For the introvert who just wants to put his head down, do good work, and be left in peace, it becomes a slow painful dozakh where the networking bro will always outmanouver and outshine you.
The West poured $50 billion into fast breeder nuclear reactors and abandoned every single one. India poured $900 million and just achieved criticality on the first commercially viable one outside Russia.
The US spent $15 billion. Gave up. Japan spent $12 billion. Their Monju prototype had one sodium fire in 1995 and never recovered. The UK spent $8 billion. Germany spent $6 billion. France, Italy, all walked away. Six of the richest nations on Earth concluded this technology was too hard and too expensive to pursue.
India started building in 2004 with an initial budget of $420 million. Twenty-two years, a dozen missed deadlines, and a cost doubling later, the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor at Kalpakkam just sustained a controlled fission chain reaction. The reactor is now alive.
The reason India never quit is a constraint most people have never thought about. India has only 1-2% of the world's uranium reserves. For a country of 1.4 billion people trying to build energy independence, that's a death sentence if you're running conventional nuclear.
But India has 25% of the world's thorium. The single largest national reserve on Earth.
The problem: you can't just burn thorium the way you burn uranium. A physicist named Homi Bhabha designed a three-stage nuclear program in the 1950s specifically to solve this. Stage 1: burn natural uranium in heavy water reactors, collect plutonium as a byproduct. Stage 2: feed that plutonium into fast breeder reactors, where it breeds MORE plutonium AND converts thorium into fissile uranium-233. Stage 3: burn thorium directly at scale.
India just entered Stage 2. Seventy years after Bhabha drew it up on paper.
The math on the thorium endgame is wild. At current energy consumption rates, India's thorium reserves could power the country for over 700 years. Most nuclear nations are playing a uranium game with maybe 80-100 years of runway. India is playing a completely different game with a 7x longer fuel supply.
The West quit because uranium stayed cheap and sodium coolant is terrifying. It catches fire on contact with air. It explodes on contact with water. Russia's BN-600 had 27 sodium leaks and 14 sodium fires between 1980 and 1997. And Russia kept going anyway because Russia doesn't quit nuclear projects. India watched all of that and kept going too.
When you have 1% of the uranium but 25% of the thorium, the engineering difficulty stops being a reason to quit. It becomes the price of admission to a 700-year energy supply that nobody else can access.
That's us! 🌍
The Artemis II crew captured beautiful, high-resolution images of our home planet during their journey to the Moon. As @Astro_Christina put it: "You guys look great."
I’ll again let people know that many tests which you feel are unnecessary- are - Yes- unnecessary - but done due to medicolegal reality - not due to doctor wanting more money.
I’m sorry - but bringing Healthcare under Consumer act has definitely inflated costs.
You went with headache and got MRI Brain done.
It’s cause of the 0.0001% chance it’s a stroke - you won’t think twice before suing the doc who didn’t get the MRI done.
Congrats- now every headache gets a MRI.
We used to manage childhood leukemia on daycare basis in AIIMS.
Transfusions were given with a strict 20k platelet cutoff. (for FN)
I would be sued into oblivion if I tried that in private and a child with leukemia with 24k platelet gets a bleed.
All the borderline cases get more treatment - not less in private - this isn’t becuase doctor doesn’t know conservative management- it’s because you will sue the doctor for not being aggressive enough incase something goes wrong.
Charlie Munger on how to succeed:
“It’s so simple: you spend less than you earn. Invest shrewdly. Avoid toxic people and toxic activities. Try to keep learning all your life. And do a lot of deferred gratification. If you do all those things, you are almost certain to succeed. And if you don’t, you’ll need a lot of luck. And you don’t want to need a lot of luck. You want to go into a game where you’re very likely to win without having any unusual luck.”
25 years ago, an LIC agent told my uncle to invest just ₹5,000/yr in a particular LIC policy, assuring him that he would be able to buy any luxury car after the policy matured in 25 years. Yesterday, my uncle received ₹2 lakh as the maturity proceeds.
That LIC agent now owns an Audi Q7.
@theskindoctor13 If funding countries that back Pakistan is your idea of a vacation, don’t cry when they fund the next attack. Nationalism isn't just for 26th Jan & 15th Aug tweets — it’s a daily choice.
Mesmerised seeing the beautiful Capital Football Arena in #Bhubaneswar where our football stars will practice during the FIFA U-17 #WomensWorldCup. I am sure, the world class facilities at the training centre will help the players prepare well for the mega event. #OdishaForSports
@geekyranjit Hey Ranjit! Can you help me deciding between Pixel 6 & 6a coz Pixel 6 is now available for 45k and 6a for 44k, given that warranty is not major concern. Any other things to keep in mind if I choose pixel 6? Will there be 5g support in Pixel6 if 5g launches in India?