A lifelong student ofpeople and machines.
I’m B.V.R.C. Purushottam. Twenty-three years in India’s civil service taught me how systems work; a late love of AI and philosophy taught me how minds do. Here I write, in my own words, about where the two meet.
Four Intellectual Territories
AI, ML & DL for Governance
Notes on AI, machine learning, and information theory — and how these tools can reimagine governance, decision-making, and public institutions.
The Policy Lab
Field dispatches and data-driven policy thinking from Animal Husbandry, Dairy, Fisheries, and Elections — plus earlier work in cooperatives and education.
Philosophy of Mind
Eastern wisdom meets cognitive science — from the Gita and Yoga Sutras to Friston, Feldman Barrett, and Kahneman. The examined life of a decision-maker.
The Proving Ground
Projects and field work that made a difference — and an open accountability tracker for the things I am building, running, and walking in real time.
Featured Insights
Impact in Numbers
children admitted under the Right to Education Act
Assisted in finalising the National Education Policy 2020
Transferred to farmer accounts via the MoU with ITBP
Beneficiary farmers — Goat Valley & Poultry Valley schemes
Relief Commissioner during the 2013 Himalayan disaster
Beyond the Blog
Your Brain Is Running Old Software
Grounded in Karl Friston's Free Energy Principle, prediction processing, embodied cognition, and attention research. Written as a dialogue — the underlying neuroscience stays rigorous, the reading stays plain. Each principle is a small upgrade you can run on your own mind, starting today.
Srilan Foundation
Supports meritorious girls from below-poverty-line families with scholarships, learning materials, and mentoring through Classes 8–12. Organises medical camps for early detection of cancers, diabetes, and chronic illness. Provides care for elderly persons without adequate family support.
Samiksha — Multi-Department Task & Scheme Monitor
A master-driven task and scheme monitoring platform spanning Animal Husbandry, Dairy, Fisheries, and Higher Education — one configurable system instead of four bespoke ones. Departments, categories, schemes, and custom fields are all admin-configurable, not hard-coded. Officer logins with department-scoped access, a status workflow with full audit trail, structured financial & physical progress tracking with auto-computed utilisation and achievement percentages, live dashboards, exportable reports, and daily WhatsApp task-alert reminders to the responsible officer.
AgriLM — Small Language Model for Agriculture
An open-source small language model trained on agriculture and animal husbandry knowledge — covering crop science, livestock management, veterinary practice, and rural policy. Designed to be deployable at low compute for field-level governance.
Pashudhan Kartavya — AH Mission Tracker
A self-hosted Progressive Web App for the Animal Husbandry Department to track tasks, milestones, responsible officers and deadlines across every workstream — with officer logins, a live shared dashboard, an audit trail, and full offline support. An accountable, real-time mission-execution platform for field-level governance.
Wiki-LLM — Personal Knowledge Graph
A persistent, Claude-maintained knowledge base for both official and personal research — every source gets read, synthesised, and woven into an interlinked wiki in Obsidian, so knowledge compounds and stays instantly retrievable instead of disappearing into files and chat history.
Pramana — A Quantitative Trading Tool
A quantitative trading tool for Indian markets that I build and tinker with in my spare time — purely a personal hobby, not a professional venture. The project is currently private.
In Their Words
Shri Anil Sahasrabudhe
Former Chairman AICTE, Chairman of National Educational Technology Forum
“Purushottam Basava is an upright career IAS officer, hardworking, honest, and follows processes with absolute due diligence, while at the same time kind, helpful, and humane in approach. He draws his strength from his deep-rooted spiritual moorings.”
Shri Maneesh Garg, IAS
Former Joint Secretary, Ministry of Education — Present Senior Deputy Election Commissioner
“Mr Purshottam is a very hard-working, intelligent and outstanding officer. He has a deep understanding of policy-making and policy issues. He gave excellent inputs for the finalisation of the National Education Policy 2020 and its implementation plan, SARTHAQ.”
Dr Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar
Former Chairman, University Grants Commission
“I found him to be a very conscientious and committed professional. His engagement with various stakeholders within the ministry has been outstanding. His role in making and implementing the National Education Policy 2020 is remarkable.”
Shri Ajay Singh
Chairman & Managing Director, SpiceJet Ltd
“Purushottam is an honest and upright officer and we need more officers like him in public life.”
R Subrahmanyam
Former Secretary to Government of India (Higher Education and Social Justice)
“One of the best officers of the service. He brought quiet efficiency and impeccable order to the Ministry of Education. His abilities to remain cool during crisis, manage time, empathy for the marginalized and thoroughness are worthy of emulation.”
Virendra Tewari
Former Director, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur
“Mr Basava Purushottam has a lot of passion for the education sector. His ability to collaborate with various stakeholders is phenomenal. His communication skills helped NEP gain acceptance from many stakeholders.”
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