Tidbits here and there

Lost Decade?

2012-01-26T09:52:00.002+08:00

Think about the following:

Three of modern Indian Cricketing greats - all from 1990s. (Photo Courtesy - http://rajeevmist.blogspot.com/2011/04/heroes.html)

When you think of current generation Indian Cricket, who are your fans of? Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly, Anil Kumble? Or perhaps Harbhajan Singh, Yuvraj Singh, Virender Sehwag or Zaheer Khan? All of them were introduced into the team before 2001.

Paes & Bhupathi - both from 1990s - still going strong (Photo Courtesy - http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-04-03/top-stories/29377080_1_lukas-dlouhy-mahesh-bhupathi-leander-paes)

When you think of Tennis in India, who do you think is currently performing the best? As of today, the few remaining players in the Australian Open draw consists of Laender Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi. Both are from the 90s. The guys who were supposed to succeed them - Rohan Bopanna and the likes - didn't really fire. Sania is perhaps edging on the border of excepting this trend, but again, what she achieved in the past 10 years pales in comparison to what these two achieved in the past 10 years.

Still the best in Bollywood - all from the 1990s. (Photo Courtesy - http://www.glamsham.com/movies/scoops/11/mar/02-which-actor-looks-cool-in-moustache-031113.asp)

When you think of Bollywood, who do you think is still ruling the roost? The Khans (Shah Rukh, Salman, Aamir and Saif Ali) & perhaps Akshay Kumar & Ajay Devgun every now and then. All of them started in the 90s or before. What happened to the next lot? AB Junior, Roshan Junior, Oberoi Junior etc?
Which present day Indian companies do you consider great? Infy? Wipro? TCS? Airtel? All of them were household names ten years back, though each of them were less than 10 years old. Which younger-than-10 year old Indian company commands the same respect? How many such companies exist?

Try to ponder over this across more aspects - politics, Gurus, brands and so on. You will probably see the trend in other places as well. The more I think of it, the more I feel that somehow, India just stopped producing talent, in general, for a few years. It's not a fool proof theory, but just a general trend I see. I would love to see an argument proving otherwise, but for now - I feel that we somehow managed to lose a decade of talent creation. I don't know why it happened, but it seemed to have. Any thoughts?

And on that note, wishing all Indians a very happy Republic Day. The constitution has served us well, and I hope it continues to do so in the years to come.

Political Majority vs Political Minority

2012-01-05T10:12:00.001+08:00

One of the alarming pieces of communication heard in social media/conversations these days w.r.t to political debate in India is about how the "middle class" or "urban" voters will get woken up by the activism of Anna Hazare or the ensuing debate on Lokpal. Every time I participate in a debate, I get the response - "Did you vote?" or an appropriate corollary as may be deemed fit.

So, I have been thinking about this long and hard. After all, it seems a valid question and a valid response is a prerequisite to further debate. For the record, I have voted every single time I was eligible and present in the jurisdiction of my voting eligibility. Unfortunately, due to the fact that I wasn't present at my normal residences during both the 2004 & 2009 general elections (first time due to studies and second time due to occupation), I actually have a poor record at voting.

Having cleared my record, let me take this further. The key issue about my voting and its effects on the politics of India lies somewhere else. Having born in a middle class, high caste Hindu, and brought up in urban upbringings all my life, I am in no way a minority in the traditional sense of the word. Yet, for the purpose of politics, I am clearly a minority. For the purposes of winning an election in India, the demographic of an influential voter constitutes a lower-middle/lower class, lower caste, rural non-Hindu (Non-Hindus, in general, are known to vote en masse.)

The statistics are easy: Over half of our population live in villages, over half of our population is lower caste and over half of our population is essentially what I term lower middle class or lower. Further, almost every constituency has the same structure. Lower class will out vote, higher class voters in most constituencies in urban India too. And of course, as a whole, the lower caste, lower class population can and does determine the output of most elections in our country.

Now, the aspirations of Indians in generally convergent - almost all of them want a strong, clean, honest, non-corrupt country where people can work and enjoy their lives with safety and security. But the means to that end is significantly divergent between the political majority and political minority.

The political minority wants a government who can sacrifice day-to-day gains for long term gains, remove subsidies, reward merit, and reward equality for the weak and meek as opposed to populism. The political majority is appeased by quotas, subsidies, populism and short term gains. Nobody can fault them. They are looking for immediate survival and whoever gets them that wins the most votes.

Nobody can question the individual wisdom in their decisions and yet collectively, the political minority will almost always end up voting those who can appease to their demands and not those who can cook up a strong nation. Nobody can blame their individual demands, since the fulfillment of the same is essential to their immediate survival.

The farmer who has to pay for power will be appeased with free power while he is ignorant of the cost of free power to the nation. A hungry man will love his Rs. 2/kg rice, irrespective of whether it is the most nutritious or the best option for the nation. A lower caste auto driver will happily accept a quota, if his son graduating next year can get an admission/job based on that, irrespective of what that quota does to the nation.

To the outsider (or the observant insider), our politics might be mind-numbingly corrupt, illogical and completely chaotic. And yet, if we agree to the above premise, it is reasonably straight forward to understand why our political parties are as they are. Indian politics has to favor the political majority and since the immediate demands of the political majority, unfortunately, is heavily loaded in favor of keeping such people in the political majority, the cycle is vicious.

And I have realized, I am in a political minority.

41 books in 2011

2012-01-04T10:11:00.000+08:00

2011 saw me reading 41 books, which is down 18% from 2010's tally of 50 books. However, I am glad that I managed to do all this reading, while taking on new hobbies in 2011 (which shall be detailed in a separate post.)

Best authors of 2011:

Stieg Larsson: Clearly the best in terms of story, characters, suspense.
Rohinton Mistry: Absolutely amazing characters - stunning drama and great attention to detail.
Sunil Gavaskar: His books gives a great perspective into the era of India Cricket which was pretty much unknown to people of me, and perhaps to my generation as a whole.
John Grisham: Good old Grisham, still fascinates me with his writing. Haven't got bored of him yet.

Shelfari: Book reviews on your book blog

COL comparions SIN vs BLR

2011-11-07T12:20:00.000+08:00

I am going to be posting about Cost of Living (COL) comparisons between Singapore & Bangalore on various things. The background is that I am hearing a lot of mixed reports about Bangalore's cost of living. Some saying it is becoming very costly. Others believe it is still cheap. The idea is to get some numbers.

Day 1:

Ride from Airport to Home:
In Bangalore: Rs. 726.
Direct Conversion: SGD: 28
PPP Conversion: SGD 72.6 (assuming PPP exchange rate of 10)
In S'pore, ride from Airport to Jurong: SGD 29.00+ (as per gothere.sg)
(reasonable comparison since my house in Blore is at other end of the town)
Analysis: With a direct conversion itself, it is just about matching, with PPP, Bangalore is quite costly.
Verdict: Bangalore is costly.

Commute from BG Road to Tin Factory By Volvo:
In Bangalore: Rs. 65+ (two legs of Rs. 10 each and one leg of Rs. 45)
Direct Conversion: SGD 1.60
PPP Conversion: SGD 6.5
In S'pore, ride from Sengkang to Jurong: SGD 1.69 (by bus. By Train is 2.02)
(Reasonable Comparison distance wise)
Analysis: With a direct conversion itself, it is just about matching, with PPP, Bangalore is quite costly.
Verdict: Bangalore is costly.

Meetha Pan:
In Bangalore: Rs. 7
Direct Conversion: SGD 0.20
PPP Conversion: SGD 0.70
In Singapore: SGD 1 (There is a guy selling Paans in Little India)
Analysis: Bangalore is cheaper by both PPP & Direct Comparison
Verdict: Bangalore is cheaper.

A reasonably scary evening

2011-11-06T14:27:00.000+08:00

Right then, having had a comfortable sleep, now is the time to write about the 2 hours last evening that had me pretty worried..

First, the background was that I was to catch a flight last night to come to Bangalore a spend a few days with my parents. As always, I packed up in time and headed out to the Airport with my wife in tow to see me off. We took the bus to the airport, and in the middle of the journey, when bus 27 exited from the expressway and still some way to go to airport (I didn't realize that it doesn't use the expressway all the way to Changi), I decided to switch to a taxi to save valuable time (I wanted to be in time to get my standard emergency exit seat) and we alighted at next stop, shifted to a taxi.

Mid way into it, a car in front off us decided to sway into our lane with little notice, and on express way, at 90 kmph speeds, and had it not been our alert cab driver, we would have rear ended the car in front and I should have been a grievously injured man, if not dead. That was averted.

We reached Changi, alight and when it came to paying up, I realized I didn't have my wallet. I surely had it at the exit from the bus (I swiped at exit), and I was sure I checked my purse for the taxi fare while in the taxi (I was wrong), so we look around the whole taxi to no avail. Bewildered, I send my wife back into the taxi to the place we boarded to check if I misplaced it there. (Apart from the fact that getting a lost wallet is generally tough, getting it in the nick of the time for the flight looked impossible, but what was the harm in trying.)

While my wife was heading back, I take my luggage and try checking in (thankfully, the ticket wasn't in my wallet), but turns out they can't check me in because they need the credit card I booked with for verification and I didn't have the card because that was in the wallet. So, I am nervously waiting for my wife to report on the wallet and the time was ticking for the check-in counter to close.

My wife reaches the point, sees no wallet there, and asks around and miraculously, a man was sitting there, waiting a good 20 minutes for somebody to come by and pick it up. My wife and the taxi driver profusely thank him, she reports this on the phone to me and heads back to the airport with the wallet.

With about 10 minutes to check-in closure, she reaches and we are back in check-in queue (the queue is because of other flights sharing the same check-in row) and we ask the staff to help us be on time, but they assure us that I should be in time and the queue will be cleared by the deadline. It does. I feel fortunate.

Now, when I am finally at check-in, it turns out that I am NOT carrying the credit card with which I booked it. (I had feared as much in the intervening minutes and the staff had assured me that if that happened, they will charge the card I had and refund the older credit to me, but the fear was time running out.) The staff and me are trying to figure out a solution when she tells me that if I could tell the last four digits of the card, she can still complete verification. Thankfully my mother in law, who decide to stay home, was at hand to retrieve the card at home, give me this information and let me check in. I feel fortunate again that my mother in law decided to rest back at home.

By now, I was spooked. Was this a day where signs were being given of an impending disaster? Was the flight going to crash? I started recalling all the episodes of the Aircrash Investigations to revise the dos and don'ts of the crash etc (check life jacket, check emergency exit opening, don't inflate life jacket before having clear path to surface, etc).

I clear all other procedures, take my seat and the captain announces that we are expecting turbulence an hour into our journey. By now, I was quite spooked, certain of a disaster. The flight is delayed, first for 5 minutes, then 10 and they were investigating technical issues (which doesn't help when you are worried about Death or TPD, as the insurance salesmen tell you) and finally 25 minutes into the delay, they announce that they are shifting us to a different aircraft.

That was when I tweeted about it. I am generally not a nervous traveller, but you put a few ominous things ahead of it and I can get quite nervous. I was silently praying for a safe arrival home.

Thankfully, that tweet was the about the turning point. Everything from there on was a spot-on experience. After the inevitable delay, the flight took off. By now, the captain told us that no turbulence was expected now because of the ground delay. The flight was silky smooth, the immigration procedures at Bangalore was tiring (due to the queue and the late hour) but smooth nevertheless. The taxi ride to my parents' home was again uneventful.

I have to downright admit that SIA's service quality amidst all this was about excellent. They had a snack box waiting between the aircraft changes. Our in-flight service was friendly and good, albeit a bit late because it took some time for the crew to get their bearings with the aircraft change. Nevertheless, really really good experience. No complaints. Whatsoever.

Secondly, I was very happy with the company I got. A smiling Sardarjee, who was returning from Jakarta after a business trip put me at ease with very interesting conversations about a lot of things. There is more to say about that, but I am keeping it for some other time.

Thirdly, thanks to those who tweeted and enquired about the situation after seeing my tweet (you know who you are). The moral support was invaluable.

An example of financial wizardry a.k.a Conning (by finexis sales agent)

2011-09-04T10:11:00.001+08:00

A few weeks back, I met a guy from this company called finexis at Sengkang MRT where the company was running a stall to promote their financial services products. I was hoping to start some investments locally and decided to get deeper into the schemes.

For starters, I had told the guy, whom we shall call E for convenience and to protect his identity, that I want n investment arrangement where I am hoping to make money, not make finexis money, which is what most investment schemes are really geared to do. From my Indian experience, ULIPs are exactly that - investment vehicles created to help the insurance company and the agents make money while you get leftovers, if any.

Meeting 1:

E went on to explain how finexis has only one arrangement which works this way - you invest a fixed amount (starting at $250) every month; you do this for 25 years; the pool at the end of the 18 months is locked for 25 years, but everything you invest after that is something you can withdraw anytime after that. Charges are: 1.5% of the holding per quarter, with it capped at 1.5% of 18th month holding from the 7th quarter onwards (basically, after 18 months, you are paying based on what you accumulated in 18 months.)

The investments go through Friend's Provident (FP), which then invests in mutual funds, which then invests in the markets. You get the drift - you are basically investing in markets, but through layers of financial companies. These charges are for FP only, who are basically going to share the fees with finexis, which is basically an agent for FP. The actual fund house would charge admin fees, but since that is something I understood reasonably well, I was most concerned about the charges FP was levying.

Now, I told E that that sounded ridiculous - why would I pay 6% per year just to FP & finexis, and he promised me that it really not 6% but less than 1% of the investment you make. I couldn't understand, but he promised me that that is the case. I told him that I want this to be shown on an excel spreadsheet, but he said he couldn't do it because the actual charges depended on stock market performance and hence couldn't be put on paper. I walked away from this meeting unconvinced about the charges.

Meeting 2:

I give my concerns that loss of liquidity and the uncertainty about charges makes it impractical for me, and hence I don't think I should invest. He explains to me that my concerns are just misgivings, and nothing more. The funds are known to beat other fund houses by 3-4% a year and hence the charges are totally worth it. So, I turn to estimation, open up an excel sheet and start throwing in numbers there. I am linking to it here for convenience. In essence, the charges turn out to be 9% of your investment amount for investments made after the 18th month (0.5% monthly of 18 x your monthly investment - since by 18th month, you would have holdings that are 18 x monthly investment). 9%. Let me repeat it - 9%. In effect, FP & finexis together is charging a 9% sales charge, which is exclusive of the fund house charges.

Individual Analysis (when E wasn't around):

For the first 4 years, you will remain under the earnings made by a normal fund. Then it takes over. But hold on, did the original assumption we started out with - that the funds under FP perform 12% a year and those not under it perform at 8.4% a year - really stay true? Did the funds perform so well in the past. So I take a list of the funds offered (those by Black Rock, Templeton etc) and walk across to my POSB banker and check with him. Turns out that the exact same funds are available through POSB for a flat slaes charges of 1.5-3% (depending on whether you invest one time or set up a regular savings plan.)

Call with E:

I told E that I am not interested. The sales charges are just turning out to be ridiculous and the loss of liquidity is the final nail. Somehow E convinces me to meet him one more time. Just out of courtesy, I meet him once more.

Meeting 3:

He tries to convince me that the charges are once again less than 1%. I am getting a bit agitated. I told him that I worked this out once - and in front of him - so what has changed. He tells me that I should divide the 9% over 25 years since I will actually keep making money for 25 years. I tell him that I can apply the same logic to POSB's charges are still enjoy the better charges. It took me a couple of iterations to explain this to him - he was either too stupid not to see the mathematics or acting too ignorant. Either case is a bad sign for somebody who wishes to be my investment manager.

Then he tells me that discipline in investment is a good thing (clearly his options with less liquidity, and POSB's with infinite flexibility somehow caused the investor to be more discipline.) At this point I was going tired and I told him to keep this logic to himself that I thought it is exceptionally stupid to pay 3 times the charges to a company so that they can offer you less liquidity. And in fact if the idea is discipline, then just say it as a damn "discipline charge" rather than go around in circles.

Finally, when I wasn't convinced with any of his argument, he offers me the option to just buy the damn funds at 3% flat sales charge. At this point, my agitation was turning into anger and my volume had started to inch up (we were in a coffee shop and I was restraining myself from going flat out) and I said something to this effect:

For 3 meetings, I have been telling you about my concern of charges and you tell me that this is the only option and is best for me, so in effect you were doing nothing except to mislead me into investing into something that was outright wrong. I have been telling you that I don't like the lock-in and you wanted me to invest in something that was more locking in than other funds. Even if you now offered me something at less charges than your competitor did, I wouldn't invest through you since what you tried was to con me. Even if I ever invested through finexis, if they could ever win my trust, you will never be the man through whom I will do it.

Saying that I stormed out.

Summary:

What sounds like a small number of 1.5% can turn out to be ridiculously high when these financial whizkids figure out how to disguise it. To their credit, or rather to the credit of regulators, they are at least telling you rather than burying it into fine print. That is enough of an opportunity for you to move in and do the grudge work of the calculation.

Having known how many very well educated people invested in ULIPs in India, which were nothing but conning schemes, and that too a poorly disguised ones and nobody cared to stop and think and compare, I am sure that E and such people will still get customers. I don't want to be one such person and I am hoping that this blog will encourage a few more of you to do due diligence before parting with our hard earned money.

As a parting summary, be careful of finexis. This might be a case of an one off sales guy, but there is no harm in erring on the side of caution. I have been dealing through POSB for mutual fund investments for 6 months now (where you can invest $100 or above monthly and the sales charges are presently 0 amounts less than $500 per month, but is expected to be revised at the end of 2011) and they have so far been very transparent and in my assessment, very fair. In fact, the banker I deal with, openly tells me when not to proceed with investments and if there are any options to do the same operation cheaper (one-off investments online are being discounted by 1.25-3.25% as of now). So far so good.

[update: Based on the feedback I sent to the Finexis guys through the form on their site, with a link to this blog, the compliance officer from Finexis got back to me to understand more of the episode. I explained to him, and on recorded assurance that the concerned agent won't come to harm, he took down the details, and promised to send the person for further training to ensure that such things don't get repeated and got back to me with a new person who is more experienced and shall be able to advise me better.]

Some thoughts on Anna Hazare & Jan Lokpal Bill

2011-08-25T13:56:00.001+08:00

What a fantastic movement this is turning out to be! Never before has a single civic issue been brought so much to the fore and with so much force as this one, at least not to my memory. I am sure many commentators have already spoken at length about the merits and demerits of each of the many versions of the bill in current circulation. I am not plugged in enough, not being in India, to make a statement either way. So, I will stick to a few general thoughts. Take it with a pinch of salt.

Never before have I seen so much following for something that does not have either a caste, religious or a regional connotation. If nothing else, this movement should be hailed for bringing together people for a cause beyond their own boundaries.

It is absolutely admirable that violence hasn't happened in these movements. I have written in the past about frustrations about non-peaceful public congregations and the peaceful nature of these congregations is a very good achievement, in my humble opinion. It shouldn't take much for political parties to destabilize the peace by using their cronies to incite violence. Why hasn't it happened? I expected it? I am pleasantly surprised.

The fact that Govt. tried presenting a bill that is actually useless doesn't surprise me. What surprises me is that why didn't they accept the JLP and then malign it beyond recognition through the parliamentary process while diffusing the movement? The cynic in me believed they would. They didn't. I am not sure who should I thank for this.

Sucheta Dalal, writes on her twitter stream:

kingfisher flight 4132 at Belgaum airport: captain announces flight is delayed because 2 MPs r on way to airport: THIS IS WHY WE NEED LOKPAL

No, you idiot. This is not why we need Lokpal. We need Lokpal to fight corruption, not egos and power struggles. Don't get carried away please.

I am concerned about saying patriotic Indian slogans allows anybody to fight any argument about any bill remotely attached to the actual national cause. The fact that well educated Indians just decide to drop in a slogan instead of an actual argument is deeply disturbing.

Just because somebody doesn't pay taxes in India (NRIs), or doesn't vote in India (millions of resident Indians too for various reasons) doesn't mean that their argument(s) is/are wrong. In fact, if a sound argument came from a foreigner, does ignoring it make it non-sound? Again, the fact that well educated Indians indulge in this instead of properly arguing a point is deeply disturbing.

When the Gujarat Riots happened in 2002, it left a lasting distaste for BJP. Even then, I never really believed Congress was the party that could take us anywhere - and unfortunately, it seems my intuition was true. Apart from their gross mistakes in Gujarat in 2002, was BJP a better party in power than Congress is today? Are they up to challenge Congress in near future? Is it time to reconsider BJP for future? Or is there an alternate party or a coalition that can not only take centre-stage but govern the country better than Congress? Will this movement germinate a lasting political legacy for India?

Finally, one of my frustrations while living in India was that our current young generation seems to be conditioned to not care too much about the laws of the land or the rules of a society. Breaking traffic rules, using "jack" or "influence", breaking queues etc are some examples - things that are easy to observe and higher in magnitude in India than in other more-developed countries. This movement seems to indicate that Indians won't tolerate external corruption, but would it also mean anything for their own personal corruption? Would they refrain from inciting corruption when it suits them? Or is this just a convenient way of wanting others to be perfect but carrying on with their own lives as if nothing needs to be changed?

Think about these points.

Remembering Saddi Dilli

2011-07-22T19:48:00.000+08:00

Today marks twenty years since my family moved lock, stock and barrel to Delhi. Me, my parents and my grandfather arrived in Tamil Nadu express from Madras at New Delhi Railway Station (back then it was just Old Delhi and New Delhi Railway Stations that were worth a mention) and started off a new phase in our lives. For my parents, it was a change, but not too great - after all, they had spent 3 years in Jammu in the 70s and had had their fair share of travelling to the north and mingling with the communities.

For me, however, it was THE change. Moving out of the cocoons of living in Madras and being surrounded by TamBrahm setup everywhere, moving to Delhi and setting myself into a whole new world was overwhelming for me. I hadn't lived through a winter yet. I did not know schools had canteens (back then, canteens weren't popular in Madras schools) and I couldn't speak much of the primary local language.

Cutting a long personal story short, here is what I would like to recall the most:

The first few years were a struggle. An overenthusiastic and over-talkative kid can find it difficult in an environment where most don't understand what you are speaking to the extent that it can drive you nuts - at least one school teacher announced to the class in my absence that I WAS nuts!
But then, once I got through that, Delhi has given me some of my best memories. Absolutely brilliant memories.
It has given me exposure to a truly metropolitan environment, where everybody was truly welcome. If you could communicate with the guy in front of you, that was enough - whether you were a Dravidian or a TamBrahm or a Jat or anything else didn't matter. Everybody kept cognizance of your background, but I can safely say from my own experience - nobody acted on it, and that was enough for me.
It gave me a college degree and life long friends from that phase of my life. There are few other gangs (or Circles as Google Plus would lead us to believe) that I find myself totally at home than my college mates from SGTB Khalsa college days.
Last, but in no way the least, it has given me my wonderful wife - whom I met on a bus ride during college days. I married her at Delhi.

Cheers to Delhi - or shall I say Saddi Dilli!

Conservative thinking anyone?

2011-07-15T23:57:00.000+08:00

A little over 100 days have passed since India lifted the world cup cricket 2011. It was a great occasion and one for Indian fans to rejoice, and what more, the Indian team seem to have done it rather easily. Yet, I bet there were very with reasonable understanding of cricket who could have openly claimed that India were guaranteed to win the finals. What more, there were tense moments where it seemed all was going wrong. So, the reasonable thing to do in such a situation is to say that the match is equally balanced and hope and pray that the team you support goes on to win the match.

In the above spirit, I believed that if anybody believed that India winning this match was a foregone conclusion, either they were foolish or arrogant, but to my surprise almost all tweets and FB updates I read indicated the contrary - that India was currently a country of super charged Indian fans only waiting for the formalities to complete before celebrating. So, I made a few tweets about my view - that we shouldn't take anything for granted - but what I got back from my network was a barrage of comments - all with a fairly arrogant tone - to the effect that I was being stupid and unsupportive of Indian team. I thought we live in strange times where being cautious is no more in fashion and being arrogant of one's or one's country's cricket teams prowess is in the in thing. It sounded strange.

Then, I read this rather interesting article "The better tomorrow?" by Sidin Vadukut, a very good writer of comic articles, but an excellent writer of articles demanding serious attention, and I am not the only thinking on those lines. The current generation of young Indians, of which I don't belong anymore as I have crossed the dreaded threshold of 3 decades since birth, doesn't want to think, want to pick their sides and then just shout (or bleed) themselves to death trying to defend the point. Sad. Very sad.

Choice quotes from his article:

These are young people. Some of them are still in college. Presumably they are literate enough to read and intelligent enough to think.

Yet they are incapable of disagreeing gracefully. They are incapable of reconciling with the fact that another person can have a different set of priorities. You are either with these people. Or you are against them.

Our tomorrow looks awfully, terribly entwined in our yesterday.

50 books in 2010

2011-01-07T13:30:00.000+08:00

I am guessing I can call myself a bibliophile now that I have read 50 books in the past year, 2010. Here is the path to the half century:

Shelfari: Book reviews on your book blog
Find new books and literate friends with Shelfari, the online book club.

I believe it has been the highlight of 2010 for me. How many of these have you read? Or otherwise, how many did you read in 2010? Leave a comment.

Thanks to all those who lent books to me, who recommended these books to me through blogs, word-of-mouth or social network posts and to the following places where I sourced most of my books:

Flipkart
Pothi.com (where I sourced a couple of self-published books and read them, as I resolved in the beginning of 2010)
National Library, Singapore (whose $53 membership has been abused through books, CDs and DVDs.)

Economics of a Rikshaw Puller in Delhi

2010-12-21T13:35:00.000+08:00

On my recent trip to Delhi, I had the opportunity to travel in a cycle rickshaw (the Metro-town connections are still not good in some places like Dwarka) and I chatted up with all the rickshaw pullers I engaged with to try and understand their economic condition.

Turns out that they earn anywhere between Rs. 100 and Rs. 150 per day. Assuming an average of Rs. 125, they end up earning Rs. 3750 per month. Their monthly rents vary between Rs. 800-Rs. 1100 a month. Again, an average of about Rs. 1000 for accommodation and a Rs. 1000 for food (around the consensus figure) and some miscellaneous expenses, leaves them saving about Rs. 1200 per month. The guys I spoke to, shared their income with their families back home, but they admitted that end up sending something around Rs. 1000 a month for their families. So, as per my suspicion, it doesn't leave much for their families to survive on, forget the option of providing a brighter future for their children.

Those who had families in Delhi struggled even more with the incomes that they wished that their families could stay back in villages.

There was however one silver lining. All of them I spoke to, end up renting the rickshaws from the owner. That rent alone is about Rs. 30 per day. This amount includes the cost of a rickshaw plus any major repairs that might be needed, but any minor repairs will have to be borne by the puller himself. The owner also provides for 3 off-days, whether you take it or leave it, which means he has to pay only for 27-28 days of rent in a month. If you factor that in, that is Rs. 840 a month that the rickshaw puller could potentially save.

The average cost of a Rickshaw is anywhere between Rs. 8000-9000, which can easily serve a puller for anywhere around 10 years, and probably more. This cost can be recovered from the rent he saves for a year. So, for the next 9 years, he gets to save something around Rs. 750 more (I am setting aside Rs. 90 a month towards the expense of "major" repairs) per month for 9 years. That effectively increases the net income for the family back in the village by 75% potentially paving the way for a brighter future for the next generation.

Then, if the above mathematics looks reasonable to you, then you will agree that this funding fits the bill for a micro-finance institution, like RangDe, to step in. It is well within the standard investment levels they make. The return payments for the first year can be the rent that they are already used to and then once the repayment is done in full, the rickshaw is for the pullers to use.

Any hurdles? Yes. Lobbies. The rickshaw owners (the ones who rent out the rickshaws) are sort of local overlords with deep connections into the local political circuit. They wouldn't want these pullers to become self-sufficient, since it kills their golden geese. So, what is needed for RangDe to function in this space is a field partner that can potentially counter the owners through educating the rickshaw pullers and providing them with logistics help to make their experience smooth.

Will RangDe take up such an initiative? Anybody else?

(Disclaimer: The facts presented here are from a few interviews only, but there is enough consistency from different pullers and the lack of a motivation to lie about it, that I believe it is representative.)

(Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons.)

RangDe follow up at the end of the 2010

2010-12-07T11:22:00.000+08:00

In April this year, I wrote about how you can distribute any investments you make on RangDe and in effect reduce your risk of defaults. I was convinced this arrangement was very close to the right mix for anybody wishing to make investments. So, I had started toying around with the idea of gradually investing to see how the money came back and figure out any other thorny issues that could arise.

I am glad to announce that I have made a total of 104 investments amounting to Rs. 32,000 so far, almost all of it happening within the past 9-10 months. Out of this, Rs. 4,600 is through re-investments with direct inputs of Rs. 27,400. I have now stabilized around contributing Rs. 5000 every month, which funds about 10-15 entrepreneurs. The money generally comes back in 12 months, and so on an average, expect about 7-8% of your total investment to come back every money and hence available for re-investments.

What does these numbers mean? On an average, most Indian rural entrepreneurs ask (or get approved for) about Rs. 5000-7500 meaning that this amount might have touched 5-6 people's funding requirements. They might have grown out of the clutches of the money lender, albeit only for a bit.

In general, there is no dearth for enterprising folks in rural India, but they are severely handicapped by the lack of funding and infrastructure. Towards the funding issue, a peer-to-peer lending arrangement charging about 8% simple interest from the entrepreneurs looks like a good arrangement for me. If I did not do this, this money would be lying around in a bank, EPF, PPF account on utilized in the stock market, probably growing at a better rate (the effective money that the lender gets back is 2.5%, the rest goes to RangDe and the field partners), but the satisfaction in contributing towards "Knocking out poverty", which is RangDe's tagline seemed too tempting to pass. Hence the consistent association.

Did I bother when there was the controversy regarding MFIs and suicides? Somewhat, but when I started reading, I realized that much of it seemed related to pure-MFIs at play, like SKS, and not with Peer-to-peer lending arrangements like RangDe (though it could spread out, but let's forget it for now) and with enough vested interests from the moneylender lobby, who stand to gain when a controversy erupts against MFIs, I decided to apply my judgment and instinct to decide that I want to continue supporting MFIs. I could be proven wrong, but that's a risk one has to take.

How did I arrive at the Rs. 5000 p.m. investment number? At around SGD5 per meal on an average per day for lunch, I spend SGD100 per month. If you add in the cost for my teh-halia-kurang-mani-takeaway (ginger tea, less sugar, take away), Rs. 5000 is what I end up feeding myself just during the day for a month. Surely, if the same amount can be put to somebody's good use, why not? It also seemed morally prudent to contribute back to the society rather than increase my own standard of living, so instead of upgrading myself to SGD10 meals per day, I would chose spending it on improving somebody's life. Makes sense, doesn't it?

What next? I want the total investment I make to Rs. 100,000 which seems a few months away. Around that number, it seems that the paybacks will be enough to sustain a little micro-cycle of investments. At that point, I am going to review my strategy.

Anything else I learnt? To remember that this is not charity. This is using your money to improve somebody else' life and getting that money back. So, I consciously try to call the beneficiaries as entrepreneurs and not as borrowers, which seems right. They are taking money against a business purpose, be it cattle raising, vegetable selling etc, and not for marrying off their daughters or on hooch. And I want to respect that intent. I wished everybody else looked at it the same way.

EPFO: Urgent need for reforms

2010-11-04T10:48:00.000+08:00

The good old Employees Provident Fund Organization (EPFO), which has successfully enabled a comfortable retirement of millions of middle class professionals in India for generations is in desperate need of a serious round of reforms. For the uninitiated, EPFO is the primary agency for providing social security in India. Your employer deducted a percentage (around 12-13%) of your salary, added their own contribution, sent it to the EPFO and when you retired, EPFO gave that and the interest it gained back to you. It also allowed you to take out loans out of that contribution for certain, specific needs, such as a down payment for a house or marrying off your children.

All is good, right? No. The devil is in the details. Let me throw some light on the problems and see what we can do about this.

The first problem is that EPFO assumes that the relationship between you and your company (that of employment) is a constant. It worked for the past 60 years where people worked in the same company for their lifetimes (my father did), but it is a woefully misplaced assumption in today's world (I have been through 5 employers in my 7th year of employment). The EPFO current records your account on the basis of a company/employee basis. So if you joined a new company, you started off a new company/employee account and requested to transfer your funds from the previous account. This is unnecessary. The accounts should be opened in the name of individuals and let the companies ask for that account number and let them credit the money there. This will also solve the problem where the companies have to expend energies dealing with PF accounts which can be put to better use.
The EPFO allowed companies to either manage the corpus themselves (through trust funds) or let the EPFO do it. This choice, hoping that trusts would do a better job in handling the money and fetch better returns, I guess, was the reason why accounts were company/employee based and not individual based. In the new world, where the average size of employers is coming down, this privilege can be used by none other than a few employers (read Govt of India, Indian Railways.) It might be time to rethink this arrangement - do we need it? If so, then let the EPFO make special deals with those employers and work it out - no need to saddle the rest of the country with structural liabilities because of this.
Currently, if a company wishes to liquidate, they have to spend time dealing with transferring the PF accounts of all former-employees to their new employers. This is a unnecessary waste of resources. With the above suggestion of opening accounts in individual names, this problem should go away.
The option of "Withdrawing" your PF contribution if you leave your company should be scrapped. I understand that you want to use your PF contribution in case you are jobless, but the current options allows you to do it even when you are just shifting jobs. I understand that you are taxed when you withdraw, but that seems a retro-fit arrangement for a broken system. Here is what EPFO should do:

If you are re-employed within say 3 months, no withdrawals allowed.
If you are not re-employed within the first 3 months, then you should be allowed to withdraw parts of your contribution every month. What that percentage is, can be debated, and I am going with half your last drawn basic salary.
Since you are not withdrawing the entire amount, taxing this is pretty much useless - so let is just be non-taxed. As it is the individual is unemployed, why bother taxing him on the output? If the Govt. feels that this is abused, then they can let this be taxed as any other income.
As soon as one gets a new job, and the EPFO receives a contribution from the new employer for this individual, stop letting the employee withdraw any more money from his account.

And lastly, the EPFO is the perfect example of lack of transparency. Individuals cannot easily find their balance. What if the company hasn't been making the contributions as promised? There is some talk about online access to accounts, but it is normally a few months old figure. What if your company fudged it in the last few months? In the age where even small financial companies let you see every transaction in real time, the largest social security organization in India giving out months old information is purely unacceptable.
Also, individuals should be able to make voluntarily contributions directly to the EPFO. Currently, this goes through the employer, but for the same reasons mentioned above, this doesn't make sense. Individuals should be able to walk up to the EPFO counter and drop a cheque (or do it online.)
Strangely enough, the PPF scheme administered by SBI and others in India, has solved all these problems. It doesn't seem like such a bad idea to let the EPFO to be administered exactly like that with slight modifications (like having a Rs. 70000 limit as is currently applicable in PPF accounts.)
Lastly, as we have caught the attention of the PPF scheme, the limit of Rs. 70000 looks really really old. That number needs to go up, in step with the increased income levels - it is a very useful scheme.

I understand that the above doesn't cover all the edge cases, but I guess it could prove to be a starting point for a healthier EPFO - which is a necessity and not a luxury. Hope the EPFO does something about it.

(ps: Very interesting stub on wikipedia on the challenges faced by the EPFO - a must read addendum.)

Bithoor and some notes on the Ayodhya matter

2010-10-02T13:52:00.002+08:00

I am sure you must have heard about the Ayodhya verdict - one which has attempted to resolve a long standing dispute between Hindus & Muslims about the Ram Janmabhoomi/Babri Masjid site. Thankfully enough, the verdict was considered fair enough that all the parties have maintained civility and peace in a nation not so well know for civility.

But, do you know Bithoor? Bithoor is a small village of purportedly great significance to Hindus - it is believed that Lord Brahma sat there and created the universe and hence it is considered the "center of universe" or Brahmavarta. Unless you studied in IITK, which is incidentally located close enough to Bithoor and located far enough from almost all other places resembling recreation, and hence forced to visit it over a bicycle ride or a scooter ride (as my parents did when they came to visit me at IITK after borrowing it from my senior Vaibhav Krishna), there is little chance you might have heard about it.

Apart from the religious significance, there is also some historical significance, specially in association with India's freedom struggle with stays by Rani Lakshmi Bai and Baji Rao Peshwa II during their attempts to free the country. So, one would assume that it would be a well maintained tourist and religious attraction, right? Of course not.

The last I visited it, it was in total shambles with little or no maintenance. Nobody (ASI or the Hindu Mahasabha) had promoted it or bothered to put up informational signs. The way to reach there from say the nearest railway station or airport was extremely chaotic. The Ganges, which flows by it is as dirty as you can expect it to be after it accepts the dirtiest and most polluted by-products of human inhabitation and that inhabitation's attempt to survive through industries which are inconsiderate to everything except short term survival.

Bithoor is but one example of such neglected places. Try taking a bath in the Ganges at Haridwar (the last I attempted it in 1998 left me with skin rashes for 6 months) or try staying hygienic in one of the other places of Hindu pilgrimage and you will know what I mean.

The Hindu Mahasabha has spent tons of money and time to fight out the Ayodhya case, and still, has little inclination to improve such places. Why? Just because there is a dispute with Muslims, Ram Janmabhoomi is more important than other places of worship? You probably guess where I am going here. Ayodhya isn't about religions, but it is about politicians. Ayodhya isn't about worship, but about the hunt for power. It is just a means for firing up the emotions of countless Hindus and Muslims, even sacrificing a few at the altar, just so that certain others can either gain or hold power.

And just to complete the picture, if you believe that this politicizing is only at the Hindu end, think twice. I am sure there are Masjids around the country being neglected as money was poured by the Waqf board to fight for the Babri Masjid.

Such is our society. And unfortunately, apart from declining to participate in the hypocrisy, there is little else you, and I, can do.

Book Review: Listening to grasshoppers

2010-09-13T11:01:00.000+08:00

A few days back, I had a rather interesting debate with an acquaintance on whether people like Arundhati Roy contributed to the society or not. For me, up to that point, she represented a perfect cynic. One who shouted at the top of her voice about a few issues. I would have rather preferred somebody who acted in a way that contributed to the well being of the society. To be frank, I was wrong. Totally wrong. There is a place for people like Roy, who are going to bring a objective view of things, considerations that are often clouded by commercial pressures in mainstream media. We need people like Roy to gain respect, not for being sensationalist, but for being objective and hence demanding the answers to troubling questions. I guess we very much need people like her.

But before I get there, let me complete the context. My good friend Deppe wrote a blog (from where I have shamelessly copied the title, but the fact remains that he also just copied it from a book's title. :-) ) about one of Roy's books. Deppe being a guy who has earned my respect, could not be ignored and hence I trudged along to the nearest public library which housed that book and started reading.

Coming back to the book - Listening to Grasshoppers, field notes on democracy, couldn't have been a better eye-opener - both to Arundhati's views and to the dark aspects of Indian democracy. Coming from a skeptical angle, Roy, supported by exceptionally well crafted arguments, couldn't have convinced me of her thoughts in a better fashion. Story after story, she has strung together all aspects, leaving little to imagination, covering for the thoughts of the devil's advocate, that I must admit I am very close to becoming a fan of her writings.

And many of the topics are eye-opening, beyond my best imaginations:

I always presumed, wrongfully though, that activists were fighting against Afzal Guru's hanging because they were against the death sentence. But as I read in the book, it has nothing to do with it but about about lack of evidence and a compelling story.
Gujarat riots of 2002 shall always remain a dark chapter in India's story of this decade, and yet, reading about it in her book only makes your even more angrier that you already were.
How our media is less about the news, but about sensationalism, was no news to me. Yet providing instances of how bad they really are, makes it a compelling read.
The chapter on genocides, both within India and across the globe over the years, is a fantastic chapter. I don't want to describe how great it was - just go and read it.
The chapter on Y.K. Sabharwal, former chief justice of India and the controversy surrounding him, his sons and real estate in Delhi is the kind of revelation that makes your blood boil. The icing on the cake was the fact that "contempt of court" was used a wide net not just to not take action against the accused but also to gag and jail the journalists involved.

But the individual chapters are just a few landmarks, the real meat is in the journey along the way, with Roy combining prose and passion to attack what we consider an ordered democratic society. (I never fully believed that, but at least supported the general sentiment that we were heading there, but now I am forced to rethink the stance - maybe we aren't really anywhere on that path.) All in all, a very worthwhile read for anybody interested in learning more how the darker side of Indian democracy manifests itself.

(ps: Deppe's blog reviewing the same book is also recommended.)

Pakistan Floods & the donation conundrum

2010-09-08T08:03:00.000+08:00

I guess this should come as no news that Pakistan is reeling under one of worst floods seen in recent history. It is also no secret that for a agriculture-centric country like Pakistan, losing vast tracts of lands, even temporarily, to floods is no less than devastating. "Devastated" is also an apt word, with little loss of meaning or magnitude, to describe the plight of millions of poor affected by the same.

While it might take months, if not years, for normalcy to return to their lives, it is imperative that they get the generous support of everybody who can contribute, so that at least their immediate needs (food, protection from diseases, basic shelter) are met. More would be needed at a later of point of time to rebuild their lives.

By the grace of God, I have a little bank balance now, after years of struggling with having to start a financial life from scratch and to deal with bad investments (a.k.a Bangalore real estate.) So I decided to contribute some money to the cause. Now, comes the real conundrum. Even if I consider it trivial to decide how much to contribute (multiply your standard weekend expenses of [eating out/partying/travelling] by two and it serves as a good starting point), it is a significantly complex problem to decide how to contribute.

The more pertinent question, in my mind, is that what portion of what I send will actually reach those in need. It is of course natural that such efforts have over head and hence I expect a small absorption of costs towards logistics, and so one would want to chose an agency with minimum overheads. But in a land like Pakistan, very much like India, that is rife with corruption and opportunists, overheads of the logistics front pale in comparison to the overheads of the leakage and corruption types.

What is a guarantee that the agency you pick up won't divert all the money to their own coffers? Or a significant percent of it? or the agency doesn't, but the multitude of the middlemen involved siphon off a part? If they do so, what percentage of a "cut" seems acceptable? Rajiv Gandhi said, and his son Rahul reaffirmed that, as much as 85% of government allocation to social measures is lost on the way. So, if the real leakage is 85%, would you be willing to contribute?

In the past, I have often shied away from relief contributions, mostly because I have never found satisfactory answers to these questions, which is why all my contributions to the society is routed through the micro-investment route. But micro-investments is just not an apt method of contributing to natural disaster relief.

In this case, I decided to bite the bullet and contribute, setting aside my fears of my money being lost in transit, so to say, because even after the transit, if the amount reaches some beneficiary, whose life is saved or enriched, even for a few meals, because of my humble contribution, I shall take that gleefully as a blessing.

Even then, I chose to find a reputed institution that came with a recommendation - and in my case it was Imran Khan's flood relief fund, which came with a supporting appeal from CricInfo. By no means is this a certification that either Imran Khan or CricInfo are "clean" parties and that their views should be taken at face value, but neither of the two parties have any past history of financial indiscipline. So, Imran Khan it is, who I trust with my money to provide for his countrymen. I am told that they have raised GBP 240,000 which is being used to send trucks of basic food resources. Each truck costs GBP 1900 and has the ability to sustain 150 people for two weeks.

That said, the issue still remains unresolved in my head. What is the threshold for leakage, under which it is prudent to contribute to a relief cause? And what is the best way to identify a relief agency in case of a natural disaster? What is the best way to validate that the relief agency did not steal away your money? Is there an opportunity for some innovation here? Perhaps a non-intrusive and cost-effective way for tracking money during relief efforts?

And in the meanwhile, I plan to repeat my contributions to the relief efforts in Pakistan, because their need of bread and butter and shelter seems bigger than my need for answers.

Quick updates - Change of Jobs, Mukul Deva's books, Frasier etc

2010-09-01T21:47:00.000+08:00

I have somehow managed to stay away for so long from blogging despite having many thoughts that I wanted to put into words. In an attempt to break away from the rut, I will put together a few quick updates from my side.

As most of you might know by now, I have left Yahoo after almost 3 years with them and moved to Vocanic. It was quite a good experience working with some very talented people there while also being a part of a large family that gave support in more ways than one. It was probably the toughest departure of my life, but I believed, with strong conviction, that the time had come for such a move. I will have more to say about my experience there, but for now, I will close this by saying that I am very excited to be at Vocanic and looking forward to flexing my brains towards a different set of challenges there.

I have been reading a bit recently, but the most remarkable reads of the recent past has been the books "Lashkar" & "Salim must die" by Mukul Deva. Both are remarkably well written books. Well researched, racy and written with focus both on action and philosophy, the two books are precisely the kind of books I'd like to read from Indian authors in the future, not the kind of new age crap that is getting served out sometimes.

On the movies/TV front, I have managed to watch many seasons of Frasier, all picked from library@esplanade. I have always liked the show, but watching them back to back has left me liking the series even more and I believe that the 8.5 stars it is holding on to at imdb is totally justified.

In other news, I am somewhat disappointed that our cricket team had a rather dismal performance in a tournament so close, both in time as well as conditions aspects, to WC'11. Before any big tournament, the general hope is that their countrymen will lift the trophy and the Indian team have been arguably in the rough range where a few good performances could have led to a positive result and hence justifying the hope. This time, I am not sure if I should be hopeful at all. At this rate, any decent result (like reaching the SF) would be a very great achievement and winning seems too far away. But things could change. For the positive. Let us hope for the same.

I guess the consolation is that we do not seem to be as steeped in controversy as our brothers from across the border seem to be.

Meter Jam and my proposal to fix the Auto menace

2010-08-12T23:15:00.002+08:00

So, today was Meter Jam day in Bangalore, an attempt to protest against Auto drivers in Bangalore. (For the uninitiated friends of Singapore, you might know them as tuk-tuks.) It is a noble attempt and if I were in town, I would have definitely supported. But there was probably no need for me to do so anyway, since I was in a constant Meter-Jam-State (MTS) all through out my stay there. And the reason for being in MTS was not because I wanted to be in MTS, but simply because it was too demeaning to try and hire an Auto. I shouldn't have to tell my life history and still bargain the hell out of my brains just for doing something as mundane as commute from point A to point B.

I wish every success to Meter Jam, but a part of me feels it won't be successful. Rather than focus on explaining why "a part of me" arrived at that conjecture, let me proceed on to something radical - a theory on how the menace of overcharging and under-plying of Autos might actually be fixed.

Ban Auto-Stands.

And now that I have made you sit up - let me try to explain my thought. The way an Auto driver operates today is to wait for exactly the right fare that he wishes - be it to the right destination or be it the right price, and then waits at an Auto stand or at some crossroad till he gets comfortable enough to go. Now, if he is in a clearly defined Auto Stand (as against de facto stands that crop up in major cross roads), he is also swayed by the idea of standing with other drivers and forming a union-like structure where they can decide to charge as per their wishes.

The big incentive for the driver while waiting is that he is not spending anything except his time, which considering the average earnings of Auto drivers, is not costly, while the returns, in terms of a premium fare is fairly reasonable.

With the proposal I make, Auto drivers cannot stand anywhere, but they will be forced to keep plying empty till they don't find a fare. This way, the cost of not picking the next upcoming fare while waiting for the premium fare is not just the driver's time, but also the cost of running his vehicle in the meanwhile, which is significantly higher.

For the commuters, since the Autos are going to be driving around, there is every possibility they will find an Auto where they want one rather than having to find the nearest standing one. This is definitely a big plus for the commuters, apart from getting Autos who ply at the prescribed fares.

The pertinent question, then, is wouldn't it reduce the overall profit margins of all the drivers in the city and drive them to poverty? No. The simple reason being that once the Autos are willing to come down to plying at the prices set by the city and not demand any more, then more commuters would be happy to use their service instead of replacing it with he next available commute option and hence increasing the overall revenues for the drivers.

What's the source of this thought? Singapore taxis. The cabs in Singapore are not allowed, by law, to stop at any place. They are supposed to be driving around. And then it stuck me that it is a good ecosystem for both the drivers and commuters.

There are many other nice features of the cab ecosystem in Singapore that ensures the good service they provide, but I feel that if Indian city governments can bring about this one change and enforce it, then it has the potential to make a significant difference.

Any thoughts?

[ps: The 3 comments I see so far on this blog are also interesting. If you got a few more minutes, read them as well.]

[pps: After commenting on this blog, Deppe went a wrote a fresh blog which generated a lot of interesting thoughts. Check that out as well.]

Potatoes and Ravi Bhaiyya

2010-08-04T19:19:00.000+08:00

[Author's Note: This blog was originally written in Feb, 2010 on my tech blog by mistake and in the interest of consolidating my general blogs from the tech ones, I am migrating this here. ]

I was at the neighborhood NTUC and the wifey wanted to pick up potatoes. Now, every indian knows that potatoes are a key ingredient in Indian vegetarian cuisine and every time I make a visit to the vegetable store, potatoes are in the list, along with tomatoes and onions, of course. But to my surprise, there were no potatoes, not even one, zilch. That was an absolute shocker. As it is I have been cribbing about the potatoes being super costly in this Island, but not finding one was too much for me, and my wife's culinary future, which was now in uncertain land, to take. So, we threw caution to the winds, and our loyalty to NTUC up into smoke, and decided to hunt for potatoes elsewhere.

We finally found some not-so-good-looking-but-who-cares-for-vanity-in-an-emergency potatoes at a mom and pop store nearby and my wife's heart, which had stopped functioning the moment she saw the potato counter empty at the NTUC, started chirping away nice and easy.

But, once potatoes come into limelight, I have to relate the anecdote of a certain Ravi Bhaiyya. It was the year 1995, and I was still in high school when an unfortunate demise in the family had lead my parents to head to Chennai leaving me in Delhi. But they found Ravi Bhaiyya, who was brother of Omkar Bhaiyya, who was physiotherapist or Sharma Aunty, who was wife of Sharma Uncle, who was a long time friend and senior of my dad. Ravi Bhaiyya had just moved into the capital to pursue a career in theatre and he didn't mind baby sitting me for the time my parents were gone.

My parents assured me that Ravi Bhaiyya could cook and if I helped him out, things should be smooth sailing. Well, it wouldn't have been smooth had it not been for a tiny glitch - Ravi Bhaiyya COULD NOT cook any shit without potato. Seriously. He had to cut in, boil in or mash in potatoes into EVERY single edible thing he had ever created in the insides of anything resembling a kitchen. He could cook the potatoes with anything - tomatoes, onions, eggplant, cauliflower, cabbage and diversify the potatoes with dishes like Kashmiri Aloo, Dum Aloo, Dari wale Aloo and various other incarnations, but never without it. It got so bad that the neighborhood subziwala stopped selling us potatoes in the suspicion that we were hoarding them. Only our innocent faces and smiling demeanor prevented us from getting arrested.

And for somebody who was brought up on the concept of balanced diet and green vegetables and neo shit like that, I just couldn't take the potatoes. Thankfully, Ravi Bhaiyya had a great voice and he practiced his singing every now and then and his beautiful renditions of hindi songs of 60s and 70s, which I totally digged, smoothed me out. Else, I was gonna murder the dude, by stuffing his potatoes into his throat.

From Ravi Bhaiyya's favorite song:

Teri duniya se hoke mazboor chala
main bahut door bahut door bahut door chala

ps: Ravi Bhaiyya finally succeeded to get into mainstream theatre by the time of our last meeting, which was many years ago, but we have, unfortunately enough, lost touch with each other since. If you happened to know a dude from Bhaliya, who could sing and act well, and could not cook without packing in a few pounds of potato, tell him to read this blog and leave a comment. :-)

Freedom is not a license to Destroy

2010-08-04T14:03:00.002+08:00

[Author's Note: This blog was originally written in Oct, 2006 on the "Civic Sense" blog I hosted and since I haven't had the time to follow through on my original idea of writing about civic sense, I am migrating them over to my main blog, specially if I believe that the contents have not become stale with time.]

I recently visited Mysore and the tourists spots nearby and I happenned to end up at Ranganthithu Bird Sanctuary even though it was off-season for the birds. I was extremely impressed by cleanliness there. They have put up a board which says - "Freedom is not a license to destroy". Awesome thought. I think in general Indians believe in the exact opposite - Freedom is always considered as a license to destroy.

I wish the British had said the same to the Indian Administrators when they gave us freedom - "Freedom is not a license to Destroy".

Lets all keep it in mind.

Anticipatory Honking (in Bangalore)

2010-08-04T14:02:00.000+08:00

[Author's Note: This blog was originally written in Oct, 2006 on the "Civic Sense" blog I hosted and since I haven't had the time to follow through on my original idea of writing about civic sense, I am migrating them over to my main blog, specially if I believe that the contents have not become stale with time.]

If you happen to be driving in Bangalore, or for that matter, any Indian city, one thing you will notice is anticipatory honking. Just before the traffic light has turned green or even after it has turned green and you are awaiting your turn to start rolling, you hear this extremely irritating honk from the guy behind. It is almost as if the guy behind you anticipates that you will fall sleep, become unconscious or even die. So he is safeguarding his options by honking, honking and still honking..

If you happen to be one of those, just chill and take it easy. Everybody on the road wants to move and once I have an opportunity to move ahead, I will. I have no reason at all to keep waiting. Your honking will make no difference to my options there. So, just chill.

If you won't I will be forced to resort to my normal action. Turn behind, give you the mc-bc and maybe even show you the finger.

Book Reviews: "Secret Keeper" & "If Cricket is a Religion, Sachin is God"

2010-06-30T07:47:00.000+08:00

Sorry for talking about two rather unrelated books in the same blog, but it so happens they are actually related to each other in the sense that I read them in sequence. :)

Firstly, I finally managed to take "Secret Keeper" by Mitali Perkins off my reading list. For a book categorized under "Young Fiction", it did not sound "young" at all and I very much enjoyed the book. The conflicts in the story are established quite nice-and-easily in the first half and the resolution of the conflicts in the second half were surprising and enjoyable. I did not anticipate the way the story was ended, but as I said, I thoroughly enjoyed it. This read and my previous read "Shine, Coconut Moon" by Nisha Meminger were both based on their respective reviews at Brown Paper by Niranjana Iyer. Having enjoyed both, I have started noting down reads from her reviewed list into my reading list.

Secondly, I finished reading "If Cricket is a Religion, Sachin is God" by Vijay Santhanam and Shyam Balasubramanian. I picked this one up from flipkart after Sachin stroked his masterful ODI double hundred. Having been an on-and-off Sachin critic over the years, I was finally convinced of his greatness after that particular innings. And the purchase of this book followed on an impulse.

While I have to say that I enjoyed reading the book in its entirety, there were places where either the discussion was a drag or totally misplaced. The authors are gushing with their passion for the little master and it shows in every page. In general, the idea is to convince you of two things - Sachin's statistics are super awesome and that he is a God, because what he achieved belittles the achievement of every other cricket in this or previous generations (except the Don, of course) through various arguments. Sometimes the arguments are compelling and at other times, they are purely irritating either for being biased, or lacking the complete context.

On the good side:

Really wonderful statistics - let there be no doubt about it. They have gone to pains to explore various angles of the numbers, both of Sachin and his contemporaries.
The "Age 33" factor, coined by the authors, reveals that at the age of about 33, all great batsmen tend to lose their way, with some rebounding and others not. Revealing. Most revealing.
The parallel that they draw with Vishwanathan Anand's success. Having been guilty of not following Vishy's career, this comparison was revealing to say the least.
Chapter 8, title "The case for Sachin", where they compare him to his Indian compatriots over the years using a new measure called "batting momentum" was novel and quite enjoyable.

On the bad side:

They have clearly chosen to ignore Sachin's leadership issues. Clearly, Sachin's career had a major flaw in terms of Sachin's 2 failed attempts at captaincy. This discussion was clearly missed, and probably deliberately left out since it would have diluted their claims.
While Sachin's performances over the years are nothing short of exemplary, there was a period of time (roughly between 1999-2007), where he missed out on firing on the big occasions quite frequently (vs Aus, WC 99, vs Aus, WC 03, vs everybody WC 07, a few test matches that could have been saved, but were not and so on) and it was no surprise that the authors failed to bring it up, since it would have diluted their claims.
It is all well that Sachin performed with greatness, but belittling the achievements of others, most notably that of Ganguly and Dravid is way too glaring to ignore. The fact that India started to win abroad in tests can be solely attributed to Dravid's single minded focus on supporting the team's batting advances way beyond anything Sachin did for years (at Adelaide 04, Dravid hit a 200 and supported the team through in the 4th innings with a fifty. Awesome.) Again, in the ODI world, Ganguly was a key pillar of strength for India between 1996-2005 and many famous victories (98 Dhaka) were designed by him. By saying that "Big 3" is not even a proper term to use, the authors are clearly just favoring their favorite son.
Boringline, a term coined by the authors to explain the Naseer Hussain tactic of bowling outside the off stump in 96 Eng series, is being compared to Bodyline on how individual greatness of players (Don and Sachin) forced captains to take extreme steps. Really? No. Really? This is the greatest drag in the book. Boringline is so inconsequential in the history of the game that nobody even bothered coining a term for it expect these authors. There was no national outrage, no stress on the diplomatic ties, no books written on it and no movies made. Bodyline hasn't been repeated in the history of the game while "boringline" has been used every now and then, most recently by Dhoni against Aussies in 2008. So, seriously, the comparison is plain stupid. It shows that the two Sachin fanboys had to draw an unwarranted parallel between the Don and Sachin and this is what they came up with.
Their discussion on religion up front and on Chess history later on, are both drags. The first one wasn't even tolerable, but the second one is quite enjoyable, though grossly misplaced.

All in all, the book is a good read for people who like statistics, or Sachin, or both, but their fanboyish passion and the above mentioned drags make it tough to complete it.

Book review: More sex is safer sex

2010-06-20T09:55:00.000+08:00

Last week, I finished "More Sex is Safer Sex" by Steven Landsburg, a book in the same league as "Freakonomics", "Superfreakonomics" and "Super Crunchers", a book that talks about using economics and statistics to uncover new findings and wowing us with non-intuitive directions on how to lead our life.

In general, MSISS focusses more on the "cost-to-benefit" analysis and specializes in trying to enumerating spillover benefits and spillover costs of our various actions, something that is not as strongly focussed upon by the other books in this genre. Also, in general, the book is quite a great read. You will often be surprised by how much you agree with his thoughts after you have read them, but still you would have never thought of it yourself despite having the same data points as he has (the idea of giving each voter two votes to challenge the political system was my favorite.)

That said, there were places I strongly disagree with what he says, and there are, of course, many places where I strongly agree with his deductions. The following are all my notes:

The opening chapter on "more sex is safer sex" assumes that there is a general nature to find multiple partners. Coming from a society like Indian, I am mostly unable to appreciate it. Having one partner is all the society focusses on and I safely agree on that. Period.
"Be fruitful and multiply" is all screwed up. The basic assumption is that parents should have as many children as they want since there is no spillover costs. At least in India, that's not true. The more population you have who can't fend for themselves, the more is the social cost of that population - education, health care, subsidies etc, all of which are taken from taxes, which in turn is a spillover cost. Of course, my reasoning means that the wealthy can have more children and the poor cannot, but one cannot be sure if the wealthy (or poor) will remain in the same social standing and not change places. Hence, I appreciate the general policy of countries like India, which basically says all parents should stick to two children or less, irrespective of the social standing.
"Be fruitful and multiply" also talks about crowding and says that people chose to live in crowded places and hence shouldn't complain about it, and if they don't like it, they should go live in a different, less crowded town. Again, he doesn't know about other nations (than US), where your mere survival can only guaranteed by you living in a large city and hence the option of living in smaller towns and villages just doesn't exist. Ask a native of a Bihar village, who belongs to a lower caste and hence would have been squeezed out of his existence in his native town, and you will know.
"Children at work" says that parents chose to send their children to work only because it is in the best interest of the family, and hence anti-child-labour protesters, coming from cushy western societies shouldn't protest because they don't know what it is to be a poor family in a slum in say Asia or Africa. Agreed. And yet, I can't understand how the same man can argue that parents should have as many kids and yet allow them to be translated into laborers. He is essentially saying it is okay to have lot of kids even if you are poor because you can send them off to child labor and recover the cost. Totally Disagree.
Chapters "What I look about scrooge", "How to fix politics", "How to fix the justice system", "How to solve kidney shortage", "how to fight grade inflation", "Oh no! its a girl", "The high price of motherhood", "Racial profiling", "An outsourcing fable" are all brilliant reads.

Irrespective of my disagreements, I believe it is a great read for people interested in that genre. Go, pick up a copy from your local bookstore/library.

(ps: It is the first book, along with "Shine, coconut moon" by Nisha Meminger, that I picked up with my new Singapore Library membership. I have had it on my reading list for too long, but always stopped short of buying it. I am glad I picked it up finally and read through it. :-) )

Something to ponder about

2010-06-10T19:34:00.003+08:00

If you haven't read it yet - the son of a shoemaker - Abhishek Kumar Bhartiya - has made it through IIT with a fantastic rank. Having failed at an attempt at IITJEE and then consequently ending up at IIT and having seen how difficult life is for even a middle class student in India is, I can appreciate the achievement of coming from his background and making it through JEE exams and the subsequent opportunities he would have in improving the life of his family, and potentially the society around him. Hearty congratulations to him and I wish him all the very best.

Having said that, I want to show you a picture of his family (minus the father) (photo source: Rediff.com):

Do you spot anything odd here? Anything at all?

I do - I see a family of four kids - been conceived by a shoemaker somewhere in the early 90s time period. Let's dissect it a bit. Coming from his background, the shoemaker wouldn't have had too much money to survive and afford a reasonable, hygienic lifestyle for himself, but he thought nothing of procreating 4 kids.

And he did it despite the time being 1990s (the eldest son should be around 18 and hence I am backtracking his procreation dates to 90s), which was about a decade and a half after Sanjay Gandhi had become infamous for pushing family planning. By early 1990s, as a 10-12 old kid, I was exposed to so much messaging about family planning that I fail to believe that he didn't see it, unless he was in a cave all along.

And even the standard explanation of "he wanted a son" doesn't stand here. All his children were sons - so that doesn't work too.

So, in a society where the government clearly is warning against having too many babies, and when you can't afford it, and when you have procreated 2 sons already, you still go ahead and have 2 more babies!

Now, let me be clear - this kind of behavior isn't isolated to this person, or to this strata of the society, or to this time period. (Even a classmate of mine decided to have 3 kids well into the 2000s AFTER being educated at IIT). I am just trying to highlight the fact if this is the mentality of our populace, we don't have much chance of improving our nation. We should at least learn to do what our government is telling us, whose benefits are clearly beyond doubt.

But in a country, where people routinely die (and quite often kill others) because they don't have the basic sense of following traffic rules laid out by the government, I guess I am asking for too much.

The good books from new wave of Indian authors

2010-05-29T15:24:00.000+08:00

When I wrote last time about the new Indian authors not setting high standards for themselves when setting out to write, I felt that I was only saying one side of the story. There is the other side of the coin - one where authors produce a good story, where they use good grammar and employ sound research on any facts/situations they might be writing about. So, which books were those?

Top of my list:

Both "If God was a Banker" & "Devil in Pinstripes" from Ravi Subramanian.
"Keep the Change" by Nirupama Subramanian (I don't think she is related to Ravi in anyway)
"A Romance with Chaos" by Nishant Kaushik

Both of Ravi's books are written in a racy style with well carved out characters etched in the world of banking. I was so often so immersed in the stories that I found myself wishing to be a lifer with New York International Bank (NYIB), the setting for both the books. Both were unputdownable. Ravi concentrates more on the stories and how they evolve. Places and emotions are described less, but the context of every scene was well laid out. I enjoyed both of them.

"Keep the Change", is this hilarious book about, presumably, a Tam Brahm lady from Chennai transforming herself into a career woman in Bombay trying to find love on the way. If you happen to be a Tam Brahm, the comedy presented in the story is just amazing. There were more than one occasion when the other commuters in the train, where I have my date with books, could hear a loud laugh or watch a wide grin. A must read for a Tam Brahm or those who are in relationship with one. A compelling read for others too.

Nishant Kaushik has taken simple settings of a standard software company, adding in characters of all hues, each trying to achieve their own goals. The characters are all well built up and complemented each other. The turns in the story were quite unpredictable and my best attempts to guess what might be coming were thwarted by Nishant's imaginative sequences. The philosophical dilemma, under which the protagonist is lost, as well as the possible outcomes were well presented, without it being dumbed down, nor making it too complex that the reader had to flex his brain muscles too much.

All in all, these reads were definitely worth the money I spent on them.