Day 1
The last time I saw snow was back in 2005 en route to Rohtang Pass. That was five years ago but the memory of snowflakes remain as fresh in my memory today, as it was five years ago. There's some thing about the sight of snow, that brings out the little child in me - fascination would be an acutely mild description of the reaction I experienced. Since then, I've grown five years wiser, earned a degree in engineering, found a job and managed to hold on to it (by the skin of my teeth).But the thought of going back to a snow-covered hamlet had me all excited - like the kid who saw his first soap bubble (or in my case, Ruffles' Layz - Tazos!)
I left Haridwar at 2 PM today in a rented Scorpio. I had been warned that smaller cars tend to skid on snowy roads, hence the "extravagance" of hiring a Scorpio, despite me being the solitary passenger on a rather solitary trip in search of some much needed solitude. Good Friend "Boy-bhob" Chaturvedi, my partner in cHRime backed out owing to an urgent need to umpire a Soap Workmen v/s Shampoo Workmen cricket Match on the 24th. He is forgiven, since the last time ITC organised a similar match, its outcome was decided by a fistfight. Anyway, on the way to Rishikesh, I caught my first glimpse of the Kumbh "Mela", albeit from a safe distance of two kilometres and from within the safety of a moving vehicle. Analogies of termites in termite hills or ants in ant hills fail to describe this unreal event. The sheer number of Homo sapien (Latin for "Thinking" man) who've raided Haridwar in the hopes of attaining salvation and washing away their sins made me wonder if ITC ought to launch a new soap, which instead of washing away dirt - washed away one's sins owing to the presence of the exotic ingredient - no, not aloe-vera or almomd-oil, but gangajal! Thankfully, I was in Rishikesh at 3 PM and began ascending up the lower Himalayas (which are called the Shivaliks). Two and a half hours later, I reached the holy town of Devprayag, which is located at the confluence of the Alakananda and Bhagirathi rivers. From this point on, the river is referred to as the Ganges. I am sure there are historical reasons to explain the apparent holiness of the town, but I did notice that the place had an inexplicably high concentration of cows - and as a result, the town was littered with tons and tons of holy crap. I tried holding my breath but had to give up after 52 seconds, which, incidentally is 43 seconds shorter than the longest I've managed to hold my breath.
My plan was to stay overnight in Devprayag, but since we had made good time on the road and good forty five minutes of sunlight still remained, we decided to press ahead to a town called Srinagar, 33 kilometers away.
Srinagar is located in valley about 600 meters above sea level adjacent to a spectacular "bugyal" (grassland, in the local Garhwali language). Entire slopes shone bright yellow under the setting sun. In the distance, I was able to catch momentary glimpses of snow covered peaks of the middle and higher himalayas. The promise of climbing the stairways to the doors of heaven tomorrow inspired me to play a series of Led Zep tracks on my phone. By the time it began playing Kashmir, the car pulled into the driveway of Srinagar's Uttarkhand Tourism Guest House, where "super deluxe" rooms were on offer for the princely sum of five hundred rupees. The room was a little damp and the carpet a tad smelly. However, the bathroom had a geyser and the room had an electric heater - and that was all that mattered.
The people here speak of brand of Hindi that I completely fail to comprehend. While they understood "normal" hindi as well, it says something about the diversity of this region, that inhabitants of two towns in the same province separated barely by a hundred kilometers speak two different languages! The resturant didn't quite measure up to standards either, but I was beginning to realise that I would have to get used to Spartan spic-and-span-ness and say ciao to Roman luxuries if I were to enjoy my trips into the Uttarakhand's picturesue little hamlets and towns. Experimenting with food was clearly not the order of the day - I settled for hot tawa rotis and yellow dal. I quite enjoyed this half-course meal, which was not entirely surprising since I've been subsiding on buttered buns and Maggi for the last couple of weeks now. A hot cup of coffee later, I was back in my room, with nothing to do but retire for the night. I had a couple of options - watch TV on a 12 inch TV or boot up my laptop and check if Tata Photon worked in this sleepy little town. Since I've spoilt myself by taking 22 inch LCD TVs for granted, I couldn't quite get the hang of watching FRIENDS on this tiny iphone sized TV. Much to my surprise though, Tata Photon does work here - and my first impression is that its speed is faster here than in Haridwar! But then, I'm biased against Haridwar - so the judgement may not be entirely impartial.
The twenty minutes that followed were spent writing up this piece. Hopefully, I will have the time and energy to follow up on this article, share some photos and make a decent travelogue out of this trip.
Tune in tomorrow.
S.B.
Srinagar Town, Uttarakhand
22nd Jan, 2010
On the "sudden" boom in Low Cost Housing
There have been numerous articles in business magazines lately about the "sudden boom" in low cost real estate. Leaving aside the inherent redundancy in prefixing "boom" with "sudden", since a "boom" is by definition, "sudden", for if it wasn't "sudden", it would be better described by "steady rise" - I find this hogging-of-the-limelight by "low cost affordable real estate" moguls a little annoying. First, real estate, in all but the metro hot-spots, is always affordable - at least by the standards of the locality in which it has been built or by the standards of the people the developers hope to sell it to. Second, the "boom" is a gross misnomer since "affordable housing" projects, going by the definition in the previous sentence happen across the length and breadth of the country - these small and faceless developers build housing colonies in small cities, large towns and even in Haridwar. Its just that they dont spend a lot of money on advertising in national newspapers and magazines - which is why we dont seem to notice their existence. Tata Housing and Unitech's new low cost arm are making the front pages because of 2 reasons - A) This is the first time they're doing this low cost thing -Incidentally, I also got the feeling they're trying to project a false facade of philanthropy around the venture though what really drives them is business reality and the sheer volume of "low cost" people. B) They have the right connections in the print media who publish away almost anything from the grand business house of the Unitechs and the like.
How about bringing in a balanced perspective - by interviewing some of the lesser known "low cost" real estate developers, and asking them what they've been up to for the last ten years, what their business model have been like, and how many hundred crores in debt they are - I'm guessing zero - unlike the big real estate firms who, up until now, pooh-poohed the grotesque thought of having to approach the "low cost" consumer and having to serenade him with fancy brochures and footing his travel bills to visit "model homes"- which are luxuries, surely reserved only for the rich and the famous? The venture into low cost real estate is more a statement of their admission of business stupidity driven perhaps by arrogance (of not entering the low cost segment earlier) than any "sudden" boom in demand for low cost housing. Are they trying to convince people that a guy who's lived in a Mumbai slum for the last ten years only recently realised that he'd rather move into a low cost property on the outskirts than continue to reside in barely livable unhygienic one-room-for-six-people slum houses?
While the concept of "Pricing" is deeply entangled in both micro and macro-economics - things I'm only beginning to understand - own price sensitivity, market segmentation and the like, it is also possible to tackle it in a different, albeit, oversimplified way.
Price = Nominal cost (Raw material + Conversion Cost + Research Costs + Overhead + Salaries) + Desired Profit Margin --- (A)
Profit = Free market governed max price a consumer is willing to pay - (Minimum possible Nominal Costs) --- (B)
When the economy is bullish and people decide they've saved up enough to invest in real estate, they enter the housing market looking for an investment. But since money is in over-supply, the mere interest in property pushes property prices up. On top of that, if at this point of time, developers can create an impression in the mind of the buyer, that the specific kind of property they're looking for (say East facing in floors 10 and upwards) is in short supply, they can push the price of real estate up from an already inflated value, and this transfers power from the buyer to the producer, who now becomes a price-setter and not the price-taker. In simpler words, the developer can now shift from Pricing model (B) to model (A). Irrational human tendencies of Homo uneconomicus ensures that market equilibrium no longer controls prices. A good deal for the real estate companies - but only in the short run.
Most crashes are fueled by prolonged irrational human economic activity, and these crashes tend to be amplified by synchronized global human irrational activity. The current crash was no different in that sense. What is worth noting though, is that the crash coincided with the first ever irrational inflation of luxurious-property values in post 1991 India. The same property booked before the crash for INR X Lakhs, was available after the crash for 0.6X Lahks. This unforgiving wrath of the free market together with Unitech's chief financer, Lehmann going bankrupt is perhaps what scared them into low cost real estate, or more accurately, rational real estate activity.
My interest in real estate economics was fueled by an uncle who recently purchased an Unitech property prior to the crash and whose value fell to 60% of its original value after the crash. Human economic activity is all vairy vairy interesting - if you're not at the receiving end that is!
How about bringing in a balanced perspective - by interviewing some of the lesser known "low cost" real estate developers, and asking them what they've been up to for the last ten years, what their business model have been like, and how many hundred crores in debt they are - I'm guessing zero - unlike the big real estate firms who, up until now, pooh-poohed the grotesque thought of having to approach the "low cost" consumer and having to serenade him with fancy brochures and footing his travel bills to visit "model homes"- which are luxuries, surely reserved only for the rich and the famous? The venture into low cost real estate is more a statement of their admission of business stupidity driven perhaps by arrogance (of not entering the low cost segment earlier) than any "sudden" boom in demand for low cost housing. Are they trying to convince people that a guy who's lived in a Mumbai slum for the last ten years only recently realised that he'd rather move into a low cost property on the outskirts than continue to reside in barely livable unhygienic one-room-for-six-people slum houses?
While the concept of "Pricing" is deeply entangled in both micro and macro-economics - things I'm only beginning to understand - own price sensitivity, market segmentation and the like, it is also possible to tackle it in a different, albeit, oversimplified way.
Price = Nominal cost (Raw material + Conversion Cost + Research Costs + Overhead + Salaries) + Desired Profit Margin --- (A)
Profit = Free market governed max price a consumer is willing to pay - (Minimum possible Nominal Costs) --- (B)
When the economy is bullish and people decide they've saved up enough to invest in real estate, they enter the housing market looking for an investment. But since money is in over-supply, the mere interest in property pushes property prices up. On top of that, if at this point of time, developers can create an impression in the mind of the buyer, that the specific kind of property they're looking for (say East facing in floors 10 and upwards) is in short supply, they can push the price of real estate up from an already inflated value, and this transfers power from the buyer to the producer, who now becomes a price-setter and not the price-taker. In simpler words, the developer can now shift from Pricing model (B) to model (A). Irrational human tendencies of Homo uneconomicus ensures that market equilibrium no longer controls prices. A good deal for the real estate companies - but only in the short run.
Most crashes are fueled by prolonged irrational human economic activity, and these crashes tend to be amplified by synchronized global human irrational activity. The current crash was no different in that sense. What is worth noting though, is that the crash coincided with the first ever irrational inflation of luxurious-property values in post 1991 India. The same property booked before the crash for INR X Lakhs, was available after the crash for 0.6X Lahks. This unforgiving wrath of the free market together with Unitech's chief financer, Lehmann going bankrupt is perhaps what scared them into low cost real estate, or more accurately, rational real estate activity.
My interest in real estate economics was fueled by an uncle who recently purchased an Unitech property prior to the crash and whose value fell to 60% of its original value after the crash. Human economic activity is all vairy vairy interesting - if you're not at the receiving end that is!
Follow up to "When Competition hurts"
In my previous blog, I had written about how overcrowded competition is hurting the airline industry and that monopoly would perhaps be a better solution. Last week, according to a report published on Livemint this is actually beginning to happen!
Air India successfully prevented from Kingfisher from operating the Delhi-London route by arguing that competition would lead to both airlines making a loss and that a monopoly was the best solution!
Why kingfisher wanted to enter this (currently) low volume route is a different story altogether. KF has a hard-to-find landing slot at Heathrow airport which they use for the Bangalore-London route and this route was canceled due to low passenger volumes. Now, they could either sell the slot to another airline or keep it to themselves for use in the future when volumes increase. They chose the latter option and preferred to make a lesser loss on operations by flying Delhi-London than a relatively greater loss by flying Bangalore-London.
Air India successfully prevented from Kingfisher from operating the Delhi-London route by arguing that competition would lead to both airlines making a loss and that a monopoly was the best solution!
Why kingfisher wanted to enter this (currently) low volume route is a different story altogether. KF has a hard-to-find landing slot at Heathrow airport which they use for the Bangalore-London route and this route was canceled due to low passenger volumes. Now, they could either sell the slot to another airline or keep it to themselves for use in the future when volumes increase. They chose the latter option and preferred to make a lesser loss on operations by flying Delhi-London than a relatively greater loss by flying Bangalore-London.
When Competition Hurts
The recession came unannounced, at least, to people outside the “know”. While I’m not much of a believer of conspiracy theories, especially those of the Rothschild genre, I find it pretty hard to believe that absolutely no one on the American financial regulatory board with the power to prevent the snowballing of the recession, knew nothing whatsoever about the impending doom. Having said that, the recession hasn’t really affected me all that much. In fact, I’ve hardly noticed it all, save for the multitude of articles in newspapers and business magazines. The one thing that has affected me though, is the rising airfare for domestic travel.
A Jet Airways Hyderabad-Madras ticket used to cost about INR 3500 a couple of years ago. Now, its about INR 4800, unless booked way in advance. Same’s the case with Kingfisher and other erstwhile low cost carriers. As an aside, Mallya’s takeover of Deccan has effectively killed the idea of no frill travel in India since Spice, Indigo and Go Air fares are almost as high as those of Full Service Airlines. And of course, the less that’s said of Air India, the better – Stuffing an extra couple of passengers into the aircraft and seating them on the airhostess’ chair – REALLY??? The last time I saw something similar was on a bus journey from Kolkata to Haldia last month. But then, that was a bus. Buses generally don’t crash land from altitudes of 30000 feet due to overloading.
Back to the topic, it is well known that the variation of cost of passenger air-service in relation to passenger volume is far from linear. Fares come down significantly when total volume is large. As volumes shrink, the fare increases at a faster than linear rate. Now that wouldn’t hurt the passenger’s wallet as much if there hadn’t been so many different airlines. As fixed cost begin to dominate with lower volumes, the variable cost, minimising which was the central strategy of low cost travel, began to rise rapidly. In simple words, if it costs 100 bucks to buy fuel, pay airport fees and salary of pilots and crew during a booming economy, it will still cost more less the same during a recession. However, as passenger volumes reduce during a recession, the fixed cost is divided between a smaller number of passengers, thereby increasing the cost per person.
But things wouldn’t be as bad if there were one single carrier during a recession. A single airline for all Indian Domestic Traffic right now would translate into a business scenario that’s more favourable than that enjoyed by Jet airways at the height of the aviation boom. Since every airline is competing against everyone else and running into massive losses, perhaps the aviation ministry could step in and provide financial relief in a rather unconventional way by taking over all aircrafts in the country. These would then be added Air India’s Fleet (Or perhaps to another entity with a different name). The merged entity would then jointly operate the entire fleet of aircrafts – managed by a governing body constituted by the CII/Civil Aviation Ministry. Extra Aircraft could be grounded if volumes do not require them to be operational. This would address the problem faced by half filled flights today. Again, remember the cost of fuel in relation to number of passengers on board is non linear. A Boeing 737 with 200 passengers onboard doesn’t burn twice the amount of fuel as a 737 with 100 passengers. It burns less than twice. Non linearity again. Arguably, such an arrangement would make some profit, which could be divided in some agreed ratio (proportional to contribution of aircraft or proportional to market share before recession). I would again argue that this arrangement will very likely bring down fares. And once the recession ends and volumes rise, airlines could de-merge go back to competing against each other.
The challenges are obvious. Cartelisation can happen easily and push fares further up. Therefore a powerful governing body with neutral, upright business men and regulators with interests in civil aviation need to be brought on board. Numerous other issues will also likely come up. But in this ridiculous scenario wher competition is actually driving prices up, that too during a recession, every out of the box solution, no matter how far out, ought to be considered.
Stupid idea perhaps. But its an idea nevertheless.
Airline Trivia:
>> The global airline industry, cumulatively, has never broken even in the 70 odd years of its existence
>> Southwest Airlines is the only airline to consistently make a profit.
>> Some Mathematicians argue that the reason for SouthWest's success is simply an anomaly arising out of network properties beyond its control and not due to anything special about SouthWest's business model. (Something like - "Its possible to decrease entropy locally, but the overall entropy of the universe always increases)
>> Quantas is the only major national carrier to never report an air crash or fatalities due to technical snags
NOTE: I fully realise that the quality of language and writing style in this piece is totally off. I'd put that down to my living in Haridwar in the Hindi heartland, and due to the fact that I haven't spoken in English over last many many days. God save me and my B-School essays.
A Jet Airways Hyderabad-Madras ticket used to cost about INR 3500 a couple of years ago. Now, its about INR 4800, unless booked way in advance. Same’s the case with Kingfisher and other erstwhile low cost carriers. As an aside, Mallya’s takeover of Deccan has effectively killed the idea of no frill travel in India since Spice, Indigo and Go Air fares are almost as high as those of Full Service Airlines. And of course, the less that’s said of Air India, the better – Stuffing an extra couple of passengers into the aircraft and seating them on the airhostess’ chair – REALLY??? The last time I saw something similar was on a bus journey from Kolkata to Haldia last month. But then, that was a bus. Buses generally don’t crash land from altitudes of 30000 feet due to overloading.
Back to the topic, it is well known that the variation of cost of passenger air-service in relation to passenger volume is far from linear. Fares come down significantly when total volume is large. As volumes shrink, the fare increases at a faster than linear rate. Now that wouldn’t hurt the passenger’s wallet as much if there hadn’t been so many different airlines. As fixed cost begin to dominate with lower volumes, the variable cost, minimising which was the central strategy of low cost travel, began to rise rapidly. In simple words, if it costs 100 bucks to buy fuel, pay airport fees and salary of pilots and crew during a booming economy, it will still cost more less the same during a recession. However, as passenger volumes reduce during a recession, the fixed cost is divided between a smaller number of passengers, thereby increasing the cost per person.
But things wouldn’t be as bad if there were one single carrier during a recession. A single airline for all Indian Domestic Traffic right now would translate into a business scenario that’s more favourable than that enjoyed by Jet airways at the height of the aviation boom. Since every airline is competing against everyone else and running into massive losses, perhaps the aviation ministry could step in and provide financial relief in a rather unconventional way by taking over all aircrafts in the country. These would then be added Air India’s Fleet (Or perhaps to another entity with a different name). The merged entity would then jointly operate the entire fleet of aircrafts – managed by a governing body constituted by the CII/Civil Aviation Ministry. Extra Aircraft could be grounded if volumes do not require them to be operational. This would address the problem faced by half filled flights today. Again, remember the cost of fuel in relation to number of passengers on board is non linear. A Boeing 737 with 200 passengers onboard doesn’t burn twice the amount of fuel as a 737 with 100 passengers. It burns less than twice. Non linearity again. Arguably, such an arrangement would make some profit, which could be divided in some agreed ratio (proportional to contribution of aircraft or proportional to market share before recession). I would again argue that this arrangement will very likely bring down fares. And once the recession ends and volumes rise, airlines could de-merge go back to competing against each other.
The challenges are obvious. Cartelisation can happen easily and push fares further up. Therefore a powerful governing body with neutral, upright business men and regulators with interests in civil aviation need to be brought on board. Numerous other issues will also likely come up. But in this ridiculous scenario wher competition is actually driving prices up, that too during a recession, every out of the box solution, no matter how far out, ought to be considered.
Stupid idea perhaps. But its an idea nevertheless.
Airline Trivia:
>> The global airline industry, cumulatively, has never broken even in the 70 odd years of its existence
>> Southwest Airlines is the only airline to consistently make a profit.
>> Some Mathematicians argue that the reason for SouthWest's success is simply an anomaly arising out of network properties beyond its control and not due to anything special about SouthWest's business model. (Something like - "Its possible to decrease entropy locally, but the overall entropy of the universe always increases)
>> Quantas is the only major national carrier to never report an air crash or fatalities due to technical snags
NOTE: I fully realise that the quality of language and writing style in this piece is totally off. I'd put that down to my living in Haridwar in the Hindi heartland, and due to the fact that I haven't spoken in English over last many many days. God save me and my B-School essays.
Qualia
It took me four readings and a great deal of online research, but I think I've finally managed to understand the concept of qualia. Gave me quite a kick too - the first kick I've had since coming to this god-forsaken pestilential ghost town of Haridwar.
And yes, I am a qualophile.
And yes, I am a qualophile.
India's $13 Billion Gift to the World
A few months ago I blogged about the drain of Indian wealth to foreign shores (and economies) when Indian students go abroad for that enigmatic "phoren degree" in "The Economics of Bribe money".
The July 17th issue of Forbes India carried an article on the same topic. Titled "Degree of Waste" on Page 24, NS Ramnath quotes the HRD Minister Kapil Sibal as saying that the total drain on the economy is a staggering $20 Billion. A more conservative estimate by the CII pegs it $13 Billion. That's a humongous sum of money, especially since a sizable fraction of it can be kept within the economy by building the country's higher education infrastructure to provide outgoing students a viable domestic alternative to say, the University of South Arkansas and the like. This investment would also be beneficial to the country in the long run given the ever increasing population imposed demands on the country's higher education infrastructure.
How then, do we get all this money back?
Education is not the only sector which is a drain on Indian wealth. Tourism is another. As is purchasing imported services and equipment. One way to tackle the issue could involve making a comprehensive list of sources of wealth lost to foreign economies and focus on those sources where viable Indian alternatives either exist, or can be built in the shirt run. In addition, the list should then be scrutinized to see if India can attract wealth in these sectors, either from the developed countries or from countries below us in the Economic pecking order. The latter would obviously be a bad option for the economies of the under developed countries. But given the relative increase of African students in Indian Universities, the phenomenon may have begun already.
If the alleged racial violence towards Indians in Australia succeeds in deterring Indian students from blowing their wealth in Australia, it could well turn out to be an unintended benefit of the regrettable incidents down under. The free trade and open global economy arguments makes sense when a product or service is brought by country X from Y only IFF that product is made more economically in Y than in X. My four year experience with India's higher education system leads me to believe that a significant number of students who go abroad for undergraduate degrees are suckers for the "phoren brand" and not because the quality of education they receive vis a vis the money they spend is any superior to the education they would receive at a comparable private college in India. In other words, these student do not classify as being the rationally minded "Homo economicus" and therefore, the free trade is good for all argument does not apply. Some might claim that this irrational choice of logic bolsters the arguments of Behavioral Economists, but that's a different issue altogether. Some day, when I'm qualified to speak about the Homo irr-economicus, I will.
In short - Stay Indian and Buy Indian. But only when the product or service is more cost effective in relation to the desired benefits, than a comparable foreign brand.
The July 17th issue of Forbes India carried an article on the same topic. Titled "Degree of Waste" on Page 24, NS Ramnath quotes the HRD Minister Kapil Sibal as saying that the total drain on the economy is a staggering $20 Billion. A more conservative estimate by the CII pegs it $13 Billion. That's a humongous sum of money, especially since a sizable fraction of it can be kept within the economy by building the country's higher education infrastructure to provide outgoing students a viable domestic alternative to say, the University of South Arkansas and the like. This investment would also be beneficial to the country in the long run given the ever increasing population imposed demands on the country's higher education infrastructure.
How then, do we get all this money back?
Education is not the only sector which is a drain on Indian wealth. Tourism is another. As is purchasing imported services and equipment. One way to tackle the issue could involve making a comprehensive list of sources of wealth lost to foreign economies and focus on those sources where viable Indian alternatives either exist, or can be built in the shirt run. In addition, the list should then be scrutinized to see if India can attract wealth in these sectors, either from the developed countries or from countries below us in the Economic pecking order. The latter would obviously be a bad option for the economies of the under developed countries. But given the relative increase of African students in Indian Universities, the phenomenon may have begun already.
If the alleged racial violence towards Indians in Australia succeeds in deterring Indian students from blowing their wealth in Australia, it could well turn out to be an unintended benefit of the regrettable incidents down under. The free trade and open global economy arguments makes sense when a product or service is brought by country X from Y only IFF that product is made more economically in Y than in X. My four year experience with India's higher education system leads me to believe that a significant number of students who go abroad for undergraduate degrees are suckers for the "phoren brand" and not because the quality of education they receive vis a vis the money they spend is any superior to the education they would receive at a comparable private college in India. In other words, these student do not classify as being the rationally minded "Homo economicus" and therefore, the free trade is good for all argument does not apply. Some might claim that this irrational choice of logic bolsters the arguments of Behavioral Economists, but that's a different issue altogether. Some day, when I'm qualified to speak about the Homo irr-economicus, I will.
In short - Stay Indian and Buy Indian. But only when the product or service is more cost effective in relation to the desired benefits, than a comparable foreign brand.
On the women’s reservation bill
Despite the sometimes snide references of India’s allegedly dysfunctional democracy in certain Western presses, our current assortment of elected leaders does paint a pretty picture for gender equality in India. The troika of a lady President, a lady Head-of-Ruling-Party and a Lady Speaker-of-the-house is perhaps unparalleled in the history of parliamentary democracy, the world over. So kudos to us, as a society, for evolving into a state where we’ve made this possible! Nevertheless, getting into a self congratulatory frame of mind at this crucial juncture would be a grave mistake. We still record some of the highest infant mortality rates, the lowest female to male sex ratio and an abysmal female literacy rate. We have only reached a stage where we can begin to effect positive change. The actual process change-making still needs to be done.
Though there’s widespread and bipartisan support for the women’s reservation bill, I get the feeling that some parties and political leaders are swaying in favour of it not because they’re champions of women’s rights and believe in the spirit of this legislature, but simply because the political cost of not supporting the bill is to too high since it will taint them as being anti-feminist “bad people”, an adage they’d rather avoid in a country where more and more women are coming out to vote. I say this because the same political parties in parliament now, had put this same bill on the back burner for the last ten years, a decade during which the “political will” to effect constitutional amendments was at an all time low owing to a series of fractured verdicts in the general elections. Remember, an amendment to the constitution requires that the bill be passed with two-thirds majority. So, now that there is some sense of this enigmatic “political will”, the ruling party and the opposition have suddenly come together and agreed to pass a landmark legislature. Two questions strike me. One. Is the legislation being championed primarily by Sonia Gandhi (given the fact that she’s a woman), with other leaders going “Sure, why not? She’s won us the election – We’ll tag along” or is the Congress as a whole warming up to this idea? Two. If the BJP felt strongly about the bill, why did it not make it an election issue? Surely if a party has an opinion on an issue fundamental enough to warrant a constitutional amendment, it ought to make it an election issues? Did they believe that taking a stand on the issue was unlikely to have a direct impact on the bottom line by upping their vote share? Is there hypothesis right?
Amartya Sen, in his book “Identity and Violence” claims there is enormous plurality in our individual identities and explores how circumstances and experiences lead to only a very small fraction of these identities dominating our personality. For example, I am (simultaneously) a Hindu-by-birth male Indian, who’s bong by birth but doesn’t appreciate Bengali literature as much as English literature, a 21 year old who is pro reforms, pro capitalism, pro feminism, pro stem cell research, undecided on gay rights, undecided on abortion, against judicial activism, against unregulated journalism, who enjoys low budget independent films, loves reading and writing, listens to rock in public, but secretly likes Westlife. My life, for whatever reasons has been such that some of my identities have faded into insignificance while some others have become more prominent. For example, I hardly consider my being Hindu-by-birth of any significance since my parents never forced me to believe things I didn’t want to believe, but I do feel strongly about reading, especially stuff that most people find vague and uninteresting and this probably has something to do with the fact that my cousin sisters were also avid readers from an early age, and I was expected (and pushed) to follow suit. Which me brings to my original point. It is possible, and not just as a consequence of the Infinite Monkey Theorem that there exists in India, a woman, who is simultaneously muslim by birth, born in a low income family, who did great in college, made a lot of money as a successful doctor, married a Christian, is a closet lesbian, is pro feminism, pro socialism, anti war, anti gay rights and likes violent movies. The question then is – which of these identities dominates her personality? Does she feel more strongly about being a woman than she does about being a Muslim, a doctor, or an anti war activist? If she does, then the women’s bill is likely to influence her decision on which party to vote for – she will very likely not vote for a party that doesn’t support the bill. But suppose being a Muslim means more to her. In that case, she is more likely to vote for a party whose primary objective is economic upliftment of Muslim society, but is against the women’s reservation bill. How important is “being a woman” to a woman, in relation to the multitude of other roles she plays in her life?
Opinio Juris is a very crucial ideal in the theory of law and justice. Though it is argued by some that it was “misused” by the US in trying to defend its invasion of Iraq in 2003, the idea that the “spirit (opinion) of the law” is as important as the law itself is extremely profound. What then, is the spirit behind the Women’s reservation bill? And will the law, in the form it is likely to be implemented, serve the spirit behind the legislation? The bill, as every political leader will tell you, is to ensure greater representation and participation of women in politics under the assumption (or is it hope?) that the effect will “rub off” on the millions of Indian women who are discriminated against and will eventually uplift them over the course of a generation to help build a society where having daughters is not considered a burden, where women are not bound by ghastly triple talaq – like laws, and where women subjected to eve teasing have the audacity to look the eve teaser in the eye and kick him in the nuts. That’s probably the general idea. But will this guiding spirit be upheld after the passing of this law? I don’t know, and to be quite honest, I’m not sure if anyone in the political establishment is.
There are two or three different ways in which this law can be implemented. One is to declare some constituencies “reserved for women” for a fixed number years. For example, if Chennai – North, East, West, South and Mumbai – North, East, West and South were the only eight constituencies in a hypothetical India, under this implementation scheme, Chennai North and Mumbai East could be declared “women’s only” for a period of ten years during which parties contesting that seat can only field women contestants. Sounds fair enough? Probably, but the key question is – how do you decide which constituencies are the first to come under this regulation, and for how long and in what order will the constituencies be cycled? What if in an effort to sideline the communists, the Congress and BJP muster the numbers between themselves and declare the home seats of the leading CPI male leaders “for women only”. That might well be the easiest way to destroy the communists once and for all, since not too many CPI MPs are women. Or what if the so called secular alliances together with the support of some moderate BJP leaders connive and declare Narendra Modi’s home constituency “For Women only”. Unlikely – yes, but the potential for misuse is significant. That is to say, the spirit of the law must not be reduced to a weapon in a political strategist’s repertoire aimed at serving partisan political objectives.
Another idea being thrown around is to require that 33% of all candidates fielded by every political party be women. But the flaw here is visible immediately – this doesn’t guarantee that 33% of elected MPs will actually be women. Political parties could simply field women from unwinnable seats to make up the numbers. The Assam Gana Parishad could a field a woman from Hyderabad to make up for the three men it plans to field from constituencies where it stands a good chance of winning. Fairly dumb right? Unsurprisingly, this is the model supported by Uma Bharti, and according to some news channels, by Mayawati as well. They probably know that to remain in power, they need their criminal male candidates to win elections. A woman carrying an AK 47 and traveling with an entourage of goons might not evoke the same kind of fear in rural voters as would a gun toting Raja Bhaiyya
However, in this entire debate, one key point is being overlooked. The whole idea of reservations – in whatsoever form is firmly against the ideals of democracy. People have taken to the streets to protest caste based reservations in education and in public sector employment. For some reason, these people aren’t against gender-based reservation in the highest public offices in the country. Having said that, I must clarify - One does not have to be a male chauvinist to oppose the Women’s bill – he could just be a fierce supporter of democracy in its purest form. A democracy where no restrictions whatsoever are placed on who can contest which seat so long as he is a citizen without a criminal record. A democracy where there are no caste based or gender based reservations. A democracy where the government doesn’t play big daddy and where a government can’t inform me that I can’t represent a group of people who want me to represent them just because I wasn’t born a certain gender or belong to certain caste.
Locke’s theory of Social Contract forms the basis of why we chose to emerge from a state of natural chaos with selfish individualistic goals to a more mutually beneficial state (society) and fostered interdependence by giving up some individual rights in return for guaranteeing some others. Whether one of those rights we gave up was the right to not have to suffer, in this generation, the penalty for past injustices inflicted upon certain sections of society by people who may or may not even be directly related to us, is obviously very very difficult gauge.
Though there’s widespread and bipartisan support for the women’s reservation bill, I get the feeling that some parties and political leaders are swaying in favour of it not because they’re champions of women’s rights and believe in the spirit of this legislature, but simply because the political cost of not supporting the bill is to too high since it will taint them as being anti-feminist “bad people”, an adage they’d rather avoid in a country where more and more women are coming out to vote. I say this because the same political parties in parliament now, had put this same bill on the back burner for the last ten years, a decade during which the “political will” to effect constitutional amendments was at an all time low owing to a series of fractured verdicts in the general elections. Remember, an amendment to the constitution requires that the bill be passed with two-thirds majority. So, now that there is some sense of this enigmatic “political will”, the ruling party and the opposition have suddenly come together and agreed to pass a landmark legislature. Two questions strike me. One. Is the legislation being championed primarily by Sonia Gandhi (given the fact that she’s a woman), with other leaders going “Sure, why not? She’s won us the election – We’ll tag along” or is the Congress as a whole warming up to this idea? Two. If the BJP felt strongly about the bill, why did it not make it an election issue? Surely if a party has an opinion on an issue fundamental enough to warrant a constitutional amendment, it ought to make it an election issues? Did they believe that taking a stand on the issue was unlikely to have a direct impact on the bottom line by upping their vote share? Is there hypothesis right?
Amartya Sen, in his book “Identity and Violence” claims there is enormous plurality in our individual identities and explores how circumstances and experiences lead to only a very small fraction of these identities dominating our personality. For example, I am (simultaneously) a Hindu-by-birth male Indian, who’s bong by birth but doesn’t appreciate Bengali literature as much as English literature, a 21 year old who is pro reforms, pro capitalism, pro feminism, pro stem cell research, undecided on gay rights, undecided on abortion, against judicial activism, against unregulated journalism, who enjoys low budget independent films, loves reading and writing, listens to rock in public, but secretly likes Westlife. My life, for whatever reasons has been such that some of my identities have faded into insignificance while some others have become more prominent. For example, I hardly consider my being Hindu-by-birth of any significance since my parents never forced me to believe things I didn’t want to believe, but I do feel strongly about reading, especially stuff that most people find vague and uninteresting and this probably has something to do with the fact that my cousin sisters were also avid readers from an early age, and I was expected (and pushed) to follow suit. Which me brings to my original point. It is possible, and not just as a consequence of the Infinite Monkey Theorem that there exists in India, a woman, who is simultaneously muslim by birth, born in a low income family, who did great in college, made a lot of money as a successful doctor, married a Christian, is a closet lesbian, is pro feminism, pro socialism, anti war, anti gay rights and likes violent movies. The question then is – which of these identities dominates her personality? Does she feel more strongly about being a woman than she does about being a Muslim, a doctor, or an anti war activist? If she does, then the women’s bill is likely to influence her decision on which party to vote for – she will very likely not vote for a party that doesn’t support the bill. But suppose being a Muslim means more to her. In that case, she is more likely to vote for a party whose primary objective is economic upliftment of Muslim society, but is against the women’s reservation bill. How important is “being a woman” to a woman, in relation to the multitude of other roles she plays in her life?
Opinio Juris is a very crucial ideal in the theory of law and justice. Though it is argued by some that it was “misused” by the US in trying to defend its invasion of Iraq in 2003, the idea that the “spirit (opinion) of the law” is as important as the law itself is extremely profound. What then, is the spirit behind the Women’s reservation bill? And will the law, in the form it is likely to be implemented, serve the spirit behind the legislation? The bill, as every political leader will tell you, is to ensure greater representation and participation of women in politics under the assumption (or is it hope?) that the effect will “rub off” on the millions of Indian women who are discriminated against and will eventually uplift them over the course of a generation to help build a society where having daughters is not considered a burden, where women are not bound by ghastly triple talaq – like laws, and where women subjected to eve teasing have the audacity to look the eve teaser in the eye and kick him in the nuts. That’s probably the general idea. But will this guiding spirit be upheld after the passing of this law? I don’t know, and to be quite honest, I’m not sure if anyone in the political establishment is.
There are two or three different ways in which this law can be implemented. One is to declare some constituencies “reserved for women” for a fixed number years. For example, if Chennai – North, East, West, South and Mumbai – North, East, West and South were the only eight constituencies in a hypothetical India, under this implementation scheme, Chennai North and Mumbai East could be declared “women’s only” for a period of ten years during which parties contesting that seat can only field women contestants. Sounds fair enough? Probably, but the key question is – how do you decide which constituencies are the first to come under this regulation, and for how long and in what order will the constituencies be cycled? What if in an effort to sideline the communists, the Congress and BJP muster the numbers between themselves and declare the home seats of the leading CPI male leaders “for women only”. That might well be the easiest way to destroy the communists once and for all, since not too many CPI MPs are women. Or what if the so called secular alliances together with the support of some moderate BJP leaders connive and declare Narendra Modi’s home constituency “For Women only”. Unlikely – yes, but the potential for misuse is significant. That is to say, the spirit of the law must not be reduced to a weapon in a political strategist’s repertoire aimed at serving partisan political objectives.
Another idea being thrown around is to require that 33% of all candidates fielded by every political party be women. But the flaw here is visible immediately – this doesn’t guarantee that 33% of elected MPs will actually be women. Political parties could simply field women from unwinnable seats to make up the numbers. The Assam Gana Parishad could a field a woman from Hyderabad to make up for the three men it plans to field from constituencies where it stands a good chance of winning. Fairly dumb right? Unsurprisingly, this is the model supported by Uma Bharti, and according to some news channels, by Mayawati as well. They probably know that to remain in power, they need their criminal male candidates to win elections. A woman carrying an AK 47 and traveling with an entourage of goons might not evoke the same kind of fear in rural voters as would a gun toting Raja Bhaiyya
However, in this entire debate, one key point is being overlooked. The whole idea of reservations – in whatsoever form is firmly against the ideals of democracy. People have taken to the streets to protest caste based reservations in education and in public sector employment. For some reason, these people aren’t against gender-based reservation in the highest public offices in the country. Having said that, I must clarify - One does not have to be a male chauvinist to oppose the Women’s bill – he could just be a fierce supporter of democracy in its purest form. A democracy where no restrictions whatsoever are placed on who can contest which seat so long as he is a citizen without a criminal record. A democracy where there are no caste based or gender based reservations. A democracy where the government doesn’t play big daddy and where a government can’t inform me that I can’t represent a group of people who want me to represent them just because I wasn’t born a certain gender or belong to certain caste.
Locke’s theory of Social Contract forms the basis of why we chose to emerge from a state of natural chaos with selfish individualistic goals to a more mutually beneficial state (society) and fostered interdependence by giving up some individual rights in return for guaranteeing some others. Whether one of those rights we gave up was the right to not have to suffer, in this generation, the penalty for past injustices inflicted upon certain sections of society by people who may or may not even be directly related to us, is obviously very very difficult gauge.
On the Minimum Wage Law
Traveling with a salesman through one of Kolkata’s dirtiest sub urban market in searing heat and humidity was an excruciating experience. Four hours later, physically drained and sweating like a pig, I took a lunch break at a fairly seedy-looking restaurant. As I gulped down my first mug of jal-jeera, I wondered how the sales guy managed to keep himself going, performing the same monotonous and physically draining job day in day out. An hour later, when I rejoined him for the afternoon session, I found out that he had been in this profession for the last two years without a raise and with no real hope of a promotion. He makes a meagre four thousand rupees a month and if he works his butt off and satisfies his incentive criteria, he can hope to make another two thousand rupees more. Imagine! A guy with a job ten times more physically draining than me earns only a small fraction of the salary I take home. Skill based specialisation has redefined the whole “survival of the fittest” theory. The glaring unfairness of it bugged me for quite some time and over dinner that night, I brought the issue up with a couple of friends in HR.
According to them, it is a case of supply-demand and skill level. In other words, if the sales guy in question gets pissed off and quits, there are hundreds of people ready to take his place and work for the same meagre salary simply because it is a low skill job. While the explanation makes perfect sense, I was not entirely convinced. Somewhere, at a very fundamental level, the problem lies in the fact that there are so many of these so called “unskilled” workers in the country. And it’s not like they’re uneducated. Most of them have cleared Class 12, and some even have a diploma or a bachelors’ degree. In other words, the government happily classifies them as “literate” when it calculates India’s literacy rate. Which begs the question – what’s the point of literacy if the industry still classifies them “unskilled”?
Yes, there are over a billion Indians, and many of them will probably get raw deals owing to the upheavals posed by fast paced development and industrialization wherein skills need to be updated more frequently than ever before. But that does not have to mean that a guy at the very bottom of the pecking order has virtually no hope of a promotion, or of earning decent wages after slogging it out for the first couple of years. Again, I know that the surprisingly convenient supply demand argument can explain this by saying – “for every 10 distributors, you need only one supervisor – and for every 10 supervisors, you only need one executive, and so on”. But that doesn’t make the situation any less unfair. It’s about time we came up with a region specific minimum wage law, where the minimum wage takes into account not just the basic roti-kapda-makaan requirements, but also includes financial allowances for learning skills and acquiring knowledge that help a worker enhance his productivity and employability.
According to them, it is a case of supply-demand and skill level. In other words, if the sales guy in question gets pissed off and quits, there are hundreds of people ready to take his place and work for the same meagre salary simply because it is a low skill job. While the explanation makes perfect sense, I was not entirely convinced. Somewhere, at a very fundamental level, the problem lies in the fact that there are so many of these so called “unskilled” workers in the country. And it’s not like they’re uneducated. Most of them have cleared Class 12, and some even have a diploma or a bachelors’ degree. In other words, the government happily classifies them as “literate” when it calculates India’s literacy rate. Which begs the question – what’s the point of literacy if the industry still classifies them “unskilled”?
Yes, there are over a billion Indians, and many of them will probably get raw deals owing to the upheavals posed by fast paced development and industrialization wherein skills need to be updated more frequently than ever before. But that does not have to mean that a guy at the very bottom of the pecking order has virtually no hope of a promotion, or of earning decent wages after slogging it out for the first couple of years. Again, I know that the surprisingly convenient supply demand argument can explain this by saying – “for every 10 distributors, you need only one supervisor – and for every 10 supervisors, you only need one executive, and so on”. But that doesn’t make the situation any less unfair. It’s about time we came up with a region specific minimum wage law, where the minimum wage takes into account not just the basic roti-kapda-makaan requirements, but also includes financial allowances for learning skills and acquiring knowledge that help a worker enhance his productivity and employability.
Introducing the Effemceegist
Ten years from now, the Oxford Indian dictionary will define an Effemceegist (also, FMCGist) as: Noun, a highly skilled entry level foot soldier of the FMCG industry, coined by blogger Hetero sapien on the 27th of June, 2009
As some of you know, I’ve recently begun working for a leading Indian FMCG company with a market capitalization of over $ 4 Billion and over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been trying to learn the ropes, so to speak, in an attempt to understand the nuances of this highly cross functional and extremely complex business. And I must say, the journey and learnings thus far have been absolutely fascinating.
I’ve been pampered in the luxury of one of the finest hotels in the country, tried out some awesome new cuisines, interacted with some very high up members of the Management committee of my business division, met up with and picked the brains of some of the biggest brand builders in corporate India, attended lectures at one of the most prestigious market research firms in the country, learnt the basics of statistical quality control from Six Sigma black belts, travelled with a salesman inside one of Kolkata’s dirtiest and most unorganised bazaars in order to understand the company’s sub urban distribution network to study its strength and weaknesses and recently interacted with complete strangers (as a salesboy) at a Spencer’s supermarket outlet and managed to convince some Pantene users to give our brand a shot. Next week, I will be hitting Rural Bengal to study the rural distribution and warehousing processes. A week at the company’s R&D Centre in Bangalore is scheduled for the week after, following which I will be spending a couple of month’s at the company’s manufacturing unit in Haridwar.
Since most of my time in the near future will be intrinsically linked to learning and hopefully mastering this business, I guess a category dedicated to - dare I say, my “adventures” in the effemceegy world is not entirely uncalled for.
Ergo this.
For a more comprehensive account containing posts in greater detail, sprinkled with office humor, office politics and office quirks, add www.effemceegist.blogspot.com to your subscription list.
Happy reading.
Btw, this post was written on my new HP Pavilion dv4 series entertainment Notebook which comes with a 4GB RAM and a really cool media load-and-play interface.
As some of you know, I’ve recently begun working for a leading Indian FMCG company with a market capitalization of over $ 4 Billion and over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been trying to learn the ropes, so to speak, in an attempt to understand the nuances of this highly cross functional and extremely complex business. And I must say, the journey and learnings thus far have been absolutely fascinating.
I’ve been pampered in the luxury of one of the finest hotels in the country, tried out some awesome new cuisines, interacted with some very high up members of the Management committee of my business division, met up with and picked the brains of some of the biggest brand builders in corporate India, attended lectures at one of the most prestigious market research firms in the country, learnt the basics of statistical quality control from Six Sigma black belts, travelled with a salesman inside one of Kolkata’s dirtiest and most unorganised bazaars in order to understand the company’s sub urban distribution network to study its strength and weaknesses and recently interacted with complete strangers (as a salesboy) at a Spencer’s supermarket outlet and managed to convince some Pantene users to give our brand a shot. Next week, I will be hitting Rural Bengal to study the rural distribution and warehousing processes. A week at the company’s R&D Centre in Bangalore is scheduled for the week after, following which I will be spending a couple of month’s at the company’s manufacturing unit in Haridwar.
Since most of my time in the near future will be intrinsically linked to learning and hopefully mastering this business, I guess a category dedicated to - dare I say, my “adventures” in the effemceegy world is not entirely uncalled for.
Ergo this.
For a more comprehensive account containing posts in greater detail, sprinkled with office humor, office politics and office quirks, add www.effemceegist.blogspot.com to your subscription list.
Happy reading.
Btw, this post was written on my new HP Pavilion dv4 series entertainment Notebook which comes with a 4GB RAM and a really cool media load-and-play interface.
CNN on IPL
That the Chargers face off against the Bangalore Challengers in the IPL final today was announced by CNN International on its homepage under the tab "Top Stories". The tab incidentally had no stories about the new Indian cabinet, the recent insurgent strike in Kashmir, or even about the upcoming release of IITJEE results :D
Check out this screen shot
Check out this screen shot
On Books - Part I
I've been cooling off at home in Hyderabad for the last few days with little to do and much to ponder. After the sixth straight day of wake up - eat - sleep - IPL - eat - sleep I decided to go buy myself a couple of new books to chew on. Its been a while since I last went to a book shop in Hyderabad and yesterday I spent the better half of four hours browsing book shelves in Odessey, Walden and Central.
I was hunting for a book called "Commonwealth" by Jeffrey Sachs. One would imagine that book shops in a large city would stock up on books authored by the most recent recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics. Clearly my imagination ran a little too wild there. One would also imagine that the philosophy section would be stocked with more than just Osho on this and Osho on that, ad infinitum up until Osho on how to fart secretly and how this helps you lead a fuller life. The section on History/Politics was peppered with Khushwant Singh's "A Train to Pakistan", the ubiquitous Harry Potter could be found in four different categories, including, inexplicably, "Religion", "Mein Kampf" is now a work of fiction (pity it isn't) and Desmond Morris'"Human watching" was relegated to "Self Help". I say "relegated" because I find self help books absolutely despicable. Sure Robin Sharma's "Who will cry when you die" has a number of though provoking statements (for example - Why do you reach for the phone everytime it rings? The phone is there for your caller's convenience, not yours) but as he candidly points out, none of these bits of wisdom are his own. Although books containing borrowed wisdom is definitely preferred over those that contain none at all (every book by Malcolm Gladwell fits that description) there ought to be a self imposed conscience driven limit on how many books you can write simply by compiling the wisdom of others. Similarly, pompous titles like "The Greatness Guide" hardly help build the author's credibility given that there are a humongous number of people on this planet who I believe to be "more great" than Sharma and who don't while away their lifetimes disseminating borrowed wisdom.
Back to the original theme, Hyderabad clearly lacks that one big, well stocked book store with knowledgeable sales staff, which is a real pity because I know lots of people here who share my hobby of browsing book stores every few weeks with the hope of stumbling upon some thing new, interesting and offbeat to read. However, when you consider that a leading book store here stocked Chetan Bhagat's "Three mistakes of my life" in a shelf titled "Greatest Bestsellers of all Time" typed bold, underlined, with Size 36 font, you begin to realise that perhaps flipkart is a better option today.
PS - I did end up buying one of those "Greatest bestsellers of all time" - Amartya Sen's Identity and Violence but not before I complained to the sales staff that I found Bhagat's presence in close proximity to such books as Adam Smith's Wealth of nations, Dawkin's The selfish gene Sagan's Cosmos and Hawkins' A brief history of Time, highly offensive.
Incidentally, I've barely reached page 15 of Identity and Violence and I'm hooked already. Do read it!
I was hunting for a book called "Commonwealth" by Jeffrey Sachs. One would imagine that book shops in a large city would stock up on books authored by the most recent recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics. Clearly my imagination ran a little too wild there. One would also imagine that the philosophy section would be stocked with more than just Osho on this and Osho on that, ad infinitum up until Osho on how to fart secretly and how this helps you lead a fuller life. The section on History/Politics was peppered with Khushwant Singh's "A Train to Pakistan", the ubiquitous Harry Potter could be found in four different categories, including, inexplicably, "Religion", "Mein Kampf" is now a work of fiction (pity it isn't) and Desmond Morris'"Human watching" was relegated to "Self Help". I say "relegated" because I find self help books absolutely despicable. Sure Robin Sharma's "Who will cry when you die" has a number of though provoking statements (for example - Why do you reach for the phone everytime it rings? The phone is there for your caller's convenience, not yours) but as he candidly points out, none of these bits of wisdom are his own. Although books containing borrowed wisdom is definitely preferred over those that contain none at all (every book by Malcolm Gladwell fits that description) there ought to be a self imposed conscience driven limit on how many books you can write simply by compiling the wisdom of others. Similarly, pompous titles like "The Greatness Guide" hardly help build the author's credibility given that there are a humongous number of people on this planet who I believe to be "more great" than Sharma and who don't while away their lifetimes disseminating borrowed wisdom.
Back to the original theme, Hyderabad clearly lacks that one big, well stocked book store with knowledgeable sales staff, which is a real pity because I know lots of people here who share my hobby of browsing book stores every few weeks with the hope of stumbling upon some thing new, interesting and offbeat to read. However, when you consider that a leading book store here stocked Chetan Bhagat's "Three mistakes of my life" in a shelf titled "Greatest Bestsellers of all Time" typed bold, underlined, with Size 36 font, you begin to realise that perhaps flipkart is a better option today.
PS - I did end up buying one of those "Greatest bestsellers of all time" - Amartya Sen's Identity and Violence but not before I complained to the sales staff that I found Bhagat's presence in close proximity to such books as Adam Smith's Wealth of nations, Dawkin's The selfish gene Sagan's Cosmos and Hawkins' A brief history of Time, highly offensive.
Incidentally, I've barely reached page 15 of Identity and Violence and I'm hooked already. Do read it!
Do animals pray?
An article on “praying” from a registered Russellophile agnostic might be unusual, but as I will explain, not entirely unexpected. But let me pose this question anyway. Why do people who either don’t believe in God or believe there isn’t enough information yet, to make a rational judgment about the existence of God, bother expending time, energy and intellect in writing about things holy, religious, sacrosanct and “godly”? While I don’t have the answer to that just yet, I certainly know for a fact that the answer isn’t “I want to convince religious folks that there isn’t really a God and that their faith is due to a cleverly orchestrated stratagem by the clergy, better known to modern thinkers as childhood indoctrination”. That isn’t my stand. Personally, I don’t have an issue with people having religious beliefs and unlike fundamental atheists, I don’t subscribe to the view that Believers are either plain stupid or are obstinate and egotistic intellectuals fully aware of the non existence of God. As a result, I don’t concur with Dawkins on his equally obstinate and almost fundamentalist stand on atheism. Having said that, I did relish the intellectual exercise Dawkins puts forward in “The God Delusion” where he argues that a God alleged to be both omnipotent and omniscient can be reduced to nothingness through a nihilistic series of self regressing arguments.
I recently started watching the Television series “The West Wing” with a great deal of interest. For the record, I haven’t seen another TV show, in any language, where the quality of script writing comes anywhere close to the standards set by this show. A friend summed up my thoughts rather eloquently when he said “There are some conversation on the wing, on a level of such unparalleled intellect, that after listening to it, you simply go Ffaahaack”. The reason I bring up The West Wing in this piece is because one line of dialogue keeps coming back to haunt the agnostic centre of my body (the rational half of my brain) – “God Bless America”. A couple of episodes featuring a certain eccentric British diplomat also left behind an uncomfortable etching in my hippocampus when it recorded the dialogue – “God save the Queen”.
If God is everything that he’s made out to be, and if we are to believe modern day politically correct utterances alleging that “All Gods are the same, but are worshipped differently”, why then would such a noble and fair minded supra natural entity be partial to the Americans and to the British queen. Why would “God bless America”, as though the specific geographic boundary that encloses the continental United States belongs to a region of significantly heightened state of religious piousness? What about naturalized Americans and the Puerta Ricans then? Perhaps the deluge of Mexican and Indian migrants into America can be put down to their desire to “more blessed” than they would be in their homelands, because of America’s supposed closeness to the faucet of blessings on God’s nightstand. The fable of the Bermuda Triangle is more believable.
From an evolutionary point of view, humans are no more significant in the cosmic scheme of things than say, the dung beetle or the now extinct Tyrannosaurus Rex. In fact humans, have been around only for the last two million years, and the first migration out of Africa which generated all non African “races” happened a mere 70,000 years ago. So the question is – “What was God doing all this while before the humans came about”? Was he busy evolving the chimpanzees into Homo erectus and the monkeys before them into the chimps? Or is the other alternative “Humans invented god about 70,000 years ago” more believable. In fact, the arrogance displayed by some anthropologists in claiming that the chimpanzee skull wasn’t “fully developed” is deeply lamentable and exposes a deep misunderstanding of the fact that the chimps didn’t while away there lifetimes trying hard to “fully develop” their skulls with the ultimate aim of evolving into humans. The chimp skull was just as developed as the chimp skull needed to be. It was neither under nor over developed. The chimp skull was just right, for a chimp.
Clearly, non human species have been around for a lot longer than humans. In the quest to answer the penultimate question Does God exist ? (the ultimate question being why does anything exist?) it might be worthwhile to look for godly activities among other species of animals. Is there any recorded evidence of, say, wolves praying? Have we discovered any dinosaur skeletons fossilized in a prostrated posture? (If we did, it would be mean God played a really cruel joke on the poor Dinosaur – fossilizing it under a stream of lava just moments after it had performed its daily religious ritual). Do birds, insects, tapeworms, trees, fungi or bacteria pray? Why don’t they? They’re all “living things” by our definition of “life”. Perhaps God doesn’t reach out to lesser evolved creatures? But wouldn’t that be extremely partial on part of a noble supra natural entity to discriminate on the basis of evolution. Or perhaps he goes by looks. A tape worm perhaps isn’t worthy of celestial perception and is therefore cut off from the faucet of blessings on God’s nightstand. Either way , it doesn’t make sense.
The crux of the argument I’m trying to drive home in this piece is – “If a supra natural omniscient entity does exist, why is he known only to humans and not to the multitude of other species of animals on the planet?” Perhaps because such an entity is the figment of human imagination, which developed out of a fear of the unknown, fear of the forces of nature beyond human control, or developed as a means by which alpha males in social groups claimed a dominant position by proclaiming them to be the "son" of an invisible yet all pervading power, perhaps as a way to deflect criticism of hierarchy and autocracy by saying “It is the will of God”. Or perhaps, God was the result of human aspirations and their belief in the existence of a power that was good, fair and a protector of the weak; aspirations born out of subjugation, hardships of life and the trauma of death and disease?
Was God the first super hero man invented?
Next up - If the idea of "God" is a myth, why then did it independently develop across so many geographically separated cultures?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I recently started watching the Television series “The West Wing” with a great deal of interest. For the record, I haven’t seen another TV show, in any language, where the quality of script writing comes anywhere close to the standards set by this show. A friend summed up my thoughts rather eloquently when he said “There are some conversation on the wing, on a level of such unparalleled intellect, that after listening to it, you simply go Ffaahaack”. The reason I bring up The West Wing in this piece is because one line of dialogue keeps coming back to haunt the agnostic centre of my body (the rational half of my brain) – “God Bless America”. A couple of episodes featuring a certain eccentric British diplomat also left behind an uncomfortable etching in my hippocampus when it recorded the dialogue – “God save the Queen”.
If God is everything that he’s made out to be, and if we are to believe modern day politically correct utterances alleging that “All Gods are the same, but are worshipped differently”, why then would such a noble and fair minded supra natural entity be partial to the Americans and to the British queen. Why would “God bless America”, as though the specific geographic boundary that encloses the continental United States belongs to a region of significantly heightened state of religious piousness? What about naturalized Americans and the Puerta Ricans then? Perhaps the deluge of Mexican and Indian migrants into America can be put down to their desire to “more blessed” than they would be in their homelands, because of America’s supposed closeness to the faucet of blessings on God’s nightstand. The fable of the Bermuda Triangle is more believable.
From an evolutionary point of view, humans are no more significant in the cosmic scheme of things than say, the dung beetle or the now extinct Tyrannosaurus Rex. In fact humans, have been around only for the last two million years, and the first migration out of Africa which generated all non African “races” happened a mere 70,000 years ago. So the question is – “What was God doing all this while before the humans came about”? Was he busy evolving the chimpanzees into Homo erectus and the monkeys before them into the chimps? Or is the other alternative “Humans invented god about 70,000 years ago” more believable. In fact, the arrogance displayed by some anthropologists in claiming that the chimpanzee skull wasn’t “fully developed” is deeply lamentable and exposes a deep misunderstanding of the fact that the chimps didn’t while away there lifetimes trying hard to “fully develop” their skulls with the ultimate aim of evolving into humans. The chimp skull was just as developed as the chimp skull needed to be. It was neither under nor over developed. The chimp skull was just right, for a chimp.
Clearly, non human species have been around for a lot longer than humans. In the quest to answer the penultimate question Does God exist ? (the ultimate question being why does anything exist?) it might be worthwhile to look for godly activities among other species of animals. Is there any recorded evidence of, say, wolves praying? Have we discovered any dinosaur skeletons fossilized in a prostrated posture? (If we did, it would be mean God played a really cruel joke on the poor Dinosaur – fossilizing it under a stream of lava just moments after it had performed its daily religious ritual). Do birds, insects, tapeworms, trees, fungi or bacteria pray? Why don’t they? They’re all “living things” by our definition of “life”. Perhaps God doesn’t reach out to lesser evolved creatures? But wouldn’t that be extremely partial on part of a noble supra natural entity to discriminate on the basis of evolution. Or perhaps he goes by looks. A tape worm perhaps isn’t worthy of celestial perception and is therefore cut off from the faucet of blessings on God’s nightstand. Either way , it doesn’t make sense.
The crux of the argument I’m trying to drive home in this piece is – “If a supra natural omniscient entity does exist, why is he known only to humans and not to the multitude of other species of animals on the planet?” Perhaps because such an entity is the figment of human imagination, which developed out of a fear of the unknown, fear of the forces of nature beyond human control, or developed as a means by which alpha males in social groups claimed a dominant position by proclaiming them to be the "son" of an invisible yet all pervading power, perhaps as a way to deflect criticism of hierarchy and autocracy by saying “It is the will of God”. Or perhaps, God was the result of human aspirations and their belief in the existence of a power that was good, fair and a protector of the weak; aspirations born out of subjugation, hardships of life and the trauma of death and disease?
Was God the first super hero man invented?
Next up - If the idea of "God" is a myth, why then did it independently develop across so many geographically separated cultures?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Betting and Stock Trading
A couple of weeks ago, I had an interesting discussion with a friend who has a pretty good understanding of the financial market. I argued that a constitution which allows people to buy and sell shares opportunistically / on a whim / on a hunch, etc should also permit people to bet money on sports, elections, a game of cards and any other event they want to bet on. But that's not how things are in India. Betting is illegal, and I found that grossly hypocritical. The guiding ethic, my friend says, is that when you play the stock market, you're betting on something that has some "intrinsic value". When you bet during a game of cards, you are not. Hmnn.
Here's an example of something that is perfectly legal - Not only could I have bought shares of Satyam for a ridiculously undervalued price the day after it disclosed its financial irregularities, I was not required by law to have any knowledge of Satyam's expected future earnings, details about its bailout program, its future owners, and other metrics that would determine its future "intrinsic value". My decision could have legally been based on the naive assumption that "things can only get better from here".
For a few days, I was fairly satisfied with the "intrinsic value" argument. But then I got thinking about what people really bet on, say in a game of Poker. I don't speak for everyone, but every time I make a bet, I am putting to test my ability to compute the probabilities of securing a "good hand" at the end of the round. In other words, I am betting on my aptitude at computing complex probabilities accurately. Why is this ability deemed to have no intrinsic value?
I'm no expert on finance, but a friend of mine who worked at the Singapore Stock Exchange's trading floor last summer says most investment and stock trade decisions of Financial Companies are made based on complex statistical and probabilistic calculations made by the company's highly paid back room boys (read Indians and Chinese). In fact, the guy my friend reported to, had a PhD in Probability from King's College, London.
So my argument is - If people are permitted to purchase shares of a company much of whose wealth generating ability is based on its competence at computing probabilities of future payoffs, ROI and market stats, why can't I bet money on my OWN competence at computing probabilities during a game of Poker?
Here's an example of something that is perfectly legal - Not only could I have bought shares of Satyam for a ridiculously undervalued price the day after it disclosed its financial irregularities, I was not required by law to have any knowledge of Satyam's expected future earnings, details about its bailout program, its future owners, and other metrics that would determine its future "intrinsic value". My decision could have legally been based on the naive assumption that "things can only get better from here".
For a few days, I was fairly satisfied with the "intrinsic value" argument. But then I got thinking about what people really bet on, say in a game of Poker. I don't speak for everyone, but every time I make a bet, I am putting to test my ability to compute the probabilities of securing a "good hand" at the end of the round. In other words, I am betting on my aptitude at computing complex probabilities accurately. Why is this ability deemed to have no intrinsic value?
I'm no expert on finance, but a friend of mine who worked at the Singapore Stock Exchange's trading floor last summer says most investment and stock trade decisions of Financial Companies are made based on complex statistical and probabilistic calculations made by the company's highly paid back room boys (read Indians and Chinese). In fact, the guy my friend reported to, had a PhD in Probability from King's College, London.
So my argument is - If people are permitted to purchase shares of a company much of whose wealth generating ability is based on its competence at computing probabilities of future payoffs, ROI and market stats, why can't I bet money on my OWN competence at computing probabilities during a game of Poker?
Socio-Economics of Energy Crisis, circa AD 2200
This piece was my introduction to an essay I began writing for the St. Gallen Symposium. For various reasons, I neither submitted nor completed the essay.
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A Pessimist’s View
After a grueling day’s work marked notoriously by power cuts – both scheduled and unscheduled, I hurriedly turned off the power supply in my office cubicle and reached for my attaché, worried I would be late for the company bus that dropped me off, a couple of miles from my apartment in downtown Mumbai.
On my way back home, I saw a group of people demonstrating on the street near the central station demanding subsidies for agricultural electricity. As I passed them, I craned my neck to catch a glimpse of the new magna-drive enabled trains – using which was a luxury, even for a well-off yet rarely listened-to energy consultant like me. During the ten minute walk from the drop off point, I thought I heard a faint warning siren urging people to stay put in their rooms. A mild Level II radiation leak in the outskirts, not the first this year. Some people had probably been affected but as long as you had a fancy university degree and dressed in smart looking Armani cloaks, you were guaranteed to never be counted among those people. We were living in a bubble whose periphery was being stretched and strained by the surprisingly profound socio-economic consequences of the energy crunch. We liked the bubble, the quid pro quo – on the one hand, an explosion would mean we would be out there – in the high radiation zones and in the kilometers deep coal mines, while on the other, an implosion would bring them inside, meaning fewer hours of domestic power supply, more crowded urban transport and a whole range of other economic upheavals I’d rather live without. The bubble was of course, purely ethereal and never really materialized into something real – real like my old Tata-Renault Electra electric car parked in the driveway. I hadn’t used it in years – charging up and maintaining it was just too expensive and unreliable.
I flicked on the TiVo. CCN reported that Russia was bickering with Ukraine over Natural gas. Again. The India-Iran gas pipeline had been attacked in North-West Pakistan. Again. The US had allegedly overshot its hydride extraction quota from the Caribbean seabed and oceanographers were up in arms. Again. North Serbia refused IAEA experts from inspecting its nuclear propelled rocket program. Again. The Western EU block claimed Serbia was secretly trying to smuggle in Helium III for unsafe fusion cycles. Again. Slumberger stock prices shot up after speculation that it had struck oil 18 miles under Antarctic ice sheets. The critically endangered Climate lobby blasted the near extinct oil lobby who fought back claiming that the discovery that the Antarctic still possessed ice sheets was an achievement in itself. Chinese scientists claimed the invention of the first genetically modified energy efficient vegetative fuel and promptly demanded nuclear fuel from Australia in return for the technology transfer. Vietnamese bureaucrats jumped in shock and lobbied for another nuclear deal with France, otherwise threatening to default on its carbon emission standards. The weather and stock markets were gloomy. And in Sports, India beat England 1-0 in a Soccer World Cup game. Finally, something to cheer about.
It is 5 40 PM now. Beyond 6 PM, the price per unit of electricity shoots up four times to INR 200. I went into my bedroom, cranked up the AC to enjoy the last units of affordable electricity that day, and promptly fell asleep.
An Optimist’s View
I woke up, still very drowsy from having dreamt about the energy crunch sci-fi movie I saw last week. A warm bath powered by the local bio-waste incinerator awaited me. The photo-voltaics were just beginning to kick into action. Satisfied, I looked forward to the short drive on the piezo-crystal embedded highway to my Nariman Point office in my Tata-Renault Electra, which was presently plugged into batteries charged by the solar panels on my rooftop.
You get the drift…
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A Pessimist’s View
After a grueling day’s work marked notoriously by power cuts – both scheduled and unscheduled, I hurriedly turned off the power supply in my office cubicle and reached for my attaché, worried I would be late for the company bus that dropped me off, a couple of miles from my apartment in downtown Mumbai.
On my way back home, I saw a group of people demonstrating on the street near the central station demanding subsidies for agricultural electricity. As I passed them, I craned my neck to catch a glimpse of the new magna-drive enabled trains – using which was a luxury, even for a well-off yet rarely listened-to energy consultant like me. During the ten minute walk from the drop off point, I thought I heard a faint warning siren urging people to stay put in their rooms. A mild Level II radiation leak in the outskirts, not the first this year. Some people had probably been affected but as long as you had a fancy university degree and dressed in smart looking Armani cloaks, you were guaranteed to never be counted among those people. We were living in a bubble whose periphery was being stretched and strained by the surprisingly profound socio-economic consequences of the energy crunch. We liked the bubble, the quid pro quo – on the one hand, an explosion would mean we would be out there – in the high radiation zones and in the kilometers deep coal mines, while on the other, an implosion would bring them inside, meaning fewer hours of domestic power supply, more crowded urban transport and a whole range of other economic upheavals I’d rather live without. The bubble was of course, purely ethereal and never really materialized into something real – real like my old Tata-Renault Electra electric car parked in the driveway. I hadn’t used it in years – charging up and maintaining it was just too expensive and unreliable.
I flicked on the TiVo. CCN reported that Russia was bickering with Ukraine over Natural gas. Again. The India-Iran gas pipeline had been attacked in North-West Pakistan. Again. The US had allegedly overshot its hydride extraction quota from the Caribbean seabed and oceanographers were up in arms. Again. North Serbia refused IAEA experts from inspecting its nuclear propelled rocket program. Again. The Western EU block claimed Serbia was secretly trying to smuggle in Helium III for unsafe fusion cycles. Again. Slumberger stock prices shot up after speculation that it had struck oil 18 miles under Antarctic ice sheets. The critically endangered Climate lobby blasted the near extinct oil lobby who fought back claiming that the discovery that the Antarctic still possessed ice sheets was an achievement in itself. Chinese scientists claimed the invention of the first genetically modified energy efficient vegetative fuel and promptly demanded nuclear fuel from Australia in return for the technology transfer. Vietnamese bureaucrats jumped in shock and lobbied for another nuclear deal with France, otherwise threatening to default on its carbon emission standards. The weather and stock markets were gloomy. And in Sports, India beat England 1-0 in a Soccer World Cup game. Finally, something to cheer about.
It is 5 40 PM now. Beyond 6 PM, the price per unit of electricity shoots up four times to INR 200. I went into my bedroom, cranked up the AC to enjoy the last units of affordable electricity that day, and promptly fell asleep.
An Optimist’s View
I woke up, still very drowsy from having dreamt about the energy crunch sci-fi movie I saw last week. A warm bath powered by the local bio-waste incinerator awaited me. The photo-voltaics were just beginning to kick into action. Satisfied, I looked forward to the short drive on the piezo-crystal embedded highway to my Nariman Point office in my Tata-Renault Electra, which was presently plugged into batteries charged by the solar panels on my rooftop.
You get the drift…
The Economics of Bribe Money
I sent in this article as my entry for an essay contest. Was informed yesterday, that it finished in third place.
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Corruption in India will perhaps go down as the most bitched about problem in history that saw the least action taken to actually eradicate it. Corruption constitutes a multitude of extra constitutional activities that lie in the wild gray expanses between the legal and illegal. Quite often, corruption strays into the illegal side, but the fact remains, it continues to be a very hard crime to prove, litigate and prosecute. In this piece, I will focus primarily on financial corruption – bribes - that is, activities where money changes hand in return for a service that is either unlawful or bends the law severely.
Let me begin by classifying financial corruption into two classes. First, where the purported financial beneficiaries are those belonging to the low and middle income groups. Second, where the beneficiaries are people in government, large corporate houses and foreign nationals. In this essay I will argue that instances of the first kind of corruption result in a number of intended and unintended benefits to the society at large when observed over a sufficiently large time frame. I will even venture to say that certain forms of the second type of corruption are beneficial to society under certain conditions. I then identify those kinds of corruption that actually hurt the country economically or otherwise and conclude by claiming that rampant bribery represents a failure of the government to equitably distribute the financial resources of the country and that certain forms of corruption effectively constitute a parallel shadow economy, chipping away at the inequalities, which the officially “legal” economy is fraught with, and that such a parallel economy is in some ways, beneficial to more than just its intended beneficiaries.
The irony about framing good tough policies is that it is a fairly easy task. What is infinitely more difficult is to translate the intended benefits of the policy, into incentives, to make the people who the policy seeks to target, see it as being to their advantage. After all, Economics is, at its very core, the science of how people respond to incentives. Unless I see an incentive, a very selfish incentive in doing something, I won’t do it. This might appear blunt, idealist and selfish, that many would dismiss as that’s not me. But it is a principle that drives a lion’s share of our actions. Beginning with the not so subtle – you want to own the latest PDA phone, but don’t have the money to pay for it. Primal instinct dictates that you walk into a store, grab the phone and walk out. But you wouldn’t do that. The incentive to own the phone is outweighed by the incentive to not spend the next couple of years in jail. Similar arguments work towards explaining why most people don’t murder, extort, kidnap, assault, rob, terrorize, embezzle and so on. Morality is the mind’s subconscious regulator to rationalize our departure from the primal existence of our lesser evolved ancestors. Going back to incentives - why do people slog for 16 years in schools and colleges, writing assignments, taking exams, failing some and retaking them? Your incentive is the chance to lead a better quality of life in the long run. Fairly straightforward, right?
Now, ever wondered why people pay bribes? What is the incentive to pay a bribe? And what is the incentive to not? The trouble with bribing is that in most cases, there is no tangible, identifiable victim. So morality takes a back seat. Both sides benefit, and often, in their opinion, at the cost of no one else. It resembles a beautiful win-win situation. And this is precisely why it is so hard to eradicate this “problem” of giving and receiving bribes. Yes, you do risk a jail term for certain forms of bribing, but knowing fully well that it is a “soft crime” unlikely to be monitored or prosecuted, you have an incentive to be party to it.
A friend of mine claims to have paid bribes on three occasions and I have often marveled at just how convenient and efficient the exchange turned out to be. Not just for him, but also for the fellow who took his money. The first time, he paid someone two hundred fifty bucks to speed up the processing time of a certain document, the second, he paid someone three hundred rupees to turn a blind eye to something and the third, he paid yet another someone, one thousand three hundred rupees in two installments to turn a blind eye, speed up processing time and issue a certain other document. The funny part – he has no regrets whatsoever and often pats himself for saving some valuable time and unnecessary effort. To give you just a glimpse of one his bribe offerings, two fifty bucks ensured that he did not have to stand in a certain queue for ninety minutes. The people in the queue in all likelihood did not want to pay the additional two fifty bucks since the arrangement is an open secret. So they were okay with waiting the extra hour in line. It suited them just fine. As did paying two fifty bucks for him. Who was the victim?
At this point, it is necessary to make a distinction between corruption and coercion. And the defining factor here is the direction of the cash flow. The way I see it, if money is transferred from a richer to a poorer person, that kind of corruption is fairly harmless so long as the service rendered in return doesn’t adversely affect a third party. Consider the example of bribing an official to speed up the delivery of your passport (all due procedure is still followed) in return for a fee. The financial transaction makes perfect economic sense. In a free market economy, the buyer and seller reach a mutually agreeable price for every transaction. The fact that the bribe giver is prepared to pay more than the government imposed price for that service clearly points to a mismatch between the true free market value of the service and the imposed value. In such a scenario, it makes economic sense for the buyer and seller to collude and revise the market value of the practice.
The question then, is, where does the money you paid in bribe end up? It is very likely that the official, perhaps a middle class family man, will spend it on monthly expenses, children’s schooling, make some indulgent purchases, or in the worst possible scenario, spend it on liquor. Notice the money changes hand from the passport official to someone else in his immediate financial circle. The money circulates, perhaps from his local grocer to that grocer’s delivery boy, from the delivery boy to a mobile phone maker, from the mobile phone maker to pay an employee, say a call center worker. Now this call center worker could be just about anyone – from the passport office employee’s nephew to the bribe giver’s niece. Making a small leap in logic, I would venture to say “When bribe money circulates in the economy, it is beneficial to society if all successive transactions transfer money to a poorer person” The problem arises when the passport official walks into a swanky restaurant to blow his money. That doesn’t help. But if he spent it to subsist on his current standard of living, or even shift to a slightly improved standard, this extra bribe money will only help in chipping away the inequalities that exist in the primary “legal” economy. And this is not only good, but critical to uplifting the economic standards of the poor.
What is unnatural and detrimental to all parties is when bribe money flows from a poor man to a richer man. This might happen in the lawless rural areas or when a poor man is blinded by emotion or destitution and begins to over-value the service he believes he is getting in return. This is not exactly corruption. The right word is coercion and I assert strongly at this point, that coercion in all forms fuels inequality. Another dangerous form of corruption is when the service offered in return for the bribe is directly detrimental to a third party. For example, money paid to a municipal commissioner to clear dangerous and faulty building plans hurts, not just other (honest) competing builders but also the residents of the proposed building who risk physical and financial harm in case the building does collapse. That this transaction hurts third parties is obvious, but it is interesting to follow the money trail. Where does the money go? A fair assumption would be that the commissioner keeps a portion of it to himself, shares some of it with other officers who are in the know and very likely, donates a portion of it to the political party that installed him in that position of power in the first place. Now, the commissioner and his officers, in all likelihood, spend the money in their respective financial circles – a new car, a fancier suit, jewelry, air tickets, a holiday, real estate, etc. The political party, again it can be assumed, uses the funds to mobilize its cadres, pay for their alcohol, pays overhead costs for running its offices to the local utility company, etc. Again, the money is distributed to the economy. I would argue, that so long as the money continues to circulate, it is beneficial to the economy in the long run, and will eventually trickle down to those people who need the money the most – the poorest constituents of the economy. What hurts, is when this money is either stored away in secret bank accounts hidden from Income Tax officials, or worse, spent to purchase foreign goods and services. When money leaves the Indian money circle, that’s when it hurts the country the most.
Let us consider the two issues separately. Banks were established in the middle ages by the Knights Templar to safeguard money, at a time when you were in actual physical and financial danger if you were caught by hoodlums with a large bundle of cash on you. But that isn’t a big problem anymore. Pickpockets and robberies do occur, but the real reason you deposit your money in a bank is to earn interest and keep your financial assets on par with inflation and devaluation. The reason why banks began offering interest on money was to encourage people to use the banking facilities in the first place. Now that the original raison d’etre of banks – to physically protect your money is no longer valid, people only put money in banks to earn interest and that has become their new raison d’etre. This is also the incentive the municipal commissioner needs, to deposit his bribe money in a bank. It can be argued that the bank uses this money to lend money to big companies to fund their expansion plans. It could even be argued that money deposited in the bank eventually helps someone. But the problem is that this someone is very likely not a constituent of the commissioner’s money flow cycle, that is, this someone is not his grocer, driver, cleaner, launderer, tailor, car dealer or real estate broker. It is someone – somewhere.
I have always wondered what Laloo does with all the money he has allegedly siphoned away through the numerous scandals that are ascribed to him. Clearly, he doesn’t invest them on fancy cars, or Armani suits, or even on swanky houses or horses. What does he do with his money? Somehow, the money must be trickling down to his party members, his goondas, his riflemen, his henchmen and his family. Consider the exorbitant celebrations during his daughter's wedding. Assuming that it was financed by his corruption money, it is interesting to note that the money did eventually make its was into the economy, and benefited the caterers, lighting walas, dance troupes, musicians, priests and so on. And when these people spend this bribe money, it trickles down to their respective money circles, and eventually it must trickle down to the producers of our most fundamental needs – farmers, artisans, and factory workers – the poorest constituents of society. What actually hurts the economy, is when bribe money is spent on foreign goods – say, imported cars and liquor or on foreign services – Caribbean vacations and American University education. This is because most of the bribe money is effectively the difference between the true free market determined cost of a service and it’s imposed market cost and when this money exits a country’s money circle, it brings down its GDP, and consequently, per capita incomes. Simply put, wealth created in India by Indians is siphoned away, never to benefit the creators of that wealth.
In conclusion, widespread instances of bribery points to a failure of the government to equitably distribute the country's financial resources. So long as money paid in bribes is not hoarded away in banks or spent on foreign goods and services, it will trickle down, over a sufficiently long period of time, to the weakest sections of society – to people who need it the most. Such a parallel economy chips away at the inequalities that the primary and “legal” economy of the country is riddled with, and in the long run, is economically beneficial to the poorest constituents of society.
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Corruption in India will perhaps go down as the most bitched about problem in history that saw the least action taken to actually eradicate it. Corruption constitutes a multitude of extra constitutional activities that lie in the wild gray expanses between the legal and illegal. Quite often, corruption strays into the illegal side, but the fact remains, it continues to be a very hard crime to prove, litigate and prosecute. In this piece, I will focus primarily on financial corruption – bribes - that is, activities where money changes hand in return for a service that is either unlawful or bends the law severely.
Let me begin by classifying financial corruption into two classes. First, where the purported financial beneficiaries are those belonging to the low and middle income groups. Second, where the beneficiaries are people in government, large corporate houses and foreign nationals. In this essay I will argue that instances of the first kind of corruption result in a number of intended and unintended benefits to the society at large when observed over a sufficiently large time frame. I will even venture to say that certain forms of the second type of corruption are beneficial to society under certain conditions. I then identify those kinds of corruption that actually hurt the country economically or otherwise and conclude by claiming that rampant bribery represents a failure of the government to equitably distribute the financial resources of the country and that certain forms of corruption effectively constitute a parallel shadow economy, chipping away at the inequalities, which the officially “legal” economy is fraught with, and that such a parallel economy is in some ways, beneficial to more than just its intended beneficiaries.
The irony about framing good tough policies is that it is a fairly easy task. What is infinitely more difficult is to translate the intended benefits of the policy, into incentives, to make the people who the policy seeks to target, see it as being to their advantage. After all, Economics is, at its very core, the science of how people respond to incentives. Unless I see an incentive, a very selfish incentive in doing something, I won’t do it. This might appear blunt, idealist and selfish, that many would dismiss as that’s not me. But it is a principle that drives a lion’s share of our actions. Beginning with the not so subtle – you want to own the latest PDA phone, but don’t have the money to pay for it. Primal instinct dictates that you walk into a store, grab the phone and walk out. But you wouldn’t do that. The incentive to own the phone is outweighed by the incentive to not spend the next couple of years in jail. Similar arguments work towards explaining why most people don’t murder, extort, kidnap, assault, rob, terrorize, embezzle and so on. Morality is the mind’s subconscious regulator to rationalize our departure from the primal existence of our lesser evolved ancestors. Going back to incentives - why do people slog for 16 years in schools and colleges, writing assignments, taking exams, failing some and retaking them? Your incentive is the chance to lead a better quality of life in the long run. Fairly straightforward, right?
Now, ever wondered why people pay bribes? What is the incentive to pay a bribe? And what is the incentive to not? The trouble with bribing is that in most cases, there is no tangible, identifiable victim. So morality takes a back seat. Both sides benefit, and often, in their opinion, at the cost of no one else. It resembles a beautiful win-win situation. And this is precisely why it is so hard to eradicate this “problem” of giving and receiving bribes. Yes, you do risk a jail term for certain forms of bribing, but knowing fully well that it is a “soft crime” unlikely to be monitored or prosecuted, you have an incentive to be party to it.
A friend of mine claims to have paid bribes on three occasions and I have often marveled at just how convenient and efficient the exchange turned out to be. Not just for him, but also for the fellow who took his money. The first time, he paid someone two hundred fifty bucks to speed up the processing time of a certain document, the second, he paid someone three hundred rupees to turn a blind eye to something and the third, he paid yet another someone, one thousand three hundred rupees in two installments to turn a blind eye, speed up processing time and issue a certain other document. The funny part – he has no regrets whatsoever and often pats himself for saving some valuable time and unnecessary effort. To give you just a glimpse of one his bribe offerings, two fifty bucks ensured that he did not have to stand in a certain queue for ninety minutes. The people in the queue in all likelihood did not want to pay the additional two fifty bucks since the arrangement is an open secret. So they were okay with waiting the extra hour in line. It suited them just fine. As did paying two fifty bucks for him. Who was the victim?
At this point, it is necessary to make a distinction between corruption and coercion. And the defining factor here is the direction of the cash flow. The way I see it, if money is transferred from a richer to a poorer person, that kind of corruption is fairly harmless so long as the service rendered in return doesn’t adversely affect a third party. Consider the example of bribing an official to speed up the delivery of your passport (all due procedure is still followed) in return for a fee. The financial transaction makes perfect economic sense. In a free market economy, the buyer and seller reach a mutually agreeable price for every transaction. The fact that the bribe giver is prepared to pay more than the government imposed price for that service clearly points to a mismatch between the true free market value of the service and the imposed value. In such a scenario, it makes economic sense for the buyer and seller to collude and revise the market value of the practice.
The question then, is, where does the money you paid in bribe end up? It is very likely that the official, perhaps a middle class family man, will spend it on monthly expenses, children’s schooling, make some indulgent purchases, or in the worst possible scenario, spend it on liquor. Notice the money changes hand from the passport official to someone else in his immediate financial circle. The money circulates, perhaps from his local grocer to that grocer’s delivery boy, from the delivery boy to a mobile phone maker, from the mobile phone maker to pay an employee, say a call center worker. Now this call center worker could be just about anyone – from the passport office employee’s nephew to the bribe giver’s niece. Making a small leap in logic, I would venture to say “When bribe money circulates in the economy, it is beneficial to society if all successive transactions transfer money to a poorer person” The problem arises when the passport official walks into a swanky restaurant to blow his money. That doesn’t help. But if he spent it to subsist on his current standard of living, or even shift to a slightly improved standard, this extra bribe money will only help in chipping away the inequalities that exist in the primary “legal” economy. And this is not only good, but critical to uplifting the economic standards of the poor.
What is unnatural and detrimental to all parties is when bribe money flows from a poor man to a richer man. This might happen in the lawless rural areas or when a poor man is blinded by emotion or destitution and begins to over-value the service he believes he is getting in return. This is not exactly corruption. The right word is coercion and I assert strongly at this point, that coercion in all forms fuels inequality. Another dangerous form of corruption is when the service offered in return for the bribe is directly detrimental to a third party. For example, money paid to a municipal commissioner to clear dangerous and faulty building plans hurts, not just other (honest) competing builders but also the residents of the proposed building who risk physical and financial harm in case the building does collapse. That this transaction hurts third parties is obvious, but it is interesting to follow the money trail. Where does the money go? A fair assumption would be that the commissioner keeps a portion of it to himself, shares some of it with other officers who are in the know and very likely, donates a portion of it to the political party that installed him in that position of power in the first place. Now, the commissioner and his officers, in all likelihood, spend the money in their respective financial circles – a new car, a fancier suit, jewelry, air tickets, a holiday, real estate, etc. The political party, again it can be assumed, uses the funds to mobilize its cadres, pay for their alcohol, pays overhead costs for running its offices to the local utility company, etc. Again, the money is distributed to the economy. I would argue, that so long as the money continues to circulate, it is beneficial to the economy in the long run, and will eventually trickle down to those people who need the money the most – the poorest constituents of the economy. What hurts, is when this money is either stored away in secret bank accounts hidden from Income Tax officials, or worse, spent to purchase foreign goods and services. When money leaves the Indian money circle, that’s when it hurts the country the most.
Let us consider the two issues separately. Banks were established in the middle ages by the Knights Templar to safeguard money, at a time when you were in actual physical and financial danger if you were caught by hoodlums with a large bundle of cash on you. But that isn’t a big problem anymore. Pickpockets and robberies do occur, but the real reason you deposit your money in a bank is to earn interest and keep your financial assets on par with inflation and devaluation. The reason why banks began offering interest on money was to encourage people to use the banking facilities in the first place. Now that the original raison d’etre of banks – to physically protect your money is no longer valid, people only put money in banks to earn interest and that has become their new raison d’etre. This is also the incentive the municipal commissioner needs, to deposit his bribe money in a bank. It can be argued that the bank uses this money to lend money to big companies to fund their expansion plans. It could even be argued that money deposited in the bank eventually helps someone. But the problem is that this someone is very likely not a constituent of the commissioner’s money flow cycle, that is, this someone is not his grocer, driver, cleaner, launderer, tailor, car dealer or real estate broker. It is someone – somewhere.
I have always wondered what Laloo does with all the money he has allegedly siphoned away through the numerous scandals that are ascribed to him. Clearly, he doesn’t invest them on fancy cars, or Armani suits, or even on swanky houses or horses. What does he do with his money? Somehow, the money must be trickling down to his party members, his goondas, his riflemen, his henchmen and his family. Consider the exorbitant celebrations during his daughter's wedding. Assuming that it was financed by his corruption money, it is interesting to note that the money did eventually make its was into the economy, and benefited the caterers, lighting walas, dance troupes, musicians, priests and so on. And when these people spend this bribe money, it trickles down to their respective money circles, and eventually it must trickle down to the producers of our most fundamental needs – farmers, artisans, and factory workers – the poorest constituents of society. What actually hurts the economy, is when bribe money is spent on foreign goods – say, imported cars and liquor or on foreign services – Caribbean vacations and American University education. This is because most of the bribe money is effectively the difference between the true free market determined cost of a service and it’s imposed market cost and when this money exits a country’s money circle, it brings down its GDP, and consequently, per capita incomes. Simply put, wealth created in India by Indians is siphoned away, never to benefit the creators of that wealth.
In conclusion, widespread instances of bribery points to a failure of the government to equitably distribute the country's financial resources. So long as money paid in bribes is not hoarded away in banks or spent on foreign goods and services, it will trickle down, over a sufficiently long period of time, to the weakest sections of society – to people who need it the most. Such a parallel economy chips away at the inequalities that the primary and “legal” economy of the country is riddled with, and in the long run, is economically beneficial to the poorest constituents of society.
Technological Zeitgeist
I was sifting through some files on my computer, and come across an assignment I wrote for a Humanities course, a few semesters ago. In sync with the changing theme of my blog, I figured I ought to publish this piece. Do Keep in mind I wrote this at a time when I was a lot more philosophical about things, than I am now.
Brickbats are welcome, but less so than compliments!
--------------------------------------------------------
Having spent the last few years of my life in hot sultry Madras, I have often cursed the weather. More often though, I have cursed the technologies that are supposed to help me acclimatize to the weather – the ceiling fans that always seem to rotate too slowly, the ACs that don’t cool fast enough, etcetera etcetera. The very idea of living in such an environment has often seemed repugnant to me. And that got me thinking. ACs have been around in Chennai only for the last 40 years or so. And motorized ceiling fans for a century at best. What about before? How did people manage to live with the god forsaken humid Madras weather? Did they while away their lifetimes wondering just when the ceiling fan or the air conditioner would be invented, to lend some sort of sanity to their lives. Obviously, they didn’t. They had to make do with what they had and over time, adapted themselves to the climate and environment.
A related example would be transportation. Can you even imagine the idea of your having to take a ride on horseback to visit your friend in another part of town or having to take a bullock cart to the suburb for a quiet picnic? The idea is absurd. But go back to 17th century India and its city states and kingdoms. Horses were the primary means of transport. People still needed to traverse long distances then. Often, they spent weeks travelling on horses to go from one city to another. While this mode of transportation might seem ridiculous to us, the point is, did it seem ridiculous to them? Again, did they while away their lives cursing their apparent state of underdevelopment and praying for the day when Herr Benz would invent the automobile? Obviously, not! The technology they possessed was commensurate, not just to their needs, but also to their perception of just how advanced that technology needed to be.
Fast forward 400 years to modern society. To travel from New Delhi to Mumbai, I can board a Jet Airways Flight departing Indira Gandhi International at 8 AM and touchdown in Mumbai no later than 10 30 AM. Would you call that fast? And if you do, what exactly would your definition of fast be based upon? A 28 hour train journey? A month long horse ride? Or a year long walk across the Indian subcontinent? Your definition is relative. At the cost of sounding philosophical, let me venture to say, that when it comes to perception, there are no absolutes.
Now here’s the difficult bit. Try fast forwarding 400 years into the future. Is it entirely unfathomable that a scientific breakthrough every bit as revolutionary as the discovery of electricity, or the invention of the steam engine or the postulation of the laws of relativity, would put forth a technology that allows for spatial travel at speeds twenty or thirty times faster than passenger aero planes of today? Given that we rode on horseback barely a century ago, the idea is not completely ludicrous. Now go back to the two, possibly silly questions that I’ve been posing all along - Would our descendants looks back at us and find the notion of taking two hours to shuttle between Mumbai and New Delhi laughable and absurd? It is very likely that they would. On the other hand, “Are we whiling away our lifetimes wishing we had a way to travel from Mumbai to Delhi in under two minutes” No! A resounding one in fact. While our aerospace engineers might be tinkering away in laboratories trying to commercialize scramjet engines, when it comes to the way we run our lives, we make do with what technology we have at hand, and model our schedules, our societies our economies and our businesses around the technology we possess. Now.
Zeitgeist is a German word that means spirit of our time. It has been used to explain numerous facets of human behavior. Moral zeitgeist, for example, is used to study the evolution of how, what we consider moral and immoral has evolved over time. Today we are much more liberal about gay rights, feminism, adultery and sexuality than we were during the Victorian age. Interestingly though, the evolution of the moral zeitgeist is not necessarily linear. For example, many Pre-Christian Pagan and Oriental Indian traditions allowed for practices we consider immoral even today. In short, moral zeitgeist refers to those morals that we consider appropriate today – in the spirit of our time. Keywords – OUR TIME.
Draw a parallel, and try imagining what the word technological zeitgeist could mean. Here’s an example – today we feel safe knowing the precise trajectories of rogue meteors that come close to Earth’s orbit. We even possess the technology to perhaps obliterate these meteors with a nuclear warhead. But is that enough to proclaim that we’re living in a technologically advanced age, with greater control over our environment and that we have a greater shot at survival than before? Or is it just an illusion generated by our perception of technological advancement? I would go with the latter. A thousand years ago, we did not possess the knowledge that a meteor strike could wipe out life on earth. We did not fret over defense against meteors because we did not understand its consequences and the forces at work. As technology advanced, we unearthed new insights into how the universe works, about meteor trajectories and how to deal with them. But does that mean we are any better off than our previous generations in preventing, say Armageddon? Our confidence of averting Armageddon is bound by our present level of knowledge of the universe. We are confident of solutions to known questions, to known problems, but for the unknown questions, we cannot even begin to imagine where the solutions might lie. We can only claim to have solutions to those problems, which we know for a fact, exist.
It is said that a man with a hammer only sees nails around him. The issue here is slightly different – A man with a hammer, in the absence of exhaustive information, and in the absence of an absolute frame to know how valuable his possessed knowledge is, such a man not only sees nails all around him, but is also blinded from the nuts and bolts and screws and all other objects beyond his cone of imagination, which cannot be fixed by a hammer. This is a deep rooted psychological issue – the presumption that we possess some kind of control over our adversaries. But that presumption is not subjective. We only come to know of, and define adversaries based on information we unearth and possess at that point in time. For example, we only believed that a meteor strike is deadly after we first understood the trajectories of heavenly bodies and simulating a meteor impact in our laboratories. If we did not possess this information, we would not consider a meteor strike deadly and would not prepared to face one. It is very likely that ancient civilizations would consider the idea of Earth being obliterated by a meteor strikes, as signs of lunacy.
A thousand years into the future, our astrophysicists could hypothetically figure out that the fabric of space time undergoes some kind of un-stretching or perhaps a reversal in the nature of gravity every few billion years and that the next such reversal would occur in AD 4000, say, and would wipe out all known matter, effectively killing us all. We would then, have a new adversary, based on our new found knowledge. Do we know anything about such a thing today? No. Why then do we consider ourselves to be a technologically advanced civilization? Why do we believe, we have a decent shot at beating our adversaries, our environment, and the universe? Did our ancestors, during their times, think any different? Is it really plausible that our ancestors considered themselves technologically backward – worrying away about ways to prevent meteor hits or enabling supersonic travel? No they did not. Their only concern was about living their lives and running their economies and society based on what information they had, at that instant of time, just like we do today. And that makes the idea of proclaiming ourselves as being advanced or inferior, meaningless.
The primary idea I am trying to convey is this - in the minds of every civilization in every stage in History, they are as developed as they need to be. All modern day proclamations of we are a technologically advanced or a technologically backward society is naïve and shortsighted since we are biased by our technologically inferior past, and blinded from our ostensibly superior future.
We are only as developed as the technological zeitgeist of our time would have us believe.
Brickbats are welcome, but less so than compliments!
--------------------------------------------------------
Having spent the last few years of my life in hot sultry Madras, I have often cursed the weather. More often though, I have cursed the technologies that are supposed to help me acclimatize to the weather – the ceiling fans that always seem to rotate too slowly, the ACs that don’t cool fast enough, etcetera etcetera. The very idea of living in such an environment has often seemed repugnant to me. And that got me thinking. ACs have been around in Chennai only for the last 40 years or so. And motorized ceiling fans for a century at best. What about before? How did people manage to live with the god forsaken humid Madras weather? Did they while away their lifetimes wondering just when the ceiling fan or the air conditioner would be invented, to lend some sort of sanity to their lives. Obviously, they didn’t. They had to make do with what they had and over time, adapted themselves to the climate and environment.
A related example would be transportation. Can you even imagine the idea of your having to take a ride on horseback to visit your friend in another part of town or having to take a bullock cart to the suburb for a quiet picnic? The idea is absurd. But go back to 17th century India and its city states and kingdoms. Horses were the primary means of transport. People still needed to traverse long distances then. Often, they spent weeks travelling on horses to go from one city to another. While this mode of transportation might seem ridiculous to us, the point is, did it seem ridiculous to them? Again, did they while away their lives cursing their apparent state of underdevelopment and praying for the day when Herr Benz would invent the automobile? Obviously, not! The technology they possessed was commensurate, not just to their needs, but also to their perception of just how advanced that technology needed to be.
Fast forward 400 years to modern society. To travel from New Delhi to Mumbai, I can board a Jet Airways Flight departing Indira Gandhi International at 8 AM and touchdown in Mumbai no later than 10 30 AM. Would you call that fast? And if you do, what exactly would your definition of fast be based upon? A 28 hour train journey? A month long horse ride? Or a year long walk across the Indian subcontinent? Your definition is relative. At the cost of sounding philosophical, let me venture to say, that when it comes to perception, there are no absolutes.
Now here’s the difficult bit. Try fast forwarding 400 years into the future. Is it entirely unfathomable that a scientific breakthrough every bit as revolutionary as the discovery of electricity, or the invention of the steam engine or the postulation of the laws of relativity, would put forth a technology that allows for spatial travel at speeds twenty or thirty times faster than passenger aero planes of today? Given that we rode on horseback barely a century ago, the idea is not completely ludicrous. Now go back to the two, possibly silly questions that I’ve been posing all along - Would our descendants looks back at us and find the notion of taking two hours to shuttle between Mumbai and New Delhi laughable and absurd? It is very likely that they would. On the other hand, “Are we whiling away our lifetimes wishing we had a way to travel from Mumbai to Delhi in under two minutes” No! A resounding one in fact. While our aerospace engineers might be tinkering away in laboratories trying to commercialize scramjet engines, when it comes to the way we run our lives, we make do with what technology we have at hand, and model our schedules, our societies our economies and our businesses around the technology we possess. Now.
Zeitgeist is a German word that means spirit of our time. It has been used to explain numerous facets of human behavior. Moral zeitgeist, for example, is used to study the evolution of how, what we consider moral and immoral has evolved over time. Today we are much more liberal about gay rights, feminism, adultery and sexuality than we were during the Victorian age. Interestingly though, the evolution of the moral zeitgeist is not necessarily linear. For example, many Pre-Christian Pagan and Oriental Indian traditions allowed for practices we consider immoral even today. In short, moral zeitgeist refers to those morals that we consider appropriate today – in the spirit of our time. Keywords – OUR TIME.
Draw a parallel, and try imagining what the word technological zeitgeist could mean. Here’s an example – today we feel safe knowing the precise trajectories of rogue meteors that come close to Earth’s orbit. We even possess the technology to perhaps obliterate these meteors with a nuclear warhead. But is that enough to proclaim that we’re living in a technologically advanced age, with greater control over our environment and that we have a greater shot at survival than before? Or is it just an illusion generated by our perception of technological advancement? I would go with the latter. A thousand years ago, we did not possess the knowledge that a meteor strike could wipe out life on earth. We did not fret over defense against meteors because we did not understand its consequences and the forces at work. As technology advanced, we unearthed new insights into how the universe works, about meteor trajectories and how to deal with them. But does that mean we are any better off than our previous generations in preventing, say Armageddon? Our confidence of averting Armageddon is bound by our present level of knowledge of the universe. We are confident of solutions to known questions, to known problems, but for the unknown questions, we cannot even begin to imagine where the solutions might lie. We can only claim to have solutions to those problems, which we know for a fact, exist.
It is said that a man with a hammer only sees nails around him. The issue here is slightly different – A man with a hammer, in the absence of exhaustive information, and in the absence of an absolute frame to know how valuable his possessed knowledge is, such a man not only sees nails all around him, but is also blinded from the nuts and bolts and screws and all other objects beyond his cone of imagination, which cannot be fixed by a hammer. This is a deep rooted psychological issue – the presumption that we possess some kind of control over our adversaries. But that presumption is not subjective. We only come to know of, and define adversaries based on information we unearth and possess at that point in time. For example, we only believed that a meteor strike is deadly after we first understood the trajectories of heavenly bodies and simulating a meteor impact in our laboratories. If we did not possess this information, we would not consider a meteor strike deadly and would not prepared to face one. It is very likely that ancient civilizations would consider the idea of Earth being obliterated by a meteor strikes, as signs of lunacy.
A thousand years into the future, our astrophysicists could hypothetically figure out that the fabric of space time undergoes some kind of un-stretching or perhaps a reversal in the nature of gravity every few billion years and that the next such reversal would occur in AD 4000, say, and would wipe out all known matter, effectively killing us all. We would then, have a new adversary, based on our new found knowledge. Do we know anything about such a thing today? No. Why then do we consider ourselves to be a technologically advanced civilization? Why do we believe, we have a decent shot at beating our adversaries, our environment, and the universe? Did our ancestors, during their times, think any different? Is it really plausible that our ancestors considered themselves technologically backward – worrying away about ways to prevent meteor hits or enabling supersonic travel? No they did not. Their only concern was about living their lives and running their economies and society based on what information they had, at that instant of time, just like we do today. And that makes the idea of proclaiming ourselves as being advanced or inferior, meaningless.
The primary idea I am trying to convey is this - in the minds of every civilization in every stage in History, they are as developed as they need to be. All modern day proclamations of we are a technologically advanced or a technologically backward society is naïve and shortsighted since we are biased by our technologically inferior past, and blinded from our ostensibly superior future.
We are only as developed as the technological zeitgeist of our time would have us believe.
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