The Whole Wide World - Can it all be wrong?

More Bits and Pieces...

2006-08-06T16:54:00.000+01:00

1. That Indians abroad, especially engineers suffer from a condition known as Technofetishism or Technonationalism is easily noted.
Nations and individuals who suffer from it tend to believe that skills to decipher the most complex differential equations and write lengthy and complicated computer code arewhat matter most in a nation's progress.
Indulgence in self-praise as a group and ridiculing the natives' skills at arithmetic is a worser symptom of this malaise. An unassailable belief that these skills will take them to the summit of success is another.
While mathematical skills are very handy, I can't help thinking that the importance of these skills is overestimated, especially in the business world where a majority of these Indians want to make a mark.

My views remain a minority, especially in this bunch.

Luckily for me, there is some support from Amar Bhide's paper which argues that good managers are atleast as important science and engineering graduates and that America's venturesome consumers egged on by these managers are a strong reason for the nation's progress.
And good managers can come just as much from Anthropology, Psychology and English degrees as they can from Maths, Engineering and Science degrees.

2. A friday evening at Smollensky's in Canary Wharf saw me run into a bunch of affable Farsis who had lived in Sweden all their lives as their parents left behind the Mullahs.
And they had a similar story to tell - That you are nobody in Iran unless you are a doctor or an engineer.
And how people wondered how sitting behind a counter handing slips to customers pays so much in London, for bankers get paid nothing in Tehran!

3. Talking of Canary Wharf, that's where I spend most of my weekdays - courtesy of my first full time job- Lehman brothers, London

References:
1. Amar Bhide, Venturesome Consumption, Innovation and Globalisation, CESifo and Centre on Capitalism and Society Conference, July 21-22, Venice.
2. Technonationalism and Technofetishism by Ostry and Nelson, the Brookings Institution.
2. Economics Focus, The Economist, July 29- Aug 4 2006.

On Why These Reservation Protests Make Little Sense.

2006-05-18T10:30:00.000+01:00

Do you think the students below would want swap their lives with the people above?

(*Hint: Those above get reservations!)

Whom would you rather be?

The students in the picture seem to think they are going to be worse off than those in picture above if the new reservation legislation comes about.

Their arguments,
1. The 'Quality' of students is going to detiororate, if you fix a percentage of seats in the country's best institutions.
2. They are going to have fewer seats and fewer jobs if the legislation comes about.

The second argument's rather selfish, if they are going to say they are worse off, then those from the 'Backward' castes can say the same thing if the lawmakers decide against.
Moreover, the 'backward' castes, represented poorly in the private sector and in the country's top educational institutions, have a more legitimate claim.

So that leaves us with argument no. 1,
'Quality' is going to detiororate, let's take that to be true, so let's say the reservation doesn't go through on these grounds, who benefits?
The 'upper' castes, simply because they are going to take a disproportionately large share of the benefits that accrue from economic growth.
So that's two self serving arguments that claim to act for the nations' sake.

Reservations need to be opposed because they fail and their failure is pretty evident thanks to a small number of 'backward' caste beneficiaries taking a big chunk of the benefits.
Incentives that make improving the status of the backward castes a national priority by including private sector firms, schools, universities are likely to bring more change than half hearted attempts by India's lethargic bureaucracy.
These could include -
1. Tax cuts for companies that have diverse caste populations
2. More govt funding for those schools that follow population patterns in castes and incentives for top city schools to take students from villages and backward castes such as vouchers, tax cuts etc etc.
3. Lumpsum payments for girls who complete class X, Class XII, and Intermediate and University.
4. University admission policies can be altered as the IIMs seem to do to take in more girls, Backward castes can be accommodated without a strict rule for 49% or whatever.
5. More scholarships and funding for backward caste students.

Obsolete best describes the nature of the protests today, with old ideas from the unsuccessful Mandal protests passing through high tech communication networks .

The angry young man is passe', they don't even make movies like that these days.

No anti-reservation protest can be complete without a recognition that more needs to be done for the 'backward' castes. That's why the current protests are bound to fail.

Pictures: (Anti reservation protest online e-mail campaign, conservationtech.com )

Pray for a good Husband..

2006-04-19T16:18:00.000+01:00

I am going to get married at 21, as soon as I graduate. The sooner the better my parents say. And they have started searching too. Occasionally, they send me photographs of rich, attractive young men in USA, UK and Australia which I share with my friends at college, who of course can't hide their excitement!
My Dad can afford it, he's been doing well, accumulating quite a sum of money over the decade to get me the best possible groom.
Getting a good groom is very difficult if you don't have that kind of cash.
A cousin of mine working in London wants a crore! And I can't really guarantee he's a good groom either.
And let me tell you that you cannot underestimate the importance of money. Why, my other cousin, not so rich, had to to get married to an unemployed chap in India and guess what? He didn't come cheap either. 4 acres of prime irrigated land, that's what he cost.

But money's not everything. A husband must be nice and caring. We hear so many stories of women who spend long hours confined to home and housework, some are married to frauds, some others to incapable men and lots more to difficult men.

Another cousin of mine, (Indians have lots of cousins and big families!) had to get a divorce. When she got married, everyone thought she was very lucky but it was not to be.
The chap was working in Silicon valley and made a fortune, but she found out that he did not really need a wife, he only needed someone to cook and clean.

My mother says it's all in one's destiny. There's nothing one can do but accept, she says, but we must try our best to get the best possible groom. And predictably she adds, Look at me and your Dad!

I can only wait and see how my arranged marriage goes. If my destiny's good, I can study for a Masters, work hard and earn my money and freedom.
If it isn't, I just have to wait until we have a child and children need so much attention that I can hardly think about my own troubles then. And after they grow up, I'll be too old to bother about any of my ambitions.
If you have got really high ambitions that you are not sure are too realistic, I have a suggestion - have children, and off go your ambitions, and with them your troubles.

But before that I need to look at some more photographs and pass some interviews,
fingers crossed until then.
Wish me luck.

So you want to be a politician ?

2006-04-04T00:03:00.000+01:00

By any measure, India needs lots and lots of scrupulous politicians today.
And people seem to have started noticing, wanting to become an MLA/MP is, refreshingly, not so rare an ambition among fresh graduates as it was.
Given the high demand and low supply, a good elected representative can expect to get a lot - A lot of goodwill, popularity and some money to go with it.
And a lot of chaps from India's elite colleges seem to be up for it. For chaps from the IITs and IIMs with whose infinitely stretching career horizons I tend to be familiar with, the standard route's as follows -
1. Get a foreign degree to get credibility,
2. Make some/lots of money working for a few years/starting something,
3. Hit the road running ten odd years from graduation.
And voila! You are going to be there, waving your V for victory to the crowds!

The ambition is noteworthy, but it stops short of being noble if it has no clue about what changes you want to bring about. And if it's a career as a politician that you fancy more than bringing about a few changes that you really want to bringabout, rest assured that you are in low demand. We've got loads of those already.

Well, you might say, you know that the chaps around now are pretty bad, and that you are better and that's all that counts. (given that you went into an IIT/IIM and your major readings were Tom Clancys and Robert Ludlums and the Econ times now and then and of course, your leadership has been proven time and again organizing pop/rock shows)

If you have won an election at college before, that's great too but the real difficulties begin much later.
I quote a few to give an idea of the monumental task that lies ahead.
1. After Tehelka exposed the corruption in the defence ministry and the Army, the following happened
a)The Judicial commission had a retired judge to look into the motives of those who published the news ie Tehelka's journalists etc.
b) Income tax inspectors raided Tehelka's offices.
c) First Global, Tehelka's biggest investor, had its licence to trade cancelled by SEBI and all its offices except one were shut.

2. The Neta Babu raj, commonly used to talk about the nexus between the bureaucrats and the politicians, takes in on average 60% of all government expenditure meant for rural development. Given the size of India's bureacracy that's a lot of people who'll see their income cut and leisure taken away - Not really good , if they include teachers and other government officials who man polling booths.
As some distiguished lawyer remarked, " It takes a superhuman effort to keep India poor and that effort is made by the government servants.

3. And lots of things that can only be summed up in one word - a big mess.
And these include reservations for backward castes, farmer suicides, water shortages, pollution among others.

It would be a good idea to get started atleast on one of these problems, there's a long way to got and lots of things to do unless you are happy with one small appearance in the big and long Indian political theatre.

Only competition makes this class.

2006-03-23T17:44:00.000Z

1. Self Esteem: Can soon become non-existent, if it depends on just outcomes.

2. Competition: Can destroy 1 above.

As a student in the computer science programme at IIT Madras, I was of the strong opinion that most people in the class were a bit off the usual. Well, they were expected to be, you might say, all of them had to make it through a gruelling examination and come out on top or do very well in the first semester at college. But they are different in a different sort of way as the "winners"/victims of excessive competition are likely to be.

If you do run into one of the guys (girls, luckily seem to be above all this), and cannot see the Halo around their heads, which other competitive individuals aware of their achievements do, consider yourself rather unlucky.
For most of them will strike you as merely usually slightly eccentric, some outrightly so and as a general interesting aside - ordinary looking :) (unlike what's expected as some people who've never been to the IITs but only heard of their 'magnificence' say)

Well, before someone says, speak for yourself,

Being a member of this class, I must admit to my own eccentricities too, the major one - an obsession with competition that seems to need tremendous soul searching to get rid of.

And various less important others (provided solely for entertainment below!) such as:
1. Searching for free stuff on gumtree.com and good bargains on ebay when I don't really need anything.
2. Going through blogs and websites (esp. rediff.com and econtimes.com, given) even when I know there's never going to be anything useful there
3. And a general absent-mindedness which makes sure i pocket any bunch of keys i find much to the consternation of their owners, and keep banana peels in my schoolbag for weeks to keep London clean and make biomanure in the front pouch.

But my most severe symptoms used to be the following,
1. A general mistrust of people especially if they could be competition. So I would never trust you if you told me you lost the book I wanted to borrow from you.
2. An obsessive curiosity about who's doing what, even if they have no relation to what I am going to do.
3. And my most worrying one - An association of self esteem to achievement and thus, outcomes, which is most worrying.

No 3 is a classic case, the university you get into for postgrad, the job you get after that, and perhaps the pay are all potential 'uplift'ers/destroyers of self esteem.
Given the number of desired jobs there are and the number of people who want them, it is likely that they destroy than uplift for most.

And the fourth year at college and the past few placement seasons at the IIMs were fantastic windows for observation.
From those who did not get into the universities(the IIMs included) they wanted when everybody else around them was to
Those who couldn't get the company or the pay they wanted to maintain their current self esteem at the IIMs and find it extremely difficult to mail friends, talk to relatives, classmates and colleagues, and these days, post blogs or scraps,
All of them are all classic examples of people who manage to get by in, what anthropologist Jules Henry put as, “a competitive culture endures by tearing people down."

History? Depends on who's writing it.

2006-03-19T12:10:00.000Z

Rewriting history textbooks is a nice pastime, especially for those self-declared "preserve our culture and tradition" types. These types generally dwell on foreign lands that guarantee political equality, ie USA, Europe etc.
Distance, they say, breeds attachment. So Indian culture and tradition are suddenly more important than they ever were before crossing the border.
And as a yiddish proverb goes, "if you are a rich man, you also look good and write well", good finances are enough to make experts on Indian culture and its history.

So with enough money in the bank, close to retirement, nothing much to do except reading some partisan version of the Vedas, what do they choose to do ? - Join a Hindu society and lobby to change history or fund those who will change it at home in India, to put it rather bluntly.

And what happens to all of us, poor and rich families alike in India, indifferent to these changes ?

Before we know it, our children (and probably us, if we did not pay too much attention to history at school) are going to be learning that the Vedas are full of mathematics and science, that the Indus valley civilization is actually the very Hindu Indus-Saraswathi civilization,
Nor will you find a mention of Nathuram Godse and his membership in the RSS if you happen to forget the assassin of Gandhi.
( See "On Inventing the Past", The Argumentative Indian by Amartya Sen, if Prof Sen is to be believed)

Given the more urgent needs of poverty and other growing pains of development, one does not expect any but the reasonably well off to bother about this 'rewriting' of history.

Even for most of this bunch, all that matters is that their children score well in the final examination, how do a few lines changed here or there matter anyway?

History is just another exam.

After all, If they do well then they can go to America, earn money and maybe make their "mark" on Indian history too!

For more on Hindu nationalist revisionists,
http://abcnews.go.com/International/CSM/story?id=1534056
and an older reference to it on The Hindu, a national newspaper
http://www.hinduonnet.com/2002/03/25/stories/2002032500041000.htm

Bits and Pieces.

2006-03-19T00:18:00.000Z

Once again, it's that time of the year, when the exams are near, when the ink that runs the blog threatens to dry out excusing itself for other troubles one's mind has to go through.

So all I can do is submit yet another patchwork of some unrelated pieces of my writing,

1. Life at College's coming to an end, atleast for now. Things that I can no more have:
a) Lectures in the Old and New Theatres, eating at the Brunch Bowl and the Wright's Bar
b) Eating out at the GBKs, Masala Zones and Pizza Expresses/Huts before catching a movie at Prince Charles Cinema, Odeon or Vue whenever i please
c) Footloose and fancy trips to England's countryside, the lake district , Scotland or Belgium or the Netherlands on shoestring budgets.
d) Catching that fantastic view of London over Waterloo Bridge at night.

And things to look forward to: ?
a) A daily 12 hr grind from 8 to 8.
b) Sandwiches for lunch on the desk, may be innumerable trips to bring breakfast, tea and lunch?
c) A nice home to get back to, perhaps and a lot more stuff that's affordable, only there's no time to enjoy it perhaps.
d) Minute-to-minute checks to see how much money I have accumulated so far?

2. To imagine life as a highly paid sales guy who has to sell to people born with gold nappies under their bums is not entirely pleasing.
Atleast that's what I picked up from the movie Syriana, even as rich Sheiks with no semblance of intelligence get, by simply being born, what most people have to work their entire lives to get.

3. It's bumper time, atleast for Indian graduates in the US and those at the IIMs. Nonetheless there will always be a few gloomy faces - especially those who would bet their lives that the frightening CGPA is the most foolproof predictor of future success.
(9 pointer Elec/CS toppers, average 8 pointers, lowly seven pointers, Cul Secs and Not-even-Sac Secs find themselves in the same boat, with similar pay in similar firms - so what decides who comes out on top ? I don't know but I can safely bet that it won't be the CGPA.)

True, High CGPA indicates a drive among young men not very common, but those in the middle ranges cannot count on a number printed on a sheet of paper to take them through the cut-throat concrete jungle that business districts in the world's prominent centres have become.
Nor are those numbers going to assure smooth sailing in academia, not with the politics professors have to play to stay in the game these days.

4. Coming back to the CGPA, nothing haunts the average male IITian more than a question about that feared number.
"Why is your JEE rank not correlated to your CGPA" is a common question that these hapless victims face, that I feel compelled to suggest, " Why was your JEE rank not as great as your CGPA then " as a reply to the chap who asks that question.
For such a question can only come from someone so insecure not just about one number but two(his JEE rank!) that he is adopting a time tested strategy of searching for security by fishing for people with lower CGs and pointing it out to them!
Moral-of-the-story : If you want to sell something to an IITian (These chaps tend to have big paychecks,unfortunately not always big hearts as is always the case with this kind of people - see 3 above) start with anything but the CGPA, starting on hostel life is a good bet.

5. As for the rest, I am doing fine and will be in India in June to seek your blessings whereupon I know i will be asked my grades and my pay converted to the highest possible exchange rate - I will however resist until early July after which I shall take leave to return to my 8am-8pm paradise.

PS: If No. 1 sounded like one of those stereotypical write-ups romanticizing foreign places to which most readers haven't been to, while ignoring similarsights at home, it was not meant to be.
I must say it's only true that the view over Waterloo Bridge is indeed wonderful, and so is the view over Tank Bund in Hyderabad, only I have not seen it with as much intensity as Waterloo, which i see twice a day everyday.
If that sounded apologetic, it wasn't meant to be. Bah! One of thse post scripts that leaves you with a tinge of dissatisfaction, I must say:)

Kulturbrille : Glasses you should not always need.

2006-02-18T14:22:00.000Z

The world seems to be ready to go up in flames anytime now if the global intolerance on display today is any indication. And we seem to be happy to see the sparks disappear, not realizing that burning embers can still start a fire.
Which makes me think if a lack of understanding of 'culture' is what it is all about. Perhaps, an understanding of modern anthropology might help, especially of the work of Franz Boas, a German Jew who migrated to the US in those heydays of intolerance.

Nothing is more striking than the idea of 'Kulturbrille', literally culture glasses. These are glasses that you and I wear depending on where we come from and how we are brought up.
These lenses help us perceive the world around us and interpret the meaning of our lives, thus providing a tinted vision of the world, which we take to be absolute if we are not aware of it.

To quote a typical example from Anthropology to illustrate Kulturbrille (Monaghan and Just)

Let's see how a traditional Hindu and a member of the Dou Donggo might see each other. The Dou Donggo are a tribe on the Sumbawa island of Indondesia. A typical Hindu might be reluctant to accept a traditional delicacay of the Dou Donggo, bee larvae just as much as the Dou Donggo will be to have onion soup for a meal.
It would be a mistake to look at the Dou Donggo, taking Hindus as absolute, something you are likely to do if you are wearing glasses tinted with the 'Hindu' vision of life.

Similarly, taking Islam as absolute and labeling non-believers as infidels would be a mistake too. And so would it be if other communities were considered less civilized than the one in the west.

If differences in eating habits strike too simple a note, there are several other that come to mind.
Marrying a cousin for instance, while unthinkable in Europe and the US is common place in India and the Middle East.
Arranged marriages are yet another example, suggesting that romantic love is never as important as the well being of children in societies in India as against those in the west.

For Telugu and Tamil readers, the movie Abhinandana in which the protagonist (played by actress Sobhana) is asked to marry her deceased sister's husband by her own father so that his grandchildren can be taken care of is an example, such an idea is unpalatable even in the cities of India today but offers a reflection of one now non-extant cultural trait.
To go further, it would not be wrong to suggest that she would have married her brother-in-law without much thought if she had not fallen in love with someone else, showing that it was as a rule, acceptable for a girl to marry her sister's husband, Sobhana being the exception.

So what do you do to help in this world of ever interacting cultures, looking for an opportunity to clash?

Push those glasses above your head, and look at yourself as being just as one of several groups wearing different brands of Kulturbrille, none more precious than the other.

A free woman : Beautiful, Desirable and very Rare in the Lands to the East

2006-02-06T16:01:00.000Z

There's not so much so beautiful as equality, especially when it applies to men and women.
and it is getting frustratingly hard to find.
Even as some countries move ahead trying hard to make their women feel equal citizens, some others are falling behind at an alarming rate.
And a few others are stuck, intention take them a couple of steps forward and their implementation looks like they took one step backward.
Notably, India's one of them. Indian women have made rapid strides in the last 15 years, making the most of economic opportunity and a growing awareness about women's rights. But here from a ringside view of society in Britain and Europe, India's progress seems far from satisfactory.
I blame two things for this poor progress report,

1. The Middle Class Indian Mother, who wants her daughter to study in the best possible schools and colleges , wants to buy her a scooty to zip around with independence - Only to let her know that she has to marry a stranger who's been paid to let her daughter cook/earn/sleep for/for/with him, the moment she is 21.
The doting mother also teaches her daughter that the good wife has to be obedient to the point of being subservient if her marriage with her (sometimes unbearable) husband needs to survive a hundred years so that she can remain married (to her still unbearable) for another hundred in their next incarnation.

The middle class mother has the power to determine how the representative Indian girl will be, only however, she chooses to make her daughter no better than herself where it matters most.

2. Our New Identity asserting our Rediscovered "Super Culture".

A good friend from college, on being asked if he would take a dowry said: " I would as I want to get married traditionally". He has since, very thankfully, changed his mind.

So blurred are our distinctions between what is modern, traditional, western and downright medieval that all the blur is causing a considerable lack of focus on the path to empowering women, the path to moving ahead as a modern society.
The new forces of the RSS( A Hindu Right wing organization with close ties to the BJP) and their hypocritical allies have not helped either. Roughing up couples in public parks, while widely condemned, atleast find some support from a society with young men obsessed with virginity and consquently with other sources such as pornography.

Hypocritical men who claim to be fighting for the women's cause don't help either - As they expect a good cooked meal to be served with utmost devotion when they get back home after fighting for society's good all day and can't stop worrying when their daughter reaches 21.

But then there's hope and things are moving in the right direction and there's always something to be proud of when you compare - You only have to look to the middle east, where freedom is wrapped around in a long dark burkha, blurring both vision and hope.

In 2006, I wish ....

2005-12-21T19:37:00.000Z

With another new year coming up, I thought it was only apt that I wish for a few things to happen,
(It's now a year since I wrote the blog entry "The New Year, what's so new?" and, I really cannot believe a year has gone by already (Cliched but true). And it has been a very important year in my life, and it's going to change me for the rest of my life)

And here's what I am wishing for...

Can I wish to see a vibrant labour market mechanics at work in the government sector?
From the Traffic police on the road to the chap who certifies your electricity meter, from the clerk in the births and deaths registrar to the one for marriages, from the district magistrate to the IAS officer, each and every member of the executive affect your life.
It is not very difficult to notice that they are not a very happy lot on being asked to work for a few hours more as one Chief Minister of Andhra found out in an election.
Itis also reasonable to assume that a good percentage of them believes they are not paid enough for the work they do, given how many people supplement their earnings from hard work under the table.

My wish list for this horrendous institution that we know as the Government Employee.

A) Introduction of a very objective appraisal system that rewards hard-working and efficient employees.
B) A performance linked pay system that allows from considerable flexibility in hiring, ie Government jobs are no longer for life ie The so-called 'Permanent Ayyindi' (I have become permanent ie i can laze around for life) will become a myth.
C) Introduction of Lateral recruitment - If an IIM grad with the experience of managing a company's division wants to run a department in the government, welcome him warmly.
D) And I no longer should be able to buy a judge on the way to court.

Can I wish that professors stop blaming students for a lack of motivation and do some self-introspection?
Introduce a contract system, that goes from short-term to medium term contracts and then on to a permanent status. If you need to make attendance compulsory to get students to attend your lecture, well there lies the answer.
We don't want to guarantee a job for life for under-performing academic staff who have decided that the leafy environs of the IIT campus is where they want to stay until they retire in the same position they joined.

Can I wish that the IITs and the IIMs give up their general compartment mentality?
For those of you opposing the expansion of India's famed institutions, what you are probably displaying is a variation of the General class comparment mentality that ensures survival in the famed compartment of the Indian Railways - Get in by Hook or Crook and do your best to keep the rest out.
If the top 3000 out of a 100,000 are so good, the next 3000 grouped together, armed with a mighty brand cannot be that bad, can they?
Can I wish that the IAS officers compete so that they don't vegetate?
Smart people who don't want to compete - that's what the IAS officers stand out as, apart from being a colonial legacy that has largely disappointed.
When you choose 50 people a year across a nation of 1.1 Billion, you would expect the ones who do badly to stand out, alas! It is the few good ones who do.
The smugly comfortable modern day Sahebs are fighting hard to keep high quality lateral entry out, even as India faces a scarcity of quality managers in the government.

Can I wish for more regulation that will ensure that not so many colleges are affiliated to caste ?
Studying in a college with peers and teachers from the same community is not going to help shape your view of the world, which is becoming increasingly pluralistic. Esp if you are one of those roughly 100,000 Indian students seeking to find a career abroad.

Can I wish that medical degrees are not sold to the higest bidder?
Banning the NRI quota of admission will mean more talented doctors - and less money spent by fathers looking to buy doctors with purchased degrees as husbands for their daughters.

Can I hope to see more intercaste marriages, that will give rise to new generations each of which is increasingly less aware of its caste identity?
That the caste system is preserved by marrying within is easily noted. Without breaking the stranglehold of the arranged marriage on the Indian youth, caste is not an institution that can be gotten rid of.
So can I see more marriages of love, atleast acquaintance so that our parents won't have to bother.

Can I hope to see all this in the next ten years? :)
A very Happy New Year to you.

Liberal ? Conservative? Can't Decide? - Take the test

2005-12-13T18:22:00.000Z

Here's an attempt to devise a tool to identify your opinion on social and economic issues. And to give you a tag as 'conservative' or 'liberal'.
While there exists no clear distinction in a number of cases, here's an attempt nevertheless.

Answer the following 5 questions and find out.

1. Homosexuality
a) I accept it as being beyond an individual's control and am willing to accept homosexuals as equals.
b) I do not believe there is a place for them in Indian society and that it is unnatural to be one.

2. Migration
a) I would prefer to see people who are similar to me in my hometown, ie if I am Telugu, I prefer to see most jobs in Hyderabad taken by Telugus. North Indians belong in the north and have no place in the South. They are here just to make the most of the IT revolution happening largely in the south.
b) I like seeing people different from me, they make life different and enrich the place I live in with their food and culture.

3) Marriage
a) I am in favour of mixed caste, mixed religion and mixed race marriages, and willing to marry from outside my community. I am not necessarily inclined to my parents' view of the world and am willing to challenge what is generally perceived to be custom and tradition if the need be.
b) I believe people from different castes are culturally incompatible, and see myself as preserving my community's way of life - be it language, customs or tradition. My parents/family have a big role to play in my marriage.

4) Cultural Issues/Birth
a) I believe in woman's rights but also believe there is an inherent division of labour between women and men. I am against abortion and pre-marital sex as they are against my culture.
b) I believe in choice, so I believe people are inclined to do as they like. Be it pre-marital sex or Abortion. I do not have strong cultural/religious inclinations.

5) Standard Trade/Economics
a) I believe in Open Competitive markets that favour free movement of goods and labour.
b) I believe in some degree of protection as competitive markets can be disastrous for poor people in my region.

As I said, we cannot put the two into watertight compartments, but the idea was to help think about a few things that can help you decide.
Barring 5 which is a rather standard question that our political parties battle on ( On which you are entitled to your own opinion somewhere between a and b or something else), I believe the first four do pretty much pin you down to one of liberal/otherwise.
If you are A B A B A, you are inclined to the liberal view of the world. The exact opposite is a very conservative view of the world.
Either way, if you think you lie between or if there are more than two alternatives to either of my questions 1-4. I would be glad to find out about that and your view of the world.

Learning to love the salesman

2005-11-17T20:53:00.000Z

Selling stuff to people is not the easiest thing in the world.
As a salesman, you have to smile as the door slams on your face. You have to learn to live with a lack of trust from a constant suspicion that you might sell stuff that is not necessary or is not worth the price you ask for.
But what can explain why the best achievers are all wonderful salespeople in their own right?
People who constantly sell themselves and their ideas to hard nosed men in power who got there the same route stand out from those who want recognition and do nothing about it.

But then the life of a salesman is never easy.

I only had to attend the public lecture at LSE by Prof. Bjorn Lomborg of the Copenhagen Business School who happens to be the convenor of the Copenhagen Consensus to find out.
Before I get ahead, the Copenhagen Consensus is a get-together of the 30 best economists in the world, with experts on the biggest problems that the world faces today.
A 'dream-team' of eight (of which four are Nobel laureates in Economics) decide on the problems that have to be prioritized first. These are on the basis of a cost-benefit analysis, thus if you had one dollar where would you put it to get the maximum benefit is the question they sought to answer.
To quench your curiosity, the four were
1. HIV/AIDS
2. Water Sanitation
3. Micronutrients ie providing the world's poor with sufficient vitamins and minerals
4. Malaria
Notably missing were Global Warming and lack of education, primary and secondary.

His effort is undoubtedly noteworthy as seen from the popularity the consensus has with mainstream media, including the economist magazine. However, it was a bit of sight as he was pulled apart by the other two on the panel.
Questions from the audience, which included comments on him being more of a statistician, an accountant, a PR guy and a number cruncher did not help the image either. The image of a salesman who just had the door slammed on his face that is.
After all, He was trying to sell his ideas on saving the world and it did not seem he found many buyers at LSE.
Me, on the other hand did find myself a buyer, even if rather reluctant initially.
The whole thing might seem simplistic to those with an intellectual bent of mind - Those who firmly believe no problem can be solved in this world without finding the complex roots of a nth order differential equation, but I beg to differ.
I liked the idea of putting all the world's problems in a simple table with costs in one column and benefits in one column.
Atleast the politicians will know something about it, not having to read through a billion pages of abstract papers and best of all, if they get their act, we will get somewhere in solving some of the world's worst problems. They might not be first four of the world's worst problems but they will be somewhere in the top 10 and that would be four already dealt with.
All because someone decided to do what most consider a rather dreary job of selling these ideas to the most powerful laymen in the world - the leaders of the world. He might fail to sell big when he has to deal with intellectual might of academic institutions that will inevitably be reluctant if anything at all, to buy his ideas. In the end, all that matters is he get the big fish, even if he misses out on the small ones.
Much better than Dr M Singh commissioning a study on what we need to deal with first, when there are problems staring at you in your face - you only have to walk on the road, which he has has probably not done after getting into government.
Twenty one years in India can only make you think- Before our bureaucrats get our act together, the list will probably change only for another PM to commission yet another study and so on it goes.

Snippets - Multiracial London to Tofu in a London Bus

2005-11-14T17:49:00.000Z

There's seeming so little to write about when you open the editor, and you thought your mind was brimming with ideas only hours earlier.
So here's an attempt to recall and put a few things down in a style unusual to mine. Inevitably, that means it is inspired and thankfully it means shorter sentences and no preaching:)

1. London's amazingly multicultural - going by the number of mixed race couples you see on any given day in the city. Atleast one outdated edition of Lonely planet London claims you see more interracial couples in one day in London than a whole week in New York. Now before I succumb to the 'hey, I am at a better place' feeling, let me move on.

2. The gap in wages between women and men has had many labour economists baffled. Nothing seems to explain the wage gap. One interesting experiment asked a sample of men and women to fold letters in to envelopes. On being asked how much they should be paid - the average woman asked for 20% less wages and did some 20% more work than the average man.
Now who would not want to hire these women?

3. Looking at the news I have been reading, the countries that feature most after India seem to be Netherlands, Belgium, Kazakhstan and Poland. Countries, my life is going to be inexplicably linked with? Odd, very odd indeed. But then, as they say, the only chains are self imposed. A few weak ones might be imposed by your parents too.

4. Telugus have the unusual ability to live in oblivion. For a language spoken by more people in India than any language bar Hindi, it is largely unknown in many parts of the world.
Funnily enough, the only place in the world to get a book that teaches Telugu seems to be Andhra Pradesh - where not many people need it.
Whoever wrote up Google's HR page thought it exotic enough to write 'Googlers speak everything from Turkish to Telugu'
Given that atleast 5o million people speak Turkish, it can be assumed that the writer wanted to suggest geographical reach and diversity of people at Google. Thus, Turkish to Tuvalian might have achieved that objective. But then there are close to 100 million that speak Telugu!

Also worth mentioning is the uncanny ability of their neighbours, the Tamils, to stand out. While those at IIT Madras stood out quite easily for more reasons than one, I took it to be a characteristic of that one particular group.
Alas, it was not to be, there are Tamils in the corner store across the street, Tamils from all over the world at LSE, they are everywhere -A position their neighbours have managed only in the US and the IIT in the Tamils' backyard.

5. All those ideas have made me hungry, rather simplistically for food. That reminds me of that poor bag of groceries which made it to someone else's home when I paid for it. What would you expect if you absent-mindedly leave two carefully picked packs of Tofu1 and Noodles from that rather smelly Chinatown supermarket in a bus? - A nice free meal for two people in some house in South East London.

Well, That finishes my little experiment writing and I have no materials for my experiment in cooking as you now know. So that finishes everything.

NB: 1 Tofu is just soybean curd, or a variant, not deep fried duck legs in green tea - no offence meant to anyone. After all the Telugus fondly stomach explosive red chilli in oil for breakfast, lunch and dinner that can detonate next morning.

Bliss forever....

2005-10-08T22:37:00.000+01:00

Imagine...
It's a nice warm sunday morning, you are sitting in this lawn at the back of your house.
You can smell the grass, and there's a lovely woman bringing breakfast for you, behind her is a chocolate Labrador with soft brown eyes.
You can hear a couple of beautiful kids running to the breakfast table in the lawn to take their seats beside this lovely woman and you.
Wait a second...., Before you can put a face to all those lovely people other than yourself, you need to get married or officially cohabit atleast.
(And to remove any hints of a male chauvinistic overtone, You did help make the breakfast, she's only getting it for you :)

But then why is that people in this state of bliss hardly get back in touch with the rest of their world. The world they knew before they met this woman.
Atleast one person I know has stopped mailing, calling etc. Especially when you want to know how well he's doing in this new stage of life.

May be he'll get in touch after this very spontaneous blog:)

The Confidence hinge that breaks and builds and breaks and builds....

2005-10-08T20:54:00.000+01:00

In the past, more often than not, I found the roots of my self-confidence not far from the surface. And i found them uprooted more often than I would have wanted them to be.

I had to plant them back through some 'victories' now and then.
In retro, only now do I get the full significance of the so-called moral victory.

Confidence that I would get through life came from comparison with others, belief in my abilities, or very simply, in some cases, not mine perhaps, parents' wealth.
While I would rather not talk about the kind of confidence that comes from knowing you're going to be wealthy just because you were born, I can say a few things about the rest.
This kind of self confidence doesn't last very long however.
You might clear an entrance exam and be confident that your neighbour's son or your friends didn't make it. Unfortunately, Everybody else at college made it through this exam as well. - So that's no reason to be confident.
If you got this really nice job at this great firm, you walk into the firm and everybody else there has made it, and what's worse you're at the bottom of the ladder - that's no reason to be confident either.
Getting a very well paid job is not going to help either, the higher your pay gets, the more likely are you to hear of people with better paychecks. So just getting a lot of money can't make you smarter.
The roots need to go deeper.
If they don't, you'll have to keep planting them back each time you recover after a setback. A lean period without a job, a long period single will uproot it again, and make you into this hapless soul desperately in need of some kind of success to get back to your confident self.
The idea would be to plant them deeper and deeper after each setback, so they don't get uprooted as easily the next time round.

But then how deep can you plant them?
Ok, you've got this really well paid job - How do you stand up confident when you meet this chap who earns more than you?
You think you're really smart and on this very complicated PhD program, how do you stand up to this very smart chap who's ahead of you in his research, and whom everybody thinks is really smart?

The answer according to one man, who ran a very big company called General Electric for a long long time was to simply be confident in your shoes!
Whatever he meant.

Low divorce rates - Not as nice as they look...

2005-09-19T13:53:00.000+01:00

Prone as we are to give in to our incessant desire to compare, it is difficult to accept the enormous difference in living standards when we come abroad.
It doesn't seem fair that some people in some parts of the world can lead vastly better lives than others elsewhere.
It doesn't seem fair that old people, like my grandparents, are not cared for by the government like those of my european friend's. Or that every guy here has been to some part of the world other than their own while a large number of my own relatives, (well-off in their own communities by any standard) will not in their lifetimes go further north than Delhi or south than Chennai. Or that you are going to be fed by the government if you have no food to eat and no job you can do.

But then our belief that the law of averages holds, and the lord Yama/Indra will take care of it, suggests that we must have something that people here don't. How can it be that these people have more than what we do ? There must be something that's better.

And the first thing that comes to mind, due to more a lack of imagination, than keen observation is that we have better family lives.No Divorces, No broken families, No pre-marital sex, No illegitimate children et al.

Ideally, if we had everything else as in this part of the world and still had the above, things couldn't be better.But little do those who raise such an argument understand that these are not independent to our current social and economic situation.

India's low divorce rate is explained as much by the degree of independence that women have as much it is a culture that we are so proud of.
More Divorces are better, India's divorce rate is a little too low.

I wouldn't want it to be so high as the US or the UK. But a little higher than now is definitely a lot better.
I'm not asking more women to divorce their husbands, rather I claim that less divorces are due to the highly dependent condition of women on me than what is believed.

My intention is to rebuff those who take lower divorces and better family lives as defence to the lack of comparable living standards at home against in this part of the world.
If more women taking up jobs and being financially dependent mean more divorces so be it.
We could have marginally worser family lives and more divorces to feed more of our people, make our women more independent, and send more children to schools.

A divorce will be easier to digest than the idea of millions of women stuck in their homes performing duties far lesser than their potential suggests.

On the basics of political opinion - Are you sure you mean what you say?

2005-06-10T20:52:00.000+01:00

This is an attempt to clear the air over political opinion, as they say, left right and centre. And it does coincidentally have a lot to do with the left and the right and what they mean in today's world.
Being either left or right, depends on which context you're talking about.
A. From an economic viewpoint
B. From a social viewpoint
While A is more well known, a definition that does not include B will be inadequate.

Being left in the first context means a close protected economy that provides adequate protection for local industry, workers, encourages government intervention in the market. For instance, Nehru's idea of having state-run industries that provide job security and the communist parties, today with their opposition to foreign investment in any sector are also left in the economic sense.

Being right would mean being supportive of an open economy, allowing foreign firms to compete with local industry, encouraging foreign investment, and more flexible labour laws that allow firms to operate competitively at the cost of hiring and firing people freely. Being right thus, means being economically liberal.

These however, are the usual context in which left and right are discussed. However, people don't vote on an economic basis alone.

For instance, they hardly knew a thing about economics, when the people of Gujarat voted back to power, the BJP after the riots. More so, the economy was going from bad to worse. Bush's decision to veto any funding for a specfic stem cell research program has the support of a large number of people, not because it's economically unviable, but because their social viewpoint concurs with his.

Differences in social opinion have largely to do with religion, tradition and customs. People inclined to their religion and tradition are generally referred to as conservative. So clearly orthodox brahmins, devout muslims, christians and jews all fall in this category, so do homophobic people,who usually are one of the former. For instance, conservative people might want to prefer sexual abstinence and sex with a single married partner as a solution to an AIDs problem.
All parties with a religious inclination, and a caste affiliation are by definition, conservative.
India, by this definition is largely conservative, with roles for men, women defined as per what is considered tradition, customs followed rigorously, be it religious ceremony or dowry during marriage. As is reflected in the general inclination of most young men and women to marry within their community and the high degree of homophobia prevalent. (Being homosexual is illegal in India)

On the other hand, people who do not take either religion or tradition seriously would be called liberal. People who don't really care about either, and perhaps look at them as being forcefull imposed on them, like young people in most western countries. Liberals would be willing to break what is generally perceived to be tradition, not be homophobic. So, to compare them to the conservatives above, liberals would encourage sex education, promote safe sex between partners, advise gay partners on the high risk nature of their sexual relationships than denounce them as immoral.
Liberals would thus, be more willing and likely to marry people, not necessarily liberal(simply because they don't care), from different ethnicities, religions and castes.

Something that would strike the more-than-casual observer is how the two divisions are combined, for it is always right-conservative and left-liberal, right-liberal is not very common and being left-conservative can sound hypocritical.
For if you belong to the economic-left, you merely signal that you are in favour of a uniform system that grants a minimum to everyone, regardless of their ability, a system that takes care of the poor and the not-gifted.
By the same measure, left politicians cannot be in favour of a system that grants more favours to one particular affiliation(religion or group or sexual inclination) and hence, are likely to be more tolerant, and would be classified more as liberal than anything else.

So the Congress(I) in the given circumstances in India is liberal. Also, the policies of P Chidambaram, would be more right, than left, if not for the coaliton with the left. In which case, we have a right-liberal, ie liberal on both fronts - social and economic.

Given these basic definitions and a understanding that parties cannot always be put into one of these four divisions - as they turn to be not water-tight in an Indian context, I would associate the following major Indian parties with these inclinations.
I consider caste as a criterion for being conservative/not only if the party is clearly partisan like the BJP, BSP - for Dalits and not just on the basis of the caste/religious identity of the leader.For instance, it is well known that in Andhra Pradesh, Kammas have a bigger influence in the TDP, while the Reddys do so in the state Congress - however,their policies are not in favour of these communities unlike the BJP or the BSP.
Also, given the nature of Indian politics, most parties are largely populist, hence left, with brief streaks of economic liberalization when things went out of control.

1. Congress - Left-Liberal (Manmohan's liberalisation programme, meant right-liberal in 1991)

2. BJP - Left-Conservative( Given, the senior leaders' partisan view that favours the Hindus)

3. TDP - Left-Liberal (right liberal in the late 1990s, when Naidu was the darling of the west, including being named Time Asia Person of the year 1999)

4. DMK - Left-Conservative (Given their partisan nature that favours Dalits but not Brahmins)

5. BSP - Left-Conservative (Highly partisan - Dalits)

Low divorce rates - Not as nice as they look...

2005-05-27T23:33:00.000+01:00

Prone as we are to give in to our incessant desire to compare, it is difficult to accept the enormous difference in living standards when we come abroad.
It doesn't seem fair that some people in some parts of the world can lead vastly better lives than others elsewhere.
It doesn't seem fair that old people, like my grandparents, are not cared for by the government like those of my european friend's. Or that every guy here has been to some part of the world other than their own while a large number of my own relatives, (well-off in their own communities by any standard) will not in their lifetimes go further north than Delhi or south than Chennai. Or that you are going to be fed by the government if you have no food to eat and no job you can do.

But then our belief that the law of averages holds, and the lord Yama/Indra will take care of it, suggests that we must have something that people here don't. How else can it be that these people have more than what we do ?

And the first thing that comes to mind, due to more a lack of imagination, than keen observation is that we have better family lives.
No Divorces, No broken families, No pre-marital sex, No illegitimate children et al.

Ideally, if we had everything else as in this part of the world and still had the above, things couldn't be better.
But little do those who raise such an argument understand that these are not independent to our current social and economic situation. India's low divorce rate is explained as much by the degree of independence that women have as much it is a culture that we are so proud of.

More Divorces are better, India's divorce rate is a little too low. I wouldn't want it to be so high as the US or the UK. But a little higher than now is definitely a lot better.

I'm not asking more women to divorce their husbands, rather I claim that less divorces are due to the highly dependent condition of women on me than what is believed.
My intention is to rebuff those who take lower divorces and better family lives as defence in their understanding of the western world.
If more women taking up jobs and being financially dependent mean more divorces so be it.

We could have marginally worser family lives and more divorces to feed more of our people, make our women more independent, and send more children to schools.
A divorce will be easier to digest than the idea of millions of women stuck in their homes performing duties far lesser than their potential suggests.

No Reality check for me please!

2005-05-22T23:13:00.000+01:00

They say economic reform's only just taking off, there is not a word of either social or political reform. But who cares?
All I want to hear or talk about is of family and friends taking up well paid, very well paid ones indeed, in multinational firms or heading to universities abroad. I only want to read the Economic Times, - its front page often tells me stuff like why I should get married to a manager if I am a techie and other interesting stuff, and importantly it doesn't spoil my mood by reporting a farmer suicide every other day.

And please don't tell me about any of the following, I've had too much of preaching on it already,

1. Politicians or politics,
I am strictly non-political, I've never liked politics since a child, I am completely obsessed with work. Who cares if our Chief Minister is giving away free power and our farmers are sucking their farms bone dry or if contracts for the biggest construction projects are given for plans designed in less than a month or if a new community is going to get a new share of the remaining unreserved pie.
2. Caste
Caste, don't even utter that word please. I am strictly against discrimination on the basis of caste, and it should be eliminated, I don't know how but I am going to marry the girl my parents search for me, compatibility is very important for marriage of course.
3. Poor People who are dying
It is quite sad, but there are always poor people and everybody has to die of course. These days it has become more common from what they say, poor chaps, I don't know why so many of them have to die and worse kill themselves. But at some point, it gets sick - you know, reading about death every day, that's why I moved to the TOI or ET, they have more interesting stuff there.

I think it is important to be cool, there is no point getting angry, we must try to find a way around things, after all, status quo seems alright.
We don't have to get angry about corrupt government servants, poor public health service, contaminated water or criminalized politics, after all we are all lucky enough to be smart, we'll soon be rich and we don't have to worry about any of these later.

We are the nation's intellectual elite, we don't have to bother about problems that plague our people.
Of course not. We have enough of our own problems to sort out.

Things that the critics of commercialization of education forget...

2005-05-19T21:45:00.000+01:00

The coaching centres of Hyderabad are a favourite pet-hate of many at IIT Madras.
A many that comprises of those that consider themselves lucky enough to not have gone through what they apparently believe to be a gruelling grind that is best avoided and a large number of those who have formed their perception on what they hear from the former.
There is some merit to that argument from an individual viewpoint.

Some, however, among whom are a few narrow minded professors, naive undergrads and surprisingly enough students who have directly benefited from it, remain mindless critics of a system that they view as now being crassly commercialized.

They couldn't be more wrong if social justice was a criterion.

All that is needed is a rough comparison at the social composition of students who come from Andhra to that from other parts of India. And it is only a miniscule fraction in the reserved category of seats that is not taken by students from Andhra, at all the IITs.

It doesn't need an indepth analysis to conclude that Tamil Nadu and Karnataka's contribution to IIT Madras is largely if not entirely Brahmin, mostly from big cities and towns and that from the North, (ignoring those who decided to put themselves through the 'crassly commercialized controls' of Kota, as against the more 'refined' version apparently available in Chennai), is but an upper middle class contribution from Delhi, Mumbai and a few other big cities, largely comprised of traders and brahmins, with a few dominant landowning castes thrown here and there.

There are clearly more opportunities as the son/daughter of a small farmer/ businessman in towns such as Tenali, Atmakur, Miryalguda than in places such as Sivakasi, Balasore or Hubli it would seem. And the single biggest contributors for this phenomenon have been the much loathed coaching centres, Ramaiah, Special, Chaitanya et al.

By taking coaching for the JEE into places no one has taken before - into the small towns and villages, these institutes have provided access to sufficient quality education to anybody as long as they could pay. And a fierce competition for finding the smartest minds has meant that you only have to do well in your grade 10 to get atleast a 50% waiver or more.
I would rather have a less 'well read, less informed rustics' from rural Andhra or Tamil Nadu filling up the seats here than just well-read people from the same school in the same city every yera from the same community.
Arguments that these people contribute little to life at IITM in the four years have no weight, for their entry serves a greater purpose in the longer run than so-called well read,talented people into a system that might otherwise degenerate into catering to the elite of the big cities alone.
If Nehru wanted a system, that brings people from every corner of the country into the IITs, aren't the coaching centres helping?
But the biggest plus on their report cards is an awareness of the opportunity, among the middle income groups of the 'underprivileged' classes - And to their credit alone, more seats in the reserved category are filled by students from Andhra than anywhere else.

Just as more Brahmins at IIT Madras from Tamil Nadu and Karnataka doesn't mean they are smarter than people from other communities in those two states, more people from the underprivileged classes of Andhra doesn't mean they are smarter than their counterparts elsewhere in the country.

It simply raises uncomfortable questions about social justice mechanisms all over the country. ( ie government enforced ones, the free market mechanism for accessible education in Andhra, only for entrance exams however:), is of course entirely a credit to these private institutions)

This must answer any questions that a narrow minded professor (who can't get his class to pay enough attention to his teaching and would resort to a methodical demoralization of a large number of 18 year olds comparing them to products from a factory that is run by an old man called Ramaiah and his team located in but a single house in Padmarao nagar in Hyderabad, little of course does he know that it would take him, from his current pathetic level, perhaps a lifetime to teach like them) would pose or other equally naive undergrads, who take his words as the truth.
However, if you indeed spent two years or less at that house in Padmarao nagar, and are still a critic, all that I can say is you probably suffered for the sake of something that benefited and still benefits a large number of people.
But it would be only a very unwise one, who would cast the blame of incompetence for the rest of his/her life, on two years spent under the strict guidance of an old man and his team, who it must be remembered only wanted to help.

So the next time, someone asks you anything uncomfortable about Ramaiah, Chaitanya, Special or the like, you have no reason to feel so uncomfortable.

Stories that changed your life....

2005-05-14T12:34:00.000+01:00

Consider the vast majority of people who rely on their parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts for information about events that happened when they were too young to notice - that you are a part of, I reckon that the story you hear will differ based on the community you're from.

Each major incident that was not a win/win for the parties involved, will have two conflicting versions to it, one from the party that gained and another from the one that lost.

And our closely knit communities that encourage marrying within - mean that the information, not necessarily accurate, gets transferred from one generation to another, developing something akin to a race memory.
For instance, the Brahmins' account of Periyar differs completely from the Dalits account of it, while Periyar is held in the highest respect by the latter, that's not what uncles, aunts or parents tell their kids in Brahmin families - both for obvious reasons.

In the same note, families affected in the Hindu-Muslim riots in Hyderabad in 1990 have differing accounts of what happened. Even so in Godhra, inevitably, across India, there is a feeling of insecurity among Muslims, irrespective of how well educated they are, how rich they happen to be and the Hindus share a deep sense of mistrust too - all because of the manner in which they are brought up.
One instance would be the discussion of the Partition following independence, which every curious kid would perhaps ask, only to hear his sincerely well meaning Hindu dad or mom say,
'It was terrible but they started it first,(i.e. making dead bodies of passengers on trains) and we had to do it too.'

All the while, there is perhaps less biased information available in school texts- but only less biased, not entirely neutral for the author has an identity too.
But a large proportion including you and me, have based opinions and formed perceptions on the basis of what our parents and relatives tell us and not always from reading unbiased books, newspapers.

May be all that you think of your friend, neighbour or colleague not from the same communit as you is not so true after all then... All those stories probably changed your life much more than you could possibly ask for.

The caste system and its evils? Look at the arranged marriage system instead!

2005-05-06T19:22:00.000+01:00

To follow up my post on how much we need a liberal Indian youth, I just want to put up a hypothesis :)

If we were to push back caste out of the minds of young people into obscure record books, I think we could start doing that by asking people to find their own spouses.

I would put the arranged marriage system on top of the list of things that sustain the caste system.
The arranged marriage system creates an entity with a specific caste identity, in simple words, children from same caste couples know what their caste is, unlike those born of people of different castes.

and nothing can be more effective than a simple age-old solution that asks people to simply fall in love! - I think it would take a pretty narrow mind to be able to 'manage to fall in love' with someone from the same caste, sub-caste and gothram etc.

And the best part is that you can see change happening from the very next generation.
So what's the objective ?- To simply encourage people to fall in love, leaving behind all their identity garbage!

That simply explains why Caste is so unnatural, it comes out of something that is very artificial - a relationship that is arranged.

So all that I ask of you - to contribute is to simply let yourself go free and fall in love!

And we'll start killing a system from its roots, so that it dies a non-violent death - and its a system that fully deserves to die.

Why be conservative? Who said it's a nice thing?

2005-04-30T22:33:00.000+01:00

One whole year in London has meant I just can't help comparing things here to those back home.
The so called clean roads, sophisticated buildings, hi tech transport and gadgetry apart, which I don't really see as something that differentiates life between here and India or anywhere else for that matter, I can see a potential solution to removing centuries old divisions in Indian society - And it's called a liberal youth.

The most lovable thing I find about young people in Europe is their close-to-complete abandon of any identity that's seemingly nationalistic or religious. Language is a difficult barrier to cross at times but it hardly is a self imposed barrier.
Religion and Nationalism are a strict no-no. And a majority of the people I know have any religious affiliation at all, and church's something they go to once a year and for some only when you are kids! And being homophobic is not a mass trait.

If I were to define conservative (more in a social, than economic sense) in an Indian context, I would look for the following:
1. A strong awareness of religion and its ideals, an unwillingness to do something that is unreligious but is lawful.
2. An awareness of caste, of what it entails and of what distinguishes from other castes.
3. A chauvinism for either language or region

It is this conservative attitude, that says it's a woman's fault that she was raped because she dressed provocatively or that she can be abused just because she chooses to drink or smoke.
It is the same attitude that says Biharis are not allowed in Mumbai and that says 'Madrasis' are not welcome in Delhi.

It's the same attitude that says eating beef is different from eating chicken, when it's just another animal being killed. To me, the following don't seem different - upper caste Hindus who eat meat but avoid beef and pork to distinguish themselves from the Dalits and the Brahmins who don't eat meat at all to distinguish themselves from the rest.

They are clinging onto an identity that they guard zealously. And so long as they guard it, the caste system will have strong roots. And worse, they rub it so well on their offspring that young people come out with the same mindset.
And we are so conveniently comfortable with the whole idea of it all that there seems to be no impetus to move in any other direction at all!

I am in favour of the young man/woman who simply doesn't care! - About religion, language, caste and ideas of nationalistic chauvinism.

It's a liberal Indian youth, that I see to be the key to weakening anything that divides. And only an education can impart that, it would seem but in this one case, some parents and grandparents might be best kept away!

So there is joy in giving ?... Or is there?

2005-04-24T13:44:00.000+01:00

Notwithstanding my naive ignorance of life given just over two decades of my existence, reading about prominent people and their lives, professional and personal, has given me a reason to believe, that the biggest setbacks in one's life come from expecting too much from anybody else other than yourself.
And, not surprisingly, those who expect more out of themselves than from anybody else do well.
If you're going to give your everything to someone you like, either you don't expect to get it back or it better be to someone you're sure will give it back - Otherwise, brace up for a setback!

They say there is joy in giving, I think it comes with a tag that says conditions apply.

And then there are always those hapless few who don't read the fine print, and give everything they can to a 'heartless' few. And as it always tends to be, these 'heartless' few seem to be an attractive lot, not really expecting much, and neither do they intend to give back much.
And those who don't read the fine print inevitably run into this bunch and then it's just sometime before they get their setback(that they were asking for?)

In defense of the 'heartless' few, they might be nice people too, but then there is only so much they ever intend to give and giving them anything more than that is never really going to come back, and the more sensible among them don't even expect to get so much either.

So whose mistake is it anyway?
Whose ever it might be, it will be those who give and expect as much or more from people who simply don't, who suffer.

So what makes me write all this anyway? May be, I believe I am the reason for some minor setbacks in some people's lives and don't really know if it's my fault, although some of them have a reason to believe so!
And may be I'll have some of those setbacks too... and then I'll probably read this and see how unreasonable I was when I wrote this or differently, how unreasonable I had gotten since I had written this!

People and Places I can never love?

2005-04-12T23:13:00.000+01:00

There's an old story about Socrates sitting at the entrance of Athens and meeting people who wanted to move in. On being asked how people were in his city, Socrates would ask the visitor the same question, if the visitor said the people in the city he was leaving were good, Socrates would say the same thing about Athens and would welcome him in.
On the other hand, if the visitor said they weren't, he would hear something not so nice about the people of Athens and be frightened off living there.

Apparently Socrates, being Socrates!, knew what he was doing.

Having lived in and loved living in Hyderabad and Chennai, (hot!) cities with very warm people, I couldn't stretch my imagination to expect anything else from London. and neither London nor Great Britain and its people disappointed.
And I can't help thinking how right Socrates was and will be

I've moved to cities wherever my education has takenme(with what I now take to be) a characteristic lack of strong preference for a place or a people. And I don't expect that to change in the future either.

But I've never been in a foreign land before and a growing liking for London has meant an unusual fear is creeping up on me...
A fear of getting sucked into a selfish life of making a career and life for yourself with little regard for anything else - For the idealism in your youth that is hungry for change - for the people you're a part of or more realistically, in flesh and blood, for the people and relationships built over two decades in which perhaps you were taken care of more than you took care of.
And now, when it's your turn, you've your career and your life for an excuse.

But an impassioned youth and a fearless ambition have a fearsome reputation for burning bridges that took years to build.
And that's one fear that I can't rein in as I find a growing attachment for a place and a people that are not my own, and perhaps can never be my own.

Twenty-one years of forgettable joy?

2005-03-27T15:51:00.000+01:00

It is with mixed feelings that I complete 21 years today, nostalgic about the years that have passed and looking forward to those ahead...
On every birthday, be it in Hyderabad, Chennai or this one in London, I inevitably experience an uncharacteristic sinking feeling that reminds me of the years passed that will never come back.
While I cherish each and every one of my moments under the sun so far, I wonder which is it that I may say I miss most...

Is it those fantastic memories of childhood made up largely of playing cricket barefoot in the hot sun, which never felt so hot then as it does now, visiting grandparents, relatives and friends in ancestral villages in the summers and and fighting with my siblings everyother day!

Or is it those two years of intense disciplined study, which meant giving up just about everyone of those little joys of childhood for the single joy of excelling amidst intense competition and the recognition that came thereafter. Also came along an ability for math, science and more that will stay for a very long time to come.

Or is it those four memorable years of what was largely carefree abandon, mixed with occasional passionate efforts to impress upon a peer group, one's own abilities and ideas.
Not to forget, a return to barefooted sport:) - a different one though this time, idealistic dreams for the nation, an exponentially increasing interest in the opposite sex and an inexplicable longing for the shores abroad - All of which ended in a degree at a college valued much more by those who got theirs elsewhere than perhaps by those who got theirs there!

That I can never relive these moments ever again is not the happiest of thoughts...

But as I look forward to life ahead with as much optimism as ever, I can only say that I'll probably get so used to missing those years passed by, that I won't miss the earliest ones as much as the more recent ones - But that's the only comfort I can offer if this is how you feel too...

Enviable Bundles of Joy or Easily satisfied souls?

2005-03-20T17:52:00.000Z

'All I need is a thousand pounds a month to live on and I can live happily if only I have somebody to love ...' said a friend, who had made a remarkable jump, by any standards, from remote Balasore to the greener pastures of Scotland.

'A big house in Vijayawada is the only thing I want so that all of us (his entire family) can stay together ' said another, now researching polymers:) somewhere in the US!

Closer home near Guntur, much further away from the more ambitious environs of IIT Madras, all that most fathers want seems to be to get their daughters married off. And for some very lovely women, just staying close and taking care of their loved ones seems to be the only thing that matters.

I am sure each of them will find happiness sooner than later. And assuming they stay that way, happiness is something they will get to, easier than some others I know, who are perhaps much smarter and importantly a lot more ambitious....

Say, you're the ambitious chap competing hard, always comparing yourself to the rest and you run into one of these friends of mine that I mentioned above. Being very ambitious, you have a achieved a lot but have a lot more to, and as is your routine, you compare yourself to one of them. You have got more wealth, more fame ....
But to imagine that the only thing you cannot match is the contented smile on his face is a painful thought!

While it would be naive to put everyone in the world into airtight containers that are either contented types or otherwise, it is fair to say that each of us will have to make a choice between the two sides - one of which takes us ahead sometimes painfully and the other which leaves us snug in comfort!

There is so much joy in relationships that it seems to override any ambitions of wealth and fame, which are more superficial than they sometimes might seem. If being with someone means more than anything else, as it sometimes seems - to a lot of people, you would be unwilling to change anything that would change that.

So that makes me wonder if it will be your impassioned youth or your conventional self, comparing, evaluating and calculating, that determines how you start off and where you end up, and if you end up happy at all....

Far, far away... from comparison.

2005-03-03T21:41:00.000Z

We are gifted with a unique ability to compare what may usually not be compared, and it does not cost us anymore to compare than not to.
So we take upon ourselves this burdenless responsibility and go about it with an extraordinary zeal, ranking purely subjective entities such as beauty, achievement and intelligence. And so efficiently do we go about this task, that our entire lives are meaninglessly obsessed with a standard that never fit us in the first place, but which we have so much experience looking out for.

The mad rush to fit into these so called standards puts us in the hot cauldron of comparison - And only a few come unscathed out of it, some are so badly maimed that they are subject to ridicule for having tried to fit (and failed) into a standard that was not really theirs.

The rest, a majority that can adapt, manages to come to terms with it, settling down in the hierarchy somewhere - Not always getting what they deserved which they might have, had they only chosen a different, more apt benchmark for themselves.
An easy example is the notion of beauty, It is frustrating to watch as India's most 'creative' ad directors creatively destroy self esteem of a large majority of women with their standard of fairness as the single most important criterion for beauty.

As I read about otherwise smart people, who choose to go by the well trodden path which they should not be taking, given that they are smart - I can't help wondering the enormous power that familiarity, or perhaps a perception of it wields on the average human being.

It is frustrating to see a large majority of India's best minds all herded into engineering colleges and then pushed off abroad to study the same thing by a force that can only be explained by an obsession for the familiar. A familiarity that arises out of yet another obsession for such narrow minded comparison that it allows for just a few standards, when so many can be set, and so much more variety in beauty, achievement and intelligence can be appreciated.

So, how prone are you to these standards?

In other words, are you sure you are not the dark skinned woman trying to fit yourself into a standard that you are not meant for?
Even if you do, you will never be so much a fair beauty as you can be a dark skinned one.
If you pay too much attention to what those 'creative' directors say, the forces of comparison might take you too far behind to catch up.

The year 21 fear.

2005-02-26T23:05:00.000Z

They say not much can change a man after he finishes his first 21 years - of largely aimless living.
And it makes a lot of sense as well, for people hardly seem to change - our politicians don't, our government servants don't, closer home, neither do orthodox grandparents or pedantic teachers.

If you think you're someone who embraces change, always changing for the better - that statement must cause some worry.
For it says, the basis, the very fundamentals that determine how you think and act, will be set in concrete by the time you finish twenty-one. And you'll need to have a 'shattering' experience that will break through the concrete if you really need to redefine your fundamentals.
Say you are in your thirties, each time you think you're embracing change, you are really not!
For how you fundamentally act and think has already been determined, and you're merely acting out a slightly unconventional reaction each time you think you're embracing radical change.

That brings us to my primary concern, what if I need to radically overhaul myself sometime later in my life? And they tell me that 21 years of work can't really be undone in a few months or even years!
Even more frightening is the prospect of not being able to change even when you want to, and being deceived into thinking you've changed when you really haven't.

I am pretty sure the number 21 isn't really special, it is hopefully something a bit bigger.(That should give us more time!) All said and done, the early twenties inevitably determine how we form our notions on important determinants of a good living - human relationships, freedom, money and religion among others.

I would rather be prone to change now and be moulded just right sooner, than stay in my shell and be too hard to change later anyway.

A single goal for everyone?

2005-02-24T00:53:00.001Z

Perhaps the single-most important goal in life for you and me is to build, nurture and when hurt or damaged, soothe what people identify today as an ego.
And if we do pour in all our efforts into that(as in anything else), we might do well enough to be considered successful by our less fortunate peers. However, we wouldn't, after all this education, be so unreasonable to know that and still go about such a task, having been educated that it is not the right thing to do.
So we adopt in our own ingenious manner, a method of convincing ourselves that what we pursue is not simply an ego boosting task but something more reasonable - a goal that has more to it than just money, fame or power (all of which feed into the ego!)

But then how unreasonable can we be?
We know deep within - whether it's a star PhD, a breakthrough idea for a startup or a job at an investment bank that we want, we do it for either money, power or fame.
Can we cheat ourselves,( we could cheat our less fortunate peers!, of course!) that what we do comes out of a platonic love for what we want to do and the three just seem to come along as a tag.

It is an open competition, and all that the world's going to judge you by - is through three indicators - Money, Power or Fame - Competition you cannot step out of.
You are on the local stage or a larger global one depending on how big your ego has grown.

You just can't afford to be nice and stay out and risk people hurting your ego - unless you are one of those low key players who haven't built up a big enough ego yet, and can watch the fight from the sidelines. Like those very laidback people you meet in the countryside - people who have not an inch to care about why they are not rich or famous as someone else, or anything of the sort.
They play on the smallest stage - of relationships, that is all that seems to matter for them.
They are the ones I adore and envy.

But then where does that leave the rest of us, with our egos (that tell us we are smart, knowledgeable etc etc and have things to do...) to satisfy ?
In the big bad ego driven world of course!
It does seem a pity that the prime of our lives must go to something that we know is not as worth as we make it up to be!
Only a lack of imagination can make us ask - "But what else have we to do then if we don't engage ourselves in the task of building, nurturing and soothing our ego ?"

If you don't have an answer, you've got nothing to worry, there's plenty of company : The world only knows one way to rate you!

So get out there and grow your ego then!

Two costly misses?

2005-02-02T23:46:00.000Z

Twice in the span of an year, I was within five yards of two very important people - of enormous stature in their respective nations. And on both occasions, all that I managed was a smile and I had only muted images to take back....

If I did not quite know what I wanted to say, when I saw Dr Manmohan Singh in December 2003 in the lavish banquet hall in the Parliament Annexe - In February 2005, I was yet to learn my lesson, when I saw Mr William Brown, the Chancellor of the Treasury(the British equivalent of India's Finance Minister), in much less pretentious environs however- at a bus stop just outside King's as he waited for his car to arrive after a lecture there.
At the Bus Stop just outside King's College on Stamford Street from where I board the bus to go home everyday, I learnt an important lesson which I hope not to forget. Something I should have learnt an year earlier!

Dr Singh went on to become India's most powerful man, and I wonder what's in store for Mr Brown, with Britain's elections fast approaching?

On Why India Is Truly Democratic and .. on Misconceived Notions of Elitism

2005-01-23T10:13:00.000Z

Stereotypical Bollywood movies, with protagonists running around trees, getting enmeshed in complex love triangles.
Street smart politicians with no education who enjoy enormous clout.
Rich Businessmen, not always ethical, who know what makes money and know it very well.

Surprising as it may seem, all the above are wonderful examples that reflect a democratic spirit that is very Indian. All of them cater to the average person, they don't care an ounce about the elite nor do they intend to be a part of it - But they are welcome in the elite!

So you are educated at a top school, got your degree from one of the best universities in the world - read just influential works of people you consider important, watch only midstream, parallel cinema( in an Indian context only english movies!, and of course no local languages please), and you want to be or consider yourself to be a part of an elite - You could be distancing yourself from the real thing more than you think!

The elite exists only because there is a larger class of simpler people who choose to be that way!
To look down upon them and distance yourself from their ways is foolish to say the least.
People who understand them and their ways well enough will be ones that cater best to the bottom of the pyramid and a look at the rich and the famous list in India can only confirm that.

If you think there's more of money, fame or whatever you aspire if you choose to be distant from the lives of your people, you couldn't be more wrong.
For all you know, if you don't know how the world works - and the larger class is to a large extent the world! , all that your fabulous degree could get you is working for a chap probably from this very larger class which you don't want to be a part of!

There's pride in being a part of the larger class too... and a lot more in not being elitist.

A fresh breath of freedom - Get a mouthful.

2005-01-08T01:06:00.000Z

I feel it at last, as refreshing as the early morning sun - freedom. Freedom indeed.

Is it freedom to be as I want to be, to be able to question everything that I once took for given and conventional and be pleasantly surprised to find that ?
Is it freedom from hidden prejudices that my (as yet naive?) vision can't spot at a place as international as LSE?
Is it freedom from being forced to do what everybody else's doing?
Is it freedom from being forced in to assertive cliques of nationality, religion, caste and language?
Or is it simply freedom from constraints - self imposed and once deeply embedded(Thanks to a culturally strong society), but of which I was unaware of?

Whichever it might be, I might get as many a mouthful as I can- to stay this way - before I eventually go back into a society that perhaps shares only a few of my notions of freedom, as of now.

That elusive milestone called success. When does it come?

2005-01-03T17:12:00.000Z

Do you keep thinking of times when there were no worries at all, times when you were a kid, or when you were at college that you perhaps consider to be the best parts of your life thus far?

And all those difficulties that you currently live through - of living alone in a foreign land working with slavish devotion for some professor in some lab, or studying hard to make it through one more of those never ending exams to make it into one of those prized firms or working very hard without taking time off at all - are necessary to achieve a goal, that is of paramount importance to you.
And after you reach this goal, you hope to be perhaps as happy or even more happy than you were in those heydays, as when at college or as a kid.

As children, we are taught that we need to pass through these difficult times to have a better time ahead. So each time we had to do something we didn't like, we were told that this is one of those last few times we would have to do it - and thereafter only good times lay ahead!

But these difficult times seem to just keep coming as we overcome one and wait for the next, until we perhaps decide that this would be the last we can take ?
A majority of us would have now come to terms with it, we now extend it, or may be extrapolate it to understand that these difficulties have to be endured until the final goal is reached, the higher the goal, the more the difficulties!

But is it the right way of going about achieving a goal ? I think not.

In my opinion, a success story would have no difficult bits to it, each and every moment would be cherished and thought fondly of, as any other. It's just a matter of realizing that. So successful men would enjoy every little bit of the path, and there is no reason why they would not keep going if that's so. Simple, isn't it?

The difficult bits come in only when you don't like what you're doing, but which you think have to be inevitably gone through.
What makes them inevitable then? - Indeed, they are avoidable if you choose so. There are things that everybody else's doing, which you don't really like but you can't see yourself not doing them simply because everybody else is. If only you choose to be different....

If not...

Then you should perhaps take a look at your goal again. Otherwise, you'll have to stop at a milestone that you could possibly showcase as success to people who stopped much before you did, but those who pass and those who keep going, they will know what it really is. Won't they?

The New Year, What's so new ?

2004-12-30T14:59:00.000Z

I wonder what we mean by a new year.
Is it a fresh year, a year that is totally afresh, something that has never happened before?
When we say something new, though we know that there is nothing new under the sun, when we talk about a happy new year, is it really a new year for us?
Or is it the same old pattern repeated over and over again?
Same old rituals, same old traditions, same old habits, a continuity of what we have been doing, still are doing, and will be doing this year - Jiddu Krishnamurthy

So what's so new about the new year this time around?
Is it going to herald a new beginning for India's poorest and most distanced?
Is it going to bring freedom from self imposed barriers of caste, religion and tradition for you and me?
If there's one change I want, It's the one that will change my answers to these questions ....

Q: Mohan, Is it true that a lot of children are uneducated in India, Is schooling not free and compulsory?
A: We do have free and compulsory schooling actually....

Q: And all those people in poverty, Doesn't the Indian government provide cheap/free food, it isn't that expensive really, is it?
A: No, we do have ration shops that provide cheap food, but there are people living in poverty....

Q: And Untouchability, it's terrible, isn't it? Are there no affirmative measures or something like that?
A: No, actually we do have affirmative action, reservations among others...

Apparently, we do have the necessary legislations and laws..., so all those not so nice people sitting in our houses of parliament, however unlikely it might seem, have done their job. It's the implementation.

It's the executive. Get them to change this new year.
Government employees have let our nation down more than anyone else! Everyone of them, from those very smart people in the IAS to clerks in local government offices have let us down.

So that's one area I would like changed this new year, otherwise it'll be nothing new to me and to those millions living difficult lives for no fault of theirs! - Hardly something you'll think about on the night of the 31st December 2004.

Hopefully, We'll have the beginnings of a whole new world, some new year soon and that new year will be new indeed.

All those things called Constraints!

2004-12-29T00:00:00.000Z

To all those people, who take as the words of God, books written by men, some special and some not really so, I have a few words to say...

First a few words from somebody else actually,

Imagine there's no heaven...
No hell below us...]
No religion too.... - John Lennon of the Beatles

Goodness is not defined by what you don't do, instead it is defined by what you create
(Actually something close to it) - The priest towards the end of the Juliette Binoche movie, 'Chocolat'

A majority of constraints that we face are self imposed. Living a life with lots of these self imposed constraints for the sake of one without - in a different place, in a different window of time, will seem downright silly if you come to realize that you can have the latter rightaway!

For instance, choosing not to eat meat, or certain kinds and forms of it, just because some book by somebody says so, is akin to chaining yourself up. For all you know, this somebody, who contributed significantly to this holy book you choose to lead your life by, might have been only as smart as you are, or probably less so. He probably enjoyed a position of power which allowed him to put some of his not so broad minded ideas into implementation!

Imagine current day Bihar in India as nation of its own and that Laloo Yadav decided to add some sections to the Gita. Considering the clout he enjoys there, he might implement some of his 'nice' ideas very well, I wouldn't be very surprised if this passed on from generation to generation and became a part of our tradition.
If you think Laloo is too much of an extreme example, there is atleast one other chap who changed lives of a lot of people more than they would have wanted it - Manu with his system of justice for the different varnas!

So, if you are not eating meat or taking alcohol because somebody in some book told you so, your education is fundamentally flawed - you don't question!
For all those who just don't do some things and have never tried them out, or those who still share foolish notions of purity, by claiming to be the forbearers of a religion who would not eat in dishes stained by anything to do with meat, I have just one thing to say-
You're not living life to the fullest!

A question of money? just questions!

2004-12-23T23:38:00.000Z

Did you ever read Chicken Soup for the Soul, any of them? Did it make you feel good? Why was that?
When was the last time you gifted someone more than what they were worth? - Probably never or the only time you did, it was a big mistake!
And when was the last time you felt you could have given him/her something better and had the following as an afterthought! - If only I had spent a bit more or thought a bit more about it.... - Very Recently? (if you are in the habit of gifting people that is)

Do you think like this?
That money can play havoc with relationships is better learnt sooner than later! And that pound you fretted over, after calculating its value in Indian rupees will be worth a lot more - after you realize it cost you a friend!

Or like this?
Well. But then money is all that matters, you'll have all the friends, beautiful women you'll need once you have the money. It's just a matter of waiting then. You can be cheap till then, which you might not really be.
To hell with all these people for whom I am expected to spend some money on to buy some gifts. I'll have better ones, when I have more money - after all, like me, they are attracted to money as well! And I'll end up with the those most wonderful flexi-friends whom I can change as I gain or lose money!

A Paradise called the West!

2004-12-18T23:20:00.000Z

Materialism is probably all that reflects from a title such as the one above. But the simple joys of materialism are in flesh and blood here and they are in plenty - in this part of the world!
Which makes me wonder what exactly is that which makes the West such a nice place to visit and make some people stay forever!
Is it those wonderful faces, eveready to smile, ready to forget their worries for a moment and make you forget yours!
Or is it the wonderfully unconstrained society, where you can eat and drink only as your tastes dictate and not as your religion does?
The second question's a bit too much thought! so let's do the first one.
When was the last time you saw a landlord smile at his dalit labourer or the chaste pujari at a lower caste devotee. Here, the chap who picks up garbage does, my tutor does, even the taxi driver smiles back. (well, may be he should after charging 10 pds for a trip that would cost 80 times less in Hyd!)
So are all these people happy in their jobs? and apparently none in India are, not the least my well paid supervisor at IIT Madras from whom I had a difficult time extracting a smile! (May be he had a good reason not to, having to supervise me perhaps!)
There are grumpy people everywhere, but there seem to be more at home than here. Why's that?
Is it because of all the thinking that we do each time we run into a person - figuring out his religion, his caste, his other not so nice characteristics that we have no time to think about smiling?
I'm sure people here think of equivalent stuff when they meet someone, but they let off a smile first and do all that later. A subtle difference that can make life a lot easier ?
So the next time you're not smiling when you meet someone, check what you're thinking about!

For all I know, It doesn't cost much to smile, so why don't we smile as much ?

A Hypocrite lives on?

2004-10-11T22:04:00.000+01:00

A Hypocrite lives on?

So, you want to change the lives of your people? After an admission to the London School of Economics and a degree in computer science from IIT Madras and setting foot in London, having spent a couple of months and a couple of lakhs of rupees– You want to return to find out what your country’s all about - for an year and make your move for the life ahead?

Your defense – You have absolutely nothing to lose, a year spent learning about villages, their people and problems is a year well spent. Moreover, you are going to give yourself one more shot at all those scholarships that you missed out on. And very very importantly, you get closer to finding out what you really want to do in life!

Notably, you haven’t said a thing about doing things for your country and other saucy stuff like making sacrifices to put yourself on that imaginary pedestal that only you would see.

You definitely want to make money but you want to make money and bring about a change all the same. And you definitely don’t want to be one of those ‘revered’ people perched comfortably high and away making donations that seem to vanish as fast as they come – doing little more than providing that mask to hide your guilt each time your country cries for help.

Do you want to see yourself in a position trying to convince the next generation that you sacrificed a lot to serve the nation- and make them see for themselves – the change that you have brought? – although they don’t seem to be spotting any?
And turn into one of those grumpy old men unwilling to accept change and trying to convince people that you are a worthy idol for them – with that two-bedroom rented house of yours and that old atlas cycle you ride to work– the days of sacrifice are far behind us today – Nobody’s going to do as you did if all that’s all your efforts are going to get for them.

For God’s sake, please don’t tell me that you derive satisfaction from the fact that you have changed lives of people although nobody seems to know about it. Sacrifices are a thing of the past; nobody’s going to make them for you to ‘change your nation’.

If you want to spearhead change – you have to be a leader – a leader of this generation –have ample money to get things done, be comfortable with change and technology and importantly be a worthy idol for today’s materialistic world.

While APJ Abdul Kalam is admired, Shah Rukh Khan and Sachin Tendulkar will have a large audience, they are listened to more than the former. On the same note, there’s no doubt which person’s going to get more ears when an RKK and a partner of McKinsey speak.

Well, you’re a part of this world and you can’t say the world is completely gone bonkers. You don’t have to change your goals – you’ve got to find ways to work round this world to achieve your goal.

So what was all the talk about coming back for a year – does it fit in into this world as it is now?
The Hypocrite lives on then… if that’s what you want to call me.

Surely, I must be crazy? Plans for the year.

2004-09-16T18:09:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, I was addressing a dilemma of mine- as an individual you will want to carve a niche for yourself where you will be among the best - but if that niche turns out to be one that was created solely for money - you'll never be among the best - No matter what you earn, there'll always be guys who will have more money.
And when you look back at the road behind, with all those bags of money in your cart under your ass, you will see a lot more people behind perched higher - thanks to more bags of money under their respective arses.
Hypocrisy was not what I was I was addressing, it was more about the dilemma on whether I should do as the world does. So after all that writing, I might be the biggest hypocrite ever if I solely write and eke my way into one of those Inv. banks or consulting firms.
My current line of thinking - I am going to give that side of me,which thinks I can make a change- by returning to India and spending a year in the villages or with Lok Satta, a real big chance - to see for myself if a change can actually occur - If I give up on account of inability or cynicism or simply parental pressure - I'll just do as the world does, make money.
Either by deferring my offer at LSE - if they agree to it or else I'll make it into one of those money spinners of our times -the IIMs. Since it's only a matter of money - all this stuff about quality education, intellectual schools of thought might as well go down the drain.- and so will my criticism of the IIMs,
So I am currently building up ground for parental counseling - to help them weather the shock - they are the ones who'll tell the relatives that their eldest son came back to work for an NGO or to see the villages after spending three months in London and an IIT degree.
So i guess they don't get any crazier than this - But an year knowing my country should help -even if it still led to a career whose only milestones might be - no of houseplots in Jubilee hills, merc cars, vice president this, president that etc.

I guess I can give an year to what I think is right.and an year with an NGO or some enterprising activity will do me no harm - it's in these days -volunteering -it'll also help you get into the B schools easily from what I hear!

Sounds downright crazy, I guess. But I hope to find out after a year if it was. and be crazier than ever before when it comes to accummulating money this time on.

2004-09-15T19:07:00.000+01:00

At Buckingham Palace

2004-09-15T19:06:00.000+01:00

At home in Clapton, London.

The World can't be wrong

2004-09-15T18:47:00.000+01:00

The Whole World Can’t Be Wrong?

Even as I started patting myself on the back for taking a decision few people would have made- let me offer some food for thought for people still living in places saner than where I do.
It's tough to accept, but wherever I go, people seem to have the same goal, irrelevant of how historically magnificent your institution is, or how many times people sitting in the same classrooms as you are, have changed the world. From MIT to LSE to IIM A to IITM, it's the same thing - make money - as much as you can in as little time as you can!
Well, everybody's doing it - so it can't be wrong, can it? There however, seems to be much wrong with this world, we can see it on the streets especially in India- Too many people living in poverty, poor primary education, poor public healthcare to cite some. But people in the best schools around the world are doing all that they can do - well, only for themselves however.
I must say all that intellectual school of thought, that I thought I would be a part of, at LSE - is a myth. I can make money, if I can get into an investment bank, there are hordes of them here and offer lots of pay.
LSE's historically been closer to labour - more inclined towards the left - but all it's grads look up to making their careers in the consulting firms and the investment banks and it's director is an honorary member on the board of Morgan Stanley and is a former McKinsey partner.
That's as paradoxical as LSE is today. It's no different at MIT or Harvard either. These are the places people want to get into in the US as well. Ask anybody there and when somebody says he's interested in B-School, you would be wise If you heard, " I want to make some money in the inv banks and consulting firms"
Irrespective of whether you study at LSE or IIM A or elsewhere, it's only the surroundings that differ - a majority want to work at one place-where they hand more bags of money. But my biggest problem with money is that, no matter how much I get of it - there's going to be a guy who'll come along waving all his bags of money - which I can only envy about.
So when there are all these problems, i.e the ones in public health etc around, why is no one working on them? - except those miserable chaps from those govt degree colleges -who well, also do it for money, but do it badly.
Now that's everybody doing stuff for money - you can get away by doing the same thing, albeit masking it with your research in quasi-atomic circulations in sub pelvic magnetic regions, which you so apparently 'love'.
So if you ever wanted to do something different as I am forced to by something inexplicable and out of my control -You risk being a fool and you are not going to be the talking point of living room discussions, nobody's going to say- "IIT chadivaadu, USA vellaadu, Car, Bungalow konnaadu, pedda garage anta, pillalu erraga englishlone maatladuthaaru, asalu ikkada dummu, matti padavu, otti bisleri neelle thaguthaaru ...."
Instead all that they are going to say is " emo nandi, edo chesthoovuntaadu, edo oka illu konnattunnaadu, antha sampadichadandi.."
Well, people, I mean all of you in places where reality can still touch you -It's upto you to decide what you want to do.
And I don't want to be a hypocrite either, I prefer the dust and the grime there.
Let me end with what an IITB CS guy said in an interview to rediff - " IITians must work to set up world-class companies in India" - He took up a job at McKinsey, as Indian as McDonalds is. Let’s hope he does something better later in life.