Posts filed under ‘Deesha’
Veering Away from Politics, Try – Word Play
But I suppose that boat has sailed (hey, another nautical metaphor – my mom is right, I am special and so are my teachers – I am a smart cookie after all) and so, while my boat is crashing into the rocks and am coaxed by the sweeper to MLA/MP/ZP campaigning in a beemer to vote, let me just say that am voting for change and hopefully, progress. It could be any party or candidate. I shudder to advise especially to bonafide idiots who have by and large voted time and again for a dynasty and monarchy to rule for 60+ years directly or indirectly or by proxy of this hopelessly wretched country but while I do not really care if any of you vote or not, but if you do like am going to even if its only because it is fashionable, here is a plea to vote for change and hopefully, progress and while at it, try to veer away from politics whose operative word is ‘tics’ which even animals would attest are blood sucking, disease spreading, scalp itching, skin irritating, ear infecting, greedy bloated parasites. Put any political symbolism like khadi and ticks become politicians. Ipso facto. QED.Ashok Inner-AAM: Rise Against Corrupt Lawyers
Soon after graduating in 2009, I went to Mysore for participating in the Flight Officer selections at the Air Force Selection Board (AFSB). I met candidates from all over the nation who were entirely different from me but at the same time shared the same passion that I had in our country. I got selected but didn’t join (a whole different story). Noticed that several of the potential Flight Officers were unaware of basic things that a citizen of India is supposed to know such as the Preamble to the Constitution of India, our National Pledge, etc. After returning from my medicals, I started asking my friends, relatives and colleagues if they knew these things and researching on why most of them didn’t even have a nominal idea about such important stuff regarding India. Found out it’s the lack of easily available information. Realized that change always begins from a single step and decided to take it.
Sorry to interrupt but the message here is that Ashok brought out his Inner-AAM and in the classic tradition of the Nataraja thandava, is giving abhayam to seekers of justice and trampling corrupt lawyers. A salute by this nacheez i.e. yours truly –
I immediately started working on an Android App (Note: I had no prior programming experience or knowledge of Law) and launched the very first basic "Constitution of India" android app on the Android Market (Android Play Store now). People really liked it, found it useful and started interacting with me on a daily basis through the feedback system built within the app. Most of the users were either law students, professional lawyers or judges in courts. I started getting suggestions, improvement ideas and the app eventually turned into the final version that is available in the market now. The morphing process was gradual. I started getting more and more requests for law applications as the data for the bare acts is really hard to find and harder still to categorize and understand. Based on the framework that I built for Constitution of India, I started gathering data from various government websites and through RTI. Each act took about a month to develop and publish. Began publishing apps act-wise as it’s easier for people to download, view and search through the apps. Each of these apps has the facility to search the central act library via web. Published about 20 apps and a lot more in queue.
Laws affect us all. And increasingly, bare acts are being searched for, read and used by a broad range of people. Bare acts are no longer confined to professional libraries but are considered intricate and intimidating. The apps empower people to directly access, search for and discuss the law of the land in the most simple way possible – using the smart phone. Given that my apps realize their full potential in the hands of people studying and practicing law, their aim is to provide the common man, the power and resources to look into the rules that define and build India. The main purpose of the law apps is to uncomplicate law, open it up for everyday discussion via the social features in the apps and make the information easily available offline.
Imagine a lawyer in a court being able to present his case without carrying any books and without wasting time to pin point the chapter number and section number. Imagine a judge being able to verify the arguments almost instantaneously by searching for specific content in all the laws of India, saving valuable time and speeding up the decision process. Imagine a client going to the lawyer and being able to discuss his specific issues by completely understanding the sections his issues are related to. Imagine a law student going to college/court with just his smartphone and work on it entirely. Imagine a teenage kid being able to read/watch a civil dispute in the news and cross reference the discussion. Imagine a normal person caught speeding on the road and finding out the exact fine amount when a corrupt police official demands a hefty fine. My apps give Aam-Aadmi the power to access all the information or laws that are related to him and that affect him.
Words to live by, or rather, draw by in this case. Please head over to CWorks for a visual depiction of how Ashok Inner-AAM is helping people rise against the reign of corrupt lawyers. As the old adage goes, information/knowledge is power. Indeed.
Call for Rise of Nation of Inner-AAMs
Whenever it passes muster that I doodle, just about everybody in India or those with roots to India mention the iconic so-called Common-Man character of R.K.Laxman to which Wikipedia has the following to say:
The Common-Man is the creation of author and cartoonist R. K. Laxman. For over a half century, the Common-Man has represented hopes, aspirations, troubles and perhaps even foibles of the average Indian, through a daily comic strip, “You Said It” in The Times of India. The comic was started in 1951.
When Laxman began to draw cartoons in The Times of India, he attempted to represent different states and cultures in India. In the rush to meet deadlines, he began to draw fewer and fewer background characters, until finally he found only one remaining – the now-familiar Common-Man who generally acts as a silent witness to all the action in the comic.
Being the contrarian that I am, just about everybody in India or those with roots to India is taken aback and fall from their smugness cloud when I reveal that I really do not like the so-called Common-Man character and that while I have no reason to disrespect Laxman as a person and even admire him for his art and drawings, I do not actually respect Laxman as an author and cartoonist for he has pissed on a great opportunity and platform. Rather than inspire people by making the recurring character an agent of change, he played his part, however miniscule, making the character hapless and clueless and in so doing, conditioned people to be suffering bovines happily quipping “arre bhai, India mein aisa hi hotha hai” with an annoying and lazy “chalta hai yaar” attitude. Before everybody in India or those with roots to India thinks that this is just my opinion, Laxman has on record parroted the same thing, “The Common-Man symbolises the mute millions of India, or perhaps the whole world, a silent spectator of marching time.”
Now one could say that maybe I am looking too much into some imagery. Could be but iconography is a powerful thing which is seldom acknowledged. Discussing imagery as iconography implies a critical “reading” of imagery that often attempts to explore social and cultural values. Allow me to make an observation. If we study imagery of icons – fictional or real – we can immediately see some patterns. For the sake of simplicity, if we just compare non-religious icons of USA and India, the noticeable icons and paragons of the Western world have been superheroes fighting evil and preserving the American way of life while the icon worthy of mention in India is arguably Common-Man who is a speechless village idiot whose inaction has created a rotting, stinking, corrupt, poor, sickening, diseased, infested, horrible, broken, polluted, communal, violent, uneducated… catch the wave, stench of an excuse of a country called India. Let this vomit throw up in your mouth and sink in.
A wise man once said to me that how we want to be treated by others is dependant on us and our actions and not the largesse and manners of others. I for one feel that the Common-Man has an Inner-AAM (Angry And Mad) that is just wanting to explode and do something about the cacophony around him. Since Laxman will continue to draw the Common-Man as a damsel in distress and sell books, give speeches, get honoured etc. by the bucketload while at it, I am taking the artistic liberty of bursting the bubble and bringing out the Inner-AAM of demure character and fight the evils, worms, leeches, maggots… get the drift, of politicians, businesses, terrorism, policegiri, supersitions, rowdyism et al. in the hope it will inspire others, yes, all of you and you, the 2 readers of this blog who could very well fall under the common-man definition or an attempt towards a definition by Udit Misra, to fight –
Now, by associating myself with I Am Aam (a seller of t-shirts with a twist), I have brought out my Inner-AAM and have joined the fight to do my bit in the way I can by immortalizing the travails and adventures of Inner-AAMs across the length and breadth of India inspired by true stories. I understand that the suspense might be killing you and you want to see what it will be like and when you can see it but the key question, and perhaps the only question that should matter is, are you in? Are you going to bring out your Inner-AAM and join the fight? We’re all waiting!
P.S: Please go here at CWorks for the full-comic
Killer Idea – Word Play
“… ideas matter. Ideas are primary. Ideas are the ultimate public good in that they are totally non-rival: my use of an idea does not diminish your capacity to use it as well. Ideas can pass from one mind to another and set up a chain reaction that has the power to transform the world. Everything that you see around you – the good, the bad, the ugly – everything was just an idea …”
But be careful folks for there are ideas and then there are dangerous killer ideas –
Pakistan Mulls over $5M Flood Relief Aid from India
Yep! India which is itself on a sinking ship is trying to save an adamant Pakistan which is not budging even when its master, the USA has spoken and Obama is urging. Funny thing here is that the really sad thing about all this is inspite of all the silliness, Pakistan as a failed country still performs better than India and others in many UN human development metrics. Here is evidence. Twisted and scary, innit?
Writing on Wall – Word Play – Hiatus Scusi
Mistakes in Causal Direction – GDP and Education
When you find a correlation between two phenomena, you’re tempted to conclude there’s a causal relation as well. The problem is that this causal relation – if it exists at all – can go either way. It’s a common mistake – or fraud – to choose one direction of causation and forget that the real causal link can go the other way, or both ways at the same time and space. Or not.We often think that people who like violent video games are more likely to show violent behavior because they are incited by the games to copy the violence that’s featured in these games. But can it not be that people who are more prone to violence are more fond of violent video games? We choose a direction of causation that fits with our pre-existing beliefs. Another widely shared belief is that uninformed and illiterate voters will destroy democracy, or at least diminish its value. No one seems to ask the question whether it’s not a diminished form of democracy that renders citizens apathetic and uninformed. Maybe a full or deep democracy can encourage citizens to participate and become more knowledgeable through participation. A classic example is the correlation between education levels and GDP. Do countries with higher education levels experience more economic growth because of the education levels of their citizens? Or is it that richer countries can afford to spend more on education and hence have better educated citizens? Maybe both. Or perhaps it is just old boy Pareto Law. Or simply, random twist of fate.
Bakes your noodles, no? These are chicken-egg problems and hence, solvable.
Joy of Giving – Ample Supply of Goodness – Banyan
Though there is a lot of suffering, there are also a large number of people and institutes and corporates doing their best to alleviate it. Goodness is not in short supply. Buddha said this in his sermon on charity, “Hard it is to understand: by giving away our food, we get more strength; by bestowing clothing on others, we gain more beauty; by donating abodes of purity and truth, we gain greate treasures; give till it hurts.” Most other religions and prophets have preached the same. In a country such as India where more than half of the population lives on less than 20-rupees daily (or 50c, hey, it is far less than international yardstick of poverty at 2$/day, interesting), it is the responsibility of the privileged fellow citizens to change the skewed balance between the haves and have-nots. Basic needs like food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, education, water, electricity that several of us take for granted are even today a struggle for several. Fortunately, the conscience of the common man is awake and alive. So are corporate hearts and dedication of NGOs.
Sounds too much of an advertisment but well, thank goodness that there is some good still left although I opine that poor are poor because they are suggestable and keep electing criminals time after time after time who are responsible for this mess which is a serious problem than is acknowledged. Maybe they deserve to suffer.
Food Price Inflation – WPI at 15.58% – Subsidy PDS
Food prices kept their upward trend hitting the common man hard. Food inflation rose to 15.58% for the second week of November with potato prices rising by 111% As compared to last year the prices of pulses were up by 35.60%, wheat by 12.53%, cereals by 13.04% and rice by 11.89%. Also prices of vegetables moved up by 11.96%, onions by 27.33%, fruits by 10.97% and milk by 11.36%. On a weekly basis, products which saw a rise in their prices are urad and poultry chicken (15% each), eggs (8%), moong (6%), arhar (5%), fruits and vegetables (3%) and milk and wheat (1% each). However, the prices of barley (2%) declined. The increase in food prices is due to shortages caused partly by a weak monsoon and partly by floods in some parts of the country. Said Mr Trehan and Mrs Mathur respectively –
In a country where even a simple vegetable like potato has become so expensive, how can one expect to have three meals a day. Survival has become really tough. How frugal can one become?
One has to think twice even for grocery shopping. Everything has become out of reach. Be it milk, vegetables or pulses. And worst, public transport has also gone so expensive. How can we honestly manage?
Inflation for all commodities more than doubled to 1.34% for the month of October from 0.50% in September due to costlier minerals and fuels, as per data released earlier. The finance minister, Pranab Mukherjee, said on Thursday that government is very deeply concerned about rising prices and will take all fiscal and monetary measures to contain it. Arjun Sengupta in his “Fair Food Deal for All” in DC on 30-November-2009 comments that it is high time that the government initiates a universal public distribution system (PDS) covering at least the essential commodities because the bulk of the population, about 70%, remains poor with their dire struggle for minimal livelihood –
About 350-million people remain below poverty line (BPL). The prices of essential commodities have been rising at an unprecedented rate. Not only foodgrains but vegetables like onions and potatoes are becoming costlier day by day. These affect all Indians but for the poor they are devastating as all their meagre incomes get exhausted, not meeting even a portion of the necessities. Prices of these products are no doubt largely due to shortfall in production but there are clear signs of market cornering, hoarding and price fixing. It is, however, very difficult to control speculatory tendencies by physical measures because the players are too many in the country and not just big traders and producers, even the common rehriwalla is hoarding. Unless those expectations are dampened they cannot bring down the speculation. The only way to do that is to increase supplies, if not through temporary production increase measures, then through additional imports.
To mitigate this problem, the universal PDS would be the first important step beginning with the BPL population by supplying them with the essential commodities at cheap and affordable prices. If PDS is targeted to a limited BPL population it may also be possible to increase their supplies through market purchase of these products and sell them at subsidised prices. This would push up the open market prices somewhat further. But targeted PDS can be sustained if the government is willing to subsidise the difference between market price and issue price of commodities. Hopefully increased prices, supported by planned increase in production incentives, will raise output in a short period reducing the supplies bottleneck. But in the immediate future, the government has to be ready to bear the cost of maintaining the PDS. However, the most important requirement is organisation of the system. That cannot be achieved by market incentives or subsidies. The government has to build up a huge and efficient structure of distribution throughout the country. It has to procure, purchase or import products and reach them to different destinations of the PDS. This can be done only with the help of state governments, first to identify the BPL beneficiaries and then to have fair-price shops supply the products efficiently. National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Limited (NACMFoI) or similar organisations can be created for vegetable and other such products. They should build up storages and have contract farming both at home and abroad. The time has now come for all kinds of out-of-the-box thinking to meet a serious problem of economic management in the country. Indian development, if it has to follow an inclusive path, must reinvent itself so that the poor develop an equal stake in our growth process.
Well, I agree in moral principle to Dr Sengupta (a Member of Parliament and former Economic Adviser to assassinated-good-riddance Prime Minister Indira Gandhi) but does this universal PDS not sound too communist? Why should the poor be further subsidized when already farmer markets, ration shops and pink/white cards etc. exist? Are not the high prices a result of supply-demand and greed (read, free-market capitalism) and therefore, market-based solutions are needed? Let missionaries, NGOs, social enterprises and fortune-at-BoP marketing gurus deal with solving something tangible like hunger for a change other than human rights, empowerment or whatever cause. Oh wait, they tried. And failed. And chickened out.
Authorized Graffiti Paintings on Bangalore Walls
I can only imagine what the future directions to lost tourists would be. “Go left on the painting that is about grief and suffering inviting the viewer to contemplate the evanescence of life speaking to the horror of ones own mortality and from there, take first right to the rather safe, predigested, bucolic genre scenes depicting the crass shallow values of the human condition”. While the former could be a banian advertisement and latter, a cinema poster, a tourist will be able to find the address in question and empty his bladder on the avant garde piece of a hole in the ground.
GE Edison Challenge – Renewable Energy for India
Raghotham in GE Edison Spotting reports on some of the student demonstrations at GE Edison Challenge 2009 in Bangalore (you cannot lure me to use the new name Reddy buggers). Here is a nice photo (of ‘Urjas’ or ‘Tech Innovas’) from IIT-Bombay (used B-word Thackerey morons) followed by clips from other finalists from IIT-Madras (get it?), SVCE, IIT-Kharagpur…
Srinath Ramakkrushnan and his IIT-Madras team who call themselves ‘Graminavitas’, are a lot more ambitious lot, proposing an integrated solution that spans rice de-husking in Natham, a 300-household village 60 km north of Chennai (with a de-husking machine he himself made after a two-year stay in Ujire in Karnataka) to building a micro-grid architecture that would partly use biogas produced from the husk to produce power to providing a workable public toilet system to improve rural sanitation to using the waste from the toilet to produce biogas to replace the need for LPG… phew.
Neha (chirpy 20-something Punjabi kudi in pink tees and blue jeans) and team from Sri Venkateswara College of Engineering are trying to produce electricity using local resources in a village in Tamil Nadu so they can have power supply round-the-clock, instead of just two hours a day. The ‘Energy Boosters’ chose Kaliyapettai village near Chennai, which has a textile mill nearby discharging industrial effluents. Neha and friends used the effluents as nutrients to grow algae on. Algae convert carbon dioxide absorbed from the atmosphere into lipids, which are then converted into biodiesel to generate electricity in a diesel generator. The team grew algae in a tank and have sent in the oil they produced for analysis of its power potential. Neha says the oil produced in 5 days can power lighting for the village’s 600 families through the day, for an initial cost of as little as Rs. 1 lakh (or 2000$).
Shashikant Burnwal, Arnab Chatterjee and Ashim Sardar of IIT-Kharagpur have built a pot-in-pot storage system that helps store vegetables and cooked food at temperatures as low as 8 to 10 degree Celsius, using nothing more than two earthen pots and a fan picked up from the insides of a desktop computer. Refrigeration, with minimal electricity necessitated by global warming. They have also designed a home cooling system in which sunlight falls on a PVC roof and heats it up, causing airflow between low pressure and high pressure areas, cooling homes – again, no electricity used.
Are these ideas, and those of the other 15 teams, practical, scaleable and worth the trouble? Well, the judges went around grilling the participants on the economics, the scientific principles and technology and the novelty of the ideas. GE and the Indian government’s Department of Science and Technology (through DSIR TEPP program) have already sweetened the deal. Each of the 18 finalist teams will take home Rs.20,000. In addition, GE will award the winning team, to be announced on Friday, Rs.5 lakh and a runner-up Rs. 1 lakh. And, to boot, the DST will consider funding their ideas so they can turn it into reality. While I feel that I have seen some if not all of these ideas during the days when there was only one TV channel in India (so the whole family watched just about everything from cheesy Mahabharatha to agricultural programs on biogas and mushroom farming), I suppose, there are some positives. Atleast it got some people thinking even if it is heavily incentivized.
Google, reCaptcha and Crowd Computing
Two words are always presented. The trick is that reCaptcha already knows one of the words, but wants you to help solve the other word. If enough people solve that other word similarly, the system gains confidence and now knows what that word reads. The second word is a typically smudged one that even the most complicated systems cannot solve. Or, they are just crowdsourcing OCR tasks to millions of people. Hence, reCaptcha is a “crowd computer”. reCaptcha’s utility is to provide spam protection AND help turning scanned books into searchable digital text in open domain
Google clearly aims to apply reCaptcha for their books and newspaper digitization projects to help with the quality of their existing OCR (Optical Character Recognition). This now means you’ll also help Google’s efforts. reCaptcha mentions they’re serving 30 million Captchas daily and that generally, people spend roughly 10 seconds on a captcha – that’s quite some human computing power. Do the math. Assuming, a typical brains capacity is a few petaflops (on a focused task), this could very well be the beginning of the worlds most powerful and cleverest supercomputer!
Who’s to say that in the future, we’ll not be solving other captcha tasks? Telling humans and bots apart and several other puzzles are tough for today’s AIs, but easy for humans. For instance, a captcha may show you a collection of a dozen images and ask you to click on all images showing a cat. For most images Google knows whether it’s a cat or not, but for one image, Google only suspects that it’s a cat based on keywords found on the same page the pic was hosted on. If many people click that picture, Google may gain confidence that it’s indeed a cat (or conversely that it isn’t)
These are straightforward applications; even more power could be unleashed if any company figures out a possibility to break up bigger questions into easy humanly solvable chunks, which would – after being solved – be merged to form a deeper answer. Maybe at some point, people would be selling the computing cycles too. Not unlike how Amazon is selling cloud computing cycles. Else we’re slaves.
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I Support GMC Affordable Private Schools Initiative
One has to understand the problem (read the documents) of appalling state of schooling in India to understand what am talking about. So, I will take an analogy. Imagine this scenario. You are aware of a potholed stretch of road and complain about it. One day some outsiders come and start resolving this issue. What would you do? I would do as it says in the figure. Try to join them and try my best to spread the word. The former will take time but this is me doing the latter. Go support GMC.
Indian Railways and Cleanliness
Emerging Markets, Emerging Models – BoP Mine
Some quotes from the report landing page are as follows –
“… first-of-its-kind report analyzing the actual behaviors, economics, and business models of successful ‘market-based solutions’ – financially sustainable enterprises that address challenges of global poverty. Compiled in an effort to use fact-based research to move beyond stereotypes, anecdotes, and common assumptions about the potential of market-based solutions, the findings highlight actual data from global working models …”
“… provides strong evidence that engaging the poor as customers and suppliers presents an exciting and significant opportunity to establish new paradigms to bring genuine social change in economically sustainable ways … year-long analysis with the starting point being the belief that the ‘next microfinance’ is out there, and that other market-based approaches may help address pressing issues of poverty and development …”
“… 35 field investigations, more than 600 in-person interviews with low-income customers and small suppliers, and over 270 social enterprises – primarily in India which offers an advanced laboratory and proved to be an especially fertile source on model effectiveness … and supplemented with research covering 19 countries across the world …”
“… based on a multi-year research project funded by eleven sponsors interested in new approaches to economic development and social change. We are grateful to ICICI Bank, IDFC Private Equity, IFC, Omidyar Network, Orient Global, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, PATH, the Rockefeller Foundation, Sir Dorabji Tata Trust, Swiss Agency for Development and Co-operation, and TPI …”
This reminds me of an old joke. A postman rings the bell outside the gate when a dog starts barking viciously. The owner says it is OK for barking dogs seldom bite to which the postman replies “I know that. You know that. But does the dog know that?”. That idiom and this report is most relevant to the dogs and poor people but they are the ones who cannot make sense of it.
The sales pitch and irony of sponsorship apart, my eyes lit up when I became aware of this. What a wonderful birthday gift. I have not read the report yet but to paraquote, it could break the stereotypes and change my attitude regarding the work that is being done by the many interested parties at the BoP. Nah… who am I kidding? I cannot change. I wish to but no one can. The brain is a bitch. So all I can see from this yapping is that it could be prove to be a fertile source for BoP related cartoons. Beware all ye BoP fans who dare to stumble upon ‘ere. Tread with caution at your own risk. You have been warned. Resistance is futile.
Slumdog Child Sale – Greedy Father – Whats New?
Numbers dont lie. There are 507 (and counting) news articles about a Slumdog child being sold by the father. Let us lay down the points –
1) A poor carpenter – ‘bottom of pyramid’ bloke earning about 4$/day
2) Many children of his struggling for a good life (education etc.)
3) One child lucky to be a movie extra and make some fame
4) Someone rich wants to adopt the child in exchange for money
5) Rhetorical, but should the father sell the daughter for adoption? YES
In my feeble opinion, the father would be an idiot not to accept the offer of adoption in the best interests of the child and his other children. In fact, I would say that this ‘child selling for adoption’ model is a rather good business. There should be companies who can clean-up ugly labouring kids and sell; yes, sell these exotic children to rich blokes worldwide. It would immediately increase the per-capita income, reduce the carbon footprint, minimise the burden of the family, society and country. Isn’t that what the BoP buggers want? No, wait, that is wrong. They want to sell cheap, low-quality, sachetized products to the poor markets, suck out whatever little money they have and thereby fooling them to feel empowered. Even otherwise, if there ever was a case for a socially responsible company that can resolve many ills of poverty, this could be a good one. As for the money and selling. Minor children are the property/responsibility of the parents. So, by free-market principles, they can be traded. I dont see anything wrong with this business as long as adoption is what is happening and there are audits. Do you? I am all for sale of children for adoption. Setup an online petition or suggest as a fund-raising initiative for some charity.
After all, there is evidence with the progress that blacks have made in the West that selling people to rich masters has long-term benefits. Heck, one Nth generation mixed-race slave is a president. And the rest of them seem to be enjoying their exponentially better lives when compared to their brothers in Africa as far as the rap, sports, crime, movies, army and obesity situations go. Would the blacks in the industrialized world be where they are today if they were not traded off as slaves? I hardly think so. Hence, selling and shipping off people has documented benefits.
With this out of the way, let us get to the sarcasm. All this hoopla has been the antics of a reporter team from a wait-for-it, British tabloid. Because the headline has ‘slumdog’ and the text has ‘india’, this gets picked up by the horrible Indian media. There is live TV coverage. There are chinese whispery syndications going about in all major newspapers. Blah. Blah. Blah.
The sad part of the sale and adoption is that this is being seen from a moral angle. That the child is being victimized and the father is greedy. In the same coin, whenever some psycho celebrities like Madonna and Angelina Jolie adopt kids from poor countries, it is seen as a good thing. There too, there is an exchange of a child and money (donations, hellooo).
So, if journalistic standards exist anywhere, the British sting operation and moral superiority should be taken to task. What did they achieve anyway? That poor people are greedy and are willing to sell children. Everyone knows that. The biggest irony of course is that no one but the paid reporters of the British tabloid and the copy-cat Indian journalists have seen any money out of all this. So, it begs the question. Who really are the lecherous repugnant malodorous pile of ringworm dropping scum now? Hint: It is not the gutter slumdog father.
India is a Futuristic Country – Smart Grand Plan
Historys (wars, looting, policies) unalterable tide has swept all nations, cultures, people and institutions along its unrelenting path. Everything and everyone has served the single purpose to produce India as it is today filled with poverty, ignorance, filth and corruption which will get worse to the point where even pigs cannot survive in the stye and maggots in the rot – but Indians can. Good for Indians and I have cartoon evidence to prove that it is all quite true.
Exhibit-A comes from the so-called “20-minute Neighbourhood” concept visualized by Andy Lubershane as part of the ‘Earthly Comics’ series.
Details are sketchy, literally, but the goal is to ensure that all necessities of life are no more than a 20-minute walk away from the house achieved by designing communities where it is easy NOT to drive. This will lead to more sustainable living. Dont know about that 20-minute shit but India is clearly way ahead of the curve for the entire nation is a 0-infrastructure town and has been designed (by plan or mistake) to not being easy to drive. There is no infrastructure to speak of in 80% of the land and whatever exists is creaking and bursting round the seams with congestion, pot-holes, accidents, road-rage, collapses et al. Heck, it is not even easy to walk because you see, first of all, there are no pavements for they are usually occupied by social entrepreneurs selling corn, spectacles and pakoras. Maybe that is a good thing because now there is counter-evidence that walking makes people consume more food nullifying and even negating the carbon footprint gains of not using vehicles. The things that science and statistics can do, eh? Even so, if someone were stupid enough to walk in the open street under an unforgiving 40-degree celsius sun in a smog-choked town, it will lead to lung disease and make people dark-skinned which is taboo and could result in them losing confidence and jobs and spouses. Simple negation of fairness ads. So, one could say that India is futuristic by a grand emergent unplan to not make Indians move their lazy fat sorry asses by foot nor car nor bike nor tram.
Exhibit-B comes from “Hard Times Ahead” predicted by Dave Granlund a while ago.
Am no conspiracist but it seems to me that India has leap-frogged (a favourite term of intellectual buggers nowadays) just about everybody to the stone age by a sustained effort to NOT having been able to get out of it. So, when everything collapses and humanity will be forced to live like barbarians in caves without sanitation, indoor plumbing, potable water, nutritous food, access to healthcare, large screen TVs, zero communication etc. Indians will take to it like piranhas to the water and thrive in the adversity. It is my suspicion that Indians have evolved a special gene to be able to live like beggars using very little resources and expectations. See bush, will crap. See slime, will drink. See garbage, will eat. Hey, Indians are one of the greenest and dirtiest people on earth. Isn’t that what everyone is trying to be nowadays. Or to be precise, what people want others to be? Plus, in the West, there are special disaster relief teams which is good business but in India, they are not needed. Blessed are all those futurists who by inaction have prepared India to deal with just about anything fate and nature can throw at it. You’ve got to admit. This is impressive doctrination at 1.4-billion peoples level.
By hook or crook, India is ready for the future. Hum honge kaamyaab ek din. Indeed.
India Election Ritual – Illusion of Control
Elections in India are in full swing. It has become a ritual. There are the usual loud campaigning on rickshaw speakers, crowd garjanas in open grounds, free liqour and biryanis, lorry loads of people wearing bandanas. Now in this high-tech age, there are phone calls, SMS messages, radio commercials, bulk emails, TV adverts, website campaigns. It is a cacophony. Tomorrow, I vote. Just to be clear, I am voting for Prajarajyam for the assembly (state). BJP for the parliament (nation). I previously voted for Loksatta during the muncipal elections. Obama for world presidency. My choice has nothing to do with candidates nor manifestos. Just change for change sake. Deal with it. Personally, I think that the elections is the same dog and pony show it has always been but voting is cool right now and am a cool dude.
Honestly, I dont really bother because an American folk wisdom says, if you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got. We know that the past, present and future of elected bunch are not the smartest people in the country. Nor are they pillars of moral rectitude. They are not known for their intelligence nor their wisdom. But then, the elected are representative of the people who do the electing whose chain of thought is something like this ‘Democracy is a great idea. India is a democracy and so it is great. Indians vote and therefore Indians are great. India is going to be a superpower.’ Cross my heart. True argument of an IITiian.
Personally though, I think that the whole voting thing is an illusion of control. People feel that they are in control because they get to pull the voting machine lever. After all, we elect politicians because we have given them the alms of votes. The politicians are putty in our hands. They are our slaves. But we all know we have no power. The fact that it goes on year after year for decades on end (not just in India but all over the world) means that the illusion works so much so that democracy can be considered a religion which shares similar paradigms.
So, who are the masters? The politicians you say. If money=power, then yes, politicians are the masters. But for the small matter of the government and the bureaucracy. They have institutional memory. Politicians come and go. Bureaucrats remain. They are pervasive. They are invisible. They are God. Heck, they created themselves. The bureaucrats are the real rulers of the country or any other country for that matter. Communism. Socialism. Arachism. Nothing is a match for the bureaucracy for it is nowhere and everywhere. And remember that you don’t elect them. They are appointed. By whom? By the bureaucracy of course. Isn’t that a cozy deal? They are the proverbial man behind the show curtain…
Like Neo had trouble coming to terms with the Matrix, many people – some of them smart – have trouble with this pod-in-pod scenario. Politicians are the masters and the bureaucracy is meant only as an institution to carry out the orders from the political superiors. So the control that the people have over the politicians is in effect a control over the bureaucracy goes the general argument which falls flat on its face because the politicians don’t really know anything about the ministries they are supposed to direct. The bureaucrats do. Do you really believe a guy who has absolutely no knowledge of aviation at all can run the aviation ministry? Or some country bumpkin run the massive Indian railways? This is not complete horse doodoo nor a personal view boiling down to a lot of hand waving and no data. There is evidence. ‘Yes Minister‘, hellooo.
Talking of a British sitcom, we have to remind ourselves that it is yet again, the fault of the British. They are responsible for everything from Kashmir to Palestine to Zimbabwe. Digression apart, the British colonial government put the bureaucracy in place so that it would execute the objectives of a colonial government. What objectives? To extract resources from the economy. How? By controlling every aspect of the economy. When they left in 1947, they handed over the bureaucracy – lock, stock, and barrel – to the new political masters. The white guys left and the brown guys took over. The brown guys saw the bureaucracy and realized it was one of the most effective ways of controlling the economy and the people. They loved it as much as the British. Every institution that the British had created was not just maintained, they were strengthened.
The unfortunate fact is that India is trapped in what we should call a low-level equilibrium. India has the governance it has because that was what was handed down to India. Of the three freedoms – economic, personal, and political – that matter to people, some in India got some degree of political freedom with the departure of the British. And no, freedom to urinate anywhere is not a freedom even though it matters to a lot of people. It is not even very clear whether political freedom in the absence of personal and economic freedom has any meaning. If I cannot live my personal life without being dictated to by others, and if I am at the verge of chronic starvation, I don’t know what political freedom really means in this context, or what good it can do. By keeping the people economically imprisoned (government machinery of greedy politicians puppeteered by bureaucrats), but allowing them the right to vote, there is an illusion of change. That the jailers are different does not alter the fact that one is still in prison. Sure now you can shout a little louder and complain a bit more vociferously about the abysmal conditions of the jail — but you are still jailed and now you are a little hoarse and tired from all the shouting and the banging of your tin plates against the bars of your cell.
It’s the illusion that keeps the game in play. If India were not so fascinated by the dog and pony show, if India were not distracted by fake symbolism, it would have seen through the sham. The power of illusions is under-appreciated. It is not without a reason that people cling so tenaciously to religion — it gives them an illusion of control over things in a universe beyond their comprehension. The religion of democracy that the people so fervently believe in is as real as the other religions. To take another analogy, in a truly democratic system, the people do have power to influence change and in the direction they want. But in India’s case, I think it is like the fake steering wheel for the 4-year old in the car. It is merely mounted on the dashboard and not really connected to the steering mechanism of the car. It gives the kid a feeling of control, while the real control is in the hands of the guy in the driving seat. Without the fake wheel bought from Toys-R-Us, the kid will be a nuisance. He will be demanding and cranky wondering if he was having fun yet and if we are there yet and where are we really going. Fake steering wheel in hand, the kid is pacified and the driver can concentrate on where he wants to go.
If all else fails to convince, remember these last words – true change is not something that arises out of random chance. Sure, we may have mutations and such every now and then that is a blog post for another day.
Rejoice Ye Poor! Prosperity Beckons – Rosling – TED
Enough of sunshine optimism which does not suit a dark and broody conflicted scientist/artist like me. Really, Rosling. Really? To paraphrase some words from my comic friend, Mike Slacknerney, these TED talks are like donuts. Sure, its all fluff, have no intrinsic value and there are big gaping holes in the middle… BUT, if you make it sweet enough with mass media hype, intellectual tripe, chequered academic accomplishments, conjectured reality and market forces, sugar-glaze it and importantly, add little coloured sprinklers and graphs to it, people will lap it up – while cheering in dunce hats. Humans are suckers that way.
Developing world is developing for the better and faster than the West of yore? Puhleeze. I will not even go into the epistemology of “development” (air quotes) but here is what I see all around me in no particular order – poverty, traffic, pollution, unemployment, disease, violence, indecency, scarcity, waste, dust, starvation, illiteracy, death, oppression, conflict, malnutrition, famine, cheating, stupidity, abuse, cheapness, exploitation, debt, slavery, greed, corruption, sleaze, vulgarity and just about every conceivable ill that has been documented and jogging for the worst at an alarming rate. I tend to think am a cynic extraordinaire but could factor that maybe, I have been looking in the wrong places. Or taking the wrong samples. Or accessing the wrong data. But I doubt it for 5.5 billion people who have to face such putrid facts of life by direct in-your-face observation and the 4.5 billion who actually have to experience it on a daily basis are hard to miss.
I do miss and dont see a lot though. Free roads like Sweden. Summer houses for all like Norway. Free health like France. Luxury SUVs for all like USA. Free education like UK. Public-art architecture like Spain. Freedoms like Netherlands. Sports facilities like Australia. Green energy like Germany. Cleanliness like New Zealand. Water security like Denmark. Oil independence like Canada. Milk surplus like Switzerland. Robot gadgetry like Japan. Intellectual culture like Italy… yada yada yada. Believe me, I have been to a lot of places and there is no parallel or progression from ‘survival’ to ‘drudgery’ to ‘life’ for the 90% of the world. Hence, such statistics and talks anger me.
The theme is that most developing countries today have similar development metrics (child mortality rate, life expectancy etc.) to western countries in the early part of the century – a world ravaged by war, rampant apartheid, legalized slavery, fuelled by imperialism and in general a shitty era to be a human unless you are not an aristrocrat. But poor people should rejoice. They are comparable and statistically better off to the poor in the West 150 years back. Ah, the thrills of schadenfreude. Yes, the West developed to where poor countries want to be but we all know they had a headstart with occupied wealth and zero competition of planetary resources. They were environmentally superior and had a clean slate to rape the Earth but now the poor countries inhabit an impoverished planet. And yes, the West back then did not have the West to strangle any indigenous development and shove complicated models. In the duration of the talks (36 minutes), I can dole out numbers of how many people must have died out of sheer helplessness and hopelessness due to a combinatorial lack/scarcity of food, water, clothing, shelter and health. But enough of my words. Let us see what Alan Kay has to say in one of his writings now taken out of context and yet made a bit more contextual to this discussion.
Shakespeare had Puck say, “What fools these mortals be!” He meant not so much the modern meaning (that we are idiots and simpletons), but that we are all too easily fooled about almost everything. Anthropologists tell us that modern human types have been around for 40,000 years (perhaps as long as 80,000 years). But the “real science” that has revealed so many surprising and powerful things about the world is only a few hundred years old. We have been fooling ourselves about most things for tens of thousands of years. Now theater, TED talks and other forms of fiction work because we not only are easily fooled, but we *like* to be fooled.
For example, a TED talk is a dark place with lots of rich people watching clever looking people on stage say good sounding words embellished by entertainment so that we are able to pretend that the scenery is not cardboard and that they are really immersed in somewhere great and worldchanging. Another good metaphor is Marshall McLuhan’s: “I don’t know who discovered water but it wasn’t a fish!”. He meant we are the fish and the water is our beliefs/assumptions, most of which have been with us so pervasively as to have disappeared from view. The only way for a fish to keep doing what it is doing is to continue living in water – even in an acquarium with things like TED the fake rocks and external food to keep the myth that all is great with the artificial world. For those who want to come outside (like me), there are slim pickings of survival unless a random mutation kicks in to develop lungs and ultimately, become an ape. It is all up to chance.
[edit] This post and accompanying cartoon have been commented by none another than the uber-analyst Hans Rosling. So, all references to 50-years/half-century have been replaced by 150-years/century – even in the cartoon. This makes my argument all the more striking. The poor world is where the West was 150 years ago but yet, there must be much rejoicing with the state of affairs and the impending progress. It is just a matter of time and would take only about the next 50+ years or so to get Mozambique and their ilk to be a Sweden of 2009. Good times ahead. It also reminds me of concepts of entropy, Zeno’s paradox and I wish I could do a Rip van Winkle but let us not digress…
One night of Power-cut – Plastic Tax Discussion
The power got cut. Yeah yeah, that is usual I hear you say. But this was long. The inverter gave up and after 3 hours or so, the UPS and laptop went dead. It is getting pretty hot in March and so, we had to go out to the terrace – all 3 of us – and goodness gracious, forced to talk. It was like the power-cut is a kind of family bond respirator or something. Awkward. First of course, we discussed the weather. Then obviously, the state of the world. No family conversation is complete without some discussion of food. Anyhoo… the discussion veered towards plastic and I present here a summary of the panel and debate.
We agreed on a ‘plastic tax’ at point of production and consumption. First of all, ban all plastic making factories. Or just tell them to get their act together. Work on bio-degradable alternatives based on corn. This will not work. Too much corruption and loopholes. So, this can only be done at point of consumption. Impose an extra tax. Whenever anyone is seen carrying a plastic bottle or a bag with the name of the brand, police can write a challan and send it to the company. We are talking about single-use plastics. Those polythene bags. Those ice-cream cups. Those water bottles. Those tea cups. Annoying plastic everywhere.
We were just going to tackle the distribution part when kambakht, the power came on. So, we all agreed that there should be more power-cuts especially, during prime-time slots because 80% of people watch TV and do nothing in that time. It is a tip towards a greener planet. On that note, we went back to doing what we were doing. PC. TV. Phone. I bet you guys are doing the same too.
Ideas – Proper vs. Rogue
How to harness the power of ideas for the social good is the challenge because if ideas are done improperly and by bad men, well, they go rogue resulting in the mad mad mad world we live in today…
Elephant in Auto – India Transportation
What is Sustainability – Challenge Your World
Though it been a part of the English language for a long, long time, the term ‘sustainability’ was truly popularized with the publication of the Brundtland Report, presented to the 1st World Conference on the Environment and Development in 1987, where ‘Sustainable Development’ was defined as ‘development that meets the needs of the current generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’.
You can find the Brundtland Report online in various places; we recommend checking out this scanned copy of the UN General Assembly document A/42/427, hosted by the Center for a World in Balance, at the following address: http://www.worldinbalance.net/pdf/1987-brundtland.pdf.
While this definition has been widely debated and discussed, it is generally accepted as the most comprehensive, despite being vague and failing somewhat to provide a more contextual understanding of the terminology in its practical application (i.e. what does sustainability mean at this point in time and given a particular set of circumstances?). In addition to the Brundtland definition, a conceptual framework using a Venn diagram was presented, which indicated sustainability as a balance between the three pillars human civilization: economy, society, and environment.
In the decades since, the terms sustainability and sustainable development have gained increasing currency in the global economy, as an ecological and social crisis has been exacerbated by unsustainable human activities, including the destruction of global ecosystems and increasing conflicts. Sustainability has entered the parlance of businesses, governments and non-governmental agencies the world over and is possibly one of the most important ideas in existence.
Dumping Climate Garbage on 3rd World
“… all the negotiations around climate change that focus on ‘sharing the burden’ or suggest passing the burden on to poor countries through a system of carbon credits, are misplaced, at least, to some extent …”
Myth of Low Inflation in India
First of all, I was influenced by all these graphs and statistics of how inflation has got down and is at some record low etc. Secondly, I dont go to the market much – one of the perks of living with parents and being a celibate ascetic of sorts. In fact, the last time I went was a year or so ago. Even then, I played the role of a driver for mom rather than the spender. It was an act of pure optimism to venture out with a 100 bucks in the first place. But not in my not-so-wild dreams did I expect to be trampled like the poor guy…
Seriously, I was shocked. I could not buy half of what I wanted with a devalued 100/-. Fortunately, the car has a secret stash pocket for emergencies which made me get what was needed for the house. That saving face grace apart, I cannot help but feel the pinch of the prices of goods and services. Indians are actually paying more per-gram of stuff per-quality of goods per-earning than in the first world is my feeling. Oh well, beggars cant be choosers. BTW, who is the finance minister now?
Ideas out of Blue – Word Play
Slumdog Oscar goes to… India
Cornell FSE # 06 – The Great Convergence
Given the urgency of both the need and the opportunity described above, Cornell’s Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise has launched the Global Forum on Sustainable Enterprise. The goal of the Global Forum is to accelerate the rate of change toward the Great Convergence in the world, with a particular focus on entrepreneurial strategies for the growth and scaling of ventures in the “convergence zone”. The inaugural Global Forum will be held in New York City, June 1-3, 2009. We will invite approximately 100 of the world’s leading practitioners on the forefront of the Great Convergence to participate as delegates.
The distinguishing feature of the Global Forum will be its focus on bringing together the leading intrapreneurs, entrepreneurs, change agents, and financiers from around the world actually engaged in the process of disruptive innovation for sustainability and the BoP. We will endeavor to create an intimate atmosphere that enables brainstorming, dialogue, alliance-building, and action planning. Through a set of carefully designed Working Sessions, the Global Forum will focus on two primary objectives:
1. to build a global community of “Great Convergence” change agents
2. to launch new action initiatives to accelerate the rate of the Great Convergence in areas of key importance (e.g. agriculture, water, energy, health, IT).
To enable the maximum degree of openness and sharing among Delegates, participation in the Working Sessions will be by invitation only. However, there will also be major Opening and Closing events intended to attract a broader public audience and media attention. David Skorton (President of Cornell University), Joe Thomas (Dean of the Johnson School of Management), Fisk Johnson (Chairman and CEO of SC Johnson), Ratan Tata (Chairman of the Tata Group), and Al Gore (Co-Founder, Generation Investment Management) have already committed to participating in either the Opening or Closing events.
Cornell FSE # 05 – The Great Convergence
As important as they have been, Clean Technology and BoP represent only partial solutions. Each has evolved with its own particular dominant logic and core assumptions. Indeed, in some respects, each represents a separate “world” with its own set of beliefs, priorities, and culture (see figure below). At the risk of over-simplification, the Clean Technologists see the road to sustainability as paved by new, “sustainable” technologies that dramatically reduce or eliminate the human footprint on the planet.
The focus is on early penetration of high-end “green” markets at the top of the pyramid, with the promise of eventual “trickle down”. BoP advocates, in contrast, focus on new business models for reaching and serving the poor. Confronting poverty is the primary focus and there is often little attention paid to the environmental implications of such strategies.
The crucial next step is, therefore, to merge these two strategies in a “Great Convergence”. The Great Convergence recognizes that clean technologies are almost always “disruptive” in character (i.e. they threaten incumbents in current served markets at the top of the pyramid). As a result, the “base of the pyramid” (BoP) is often the best place to focus initial commercialization attention. At the same time, the Great Convergence also recognizes that successful strategies must be co-created with communities and local partners so as to ensure culture fit, rather than imposing technological solutions from the top down.
Unlike the traditional model of rapid industrialization, which relies heavily on conventional (unsustainable) technology, the Great Convergence seeks instead to fuel growth through the incubation and rapid commercialization of the green (sustainable) technologies of tomorrow. Through such a strategy, the emerging economies of the world could become the breeding ground for the “Green Leap” Revolution (see the figure below)…
Cornell FSE # 04 – (Mis)Fortune at Base of Pyramid
Alongside the “clean tech” revolution, commercial strategies for serving the bottom (or base) of the income pyramid (BoP) have also emerged over the past five years. Dozens of global corporations and hundreds of smaller social enterprises around the world have now initiated or deepened commercial experiments to serve the four billion poor who have been largely bypassed by economic globalization to date. These initiatives may hold the keys to a new, more inclusive form of capitalism.
But as business momentum in the BoP has grown, two problems have become apparent: First, many companies have chosen to simply adapt environmentally unsustainable products and services to sell in the BoP “mass market.” Left unchecked, this path clearly leads to environmental oblivion. Second, increasing corporate activity in the BoP has raised growing concern that such strategies are nothing more than the latest form of corporate imperialism—veiled efforts to profit by selling extractive products to the poor. Already, there is a growing backlash movement against BoP. Taken together, these two emerging problems could derail the entire BoP agenda.
To make matters worse, rapid economic growth in the developing world has focused primarily on conventional strategies of rapid industrialization: Massive public investment in centralized infrastructure (dams, power plants, factories, roads, and public works) coupled with foreign direct investment and market reforms. China, for example, has been able to achieve astonishing rates of growth by becoming the “workshop to the 3rd world” – much as England did in the 18th century. This growth comes, however, with a high price: massive environmental degradation, growing inequity, and rising international concerns.
Cornell FSE # 03 – Coming Clean Technology Bubble
Disruptive lean technologies, including biomaterials, biomimicry, wireless information technology, nanotechnology, sustainable agriculture, point-of-use water purification, renewable energy and distributed generation may hold the keys to solving many of the world’s global environmental and social challenges. And they represent enormous business opportunities for those companies able to develop the competencies needed to effectively commercialize these “leapfrog” green technologies.
In fact, there has been an explosion of sustainable innovation over the past few years: In 2006, for example, venture capitalists invested nearly $3 billion in “clean technology” deals in North America alone, making it the third largest investment category. There are now literally thousands of new “clean tech” start ups flush with investment capital, particularly in the strategically significant arenas of biofuels and renewable energy.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of these investments are focused purely on sustainable technology development targeted at the “top of the pyramid.” Comparatively little attention is being paid to creative commercialization strategies or distribution models for clean technologies targeted at the “base of the pyramid,” raising the concern that large numbers of them might fail in the coming years. Furthermore, the pace of technological adoption by existing corporations will ultimately determine the success of these new ventures, since the exit for most will likely be acquisition rather than initial public offering.
Therefore, until existing incumbent firms increase their appetite for such disruptive, “clean” technologies, the rate of change will continue to fall well short of the challenge – and the opportunity. In short, the clean tech “revolution” might turn out to be the clean tech “bubble.”
Thoughtcrafts Sriks6711 
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