Reliance Gas Pricing Formula - Interesting !

Reliance Industries has been in news, recently - which I am sure is nothing new - for the impassé over the pricing of the gas which will be pumped from the Krishna-Godavari basin. For sometime I maintained a very academic interest in this issue, thinking it to be another case of government needing to maintain a pro-poor and pro-middle-class image and also pacify the left parties. An article in Business Standard,'Gas in pricing remains' by Sunil Jain, though, made an interesting read and brought home the fact that the Reliance-Centre talks and other similar negotiations are not just a question of "who blinks first". Hardcore numbers are involved. Let me try and elucidate this in bullet points.

i) In April 07, Reliance selected 10 potential buyers and asked them to bid
ii) These potential, enlisted, buyers had to submit their bids based on a formula provided to them by Reliance
iii) Formula consisted of three parts
a) A fixed component
b) A component based on the prevailing price of crude oil
c) A component 'c', which was biddable
iv) Oil and Gas, being much in demand, c was bound to be relatively high, especially jacked up by companies for whom assured supply of gas was crucial for their existence.
v) What is wrong or rather out of place here is the listing of bidders by Reliance itself and the opaque manner of evaluating bids.
vi) The EGoM (Empowered Group of Ministers) after all the negotiations did not remove the 'c' component. They just the value changed to zero.
vii) This implies that further down the road, the value of 'c' can still be resurrected.

Note: Do read the article for more insight.

When you learn how to die, you learn how to live

I got this book by sheer chance. I was at my friend's cube and there was this book on her desk. The bibliophile that I am, I picked it up to see what is it about. My friend suggested me to read it and I complied. Home from office, I started reading India: A Million Mutinies Now and was done with the quota for that day when I thought of perusing through Tuesdays with Morrie.

The simple language got me interested and before I knew I had finished a fourth of the book. Then it was a race against time. The 30 odd pages that were unread were taken care of in the morning at the cost of my morning newspaper ritual. To the book...

The story is about a Mitch Albom,who after unsuccessfully dabbling in music for sometime makes it big in sports reporting. Somtimes, He remembers his graduation days' discussions with his professor of psychology, Morrie. How he had promised to keep in touch but how the mad rush, sometimes for money, sometimes out of habit, cut that cord. An interview of Morrie on television, which Mitch chances upon while flipping channels, reveals that his favourite teacher or "coach", as he calls him, he suffering from a terminal disease.

The book is about the conversations between Mitch and Morrie, mostly with Morrie speaking. Views on life, the rush, the futility of it all. The need to develop your own culture if the extant one does not deem appropriate. To sum up, a nice read which will leave with you good feeling without taking the time of a tome.

उठो लाल अब आंखें खोलो

Today morning I was woken up by my dad with the following poem; well just the first two lines. I "googled" the rest !

"उठो लाल अब आंखें खोलो
पानी लाई हूँ मुँह धोलो

बीती रात कमल-दल फूले
उनके ऊपर भँवरे झूले

चिड़िया चहक उठी पेड़ों पर
बहने लगी हवा अति सुन्दर

भोर हुइ सूरज उग आया
नभ में हुई सुनहरी काया

आसमान में छाई लाली
हवा बही सुख देने वाली

नन्ही-नन्ही किरनें आयें
फूल हँसे कलियाँ मुस्कायें

इतना सुन्दर समय ना खो
मेरे प्यारे अब मत सो"

A game outside the field

Considering, what an avid blogger I HAVE BECOME in the last one month, it would be a sacrilege not to write something on the Indian victory yesterday at Wanderers. At the same time, I am also aware of the depth of my analytical abilities or rather the lack of it, when it comes to cricket. Also, I am sure there are people who can give a much better perspective from the technical and, should I say, the political angle. Economic Times, its usual boisterous self, went a step further and wanted CEOs to learn from Dhoni. Well, what can I say, I guess now it is Dhoni-time for IIM-A after the Laloo-express. Anyway, for the lack of something good to write I will end the blog here, abruptly.







Just kidding. Was trying out some blog theatrics. So I will try and talk about the excitement that was building up off the field, a game which started 24 hours before D-match, culminated last night and is now in its receding phase. The mood was simply charged after India's convincing win over Australia. For a change, everybody wanted Sunday to pass off fast. Everyone knew it, but still the same question came out up broach conversations "The match is tomorrow right ?". People took the cue and the conversation slowly but surely veered towards India's tactics, its new found confidence, J Sharma's stoic face with that rare show of emotion when the bowled the first bowl of the last over against Australia, Bhajji's crying face when he comes out to bowl (Many of us thought he was unhappy because his request to bowl only to tail enders was turned down and that he had to face Hayden and Symonds), Dhoni trying to take a second run in the last over of Indian innings - that too when the ball was lodged safely in the hands of Adam Gilchrist - what a cheeky man :-). Sreesanth's antics with the Australian players. I mean can you imagine him challenging Hayden, Symonds and Gilchrist. A classic case of David vs Goliath and history did repeat itself with David (not to be confused with Dravid) having the last laugh.

Anyway so these are the conversation topics. People barged in others' private conversations about cricket and again, for a change, nobody seemed to mind the gatecrasher. Monday morning came and the excited tension or tensed excitement is palpable among the hoi polloi. Everybody has a pointer or two for Dhoni. At this rate Dhoni will need a Big Blue to sort out the sermons in classes of ridiculous, obvious and worth-a-thesis. So everybody is working like Carnot Engine, no energy loss. There is a quiet understanding among everyone "No coffee breaks! we gotta finish our work and get lost before anyone from onsite comes online". The crowd in office thins out as the Indian subcontinent approaches 1200 hrs GMT. By 1700 IST, the office looks like a site of a neutron bomb attack - building is intact but no human in sight. The ones left behind take a cue and rush out. The scene on the road is worth seeing. Everyone wants to reach a place which has a television because if there is one, there are no points for guessing what channel is on. Obviously it will be ZOOM TV. We, as evangelists, will need to go there, educate them and convert them to the religion of cricket.

So people reach their destinations and the match has started. Dhoni has won the toss and, to the approval of the Indian fan, has elected to bat. Sehwag is hurt and the younger Pathan, Yousuf has come to bat. He starts off with a bang but then falls prey to the Pakistani bowling soon. Outside the television, people are unfazed. Gautam Gambhir is still at the crease and there is plenty of batting to come. India's batting is much more staid compared to the last two matches. Yuvraj and Dhoni fail to deliver this time and the Indian fans are a worried lot. They are chalking out plans for the Indian team. In between they also cannot afford to take their eyes off the svelte girls dancing on the Reliance podium. This T20 is a real jamboree. Also, the Indian male fan cannot stop wondering how good Indian girls look in the South African background. To top it all Shahrukh Khan makes an entry with a, what looks to be a costly camera and starts clicking away. After a considerable amount of struggle, India reaches 157. Now we can take a break. Have tea/biscuits and help Dhoni come out with a killer plan. We know the score is not very daunting and will need some good show from the 'boys'. Okay, let us assemble again, Pakistan is out to bat. Please bear with our ignorance of names of players from Pakistani team. R(i)P Singh true to his name, RiPs through the first wicket. Fans are ecstatic. Expletives and invectives are hurled at the Pakistan team. What were they thinking? Sreesanth brings a semblance of method to this madness and does some pedestrian bowling to take the score to 25 from 4 in course of an over, an acceleration that fast cars all over the world would die for. RP Singh strikes again and the match proceeds.

Nails are getting cut, naturally, at an extraordinary rate. People are offering to cut others' nails. Towards the end, Bhajji comes and gives an open invite to Indian fans to lynch him. People are hurling abuses at Bhajji. The turbanator is going to be thrown into a big crater. Sreesanth comes and surely does not help the cause. Fans are pacing up and down their rooms, Some want to put their televisons off for the last over. With one wicket remaining, 13 runs to be scored and J Shrama bowling, this looks like the "1 Karod ka question" in Kaun Banega Crorepati. 1 ball wide. J Sharma surely does not want to hear the words of wisdom being hurled at him by the fans. Then a six. 4 balls left and six runs to win.

We are now preparing ourselves for the mourning. Suddenly Misba!@#$! takes a strange stance and hits the ball back. All of us think it is a six when...lo behold..that son of gun Sreesanth is there and has caught the bowl.....

After that I am quite unable to comprehend what others are saying because I am unable to understand what I myself am saying. Fire crackers everywhere, elated faces which hide the sign of desperate relief.

Morale boosting Aphrodisiac for offshore team

Client comes in. He has some lieutenants, some from his own company, let us say A, some from the vendor, B for the sake of illustration, in tow. He tries to be very informal. Acts like he is a part of the minions. Will goof up intentionally so that his so called shortcomings are conspicuous resulting in we, the hoi poll accept him as a part of the clan. Cake cutting for successful completion of X years of "creating synergies", "generating value for the client through constant innovation", "following best in class processes and practices", "risk mitigation", "customising solutions for better delivery".

Now comes the pep talk "Hey guys, Good to see all of you here. Back there (author's comments: "Back there" means the client's den, most probably in the US of A where all the escalations take place) we all appreciate the quality of work coming from our partner. We started with a team of Y people (author's comments: needless to say, Y is an infinitesimally small number compared to Z, a variable which will be referred to later but has been declared here); Kailash here would remember the way things started. We did not even know where to get the stationery from; (it is another matter that Kailash was carrying loads of stationery home for his kids' homework.) We have come a long way after Z years. It is very important for each one of you to realise that back there (ayyo!) we do not consider B and A to be different. The only difference is that your salary comes from B (hello ! ..... Isn't that difference enough !).

I like the work culture here (well why wouldn't you, we do not work at all. Walking up to the coffee vending machine 5 times a day is tiring enough. And with all that office gossip, I do not have time for those boring requirements documents in my brain). We look forward some really great times and seeing some of you back there (Kill me ! This is asphyxiating.)"

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Persecution in the name of religion is the greatest (& only) blasphemy

60 years! 60 years since one of the biggest (and bloodiest) migrations in recent human history. 60 years since the violent uprooting of decades old family and neighbourly ties and premanent severence of the umblical cord connecting people with their homes. 60 year old stories of murder, rape, land grabbing. There are some families who escaped to the other side safely- as safe as they could in those days, many who lost some of their loved ones but of whom a few where spared by destiny to tell these stories. There were many which were wiped out in their entirety. Families which had to depend on partition time historians or even the non partition types, to tell their stories. Who can cover stories of lakhs of families, lakhs of families translates into tens of lakhs of individuals and as many trains of emotions of equally varying lengths. Is it possible to narrate even one story capturing its poignancy and regignation. I do not think so !

Killing in the name of religion? If God does exist and if he/she/"anything other than he/she" approves of this killing then God is barbarian. If he does not approve of such killings then killing in the name of God is insanity at the least and blasphemous to go a little further. Killings and rapes(again in the name of God, sic!) are nothing but acts of egotism and ego-satisfaction under the garb of maintaining religious sanctity. The only killing that can be justified is the one done in self-defence. I can here some people justifying communal riots as "acts of self defence".

Wont hurt if you know - III

Two terms that are being increasingly used in today's terminology.

Moral hazard: This economic concept, though old, has currently gained currency in light of the recent sub prime crisis in US, which threatens to rattle the boats of many countries which were sailing in tandem with the US frigate. It has its roots in the insurance business. The idea goes like this: If you protect someone too well against an unwanted outcome, that person may behave recklessly. Someone who buys extensive liability insurance for his car may drive too fast because he feels financially protected.(From Wall Street Journal)

It is pertinent in the extant global financial scenario because many of the banks, in absence of resuscitation from their respective central banks, will go under. Now, these banks while making investments in products built around sub prime loans and mortgages should have been (caveat emptor) and infact were aware of the concomitant risks. Bailing them out with someone else's capital leads to a false sense of security and sets an unhealthy precedent.

Long tail effect: The phrase The Long Tail (as a proper noun with capitalized letters) was first coined by Chris Anderson in an October 2004 Wired magazine article to describe certain business and economic models such as Amazon.com or Netflix.
Businesses with distribution power can sell a greater volume of
otherwise hard to find items at small volumes than of popular items at
large volumes. The term long tail is also generally used in statistics, often applied in relation to wealth distributions or vocabulary use. Read more @ Wired.com (Excerpt from wikipedia)

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Employee Retention, Grooming Leaders, Achieving Synergies, Meritrocracy .....what about "Honesty is the Best Policy" for a change

A lot of time a lot of jargon about employee retention is thrown at readers of business newspapers/magazines/journals. Many a times, if not always, I have thought this is mere glib talk. Many a times I have also found myself comparing one company's work culture with the other, often basing my arguments on data scraped from media.

Looks like Business Standard was chosen, by fate to put this article in their pages. I am sure some of my ex-colleagues from Satyam will find it hard to hide a grin once they read this article. In quick succession, a birdie from McKinsey Quarterly dropped this interview of Mr Ramalinga Raju into my mailbox.

Looks like a lot is being done on the employee retention front! Even after making ample space for need of employee initiative, I feel that the steps being taken by various organizations (my ex employer seems to be at the fore front) are an exercise to put "strategies" into place. As argued in an earlier post, despite the most air-tight/water-tight processes to weed out incompetent persons (the term incompetent is subjective) and promote talent, all ends up in the cabin of the manager. I am aware of companies holding Art of Living workshops, Stress Management related talks, devising ways to create CEOs within their companies; but many a times what is required is not smooth talk but honesty, simplicity and non-partisanship.

Today's IT crowd, projected as reckless in terms of company loyalty, are very responsible. Nobody likes to leave his first company for money; but when instances abound when decisions are taken on the basis of boss' idiosyncrasies, one of the ways is to escape the rot into another. I have been lucky enough to join a company which has a amiable yet challenging work environment as its USP.

A true manager is not there only to sign reimbursement requests. He is there to provide feedback on a proactive basis. He should have a career plan for people under him and evolve it in consultation with them. Expectations should be realistically. And most important of all, no manager should forget the promises he made to himself when he himself was an employee.

"India - A Wounded Civilization" by Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul

It took me nearly a month to complete this book. Of course, I was reading it in tranches of an hour or so, at a time. The fact that I was reading a commentary on the state of Indian affairs, added to the delay. Now when I think about it, this book seems to be the first one of its kind that I have read. Most of the books I have read so far were either fiction or dealt with history. I remember buying "Hegemony or Survival" by Naom Chomsky but have not made any decent progress in reading it. Back to the book.....

While I was reading the book, one thought that repeatedly came to me was "I have to read this book again at least once to get a hold of its idea". May be I will need to read more on the themes touched by Naipaul to sift the facts from the assumptions from the inferences. "India: A Wounded Civilization (1975)" forms the second part of Naipaul's "Indian Trilogy"; "An Area of Darkness (1964)" and "India: A Million Mutinies Now (1990)" being the first and third constituents, respectively. To be frank, the author's handling of the central theme - India and its history, its people, their attitudes, the national psyche and the reasons behind it - can give an rush of nationalistic fervour to even the most candid of readers. This could be reason why Naipaul is is much disliked person among "laymen".

The book has been written at a time when a lot of things were terribly wrong with our country - Emergency, laying of foundations of the Naxal movement, maturing of the system of sycophantic politicians and political families - Naipaul has extrapolated these phenomena to predict a very bleak future.

For a person cut off from India by a spatial distance of thousands of miles and a temporal distance of many decades, Naipaul does exhibit knowledge which is wide in its range but, I feel, shallow in its depth, at places. He uses examples as long as they serve his argument.

Naipaul also shows an exemplary knack for belittling personalities who have been hailed by "ordinary masses". In one place Mahatma Gandhi's work is described thus "The difficult lessons of South Africa were simplified and simplified in India: ending as a holy man's fad for doing the latrine cleaning work of untouchables, seen only as an exercise in humility, ending as a holy man's plea for brotherhood and love, ending as nothing". To allay any misunderstandings, here Naipaul actually tries to explain the watered down South African Gandhism that was followed in India. The author does give adequate explanations for this conclusions, though at times, the reader begins to feel that "Indianness is bad because it is not western".

Giving Naipaul due credit, I would say that this book is a must read as many sensitive topics are discussed. And discussed in such a way so as to challenge the hitherto unquestioned beliefs of the average reader. A positive aspect of the book is that for a change, the Indian hubristic mindset is posed with difficult questions - questions which are not always unanswerable.


PS: I found a reference to the book the very next morning in a review of India A Journey Through a Healing Civilization by Kishore Singh in Business Standard. Talk about co-incidences!

For how long, this 'Ostrich's Head in the Sand' approach

A few months back, India, to the false relief of many an Indian, was declared to be a country with the second highest number of AIDS patients and not the highest as was thought to be. The highest number belonging to South Africa.

Tackling a disease like AIDS was never going to be easy. First of all, there is no vaccine found yet to prevent the disease. To compound matters one of the major ways this disease spreads is unsafe sex. Making matters worse is the fact that, the three letter word, 'SEX' is a taboo in India. Now, it is understandable if this aversion to discuss such topics comes from illiterate and rural people - though, let me clarify, being illiterate or a country folk does not necessarily imply ignorance - but it is really appalling to see educated people, even doctors harbouring all kinds of wrong notions regarding the disease.

I see two reasons for this malaise - lack of information or awareness, even among the so called informed, and the obstinate mindset of many. Considering that AIDS is gaining epidemic proportions in our country, the governments, at the centre and at the states, are expected to spread awareness on a war footing. It is obvious that the cost of preventing a disease like AIDS is much less when compared to the cost of treating it. But treating AIDS conveniently brushes the entire issue of sex education under the carpet, not to the mention that unsafe physical contact is just one of the ways in which this deadly disease spreads.

As this article (which was the immediate reason for this post) shows, governments are not ready to take long term decisions in interest of the people. For them, it is easier to be morally (sic!) correct than to face difficult issues head on and then come up with innovative and effective solutions.

I was sitting in a hospital waiting to donate blood when I saw this poster by National Aids Control Organization (NACO). I do not remember the exact message but what it was trying to say is that AIDS can be prevented by being faithful to a partner. Though it may reduce the possibilities, a dangerous assumption that this message makes is that everyone will be faithful. My point is that it is very important to refrain from one-liners and get the entire message across. Half knowledge could be as dangerous if not more than no knowledge.

About people's attitude, it is very ironical that cases of ignorance also emanate from Kerala, which prides itself as a state with highest literacy rate and enviable social indicators.

There are lot of organizations working towards helping in treatment of AIDS and spreading awareness and everything else in between. It is very important for us to first educate ourselves on this topic and then spread awareness.

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Algorithms and Business - Economist

Three linked articles on Economist online

1) Business by numbers

leads to

2) Of greed and ants

leads to

3) The death of expertise

Also, in case it interests you, Economist is a magazine/newspaper which does not have bylines, which means reporters' names are not given with an article. Click on the link earlier in the paragraph to hear why ?

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Urinators Infinity - The Stinking Day

Another lazy...oh sorry it is Friday....exciting morning..and I am off to my dear 6th floor office for my daily bout of coffee binge and office gossip when I see this strange creature standing near Country Club, with his back towards me. He is standing akimbo with one hand jutting out and I cannot see the other hand. I am struck with a feeling of serendipity. I have seen such an organism somewhere. Where..? Where..? Where..? Leave it, I do not want to start my day using the most atrophied part of my body...my brain. So I deem it prudent to approach the creature and get acquainted. In this Dog-eat-Cat-eat-Mouse-eat-Bedsheet world of cut-throat competition, networking is really important and I do not want to leave any stone unturned to extend my network; so I walk up to him to start a conversation. As I come closer, I am overwhelemed by a really obnoxious smell and I need to cover my nose, which actually is a form of psychological consolation because I am still breathing, and not through my mouth. And seems like with my nose covered, my brains work better, I can faintly remember who this guy is.

Me: Now don't take this the wrong way, but you are a Urinator, right?
Urinator: Yes. Indian Stench Systems, Model 420...
Me: You're like a filthy pig underneath, right? But sort of human outside?
Urinator: I'm a shameless ungrateful organism. Dead civic sense cells over a metal osseous tissue.
Me: This is gross. Get a grip, mere bhai. OK, uhm, you're not here to make us feel proud. I figured that part out for myself, seeing your actions. So what's the deal?
Urinator: My mission is to urinate at all places populated by human beings.
Me: Yeah? Who gave you the right to do that?
Urinator: I need no right. Sixty years back from now, the great leaders got us independence and with that independence came full freedom to do whatever I want.
Me: This is deep...shit
{Change of scene: Now I am trying hard to slow down my breathing considering there are other Urinators who have lined up against the wall to assert their freedom; continuing the conversation....}
Me: So this other organism who spits on the road ? He's a Urinator like you, right?
Urinator: Not like me. A Spitfire-1024. Not as advanced as me though he has some advantages. He does not need a corner to function. He can spit on anyone and anything - roads, buses, trains, AIR, PEOPLE - anything. He can spit red beetel juice or the plain vanilla saliva. But we are trying to evolve with each passing generation. Earlier we could only function (read urinate) in secluded places and had to be on the lookout. Nowadays, the more evolved ones among us can defecate and urinate with impunity without a strain of guilt. You wanna convert? I am a urin-angelist for the Urinator clan.
Me: ..........(I just flee from there before I can be brainwashed into converting my country into a stinking hell)

Honk..Honk........

So I am jolted from my train of thoughts by this autorickshaw which nudges at me asking me to move aside, let vehicles pass and 'enjoy' the scene of the public urinal in my own space.

I just think why all this worry about India's safety and its strategy of defence against great nuclear powers. Our enemies just have something called Uranium which is just a raw material. We have a full fledged Urinator legion ready to turn any civilization into a public lavatory. They cannot be quarantined or contained. Urinators will work in two ways. Our land will become useless to the conquerors because of the stench and at a later stage the so called 'conquerors' will realise that theirs was a pyrrhic victory since this time they will be on the run to save their piece of land which our Urinators would have set their sights on :-).

I can hear one Urinator telling me "Hey !@#$%, #$%^ off, I love my country, Jai Hind !"

Credits: Terminator Dialogue taken from Wikipedia

Wont hurt if you know - II

Sharpe Ratio : A ratio developed by Nobel laureate William F. Sharpe to measure risk-adjusted performance. The Sharpe ratio tells us whether the returns of a portfolio are due to smart investment decisions or a result of excess risk. (From Investopedia)

Big Mac Index : Simply put, it compares the price of McDonald's Big Mac in different countries and depending on the price finds out the respective comparison between any two currencies. Considering that McDonald's outlets operate in 119 countries, it can be considered a good measure of currency exchange rate based on the principle of purchasing power parity. (From Economist, they guys who came up with this index)

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Living the life that many others just dream of

This article on Livemint really inspires everyone who reads it to leave the drudgery of city life and 'get a life'. I too want to do the same; but as has been said by most of the people profiled here, it requires a lot of many things - planning (financial and emotional), sacrifices, understanding within the family and most of all the GUTS - to start afresh.

Without going much into the details - they normally spoil the fun - I am compelled to think that this "Return to Innocence" (to borrow a phrase) was something waiting to happen considering the frenetic pace of city life. Long hours of commute, running the rat race, irrespective of the fact whether you want to win the race or not, bloated egos, torn between the chasm of generation gap of X(your parents), Y (you), Z(the-yet-to-come ones).

Important: More important than this post is the article I mention. Make it a point to read it.

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Wont hurt if you know - I

I was just reading some financial/business jargon and I realized there are so many of them. Many a times I read up on them - wikipedia/investopedia do help a lot :-) - but after sometime I forget or I am just left with a faint idea of what those terms mean. So I am going to give a small introduction - most probably an excerpt from some other website with due acknowledgments - and will not limit myself to technical/management/financial jargon. Any term of interest with due ability to interest people will not be turned back from the door.

Herfindahl-Hirschman Index or HHI or H Index : a measure of the size of firms in relationship to the industry and an indicator of the amount of competition among them. It is an economic concept but widely applied in competition law
and antitrust. It is defined as the sum of the squares of the market
shares of each individual firm. As such, it can range from 0 to 1
moving from a very large amount of very small firms to a single monopolistic
producer. Decreases in the Herfindahl index generally indicate a loss
of pricing power and an increase in competition, whereas increases
imply the opposite. (From Wikipedia)


Gini coefficient: a measure of statistical dispersion most prominently used as a measure of inequality of income distribution or inequality of wealth distribution. It is defined as a ratio with values between 0 and 1: the numerator is the area between the Lorenz curve
of the distribution and the uniform distribution line; the denominator
is the area under the uniform distribution line. Thus, a low Gini
coefficient indicates more equal income or wealth distribution, while a
high Gini coefficient indicates more unequal distribution. 0
corresponds to perfect equality (e.g. everyone has the same income) and
1 corresponds to perfect inequality (e.g. one person has all the
income, while everyone else has zero income). The Gini coefficient
requires that no one have a negative net income or wealth. (From Wikipedia)

Parliament - An institution meant for the people, being used to satisfy legislators' whims and funded by the taxpayer

An editorial I read in the Hindu today morning set my mind rolling on this phenomenon of parliamentary disruption. I planned to research on this on the internet and then write an entry. To my pleasant surprise, ironically, I got a plethora of articles, posts, research and survey papers talking about the condition of governance in India. I will add them at the end of the article.

What is surprising though is that last month in an all party meet, present speaker Somnath Chatterjee, had put forward a proposal of "no work, no pay", which in a normally dormant show of solidarity was shot down by all major political parties except the Left. The audacity with which these legislators assert their right to pay would pay even the most ardent mandamus worshipping CEO to shame.

Again picking up the pieces which I left from an earlier entry, I think public apathy is one of the main causes of such blatant disregard towards rules of ethical conduct. I am reproducing here some statistics which try and measure the extent to which time, energy and money is spent on doing nothing.

----
According to a report prepared by the National Social Watch
Coalition, titled ‘Citizens Report on Development and Governance—2006,’
India’s current Parliamentary expenditure is Rs 72 lakh per day.

This works out to Rs 20,000 per minute. In 1951,
the cost was Rs 100 per minute. If this isn’t stunning enough, there’s
more, according to the report. Even with all this money being spent, a
lot of the time is wasted. The coalition’s survey found that the total
time wasted in pandemonium was as follows:

11th Lok Sabha,1996 to 1998: 5.28% of the time was wasted.

12th Lok Sabha, 1998 to 1999: 10.66% of the time was wasted.

13th Lok Sabha, 1999 to 2004: 22.40% of the time was wasted.

14th Lok Sabha, 2004 to 2006: 38.0% (More than 1/3 rd) was wasted in the first two sessions itself.

Rajya Sabha—201st and 202nd sessions: 46% (almost half the time) was wasted.

----- From Financial Express Website

Public Expectation: Political parties should stop being so hypocritical. Saying one thing when in power and resorting to brinkmanship when in opposition. As Hindu described aptly they are holding the Parliament at ransom.

I think we need to question the rationale behind this frequent disruption of parliamentary proceedings. What was the case made by the political parties when they shot down the proposal of Somnath Chatterjee. Can we invoke RTI in this case? What will be the questions that we will be asking?

We should surely evolve a consensus and come up with a working strategy which can make the legislators more accountable.

Link 1 : On Social Watch website

Link 2: On Business Standard Website by Sunil Jain

What they cannot TEACH you at B Schools

Business Standard comes out with a pullout every tuesday, "Strategist". In these 4 pages (I am also accounting for advertisements :-) ), they talk about management concepts and how companies are applying them in the problems they face. A regular feature in these pages is "WHAT THEY DON`T TEACH YOU AT B-SCHOOL". People who have made a mark in their own way and are mostly B school pass outs; they talk about stuff that does not form part of the curriculum but is nevertheless of importance in corporate life. This article especially impressed me because I could relate with it. Many times, I along with my friends start thinking about problems and their solutions and the solution has a problem and so on......

B school theory subjects cannot teach a person how to think, how to approach issues. Interaction with people - fellow students, mentors, ordinary subjects - does help in cultivating a healthy manner of thinking. Which leads us to the problem of "management grad hubris". They are so overwhelmed and overawed with high knowledge subjects that simple things seem pedestrian to them. This is a trait which should be avoided.

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Pentagram - Voice / My Letter to the Open Page, Hindu

a case against reservation

In every nation’s history there do come occasions when the entire population engages in a debate – active or passive- and when the outcome of such a debate holds key to the shape of the country’s future. The topic of reservation being deliberated today at various levels is one such turning point for India.

A lot of learned people have presented facts, figures and graphs in support of reservation. At the risk of sounding naïve I take up the task of presenting my case against reservation.

Is reservation a panacea for all socio-economic problems?

There are a lot of countries which have tried their hands at facilitating a more equitable representation of their populace in various institutions. From their experience we can learn that reservation, though one of them, is not the only one. We do not have reliable figures that can quantify the benefits accrued to the targeted classes by way the past 50 years of reservation. Why are we not talking about greater empowerment of the unprivileged classes to ensure equity? How many students are able to acquire the minimum qualification required to gain admission to the higher seats of learning, which we propose to bring within the ambit of reservation? How many of the deserving students are unable to join because they do not have the financial wherewithal? What has the government done to help students, irrespective of caste, take these exams with better chances of securing a good rank? Why is the government not interested in taking a bottom-up approach by ensuring accessibility to and quality of education at basic level and then move upwards? Such an approach will ensure that students from all walks are able to assert their right to quality education rather than remain at the mercy of government intervention at every stage. On second thoughts, why should the government do so? Doesn’t it suit the government to actually make the population dependent on it? It does not want permanent solutions which take a longer time to fructify. It believes in the power of short term decisions which can bring them back to power.

Do the unprivileged or underprivileged belong only to the lower castes?

The dispensation of the day rightly assumes that socially backward classes form a bulk of the population that has suffered from discrimination over the years. Social discrimination leads to economic stagnation which again leads to social discrimination. Now, this vicious cycle needs to be broken. Problem lies in the fact that the government is trying to break the cycle at the wrong place. The case for reservation on the basis of caste, consciously or otherwise, ignores the fact that one of the most prominent reasons for inaccessibility to education is socio-economic in nature. If the government is able to ensure that no land tiller needs to withdraw his kids from school and make them work in the fields, it would be a giant leap towards ensuring education as a means of empowerment. The government should ensure unmatched quality of the education being given to students in government schools. That the curricula of these schools are themselves suspect, given their dependence on the government of the day, does not help matters. We need to ensure education for everyone up to 12^th standard. Any student interested in joining an institute of higher learning should be extended facilities to equip himself with skills to face competitive exams.

Here is one innovative way to achieve this. Economics of scale work well in a country like India. The government, centre or state, can join hands with respected coaching centers and ensure that they provide training to deserving students at a subsidized rate. This training could be provided free too with the government and the coaching center pitching in with the money. The issue of coaching centers required to gain entry to institutes, itself, is debatable but as long as such a situation prevails let us work with it.

We need to think out of the box to find solution to situations like these. Even if reservation works, why not find a solution that doesn’t hurt anyone. After all the upper caste of today shouldn’t be persecuted for something their forefathers did or merely witnessed hundreds of years ago.

Does a beneficiary of reservation necessarily give back to the society?

AN ASSUMPTION BETTER TREATED AS AN ASSUMPTION. I guess one of the peripheral, if not the main thoughts our leaders had while introducing reservation was that it would have a ripple effect and one day it would not be needed. Though this does not seem to be happening, politicians like Arjun Singh are relying increasingly on such issues to hold on to their positions and vie for higher ones. We do not have statistics that identify any ripple effect though one-off instances do exist. The IITs/IIMs could call on their alumni and ask them to do something in this direction. The Indian government doles out dual citizenship to the Great Indian Diaspora. May be it could come with a rider that a person who receives such a dual citizenship should have given back to the Indian society in terms of providing opportunities to the underprivileged.

In a country of more than a billion, there will be no dearth of issues. What we need to understand is that with so many people we will not have dearth of ideas too to tackle these issues. Why resort to a palliative like reservation, which is barely able to address the symptom, and hail it as the solution to all socio-economic ills.

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National Do Not Call Registry

I am sure many of you are aware of the Do Not Call Registry being created under the aegis of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. From what I read in ET, 50 lakh people have already registered driving the expectation that this number will reach 10 crore by year end. If you too want to register your number call up your telecom service provider for more information

Are we moving towards a general apathy towards the value of human lives ?

There has been a lot of instant anger whipping up in wake of a section of the Punjugutta flyover collapsing leading to loss of atleast 20 lives. I am getting skeptical about the figure as I read wildly varying numbers from variuous sources. Nevertheless, that is not the point. I feel due to the sheer population of our country, we are slowly losing the realization of the value of a human life. Leave alone being sensitive towards special people - designing disabled friendly buildings, buses or trying to bring them to the mainstream - public and government apathy towards value lives has reached a point where all of us are just numbers. You just need to 'google' to get the list of accidents in the last one year. If you go a litle more back in time, there is a chance you may be overwhelmed; that is of course if you yourself have not been afflicted the malaise of apathy.

Somethings that come to my mind are death of more than a hundred children in TN in a school where a function was being held, public transport buses mowing down kids/adults alike, Bhopal gas tragedy (I realize that this is something really back in time) but that does not belittle the responsibility of the govenment and the factory owners towards the affected, Viadharbha farmers committing suicide at such a frenetic pace and government coming out with solutions - which are a palliative at best or a placebo at worst. This list can go on. The question is what will it take to realise the importance and value of a human life. Does it suffice to suspend one or two officers who may actually not be guilty? Why is the government treating the public in world's largest democracy has something dispensable?

I think instead of ranting about the government's inefficiencies, we would be better off investing some time in serious introspection. We need to get into the DO mode; Indian constitution offers adequate avenues to people for redressal of their apprehensions and grievances. But do we use them? Right to Information(RTI) Act, a landmark law, with regard to citizen empowerment and answerability of the government should be used to its maximum. It is high time we graduated from the level of cursing the government of the day, placing the blame on 'OTHERS', waiting for a saviour who will set things right, writing blogs to efface any self-guilt. "Charity begins at home". Be concious of your rights and more importantly the responsibilties that entail.

Start to bring about a change in your own lives. Stop littering the road. Stop jumping traffic lights. Stop bribing officials to get out of sticky situations. Stop being unfaithful to your job. Stop urinating and spitting on the pavements. Stop paying any amount to the rickshaw driver. Start questioning the ways of the government and the municipality that manages the city. Start buying tickets when you travel. Find out about RTI and how you can use it. Educate people about civic responsibilities and create awareness.

As for me, a couple of people I know, who feel the same are trying to make a start. Let us hope.