Amit Varma writes about the concept of victimless crimes, and describes how the decriminalization of certain acts that are commonly perceived to be immoral(whatever that may mean) but have no victims is necessary for a truly free and functional society. He makes his point well, and tackles the issue using three examples that are extremely relevant and lead to considerable debate and grey areas - betting, prostitution, and drug usage. He says legalize, legalize and legalize. I say yes, yes and no. For the yes and yes, go read his article. For the no, read on.
Amit argues that commonly accepted notions of relative harm of these drugs is misplaced and quotes a study from the Lancet, rather a newspaper report of a study by the Lancet, to make his point. He also refutes the common argument against legalizing drugs in this manner -
You might argue that people commit crimes under the influence of drugs, but then, punishing those crimes should be deterrent enough.
He makes another point by saying that
In contrast, consider the Netherlands, where drugs are legal and cannabis is purchased mainly in coffee shops. They have the lowest rate of drug-related-deaths-per-million in Europe.
Wrong, wrong and wrong.
The Lancet study ranked Alcohol at no. 5, Tobacco at no. 9 and the others(Ecstasy, Marijuana, and LSD) somewhere between 10 and 20. There were various factors considered for this ranking, and the 'effects of long term addiction on family and society' were also considered. With reference to this factor, the scientists who conducted the study mentioned that alcohol figured very high in the list as a result of the fact that the number of people who imbibed alcohol was far greater than those who used the other drugs. Which is to say, that alcohol ranked higher than say, ecstasy, because if about 90% of Brits drank, only 10% took ecstasy. (The numbers are my own, used to illustrate the larger point, and are quite inexact). Had ecstasy been used by 90% people, which may very well happen if it is freely available, it may rank significantly higher than alcohol, because its psychotropic effect is greater and addiction to ecstasy develops far more easily than addiction to alcohol.
To quote the Lancet study, taken from this TOI article
Tobacco and alcohol were included because their extensive use has provided reliable data on their risks and harms, providing familiar benchmarks against which the absolute harms of other adjudged. However, direct comparison of the scores for tobacco and alcohol with those of the other drugs is not possible since the fact that they are legal could affect their harms in various ways, especially through easier availability.
This is clearly an argument for stricter regulation(though not banning), not more lax laws. Digressive moral of the story - please don't trust/use abridged versions of news reports of scientific studies. You are likely to miss some fine point which can entirely change the inferences from the study. Also, ToI is not THAT bad - their headlines are a sham but they gloss over fewer details and are slightly more accurate.
The second point that Amit raises is wrong, because the argument of punishing those crimes should be deterrent enough presupposes a rational disposition. Most libertarian viewpoints have an underlying assumption, which is - the consenting adult is rational and the best judge of his/her own decision and an act by consensus should not be a matter of the state. In principle, I agree with this assumption. However, in the case of behaviour under the influence of drug consumption, and more importantly, behaviour under the influence of drug addiction(the state of addiction itself, not of the psychotropic high), this assumption is no longer true. To quite a few drug addicts then, punishing the crime is NOT deterrent enough. A heroin addict is more likely to commit a crime, not under the high induced by heroin use, but by the physiologically and psychologically compulsive desire to obtain more heroin, which may require money beyond the means of the addict. The state's job should not end with catching and punishing the criminal. It should also involve some pre-emptive policy decision that prevents the crime from happening in the first place.
The third point is factually incorrect and is a classic case of a socio-economic inference that may be wrong because its multivariate nature has not been considered adequately. 'Drugs are legal in Netherlands' is a grossly misleading generalization. Yes, coffee shops retail cannabis, so buying and selling for personal use are legal. Large-scale cultivation and wholesaling, however, are banned. All narcotics, opiates, etc (hard drugs) are banned and offenders are severely prosecuted. The Dutch drug policy explicitly recognises the difference between 'hard drugs' and 'soft drugs', and even the sale of soft drugs (cannabis) is quite regulated. Secondly, the fact that the Dutch have the lowest drug deaths per million may not necessarily be due to availibility of pure, unadulterated drugs. It can very well be because the restrictions on hard drugs are more strictly and more efficiently enforced in Netherlands than in other European countries
So, what is my solution? I support the drug policy of Netherlands - it's just that this policy is not what Amit thinks it is. In fact, I'd go one up and decriminalize the growth and wholesaling of cannabis. But narcotics and opium-derived alkaloids are a strict no-no. It has been a long-standing conviction of mine that in an issue of legality, if science can be brought in to simplify the grey areas presented by the combination of ideology and utility, it must be brought in. To be more specific, use/trade of substances that are not toxins according to the medico-legal definition of the word must be decriminalized, and those that are toxins should remain illegal. This immediately makes marijuana/cannabis legal and perhaps LSD too. The alleged reason for the illegal status of cannabis is one of the most believable and best documented conspiracy theory of our times (I tried searching for the article on Wikipedia, unfortunately all references to DuPont's role have been removed from all articles). This causes a new problem - both alcohol and tobacco should be illegal by this definition.
Alcohol has been shown to have various medical benefits when drunk in moderate amounts, including protection against heart disease and protection against renal failure. So it should be retained as legal, but regulated - no alcohol advertisements in electronic media. Tobacco, though, would be illegal in my scheme of things. This is logistically impossible given the current situation. Even a ban on public smoking is supremely difficult to enforce, a blanket ban on tobacco is quite unthinkable. Hence, it should not (can not) be illegalized, but tobacco companies should be taxed until they bleed. I'm sure that the economic benefits derived out of a generation of a lower number of smokers will far outweigh the loss in productivity and revenue resultant from this heavy taxation. Tobacco companies that face losses will have to branch out. (In fact, the continued increase of tax on tobacco products is one of the few heartening things of our budget every year)
So, the final proposal - narcotics and amphetamines illegal, cannabis legal, alcohol legal but unadvertised, tobacco legal but unadvertised and heavily taxed, all others to be judged on similiar grounds after scientific evidence. A most perfect marriage of ideology, science, utility and freedom. What do you say?
Friday, March 30, 2007
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Individuals and Categories - 2
Jai Arjun Singh had once written about Identity and Violence, and reproduced an excerpt from its prologue, which I re-reproduce, corny as that sounds.
Civilisational or religious partitioning of the world population yields a ‘solitarist’ approach to human identity, which sees human beings as members of exactly one group…This can be a good way of misunderstanding nearly everyone in the world. In our normal lives, we see ourselves as members of a variety of groups – we belong to all of them. The same person can be, without any contradiction: an American citizen, of Caribbean origin, with African ancestry, a Christian, a liberal, a woman, a vegetarian, a long-distance runner, a historian, a schoolteacher, a novelist, a feminist, a heterosexual, a believer in gay and lesbian rights, a theatre lover, an environmental activist, a tennis fan, a jazz musician, and someone who is deeply committed to the view that there are intelligent beings in outer space with whom it is extremely urgent to talk (preferably in English). Each of these collectivities, to all of which this person simultaneously belongs, gives her a particular identity. None of them can be taken to be the person’s only identity or singular membership category.
Amartya Sen has summarily destroyed all of my rhetorical '22, male, engineer' posturing. I stand corrected. Indeed, a definition of individual identity as the intersection of all the sets that the individual belongs to takes care of the individual vs category debate in my mind.
It is still fascinating to explore why we let the classifications of various categories overshadow our perception of others as individuals. Nation, religion, caste, race and gender are the bases of division that spring to the mind immediately, but it can be extremely interesting to explore this phenomenon in a more localised manner. In school and college, fights that break out between individuals often transform into group vs group slugfests. Hostelites vs Day-scholars. Localites vs Outsiders. Seniors vs Juniors. Hostel X vs Hostel Y. Even Wing A vs Wing B. There is perhaps a distinction though. It is highly unlikely that violence at the micro-level will affect individuals who were not directly involved. Those people from hostel X who were not part of the slugfest will probably be spared by the warring battalion of hostel Y. On the broader issues too, for some reason, violence that envelopes even unwilling individuals is common only in the case of religion and caste. I may have had to include nation into this list but the modern concept of armed nation states largely prevents that (leaving aside bombings on civilian areas - but those are anyway termed 'mistakes' and are not part of acknowledged strategy). Is this the reason why a majority of educated 'liberal' individuals consider patriotism a virtue but casteism and communalism to be evil?
Though, I still stand by my argument that the opportunities available to most individuals are the products of not just their abilities and choices as individuals, but also of their unchosen allegiance to certain categories.
Civilisational or religious partitioning of the world population yields a ‘solitarist’ approach to human identity, which sees human beings as members of exactly one group…This can be a good way of misunderstanding nearly everyone in the world. In our normal lives, we see ourselves as members of a variety of groups – we belong to all of them. The same person can be, without any contradiction: an American citizen, of Caribbean origin, with African ancestry, a Christian, a liberal, a woman, a vegetarian, a long-distance runner, a historian, a schoolteacher, a novelist, a feminist, a heterosexual, a believer in gay and lesbian rights, a theatre lover, an environmental activist, a tennis fan, a jazz musician, and someone who is deeply committed to the view that there are intelligent beings in outer space with whom it is extremely urgent to talk (preferably in English). Each of these collectivities, to all of which this person simultaneously belongs, gives her a particular identity. None of them can be taken to be the person’s only identity or singular membership category.
Amartya Sen has summarily destroyed all of my rhetorical '22, male, engineer' posturing. I stand corrected. Indeed, a definition of individual identity as the intersection of all the sets that the individual belongs to takes care of the individual vs category debate in my mind.
It is still fascinating to explore why we let the classifications of various categories overshadow our perception of others as individuals. Nation, religion, caste, race and gender are the bases of division that spring to the mind immediately, but it can be extremely interesting to explore this phenomenon in a more localised manner. In school and college, fights that break out between individuals often transform into group vs group slugfests. Hostelites vs Day-scholars. Localites vs Outsiders. Seniors vs Juniors. Hostel X vs Hostel Y. Even Wing A vs Wing B. There is perhaps a distinction though. It is highly unlikely that violence at the micro-level will affect individuals who were not directly involved. Those people from hostel X who were not part of the slugfest will probably be spared by the warring battalion of hostel Y. On the broader issues too, for some reason, violence that envelopes even unwilling individuals is common only in the case of religion and caste. I may have had to include nation into this list but the modern concept of armed nation states largely prevents that (leaving aside bombings on civilian areas - but those are anyway termed 'mistakes' and are not part of acknowledged strategy). Is this the reason why a majority of educated 'liberal' individuals consider patriotism a virtue but casteism and communalism to be evil?
Though, I still stand by my argument that the opportunities available to most individuals are the products of not just their abilities and choices as individuals, but also of their unchosen allegiance to certain categories.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Of Analogies, Individuals and Categories
Amit Varma warns about the perils of thinking in categories. He says
We tend to think in categories, and ignore individuals in the process. We are pattern-seeking creatures, and this can be a useful cognitive shortcut: classifying things into groups of things helps us make sense of the world. But it has its perils when we take it too far.
Very true. It also explains why those of us who feel a compulsive urge to analyse and understand the world around us tend to make lists, ranking systems, etc. But I digress. Amit goes on to tell us why the individual is important, and says that communal riots, reservations policy etc. are the result of thinking in terms of categories at the cost of ignoring the individual and certain situations that sound absolutely ridiculous are actually analogous to these scenarios.
And we have many convenient labels like that. Imagine someone saying, “Some Indian bloggers have been seen cheering for Pakistan during cricket matches. Therefore, all Indian bloggers are anti-national.” Or “Some bloggers burnt a train full of drivers, therefore we drivers will slaughter all the bloggers we can find.” Or “Bloggers have been discriminated against in the days before the internet, when they didn’t have access to any readership, therefore we will reserve a set amount of newspaper space for them.”
Ahh, the perils of stretched analogies. An analogy is usually a very convenient tool to explain or accentuate an idea. Indeed, Douglas Hofstadter has argued that analogy is at the very core of all cognition and that there is no difference between high level perception and analogies. But there is such a thing as an overly stretched analogy. All of the analogies mentioned above break down. The first one about cricket matches obviously replaces the term 'Muslims' by 'bloggers'. Wrong, because the terms 'Pakistan' and 'Muslim' have some attachment due to historical and current contexts while the terms 'Pakistan' and 'bloggers' have no such attachments. The second one references communal riots and is invalid because in any events of communal violence the violence is perpetrated/experienced solely because of one's belongingness to a particualr community. In Amit's example above, it is implicit that some individuals who happen to be bloggers burned a train that happened to be full of some other individuals who happen to be drivers, the drivers are not burned because they are drivers . It would be unnatural to think in terms of bloggers/drivers in that scenario. In communal riots however, some individuals kill some other individuals specifically because those other individuals belong to some particular community. It is difficult not to think in terms of Hindu/Muslim then. The third example obviously references reservations and to my mind is invalid because newspaper space cannot be considered essential by any definitions of a minimum acceptable level of life, while a decent education and an opportunity to make a livelihood, i.e a job are very much integral to any such definition.
Let me make it clear that I do not condone any of the three specific situations that have been referenced. Muslims do not become anti-national simply because some Muslims cheer for Pakistan in a cricket match. Communal riots can not be condoned in any circumstance. The issue of reservations will be discussed in the next post. However, the failure of these analogies, and indeed of most arguments that are propounded in favour of giving an indiviual supreme importance as opposed to the community only illustrates a belief I've always had - that an 'individual only' stance is as unnatural and as open to contradiction as a 'community only' stance.
Think about yourself hard enough, and try to describe yourself. The terms that most of us will come up with will all have something to do with allegiance to a larger community. I am 22, male, engineer, short, dark, math-inclined, Bhavanite etc. All are adjectives or nouns that describe categories. Do you fare any better? What to make then of this romantic notion of that 'I' within me that distinguishes me from everyone else, assuming one is disregarding the existence of a 'soul', that as a firm believer in all things rational, an individualist must disregard.
Of course, the point Amit makes is that thinking in terms of categories should not influence our reactions to other people and more importantly, state policy. In principle, I agree. But all around us we see that certain opportunities are created for us, or conversely certain opportunities denied to us not because of any talent/shortcoming as an individual but precisely because we belong to certain families and/or categories. I have access to the best institutes to train me for entrance examinations to postraduation courses. This goes a long way in aiding whatever natural abilities I have to succeed in those examinations. I have this access because my parents can pay for it. This has nothing to do with my innate 'individual' nature, and everything to do with the past of my family. My father was not as lucky as I am, and had to struggle much harder to make it in life. However, he still had a basic minimum base to build upon, for we were one of the land-owning families in the village, being 'upper castes'. I wonder if it would have been the same if he belonged instead to one of the land-tilling, poorer, 'lower catse' families. To summarise, my chances of making it to an IIM have been aided by the fact that I descend from an 'upper-caste', non-poor lineage. This has everything to do with my community and category, and nothing to do with me, the individual.
I want to repeat that I have not supported reservations here, atleast not yet. All I'm saying is, thinking only in terms of 'individuals' is neither very possible nor enough, for a lot (though definitely not all) of our experiences and opportunities are the functions of our unchosen allegiance to certain communities and have little to do with either our abilities or our choices as individuals.
We tend to think in categories, and ignore individuals in the process. We are pattern-seeking creatures, and this can be a useful cognitive shortcut: classifying things into groups of things helps us make sense of the world. But it has its perils when we take it too far.
Very true. It also explains why those of us who feel a compulsive urge to analyse and understand the world around us tend to make lists, ranking systems, etc. But I digress. Amit goes on to tell us why the individual is important, and says that communal riots, reservations policy etc. are the result of thinking in terms of categories at the cost of ignoring the individual and certain situations that sound absolutely ridiculous are actually analogous to these scenarios.
And we have many convenient labels like that. Imagine someone saying, “Some Indian bloggers have been seen cheering for Pakistan during cricket matches. Therefore, all Indian bloggers are anti-national.” Or “Some bloggers burnt a train full of drivers, therefore we drivers will slaughter all the bloggers we can find.” Or “Bloggers have been discriminated against in the days before the internet, when they didn’t have access to any readership, therefore we will reserve a set amount of newspaper space for them.”
Ahh, the perils of stretched analogies. An analogy is usually a very convenient tool to explain or accentuate an idea. Indeed, Douglas Hofstadter has argued that analogy is at the very core of all cognition and that there is no difference between high level perception and analogies. But there is such a thing as an overly stretched analogy. All of the analogies mentioned above break down. The first one about cricket matches obviously replaces the term 'Muslims' by 'bloggers'. Wrong, because the terms 'Pakistan' and 'Muslim' have some attachment due to historical and current contexts while the terms 'Pakistan' and 'bloggers' have no such attachments. The second one references communal riots and is invalid because in any events of communal violence the violence is perpetrated/experienced solely because of one's belongingness to a particualr community. In Amit's example above, it is implicit that some individuals who happen to be bloggers burned a train that happened to be full of some other individuals who happen to be drivers, the drivers are not burned because they are drivers . It would be unnatural to think in terms of bloggers/drivers in that scenario. In communal riots however, some individuals kill some other individuals specifically because those other individuals belong to some particular community. It is difficult not to think in terms of Hindu/Muslim then. The third example obviously references reservations and to my mind is invalid because newspaper space cannot be considered essential by any definitions of a minimum acceptable level of life, while a decent education and an opportunity to make a livelihood, i.e a job are very much integral to any such definition.
Let me make it clear that I do not condone any of the three specific situations that have been referenced. Muslims do not become anti-national simply because some Muslims cheer for Pakistan in a cricket match. Communal riots can not be condoned in any circumstance. The issue of reservations will be discussed in the next post. However, the failure of these analogies, and indeed of most arguments that are propounded in favour of giving an indiviual supreme importance as opposed to the community only illustrates a belief I've always had - that an 'individual only' stance is as unnatural and as open to contradiction as a 'community only' stance.
Think about yourself hard enough, and try to describe yourself. The terms that most of us will come up with will all have something to do with allegiance to a larger community. I am 22, male, engineer, short, dark, math-inclined, Bhavanite etc. All are adjectives or nouns that describe categories. Do you fare any better? What to make then of this romantic notion of that 'I' within me that distinguishes me from everyone else, assuming one is disregarding the existence of a 'soul', that as a firm believer in all things rational, an individualist must disregard.
Of course, the point Amit makes is that thinking in terms of categories should not influence our reactions to other people and more importantly, state policy. In principle, I agree. But all around us we see that certain opportunities are created for us, or conversely certain opportunities denied to us not because of any talent/shortcoming as an individual but precisely because we belong to certain families and/or categories. I have access to the best institutes to train me for entrance examinations to postraduation courses. This goes a long way in aiding whatever natural abilities I have to succeed in those examinations. I have this access because my parents can pay for it. This has nothing to do with my innate 'individual' nature, and everything to do with the past of my family. My father was not as lucky as I am, and had to struggle much harder to make it in life. However, he still had a basic minimum base to build upon, for we were one of the land-owning families in the village, being 'upper castes'. I wonder if it would have been the same if he belonged instead to one of the land-tilling, poorer, 'lower catse' families. To summarise, my chances of making it to an IIM have been aided by the fact that I descend from an 'upper-caste', non-poor lineage. This has everything to do with my community and category, and nothing to do with me, the individual.
I want to repeat that I have not supported reservations here, atleast not yet. All I'm saying is, thinking only in terms of 'individuals' is neither very possible nor enough, for a lot (though definitely not all) of our experiences and opportunities are the functions of our unchosen allegiance to certain communities and have little to do with either our abilities or our choices as individuals.
Monday, February 26, 2007
I read
primarily from an illuminated screen these days. And apart from wikipedia, the ones that manage to catch my attention and interest strongly enough are :
1) India Uncut : Amit Varma is easily India's most famous blogger. The new site has a lot more than the blog, including crosswords(thankfully not cryptic), fantastic links and trivia. The blog however, remains the main attraction. I often don't agree with him, but that's a question of ideology. For individualism, atheism, Hemingway, cows and Chomskyian semi-semantic yet fully syntactic sentence constructs, kindly proceed without further ado.
2) Youth Curry : Rashmi Bansal - editor of JAM, popular figure among Mumbai's student community, no stranger to controversies. Wonderfully balanced and achieves its stated intent of providing an insight into India's youth to a large extent. The blog that prompted me to pick up the cyber-pen in the first place, so much so that (and this was totally sub-conscious, I swear) I ended up choosing the same template.
3) Vantage Point : Came to know about this one from the IIPM controversy. Gaurav writes coherently about libertarianism and America and cracks PJs that should qualify for the 'PJs that only engineers can crak - Hall of Fame'. Used to post quiz questions that severly dented my self-opinion of trivia king, but that feature has been missing for a long time.
4) Recursive Hypocrisy : Cool name, though very often there's no recursion, only irony. Recent find, though apparently this guy is super-popular(in a cultish, non-mainsteam way) on the blogosphere.
5) Sanjana : Are you feeling sad or depressed? Do you need sunshine? Are you ready to listen to nostalgic anecdotes about wonderful animals and tributes and backhanded compliments to Freud and classical mathematicians? Do you want to read dreams and visions and sentiments and rants that may leave you smirking at the author's naivette yet absolutely charmed by the idealism,information and sensitivity? If yes, do visit.
6) Random Thoughts of a Demented Mind : Humour is difficult to do. To do so consistently over sustained periods of time requires a rare talent. He is not as godly as many of his commentators describe him to be, but the chief priest and prophet of Mithunism is a bloody good read anyway.
7) The Examined Life : Another member of the libertarian cartel, he has apparently defected to form a new cartel himself. Doesn't update anymore but back when he used to write, he managed to get serious, non-sarcastic non-puke comments from the great Nilu. Read him for some meaningful explorations on law, economics, ethics, you get the dirft.
8) Kalachakra : She is perhaps the most popular new blogger in the Indian blogosphere. Another libertarian, and one who often lets her perceptions colour her observations (but don't we all). The legal angle she brings to issues makes her a worthwhile read though.
9) Kaleidoglide : Infrequently updated but I visit this on and off to keep myself updated on the latest on net-feminism. Thanks to her I atleast know who Andrea Dworkin is.
10) Known Turf : Has begun to write in a dangerously Arundhati Royesque manner, both in terms of content and stylistics, which means that I'm not a regular reader anymore. However, her knowledge of the Hindi heartland is almost encyclopaedic, and this post should probably be part of a 101 course on gender issues and sexual harassment.
11) Sonia Faleiro : Journo blog. Seems wonderfully non-judgemental at first read, an image that gradually breaks down on further investigation as the prejudices reveal themselves. However. she writes about a lot of things that most of us do not bother ourselves with. The interview with Jockin Ananthapuram is a classic.
12) Falstaff : Finally, a guy who manages to be more pedantic than I am. His pedantism is usually quite non-offensive though, and he has a brilliant way with words, writes some damn good fiction. His footnotes on economic discourses though, are the reason I ever read him in the first place.
13) Sauce : If you are, like me, somewhat of a voyeur, you'd enjoy an excursion into the world of the JUDE girls. I read this on and off to nullify the effects of all the serious pop economic philosophy that I subject myself to.
14) The Indian Economy Blog : Largely dominated by the libertarian cartel. The discussions in the comments sections are usually a lot more informative and meaningful than the posts themselves. Don't read this very often either but this is a one-stop shop, so.
15) Yazad Jal : This hasn't been updated in a long time. Read the archives posted by a guy called Sauvik who has written some insane articles in the ToI in the past to know exactly how prejudiced rhetoric in the name of economics makes for cringeworthy journalism.
16) Psychotic Ramblings of a Mad-Man : Vulturo describes himself as a 'rabid individualist', and I agree. For me, once the first term of that phrase is established, the second is inconsequential. Why then do I read this? Simply because it has been witness to some of the most interesting and insanley hilarious flame wars in the blogosphere.
1) India Uncut : Amit Varma is easily India's most famous blogger. The new site has a lot more than the blog, including crosswords(thankfully not cryptic), fantastic links and trivia. The blog however, remains the main attraction. I often don't agree with him, but that's a question of ideology. For individualism, atheism, Hemingway, cows and Chomskyian semi-semantic yet fully syntactic sentence constructs, kindly proceed without further ado.
2) Youth Curry : Rashmi Bansal - editor of JAM, popular figure among Mumbai's student community, no stranger to controversies. Wonderfully balanced and achieves its stated intent of providing an insight into India's youth to a large extent. The blog that prompted me to pick up the cyber-pen in the first place, so much so that (and this was totally sub-conscious, I swear) I ended up choosing the same template.
3) Vantage Point : Came to know about this one from the IIPM controversy. Gaurav writes coherently about libertarianism and America and cracks PJs that should qualify for the 'PJs that only engineers can crak - Hall of Fame'. Used to post quiz questions that severly dented my self-opinion of trivia king, but that feature has been missing for a long time.
4) Recursive Hypocrisy : Cool name, though very often there's no recursion, only irony. Recent find, though apparently this guy is super-popular(in a cultish, non-mainsteam way) on the blogosphere.
5) Sanjana : Are you feeling sad or depressed? Do you need sunshine? Are you ready to listen to nostalgic anecdotes about wonderful animals and tributes and backhanded compliments to Freud and classical mathematicians? Do you want to read dreams and visions and sentiments and rants that may leave you smirking at the author's naivette yet absolutely charmed by the idealism,information and sensitivity? If yes, do visit.
6) Random Thoughts of a Demented Mind : Humour is difficult to do. To do so consistently over sustained periods of time requires a rare talent. He is not as godly as many of his commentators describe him to be, but the chief priest and prophet of Mithunism is a bloody good read anyway.
7) The Examined Life : Another member of the libertarian cartel, he has apparently defected to form a new cartel himself. Doesn't update anymore but back when he used to write, he managed to get serious, non-sarcastic non-puke comments from the great Nilu. Read him for some meaningful explorations on law, economics, ethics, you get the dirft.
8) Kalachakra : She is perhaps the most popular new blogger in the Indian blogosphere. Another libertarian, and one who often lets her perceptions colour her observations (but don't we all). The legal angle she brings to issues makes her a worthwhile read though.
9) Kaleidoglide : Infrequently updated but I visit this on and off to keep myself updated on the latest on net-feminism. Thanks to her I atleast know who Andrea Dworkin is.
10) Known Turf : Has begun to write in a dangerously Arundhati Royesque manner, both in terms of content and stylistics, which means that I'm not a regular reader anymore. However, her knowledge of the Hindi heartland is almost encyclopaedic, and this post should probably be part of a 101 course on gender issues and sexual harassment.
11) Sonia Faleiro : Journo blog. Seems wonderfully non-judgemental at first read, an image that gradually breaks down on further investigation as the prejudices reveal themselves. However. she writes about a lot of things that most of us do not bother ourselves with. The interview with Jockin Ananthapuram is a classic.
12) Falstaff : Finally, a guy who manages to be more pedantic than I am. His pedantism is usually quite non-offensive though, and he has a brilliant way with words, writes some damn good fiction. His footnotes on economic discourses though, are the reason I ever read him in the first place.
13) Sauce : If you are, like me, somewhat of a voyeur, you'd enjoy an excursion into the world of the JUDE girls. I read this on and off to nullify the effects of all the serious pop economic philosophy that I subject myself to.
14) The Indian Economy Blog : Largely dominated by the libertarian cartel. The discussions in the comments sections are usually a lot more informative and meaningful than the posts themselves. Don't read this very often either but this is a one-stop shop, so.
15) Yazad Jal : This hasn't been updated in a long time. Read the archives posted by a guy called Sauvik who has written some insane articles in the ToI in the past to know exactly how prejudiced rhetoric in the name of economics makes for cringeworthy journalism.
16) Psychotic Ramblings of a Mad-Man : Vulturo describes himself as a 'rabid individualist', and I agree. For me, once the first term of that phrase is established, the second is inconsequential. Why then do I read this? Simply because it has been witness to some of the most interesting and insanley hilarious flame wars in the blogosphere.
Thursday, February 01, 2007
The Ritwik's Cube
An idea has been buzzing in my head for quite some time now, and it may turn out to be mere self-indulgence or may even have the potential for some larger initiative. This post invites an open house on this idea, its correctness and its feasibility. Those who are regular readers and my close friends are obligated to pour their thoughts in writing!
1) The socio-politico-economic Cube
How often have you come across the terms left-wing, right-wing, conservative, liberal, socialist, libertaraian, objectivist, marxist etc? And how often have you wondered about where exactly you stand on various issues that affect our daily lives, our relationship with the state, and the nature of our government? Society, politics and economics are deeply inter-related and yet some delineating markers can be found, in terms of various pressing issues that can be categorized as social, or political or economic. I have been trying to think of some of these issues that taken together may be comprehensive and representative, for an exhaustive list is not possible.
1-A : The Political Spectrum (the first axis of the cube)
A person's political views can lie anywhere between(and ofcourse, including) the extremes of anarchy on one side, and absolute authoritarianism on the other. If you support a hawkish foreign policy, aggressive millitary policy, capital punishment, etc. you are likely to be somewhat authoritarian. If you support freer borders, have deep faith in the Geneva Conventions, have little time for nationalist discourse and view the government and the millitary/intelligence agencies with inherent suspicion, you are more likely to be somewhat of an anarchist. Ofcourse, you may support a few of these things, oppose a few others and then again support or oppose these issues to different degrees. Here's a possible list of representative issues
1) voting rights and form of government
2) immigration policy
3) nature of defence policy and armed forces
4) legal system esp. capital punishment
5) extent of Right to Information
6) free speech wrt to importance of flag, anthem and other national symbols
7) intelligence agencies, security and privacy
8) human rights laws and power of law-enforcing agencies
1-B : The Social Spectrum (the second axis of the cube)
A person's social views can lie on the extremes between very conservative and very liberal, and a possible list of representative issues can be (don't think I need to mention what views are consdiered conservative and what views are considered liberal)
1) freedom of speech wrt censorship in arts/media/entertainment
2) role of religion in public life
3) gay rights and laws on homosexuality
4) abortion and contraception
5) euthanasia and suicide
6) drugs and laws on substance abuse
7) pornograhy laws
8) sex-trade
1- C : The Economic Spectrum (the third axis of the cube)
Economic views can be between Stalinist statism on one side and absolute laissez faire capitalism on the other, and a list of representative topics are
1) ownership of means of production
2) intellectual property rights
3) labour laws, unions, minimum wage etc.
4) government role in infrastructure, health and education
5) environmental regulations
6) domestic and international trade regulations
7) tax system and policy
8) monopoly or anti-trust laws
Now, here's the plan. A concise but representaive questionnaire can be developed, with three sections, one for each of the above aspects. Each of these sections will have a few questions, hopefully around 10, and each question will represent exactly one of the topics listed in each section. These questions will have multiple responses, and each response will have a numerical value attched to it to measure how anarchist/authoritarian or conservative/liberal or capitalist/marxist your views are on that issue. The scores on each question can then simply be totalled up to obtain the score for each section, and a combination of the sectional totals will directly reflect the set-up you want to live in. For eg. a score that is higher than average on authoritarianism and conservatism, and very high on the capitalism side would reflect a viewpoint that matches with messrs George W Bush et al. A score that is slightly skewed towards anarchy, and very high on the social liberal and capitalist scales would indicate a libertarian viewpoint, and so on. As a sample question and responses, consider this
Q: What's your take on capital punishment?
1) State-sponsored violence, a tool of propaganda, open to flagrant subjective abuse, a form of tribal justice that has no place in the modern scoiety
2) Has some arguments in its support, but statistics show that it is ineffective and counter-productive in controlling violent crime. Plus, it is extremely terminal nature for it delas with life. Should be abolished.
3) A system of natural justice that should be present, but used minimally. Should be used against serial killers, attackers and conspirators in terror bombings, political assasins who wage war against the state, and possibly for murders which were committed in an extremely premeditated and cruel manner.
4) An effective tool of retributive justice. Necessary for setting a precedent and controlling violent crime (statistics that show otherwise are flawed). those who violate someone else's right to life violate their own right to life. Can be handed out for all the above cases, as well as single murders and possibly even rapes.
As is easy to see, the responses are arranged in increasing order in support of a strong, authoritarian state, and hopefully represent all the rational viewpoints on the issue.
This plan can end up as nothing more than a rather meaningless online test that is not even fun. But then again, it may help many of us figure out the exact manifestos and public policy that we support and expect, and the public policy that some of us may even hope to form and implement in the future. What say?
1) The socio-politico-economic Cube
How often have you come across the terms left-wing, right-wing, conservative, liberal, socialist, libertaraian, objectivist, marxist etc? And how often have you wondered about where exactly you stand on various issues that affect our daily lives, our relationship with the state, and the nature of our government? Society, politics and economics are deeply inter-related and yet some delineating markers can be found, in terms of various pressing issues that can be categorized as social, or political or economic. I have been trying to think of some of these issues that taken together may be comprehensive and representative, for an exhaustive list is not possible.
1-A : The Political Spectrum (the first axis of the cube)
A person's political views can lie anywhere between(and ofcourse, including) the extremes of anarchy on one side, and absolute authoritarianism on the other. If you support a hawkish foreign policy, aggressive millitary policy, capital punishment, etc. you are likely to be somewhat authoritarian. If you support freer borders, have deep faith in the Geneva Conventions, have little time for nationalist discourse and view the government and the millitary/intelligence agencies with inherent suspicion, you are more likely to be somewhat of an anarchist. Ofcourse, you may support a few of these things, oppose a few others and then again support or oppose these issues to different degrees. Here's a possible list of representative issues
1) voting rights and form of government
2) immigration policy
3) nature of defence policy and armed forces
4) legal system esp. capital punishment
5) extent of Right to Information
6) free speech wrt to importance of flag, anthem and other national symbols
7) intelligence agencies, security and privacy
8) human rights laws and power of law-enforcing agencies
1-B : The Social Spectrum (the second axis of the cube)
A person's social views can lie on the extremes between very conservative and very liberal, and a possible list of representative issues can be (don't think I need to mention what views are consdiered conservative and what views are considered liberal)
1) freedom of speech wrt censorship in arts/media/entertainment
2) role of religion in public life
3) gay rights and laws on homosexuality
4) abortion and contraception
5) euthanasia and suicide
6) drugs and laws on substance abuse
7) pornograhy laws
8) sex-trade
1- C : The Economic Spectrum (the third axis of the cube)
Economic views can be between Stalinist statism on one side and absolute laissez faire capitalism on the other, and a list of representative topics are
1) ownership of means of production
2) intellectual property rights
3) labour laws, unions, minimum wage etc.
4) government role in infrastructure, health and education
5) environmental regulations
6) domestic and international trade regulations
7) tax system and policy
8) monopoly or anti-trust laws
Now, here's the plan. A concise but representaive questionnaire can be developed, with three sections, one for each of the above aspects. Each of these sections will have a few questions, hopefully around 10, and each question will represent exactly one of the topics listed in each section. These questions will have multiple responses, and each response will have a numerical value attched to it to measure how anarchist/authoritarian or conservative/liberal or capitalist/marxist your views are on that issue. The scores on each question can then simply be totalled up to obtain the score for each section, and a combination of the sectional totals will directly reflect the set-up you want to live in. For eg. a score that is higher than average on authoritarianism and conservatism, and very high on the capitalism side would reflect a viewpoint that matches with messrs George W Bush et al. A score that is slightly skewed towards anarchy, and very high on the social liberal and capitalist scales would indicate a libertarian viewpoint, and so on. As a sample question and responses, consider this
Q: What's your take on capital punishment?
1) State-sponsored violence, a tool of propaganda, open to flagrant subjective abuse, a form of tribal justice that has no place in the modern scoiety
2) Has some arguments in its support, but statistics show that it is ineffective and counter-productive in controlling violent crime. Plus, it is extremely terminal nature for it delas with life. Should be abolished.
3) A system of natural justice that should be present, but used minimally. Should be used against serial killers, attackers and conspirators in terror bombings, political assasins who wage war against the state, and possibly for murders which were committed in an extremely premeditated and cruel manner.
4) An effective tool of retributive justice. Necessary for setting a precedent and controlling violent crime (statistics that show otherwise are flawed). those who violate someone else's right to life violate their own right to life. Can be handed out for all the above cases, as well as single murders and possibly even rapes.
As is easy to see, the responses are arranged in increasing order in support of a strong, authoritarian state, and hopefully represent all the rational viewpoints on the issue.
This plan can end up as nothing more than a rather meaningless online test that is not even fun. But then again, it may help many of us figure out the exact manifestos and public policy that we support and expect, and the public policy that some of us may even hope to form and implement in the future. What say?
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
The Joy!
Of blogging, that is. About a year after I've started blogging, I'm finally doing it some justice. I've been writing more frequently, am gradually learning how to write shorter and (hopefully)more lucid prose and have finally realised the benefits of writing directly to a computer screen with various virtual tools to bail you out. No need to make messy cuts on the paper, simply delete and re-write. No need to draft, re-draft and then type the whole thing - just delete all and start over again if you're not satisfied. I am finally getting past what I stated here, and in the process also saving paper. (Ofcourse, determining whether the ecological impact of an hour of extra computer usage is lesser than that of a few wasted sheets of paper would involve some massive cost-benefit analsysis; but lets just go along some 'intuitive, seemingly correct' assertion for the time being). Today, I typed an entire post and closed the window without saving or publishing it. And then, astonishingly, found the patience to come back and re-write it after a small break. Ahh, the joy of blogging.
Guru (In which Mani Ratnam pulls off an Ekta Kapoor)
'Gurubhai Gurubhai aavya chhe...dhoom dhadhaka laavya chhe...gurubhai gurubhai aavya chhe...dhoom dhadhaka laavya chhe' (gurubhai has arrived, bringing the fireworks along with him). This ridiculous anthem blares at full blast while our protagonist marches on, literally and figuratively. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the world of Guru, a strange movie where an often brilliant attention to detail sits awkwardly with stylisations and cliches that would be more at home in a K-soap.
I was disappointed by Mani Ratnam's much awaited new release. Perhaps, it was a case of failed expectations as most of my friends, who have otherwise impeccable taste, loved it, and throughout the movie I was wondering why. There are things to be lauded in Guru - it is ideologically powerful, making a case for economic freedom, it is as true to reality as a fictionalised biopic can be, it is balanced in its portrayal of the lead protagnists, and the attention to a few details is staggering, for eg. the old railway compartment, the cloth market, the vintage cars etc. However, it never makes for a compelling drama. Not once in the movie is the viewer ecstatic, saddened, provoked to think deeply, or driven to rage. Guru is overlong, badly edited and failed to catch my attention for any sustained periods.
The screenplay leaves much to be desired, and never allows the actors to move beyond certain stylistics, acting-wise. AB Jr. is always slightly goofy early on, always slightly defiant later, Madhavan is always relaxed and self assured, and all the male characters are suitably stoic in death or defeat, as necessitated by the stereotype of the iron-willed male protagonist. Bleh. The songs are totally out of place, and stop the narative flow in a very irritating manner, with a tuneless ditty called 'Ek Nahin Do' being the worst offender. The climax with our beloved Gurubhai(he of the inane background score fame) is particularly tepid as it is a courtroom drama where the protagonist raves and rants a lot but never inspires, for he is a defendant in a case and never really makes a defence for himself. Worse, the scene is shot with all the cliches that would make Ekta Kapoor and KJo proud - there is a percussive background score, the camera zooms in and out of the faces of the jury (the villains about to have a change of heart, apparently), the protagonist is surrounded by stream of consciosuness voices and images, there is the obligatory public applause that gradually reaches a crescendo, and the jury pronounce Gurubhai a 'genius thug' with a loving indulgence. How could you Mr Ratnam? How could the man who gave us the most memorable melodaramatic climax of the 90s in Dil Se direct this kind of drivel? How?
AB Jr is good in the title role, depicting the transition from wonder-eyed and strong-willed to defiant and strong-willed in an adequate, though predictable manner. Aishwarya is ok, her attempts at playing an independent-minded girl and woman good, her attempts at getting into the skin of the character(while speaking Gujarati, for instance) palpable. MithunDa gives us glimpses of the actor who won the national award in his very first movie, with a stirring portrayal of Manek Gupta(or Ram Nath Goenka, simply) - his ego, his quirks, his character, his righteousness, his self-righteousness and the ultimate pointlessness of his rather moralistic fight. Madhavan is good again, but he is too much of a side-plot to make any real impact (incidentally, can anyone tell me who he's playing - S Gurumurthy or Arun Shourie). Vidya Balan is charming, and kisses on-screen with realism, ease and affection, with neither the hypocritical awkwardness nor the calculated sleaze that Bollywood smooches usually carry. The music, except for two great songs, is nothing to write home about.
Guru is ideologically strong and high on realism, however as a movie, as a work of art and of entertainment, it fails on many counts. Average by any standards and mediocre by Mani Ratnam's.
Rating - 5/10
I was disappointed by Mani Ratnam's much awaited new release. Perhaps, it was a case of failed expectations as most of my friends, who have otherwise impeccable taste, loved it, and throughout the movie I was wondering why. There are things to be lauded in Guru - it is ideologically powerful, making a case for economic freedom, it is as true to reality as a fictionalised biopic can be, it is balanced in its portrayal of the lead protagnists, and the attention to a few details is staggering, for eg. the old railway compartment, the cloth market, the vintage cars etc. However, it never makes for a compelling drama. Not once in the movie is the viewer ecstatic, saddened, provoked to think deeply, or driven to rage. Guru is overlong, badly edited and failed to catch my attention for any sustained periods.
The screenplay leaves much to be desired, and never allows the actors to move beyond certain stylistics, acting-wise. AB Jr. is always slightly goofy early on, always slightly defiant later, Madhavan is always relaxed and self assured, and all the male characters are suitably stoic in death or defeat, as necessitated by the stereotype of the iron-willed male protagonist. Bleh. The songs are totally out of place, and stop the narative flow in a very irritating manner, with a tuneless ditty called 'Ek Nahin Do' being the worst offender. The climax with our beloved Gurubhai(he of the inane background score fame) is particularly tepid as it is a courtroom drama where the protagonist raves and rants a lot but never inspires, for he is a defendant in a case and never really makes a defence for himself. Worse, the scene is shot with all the cliches that would make Ekta Kapoor and KJo proud - there is a percussive background score, the camera zooms in and out of the faces of the jury (the villains about to have a change of heart, apparently), the protagonist is surrounded by stream of consciosuness voices and images, there is the obligatory public applause that gradually reaches a crescendo, and the jury pronounce Gurubhai a 'genius thug' with a loving indulgence. How could you Mr Ratnam? How could the man who gave us the most memorable melodaramatic climax of the 90s in Dil Se direct this kind of drivel? How?
AB Jr is good in the title role, depicting the transition from wonder-eyed and strong-willed to defiant and strong-willed in an adequate, though predictable manner. Aishwarya is ok, her attempts at playing an independent-minded girl and woman good, her attempts at getting into the skin of the character(while speaking Gujarati, for instance) palpable. MithunDa gives us glimpses of the actor who won the national award in his very first movie, with a stirring portrayal of Manek Gupta(or Ram Nath Goenka, simply) - his ego, his quirks, his character, his righteousness, his self-righteousness and the ultimate pointlessness of his rather moralistic fight. Madhavan is good again, but he is too much of a side-plot to make any real impact (incidentally, can anyone tell me who he's playing - S Gurumurthy or Arun Shourie). Vidya Balan is charming, and kisses on-screen with realism, ease and affection, with neither the hypocritical awkwardness nor the calculated sleaze that Bollywood smooches usually carry. The music, except for two great songs, is nothing to write home about.
Guru is ideologically strong and high on realism, however as a movie, as a work of art and of entertainment, it fails on many counts. Average by any standards and mediocre by Mani Ratnam's.
Rating - 5/10
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Images from Techfest 2007
The lure of John Nash, Arun Netravali and the Royal scoiety exhibitions, as well as the thought of attending atleast one edition of Asia's largest campus technical festival made me change plans last minute and stay back in Mumbai for two more days. Can't help feeling a little shortselled after what transpired next, and thats why this post.
A quick look at most of the events, and I was reminded again of why I have had no enthusiasm for these festivals in the past. Most of the competitions involve robotics, and I hate robots. Now there are some issues about robots that are very fascinating, including the fundamental question of the possibility of machine consciousness, but that is more AI and philosophy. Beyond some utility purposes, in terms of shopfloor automation etc., I see no point of robots as they are today. Robots that can swim, jump, play football, fight against each other...bleh - they are simply mechanical devices (I refuse to call the ones we commonly see as machines), and very pointless ones at that. For the life of me I cannot understand how some people, mostly Japanese, are actually interested in robot dolls or robot pets. The Japanese must be the saddest people on earth - they have zero population growth rate, get no real sex, wear boring suits, have humourless TV shows, get portrayed as sad in sad Bill Murray movies, produce really weird porn, really weird cartoons, inspire shitty Quentin tarantino movies, and are in love with robots. But I digress. The point is, there are some things that are considered cutting edge in terms of technology - robots and computer game animation - that the Japanese are considered masters of, and I have zero regard for them. A significant amount of talent at the very top of computer science goes into these fields, and I have a very strong feeling that it could be utilised much better elsewhere. In societal terms, there is simply not enough return on investment in these fields, though they perhaps make good localized business sense. Besides, robots are ugly.
The two guest lectures were also disappointing. The Video conference with Dr Netravali was reduced to an audio conference due to the repeated failure of the video connection, and because the talk was as general as 'the future of digital communications', most of it was uninspiring. There were a few interesting things however, including some of his predictions for the future and his exhortation to current students to implement certain tech advances that he termed 'gifts'. The converse happened with Dr John Nash's lecture. The communication links worked perfectly, however the talk was extremely specialized - 'Agencies In cooperative games', and a large part of the audience had gathered only to get a glimpse of the man made famous by 'A Beautiful Mind'. (not their fault entirely, the IITians had themselves hyped up the event in similiar terms and I was surprised that 'A Beautiful Mind' featured more in their promotions than 'Game Theory'). The talk was very specialized, and worse was not even a talk really, for Dr Nash actually only read out and tried to explain large portions of small-font typewritten text that no one in the audience could understand. It would have worked much better as a face to face lecture rather than a videoconferenced talk. I must also share part of the blame, for not having read game theory fundamentals before I went in to attend a talk with a rather specialized focus.
The Royal scoiety exhibitions were also OK, with the Mind Reader catching my interest. I'm convinced that cognitive science is the field in which we will have our next scientific revolution, and the nature of the field means that there is finally an area of study that can do true justice to the interdisciplinary tag.
All these things notwithstanding, I think I'm still better off having attended the two days. Also, got a Shell t-shirt as a freebie for some quiz question at one of these events!
A quick look at most of the events, and I was reminded again of why I have had no enthusiasm for these festivals in the past. Most of the competitions involve robotics, and I hate robots. Now there are some issues about robots that are very fascinating, including the fundamental question of the possibility of machine consciousness, but that is more AI and philosophy. Beyond some utility purposes, in terms of shopfloor automation etc., I see no point of robots as they are today. Robots that can swim, jump, play football, fight against each other...bleh - they are simply mechanical devices (I refuse to call the ones we commonly see as machines), and very pointless ones at that. For the life of me I cannot understand how some people, mostly Japanese, are actually interested in robot dolls or robot pets. The Japanese must be the saddest people on earth - they have zero population growth rate, get no real sex, wear boring suits, have humourless TV shows, get portrayed as sad in sad Bill Murray movies, produce really weird porn, really weird cartoons, inspire shitty Quentin tarantino movies, and are in love with robots. But I digress. The point is, there are some things that are considered cutting edge in terms of technology - robots and computer game animation - that the Japanese are considered masters of, and I have zero regard for them. A significant amount of talent at the very top of computer science goes into these fields, and I have a very strong feeling that it could be utilised much better elsewhere. In societal terms, there is simply not enough return on investment in these fields, though they perhaps make good localized business sense. Besides, robots are ugly.
The two guest lectures were also disappointing. The Video conference with Dr Netravali was reduced to an audio conference due to the repeated failure of the video connection, and because the talk was as general as 'the future of digital communications', most of it was uninspiring. There were a few interesting things however, including some of his predictions for the future and his exhortation to current students to implement certain tech advances that he termed 'gifts'. The converse happened with Dr John Nash's lecture. The communication links worked perfectly, however the talk was extremely specialized - 'Agencies In cooperative games', and a large part of the audience had gathered only to get a glimpse of the man made famous by 'A Beautiful Mind'. (not their fault entirely, the IITians had themselves hyped up the event in similiar terms and I was surprised that 'A Beautiful Mind' featured more in their promotions than 'Game Theory'). The talk was very specialized, and worse was not even a talk really, for Dr Nash actually only read out and tried to explain large portions of small-font typewritten text that no one in the audience could understand. It would have worked much better as a face to face lecture rather than a videoconferenced talk. I must also share part of the blame, for not having read game theory fundamentals before I went in to attend a talk with a rather specialized focus.
The Royal scoiety exhibitions were also OK, with the Mind Reader catching my interest. I'm convinced that cognitive science is the field in which we will have our next scientific revolution, and the nature of the field means that there is finally an area of study that can do true justice to the interdisciplinary tag.
All these things notwithstanding, I think I'm still better off having attended the two days. Also, got a Shell t-shirt as a freebie for some quiz question at one of these events!
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Land, again
Just had to write about this ever since it has struck me. With all this controversy about the Singur acquisition, why is is that none of the commentators on the blogosphere find it fit to criticise Tata Motors for their role in the whole controversy. Is it because that will mean opposing a business house, a capitalist, an epitome of a liberal economy? Or is it because criticising the government is the more 'done' thing as part of the liberal discourse, the easier way out in any controversy? The Tatas have enough MBAs, economists and general other such informed souls to know and understand the concept of individual freedom, property rights, and suchlike. If the government is acting as a land recovery agent for them, surely it is because they have asked the government to do so. If there has been an underpayment to the people losing their land, surely it is in part to indirectly subsidise the costs to Tata Motors. Why have they taken these route, and more importantly, why have they not been criticised, except by politicians/activists who will anyway attack any corporates as and when they want?
Yes, I know the obvious answer. Tata Motors will act in their rational self interest, if there aren't provisions for direct sale, and there are provision for government backed acquisition, why wouldn't they use these provisions? The government however, represents the people. It must take decisions and make and implement policies for the representative or the individual's interest, etc. Sorry, but this logic runs thin. The government is not the 'government', some abstract quantity, but the particular individuals and officials making up the government legislature and executive. When they strike a deal with Tata, they are also acting in their 'rational self-interest'. We expect better from them because they are the 'government', they run on our taxes, they represent us etc. but if we do so, we must also expect a certain ethical high standard from the corporate houses, whether they directly represent us or not. A liberal citizenry and a liberal government needs corporates that believe in the same tenets of liberalism - crony capitalism is a two-way wrong.
I would probably not have thought about this so much had it not been for the fact that this is the Tatas, the guys who set up the Tata Memorial Cancer Hospital, the IISc, TIFR, Air India, the Taj Mahal hotel. The Tatas, the relatives of Homi J Bhabha. The one business house that I have admired without any reservation whatsoever. Rational or irrational, I expected better from them.
Another interesting thing is the fact that most bloggers have also criticised this acquisition as being typical 'communist' policy. Just as the left-liberals have certain pet targets that must come up, irrespective of relevance (America, upper caste Hindus, all corporates, etc) the free market liberals have their own straw effigy to be burnt at every instance - the communists. Thin logic again. Bengal is not the only state acquiring land aggressively for SEZs etc, and most of the other states are not ruled by communists. India's socialist past may have given these governments the tools to indulge in some self-gratification in the name of development, the urge to act in 'rational self interest', however, is not a by-product of socialism/communism. Truth is, the inherent properties of communism or any other ideology have nothing to do with the current spate of land acquisition by the state governments, it is just that when it happens in a communist-ruled state, the hypocrisy is more evident, which really is tangential to the central issues of land ownership, property rights, industrialization and government intervention.
Also, read this Modi on liberalization
The man all liberals love to hate is the only one who is absolutely clear and categorical about the liberal way to industrialize. What irony!
Yes, I know the obvious answer. Tata Motors will act in their rational self interest, if there aren't provisions for direct sale, and there are provision for government backed acquisition, why wouldn't they use these provisions? The government however, represents the people. It must take decisions and make and implement policies for the representative or the individual's interest, etc. Sorry, but this logic runs thin. The government is not the 'government', some abstract quantity, but the particular individuals and officials making up the government legislature and executive. When they strike a deal with Tata, they are also acting in their 'rational self-interest'. We expect better from them because they are the 'government', they run on our taxes, they represent us etc. but if we do so, we must also expect a certain ethical high standard from the corporate houses, whether they directly represent us or not. A liberal citizenry and a liberal government needs corporates that believe in the same tenets of liberalism - crony capitalism is a two-way wrong.
I would probably not have thought about this so much had it not been for the fact that this is the Tatas, the guys who set up the Tata Memorial Cancer Hospital, the IISc, TIFR, Air India, the Taj Mahal hotel. The Tatas, the relatives of Homi J Bhabha. The one business house that I have admired without any reservation whatsoever. Rational or irrational, I expected better from them.
Another interesting thing is the fact that most bloggers have also criticised this acquisition as being typical 'communist' policy. Just as the left-liberals have certain pet targets that must come up, irrespective of relevance (America, upper caste Hindus, all corporates, etc) the free market liberals have their own straw effigy to be burnt at every instance - the communists. Thin logic again. Bengal is not the only state acquiring land aggressively for SEZs etc, and most of the other states are not ruled by communists. India's socialist past may have given these governments the tools to indulge in some self-gratification in the name of development, the urge to act in 'rational self interest', however, is not a by-product of socialism/communism. Truth is, the inherent properties of communism or any other ideology have nothing to do with the current spate of land acquisition by the state governments, it is just that when it happens in a communist-ruled state, the hypocrisy is more evident, which really is tangential to the central issues of land ownership, property rights, industrialization and government intervention.
Also, read this Modi on liberalization
The man all liberals love to hate is the only one who is absolutely clear and categorical about the liberal way to industrialize. What irony!
Thursday, January 11, 2007
CATalysis
Yes I know the title I have used is a very tired cliche. Lets just attribute it to my lack of imagination and move on. Of course, I am about to pour gyaan on the entrance test that has caught the fancy of everyone who is anywhere in the vicinity of any media whatsoever. Since most reactions to the various changes in pattern, marking etc. tend to be either disgustingly predictable 'Expect the unexpected in CAT' or knee-jerk and inflammatory ' CAT this year was a mess, the IIMs didnt select me, I seriously dont know whats wrong with them they'll all burn in hell and die etc etc', a slightly informed critique is rather necessary.
First of all the basics for those who are as yet uninformed - 75 questions 300 marks...equally distributed over the three sections, very easy quantitative section, very ambiguous verbal section. Assuming that the shift to easy math and inference based english was not a result of accident, it is worthwhile to examine why the shift was effected in the first place. There is but one obvious answer - Indian students in general, and techies and managers in particular, are renowned for their quantitative skills and the general impression, not entirely untrue, is that the communication skills of even the best among them are not of equivalent level. Standardized tests administered by the US agencies, for eg SAT, GRE and GMAT tend to have much simpler math sections and conversely, have verbal sections that are either equivalent to or tougher than their Indian counterparts. It is not uncommon to see Indian engineers with GRE scores of 1300 with a break-up of Math:800, Verbal:500. Inspite of this, I have always believed that the American tests cannot be considered ideal in their balance either. To this day, I vividly remember the absolute shock I got when I realised that the first question in Math in the SAT I exam was basically asking me to subtract 6 from 11. I mean, was this what 12th graders were supposed to be asked? Ofcourse, at the same time I was also expected to know the meaning of the word 'marionette' which I didn't know then, and I've seen used only once in all of my habitual readings of newspapers etc in the 6 years that have passed by since that exam. So while a move towards giving equivalent weight to quantitaive and verbal skills is most necessary for CAT, I don't think a sudden dumbing down of the math level and a corresponding exponential leap in the verbal section was the answer.
Secondly, and more importantly, even if the basic plan was perhpas spot-on, the implementation was far from it. It is easy to see that if the relative toughness of a section is either very high or very low, people who are naturally more skilled in that department start with a huge advantage over those who are only moderately good in that section but more balanced. For eg, a very tough math section would mean that there would be a lot of questions that only people with strong mathematical backgrounds will be able to attempt. Also, if the math section is much easier than average, those who are good with numerical speed have a huge advantage over the others. To give most people a fair shot in quant. and to ensure that it doesn't become make or break, it is absolutely imperative that the section is of average difficulty.
As far as the verbal section goes, the huge amount of ambiguity introduced by the fact that most questions were inferential in nature rendered the concept of the 'educated guess' equivalent or even inferior as a tactic to wild guessing. The only safe option was to attempt a fewer number of questions, to basically be more risk-averse, which is not necessarily a quality that managers in the current Indian context should possess. More pertinently, atleast some questions had answers according to the official IIM key that could be debated for hours on end. There was a paragraph completion question, where the paragraph was taken from a paper by Noam Chomsky and the key obviously showed the answer as the sentence that Chomsky had himself used in his paper. Now Chomsky may have used those words because they seemed to him as most appropriate to carry forward the general idea he was propagating through the paper(as opposed to that one particular paragraph), yet there was nothing in the given four lines to suggest that the sentence given in the official answer key was more appropriate to round off the paragraph than atleast two other options that were given. This year's verbal section can be described as a test of a particular way of thinking, rather than that of a general proficiency in communication and language, and there's no reason to presume that people with that way of thinking would necesarily make better students/managers.
And then ofcourse there was the case of the cut-offs decided by IIM-A. This institute had very initially declared that sectional cut-offs will not be less than 25% marks, and it stuck to its word, with the Verbal cut-ff being the lowest at exactly 25 marks, which gave a percentile of 95.33 in that section. Now, this percentile was strangely extended to the other two sections in an extremely rigid algorithmic fashion, ensuring that those with a score of 45% in DI/LR(95.22 percentile) and 50% in math(95.27 percentile) lost out on sectional-cutoffs by extremely narrow margins, despite some of them having brilliant overall scores. Ahmedabad may have had its reasons, the number of students they wanted to shortlist for the interviews seems like a highly possible one, but I genuinely feel they have lost out on a significant number of very brilliant students who will probably grace one of the other IIMs.
And now for the facts ....
1) The topper had 204 marks
2) 100th percentile was achieved at 195 marks
3) The highest percentage in the three sections was, respectively, 86(DI/LR), 61(VA) and 100(QA).
4) A total of 123+ with a sectional distribution of 46+, 25+ and 51+ would ensure all six IIM calls.
5) The total marks obtained by the students seemed to fit beautifully in a log-normal curve, with a mean of around 36 and a standard deviation of around 41 on the positive side.
All factual analysis is courtesy the information gleaned from the discussion forum at http://www.pagalguy.com
First of all the basics for those who are as yet uninformed - 75 questions 300 marks...equally distributed over the three sections, very easy quantitative section, very ambiguous verbal section. Assuming that the shift to easy math and inference based english was not a result of accident, it is worthwhile to examine why the shift was effected in the first place. There is but one obvious answer - Indian students in general, and techies and managers in particular, are renowned for their quantitative skills and the general impression, not entirely untrue, is that the communication skills of even the best among them are not of equivalent level. Standardized tests administered by the US agencies, for eg SAT, GRE and GMAT tend to have much simpler math sections and conversely, have verbal sections that are either equivalent to or tougher than their Indian counterparts. It is not uncommon to see Indian engineers with GRE scores of 1300 with a break-up of Math:800, Verbal:500. Inspite of this, I have always believed that the American tests cannot be considered ideal in their balance either. To this day, I vividly remember the absolute shock I got when I realised that the first question in Math in the SAT I exam was basically asking me to subtract 6 from 11. I mean, was this what 12th graders were supposed to be asked? Ofcourse, at the same time I was also expected to know the meaning of the word 'marionette' which I didn't know then, and I've seen used only once in all of my habitual readings of newspapers etc in the 6 years that have passed by since that exam. So while a move towards giving equivalent weight to quantitaive and verbal skills is most necessary for CAT, I don't think a sudden dumbing down of the math level and a corresponding exponential leap in the verbal section was the answer.
Secondly, and more importantly, even if the basic plan was perhpas spot-on, the implementation was far from it. It is easy to see that if the relative toughness of a section is either very high or very low, people who are naturally more skilled in that department start with a huge advantage over those who are only moderately good in that section but more balanced. For eg, a very tough math section would mean that there would be a lot of questions that only people with strong mathematical backgrounds will be able to attempt. Also, if the math section is much easier than average, those who are good with numerical speed have a huge advantage over the others. To give most people a fair shot in quant. and to ensure that it doesn't become make or break, it is absolutely imperative that the section is of average difficulty.
As far as the verbal section goes, the huge amount of ambiguity introduced by the fact that most questions were inferential in nature rendered the concept of the 'educated guess' equivalent or even inferior as a tactic to wild guessing. The only safe option was to attempt a fewer number of questions, to basically be more risk-averse, which is not necessarily a quality that managers in the current Indian context should possess. More pertinently, atleast some questions had answers according to the official IIM key that could be debated for hours on end. There was a paragraph completion question, where the paragraph was taken from a paper by Noam Chomsky and the key obviously showed the answer as the sentence that Chomsky had himself used in his paper. Now Chomsky may have used those words because they seemed to him as most appropriate to carry forward the general idea he was propagating through the paper(as opposed to that one particular paragraph), yet there was nothing in the given four lines to suggest that the sentence given in the official answer key was more appropriate to round off the paragraph than atleast two other options that were given. This year's verbal section can be described as a test of a particular way of thinking, rather than that of a general proficiency in communication and language, and there's no reason to presume that people with that way of thinking would necesarily make better students/managers.
And then ofcourse there was the case of the cut-offs decided by IIM-A. This institute had very initially declared that sectional cut-offs will not be less than 25% marks, and it stuck to its word, with the Verbal cut-ff being the lowest at exactly 25 marks, which gave a percentile of 95.33 in that section. Now, this percentile was strangely extended to the other two sections in an extremely rigid algorithmic fashion, ensuring that those with a score of 45% in DI/LR(95.22 percentile) and 50% in math(95.27 percentile) lost out on sectional-cutoffs by extremely narrow margins, despite some of them having brilliant overall scores. Ahmedabad may have had its reasons, the number of students they wanted to shortlist for the interviews seems like a highly possible one, but I genuinely feel they have lost out on a significant number of very brilliant students who will probably grace one of the other IIMs.
And now for the facts ....
1) The topper had 204 marks
2) 100th percentile was achieved at 195 marks
3) The highest percentage in the three sections was, respectively, 86(DI/LR), 61(VA) and 100(QA).
4) A total of 123+ with a sectional distribution of 46+, 25+ and 51+ would ensure all six IIM calls.
5) The total marks obtained by the students seemed to fit beautifully in a log-normal curve, with a mean of around 36 and a standard deviation of around 41 on the positive side.
All factual analysis is courtesy the information gleaned from the discussion forum at http://www.pagalguy.com
Acknowledgements
The previous post was inspired and informed by a few brilliant blog-posts and articles, apart from my own views. Here are the links
classic-example-of-government-dacoity
shallowness-of-west-bengal-land
imminent-danger-of-eminent-domain
shallowness-of-the-west-bengal-land-reforms
Land
Land is the ultimate property, indeed it is very often the only real property, fittingly called real estate. Some considerable amount of thought has me convinced that the fundamental difference betwen the capitalist and the socialist forms of governance, the head-on conflict about private vs. public ownership w.r.t the means of production has its clearest and most basic manifestation in the issue of the ownership of land. The reason I have been compelled to go back to terms I first read in the 9th standard economics textbook is the recent spate of land acquisition by the various state governments to develop SEZs as part of the 'reforms' process and the Singur controversy in particular.
The West Bengal government has used 'eminent domain' to get part of the 1000-odd acres that they have acquired for the Tata Motors plant at Singur, while mouthing the official line of 'We are trying to get consent'. They're also in the process of similiarly acquiring some 19,200 acres of land in Nandigram for an SEZ. Without delving into the political gimmickry surrounding both these acquisitions, the core issue on hand is something that is extremely fundamental to the basic model of governance, economic and otherwise, that a nation or a government adopts.
Simply put, eminent domain is the right of the government to forcibly acquire land from its current owners or residents (I say residents because ownership can be a very tricky thing) at a price that it deems fit, if they refuse to sell it to the government. It has traditionally been used for projects that involve infrastructural development, the Sardar Sarovar project on the Narmada being a classic exmaple. The most common moral rationale given for such acquisition is 'greater common good', a term that is viewed, often rightly, with huge skepticism by liberal intelectuals.
Working under the assumption that no one in their right mind supports a collectivist approach to land ownership, it is fascinating to examine the two basic approachs that remain, one that of liberal free-market capitalism and the other a more sitting-on-the-fence centrist approach that tries to find the middle ground. A libertarian viewpoint would put individual property rights above anything else, and argue that governance that is based on any sense of a unit that is more of a 'community' than an individual is bound to be subjective, hypocritical and open to flagrant abuse by the authorities and those close to them. While such a stand seems absolutely logical theoretically, it also reeks of moral grandstanding. A call of 'only private property' is fundamentally not very different from 'no private property' in its ideological absolutism. Transport, drinking water, etc. are integral to basic national infrastructure and it is the job of a government, even in a libertarian set-up, to provide for them. Railroads have to be built, roads have to built, dams have to be created. Some land will be required, some areas will be submerged, and some people will have to move. Ofcourse, it would be brilliant if the transaction happened through a proper consensual sale, but that is a truism, lets tackle the areas that are contentious. If you will criticise the government for acquiring land inspite of its residents' unwillingnes, and criticise the government for not doing enough for the infrastructure if it doesn't do so, and criticise it for wasting the taxpayers' money if it tries to find the middle ground by opting for an economically less viable project that goes through previously uninhabited land, you really do not leave the government with any choice, and are not helping the situation at all. Eminent domain has a purpose, and it must exist.
The concept of 'greater common good' also does exist, but is nearly impossible to formalise. I have been told that its currently accepted definition is 'benefit whoever you want to, but do not degrade the existing standard of life of those you are affecting'. Cultural and emotional issues notwithstanding, 'do not degrade' would simply mean adequate compensation. Even assuming that there do exist correct formal methods of determining 'adequate compensation', the beautiful definition quoted above is, like most such beautiful definitions, a convenient truism. What if basic amenities to 50 people can be provided only by degrading the standard of life of some other 5? Should the government go ahead? What if the numbers are more evenly balanced, say 50 against 40? Should the government go ahead now?
Coming back to Singur, it is easy to see that the primary reason for the controversy is the fact that Tata Motors is a private enterprise and hence the use of eminent domain for land for the 'Rs 1 Lakh car' factory just cannot be viewed at par with its use for land for say, railway tracks. What makes the situation truly scandalous is the fact that the government has a monopoly on the sale of agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes, which basically means that the farmers in Singur cannot sell their land to Tata directly, even if Tata was offering them a briliant deal, but Tata Motors can always lobby with the government and hence get the land at any rate that the government decides. This monopoly over the market for agricultural land was part of the land reforms carried out by successive state and national governments, in continuation with the abolition of the Zamindari system. The rationale is simple to see, the government didn't want the Zamindar to scoot after booking his profits by seling the land that was tilled by others but owned by him. The opposing rationale is simpler to see, and is far more convincing. The presence of government as the monopolistic intermediary increases the number of transactions points, the number of vested interests, the number of rent-seekers and those who make a 'cut' and is a stark example of a legislation that breeds crony capitalism instead of the intended socialist democracy. It is a classic demonstration of the fact that the tools that are required by a collectivist government to take from the rich and give to the poor are the exact same tools required to take from the poor and give to the rich. The rationale behind land reforms, however cannot be faulted as a whole. A defence of private property rights is not an adequate argument for the rights of the 'Zamindars' and the Zamindari system had to be abolished. Like so many things however, land reforms in India have been carried out insufficiently, indiscriminately and with the use of heavy handed statist legislation instead of a judicious centrist balance.
The inherent problem with the centrist approach that I take is that it can be easily accused of hypocrisy and subjectivity unless a specific concrete model outlining the basic points of balance is presented. Here goes then, my set of conclusions.
1) Eminent domain must stay. It must however, be used only in government projects that can be counted as integral to the basic national infrastructure and nation-building. The dam on Narmada should have been built, else large parts of Saurashtra may have never recieved clean drinking water. However, the Tata Motors plant in Singur, irrespective of the revenue or the employment that it will generate, cannot be counted as integral to public infrastructure and the state or the national government should have nothing to do with land acquisition for the same.
2) The government monopoly on the sale of agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes must go. If Tata Motors has to lobby with someone to acquire land at Singur, it should be the villagers or the Gram Panchayat directly. The compensation deal, in terms of money/employment/education/whatever should be directly between the company and the farmers, and if the farmers still refuse, the company must search elsewhere instead of asking the government to play mai-baap.
3) Atleast some part of the relief and rehabilitation work in any project where the government does use eminent domain must precede the work done by the government for the project itself.
4) SEZs are a sham. If a rule has to be relaxed for the economy to prosper, there is no reason why it must be relaxed only in a particular area and only for those companies that are big enough to manage to get land in those areas. If the reform process has to be gradual or humane(whatever that means), the relaxation of the rules may be more gradual in pace, but whenever implemented, it must be implemented for the entire nation at a go. A couple of days ago, the PM said something to the effect of 'the government will acquire land aggressively to force the pace of industrialisation'. Mr Prime Minister, reforms are about removing the stumbling blocks in the setting up of private enterprise, not about 'forcing the pace of industrialisation' which is simply Stalin-talk thinly veiled as a proactive approach to reforms. The Soviet Union was also highly industrialized and also showed aggregate increase in economic prosperity. Government backed land acquisition for private players, while seemingly different from dirigiste practices, is actually very similiar. The spoils will simply be shared by the government and a handful of big private players, instead of only the government, as was the case in USSR.
Post conclusions, as a loosely related aside, it is also very interesting, if cynicism-inducing, to notice that even in those cases where the land acquisition does not happen through the government, the basic element of coercion is ever-present. Say a large company wants to develop a large xx.yy lakh square feet mall in a city that it has previously no operations in and ties up with a local player to acquire land for the same. From first-hand knowledge, I can tell you that most of these local players are nothing but local real estate mafia and the 'acquisition' is a straightforward case of bullying and threatening and violence that is at times lethal. Ofcourse, I can also tell you that the people who are already present on many of these lands are also simply closely-knit communities of strong-men with various day jobs (the Bharwads in Gujarat, for eg.) who have no real claim to the land that they are occupying. Ownership, like I said, can be a very tricky thing.Reminds me of something that Mark Twain said - 'No individual or nation occupies a piece of land that was not once stolen'.
The West Bengal government has used 'eminent domain' to get part of the 1000-odd acres that they have acquired for the Tata Motors plant at Singur, while mouthing the official line of 'We are trying to get consent'. They're also in the process of similiarly acquiring some 19,200 acres of land in Nandigram for an SEZ. Without delving into the political gimmickry surrounding both these acquisitions, the core issue on hand is something that is extremely fundamental to the basic model of governance, economic and otherwise, that a nation or a government adopts.
Simply put, eminent domain is the right of the government to forcibly acquire land from its current owners or residents (I say residents because ownership can be a very tricky thing) at a price that it deems fit, if they refuse to sell it to the government. It has traditionally been used for projects that involve infrastructural development, the Sardar Sarovar project on the Narmada being a classic exmaple. The most common moral rationale given for such acquisition is 'greater common good', a term that is viewed, often rightly, with huge skepticism by liberal intelectuals.
Working under the assumption that no one in their right mind supports a collectivist approach to land ownership, it is fascinating to examine the two basic approachs that remain, one that of liberal free-market capitalism and the other a more sitting-on-the-fence centrist approach that tries to find the middle ground. A libertarian viewpoint would put individual property rights above anything else, and argue that governance that is based on any sense of a unit that is more of a 'community' than an individual is bound to be subjective, hypocritical and open to flagrant abuse by the authorities and those close to them. While such a stand seems absolutely logical theoretically, it also reeks of moral grandstanding. A call of 'only private property' is fundamentally not very different from 'no private property' in its ideological absolutism. Transport, drinking water, etc. are integral to basic national infrastructure and it is the job of a government, even in a libertarian set-up, to provide for them. Railroads have to be built, roads have to built, dams have to be created. Some land will be required, some areas will be submerged, and some people will have to move. Ofcourse, it would be brilliant if the transaction happened through a proper consensual sale, but that is a truism, lets tackle the areas that are contentious. If you will criticise the government for acquiring land inspite of its residents' unwillingnes, and criticise the government for not doing enough for the infrastructure if it doesn't do so, and criticise it for wasting the taxpayers' money if it tries to find the middle ground by opting for an economically less viable project that goes through previously uninhabited land, you really do not leave the government with any choice, and are not helping the situation at all. Eminent domain has a purpose, and it must exist.
The concept of 'greater common good' also does exist, but is nearly impossible to formalise. I have been told that its currently accepted definition is 'benefit whoever you want to, but do not degrade the existing standard of life of those you are affecting'. Cultural and emotional issues notwithstanding, 'do not degrade' would simply mean adequate compensation. Even assuming that there do exist correct formal methods of determining 'adequate compensation', the beautiful definition quoted above is, like most such beautiful definitions, a convenient truism. What if basic amenities to 50 people can be provided only by degrading the standard of life of some other 5? Should the government go ahead? What if the numbers are more evenly balanced, say 50 against 40? Should the government go ahead now?
Coming back to Singur, it is easy to see that the primary reason for the controversy is the fact that Tata Motors is a private enterprise and hence the use of eminent domain for land for the 'Rs 1 Lakh car' factory just cannot be viewed at par with its use for land for say, railway tracks. What makes the situation truly scandalous is the fact that the government has a monopoly on the sale of agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes, which basically means that the farmers in Singur cannot sell their land to Tata directly, even if Tata was offering them a briliant deal, but Tata Motors can always lobby with the government and hence get the land at any rate that the government decides. This monopoly over the market for agricultural land was part of the land reforms carried out by successive state and national governments, in continuation with the abolition of the Zamindari system. The rationale is simple to see, the government didn't want the Zamindar to scoot after booking his profits by seling the land that was tilled by others but owned by him. The opposing rationale is simpler to see, and is far more convincing. The presence of government as the monopolistic intermediary increases the number of transactions points, the number of vested interests, the number of rent-seekers and those who make a 'cut' and is a stark example of a legislation that breeds crony capitalism instead of the intended socialist democracy. It is a classic demonstration of the fact that the tools that are required by a collectivist government to take from the rich and give to the poor are the exact same tools required to take from the poor and give to the rich. The rationale behind land reforms, however cannot be faulted as a whole. A defence of private property rights is not an adequate argument for the rights of the 'Zamindars' and the Zamindari system had to be abolished. Like so many things however, land reforms in India have been carried out insufficiently, indiscriminately and with the use of heavy handed statist legislation instead of a judicious centrist balance.
The inherent problem with the centrist approach that I take is that it can be easily accused of hypocrisy and subjectivity unless a specific concrete model outlining the basic points of balance is presented. Here goes then, my set of conclusions.
1) Eminent domain must stay. It must however, be used only in government projects that can be counted as integral to the basic national infrastructure and nation-building. The dam on Narmada should have been built, else large parts of Saurashtra may have never recieved clean drinking water. However, the Tata Motors plant in Singur, irrespective of the revenue or the employment that it will generate, cannot be counted as integral to public infrastructure and the state or the national government should have nothing to do with land acquisition for the same.
2) The government monopoly on the sale of agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes must go. If Tata Motors has to lobby with someone to acquire land at Singur, it should be the villagers or the Gram Panchayat directly. The compensation deal, in terms of money/employment/education/whatever should be directly between the company and the farmers, and if the farmers still refuse, the company must search elsewhere instead of asking the government to play mai-baap.
3) Atleast some part of the relief and rehabilitation work in any project where the government does use eminent domain must precede the work done by the government for the project itself.
4) SEZs are a sham. If a rule has to be relaxed for the economy to prosper, there is no reason why it must be relaxed only in a particular area and only for those companies that are big enough to manage to get land in those areas. If the reform process has to be gradual or humane(whatever that means), the relaxation of the rules may be more gradual in pace, but whenever implemented, it must be implemented for the entire nation at a go. A couple of days ago, the PM said something to the effect of 'the government will acquire land aggressively to force the pace of industrialisation'. Mr Prime Minister, reforms are about removing the stumbling blocks in the setting up of private enterprise, not about 'forcing the pace of industrialisation' which is simply Stalin-talk thinly veiled as a proactive approach to reforms. The Soviet Union was also highly industrialized and also showed aggregate increase in economic prosperity. Government backed land acquisition for private players, while seemingly different from dirigiste practices, is actually very similiar. The spoils will simply be shared by the government and a handful of big private players, instead of only the government, as was the case in USSR.
Post conclusions, as a loosely related aside, it is also very interesting, if cynicism-inducing, to notice that even in those cases where the land acquisition does not happen through the government, the basic element of coercion is ever-present. Say a large company wants to develop a large xx.yy lakh square feet mall in a city that it has previously no operations in and ties up with a local player to acquire land for the same. From first-hand knowledge, I can tell you that most of these local players are nothing but local real estate mafia and the 'acquisition' is a straightforward case of bullying and threatening and violence that is at times lethal. Ofcourse, I can also tell you that the people who are already present on many of these lands are also simply closely-knit communities of strong-men with various day jobs (the Bharwads in Gujarat, for eg.) who have no real claim to the land that they are occupying. Ownership, like I said, can be a very tricky thing.Reminds me of something that Mark Twain said - 'No individual or nation occupies a piece of land that was not once stolen'.
Monday, October 30, 2006
Fundas & Gyaan 1 - Relationships etc.
Its probably quite presumptuous to sit down and write a lengthy exegesis on, of all thing, relationships at the ripe old age of 21. But this is a world where 4th year engineering students from IIT write crappy novels on first love and what not and get published by renowned houses and such stinking pseudo-philosophical gibberish-givers(multiple alliterations!!, I''m on a roll bayybee, now where's my Pulitzer) as Deepak Chopra and Robin Sharma are world renowned authors. So, I guess, I can indulge in my favourite activity of pouring gyaan to anyone who bothers to read. The earlier plan was to preserve all this gyaan till the age of 40-45 and then find an alternative career as a writer to have that second source of income which will ensure that cosy post-retirement nest egg. However, altruist that I am, I have chosen to let go of whatever little shred of materialism I was left with and reveal the eternal wisdom of the universe through a free medium. Come one, come all, and be enlightened.
Inspiration for this post has been provided, apart from my own experiences and observations, by the endless discussions about 'all this stuff' with friends/peers and an ever-present and ever-growing disdain for the available literature on the issue. Yes, John Gray & India Today, I'm looking at you guys. 'Women use sex to fulfill their emotional needs, men use emotions to fulfill their sexual needs' 'This is the age of instant relationships' etc etc. Bleh. How disappointingly simplistic and deterministic, and most importantly, not validated in any strong measure by personal experience. We live in a changing society and often have to juxtapose our upbringing and social conditioning with the waves and undercurrents of newer experiences and influences, to determine and define our own niches on the socio-emotional spectrum. And at all such times, we also feel the push and pull of something more primordial, more natural and more universal, which is our biological hard-wiring. This post is probably just an attempt at carving out and stating my own niche and understanding other such niches around me.
I tend to have a very live and let live approach towards pre-marital sex/live-in relations/casual sex/ one-night stand/whatever, though qualified with a few riders.(what riders?!?! A closet fascist and moral policeman under the guise of a bleeding-heart liberal??...Naah, hang on, read on.) It doesn't matter to me what anyone thinks or does, just as it shouldn't matter to them what I do or think, but it does matter to your partner what you do/think, and vice-versa. This seems like the most obvious thing in the world, and yet if people were to actually take into account this very simple obvious fact, we would have seen lesser odes to the goddess of discord. So here goes, after much introductory rambling, my take on all things great and small.
1. Like I said, I'm not judgemental about anyone's personal sexual/emotional morality. I am, however, judgemental about lack of emotional clarity. There's nothing wrong with being committed, there's nothing wrong with being casual, but there is something very wrong with not knowing and letting the other person know if one is casual/committed, and more importantly in not knowing if it is actually possible for one to be casual at all. Personally, I find it impossible to delineate physical and emotional intimacy, and most people I know think/feel along the same lines(which may not be very surprising .......upper middle class Metallica-loving, cricket-worshipping, short haired engineers tend to have rather homogenous friends and social circles, namely, other upper middle class Metallica-loving, cricket-worshipping, short-haired engineers). However, recent research seems to suggest that there may be some biological basis to this. Apparently, sex (and I suspect any romantic physical intimacy) releases neurochemicals that cause feelings of obsessive emotional attachment. Our biological hard-wiring is indeed funny. We are programmed to be promiscuous, and also to be jealous. Among all primates, we have the highest sex-drive barring chimpanzees, and yet it seems we(or atleast, most of us) can't be casual about sex. In the current context, what that means is that basically, we are hard-wired to create recipes for almost sureshot emotional disasters. Which is why it is important to think, to know and to express. People who are not clear about what they want or what they are ready to give, end up causing a lot of emotional damage to themselves, and worse, to others involved with them. And that is something I do not condone. And yes, very often the only way to reach a level of emotional clarity is to be in various relationships with people who make us realise different things about ourselves. Once, twice, maybe even a few times, (if you started early that is). But I believe that by about the time people graduate from college, in their early twenties, they have no excuse for not knowing what they want from a person and a relationship.
2. Of course, there is only so much that one can foresee and control. As a relationship progresses, people grow and mature differently and this may create incompatibilities that didn't even exist earlier. The uncertainity involved with feelings of intense passion is often one of the most charming things about these feelings. Yet, it is easy to avoid experiencing/causing a lot of heartburn by the simple act of thinking thoroughly, atleast once, before doing something.
3. Then there is the issue of people with numerous liasions and the much talked about stud/slut dichotomy(this word has to be used atleast once in every post of mine). Now I've never been a victim to that particular line of thinking, partly because I've seen enough guys with the 'if she's out of your reach, she's a bitch' mentality to be disgusted by it very early in my life, and partly because the adding-notches-on-the bedpost, scratching-numbers-in-the-locker 'stud' has never been any sort of male ideal for me. However, irrespective of gender, I have noticed that people who flit from one relationship to another and who seem to just not be able to remain relationship-less, have one or more of the following three things in common - a high degree of physical attractiveness(which is commendable), lack of emotional clarity(already dealt with), and excessive emotional neediness. I have also noticed that people who are more emotionally needy are more likely to straddle either or both of the extremes of unreasonable demands on one hand, and absolutely submissive behaviour on the other. Emotionally self-sufficient people are more likely to be close without being clingy. So if someone has been with a lot of people, that per se is fine by me, but it may indicate one of the above-mentioned things, which is going to set a few alarm bells ringing in my head, and which is probably why it also sets alarm bells ringing in other people's heads.
4. Finally, what about the whole deal of playing the field, weighing all options, considering other alternatives/people? I tend to look at it this way - say a person X has been with 10 people Y1 to Y10, and finally commits to and settles down with Y10. Does it mean that that is necessarily a better choice than setlling down with Y1 or Y2? Does it imply that Y10 is better suited/matched with X? Not really, it may very simply mean that X was at a very different point of time in his/her life when Y10 came along, much more ready to compromise and to commit. Some people are ready to commit for life at 20, some are commitment-phobic even at 35, neither is unjustified as long as they know what they're doing. Of course, many young people in the intense throes of passion in their late teens/ early twenties feel their first 'love' is going to last a lifetime, and we all know just how right these peolpe are. All I mean is, there is no automatic lower bound or no automatic upper-bound to commit, the only guiding principles are the legal permissible age of adulthood and security in life, on the lower side, and perhaps health factors on the upper side.
Long, pedantic discourse draws to an end, and yet a list of aphorisms are as yet unmentioned! Maybe, some other time.
Inspiration for this post has been provided, apart from my own experiences and observations, by the endless discussions about 'all this stuff' with friends/peers and an ever-present and ever-growing disdain for the available literature on the issue. Yes, John Gray & India Today, I'm looking at you guys. 'Women use sex to fulfill their emotional needs, men use emotions to fulfill their sexual needs' 'This is the age of instant relationships' etc etc. Bleh. How disappointingly simplistic and deterministic, and most importantly, not validated in any strong measure by personal experience. We live in a changing society and often have to juxtapose our upbringing and social conditioning with the waves and undercurrents of newer experiences and influences, to determine and define our own niches on the socio-emotional spectrum. And at all such times, we also feel the push and pull of something more primordial, more natural and more universal, which is our biological hard-wiring. This post is probably just an attempt at carving out and stating my own niche and understanding other such niches around me.
I tend to have a very live and let live approach towards pre-marital sex/live-in relations/casual sex/ one-night stand/whatever, though qualified with a few riders.(what riders?!?! A closet fascist and moral policeman under the guise of a bleeding-heart liberal??...Naah, hang on, read on.) It doesn't matter to me what anyone thinks or does, just as it shouldn't matter to them what I do or think, but it does matter to your partner what you do/think, and vice-versa. This seems like the most obvious thing in the world, and yet if people were to actually take into account this very simple obvious fact, we would have seen lesser odes to the goddess of discord. So here goes, after much introductory rambling, my take on all things great and small.
1. Like I said, I'm not judgemental about anyone's personal sexual/emotional morality. I am, however, judgemental about lack of emotional clarity. There's nothing wrong with being committed, there's nothing wrong with being casual, but there is something very wrong with not knowing and letting the other person know if one is casual/committed, and more importantly in not knowing if it is actually possible for one to be casual at all. Personally, I find it impossible to delineate physical and emotional intimacy, and most people I know think/feel along the same lines(which may not be very surprising .......upper middle class Metallica-loving, cricket-worshipping, short haired engineers tend to have rather homogenous friends and social circles, namely, other upper middle class Metallica-loving, cricket-worshipping, short-haired engineers). However, recent research seems to suggest that there may be some biological basis to this. Apparently, sex (and I suspect any romantic physical intimacy) releases neurochemicals that cause feelings of obsessive emotional attachment. Our biological hard-wiring is indeed funny. We are programmed to be promiscuous, and also to be jealous. Among all primates, we have the highest sex-drive barring chimpanzees, and yet it seems we(or atleast, most of us) can't be casual about sex. In the current context, what that means is that basically, we are hard-wired to create recipes for almost sureshot emotional disasters. Which is why it is important to think, to know and to express. People who are not clear about what they want or what they are ready to give, end up causing a lot of emotional damage to themselves, and worse, to others involved with them. And that is something I do not condone. And yes, very often the only way to reach a level of emotional clarity is to be in various relationships with people who make us realise different things about ourselves. Once, twice, maybe even a few times, (if you started early that is). But I believe that by about the time people graduate from college, in their early twenties, they have no excuse for not knowing what they want from a person and a relationship.
2. Of course, there is only so much that one can foresee and control. As a relationship progresses, people grow and mature differently and this may create incompatibilities that didn't even exist earlier. The uncertainity involved with feelings of intense passion is often one of the most charming things about these feelings. Yet, it is easy to avoid experiencing/causing a lot of heartburn by the simple act of thinking thoroughly, atleast once, before doing something.
3. Then there is the issue of people with numerous liasions and the much talked about stud/slut dichotomy(this word has to be used atleast once in every post of mine). Now I've never been a victim to that particular line of thinking, partly because I've seen enough guys with the 'if she's out of your reach, she's a bitch' mentality to be disgusted by it very early in my life, and partly because the adding-notches-on-the bedpost, scratching-numbers-in-the-locker 'stud' has never been any sort of male ideal for me. However, irrespective of gender, I have noticed that people who flit from one relationship to another and who seem to just not be able to remain relationship-less, have one or more of the following three things in common - a high degree of physical attractiveness(which is commendable), lack of emotional clarity(already dealt with), and excessive emotional neediness. I have also noticed that people who are more emotionally needy are more likely to straddle either or both of the extremes of unreasonable demands on one hand, and absolutely submissive behaviour on the other. Emotionally self-sufficient people are more likely to be close without being clingy. So if someone has been with a lot of people, that per se is fine by me, but it may indicate one of the above-mentioned things, which is going to set a few alarm bells ringing in my head, and which is probably why it also sets alarm bells ringing in other people's heads.
4. Finally, what about the whole deal of playing the field, weighing all options, considering other alternatives/people? I tend to look at it this way - say a person X has been with 10 people Y1 to Y10, and finally commits to and settles down with Y10. Does it mean that that is necessarily a better choice than setlling down with Y1 or Y2? Does it imply that Y10 is better suited/matched with X? Not really, it may very simply mean that X was at a very different point of time in his/her life when Y10 came along, much more ready to compromise and to commit. Some people are ready to commit for life at 20, some are commitment-phobic even at 35, neither is unjustified as long as they know what they're doing. Of course, many young people in the intense throes of passion in their late teens/ early twenties feel their first 'love' is going to last a lifetime, and we all know just how right these peolpe are. All I mean is, there is no automatic lower bound or no automatic upper-bound to commit, the only guiding principles are the legal permissible age of adulthood and security in life, on the lower side, and perhaps health factors on the upper side.
Long, pedantic discourse draws to an end, and yet a list of aphorisms are as yet unmentioned! Maybe, some other time.
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
All Apologies
College, exams and then an extended bout of laziness have meant a sabbatical of nearly three and a half months. So, to my dedicated readers (a total of less than 10, at last count, yet they deserve my apologies), I'm sorry. And hopefully, I'm back in the game.
Sunday, February 26, 2006
Of Talent & Hard Work
Oh, another one of those dichotomies(I am getting smitten by this word lately). When people talk about success and the qualities needed to succeed, a number of words are used almost interchangeably - talent, aptitude, skill etc. Each one of those is usually contrasted with the other qualities needed to succeed - grit, labour, determination,etc. The point is, do we ever try to tackle this line of thought in terms that are anything beyond the cliched and self-defeatingly general observations like - 'talented people will do well no matter what' and 'hard work will win the day even if you are not so talented'. I perhaps have no new insights to offer myself, but in this post I will attempt to clear the muddle somewhat, atleast to my own satisfaction. It will probably be interesting for those who know me well because a significant part of my life as a young adult has been a classic case in the gap between what is and what could have been. This blog, and the thought process that led to it, has been inspired, inter alia, by
1. The classic nature vs nurture argument.
2. The overwhelming observation that a huge number of people study, and end up doing what they believe they are not inherently good at, and the equally overwhelming observation that a huge number of people have done brilliantly for themselves , and for the society, doing things that no one thought they were good at.
3. On-off public/private debates about the merits of examinations as true measures of talent.
4. A discussion with a friend, about a year ago, about the difference between skill & talent with refrence to Frank Lampard's meteoric rise to form for England & Chelsea last year.
To begin with, let's first state what seems like the most obvious thing - to succeed in any field, endeavour, education or sport, one needs a set of skills. Successful people are those who are more skilled at what they do than others. This general observation has a lot of underlying implications.
1. Examinations cannot, and should not, measure talent, for they are not supposed to. They are measures of skill, and in the sense that an examination is supposed to artificially measure the chances of a person's success in his/her chosen line of study/work, examinations cannot be faulted as a whole. It is possible to debate individual examination systems, to see if they are really testing the skills that they are supposed to test, but these are localised discussions and it is futile to think along the lines of 'exams are useless'. If some genuinely insightful researcher was to develop an indigenous way of testing aptitude in a specific field, I may still give it a rethink, but as every student worth his salt knows, there are ways to ace any of the existing popular aptitude tests(and thats not very wrong - if a person is resourceful enough to figure out how to maximize success in an aptitude test, he probably has it in him to figure out how to maximize success in a real life situation).
2. The word talent needs defining, and in light of the above observation, it can be defined as 'the ease with which you acquire the skills that you need to'. Which is to say, A is more talented than B if he(pardon my constant use of the male third-person pronoun. I am not sexist, I am just used to the old school of writing. I am trying to change, though.) can acquire an equivalent set of skills with lesser effort, and correspondingly become more skilled with the same amount of effort. Effort can, by and large, be measured with the simple metric of time. If you need 6 hours to perfect your cover drive while I need 12, you are a more talented batsman than I am.
3. This is probably the only genuinely new thing I have to offer - I assert that it is near impossible to compare the intrinsic talent level of two people, especially w.r.t sporting celebrities, unless you have personal experience with both of them or have access to some insightful observations made by someone who is analytical and has observed both of them closely. We can compare our classmates based on their academic talent with some reasonable degree of accuracy, because we work with them day in and day out. However, when we say something like 'Saurav Ganguly is more talented than Rahul Dravid' most of the times we just mean that the former is more flamboyant/stylish and scores at a quicker rate. We have no way of ourselves determining how much effort went behind developing each one of those seemingly 'effortless' cover drives that Dada played(atleast in his prime), and consequently must not, unless informed by suitably knowledgeable sources, indulge ourselves in such mind-numbingly simple generalizations as 'Ganguly is talented but not hard-working and Dravid is hardworking but not so talented' (ok, now that Chappell says that Saurav is actually a lazy bum, what do I know, maybe our generalizations were correct after all ;) )
4. Some kinds of talent are easy to spot and identify with certainity, even for the casual observer. Two stereotypes spring to my mind - the precocious and the outrageous. Examples are easy to find in the sporting world, and elsewhere.
Precocious - SachinTendulkar debuted for India with flying colours when he was 16, and Pele scored in a World Cup semifinal with a scissor's kick when he was 17.
Outrageous - On a good day, VVS Laxman picks up short of length deliveries outside the offstump and consistently flicks them through midwicket. Maradona once famously scored a goal against England in the '86 World Cup, starting from his own half, dodging and dribbling past five burly Englishmen and making Peter Shilton look like an absolute idiot(and as is often forgotten, did a near replay of that goal when he scored against Belgium in the next match).
It is, however, important to note that the youngest debutantes seldom make the best players of their generation. Also, sportsmen who do things on the field that their peers don't even think of doing are usually not those who win most matches for their country. There are a few notable exceptions, and they only serve to prove the rule.
5. Talent, or intelligence are not static quantities. Interest whets aptitude, aptitude whets interest, and hard work whets them both. If you believe that you are not mathematically gifted, but resolve to work hard at it anyway, there are very good chances that not only will you become skilled at what you are currently learning in maths, but you will also be more receptive and intuitive about any further topics that you will learn later. According to Darwinian analysis, you may not have actually increased your natural capability, just awakened some latent genes, but for all practical purposes, from a macro, society point of view, your talent level has increased. (And so Divs, Lampard might have plainly become more skilled, or gloriously, more talented - we will not know. The only thing that we can say for sure is that he must have worked his ass off.)
6. Only if you set your sights at stratospheric levels of achievement in your chosen field does your natural talent level assume make or break significance. Do get expert opinion before you latch on to a career plan of 'I want to be a nuclear physicist at Stanford's particle accelerator labaratory' or 'I want to play Test cricket for India'. For most people though, and in most professions, a medium level of natural ability is enough and doesn't set an automatic upper bound on what you may achieve through your efforts. Amazingly and amusingly, this works out just as well for someone who is in a career that may not have been her(see, I'm improving!) first choice as for someone else who is trying to pursue her dream, only to find that she may not have genuine natural ability in her field of choice.
7. Neither of the above two points are supposed to imply that we must all then just accept the first decent thing that comes our way and then keep pushing hard, without thinking in terms of 'do I really like what I do?'. There are two reasons for this. First, quite a few people have a genuine lack of natural ability, as well as disinterest in what they are doing. They will then fall into the lack of interest-lack of ability- lack of effort vicious cycle and it is a must to avoid this. Second, and more importantly, to lead a fruitful and fulfilling life, one must at all times try to create the corresponding virtuous cycle, one of interest-talent-hard work. For this it is important to introspect, analyse, confer and maybe get professional advice.
Phew, that was a long one.
Random assertion - Quentin Tarantino is the most over-rated director in the history of Hollywood. He may not be bad per se, but no one as under-achieving has ever headed a Cannes jury. I couldn't sit through one hour of the cult classic Pulp Fiction. I like John Travolta, am not too fond of Samuel Jackson. But, either of them walking on a Saturday Night Fever hangover and mouthing 'F***ing M*****f***er, I will chop your balls off, F***ing M*****f***er' is not my idea of good cinema. And as for Kill Bill, watch out for a review sometime in the future.
1. The classic nature vs nurture argument.
2. The overwhelming observation that a huge number of people study, and end up doing what they believe they are not inherently good at, and the equally overwhelming observation that a huge number of people have done brilliantly for themselves , and for the society, doing things that no one thought they were good at.
3. On-off public/private debates about the merits of examinations as true measures of talent.
4. A discussion with a friend, about a year ago, about the difference between skill & talent with refrence to Frank Lampard's meteoric rise to form for England & Chelsea last year.
To begin with, let's first state what seems like the most obvious thing - to succeed in any field, endeavour, education or sport, one needs a set of skills. Successful people are those who are more skilled at what they do than others. This general observation has a lot of underlying implications.
1. Examinations cannot, and should not, measure talent, for they are not supposed to. They are measures of skill, and in the sense that an examination is supposed to artificially measure the chances of a person's success in his/her chosen line of study/work, examinations cannot be faulted as a whole. It is possible to debate individual examination systems, to see if they are really testing the skills that they are supposed to test, but these are localised discussions and it is futile to think along the lines of 'exams are useless'. If some genuinely insightful researcher was to develop an indigenous way of testing aptitude in a specific field, I may still give it a rethink, but as every student worth his salt knows, there are ways to ace any of the existing popular aptitude tests(and thats not very wrong - if a person is resourceful enough to figure out how to maximize success in an aptitude test, he probably has it in him to figure out how to maximize success in a real life situation).
2. The word talent needs defining, and in light of the above observation, it can be defined as 'the ease with which you acquire the skills that you need to'. Which is to say, A is more talented than B if he(pardon my constant use of the male third-person pronoun. I am not sexist, I am just used to the old school of writing. I am trying to change, though.) can acquire an equivalent set of skills with lesser effort, and correspondingly become more skilled with the same amount of effort. Effort can, by and large, be measured with the simple metric of time. If you need 6 hours to perfect your cover drive while I need 12, you are a more talented batsman than I am.
3. This is probably the only genuinely new thing I have to offer - I assert that it is near impossible to compare the intrinsic talent level of two people, especially w.r.t sporting celebrities, unless you have personal experience with both of them or have access to some insightful observations made by someone who is analytical and has observed both of them closely. We can compare our classmates based on their academic talent with some reasonable degree of accuracy, because we work with them day in and day out. However, when we say something like 'Saurav Ganguly is more talented than Rahul Dravid' most of the times we just mean that the former is more flamboyant/stylish and scores at a quicker rate. We have no way of ourselves determining how much effort went behind developing each one of those seemingly 'effortless' cover drives that Dada played(atleast in his prime), and consequently must not, unless informed by suitably knowledgeable sources, indulge ourselves in such mind-numbingly simple generalizations as 'Ganguly is talented but not hard-working and Dravid is hardworking but not so talented' (ok, now that Chappell says that Saurav is actually a lazy bum, what do I know, maybe our generalizations were correct after all ;) )
4. Some kinds of talent are easy to spot and identify with certainity, even for the casual observer. Two stereotypes spring to my mind - the precocious and the outrageous. Examples are easy to find in the sporting world, and elsewhere.
Precocious - SachinTendulkar debuted for India with flying colours when he was 16, and Pele scored in a World Cup semifinal with a scissor's kick when he was 17.
Outrageous - On a good day, VVS Laxman picks up short of length deliveries outside the offstump and consistently flicks them through midwicket. Maradona once famously scored a goal against England in the '86 World Cup, starting from his own half, dodging and dribbling past five burly Englishmen and making Peter Shilton look like an absolute idiot(and as is often forgotten, did a near replay of that goal when he scored against Belgium in the next match).
It is, however, important to note that the youngest debutantes seldom make the best players of their generation. Also, sportsmen who do things on the field that their peers don't even think of doing are usually not those who win most matches for their country. There are a few notable exceptions, and they only serve to prove the rule.
5. Talent, or intelligence are not static quantities. Interest whets aptitude, aptitude whets interest, and hard work whets them both. If you believe that you are not mathematically gifted, but resolve to work hard at it anyway, there are very good chances that not only will you become skilled at what you are currently learning in maths, but you will also be more receptive and intuitive about any further topics that you will learn later. According to Darwinian analysis, you may not have actually increased your natural capability, just awakened some latent genes, but for all practical purposes, from a macro, society point of view, your talent level has increased. (And so Divs, Lampard might have plainly become more skilled, or gloriously, more talented - we will not know. The only thing that we can say for sure is that he must have worked his ass off.)
6. Only if you set your sights at stratospheric levels of achievement in your chosen field does your natural talent level assume make or break significance. Do get expert opinion before you latch on to a career plan of 'I want to be a nuclear physicist at Stanford's particle accelerator labaratory' or 'I want to play Test cricket for India'. For most people though, and in most professions, a medium level of natural ability is enough and doesn't set an automatic upper bound on what you may achieve through your efforts. Amazingly and amusingly, this works out just as well for someone who is in a career that may not have been her(see, I'm improving!) first choice as for someone else who is trying to pursue her dream, only to find that she may not have genuine natural ability in her field of choice.
7. Neither of the above two points are supposed to imply that we must all then just accept the first decent thing that comes our way and then keep pushing hard, without thinking in terms of 'do I really like what I do?'. There are two reasons for this. First, quite a few people have a genuine lack of natural ability, as well as disinterest in what they are doing. They will then fall into the lack of interest-lack of ability- lack of effort vicious cycle and it is a must to avoid this. Second, and more importantly, to lead a fruitful and fulfilling life, one must at all times try to create the corresponding virtuous cycle, one of interest-talent-hard work. For this it is important to introspect, analyse, confer and maybe get professional advice.
Phew, that was a long one.
Random assertion - Quentin Tarantino is the most over-rated director in the history of Hollywood. He may not be bad per se, but no one as under-achieving has ever headed a Cannes jury. I couldn't sit through one hour of the cult classic Pulp Fiction. I like John Travolta, am not too fond of Samuel Jackson. But, either of them walking on a Saturday Night Fever hangover and mouthing 'F***ing M*****f***er, I will chop your balls off, F***ing M*****f***er' is not my idea of good cinema. And as for Kill Bill, watch out for a review sometime in the future.
Monday, February 13, 2006
The end of imagination
No, I'm not Arundhati Roy's greatest fan. Rather, I'm quite cynical about her and others of her kind. But I do think she manages to come up with some incredibly compact phrases, which are very appropriate in the sense she uses them , as well as open ended to allow considerable intellectual and linguistic latitude for the plagiarisers. Brutality smeared in peanut butter - good. The algebra of infinite justice - brilliant.
Here, I use the title of her famous essay on India's nuclear tests to convey my own situation with regards to my blog. You see, I'm not really suited to the free-flowing spontaneous style of writing directly to the computer screen, which is what bloggers do (I assume), and I have done till now. I like my pen, and my paper, and since I'm more interested in preaching my viewpoint than in divulging personal information, writing a composite topical essay before publishing it as a blog makes more sense( which might just be a fancy way of saying that I don't have anything to write, but I still want to write right now). So for today, I will limit myself to making a couple of lists, forming some sort of a direction statement for this blog.
A list of topics I want to eventually cover in my posts ...(in no particular order)
1. The bastardization of popular culture
2. My musical credo
3. The girls I have known
4. Sex & sexuality
5. In defence of democracy
6. Crime & Justice : Capital Punishment
7. A semi-chronological history of rock music
8. Mathematics - the language of the Universe
9. Philosophy and organised religion
10. Hinduism
11. Evolution & Darwinism
12. Ancient Indian history
13. Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian National Movement
14. Education and career
14. The greatest sport on earth
15. Cricket
16. The great dilemmas of society and culture
17. The concept of a nation
18. Money and the notion of success
19. The armed forces
21. The Asian century
22. The partition of India and the Kashmir issue
23. Fate, destiny and astrology
24. God & the Final Question
A list of lists I want to make for this blog...
1. A list of topics I want to eventually cover in my posts
2. A list of lists I want to make for this blog(is this a meta-list or what)
3. A list of immortal quotations
4. Lists of the greatest scientists, mathematicians, etc.
5. A list of things I'm thankful for
6. A list of the greatest technological revolutions
7. Lists of best bands, musicians, vocalists, etc.
8. A list of things I'm cynical about
9. A list of things I can't comprehend about this world
10. A list of must - reads
Random assertion - Sushmit Sen(Indian Ocean) is the best acoustic guitarist of the world. I have seen the band in concert and most often he plays what looks like a very modified guitar, but a guitar all the same.
Random gyaan - Contrary to popular belief, the Ganga is very clean in Banaras. The cleanest, in fact of any major river I have seen in any major city/town.
Here, I use the title of her famous essay on India's nuclear tests to convey my own situation with regards to my blog. You see, I'm not really suited to the free-flowing spontaneous style of writing directly to the computer screen, which is what bloggers do (I assume), and I have done till now. I like my pen, and my paper, and since I'm more interested in preaching my viewpoint than in divulging personal information, writing a composite topical essay before publishing it as a blog makes more sense( which might just be a fancy way of saying that I don't have anything to write, but I still want to write right now). So for today, I will limit myself to making a couple of lists, forming some sort of a direction statement for this blog.
A list of topics I want to eventually cover in my posts ...(in no particular order)
1. The bastardization of popular culture
2. My musical credo
3. The girls I have known
4. Sex & sexuality
5. In defence of democracy
6. Crime & Justice : Capital Punishment
7. A semi-chronological history of rock music
8. Mathematics - the language of the Universe
9. Philosophy and organised religion
10. Hinduism
11. Evolution & Darwinism
12. Ancient Indian history
13. Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian National Movement
14. Education and career
14. The greatest sport on earth
15. Cricket
16. The great dilemmas of society and culture
17. The concept of a nation
18. Money and the notion of success
19. The armed forces
21. The Asian century
22. The partition of India and the Kashmir issue
23. Fate, destiny and astrology
24. God & the Final Question
A list of lists I want to make for this blog...
1. A list of topics I want to eventually cover in my posts
2. A list of lists I want to make for this blog(is this a meta-list or what)
3. A list of immortal quotations
4. Lists of the greatest scientists, mathematicians, etc.
5. A list of things I'm thankful for
6. A list of the greatest technological revolutions
7. Lists of best bands, musicians, vocalists, etc.
8. A list of things I'm cynical about
9. A list of things I can't comprehend about this world
10. A list of must - reads
Random assertion - Sushmit Sen(Indian Ocean) is the best acoustic guitarist of the world. I have seen the band in concert and most often he plays what looks like a very modified guitar, but a guitar all the same.
Random gyaan - Contrary to popular belief, the Ganga is very clean in Banaras. The cleanest, in fact of any major river I have seen in any major city/town.
Sunday, February 12, 2006
Rang De Basanti
So well i blabbered something about Bhagat Singh in last week's blog. And is this day and age of pop patriotism, the mind invariably veers to the recently released Rang De Basanti in that case. I thought the movie would have evoked some strong reactions(which it did). I thought people would have been ambiguous about it (which they weren't). The movie has been almost universally liked, with India Today being the lone dissenting voice in its review. Since everyone is an armchair critic, and I fancy my reviewing skills too, here goes. Ladies and gentlemen...(crash, bang, drumroll)...my first formal(if it can be called so) movie review.
My one sentence evaluation, when the movie was nearing completion, as I have often repeated to all my friends, was 'first three quarters is the best Hindi movie of the last 5 years, last quarter grates terribly, especially when put alongside the previous 2- 2.5 hours.' Rakeysh Mehra gets it spot on for the larger part of the movie. The charming everyday wit of the dialogues, the brilliant balance between the real (the canteen with the 'slap it to work' TV) and the realistically apsirational (the off-road antics, cool no?), the character sketches et al were terrific. And this is before we talk about the really wonderful aspects - the great acting by each one of the lead cast members, the consistent distribution of role and screen-time to each one of the characters, the camerawork(a recreation of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre is absolutely thrilling), the seamless transitions between the past and the present(and thus the reel and the real), and the gradual, absorbing transformation of the youngsters' attitudes. But then it comes apart. Right from when the defence minister describes the dead pilot in derogatory terms and Soha Ali Khan says the apocalyptic "Maar Do'. For some time, I thought it was probably a sequence from someone's dream or something (did they really show this bunch of guys from DU assasinating the Def. Min., did they really?!). Alas, it wasn't and the movie trapped itself in a downward spiral then onwards. Some ludicrous reels later, the movie jarrs to a halt.
There is a line of thought which says that the message of the movie makes up for the melodrama. But melodarama isn't really the problem. Life, I believe can be a lot more melodramatic than fiction, and when rightly presented melodrama makes for intensely satisfying cinema. The problem is trivialisation of a great idea, unintentionally mocking the very message that the movie sought to propagate. The first half of the movie is positively visceral in its visual and substantive content, it made me challenge my long held beliefs of evolution(as opposed to revolution) as the only method of sustainable change. That is the power of great cinema. Two hours that can rattle two decades of multi-layered thought. The final few reels though, unfotunately, make a mess of the execution of that message of revolutionary change. And by the time the excruciatingly stretched parallels between the acts (and death) of the great revolutionaries and these young rebels with a cause draws to a close, the movie fails to do requisite justice to itself, its message, and my expectations, expectations which had been raised solely due to the previous reels.
Incidentals - the music is great(duh). Personal favourites being the bass and acoustic guitar driven 'khalbali', and 'luka chhippi' , the song which comes after Madhavan's death (what lyrics). The firangs in this one can (for a change) actually act. Aamir Khan looks a lot younger than he's looked in recent times. It is surprising that the movie has yet not run into any trouble, even in the BJP-run states. Kunal Kapoor should go a long, long way.
Rating - 7/10. Yes, I use a 10 point scale. And I'm unafraid to use diffrences of half points. Those who know me will tell you that it's uncharacteristic of me to stop at a single decimal point.
Random assertion - Linkin Park is the best band to come out of the Nu-Metal era. Chester Bennington, and lyrics which seem like they took atleast some reasonable time to write are the qualities that set them apart from the poop crowd.
My one sentence evaluation, when the movie was nearing completion, as I have often repeated to all my friends, was 'first three quarters is the best Hindi movie of the last 5 years, last quarter grates terribly, especially when put alongside the previous 2- 2.5 hours.' Rakeysh Mehra gets it spot on for the larger part of the movie. The charming everyday wit of the dialogues, the brilliant balance between the real (the canteen with the 'slap it to work' TV) and the realistically apsirational (the off-road antics, cool no?), the character sketches et al were terrific. And this is before we talk about the really wonderful aspects - the great acting by each one of the lead cast members, the consistent distribution of role and screen-time to each one of the characters, the camerawork(a recreation of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre is absolutely thrilling), the seamless transitions between the past and the present(and thus the reel and the real), and the gradual, absorbing transformation of the youngsters' attitudes. But then it comes apart. Right from when the defence minister describes the dead pilot in derogatory terms and Soha Ali Khan says the apocalyptic "Maar Do'. For some time, I thought it was probably a sequence from someone's dream or something (did they really show this bunch of guys from DU assasinating the Def. Min., did they really?!). Alas, it wasn't and the movie trapped itself in a downward spiral then onwards. Some ludicrous reels later, the movie jarrs to a halt.
There is a line of thought which says that the message of the movie makes up for the melodrama. But melodarama isn't really the problem. Life, I believe can be a lot more melodramatic than fiction, and when rightly presented melodrama makes for intensely satisfying cinema. The problem is trivialisation of a great idea, unintentionally mocking the very message that the movie sought to propagate. The first half of the movie is positively visceral in its visual and substantive content, it made me challenge my long held beliefs of evolution(as opposed to revolution) as the only method of sustainable change. That is the power of great cinema. Two hours that can rattle two decades of multi-layered thought. The final few reels though, unfotunately, make a mess of the execution of that message of revolutionary change. And by the time the excruciatingly stretched parallels between the acts (and death) of the great revolutionaries and these young rebels with a cause draws to a close, the movie fails to do requisite justice to itself, its message, and my expectations, expectations which had been raised solely due to the previous reels.
Incidentals - the music is great(duh). Personal favourites being the bass and acoustic guitar driven 'khalbali', and 'luka chhippi' , the song which comes after Madhavan's death (what lyrics). The firangs in this one can (for a change) actually act. Aamir Khan looks a lot younger than he's looked in recent times. It is surprising that the movie has yet not run into any trouble, even in the BJP-run states. Kunal Kapoor should go a long, long way.
Rating - 7/10. Yes, I use a 10 point scale. And I'm unafraid to use diffrences of half points. Those who know me will tell you that it's uncharacteristic of me to stop at a single decimal point.
Random assertion - Linkin Park is the best band to come out of the Nu-Metal era. Chester Bennington, and lyrics which seem like they took atleast some reasonable time to write are the qualities that set them apart from the poop crowd.
Sunday, February 05, 2006
The Art of Negotiation
You do not need to take personnel management or HR classes in an MBA course to learn the nuances of negotiation. A 3 year old child, when she cries for something she needs but feels won't be given to her in normal circumstances has perfected one aspect of it. Everyone uses negotiation skills, almost on an hourly basis, and some do it better than others. There are people who are experts at negotiating with shopkeepers, others who stand up (or bend down, if it is so necessary) to figures of authority at just the right time, some others who may be abject failures in other aspects but are masterly at instilling fear in people who may be at a disadvantage compared to them. Some who are brilliant in the boardroom, others who are the glue that holds their family together. Very few people, if any, manage all these aspects equally well.
Modern Indian urban society, especially the youth, is very often analysed in paradoxical terms with regards to their negotiating skills. Most of the news magazines will have you believe that this is a generation of go-getters who are much better informed than their parents and clear about what they want and how to get it. Yet, I know any number of young guys, with self-made parents, who are believed to be losing the 'streetsmarts' required for 'grassroot' negotiation as they have hade it 'too easy' and the focus of the urban well-to-do society is on 'soft skills'. A lot of my daily experience bears this out too. I have had the Bihari equivalent of this phenomenon, the 'lalbabua' tag implied about me too, and I would have to agree with it in retrospect. Which is slightly surprising, for I'm also known to be an aggressive and short tempered guy among my peers(again, I would have to agree with that too).
I have always had this sneaky suspicion that a lot of what qualifies as 'streetsmart' behaviour is just a euphemism for genuinely unsocial attitudes. I also know it for a fact that many people who are experts at getting seats in a crowded train, or of undercutting the rickshaw fare will the first ones to ask for mercy or worse, escape, in case you were ever to get into a street brawl with a serious chance of getting hurt. Yet, I would like to get some of their special skills too, for the times rickshawallahs try to fleece me even though I know the correct fare for the trip even before they can say 'rate card'.
Yes, with time I have learnt how to negotiate with most categories of people. Rickshawallahs remain a confounding proposition though. Some quote the night-time fare, even going as far as to show the rate card, thinking I will not be able to read Gujarati. Others finish with a boisterous "Hum to itna hi lete hain, bas'. Others still tug at your heart strings with a 'yeh aaj ki pehle savari hai' or 'arre seth chai piyoonga'. The most confusing, and irritating situation arises when they adopt the genuinely hostile stance. Now I am not the kind to back down from a fight, but a fight is different. You go into one in the full knowledge that verbal abrasion is a minimum, and physical harm on either side may be expected. No quarters given, none asked for. Not a desirable situation, yet a simple one for it affords clarity of thought. But how do you a react to someone who is trying to bluster his way into cheating you, yet you do not want to get into anything serious because the stakes are too low, or because time is usually at a premium. Should one simply pay the correct fare and walk off, matching the guy bluster for bluster(with the possibility of a prolonged altercation ensuing after that)? Or does one agree on an in-between fare, in the knowledge that the extra 5-10 bucks mean a lot more to him?
In general, how does one react in and manage a situation, when the other party is being genuinely hostile and the focus from our own side is to not match the hostility and yet to not lose out in the ensuing transaction? The answer to this question will probably determine the amount of success one has in dealings with strangers, and finding out the golden middle is of paramount importance. It is also readily noticeable that the rickshawallah is much less likely to try his antics if there is another guy, a friend, with you. Even if this other guy is obviously less aggressive than you are. Which underlines the supreme power of sheer numbers, the tyranny of the majority. And which is why most of the well remembered social leaders in history have been mass mobilisers, instead of simply being individuals with maximum personal capability/sacrifice(part of the reason why Mahatma Gandhi is better remembered than Bhagat Singh, not that I'm questioning the individual capability of the former). But i digress, more on this some other time.
I have rambled on for too long now, and not very cohesively. Hopefully, things will be better as time progresses.
Random assertion - Slash is the best lead rock guitarist of all time. Guns N Roses sound wonderful even though the vocals can be laughably bad.
Modern Indian urban society, especially the youth, is very often analysed in paradoxical terms with regards to their negotiating skills. Most of the news magazines will have you believe that this is a generation of go-getters who are much better informed than their parents and clear about what they want and how to get it. Yet, I know any number of young guys, with self-made parents, who are believed to be losing the 'streetsmarts' required for 'grassroot' negotiation as they have hade it 'too easy' and the focus of the urban well-to-do society is on 'soft skills'. A lot of my daily experience bears this out too. I have had the Bihari equivalent of this phenomenon, the 'lalbabua' tag implied about me too, and I would have to agree with it in retrospect. Which is slightly surprising, for I'm also known to be an aggressive and short tempered guy among my peers(again, I would have to agree with that too).
I have always had this sneaky suspicion that a lot of what qualifies as 'streetsmart' behaviour is just a euphemism for genuinely unsocial attitudes. I also know it for a fact that many people who are experts at getting seats in a crowded train, or of undercutting the rickshaw fare will the first ones to ask for mercy or worse, escape, in case you were ever to get into a street brawl with a serious chance of getting hurt. Yet, I would like to get some of their special skills too, for the times rickshawallahs try to fleece me even though I know the correct fare for the trip even before they can say 'rate card'.
Yes, with time I have learnt how to negotiate with most categories of people. Rickshawallahs remain a confounding proposition though. Some quote the night-time fare, even going as far as to show the rate card, thinking I will not be able to read Gujarati. Others finish with a boisterous "Hum to itna hi lete hain, bas'. Others still tug at your heart strings with a 'yeh aaj ki pehle savari hai' or 'arre seth chai piyoonga'. The most confusing, and irritating situation arises when they adopt the genuinely hostile stance. Now I am not the kind to back down from a fight, but a fight is different. You go into one in the full knowledge that verbal abrasion is a minimum, and physical harm on either side may be expected. No quarters given, none asked for. Not a desirable situation, yet a simple one for it affords clarity of thought. But how do you a react to someone who is trying to bluster his way into cheating you, yet you do not want to get into anything serious because the stakes are too low, or because time is usually at a premium. Should one simply pay the correct fare and walk off, matching the guy bluster for bluster(with the possibility of a prolonged altercation ensuing after that)? Or does one agree on an in-between fare, in the knowledge that the extra 5-10 bucks mean a lot more to him?
In general, how does one react in and manage a situation, when the other party is being genuinely hostile and the focus from our own side is to not match the hostility and yet to not lose out in the ensuing transaction? The answer to this question will probably determine the amount of success one has in dealings with strangers, and finding out the golden middle is of paramount importance. It is also readily noticeable that the rickshawallah is much less likely to try his antics if there is another guy, a friend, with you. Even if this other guy is obviously less aggressive than you are. Which underlines the supreme power of sheer numbers, the tyranny of the majority. And which is why most of the well remembered social leaders in history have been mass mobilisers, instead of simply being individuals with maximum personal capability/sacrifice(part of the reason why Mahatma Gandhi is better remembered than Bhagat Singh, not that I'm questioning the individual capability of the former). But i digress, more on this some other time.
I have rambled on for too long now, and not very cohesively. Hopefully, things will be better as time progresses.
Random assertion - Slash is the best lead rock guitarist of all time. Guns N Roses sound wonderful even though the vocals can be laughably bad.
Saturday, February 04, 2006
Introduction - I, Me, Myself
Just the basic facts......
I am ...... Ritwik Priya
I am doing.... B.E(Computer Engineering), 3rd year, from DDU, Nadiad...for the uninitiated its a place halfway between Ahmedabad and Baroda.
I was born.....on 16th Nov 1984, at Raxaul...a small town in north Bihar at about 27 degrees North , 85 degrees E...3 km from the Nepal border and 4 km from Birganj..a place in Nepal famous for smuggling Chinese made electronic goods into India.
My native place....would according to the patriarchal system of denoting one's hometown , be Bhandari, a village in Sitamarhi district , Bihar. I have only been there twice, though.
I have stayed in....Dumra, Muzaffarpur, Vyara, Bhuj, Bariya, Rajpipla, Baroda, Surat, Singpaore, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Nadiad...not exactly nomadic, but part and parcel of your life if your father happens to be in a transferrable job. Barring the first two and the obvious, the rest are in Gujarat
I am creating this blog.....to make the internet my sounding board, and reach out with my views on everything under the sun...I have wasted far too much time brilliantly arguing my case in front of imaginary audiences...virtual space should provide some solace .
This blog will contain..... my world view , based on my experience and my readings. Rudimentary music and movie reviews may intersperse my raving and ranting.
It will not contain.... details of my everyday personal life....I am not too keen on actually befriending cyberspace...I believe in the concept of the internet transcendent rather than the internet immanent...and seriously, would you rather know what someone said to me today ...or my analysis of why people say certain things to other people in general.
Its called ...........'Of thought & action' ...because I believe that the dichotomy between those two aspects of human endeavour is fundamental yet subtle, practical yet philosophical, and very central to defining one's life, physically and metaphysically. In other words your position on the thought-action spectrum is ur raison d etre, in the atomic as well as the bigger picture.
I sign off as .....'zen babu'. The Zen signifies that I believe I'm philosophically advanced. The Babu signifies that I'm a Bihari(not as if it means a lot to me, but still). I know its a corny name, but I coudn't come up with anything better in the short time one wants to spend on registration. Feel free to suggest something better.
I will update ... on an average, about once a week.
This has been...a long blog. Pardon me, but be prepared for more. I love talking, especially about myself. Verbosity is one of my many flaws.
I am ...... Ritwik Priya
I am doing.... B.E(Computer Engineering), 3rd year, from DDU, Nadiad...for the uninitiated its a place halfway between Ahmedabad and Baroda.
I was born.....on 16th Nov 1984, at Raxaul...a small town in north Bihar at about 27 degrees North , 85 degrees E...3 km from the Nepal border and 4 km from Birganj..a place in Nepal famous for smuggling Chinese made electronic goods into India.
My native place....would according to the patriarchal system of denoting one's hometown , be Bhandari, a village in Sitamarhi district , Bihar. I have only been there twice, though.
I have stayed in....Dumra, Muzaffarpur, Vyara, Bhuj, Bariya, Rajpipla, Baroda, Surat, Singpaore, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Nadiad...not exactly nomadic, but part and parcel of your life if your father happens to be in a transferrable job. Barring the first two and the obvious, the rest are in Gujarat
I am creating this blog.....to make the internet my sounding board, and reach out with my views on everything under the sun...I have wasted far too much time brilliantly arguing my case in front of imaginary audiences...virtual space should provide some solace .
This blog will contain..... my world view , based on my experience and my readings. Rudimentary music and movie reviews may intersperse my raving and ranting.
It will not contain.... details of my everyday personal life....I am not too keen on actually befriending cyberspace...I believe in the concept of the internet transcendent rather than the internet immanent...and seriously, would you rather know what someone said to me today ...or my analysis of why people say certain things to other people in general.
Its called ...........'Of thought & action' ...because I believe that the dichotomy between those two aspects of human endeavour is fundamental yet subtle, practical yet philosophical, and very central to defining one's life, physically and metaphysically. In other words your position on the thought-action spectrum is ur raison d etre, in the atomic as well as the bigger picture.
I sign off as .....'zen babu'. The Zen signifies that I believe I'm philosophically advanced. The Babu signifies that I'm a Bihari(not as if it means a lot to me, but still). I know its a corny name, but I coudn't come up with anything better in the short time one wants to spend on registration. Feel free to suggest something better.
I will update ... on an average, about once a week.
This has been...a long blog. Pardon me, but be prepared for more. I love talking, especially about myself. Verbosity is one of my many flaws.
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