Greeks Don’t Want to Repay

In a single sentence, the title says in a nutshell what the Greek tragedy played out during the weekend attempted to convey in a diplomatic way. The Greeks don’t want to repay their debt. Period. Not only that, they are not even willing to save some money by cutting down on some of their socialist profligacy. Greeks want Europe to supply them with money to squander to their hearts’ content.

Austerity is a word anathema to Greek society. I see in Google that the word translates to litotita in Greek. Is it such a bad word in that language? I certainly don’t know. But looking back to the fate of governments that tried to implement a few of the austerity measures, I am tempted to think it is! Antonis Samaras, the 64-year old leader of the centrist New Democracy party, who was the prime minister from 2009, was successful in achieving a budget surplus in 2013 and also a triumphant return to global bond market with a decent yield of around 4.95%. Greece returned to growth after six years of economic decline in the second quarter of 2014, and was the Eurozone's fastest-growing economy in the third quarter. But he chose the path of economic reforms, austerity measures and privatization as suggested by the consortium of creditors, who were naturally averse to the debtor again going along the wasteful path. Samaras was defeated in the election held in early 2015, paving the way for the leftist Syriza party to assume office under Alexis Tsipras, who was also Greece’s youngest prime minister at 40.

Syriza forgot the cardinal axiom in democracy that it is always easier to sit in the opposition, criticizing the government left and right on every issue. Being a leftist party, their policies were naturally outdated and flawed. Unable to calibrate their ideas to the new millennium, Tsipras couldn’t stem the slow slide to disaster, when the country at last had to concede sovereign default on its payment by the end of June 2015.

Now comes the clever part in the drama. Tsipras and his team knew that their game was up. To continue to provide liquidity in Greece’s economy, he would’ve to concede exactly those measures which drove his predecessor to doom. Unwilling to take that risk, he deftly called for a national referendum to seek popular opinion on the issue. If the people voted ‘Yes’, it meant they didn’t mind imposing austerity measures, and if they voted ‘No’, that implied leaving the Eurozone and big uncertainties in the economy. During the week leading to the referendum, all banks were closed and a paltry limit was set on the amount that could be withdrawn from ATMs. Newspapers flashed images of the elderly weeping in front of teller machines apparently at their inability to withdraw pension funds. Though Tsipras asked the people to vote ‘No’, it looked as though people’s hands were forced by the strict controls on banks to vote ‘Yes’. Syriza declared that if the vote was ‘Yes’, they would relinquish power. A ‘Yes’ vote was hoped to be the escape route for the beleaguered leftists.

But alas, the Greeks were determined not to let them off the hook so soon. With a stunning 61% ‘No’ vote, they overwhelmingly supported Tsipras in his anti-austerity and anti-creditor moves. Syriza and Tsipras must continue to govern, howsoever unpleasant it might turn out to be. They lost a loophole to resign. But the finance minister had his stomach full with six months of administration. Yanis Varoufakis wanted to have no more of it. When he saw the results of the referendum, he immediately resigned, saying that his presence would hinder the dialogue with European leaders.

What would be Tsipras’ next move on the Greek chess board in which he is playing to lose and go home happily?

Doppler Shift Horn

Imagine you are strolling along a street. All of a sudden, you hear the faint siren of an ambulance in the background. With each passing moment, the intensity of the siren increases, which become more and more piercing. Then it goes past you in a whoosh and the siren shifts to a low-pitch. With the rise in pitch, you estimate the speed of the ambulance’s approach and decide in a flicker whether it would be suicidal to cross the street at that instant. What is at work here? Nothing spectacular, obviously. Every school child knows that the phenomenon pictured above is a demonstration of the ‘Doppler Effect’, which was first explained by the Austrian physicist Christian Doppler in 1842 as the apparent change in frequency of a signal caused due to the speed of movement between the source and the listener. Most of us would also have heard the physics teacher remark that police employs this method to trap speeding vehicles on the road (At this point, one of my naïve friends loudly exclaimed wonder at the cleverness of police officers!). If you bother to search this item in Wikipedia, you would find a simple mathematical formula linking the change of frequency with speed. It is really that simple.

Now, think about the reverse mechanism. What if we supply a horn with a stream of signals whose frequency is changing so fast as to invoke the sensation that a vehicle is rushing on to us at a very high speed? The utility of the horn is obvious. People would stampede on their run to be out of the way of this oncoming vehicle. Your right of way would be guaranteed. If the device is used sparingly and judiciously, the driver can find his way in any crowded street.

The new Doppler horn is not difficult to construct. With a square-wave generator whose frequency can be controlled to be in relation to the desired speed, an electronic horn can be built having sufficient amplification to produce sound loud enough to be used in automobiles. ‘Doppler Shift Horn’ might be a good name for the device.

Any takers?

Animals Can't Detect Quakes

A devastating quake has brought Nepal to its knees. 4400 people are confirmed death by now and Nepali administration fears that the toll may well exceed 10,000. Over 8 million people are affected or about a third of the total population. Being a developing state, Nepal’s infrastructure is strained almost to breaking point under the impact of this natural calamity of a scale unseen In the Himalayan state. As of now, every hand is engaged in extricating people trapped under the debris, before it’s too late. Soon, the effort will shift to reconstruct the damaged buildings. A huge amount of money will be required to put the economy back on track. The impact on tourism industry, which was one of the mainstays of Nepal, would naturally be huge as well. All reservations for the next two years might be cancelled. The country may have to start from scratch again, since it is reported that almost 80% of the ancient temples are either destroyed or heavily damaged.

As we know, Himalayas is a seismic zone inherently prone to devastating quakes like what we saw a few days back. The Indian tectonic plate pushing under the Eurasian plate is a scary reminder for people in this region. There have been no warnings this time too. Soon, hordes of astrologers and charlatans would come out to claim that they had predicted about the tremor. Unfortunately such warnings appear in media, only after the events. No human being has so far been able to forewarn his fellows about an imminent quake. Even technology is helpless as of now to make a prediction applicable to a specific period of time. How long will it take for mankind to device deep probes that sense the heart throb of the Earth?

There is another group of people who claim that they got wind of the impending disaster by the behavioral peculiarities exhibited by domestic animals. This argument is also false, but cloaked under the veneer of scientific probability. It is quite probable that a fault zone about to cause a tremor might release noise in the longer wavelengths, and hence lesser frequency. Man cannot detect sounds less than 20 Hz frequency, so he can’t hear them. But dogs and cats have the faculty to hear low frequency sounds as well. Then, isn’t it possible that the animals may be used to detect earth quakes before they actually occur?

Here, we are in a dilemma. We can’t simply reject the argument as baseless. Charlatans have an uncanny ability to exploit doubts in others to their own nefarious ends. A useful strategy to adopt here is to appeal to practical considerations. Even if we accept for argument’s sake that animals could sense tremors that are on the way, it is equally true that nobody escaped a quake by deducing it from the strange behaviour of an animal. After the event, many people ‘remember’ that their pets acted strangely, but never before it. What is the morale here? Even if the animals detect tremor signals, their behaviour is not altered or at least not changed in such a way as to attract the attention of people around them. Their masters could not detect anything extraordinary in their behavior. Isn’t it clear proof that animals can’t be used to sense earth quakes in a sensible way?

Kerala Hartal Calendar

Public life would come to a standstill on a hartal day

This post is a simple effort to serve as a guide to people from outside Kerala state who are unfortunate enough to arrive on a hartal day in Kerala. This is basically a survival guide to overcome the effects of hartal up to an extent and also provides an online schedule of planned hartals. As soon as a hartal is announced, this will be updated online, and people planning to travel to Kerala may do better to visit the hartal calendar before venturing on their journey. It is always good to postpone the trip, if at all possible. If your travel was planned much in advance, or is very important, you might have to do it anyway, whatever may be the risk. In such a case, you may read the following section.

1. Violence

Surprisingly, there is no risk of personal violence. The protesters may stop your vehicle, if you are riding in one, and may ask you to get out. If the mob is much agitated, they may smash the wind screen, but there is no chance that you will be personally injured.

2. Travel

Flights and railway are the two modes of transport which will operate without any hitch. Strikers won’t normally hinder movement of trains. So, if you can reach the railway station or airport, you can travel freely. On the other hand, all other forms of public transport will be stopped. Busses will not run, taxis will not ply, and auto rickshaws will stay off the road, for fear of their wind screens and tyres. Private transport will not be normally blocked, though many people are reluctant to take their cars on the road. Two wheelers have no restrictions. Protesters will not stop them. So, the best way to reach your destination is to hitchhike on two wheelers, who are generally helpful and would give you a free lift. But if you have heavy baggage, your options are limited. Private cars may or may not accommodate you, of course, depending on your appearance! Another option is to seek help from the Police, who might take you to your destination on one of your fortunate days.

3. Food

Food is the most difficult item to arrange on a hartal day. All restaurants will be closed. If you happen to stay in a hotel with an attached restaurant, you are safe. Otherwise, if you are on the road, there is absolutely no way to get food and drinks during forenoon in the case of dawn to dusk hartals. Eateries may function in the railway stations. It is always advisable to stock up provisions on the previous day itself. Street vendors generally open their stalls by around 2’o clock in the afternoon. Basic food items may be obtained from them. However, if you are exceedingly hungry in the morning, there is not much you can do other than begging at nearby homes.

4. Accommodation

No problem on this front. All hotels will function. If you can reach the hotel, the ‘rest’ is assured.

5. Hartal Calendar

All hartals cripple public life in Kerala, irrespective of the numerical strength of the organization calling for it. Keralites don’t want to take risks. So, don’t entertain the false hope that at least some daring trader would open his shop. Statewide hartals occur roughly about once in two months and district hartals occur more often. There are two types of hartals, one is of the lightning variety that is often called against some political violence. You would get hardly 24 hours notice in this case. Most often, the next day would be declared a hartal day. One point to remember is that no hartal would be called on Sundays and public holidays, because if you do, loss of productivity would be very minimal and the protesters naturally want to cause maximum loss to the public exchequer. The second type of hartal is called in protest against a policy of the government, such as liberalization, hike in petroleum prices, increase in insurance premium and the like. Here, the notice period would be around one week, so to say. So how would you know that a hartal is announced on the day you plan to visit Kerala?

I have started an online Kerala hartal scheduler, which will be updated as frequently as possible. You may see the schedule at TeamUp http://teamup.com/ksb4c10e215321a338/. Or, watch for shortened URL http://goo.gl/Gt9Qpn

Time’s Winged Chariot

Andrew Marvell (1621 - 1678)

Poetry is a very beautiful expression of human emotions. If I left it at that, it would have been the understatement of the year! A couplet, unexpectedly wafted by a literary wind in the form of a quote in a quite unrelated book, might set in motion in you a train of thought, and at the same time savouring the metaphysical essence of it. It is the economy of words while expressing an idea that makes poetry an unassailable foe to prose. Likewise, I stumbled upon the lines

“But at my back I always hear

Time’s winged chariot hurrying near”

as a quote in Arnold Toynbee’s ‘A Study of History’. There wasn’t any mention of the author – just the beguiling lines that invited the listener to immerse in a deep ocean of thinking at the philosophical inevitability of the subject alluded to, by the poet.

If the day was three decades prior to what it actually was, nothing would’ve happened. You would have no clue as to the poet who wrote these lines. May be learned scholars in English literature would have able to help, but most of them are out of reach of rustics like me even now. The lines would’ve forever haunted me with neither the beginning nor the end in sight. I would’ve been forever chained to the present as enunciated in those lines. But the year is 2015, the Internet has reached every corner of the country, and it was a matter of seconds to run a search in Google and coming up with 16,000 matching results! Not only the full poem, but a biography of the author is now available at your fingertips.

It was Andrew Marvell (1621 – 1678) who wrote these lines in his poem, ‘To His Coy Mistress’ around 1650. Contrary to all expectations we might have formed based on the metaphysical quote, the poem is actually an amorous one in which the poet urges his mistress to shed her coyness and to respond favourably to his lustful advances because the time available to live is very short and he is already hearing the clatter of time’s winged chariot approaching from behind. What an irony! The thing you thought to be a diamond of philosophical speculation turned out on closer examination to be a piece of charcoal! The fact that both are of the same material need not detain us here. The poem is still noteworthy, with a few more aces down the poet’s sleeve, when he reminds us that “yonder all before us lie deserts of vast eternity”. It ends with this marvelous sextuplet,

“Let us roll all our strength and all

Our sweetness up into one ball,

And tear our pleasures with rough strife

Through the iron gates of life:

Thus, though we cannot make our sun

Stand still, yet we will make him run”

English is hilarious if we detect the pun! Full text of the poem may be found here.