Captain Takes the Team to Finals

And the semi-finals threw up results along expected lines. Congress was decimated in all four states of the Indian heartland. The total rout is sure to shake the foundations of its weak government in the Centre to the core. It is once again clear that dynastic policies are no more relevant in India than some of the burning day-to-day issues. And Rahul Gandhi is not equal to the caliber of his grandmother or great-grandfather, though it may be comparable to his father!

A dangerous trend seen in Delhi is the phenomenal rise of the Aam Admi Party (AAP – Common Man’s Party). Formed barely a year ago, the party cornered 40% of the Assembly seats there, advocating the slogans of transparency and corruption-free polity. Both these concepts are worthy to be enshrined in a society, then why the rise of AAP is construed as dangerous? It seems that being a baby among political parties, AAP is not yet mature enough to chart out a pragmatic course of action. Corruption must be rooted out, but the party’s suggested modus operandi is childish. If you follow it, governance will grind to a halt as you can’t put all the officers under the cloud of suspicion. Also, its militant posture towards increase in commodity tariffs like power that is warranted for the sustainability of the power companies belies the party’s claim to be a responsible partner in the nation’s politics. And it is indeed lucky for them not to have won power this time. If such was the case, people would’ve immediately got disillusioned with them and thrown them out at the next available opportunity. Now that they are sitting in opposition, they may have a better longevity to have a go at the next election. It is easy to sit in opposition and blame the government for all troubles. The toughest thing is to rule and be accountable. Any society gets the government they deserve. Corruption is rampant in India only because people tolerated it since recorded history. Even now, the only grouse most people harbour against corrupt officials is that they themselves are not able to indulge in making some extra bucks. Ask any parent about his plans for their children, and the invariable answer is to make them government officials. What for? Isn’t it naïve to assume that these people strive to enter public service only to ‘diligently’ serve the people? So, in a country where parents are rearing their children to have a share of the booty, corruption is the natural thing. The attitude of the society need to change.

Many people go far too much away from the mainstream to deny Narendra Modi any credit in BJP’s spectacular win. The victory, according to them, rests with the state leadership of the party and not to Modi. Notwithstanding the stature of leaders like Shivrajsingh Chouhan, what kind of reasoning is this? Everybody understood and anticipated this contest to be the semi-final of the final match, which is the General Elections in 2014. Everyone was anxious about the impact Modi could obtain on the populace. The team made a brilliant victory and the critics say the captain had no role in it! Suppose the BJP had lost the elections, would these same critics have trumpeted from their rooftops that the Modi factor failed to take off? This Lose-Lose argument exposes the prejudice of these observers.

But Narendra Modi should not get carried away by the results. True, he had credited teamwork for the success, but should not lose sight of the fact that the finals are yet to come and it would take much stamina to reach all the way to the Lok Sabha. Nobody should overlook the realistic fact that the NDA has not much clout in the three states of Odisha, Seemandhra (when AP is divided) and Tamil Nadu. With a total of 91 seats among them (21 in Odisha, 31 in Seemandhra and 39 in TN) these states may decide who would rule from Delhi in 2014. And all the three states are so winnable for the NDA! Who would doubt that the Congress will be trounced in Seemandhra this time? They may sweep Telengana, but that’s only 11 seats! The BJP doesn’t have any partner in these states, even though the AIADMK, BJD and Telugu Desom may not be averse to have an understanding with them. Chandrababu Naidu may strike the pose of a principled leader who would have no truck with BJP, but having been out of power for more than a decade must have chastised his enthusiasm a bit. Jayalalitha would be friends with anyone who would oppose Karunanidhi. A little nudge may prompt Navin Patnaik to come back to the NDA. There is a very good chance for the BJP to ensure the support of up to 75 – 80 seats in these three states, if it plays its cards right. The party should not overlook this crucial aspect if it is to win the finals.

Non-Stop Till Full Stop

The life expectancy of an Indian had gone up – impressively – from 42 years in 1960 to 66 in 2011. This is a commendable achievement, coming within half a century. Many factors have contributed to this – education, better medical care, increase in level of hygiene, awareness of health issues, and most important of all, increase in the nation’s wealth. India’s per capita GDP leaped from $84 to $1159 over the same period, a rise of 13 times and that too, adjusted for inflation.

This simple statistic is not understood in its true perspective by a lot many people, even influential ones. Today’s average person is much more healthier, happier and prosperous than his grand father was, at his age. Alarmists cite a lot of cases trying to prove otherwise – atmospheric pollution, radiation from mobile phone towers (!), fast food, slow food contaminated with chemical pesticides, occupational hazards and increased incidence of fatal diseases like cancer, cardiac and neurotic cases. Of course, these monsters are with us, but haven’t we learned to live with them? Even with all these meddling issues, we are living longer than the previous generations who lived less, even without any of these modern debilities to trouble their way. Don’t forget even for a moment that most of the deadly illnesses afflict aged people and as the number of the aged rises, the absolute number of sick people definitely goes up, but as a percentage of the total population, they are far fewer than it was 50 years ago. Increased and early detection help to save many lives, even though it contributes to the number of patients shooting up.

This is the background. But do everyone need to faithfully follow every health advice to the letter? Say, you are a middle-aged man and a medical examination shows that you have a cardiac or diabetic complication. Naturally, you are condemned to alter your life style, diet, exercise habits, and the entire way of life. In short, you transform to another person in a vain bid to prolong your life expectancy from say, 66 to 71. What is this really worth? When you change one of your ingrained habits like the diet, the ‘you’ inside you have died at that moment and a totally new person is the one trying to live out a few more years, ready to accept any compromise. Isn’t it better to continue as before, and live life to the full – in your own way – and perhaps surrender to the inevitable when it comes?

Our lives are ruled by a combination of chance and our ability to take risks. The process of birth itself is the result of pure chance alone. We, or at least the brain cells dictating these lines, could have originated in one of the lawless states in the under-privileged part of the world and died an early death fighting enemies or diseases. Or, we could have chosen a riskier profession, like the military, where the life expectancy is shorter than the general population. Any of these factors could’ve cut back our life span, so why fret over a disease that threatens a few years at the fag end of life?

Be yourselves and face the situation with courage.

Or, shall we say, non-stop till full stop?

Terrifying Assault at ATM Counter

The assault on the helpless woman

The nation, and especially anyone who has ever used an ATM machine would’ve recoiled in horror at the brutal attack on a woman bank officer by an unidentified (as yet) assailant in Bengaluru yesterday, caught in excruciating detail by the surveillance camera. The video shows the lady entering the chamber and is soon followed by the assailant who downed the metallic rolling shutters of the cabin, probably to convey the feeling that the machine is down for re-filling cash. He then turns to the terrified woman with a pistol and a machete demanding something from her, possibly her ATM PIN. She might have refused (credit be to her!) and then we see him furiously attacking her with the machete, inflicting serious wounds on her neck and upper torso. After a brief scuffle, she is seen collapsing on the floor, mercifully unconscious. The attacker soon left the cabin and it was only some time later that people noticed blood trickling under the rolling shutters and the police was informed.

This gruesome incident must wake up the concerned authorities and the society as a whole to focus on the security of ATM machines. Till now, the limited security cover wherever it is provided, is only for the machine and the users are left to fend for themselves. Very few machines are guarded, particularly if they are attached to a functioning branch of the bank. There are many locations where an unguarded ATM is installed in a remote location. Since every machine is now placed under video surveillance, the banks are content to leave them undefended, in the sure hope that they can zero in on the miscreant based on video footage. But such incidents like what happened yesterday in Bengaluru can’t be prevented by such measures.

Everyone would agree that assigning guards at every ATM is not an economically viable proposition. Should the banks be coerced to ensure such protection as a result of misguided public ire blown out of proportions against the gravity of the incident, it would end up as an unnecessary cost to be borne by the customers. Are there any alternate, but easier options left?

New lock mechanism

If we re-examine the video, we would realize that the incident appears so frightening after the assailant had downed the rolling shutters confining the victim and the attacker to a small cubicle out of public view. This action immediately transformed the benign cubicle into a claustrophobic cavern where one subconsciously surrenders to a primal fear arising from slumber deep inside our minds. The tiny, closed room in which the attack takes place awakens a sense of futility at resistance whether it is a man or a woman. For the onlookers, it surely evokes concerns about the safety of our loved ones who may find themselves in similar circumstances. Probably, the incident might not have provoked such alarm if it had happened in a public place.

A simple, but efficient deterrent seems to be providing a lock on the rolling shutter door in the fully open position. Normally, these devices could be locked only in the fully closed position, and only some minor welding work should be enough to lock it in the open position too. The maintenance guys only need to possess the key to temporarily down the shutters at the time of re-filling. If such a locking arrangement could be provided, the enclosure would be visible at all times, ensuring safety through transparency, so to say!

This modest mechanism shall serve to deter a quite few of the miscreants.

Advice to Young Electrical Engineers

Electrical engineers normally find pleasure in residing in deep wells of their own discipline, with no awareness of what is going on around them in other fields. There will definitely be a few exceptions, but the rule fits most of them in a well-settled organisation. Young engineers should strive not to fall victim to this false sense of disregard as far as other disciplines are concerned. This attitude handicaps them which they don't realize at the time, just as a riding horse doesn't feel constrained by its blinders. This specializing attitude would harm them in the long run and it is no wonder that in almost all organisations, the top posts are garnered by Mechanical guys. Only when the Electrical guys venture out of the confines of the well in which they've placed themselves, do they experience the sunshine they were missing all along!

A Curious Linguistic Coincidence

Japanese is really a nice language to learn. Not only that it will open a window to the hearts of one of the world’s most hard working people, and also it convinces you of the constancy and invariability of human needs of communication. Man is the same everywhere. If you allow for the sophistication brought about by technology, you’d also realize that he is the same, over the ages. But this does not deny that etiquette and manners had tremendously improved as time progressed. We live in a far better place than our ancestors did and our descendants will obviously live a happier and better life. What caused this? Technology did it, as I will explain.

Noble ideals like altruism, charity, social help and support of the weak do not come about naturally. Evolution is all about survival ensured through success in the competition for limited resources. But explicit competition over food or mates is frowned upon in modern society. So what should be the alternative? Increase the resources so that there is no need to compete that would sometimes end up in the death of one of the rivals. You willingly hand over the first cup of tea in restaurant to your friend with the full assurance that another cup will follow soon. If that self-confidence is lacking, and you grab the first cup, you’d end up as an anti-social person in a rich, modern society, whereas you will be just another normal guy in a primitive society where food is scarce. In essence, we are able to live happily in a socially responsible way only because we had had technology with us for the last 10,000 years or so. In short, we owe our morality and principles to technology.

But that was not the observation I had originally planned to make. How easily one is swerved off the track! I was mentioning the Japanese language based on a brief exposure to it lasting hardly four months in 1999, fourteen years ago. We learned the alphabet in Katakana script which is sound-based, rather than the impossibly difficult Hiragana script which was pictogram-based. The alphabet is similar sounding to its Indian counterparts which is having the same sounds, but in different scripts. We found it much easier to learn the pronunciation of Japanese terms by transliterating it in Indian scripts rather than in English. However, there was a major difference between Indian and Japanese languages. There is no sound of ‘la’ in Japanese. They replace it with ‘ra’. This ends up in awkward rendition of English words like ‘hotel’ which is voiced as ‘hoteru’. Similarly, ‘link’ becomes ‘rink’. This had caused much amusement back then when pronouncing the participants’ names which contained the sound ‘l’.

 

A comparison between Katakana and Brahmi scripts

What I find now is that the transposition of ‘r’ and ‘l’ is not unique to Japanese. In fact, it was practiced in India itself, though removed 2200 years back in time to the Mauryan period. Here, the reverse happened, that is, ‘la’ is used in place of ‘ra’. Emperor Ashoka’s inscriptions in rock and pillar edicts are our main sources of epigraphic information about this period. We see two instances of ‘l’ replacing ‘r’. Ashoka’s Bhabra Edict contains the words, “piyadassi laja magadhe” (Priyadarshi, Raja of Magadha), while inscriptions of Dasaratha, Ashoka’s successor, on the caves in Nagarjuni Hills includes the words “dasalathena devanampiyena anantaliyam abhisitena” (given by Dasaratha soon after he was crowned by Ashoka). The language is Prakrit which was a vernacular dialect of Sanskrit. The script is Brahmi, which is widely assumed to be the forerunner of many scripts in south and south-east Asian languages. Who knows, there might have been a connection to Japan as well. A curious coincidence in deed.

Vigilance Meet

Attended a meeting of the Vigilance Study Circle, Kerala at the city office of BPCL at Kundannur. The study circle conducts its meetings often, and sometimes people like me get nominated to attend a program which is as taxing on patience as it is in vain to serve any useful purpose.

The program began with an address by the Chief Vigilance Officer of Cochin Ship Yard who astonished the audience with a suave confession that he does not understand a thing about ships or of building one. It seemed he stopped just short of continuing, “And I don’t care a damn”! So, this man, who doesn’t know anything about how the company earns its money to pay the workers which includes himself, is positioned in such a high point on the ladder to decide if or when his colleagues had gone wrong. Vigilance organizations are mainly concerned with four aspects of malpractice, namely,

a)    Violation of procedure

b)    Illegal gratification

c)    Both (a) and (b)

d)    Illegal gratification but with no violation of procedure (as in government offices)

Those people from the technical community who are burdened with the unenviable task of completion of deadlines in a project know that violation of procedure is one evil they must learn to live with, of course, without any illegal gratification. If such officials like the above vigilance officer lead the watch hounds, how could they even hope to get a sympathetic ear to explain their conduct? It must be repeated here that there is no counter argument to the notion that any illegal gratification must be strictly punished.

The central item on the agenda was a talk given by Shri. P C Cyriac, IAS (Retd) who was the Commissioner of Commercial Taxes in Tamil Nadu and a former collector of Madurai district. I must concede that all of his anecdotes not related to vigilance were interesting and made the talk lively for a few flickering moments! But it soon became apparent from his own words, that he never stood bolt upright against the corrupt. His actions always seemed to be to deny the chances for wrongdoers to take bribe rather than imposing punitive action against the venal. In fact, he cited an example which was unfortunate for his argument. He narrated an innovation he implemented in the tax department of Tamil Nadu. Shop owners were invariably required to submit their account books before the assessing officers for verification while presenting annual statements. Naturally, this was an ideal hunting ground for the corrupt officials to fleece the vendors. And, what did Cyriac do? He put forward a stipulation that people having a turnover of less than Rs. 1 crore (which at that time comprised 90% of the dealers) need not submit their books for verification at the time of presenting statements. The tax department then checked in detail 20% of the people selected at random. He claimed that his exercise resulted in an increase of 50% in the revenue. Of course it might have, but what about the corruption which might invariably have accompanied it? Instead of standing firm against the unscrupulous, he simply sought to avoid the occasion for profiteering by denying an opportunity for the dealer and officer to see face to face. It is definitely true that the officers would have more than made good what they have lost, on the hapless 20% allotted to them for verification!

The food was good, particularly the tea. The most difficult part of decision making was to determine which items should be left on the plate as a matter of good manners. Lunch was also sumptuous, but not of the high caliber expected from the ilk of BPCL. The hosts were generous in supplying a very good ‘Add Gel’ pen too. But the pen was blue, and for me, handling a blue pen is like having a piece of bacon in the hands of a strict vegetarian. The meet ended at 2 pm leaving many people including me wondering why we were invited to a seminar which was not in the least relevant for our work.

Raghuram Rajan Eyeing the Nobel?

Raghuram Rajan, the new RBI governor is at it again. Famous for his unconventional thinking, some of the comments he let out at Frankfurt yesterday arouse suspicions that he is eyeing the Nobel for Economics after or during his stint at RBI. His comments come when he was in Germany to accept the Deutsche Bank prize in financial economics.

It is part of established financial wisdom that low interest rates spur economic growth of the national economy, especially after a meltdown such as those we witnessed around the end of the last decade. It works this way – when the lending rates go down, more money is available for entrepreneurs who could invest them on new projects and schemes. It also prompts people to park their savings in stock markets instead of banks where the interest on deposits would also be low. In fact, the rate of interest is a distinct marker of the health of the economy. Industrialized nations possess a razor thin interest rate while the developing ones slug it out with a big rate. Though it may superficially appear to be beneficial for small investors in banks, that is not really the case. High inflation always accompanies high interest rates thereby wiping out the additional amount claimed as interest. So, the trusted equation goes – high growth, low rates.

The RBI governor now asks whether there were better tools than the rock bottom rates used by major central banks. He also said that low rates could have unidentified consequences, for instance that they could encourage people in their 60s to save instead of spend because the low returns mean they were unable to reach their retirement savings goal. However, he conceded that he did not have the answers but said it was time to ask, “Are ultra low rates the solution or part of the problem?”

So, what does it tell us? Is Rajan trying to explore less trodden paths in his all out efforts to shore up the rupee and to kick start the halted economic reforms? Unconventional it surely is, but are such policies enough to save the day? There is no doubt that in case what Rajan has in mind comes to pass, it evidently merits a Nobel. Will it be Rajan, after Amartya Sen?