Sunday, August 16, 2009

More social justice

The apex court says "they" are class apart. It's not enough to reserve seats and lower cut offs for them but we should take care(read reserve, discount ) at every stage.
Link

a Bench comprising Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan and Justices P Sathasivam and B S Chauhan said, “These socially and economically backward categories are to be taken care of at every stage even in specialised institutions like IITs.”
However, it rose to their defence, especially as they were from the socially and economically backward class. “It is relevant to mention that admittedly all these students had joined IIT Delhi in the academic year 2006-07 and 2007-08 after clearing All-India JEE conducted for all the IITs in the year 2006 and 2007. It shows that they were successful in securing the minimum cut-off marks earmarked for the SC/ST categories,” the Bench said.

“In such circumstances, it cannot be claimed that all these students are not fit to be admitted in IIT,” it said, adding, “We are of the view that ends of justice would be fully met by giving one more opportunity to them.” It directed IIT Delhi to consider their cases afresh within four weeks taking into consideration the various aspects discussed in the judgment.
This must be a pathetic defending from the IITs. Who is claiming that they are not fit to be admitted in IIT? They are being expelled for poor performance in the IIT after the admission and coaching.
Long live socialism!!

Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Another case for divestment

This piece in TOI shows how the govt screwed up with Air India.
Aviation minister Praful Patel is setting up an international advisory board comprising prominent people, including former heads of major global airlines, to helm the turnaround of Air India. And top government sources said Ratan Tata has already been approached to head this board.

"The board will be headed by someone of the eminence of a luminary like Ratan Tata and will be set up within a month," Patel told TOI on Tuesday
The carrier was founded by J R D Tata and later was nationalized by the Nehruvian -Stalinist govt of India. In the last 60 years or so, neither Air India nor Indian Airlines made any progress in the way they operate or serve.They have been mostly used to tour Haj pilgrims sponsored by the secular govt.
Air India hardly changed even after the entry of private players into the aviation industry.The govt in the last 60+ years has created a pathetic bureaucracy and overweight air hostesses out of this carrier.
Now, it's poetic justice that the govt is asking Ratan Tata to help it out. The question is why don't they just let it go when they can't manage it?

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

The "Game theory" of entitlements

India is much advanced in its innovation of entitlements compared to the other democracies in the world.Our politicians, mostly illiterate or semi illiterate, are masters of this entitlements game and irrespective of the party or ideology all of them agree unanimously in this regard or at least no one would dare oppose any entitlement policy.They know where they are putting their monies.

The Karnataka state govt has apparently come up with one such entitlement plan that you can read about here[ Link ], though this time they are addressing their core voters. Some argue that there is nothing wrong in this as the money is going back to those who are contributing to the temples, all these days this money is spent only on the foreign pilgrimages of so called religious minorities in India.
The YSR govt of Andhra had already come up with one such plan for a trip to Jerusalem and the CM himself has utilized the plan after his emphatic win.
The new corporate affairs minister of the central govt is also batting for one such entitlement plan, this time he is asking the corporates to oblige[ Link ]again, no corporate would dare say NO to it, they might say it should be volunatary blah blha blah.

In any of the above three cases, you don't see opposition parties raising their voice against such policies.Simple game theoretic equilibrium, you satisfy your core voters and your oppostion can't oppose it. It's such an effective weapon.


But, we have witnessed our "caste leaders" ( Lalu Yadav, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Sharad Yadav etc) vociferously opposing women reservations bill in the parliament. I sometimes wonder, why are these affirmative action champions are so dead against women reservation bill.

The logic is simple here, if the women reservations bill is implemented, the sitting MPs have to vacate their seats.Each of them has to vote for vacating his seat, as the seat allocation is not decided yet. If we change the game a bit, that all the MPs know which all seats are becoming women seats then we can see those losing their seats voting against it and those not losing seats being indifferent to or for the bill.

If we forget for a moment whether the women reservations bill is good for the country as such, we can see that our politicans clearly support anything that gurantees them votes, irrespective of whether that has to do anything with the country's benefit. It's not only true for out politicians but it's true for most of the Indians. We play our own little games in our lives and do things which benefit us, it could be while voting for a party or voting against a party.
May be it's true that Indians are individually smart but collectively dumb as the ex-IIMA prof put it here
"In the first chapter of my book, I describe what I believe Indians are like by offering 12 canons of "Indian-ness." For example, one of our traits is "low trustworthiness." By that I mean we are most likely not to cooperate in a prisoner's dilemma kind of situation. Privately, Indians are reasonably smart - in fact, we are as smart as anybody else - but publicly we are dumb. Our ability to understand the need for cooperation is very low. We believe that cooperation and selfishness
cannot go together- which is not true. We also tend to be very fatalistic in our outlook. We give excuses such as, "What can I do alone? Everybody else is looking out for himself, so why shouldn't I?
"
The problem with these entitlements is that , similar to time, they are irreversible. Whoever may come to power in the future, will not have the gall to reverse these socially inefficient policies.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

The second coming of Los Galacticos

It was
-Zidane
-Beckham
-Figo
-Ronaldo ( the fat one)

Now it would be
- Kaka
-Ronaldo ( the womanizer)
-Ribery??
-David Villa??
-Xabi Alonso??

Real has not progressed beyond the knock out stages of UCL in the recent past and they are no where near what they used to be.But, the return of Galactico era?No, puhleeeeeeeeeeeeezzzzzz........Florentino Perez is back to destroy the great club again.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Professional tennis and gender discrimination

I grew up watching Pistol Pete and Stefi Graf ruling the tennis world. Naturally I loved the grace of Sampras and the versatility of Stefi, though I always respected Navratilova for her grit and greatness, my heart was always rooting for Stefi.
I still dispise french open and don't consider it an equal to other grand slams for all those matches I had to watch Pete beaten by some worthless tennis player.He simply was reduced to a mere mortal ,nay, worse than that on that Roland Garros slow and dead clay court.
I almost stopped watching and following tennis after the retirement of Pete and thought there would never be a player of his league.But I was proved wrong.
When I saw Federer for the time first time in Wimbledon , he looked more like another Carlos Moya with his pony and that deforemd nose. As I started following his game, I started liking his game as it is the same grace that has made a come back to the tennis court.And contrary to many other Pistol Pete fans, I have become a fan of this man and his game.His game is simply poetry, it just flows with grace.
I should mention here that I like players who use single hand for their returns and shots. I dislike thos who grunt and use both the hands to play tennis.Even though I have no respect for French Open, Roger made me follow it for four consecutive finals to root for him. But, the butcher from Mallorca was always there to nail him in the finals. Nadal has become unbeateable on clay and slowly bettered his "effectiveness" on other courts, which was proved in 2008 Wimbledon final.
Nadal has been a successful and a winning star but his game is boring with no grace and no elegance. I respect him for his attitude and his toughness but he can never come in the league of Pete and Federer.
After the recent Frecnh Open win of Federer, there were many people who said that Federer could win it just because Nadal was not there in the finals.The say that one has to beat the reigning champion to become the king of the game.May be they are unaware of the term called "bogey man" and are too biased towards Nadal.Should we talk about someone who failed to come to finals??
Many tennis professionals and former players around the world have declared Roger Federer as the greatest ever, Pete himself has said that if he wanted someone to beat his 14 grand slams record, it was Roger.But, are 14 slams that great?? Does it become a bench mark just beause no "man" could do it till date?
Why should we not lookt at those players who are not "men" and have won much more than this "14"?
Stefi Graf had won 22 grandslams, Navratilova won 18 and Chris Evert had won 18.Why the game is so different for men and women?Ofcourse women play 3 setters and win less prize money than their male counter parts.But, isn't competition much harder in women, look at all those "novas" from Russia?Isn't randomeness higher in a 3 setter than a 5 setter?Anyone on their day can win a 3 setter and winning a 5 setter takes a lot of consistency.So, someone who keeps wining those 3 setter for almost a decade must be really much better than the rest in the game.
Stefi is the only player till date to win all the four grand slams four times each, she is the only player to win a Golden Slam and I don't think anyone can beat her 22 grand slams record in the modern era.She could play on any surface and she was a complete player. She played the best tennis that we have seen so far.
Some people attribute her success to that unfortunate incident which happened to Monica Seles. But, if we look at the record
"In head-to-head matches, Graf never had a losing record versus Seles at any point in her career, and prior to 1990, Graf was undefeated versus Seles in three encounters. Seles, however, won four of the seven matches they played from 1990 through 1993, including a 3–1 advantage over Graf in Grand Slam tournaments. From the start of 1991 until the April 1993 Seles stabbing (i.e., the period of Seles's dominance), Graf lost nineteen matches but only two of these were to Seles (while defeating her three times). Graf retired with a 10-5 lifetime record over Seles, including a 6–4 winning record versus Seles in Grand Slam singles tournaments and a 3–2 winning record versus Seles while Seles was ranked World No. 1 in 1991-1993"Link

That period of Grafs career when she lost her No: 1 ranking was more to do with her personal and injury problems than the dominance of grunting Seles.

I think we should have a tournament b/w the tope 3 male and female seeds every year and crown the player as Champion of the year.But, during the last decade women's tennis has beocme more of a glamour show than the game of tennis.That is the reason we don't see any more Navratilovas and Stefi Grafs. The "novas" come and go but I don't think we are fortunate enough to see another great player like Stefi.She is the best and greatest ever.

Monday, June 01, 2009

Aam Aadmi Economics

The Aam Aadmi is a peace loving person. He is just a simple dude who wants to live by himself and a benign person.
But, when there are too many Aam Aadmis ( 100-200), they generally get bored of each other and start destroying public property. Does the Aam Aadmi know that public property is his property and the property is bought with the taxes he pays?This would open a pandoras box whether every Aam Aadmi pays tax. That's a different question altogether.

May be the Aam Aadmi is an economic genius. In these times of economic slow down, he devised new ways to improve the country's GDP. He destroyed some 7000Crs worth public property in Punjab recently and now some 100 Crs worth in Bihar.This would make the otherwise reluctant UPA government to spend money on reacquiring these assets. This would boost the economy of the country and create jobs.
I think the social scientist Ashis Nandy is going to agree with me on this.Please have a look at thislink to know why I quote Ashis Nandy here.

Friday, May 29, 2009

Champions of Europe 2009


I am no great fan of FC Barcelona but they played some good football in the just concluded season.

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Rogue politicians exploiting innocent people

I have been of the view that people get the Governments and leaders they deserve.If not everyone of them, at least 80% of them deserve the rule that is there at present.

If you are someone who believes in the "wisdom" of the masses, you would have trouble explaining Samajwadi Party of Mulayam Singh Yadav winning 20+ LS seats in the recent general elections.We hear our intellectuals talking about how the common man is more concerned about winning his daily bread than lofty ideas like national security, fiscal deficits,economic stability etc.May be that is the reason the common man in UP voted for Mulayam Singh Yadav's party. But, wasn't it the SP's manifesto that promised to curb English and Computers? Doesn't the common man in UP believe that learning english would improve his chances of winning daily bread? Or is it that the common man in UP believes that computers have reduced his chance of winning daily bread, one might wonder about the penetration of computers in UP, it must be mind boggling, that the mean machines are stealing the daily bread of the common man.

The common man in West Bengal is even smarter. He rightly voted for the lady who drove away the 3rd world car project from the green and fertile fields of bong land.But the choice for the bengali babu is easier, he had to choose between the lesser of the two evils. Some of the eminent intellectuals even claim that the Left got decimated because of it's opposition to the nuclear deal. The common man in bengal is very smart you see, he knows not only about the 3rd world car project but also about the nuclear deal.He voted for the Lady who opposed the car project but voted against the Left for opposing the nuclear deal. The bengali babu is a very smart and complex person. Wish we had such a profound depth of thought!

I chanced upon one of the Wiki articles on a dude called Alexander Tytler. The following paragraph is attributed to him.
A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Tytler
I don't know whether he said the exact thing or not but this makes lot of sense.Nothing beasts the populist policies in a democracy.(now, don't argue with me about the average age 200 yrs and all that)I am shocked and surprised that none talks about the biggest and most effective populist policy that the previous UPA govt introduced. People talk about NREGA, Farm loan waivers and the crap that people wanted secular govt etc. But, none talks about the OBC quotas that were introduced by the incumbent govt.( I am not interested in debating the pros and cons of this quota, we all know it) I think that one factor would have given the grand old party of India at least 10% votes advantage over rivals. I know many people who have benefited from this quota and they are all grateful to the govt that introduced this. One shot, rivals can't oppose it and you have a loyal vote bank for the next election. Bang!!!

I think what is attributed to that Tytler dude makes lot of sense and my belief that people get the govts that they deserve holds good.









Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Back!!!

Yes, I think it's time to come back here.