The dangers of the face value

For almost twenty four years (discount the first five years) of my life, I have been used to conducting transactions with only the Rupee as a currency. And over these years, I have seen how things have become expensive (or the value of the Rupee has diminished). Moreover, I have been able to develop benchmarks for how much to spend on what item. And also rough benchmarks for monthly expenses and savings required.

Cut to September 2011. I am in Canada and suddenly, I have to spend in Canadian Dollars. Now, the game has completely changed. Suddenly, I have to adjust to the new currency and what can one unit of this currency buy and is buying of that amount, actually worth that value? But, the problem is that I haven't yet developed any benchmarks. One Canadian cent still has a lot of value, compared to one Indian paisa. But, then for many days, it is only the face value of the currency that registers in my mind. And with the mental framework wired to deciding the worth based on the Rupee, many a times doesn't register the gravity of the expenses incurred. E.g., a CAD 1.24 worth of coffee is far expensive than if I would have my own coffee maker. But this gravity doesn't register quickly, as for me the value 1.24 registers as a small number, because I am used to transacting in the Rupee. But, it is significant value for many Canadians. And hence, some of them might skip the coffee for a day and have it only on certain number of days.

This is the danger that the face value of the currency poses. For me to realise the gravity of the transaction, I have resorted to converting the amounts into Indian rupees. This helps me in also keeping a tab on the expenses involved. Moreover, it has led to looking for cheaper alternatives. But, the flip side is that I might not end buying something really needed or beneficial, just because its price in Rupees feels too much!

Test Match or T20?

This debate seems to be happening everywhere. Newspapers, websites, cricket forums, columns, news channels, debating shows, on the tea-stalls near offices, canteens, messes, buses, trains, airplanes, and even on the cricket field. The latest format of cricket seems to have taken the world by storm. Reducing the five-day game to mere 3 hours of action packed hitting around the park. Of course, bowlers too have their say, and fielders have to be athletes of the highest quality to prevent runs from being scored.

Talks have been doing the round that Test cricket is on its way to death, T20 is the 'in'-thing. To justify their arguments, people talk of the huge response to IPL and the T20 world cup. What also provided fillip to T20 in India was the Indian team's victory in the inaugural edition of the T20 WC. And then IPL took T20 a step further and tried (with some success) to become like the footballs leagues in England. Building loyalties around cities and franchises, rather than states. Critics point out to the decreasing popularity of Test cricket by pointing out to the empty stands in the Nagpur test between India and England in 2008. They point that Test cricket is unsuited for the fast lifestyle of today and T20 cricket allows us to enjoy the game in under 3 hours and then get on with our work. Yes, we have changed. Our lifestyles have changed. Quick value for money is the mantra for today.

But then, really, does T20 provide all the excitement that we desire in a sport? As Sachin Tendulkar said, in T20 a batsman is 'good' if he can hit the ball around the park for three or four overs. So, a Yuvraj Singh is a must in T20. When he hit Stuart Broad for six sixes in the WC match in South Africa, it was considered a great display of batting. A bowler with bowling figures of 4-0-20-0 (O-M-R-W), is considered 'good'. The bowler's main activity is to stop flow of runs. The bowler doesn't need to trap a batsman into committing mistakes to get him out. So, we see spinners of the highest quality relying more on line and length, rather than flight and turn. Imagine Harbhajan Singh bowling yorkers, straighter and flat through the air deliveries. Where is his craft as a spinner put to display? In very very few situations, I would say.

The other end of the spectrum is Test cricket. Spread over five days, it requires a team to bowl its opposition out twice over. Or, if batting second, score more runs that the other team's combined first and second innings total. Only then can it be declared a winner. It tests the grit and determination of batsmen and bowlers alike, their skill to endure onslaughts. Batsmen have to face swinging deliveries, bouncers, four slips, and a point. A slight nudge outside the off stump and the batsman may loose his wicket. Sachin faced this problem in the 1999 and 2004 tour of Australia. But in the third test match, he was determined to get back the flow of runs. So determined that he didn't touch any ball bowled outside his off-stump. Such was his judgment that he knew exactly where his off-stump was, and left everything that was outside it. Almost all of Sachin's runs came off the leg side. People may call this defeatist mentality, but Sachin managed to frustrate the Australian bowlers and simultaneously get back the flow of runs. In the 2007 tour, he was seen teasing Brett Lee by hitting him over the slip cordon and scoring runs easily.

The grit and determination of V.V.S. Laxman, in the third test during India's tour to Australia in 1999 is also an innings to remember. Though Laxman's century was played in a lost cause, the sheer determination and cricketing shots displayed in the 167 runs that he scored is amazing. Australia didn't have it easily. Not to forget, the second test match of the India-Australia series in 2001. Where he and Rahul Dravid stitched together a record-breaking partnership and India went to score a victory over Australia after being asked to follow on, the third instance that such a thing happened in Test cricket's history.

I am not a very good cricket historian. So spotting anecdotes from cricket history is difficult for me. But, Maharashtra's famous cricket historian and writer Shireesh Kanekar has a thing or two for Test cricket. He says that while in one-day cricket (or T20 for that matter) how the runs are scored do not matter. But in Test cricket, it is very important for the batsman not to play rash shots. In Test cricket, bowlers always have a chance of coming back, not so in ODIs or T20s. It is actually appalling to see bowlers bowling flat trajectory balls or yorkers in T20s. In a test match, the bowler would have to bowl a mix of flighted deliveries, straight, flat and yorkers. Add to the fact that there would be a slip, a short-leg, silly mid-off and possibly a leg-slip, all waiting to pounce upon the nick that the bat might produce. A few runs given wouldn't matter if they could bring a wicket. In swinging conditions, bowlers would bowl with three slips and a point maintaining a line just around the off-stump. If the batsman manages to hit a few strokes through the off-side, it didn't matter, because the bowler could always try what he wanted.

On the other hand, for a batsman, it is essential to play strokes as correctly as possible. Test cricket can have a lot of scenarios in which batsmen would be required to change their batting style. There could be periods when attacking is possible, periods when wickets need to be conserved and periods where the run rate needs to be maintained. All these situations require a different skill set from the batsman. Not all batsman can be good Test players. Scoring runs in any possible manner isn't the name of the game in Test matches. Scoring them according to the situation is much more important. Sometimes conserving the wickets itself helps save a Test match. Remember England 2007? India couldn't win the third Test because they couldn't bowl England out in the second innings. Although India had the upper hand all through out the match.

Overall, I feel that a Test match is like our life. It goes through periods of highs and lows and we have to fight it out and overcome our adversaries to score a victory. There is no victory if the opposition is not vanquished. Remember Chennai 1999? Sachin Tendulkar, nursing an injured back played a brilliant knock of 136 to bring India close to the target. While India lost the test match by 12 runs, Sachin's knock was a display about how Test cricket should be played. About T20, my feeling is that it is like drugs, which give a temporary high, but then leave us with a vacuum.

So, let T20 remain for those who like to enjoy the temporary highs, but let Test cricket flourish for fans like us, who want a wholesome game.

P.S. Did anyone mention the empty stands during IPL-2? Well, it seems that T20 cricket can't attract enough crowds either

India's election methods: Is there an alternate method?

All through our life, we have to make choices. We make these choices based on certain needs and desires that we have. From small things like buying a toothpaste to larger things like picking up a job or buying a house for ourselves. But everytime we set out to exercise our choice, we have a backup plan, an alternative. With the toothpaste, it can be choice of brand or size of the tube, etc. With jobs, it can be choice of location, variation in job profile, salary, etc. The bottom line is that we always have a plan laid out- if this isn't available, then I'll settle for that.

In my previous post, I mentioned how candidates who have secured around 33% votes have been declared winners. Despite the fact that around 67% of the people who cast their votes, have done so against the winning candidate. This scenario should actually call for a tweak in the election system that is being followed currently. There are suggestions of a US-style run-off, but this would mean conducting two elections and it would happen across many constituencies. This, would further increase the expenditure towards elections and the already low turnout, would reduce further if there are back-to-back elections.

Another option, that is being used in Australia and in some cities in the US, is called the instant run-off. This option is similar to the scenario I mentioned in the first paragraph. In this scenario, people would indicate a preference of candidates in decreasing order. Instead of having to indicate preferences for all candidates, it can be restricted to indicating three preferences. In some constituencies of India, there are more than forty candidates contesting, which would turn off people from voting as they would have to indicate those many preferences. Suppose there are four candidates in the fray for a particular seat. This indication of preferences can be optional if needed. So, if a voter need not indicate his/her 2nd or 3rd preference. A voter's voting preference can be as seen in the table below.

Candidate	Choice 1	Choice 2	Choice 3
A	Y	N	N
B	N	Y	N
C	N	N	N
D	N	N	Y

Thus, the voter indicates that A is his 1st choice, B his 2nd and D his 3rd.

When the results are being processed, it can be done in the following manner. First look at the number of votes, each candidate has received as first preference. If any candidate has received more than 50% of the votes polled, he/she can be straight away declared as the winner. If any candidate does not secure more than 50% votes, then the top three candidates are taken and then count the number of votes each received as 2nd preference. Now, add the votes each of these received as 1st preference and 2nd preference in the following manner-

votes for a candidate = (votes as 1st choice) + m*(votes as 2nd choice)

where, 0.5<m<1. A reasonable choice can be m=0.75.

total votes = total votes as 1st choice + m*(total votes as 2nd choice)

Total votes as 2nd choice imply the number of voters who have polled for a candidate as their 2nd choice. This candidate need not be amongst the top three. This choice would eliminate those voters who haven't indicated a 2nd or 3rd choice of candidates. Fractional votes, if any, should be rounded off to the next highest integer.

At the end of this round, if a candidate secures more than 50% votes, he/she should be declared winner. If not, again take the first two and add the votes each secured as 3rd choice in the following manner-

votes for a candidate = (votes as 1st choice) + m*(votes as 2nd choice) + n*(votes as 3rd choice)

where, n=0.5. At this point, the person with the maximum number of votes will have to be declared winner. No matter if he/she has secured more than 50% votes. This is one of the flaws of the system. But, this would still reduce the instances where the winner is the person who has secured just 33% of the votes. There would be more people who would have the winning candidate as one of their preferred choice, rather than having nothing more than a yes/no to say.

A question that may arise here is the difficulty in asking people to do so. Many people may frown at the need to indicate three choices. In every system, a change from status-quo meets some resistance. But, educating the masses can certainly help us overcome this hurdle. It happened when EVMs were introduced. It will happen again if a new system is introduced. But, if the benefits exceed the troubles taken, then time and efforts should definitely be involved in this. As for the technology, we have a large pool of engineers who can be employed on developing systems that can handle such algorithms. Like the EVMs, this to can be developed with indigenous technology and manpower.

Caution: This is a proposed system or process. Like every man-made system or process, this too may have its faults. And like every other system or process, it can be improved till the point it is replaced by a better one.

Elections 2009: Do results really reflect ground reality?

The Great Indian Political League 2009 threw a lot of surprises. These surprises surprised even those who caused the surprises. Before and during the elections every analyst was describing the kind of surprise that will be witnessed in these elections. After the results, they are now trying to explain why those surprises didn't occur. In this era of "breaking news" syndrome, the media tries to keep churning stories upon stories. The constant bombarding of varied news content doesn't leave time for the common man to sit back and analyse the data peacefully. And therefore, we believe the media most of the time. Being a Ph.D. student most people, from my relatives, friends and even people who do not know what a Ph.D. is, believe that I have all the time in the world. So, it doesn't do harm to keep that belief intact. Just as we like to believe that the Congress, SP and RJD are secular, but BJP is communal. So, I took some time off and decide to dig a little bit about the result. This is my analysis of the election results.

Let us accept one fact that most of the media in India is pro-Congress, rather anti-BJP. That is why the media kept playing about Narendra Modi and his connection with the Gujarat riots. I remember a news channel advertisement, where it was providing snippets of an interview with NaMo, that was to be broadcast later. The snippets kept repeating the interviewer's question on the riots to NaMo and NaMo's brushing aside the question. Now, if this snippet is shown in every break up to hours before the full telecast, imagine the effect it will have on the viewer. Remember, till now no court has ever proved that NaMo is guilty, nor is there any judgement which states that NaMo is hindering the investigations. But, NaMo is guilty until proven innocent. On the other hand, the Congress is treated softly by the media. No demolishing of the Congress for giving tickets to Sajjan Kumar and Jagadish Tytler. Just see how softly Barkha Dutt interviewed Priyanka Gandhi. Nor did the Prime Minister's statement about Ottavio Quattrochi receive enough coverage and demolition that it deserved. So, the media was involved in biased reporting.

Now, coming to the analysis of the results. First, the voter turnout was around 58% over India as a whole. So, let us forget the other 42%. Most of them deserve to be stuck with the MPs that came through. But, as the media claims, have people really elected for stability? Recounting Navjyot Singh Sidhu's Sidhuism, "Statistics are like bikinis, what they reveal is interesting, what they conceal is vital." To support this, I'm now giving the case of two constituencies here, one where the Congress was elected and the other where its ally the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) was elected.

The first one is Mumbai North. Sanjay Nirupam of the Indian National Congress (INC) defeated Shri Ram Naik of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Mr. Nirupam polled 255157 votes, whereas Mr. Naik polled 249378 votes. The difference between the winning and losing candidate: a mere 5779 votes. The total votes polled in Mumbai North were 683975. So, percentage-wise Mr. Nirupam got 37.31% of the votes. Which means, a whopping 62.69% of the voters rejected Mr. Sanjay Nirupam.

The second is Mumbai North East. Mr. Sanjay Patil of the NCP polled 213505 votes, while the runner up, Mr. Kirit Somaiyya of the BJP polled 210572 votes. The difference: a mere 2933 votes. Here, the total votes polled were 667904. Percentage-wise, Mr. Patil got 31.96% votes, lesser vote percentage than Mr. Nirupam. In this case, 68.03% of the voters rejected Mr. Patil.

These may appear selective statistics, but then all over India, there have been many constituencies, even the prestigious Sivganga constituency, where such close contests have been witnessed. So, how much value does statements "Mandate rejection of caste politics" and "A vote in favour of a new dawn" or "A thoughtful verdict for stability" hold? Since India's election is about first past the pole, there will be a large number of people who will reject this statement. At least those who voted against Messrs Nirupam and Patil would do so.

In this election the Indian voter has just showed how many choices they have and that few candidates enjoy the support of the majority. If this was a mandate for the UPA, at least half of their elected MPs should have had secured more than 50% votes in their constituencies. But this is not the case as we see from the two examples above. I am sure that many of the elected MPs have come to the Parliament with similar vote shares. This is the flaw in our democratic system and we have to live with it until someone comes across with a better alternative.

P.S. All figures for votes and voting percentages have been compiled from the Election Commission of India's website.

Modern day Tanaji Malusare

Everyone of us (in India, especially those in Maharashtra) have heard about Tanaji Malusare. Tanaji was in the midst of his son's wedding Raiba, when Shivaji Maharaj called him to lead the forces to capture the fort Kondana. While his guests and family members persuaded him from not going and enjoy the festivities, Tanaji decided against it and said the now famous dialogue- "आधी लगीन कोंडाण्याचे, मग रायबाचे", meaning capturing the fort Kondana is more important than Raiba's wedding. This just gives us a feeling of the sense of duty that Tanaji had. Where his duty towards the nation, his king takes priority over everything else.

Cut to 2009. Election season in India. Central and state government officers and staff are summoned for election duty. Of those, many try to excuse themselves from the duty by giving some reason or the other. However, Deputy Collector N. P. Jadhav of the suburban collectorate, is an exception. He not only took up the duty, but also postponed his son's wedding, which was scheduled on 22nd April to 3rd May, so that it doesn't clash with his election duty. Of course, his family isn't too happy with his decision, but then Shri Jadhav says "Duty comes first". Too many similarities between Tanaji Malusare and N.P. Jadhav. Of course, Shri Jadhav doesn't have to fight a battle, but then sense of duty towards the nation overrides everything else. Shri Jadhav is today's Tanaji in many senses. A welcome news and probably signs of change, in times where elections are looked upon as a burden by both the officers, as well as eligible voters. A pity that the other newspapers haven't published this story, at a time when locked up dogs take up half-a-page of main stream newspapers.

To those who read this blog: Please spread this story as it demonstrates that there are officers who still value their duty towards the nation.

The Samajwadi Party Manifesto: A joke or opportunity

I haven't been able to read the Samajwadi Party's manifesto. Whatever I could gather is from reading about it on various news websites. What I gather from there, is that they are against use of English language, machines and computers. With an after thought, Mulayam Singh added that the party will push for use of regional language in education, administration and judiciary.

It is nice to know if they are going to seriously try to do that. We need to promote use of regional languages in education atleast at primary level. Even administrative and government activities should make use of functional regional language. I mean, if words need to be borrowed from English, do that, but write those in regional script. We tend to idealise the West in everything. Even there, their primary and secondary education is in the native language. Germans, French, Italians, Spaniards, they all take their primary education in their native language. Towards the east, Japanese and Koreans to learn their elementary science in their native language. Nothing has stopped them from becoming scientific and engineering superpowers. The Japanese cars and electronics, German engineering and efficiency, Italian designs, Korean electronics are admired world over, even as they fumble with their English language.

Some other parts of the manifesto (e.g. avoiding mechanisation, removing computers) are objectionable, but this one is surely worth giving a try.

As I said, I have not read the manifesto and I wrote this article based on what was available in the media. Now, Indian media is definitely not famous for its neutral reporting!

Developed west asks world to pickup tab of economic crisis

Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of UK, while addressing the US Congress said: "America and a few countries cannot be expected to bear the burden of the fiscal and interest rate stimulus alone. We must share it globally."

The open question is- should we? The current fiscal mess is a creation of American investment banks. They extended credit recklessly, by throwing all caution into the wind. Even the American Fed didn't bother to check the ever inflating real-estate balloon. And when it did try to check, the balloon had grown to big in size and the Fed's check caused it to implode. Along with it, the real-estate market has taken down big financial companies and all those people who were lured into buying those fancy financial instruments. The real-estate bubble has sucked out more than a trillion dollars directly from the system. Indirectly, it has sucked more than that, if you consider the financial companies' business plans, based on projected incoming cash flows. And now the situation is that capital supply is scarce but demand is high. So, banks have started charging a premium for money supplied, that to in insufficient amounts.

This is a catch-22 situation. If the world doesn't get its act together, there is a danger of the economy sliding into a long time recession. But if they get together, it is like helping America get back on its feet using global money. Everybody is looking towards the western world to stimulate the entire world economy. The world was progressing on the model where the west consumed while the east produced. A tectonic shift is being predicted, where the west would see itself significantly diminished, while the BRIC nations would have come to the forefront. Inspite of the slow-down, China has returned a 7% + growth in its GDP, while India has a 5%+ growth. If India and China focus on developing their infrastructure to the levels of first world countries, they would end up stimulating a huge section of both, the local and global economy. Imagine Brazil and Russia chipping in with similar efforts. China and India have lots of dollars stashed in their foreign exchange reserves. There is a possibility of using these at least in part to build up the infrastructure. That will stimulate local economies to a certain extent. Keynes was right in a certain extent. The government cannot detach itself from the economy, the way Reagan and Thacther did with their respective economies. Everything in life needs regulation. In the hindsight, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) did a commendable job by increasing interest rates at the right time and regulating the flow of money. However, it was criticised at that time, when people said that RBI is sacrificing growth at the cost of inflation. Such regulated systems allow the economy to maintain its health, even though it may not grow spectacularly. It also provides a soft cushioned landing when the economy passes through a bad phase. The RBI now has the ability to pump money back into the system to stimulate demand.

Is the west ready to accept such regulated systems? Brown and co. do not provide any answer to this question. So, if the West (especially US and UK) are not ready to regulate their economies in a better way, why should the rest of the world pick up the tab for their recklessness?

An update on my previous post

In my previous post, I had talked about laptop manufacturers not offering a choice between Windows and Linux operating systems, atleast in India. It turns out that I am somewhat wrong. Asus and HCL offer a choice between Windows and Linux OS on their "ultraportable" series of laptops. These are also termed as "Netbooks" aimed at people who want to use the laptop for surfing the internet, light editing type works and light multimedia. The main reason, though, for offering Linux is not about giving a choice, but cost reduction and resource utilisation, as the processors in these netbooks are pared-down versions of the Core2Duo.

But I still maintain my protest, as the mainstream manufacturers do not give the option to those who are more heavy users as compared to the netbook customers.

Monopolistic practices (and cartelisation??)

Over the years that I spent at IIT, I have begun to like Linux a lot. Although I am not particular about a distro, I prefer having Fedora or Ubuntu loaded on my PC. And over time, my liking towards Linux has grown along with the fact that I began disliking Windows. There were several reasons for me to starting liking Linux. One of them is that it was free and the freedom to use Linux the way I wanted it. Also, Windows had a hundred conditions that needed to be satisfied before I could use it and continue using it. To top it off, Microsoft never offered free upgrade to later versions. Only free updates and patches for the installed version were offered. And once a new version was out, Microsoft slowly reduced and eventually stopped support and updates for the previous version. This forces many customers to either upgrade to the new version by again paying for it or remain vulnerable to various shortcomings of the installed version. Linux being available freely means that one can upgrade to the new version without incurring any costs at all.

When I wanted to buy a laptop, I decided that I would not have Windows with it. I wanted a machine that would have only Linux on it, preferably a distro of my choice. However, to my utter dismay, when I looked around in the market, none of the laptop companies were offering a choice between Windows and Linux operating systems. Neither did they offer a laptop without an operating system. I was forced to buy a laptop with Windows loaded on it. What's more, the laptop manufacturer doesn't provide a Windows CD/DVD but loads the recovery system on a partition of the hard-drive that can only be accessed by the recovery software, there by eating into existing disc space.

My laptop has since then become defunct due to a hardware failure. But, I was thinking about this issue for very long. Why don't the laptop manufacturers offer us a choice? Why are we forced to buy Windows? Of course, there are open source supporters, like IBM-Lenovo supports Fedora/Red Hat, HP supports open SuSE but where do they put their preaching into practice? Their laptops too come pre-loaded with Windows OS. Isn't this some sort of cartelisation between Microsoft and the laptop manufacturers? Sure, the manufacturers can order Linux distros at very cheap rates and distribute them on DVDs instead of trying to restrict the Windows OS to a single machine by loading it on the machine's hard drive. Why hasn't any government taken action against the laptop manufacturers? In other sectors, this kind of bundling (without offering a choice, when available) has been frowned upon by the regulators. Will there ever be action against such caterlisation? Microsoft being a dominant force in the OS market, will try to exert its influence over the laptop makers. But isn't it the duty of the regulators to see that others too have a fair chance? And with options being available, the regulator should ensure that customers get the choice of operating systems. Why should we ever be forced to take stuff from Microsoft?

Change is happening

No, this isn't yet another blog post about Obama. It is about my very own country, India. Indeed, it is about Bangalore (I don't know if the city is officially called Bengaluru so I'll stick to Bangalore). I was in this city in 2005-2006. There was a lot of mess around the city. The flyover from Indiranagar to Domlur was in doldrums, there was another flyover near Jayadeva Hrudayalaya whose construction period was stretching for ever. On top of that, Devegowda had gained a lot of bargaining power in the political setup. He announced his hatred for the IT industry, thus drying up funds required to spruce up Bangalore. So many infrastructure initiatives taken up by the previous government were put on hold or funding reduced, virtually bringing such projects to a halt.

Back then, it used to take atleast half-an-hour to reach from Indiranagar to Domlur. There used to be a round about from the construction site through the narrow lanes to go to Domlur. Similarly, near Jayadeva Hrudayalaya there used to be a huge rubble across which the buses, cars and other vehicles used to crawl. Another notorious junction was the Silk Board junction. This junction too used to be crowded and packed because of lack of proper traffic management.

Slowly but steadily, most of these projects got completed with a huge time delay and cost overrun. But, the fruits of these are visible. Today, we can zip from Indiranagar to Domlur over the flyover. We can get on and off the Old-airport road without worrying about the traffic coming from either side. The Silk Board junction has be decongested to a large extent and Jayadeva Hrudayalaya junction has a good over bridge and underpass to allow traffice to pass through it. This has saved everybody a lot of time and energy. The economy is gaining due to improved productivity of the manpower. People are losing less fuel in traffic jams. This helps in saving a precious fuel source. But, the flip side is, seeing this infrastructure development, more people would be tempted to use individual vehicles rather than mass-transport. So, the government should now focus on developing the mass-transport system. The Namma Metro is on its way. The metro should be complemented by the BMTC, thus creating a smooth system of mass-transport.

Change is happening. It is happening slowly. That is the problem. But it is hapenning, it hasn't stopped completely.