Looking Out Across The Horizon

A few days ago I began reading Dalrymple’s book ‘The Last Mughal’. Dalrymple’s love for Delhi oozes from every sentence and he grips your attention from the very start. A lot of what he has written raises several questions and thoughts. Even as he writes the introduction, he laments the destruction of the old relics of 1850’s Delhi. He writes:

I find it heartbreaking: often when I revisit one of my favorite monuments it has either been overrun by some slum or container park, unsympathetically restored or reconstructed by th Archaeological Survey of India or, more usually, simply demolished. NInety-nine percent of the delicate havelis or Mughal courtyard houses of Old Delhi have been destroyed, and like swathes of the city walls have disappeared into memory. According to historian Pavan Varma, the majority of the buildings recorded in his book - Mansions At Dusk - only ten years ago no longer exist. Perhaps there is also a cultural factor here in the neglect of the past: as one conservationist told me recently: ‘you must understand’, he said, ‘that we Hindus burn our dead.’ Either way, the loss of Delhi’s past is irreplaceable; and future generations will inevitably look back at the conservation failures of the early twenty-first century with a deep sadness.

I am torn about whether to sympathise with the author’s view that Delhi’s old havelis should have been preserved or to shrug it off. Can we afford to make space for a century old history when we barely have space for the present? Perhaps technology could have let us store away in “full 3D” the narrow streets of Delhi. But how would we capture the smells of spices, the dust, the heat, the essence of that history in bits and bytes? Is it really best that we “burn our dead”?

I feel the loss as keenly as he does. Yet I don’t know of a way out.

Parijat Uncategorized Delhi, History

Even as I punched out the title of this post, I realised that it sounds very much like a sequel of a horror movie. Indeed, it is. Except it’s not a movie. It’s real life. Everybody who’s filled his own IT Return knows it can be a nightmare. Thankfully, it has a reasonably happy ending as I realised today.

I had some tax due which I had to pay before I could file my return. I used the online tax payment system to pay it and immediately received a receipt. I quoted the receipt number in an online form for filing my return. The return itself was converted into an XML document which could be uploaded to the Income-tax department website signed using a digital signature. Immediately on upload, I got an acknowledgement email and pdf for my records. And that was it. Done! It took me a flat 30 minutes to pay my tax and file my return. (the preparation of the return itself took much longer of course). Contrast this to a few years earlier when you’d have to visit a bank or the IT department to pay your tax. To do that, you’d fill a long form, in triplicate. Having done that, you’d then have to visit the department again to file your return. Hours and hours of wasted time. It’s all gone now. Beautiful!

If this sounded like an advertisement for the Income-tax department, I don’t care. I’m just happy I could do this sitting at home!

Parijat Uncategorized

It’s been two months now. While I was here, it didn’t feel like much but when I look back, it’s like an eternity. This was a fun trip. So many friends visiting from other places. Evening river cruise around New York. Visiting a circus. Watching Lion King. Metropolitan museum. Giving directions to tourists on the streets. Rockefeller Center. Playing poker. AOE. Playing Give-and-Take at Union Square. IIT social event (major disaster). Maryland. Chicago and The Bean. Kellogs campus. Architectural tour. Hancock Towers. Face Paint. Yankee Stadium Baseball match. Ravioli and Tiramisu. Birthday Treats. Office pranks. 3D movies. 4D movies. Wow!

And now I’m heading home. Finally. Really looking forward to it. It’s been so long. Sigh.

Parijat Uncategorized

Everybody should have an ideal to look up to, to work towards. When we are younger, I guess we all do. We look up to our mother, we look up to our first standard class teacher, we look up to Bill Gates. We soon learn to look up to famous people in our fields… Claude Shannon in my case. But at some point, perhaps no one person can be one’s ideal. That ideal then must be described by the playwrit, the poet or the lyricist. A man so perfect that he can exist only in the human mind. Over the years, I have found a play, a poem and a song that get close to doing that for me.

The play is Shakespeare’s Hamlet. (below)

The poem is If by Rudyard Kipling.

The song is I Hope You Dance by Mark Sanders and Tia Sillers.

Of course, the ideal would have to be all this and much more, but for now, these are worthy goals…

Hamlet. Act I Scene III. Polonius to Laertes.

And I’m reminded today (Jan 23 2010), over six months later of Abraham Lincoln’s letter to his son’s teacher. Every man would do well to learn for himself what he asks the teacher to teach his son…

He will have to learn, I know, that all men are not just, all men are not true. But teach him also that for every scoundrel there is a hero; that for every selfish Politician, there is a dedicated leader… Teach him for every enemy there is a friend,

Steer him away from envy, if you can, teach him the secret of quiet laughter.

Let him learn early that the bullies are the easiest to lick… Teach him, if you can, the wonder of books…But also give him quiet time to ponder the eternal mystery of birds in the sky, bees in the sun, and the flowers on a green hillside.

In the school teach him it is far honourable to fail than to cheat… Teach him to have faith in his own ideas, even if everyone tells him they are wrong… Teach him to be gentle with gentle people, and tough with the tough.

Try to give my son the strength not to follow the crowd when everyone is getting on the band wagon… Teach him to listen to all men… but teach him also to filter all he hears on a screen of truth, and take only the good that comes through.

Teach him if you can, how to laugh when he is sad… Teach him there is no shame in tears, Teach him to scoff at cynics and to beware of too much sweetness… Teach him to sell his brawn and brain to the highest bidders but never to put a price-tag on his heart and soul.

Teach him to close his ears to a howling mob and to stand and fight if he thinks he’s right. Treat him gently, but do not cuddle him, because only the test of fire makes fine steel.

Let him have the courage to be impatient… let him have the patience to be brave. Teach him always to have sublime faith in himself, because then he will have sublime faith in mankind.

This is a big order, but see what you can do… He is such a fine little fellow, my son!

~ Abraham Lincoln

Parijat Uncategorized

3 years ago, I posted a rant about how the call-center industry in India is just a modern version of the days when the British forced Indigo plantations in India. I argued that the relatively easy money in the industry is a disincentive for young graduates to pursue careers in their core specialisations like civil engineering or basic sciences. This discussion came up again recently among friends and I found myself even more convinced that this is not the simple result of international business alone.

Since the sunset clause on the STPI scheme (a scheme that provided for a tax holiday for firms in the IT and ITeS sector) has come under discussion, it has struck me that this specific Government policy, while being a major source of national income has simultaneously hurt the core infrastructure industries. It is clear to me now that Government tax policies can have very pointed impacts on the educational demographics of the country. The reasoning is simple enough. Lower tax burdens on IT/ITeS firms allows these firms to hire more people at higher salaries. Also, since tax burdens are lower, they can also operate on lower marginal productivity of labour, thus tolerating a less capable work force. In turn, this significantly increases incentives for students to study subjects which can get them these jobs - viz. computer science/software engineering. Also, these students are willing to pay more in fees to their engineering institutes, creating large incentives for enterpreuners to set up engineering colleges specialising only in these fields. A large number of such institutes are set up while teaching and infrastructure development for other engineering and core science disciplines suffers. Apart from engineering, there is a much reduced incentive to study in other specializations too, such as humanities or commerce.

Friends argue that if indeed this were creating an imbalance, there would be an oversupply of engineers, wages would fall and so would the incentives. Unfortunately, in my opinion, there are two other aspects to this. One is that the equilibrium itself would settle much further away than optimal because there is an imbalancing force to begin with - viz. selective tax incentives to IT firms. Secondly, the equilibrium would take a significant time to get established. This would be atleast 4-5 years long because of the gestation period required to increase supply in any given specialisation. Since the demand is significantly higher, it would take several batches of students to graduate before saturating the demand. Meanwhile, before the adverse impact of increases supply is felt, 4-5 batches of students would already be in the CS engineering pipeline while other fields like medicine etc would have much fewer students.

Also, by the time the incentives generated by a dearth of doctors or lawyers is felt by students to study these subjects, the country would face between 3-10 years (3 years at least for law and 10 years for medicine) of a severe crunch of these specialists.

The whole argument is that financial, not only social or educational policy, must be designed keeping in mind the tremendous lags that are inherent in the education pipeline. Careful management of India’s talent pool by providing the right sort of incentives to the required fields is very important and critical to India’s success in the decades to come. I hope these considerations are taken into account by the Government that has just returned to power.

Parijat Uncategorized

It was a tiny room, yes. But it had an awesome terrace. Overlooking the lake and the Bombay breeze. After sun down, just standing there, looking across lake Powai at the speeding cars and Hiranandani in the distance… you felt distant yet connected. Nothing could keep you down for too long… I miss that now. A lot.

Parijat Uncategorized Nostalgia, Rambling

Here’s an excerpt from the recently released Congress manifesto for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

The May 2004 mandate was for a government that would be responsive to the concerns of the aam admi and to the needs of the poor, the deprived and the disadvantaged.

This has been achieved in very substantial measure.

The May 2004 mandate was for a government that would accelerate economic growth but with a focus always on livelihoods and jobs, on inclusive growth and on social justice.

This has been achieved in very substantial measure.

The May 2004 mandate was for a government that would take forward the agenda of empowerment of the weaker sections of society in a forthright manner with emphasis on education.

This has been achieved in substantial measure.

The May 2004 mandate was for a government that would bridge all divides, that would bring all sections of society together, and give them voice.

This has been achieved in substantial measure.

We let the record speak for itself.

They have made sweeping claims that their initiatives have succeeded and yet they shy away from providing any numbers whatsoever. They are “letting the record speak for itself”. I don’t see any records and I can’t hear them speak. If they went out with this manifesto in a college election, they would be thrashed in the soap-boxes. And yet, at the national level, this will probably pass unnoticed as news channels make headlines out of seat-sharing agreements.

Parijat Politics Bullshit, Congress, Elections, Politics

After about a million people telling me that Wordpress beats blogger hands down, I decided to set one up for myself… so here we are. This looks good so far. I will need to figure out some way to add email-blogging support.

Parijat Geeky Random, Technical