Please note that I have shifted my blog to WordPress. Maintaining a custom server and wordpress installation was getting tougher and tougher. Also IIT-B network doesn’t allow me to use FTP, it added to the problems.

Also the server seemed too slow to most of my readers. It is not only that I am shifting the service provider, I am also going to blog a bit less regularly, but that doesn’t mean I will invest less time in it. Now onwards I am going to cautiously stick to fewer topic, focusing on depth and quality.

I am also going to work on my spellings grammar and articulation skills. Till now I have been blogging for myself, never felt a need to address someone or to generate a discussion. Nevertheless I will be always happy to see more and more people commenting, criticizing and mailing me in response.

NEW LINK: http://akshar100.wordpress.com

RSS FEED: http://akshar100.wordpress.com/feed/

Regards,

Akshar

What I have realized is that even a list for a day is macro-management for a lazy bum like me. What I really need is micro-managing my time. It is not enough to figure out what I need to do the whole day but I need to figure out what I need to do in next 3 hours.

I have tried this using paper lists and I have found it very beneficial. When I have more stricter deadlines I end up wasting lesser time on things such as checking mails, playing Mafia Wars on Facebook, reading/writing blogs, Twitter etc.

I feel a need for handheld personal organizer very badly. Something that should have an alarm as well. Unfortunately my budget is too mean to buy something like that hence I am using a notebook.

But there is an immense joy in preparing this list. I am preparing a list titled
“Little Joys of Life”

1. Reading a fresh Book

2. Smelling a cup of hot tea (with ginger in it) on a roadside Dabhaa.

3. Meeting an Old Crush

4. Riding at 90kmph on a straight barren road.

5. Helping an Old man to do something.

6. Helping a little kid with his math

7. Listening to “khut-khut” sound/noise of an old Ushaa fan keeping your eyes closed and trying to sleep.

8. Waking up early morning listening to your favorite song on radio

9. Waking up very early in the morning despite realizing that you have no work to do the whole day.

10. Watching a B-grade movie on a winter morning, covered in a thick blanket on the bed.

11. Winning a consolation prize in some irrelevant, insignificant competition

12. Spending a night on Railway Platform

13. Remembering the last time I sat under a tree with no worries in my head.

14. Finding the remote just next to you when you want to change the channel.

I have certainly missed many. Feel free to add in comments.

I think one reason why IITs have been center for excellence (despite being Government institutions) for such a long time is the autonomy that they enjoy. Here the profs have complete freedom to design their course, their syllabus and also evaluating mechanism.

Generally purely theoretical subjects contain 2 Quiz, one end sem, one mid sem and weekly assignments as evaluating criteria. The number of marks alloted to them are not so important what matters is the “weightage” each of these criterias have. E.g. End sem for some profs is of 50% weightage where as some profs it’s only 10 and weekly assignments are of 80% weightage.

Other subjects where theory can be applied, e.g Artificial Intelligence, we have 2 Quizs (surprise quizs), Lots of programming assignments, 1 paper presentation, 1 Seminar is the form of book discussion. (Emperor’s new mind and Society of Mind), end sem and mid sem. And Guess what? All th Exams are open book exams. You are free to get your notes in examination hall and use them. And still I got only 40% .

Software Engineering is a subject where we haven’t got any exams at all. We are supposed to do a real project for real clients using the methodology in the class. 25% of marks are purely on what your client thinks of your project.

What I have realized here in these few months is, it is not about studying for exam but it is about accepting study as a way of life. I haven’t referred to a single textbook except one on mathematics till now, but the amount of thinking I have invested is lot more that what I did in 4 years of undergraduate education.

It is a real pleasure to learn these subjects from people who have absolute clarity about what they are talking. For example DBMS course will be taught by Sudarshan, the Korth and Sudarshan textbook fame.

I have not been able to make full benefit of the system yet. I rarely open my mouth in class because, my thinking process is very slow compared to others. It takes me more time to understand the subject and when the questions really occur in my mind, the prof is out of the class. Besides, for last so many years I had absolute disrespect for the Teacher-student learning model mostly due to the teacher I had in Goa Engineering College.

But overall the system is good and it is good because of the autonomy the institution has in managing its own affairs. Arjun Singh did screw up things by a fair amount that that is why 4 of us have to share one room. Lets hope Mr. Sibbal would not screw things harder.

Sir, he hit me first, shouts one boy pointing to other. The other boy who is bleeding, says, Sir, he abused me first so I hit him. Headmaster turns his head to first boy again who shouts, sir he stole my pencil. Now it’s the first boys turn. Headmaster merely goes by the simple policy of the school that he must punish the boy who started it first. He calls it “The Root Cause”.

It turns out that the root cause was that one boy always defeated the other in game of Table Tennis. And the other boy removed his anger by accidentally(!) throwing a paper ball at the first and thus the matter escalated to level where one boy was bleeding. The headmaster decided that the two boys should never play Table Tennis again. This he called “The middle Ground”.

What is lost in the whole drama is what we should call “Interest of the School/State”.

Now find the analogy between Naxalism and the above example!

When the Price, Indian Messiah, Heir apparent to the thorn along with his blue turbaned henchman calls for “identifying the root cause”, he must look at the history of his own party and the system they have built over years to search and address the root causes.  Goa government fails to make up its mind on a simple issue like “do we want Mopa airtport or not”. None of the politicians is able to take an unambiguiuse and consistent stand. Not because they cant decide what is right , but simply because they dont want to hurt one of the parties, not out of compassion but out of pure vote bank politics.

And then these people, the policymakers, the people who are supposed to find and address the root causes, take “the middle ground”. They claim that this middle ground solves “the root cause”. No one cares about the interest of the state nor the actual parties involved as long as they stick to power.

See the middle ground that UPA government has taken on Afzal Guru’s sentence. See how Mopa, Express highway projects have been stranded in Goa. Smart people soon realise that whenever government makes a decision, by proposing an exact opposite thing irrespective of what the decision is, they can hold the whole state for ransom. They can reap rich rewards by this method and the state consistently sticks of “middle ground”.

This middle ground is nothing but supressing the symptom and ignoring the real cause. What the headmaster should have ideally done in above situation is, he should have identified that any student physically hurting another student for whatsoever reason is harmful for his schools reputation as well as for the health of all the students. Thus he should have imposed severe punishment for those who physically hurt any other student. That should be the first thing.Think like developing sportsmanship among students etc, will have to be done but only after the first step is taken.

And yes, there is another interesting aspect of this story. We will make “Minimum Use of Force”, we will not call army, we will not use all our strength. Why? Is it okay if few more soldiers die? Or arent you interested in wiping the Naxalites entirely? Textbook reasons: Avoid collataral damage! Huh. What about the unilateral damage caused by Naxalites? What if they purposely do more and more collatoral damagae and blackmail you?

Peace, as the wise man says is having bigger stick than the other guy. For a nation where, large part of the nation still wishes this country to be democratic and hopes that the system can be made better, it should always be the state who has the bigger stick. If the Naxalites, who are faishoably refered as modern day Robinhoods , get the bigger stick, they will hold the majority of the people for ransom.

Besides, another saying by the wise man is that, the best weapon is the one which you have to never use, if you have to use it, it needs to be used only once. Hence “the minimum use of force” is nothing but sign of impotency and weakness. The force when applied should be OVERWHELMING. It should not give the enemy any opportunity of breath. The way we did at Taj on 26/11.

In every subject you get a grade. which can vary from AA,AB, BA, BB, CA, DA XX and FR. XX and FR are equivalent to fail. If one fails in more that one subject he has to discontinue the program.

But thats not the end of the story. any grade greater than C gives you more than 4 points. To pass in every subject one has to score more than 4 points in that subject. that like our engineering 40% passing, except that , there is no such thing as grace marks here.

It is not enough to score 4 in every subject. Overall you must score more than 6. That is, your aggregate in all the subjects should be more than 6. Like saying 60% aggregate.

Thats tough .it means if you score 4 in one subject you must score 8 in some other subject. Either be sufficient good in all subjects or be extremely good in some subject and just passing in others.

No doubt this is tough, more tougher for someone like me who is finding it real tough to intellectually cope up with the demands of the system. But then I think if I manage to pass here, I will have something to brag about.

This argument is bought by most of our countryman including the guys who we all think as smart and honest. Can we examine this argument?

Consider this particular case of corruption articulated by Atanu. Form my personal experience I know that the case is true and the reality is even more worse. I have posted an excerpt from his post below

“Let me give you the short version,” RL said. “The truckers have to carry more than the legally mandated load. Otherwise it would be too costly per ton. To get around the legal limit, you have to bribe the RTO — the road transportation officials. There are many check points along the route. It helps that the bribe is collected at one point and that too for the entire month. Otherwise it would take too long. Anyway, the collections are passed on to various people, all the way to the top. Government ministers and other bureaucrats, you know. But this scheme works only because there are other interests tied to it.”

“Like what?”

“Consider the truck manufacturing companies. They make more money because they sell more trucks which are rated at a lower carrying capacity. So they are not interested in raising the legal load limit. But the overloading of trucks is good for the RTO. They make money in bribes. That’s not all. The government builds roads. Right? OK, so they get contractors to build roads that are rated to carry say 16 tons per truck. Naturally with trucks carrying 32 or even 45 tons, the roads get f**ked. The contractors make money from repaving the roads frequently. The kickbacks from the contractors for road repairs ends up in may pockets, mainly the politicians. It’s huge. Road repair is huge business,” RL said.

Do read the original article. A simple government control over how much a truck should carry has resulted into a parallel economy where interests of so many people are involved. Consider the list.
- Truck Owners who manage to run the business
- RTO officers who get bribe
- Politician who are the end beneficiaries
- Truck Manufacturing companies who manage to sell more trucks
- Tire Companies who end up selling more tires
- Fuel sellers who sell contaminated fuel because overloading of trucks has already reduced engine life and truck owners don’t mind using such fuel which comes cheap.
- Pollution check authorities and others related fuel business
- Public Works department in charge of maintaining roads.

There is nothing wrong if a truck company manages to sell more trucks because of some government regulation gone wrong. But the point here is that each of these entities are responsible for determining economic interests of wider public. For example if tomorrow government makes sure that RTO officers are doing their duty well enough, suddenly all the other entities will be soup.

Tyre demand might go down suddenly by 10-20% (or whatever figure). Prices of goods carried by the truck might increase overnight by another 10-20%.

But this will not happen. Government officials are corrupt and they will remain so. Hence all these entities will keep making extra money. But they are not supposed to have this extra money. When an RTO officer will buy a new car, jewelery for his wife, ideally he is not supposed to buy it. Money that goes to politicians will go straight away to Swiss accounts.

As we can see one element of corruption has affected so many people and so many businesses. It’s impact might be less 5-10% ? or even less. But this is not growth, this is swelling. Just like the sub prime crisis in US, the growth of tire companies, growth of Truck manufacturers and the person who sold jewelery to RTO officer’s wife are earning money which does not really have any underlying value.

Money itself does not have value. It’s value is determined by value of underlying promise of goods or services. So ideally when someone earns money he is supposed to provide in return a service or goods of value equivalent to assumed value of money. Thus actual value of money can be crudely said to be
value of money = (total value of all the goods and services in the country)/(total currency value)

When money is exchanged without providing a valuable service e.g. RTO officer taking bribe. He is not making any addition to the numerator in above equation. But he is increasing the denominator (this is black money). Thus the value of money in country goes down causing inflation.

But the real problem lies in the fact that eventually this system is going to collapse. As it collapses interests of the the people who may not be even directly corrupt will get hurt severly and these people will demand state help.

What can cause the collapse in this system? I dont know. What we need is one Black Swan.

The official webpage is at

http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~akshar/cs699/mpStage2.html

It is well tested and usable!

ATwitt

Sometimes in life, blindness is not only about vision. Its an barrier we create to shield ourself from potential worries.

I felt this deeply when I watched Sai Paranjape’s “Sparsh” starring Naseeruddin Shah and Shabana Azami. Sai’s movie have a core that resonates with me always. From ChashmeBaddoor to Halo almost every movie that I have seen of her, I have loved it.

Shash plays Aniruddh, a blid principal of a blind school. Shabana Azami plays Kavita a widow who fears getting out of her house. Fate brings both of them together and as anyone would guess there rises a possibility to love and marriage.

Had it been a Karan Johar movie, it would have ended with marriage. But the characters of both Aniruddh and Kavita are so strong that, initial coldness gets converted into friction and their relationship eventually breaks away. Either of them have to leave the school.

The movie ends with a hope where both of them try to find if there is a way out.

The success of flim lies truely in showing the traction between both the protagonists about the story. A relationship can not be built on pity or compassion, it is more complex than that. More ever the fears that we develop about the other person play a more vital role than anything else.

Bengali literature has always amused me. I have found it very much down to earth. There is an inherent simplicity in it’s narration but it doesn’t lose the depth. I have mostly read Ray’s work and a bit of Tagore. This was Sankara’s second book I was reading. I had read through his another book Chowrangi.

Jana Aranya tells story of Somnath, a young man from a well to do family but jobless. The novel potrays his struggle to stand on his own feet. It is not just that he goes through that struggle but his entire family even though his earning/not earning makes little difference to them, has to struggle.

Somanath and his Babhi’s relationship is like that of mother and son and she provides him the much required emotional support throughout. Somnath however is more worried about his very poor friend Sukumar who is supposed to be the only earning member of a family but is jobless. Somnath eventually takes up business and starts learning the skills required to succeed.

The climax of the book as per wikipedia is very moving.

ne day, Somnath finds that in order to land a big order, he must appease the reluctant client by supplying a prostitute. After much hesitation and trying several brothels, Somnath finds a suitable girl. However, the girl turns out to be Sukumar’s sister. At a loss, Somnath offers her money and tells her to leave, but the girl refuses, saying that she is there to earn money, not beg. Somnath delivers the girl to his client.

Until now we had seen Shreyas Talpade, Ritesh Deshmukh dazzling on the screen in female costumes showing their waxed thighs and tennis ball packed chest. This time around Yash Raj films have done exactly the opposite. Rani Mukharjee now features with mustache.

Disappointing all the audience who are under the impression that Rani was on a special weight loss program for this movie. The weight loss problem had nothing to do with she looking sexy (she can never be) but it was directed to lose weight at all wrong places in order to look like flat chested man. sheesh!

Hows Shahid and Rani’s chemistry? Asks someone. I think the most watchable chemistry is between Rakhi Sawant and Rani Mukharjee. If you dont believe me look at this shot :

Those who have seen Kaminey and believed that Shahid is maturing as an actor, Shahid’s English accent will give a new meaning to the concept of good acting. Well, sounding like SRK is what all it takes to be among the top than I guess the accent is just fine. Closing the eyes and saying “yup” is probably “English like” for Shahid.

The climax however is packed with emotional melodrama and a speech. What an remarkable speech where Rani gives away another unforgettable gems like
Chand pe utarane wali 5 logon mein se Sunita Williams ek ladaki thi (did she got down on moon?????)
Is desh ko chalane mein Indira Gandhi ne kyaa kami chodi thi ? (Sheesh, had she lived a bit longer koi desh bachata hi nahi)
Player ko dekho usake naam ko mat dekho (instead of naam she should have said “Gender”)

I left the theater in despair and with a question WTF is this Hadippa? What difference it would have made if the movie was named “Dil Bole Tara ra ra ” or “Dil Bole harrappa Mohenjodaro” ?

My last month’s reading involved his one of the first books “Midnight’s Children”. This book too got him into controversies such that Indira Gandhi had prepared to sue him. The book won Booker Prize and twice declared as “Best of Booker”.

Rashdie’s USP is his abstractness. He speaks in terms of metaphores of very high abstract nature. The protagonist of the story is a Boy Saleem Sinai, born on the midnight of 15ht August 1947. Somehow this boy’s destiny gets linked to that of India. He is capable to communicating to other 100 children who too were born on the same time. Yes, and his big nose which can smell troubles.

Midnight’s Children at times becomes a painful read because you just miss the context. The titles of the chapters add to the confusion if you are reading Rashdie for the first time. “Hit the Spintoon” doesnt really make much sense does it?

The book’s climax is when Indira Gandhi imposes emergency, the book criticised Gandhi with such a vigour that Indira had to pretend to be got hurt and try to create legal problems for the author and his publishers. Rashdie has dealt with that in detail in the Introduction.

Wikipedia puts it very aptly

Meanwhile, Saleem must also contend with his personal trajectory. His family is active in this, as they begin a number of migrations and endure the numerous wars which plague the subcontinent. During this period he also suffers amnesia until he enters a quasi-mythological exile in the jungle of Sundarban, where he is re-endowed with his memory. In doing so, he reconnects with his childhood friends. Saleem later becomes involved with the Indira Gandhi-proclaimed Emergency and her son Sanjay’s “cleansing” of the Jama Masjid slum. For a time Saleem is held as a political prisoner; these passages contain scathing criticisms of Indira Gandhi’s overreach during the Emergency as well as what Rushdie seems to see as a personal lust for power bordering on godhood. The Emergency signals the end of the potency of the Midnight Children, and there is little left for Saleem to do but pick up the few pieces of his life he may still find and write the chronicle that encompasses both his personal history and that of his still-young nation; a chronicle written for his son, who, like his father, is both chained and supernaturally endowed by history.

What more, a film by (not my favourite) Deepa Mehta on the same subject it expected to arrive this year.

Calvin and Hobbes

The more I you grow more you realize that the so called true happiness does really lie in big things. At least that the case for me. May be it’s because as you grow up several responsibilities are forced upon you. You keep figuring out why exactly these responsibilities for the part of your life but you, for some strange reason find these responsibilities to be a virtue.

I have been studying probability for last so many days, I had only few hours of sleep in last 72 hours. And I have virtually become indifferent to the result of the exam for which I have been studying. I have been longing for a couple of free hours where I could watch a good movie, or sit under the fan facing the window and read my favorite book.

But then you start realising that this apparantly trivial dream of yours is not as simple to achieve. I have another test tomorrow and day after tomorrow I am travelling to Goa. And I know this is the case with everyone. In their case excuses will be little different but the consequences will be same.

While doing so I thank god for giving me a good childhood, free from all worries and full of tiny moments to be remembered.

History written in such fashion tells many things. It oscillates between the fear the victor initially felt and how he overcame it. When we read between the lines, we can also see the survival strategies of the victor. At time before the final victory the victor might had chickens out completely, such a behavior now is termed as “tactical”. But when you study one version of history in light of several versions and scrutinize it based on scientific thinking, many more interesting things get revealed. A curious reader may go through various books on World War II which will testify what I have said.

In context of Indian history writing, which vast, old and controversial, some schools have been completely ignored while some have flourished through government patronage. There are several popular books on India’s history and “Discovery of India” has been on popupalr one, it’s author being India’s first prime minister, a very articulate person Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru.

Let me quote one passage from his book.(Thanks to My Country My Life)

Mahmud was far more a warrior than a man of faith and like many other conquerors he used and exploited the name of religion for his conquests. India was to him just a place from which he could carry off treasure and material to his homeland… Mahmud was anxious to make his own city of Ghazni rival the great cities of central and western Asia and he carried off from India large number of artisans and master builders. Building interested him and he was much impressed by the city of Mathura.. About this he wrote; ‘There are here a thousand edifices as firm as the faith of the faithful; nor is it likely that this city has attained its present condition but at the expense of many millions of dinars, nor could such another be constructed under a period of 200 years.”

No one in my house liked it. It was customary that all the family members use to read the book after I finish it. However I liked it. It was a fantasy a lot different from the rest. Unlike a fairy tale with beautiful princess and strong prince along with villain, this probably had no black or white characters. In fact I felt the tiny incidences that happen with Alice were in some sense metaphors of larger real life problems.

And of course Alice. She represented the reader throughout the journey. It was through her eyes and outlook we looked at the events, and Lewis Carrol the author had put that outlook amazingly well on paper. He had got the psyche of a child. That might be a reason why elders normally did not like it.

Very few people know Lewis as a mathematician though. The standard text book on Discrete Mathematical Structures has his biography. His contribution to the world of mathematics was significant. Lewis Carol was his pseudonym his real name however was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.The same book also mentions that he use to like to draw nude sketches of young girls. Probably that made him know many young girls intimately enough to get into their psyche and produce a book like Alice in Wonderland which is especially popular with girls.

When Mr. Shourie refered to BJP leadership was Humpty Dumpty I was surprised. He is not a man of few words, he uses 10 words where one would suffice, but then he is a man of chosen words. I did not like that he called someone by name like Me Tarzon, Humpty Dumpty of Alice in Blunderland. But I was more astaunished by his explaination of these words in his Op-Ed in Indian Express and I could not stop myself laughing.