LIVE FROM LIFE - HOW TO TACKLE TERRORISM

I don't know if there is anything like a really wrong time for writing your blog, but if any such thing is defined, this will certainly belong there. I have got innumerable number of examinations, both 'classified' and unclassified lined up, and am hard pressed for time. Still, this idea came to me just like that, and i have to put it in before, like good ideas, vanishes. The Saturday's bomb blast hurt me at a more personal level than ever before. Earlier, bomb blasts and terror attacks were news items - this time it was about real places. Two days before the blasts, i was out into the busy markets of Nehru Place, and a week before, I was at the Palika Market, using the afflicted main gate. Had these terrorists been a week too early, I would not have been writing this piece - not that I am suggesting that I am back from a brush with death - claiming so would be an insult to the actual sufferers - yeah, I too suffered that Saturday evening - but it more of an uninvited lecture in a room with AC gone wrong - I just meant to say that when these things happen close by, they make a deeper impact.
For days now, I have been racking my trustworthy brain to find a solution to this problem - many suggest that taking a hardliner stance will be the best, as in the USA. It is a known fact that after 11th September, not a single attack has been carried out on the US, and it is the Great Satan according to the Islamists! On the other hand, our supposedly liberal, secular, cosmopolitan (the whole unity in diversity hogwash) country has had uncountable attacks in the past few months themselves. So, what are we supposed to do - just sit back and commend the 'never say die' spirit of Delhi or Mumbai, which is often paraded on the media after every terror attack - the truth is that the people have no option but o come out to work - there is no spirit involved, it is survival instinct. So what can be done. I am a humble mechanical engineer turned MBA student, but I will like to put forth some ideas, which I think can be used to tackle this bomb menace.
First of all, we must be ready for the big brother watching over us. Well, I am the biggest advocate of privacy, but now, the time has come to surrender it for a greater good. I say the law authorities be given complete freedom to snoop around the calls, the SMS, the emails. However, it is important that the information is used to curb terrorism, and terrorism only. Our moralistic police would like to use this open freedom to see listen to amorous couples making plans for their next tryst, or to monitor some frustrated teen surfing for cyber porn - well, they must desist from it. The lesser the activities are classified as 'wrong', the lesser are they driven into the 'dark', and then the 'dark' consists of undiluted dark matter only, which can then be monitored for signs of the next budding plot. People would not take kindly to violation of privacy, because we think some things need not get out - so the authorities need to ensure that any information dug up does not leave the official databases. Secondly, we must loosen the laws on irrelevant stuff, say, for example, drug dealing, romantic liaisons and other things that our police seem to be very involved in dealing with. It all needs to be done away - these people should not be driven into meeting clandestinely, so that whenever there a clandestine meeting does take place, we know it is a terrorist cell hatching its plot.
On the technical side, I think we should start to look for a photochemical equivalent of radars - you know, special beams of em waves, which are beamed all around, and they pick the characteristic of material they impinge on, pass through etc. The return waves could thus tell us about the substances around the probe. Or we could use the method in which heated elements absorb a particular signature wavelength of the incoming em waves - can this be done for things at room temperature? And we can maintain a checklist of substances which should not be lying too close e.g ammonium nitrate and paraffins. It's been 5 years since I've studied physics and chemistry, so I do not have a clue what I am talking about, but I believe the technical support has to come from em wave spectroscopy type techniques.
This is badly put, and I apologise for the erratic flow of ideas, but they are presented as they came. Have a terrorist-safe day.

Fair chance nobody is reading it, but still, with heavy heart, I have to announce that no posting will be possible till mid November. Oh, how itching I am to type for the whole day, telling you about the famed and overkill ‘B School life’, and about some really ‘noteworthy’ profs. Alas, survival comes first. Fair chance I may flunk the minors, or even the degree. I have no qualms – just the thought of what the folks would think pisses me off. As far as I see, I was totally right about Management education. Worst part is, I am in the middle of it, battling for survival in the dog eat dog world. And I got to take the Civil Services Main exam in midst of this. So for now, take care.

Live from Life - B School Blues

This is my first post form my new location, and hopefully my location for the next two years. ( I say hopefully, because there are chances that one fails the programme and drops out – I don’t know the time period for that evaluation – maybe one semester or one year: in any case, it is going to be my location for the next 5 months – or as they said in the orientation, 14 weeks.) The location is Jwalamukhi Hostel, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (known ‘affectionately’ as IITD ). I have enrolled here for the two year full time MBA programme, and lasting those two years seems to be a priority concern for now. This post had to be coming this week – I had so much to share. This being my first weekend at IITD when I have not been pestered with more existential tasks ( like paying the fees, getting hostel rooms, depositing the required certificates which need to be transferred half way across the country.) So here I am keying down my report of my ‘B School Experience’ – in fact, a few days ago, we had an official opportunity to write about our ‘B School Experience’ for the official forums, but I could not do that – the deadline was too short for a person down with serious influenza and viral fever to meet. Besides, what’s the fun in writing for the official channel, where one has to keep only the sweet memories, and manufacture some if not present already! So I prefer this uncensored version – my own ‘Snapshots from Hell’.
My interaction with the IIT system began a few hours later than planned, because my train, which was supposed to touch New Delhi at 8 o’clock did so at 12 o’clock. So all my plans of relaxing at the Lothian Bridge Rest House for a while before proceeding for meeting the unknown vanished, as I hastily tried to lug the whole lot of luggage across the NDLS to get an auto to the Lothian. Here again, I was met with the same old ‘Delhi behaviour’ – how so ever much I try to like Delhi – it is the capital of India, the home of Virender Sehwag and Delhi Daredevils (my next favourite after the Kolkata Knightriders), and most probably my home for the next two years – Delhites come to bite me back. Here the autowallahs, when asked for the fare to Old Delhi, demanded sums as obscenely huge and inappropriate as Rs.200! They must have seen a sweating guy in distress, with a laptop on the shoulders, and made their move! It was after a very long search that I did manage to find some one to go for Rs.60. Once at Lothian, I barely had chance to change a bit and moved out in ten minutes. Hailed another auto, at Rs.150, and moved to the IIT. Well, though it gives an impression of being within the city limits, IIT Delhi is really far from the main railway stations: unless you are loaded enough to be flying in, IIT is going to take time to reach. Once there, it took some long walk in the sun to reach the institute building (the ‘insti block’ of FPS). Here the guys like us who were yet to receive their hostels formally, were given the letters for the same, and then I walked the long walk to Jwalamukhi – stopping for a few drinks and stuff here and there – it was too hot. Reached the Jwalamukhi, and the stark realization hit me – be it Pantnagar or be it IITD; the officialdom has a love for paperwork. I was handed a big wad of papers to fill up – lots of them with photographs and stuff. Then I realized I did not have a pen, and since I did not know any place nearby (only 10 meters away), I walked a kilometer to the Bersarai market to get the stuff. Well, the job was done in some time, anyway, and I turned in the paper to the caretaker, a small, friendly looking guy – too young to be ‘authority’, and he assigned me a room – D-89. A sweeper was deputed to show me the room – who left me halfway through the ground floor with the instruction to climb to the top floor and get into the first room from the stairs. Well, I did that, and found myself looking into a storeroom of sorts – cupboards, chairs, bedsteads, and kitchen sink (!!) all lying pell-mell. It obviously had to be a mistake – a big one. I went back to the caretaker, who came with me this time, to the foot of the stairs and showed me A-89, marked ‘Deluxe Room’. He said my room was the ‘Deluxe room’ on the 3rd floor. So, it was no mistake – this ‘Deluxe Room’ was my room for the next year. Well, quick decisions had to be made – how to live here. All my engineering insight told me the room could be made into two operational halves – and it also told me that the side which was further from the door was a better deal in privacy, whatever limited part of that a person could have here. So I got down to hard work, pushing and pulling the chaos around to give it some semblance of a room for two. A job, when finished, looked decent enough. Now came the problem of marking the territory – how was I, in absence of my luggage and bedding, to take the far side as my own? I did it by locking the cupboard I had pushed into that corner – after all, if my new roomie arrived behind me, he would go for a cupboard that was not locked – and his civilization would flourish around that cupboard. Anyway, I need not have worried too much. My new roomie arrived when I was there, so that I could formally ‘claim’ my side of the room. Then I started back to Lothian to get my luggage. This autowallah, though not overcharging, was repulsive in a different way. First of all, he was behaving as if he was a bit drunk. Secondly, he was a home grown ‘aviation enthusiast’ – so much so that he stopped on the Safdarjung Flyover to take a look at some small business jet that had made the rarity of landing at Safdarjung. When I insisted that we had to go – time was running short, he made such nice puppy eyes that I could not ask him to leave this treat and come with me. When we finally started again, he bored me all along with his theory of ‘how the airplane flies’ that really changed the rudimentary stuff I had learned in my engineering degree. Anyway, once at Lothian, I took the opportunity to get showered, and lie down in the AC and finish my diary and some paperwork. Leaving the air conditioned two big bedroom suite at Lothian for the hot, dusty, one kitchen for two beds D-89 was one of the toughest decisions I had to make that day. Anyway, once I had reached Jwala once more, and had lugged my entire luggage to the top floor, and spread my bed – it started looking like a raft I had in a stormy sea – a battered looking raft, but still a raft. Of course, the almirah did not have shelves, nor did it have rods. So my suit, which I had bought so affectionately two days before, had to go under the mattress, and in absence of hanger pegs, my chair, which was redundant in the face of the fact that my bed touched the table, was turned to be used as a receptacle for the clothes. As I reclined, alone (my roomie had decided to stay at some friend’s place) and listened to FM music, it was a sleep of a tired sailor who had found land – maybe just a barren island, but still land.
The orientation and registration had other small problems. The orientation was short and objective – unlike the one at my UG place, where they just went on and on and on. However, after the orientation, went straight to registration, as registration sheets were distributed. My name was not in the list of the students of MBA telecom systems, and the person distributing the cards, with the official nonchalance, asked me to ‘wait’. Wait for what? I stood there, and it was purely by chance that I saw my name on the management systems list. Wow, so I had been upgraded to the regular course. But then, another big problem had been created – this upgradation changed my entry number from 2008SMT6575 to 2008SMF6575. Now entry number is a very basic thing in one’s existence at IIT. It is one’s identity, on which one’s room is allotted, on which account the fees are deposited, and lots of other things. So there was this new problem of getting the entry numbers corrected in the registers. Again, there was a problem of much bigger proportion. Soon we came to know that our original JMET rank cards had to be deposited in here. Now I had not brought the card with me – to Delhi. I remember that halfway through to Patna from Sonpur, I had realized that I had not packed the rank card. But I had brushed it off with the thought that they had not included that in the list of documents required. Also I had wanted to avoid inconvenience of getting the card fetched from across the river. How wrong was I! Here I realized that these guys wanted the documents they wanted, and it did not matter that the item was on the list or not. I had to call Dad, who had to send the card by train, across the states, by booking a person, and spending helluva money for it, so that goes for avoiding the inconvenience part. It is very hurting on the inside to be a 22 year old man, who has spurned a decent enough job to stay a student, and to go crying to Dad for some small problems – unfortunately, life does that sometimes.
The experience within the Department of Management Studies was a bit better. The welcome was short and good, the snacks better – the time table the best – 4 days with 3 off, though it is a matter of seeing whether it stays that way. The registration was easy, being online. The classes, as they began, had their own characteristics. Some, like quant or Accounts and Finance, or Managerial Economics are water tight, with a clear idea of what to study, and what would be expected in the examinations. Some are not so – creative problem solving, systems thinking, marketing management etc are, so to say, like talking in the air – trying to form theories about really complex and abstract things. It is like the question of Adams – the life, universe and everything. So it is really hard to study – at least to study in the conventional sense. Then, another peculiarity of the system is the sadistic reveling in misery – people talk about assignments for the sake of assignments, running hither and thither for the sake of it. One prof. does not give his powerpoint presentations to us as soft copy, but expects us to get them copied though a long proper channel. Leave alone the profs – even the seniors are in to it. Enjoy suffering – they tell us proudly about the hours they have to toil, and the meals they have to miss, and the late nights they have to put in, for a pittance, as if they are describing a holiday on a cruise ship in the tropical seas! Oh, I do miss the seniors of my UG place, who always told us to take it easy – don’t worry, be happy. Both approaches are extreme, and life takes a middle path, but still the latter advice soothes frayed nerves. In the profs, we have the extremes – One Dr.HC is the ultimate genial prof – his lectures seems like a visit to the shrink – what do you like, what are your dreams, your goals etc. ( And for those who start thinking he is some quack who has nothing better to offer, he is an IITK, IIMB product and a top consultant ). On the other hand, we have a Dr.VSG (another luminary, former Head, DMS, founding director of IIMK and the lead figure for the setup of IIMS ) – whose full class we are yet to have, but a 10 minutes encounter has really assured me I am not going to take his electives. For those from my UG place, multiply Rocky ten times, and you begin to understand what I am talking about – don’t wear T-shirts, behave like executives, behave like adults, and a lots other areas of dressing down for no apparent reason. I really dread the next Thursday!
The hostel life at IITD has its upsides and downsides – perhaps more of latter. One can cite many reasons for that – smaller campus (it is the smallest of the seven IITs, not counting the new ones, as their campuses are yet to be built), lower endowment funds from alumni etc. But for ones who have been dazzled by hostels 12 and 13 at IITB, Jwala is going to be a rude shock – especially if you are supposed to live in the ‘deluxe room’. The only redeeming feature for Jwala is the mess – the food is good, and that is when speaking from the point of view of a seasoned veteran of hostels. The menu is richly varied, and the delivery is efficient. Apart from that, the hostel has little to offer – the old walls look dilapidated, and the patchwork fails to hide the decades of abuse. The loos deserve a special mention. For a big population, it has just three WC’s. Now that would be misleading – one is a Western Style without the jet or the paper holder, or an alternative sink. God knows I don’t know how to use that one! The next is the normal Indian style thing, that bears the abuse of the whole of the D – Indiresan wing. The masterpiece, however, is the third one. Open its door, and there you find no pan, in fact no floor – a sheer drop through to the ground floor, like an elevator shaft – what is it that they were trying to do about it?? I have an idea – put an elevator car with a shitter in that. Market the idea as – ‘When you have to go on the go!’ I am not worried about much for myself – I have two years to stay here, and anyway, the JMET did not require much preparation from my side. Nor do I have to ‘do’ the MBA – for all I know and hope, I could clear the Engg. Services and leave. But I do care for the B.Tech undergrad population – these guys have invested two to three (or more??) years of their lives trying to get through to this place, and now they are living like chicken – cooped in a rooms, three to one in a room hardly meant for two!
I might have been getting too negative and bitter in the last paragraph. It so happens that whenever I think about my prospects here, my heart does sink a bit – I am not an MBA enthusiast, so it’s like fitting into a suit not cut for me. For long times in lectures going overhead, where I am wondering WTF, the guys are putting up their hands and asking questions from the professors. Yeah, mostly it seems like they all are bluffing – trying to create a place for them in the social hierarchy. So all are behaving like competitors now – good corporate competitors, who are suave and polite, with their ‘please’ and ‘thank you’, and refined language. I guess it will require the first minor to happen before the hierarchy is defined naturally, and guys put the masks off, so that true friendships can be formed. Only then will the college life truly begin, and the negativity will go off.

Live From Life - for the Greater Good

Have you ever wondered why the voting rights are available to us Indians only after we turn eighteen? Why not a truly 'Universal Franchise'? They say this age limit is put forth because those below that age are not 'mature' enough to decide what's good for them. Isn't that pure hogwash? The guys much below that age are taking the boards, the IITJEE, the AIEEE, the CPMT, the AIPMT and what not EE's and PMT's. So these guys are deemed fit to take some of the most stressful and rigourous exams in the world ( stressful for boards, just check the suicide rates ), but they do not have brains enough to decide which idiot is a better idiot to govern us? No, you say. Very well, that was not my point, but now I will start on it. You agree that some people are not just fit to govern themselves, or, to put it mildly, they do not know what is good for them. Can't vote before 18, can't marry before 21 and can't drink before 25. Two things must be noted - in a country claiming to be a democracy, there are restrictions on what one can't do if one does not qualify according to some criterion; secondly, that this criterion is always the age. Behind these age limits is the thinking that the person is not knowledgeable enough or world-wise enough before some given age – it’s all got to with the brains. And brain keeps on developing till about 18 years of age - that means anybody below eighteen has scope to grow brainwise - some grow fast, some slow, and that is why we have the concept of Intelligence Quotient - I.Q. = mental age / chronological age in percentage. That means that if a kid 10 years old shows a mental age of 12, i.e if a fifth grader can solve seventh grade problems, he has an IQ of 12/10 X 100 =120. But this model applies only for upto eighteen years of age. Does than mean after 18 years, all human beings have the same intelligence. No, the intelligence follows a bell shaped curve, with a mean (average) of 100 (i.e. on an average, an adult shows an intelligence of an adult). Here is appended a graph of IQ of the human population. As you can see, quite a few people are above 100, and quite a few are below it. And this is the data for the adult population, which means that some of the adults, who have the right to vote and might be using it at the next elections, are simply not in the knowledge of 'what is good for them' (according to the criterion on which below 18 are barred from voting), and with their unqualified voting, they might be wreaking havoc on the system. Similarly, nearly the same are above 100, that means many are too well equipped with their faculties, and the single vote accorded to them is simply not doing justice to the collective human intelligence stock - its like selling Darjeeling tea and ordinary tea at the same rate! One might say that there is no great harm in this system, after all, the damage done by the below par would be covered up by the judicious voting of the above pars - that is the beauty of the bell curve - in the end, everything is balanced. But is the damage rectified in the end, in the real system. We have not yet looked into one important piece of theory that is essential to this whole idea - The Market for Lemons. This theory is being brought to you lifted straight from the Wikipedia page, because I feel they have explained it way better than I could:
“The interaction between quality heterogeneity and asymmetrical information can lead to the disappearance of a market where guarantees are indefinite. In this model, as quality is undistinguishable beforehand by the buyer (due to the asymmetry of information), incentives exist for the seller to pass off a low-quality good as a higher-quality one.
The buyer, however, takes this incentive into consideration, and takes the quality of the good to be uncertain. Only the average quality of the good will be considered, which in turn will have the side effect that goods that are above average in terms of quality will be driven out of the market. This mechanism is repeated until a no-trade equilibrium is reached.”
To see this theory in the context I am writing about, one will have to take a very loose interpretation of the Lemon Market. It is assumed that the higher educated and intelligent group of voters expect a good economy, national prestige, equality of opportunity, honesty at work and all such stuff one can find in a moral science book (Why is it called ‘science’ anyway??), and those on the wrong side of intelligence curve, with lower education would want to see a leader who vouched for their caste, their religion, their region, their language etc. This type of group may also like a leader who subsidises products, bankrolls useless projects for bogus employment etc. most of these issues have little or no bearing on a person’s standard of living, and are basically petty prestige issues, or may be good for it in the short run (reservations and subsidies) but are detrimental for the country in the long run. Now, consider these groups of people ‘selling’ their votes on the electoral ‘market’ in exchange for ‘good governance’ – good according to their own ideas. Now, the netas buy these votes – both high quality and low quality. Assuming the even distribution of the bright and dull minds across the country, a neta does not know if a particular voter is high class or low class. Low class votes come cheap – incite a communal riot or just bash up ‘outsiders’ in your state – voila! Votes! High class votes require real efforts, real management skills: efforts that are reflected in the country’s , state’s or constituency’s economic and social health. When running companies requires a person to clear the really tough management entrance exams (to prove intelligence, diligence and aptitude), just imagine the aptitude, intelligence and diligence required to run the whole states and countries. And though the cost price of both types of votes for the buyer (netas) is different, their satisfaction utility for them is the same i.e. one vote. Remember that Deepika jee advertisement for Nirma Super – “ Jab wohi mehge damon waali quality, wohi safedi, wohi jhaag, kam damon mein miley, to koi yeh kyun le, woh na le?” ( If you get the quality, whiteness and froth as given by the costly detergent with the cheap one too, why not go for the cheap one?”) So, the netas pay only for the low class votes – they come cheap, and in numbers.
Now, the higher end voters do not find any takers for their votes, i.e. no market – so they leave the market, thus lowering the average level of the ‘seller of votes’ still further. Again the politicians does not know about individual voters – so he would aim for the cheaper ones among the reduced vote bank – in the process driving out the cream of the reduced vote bank. Thus the level of voters keeps on falling and falling – our no trade equilibrium is reached – not that the votes are not polled now – it’s just that the trade is not present – even the promise of roast chicken and a quarter of desi daaru is enough to get the votes.
In the standard market for lemons scenario, the solution is given – inform the buyer about the products and its quality, and how to distinguish between the high quality and low quality products. Now, in a standard used car market (the scenario for which the lemon theory was proposed), a buyer has the incentive to know about high quality goods. But then, there is no incentive for netas to go looking for the high quality votes. So, an incentive needs to be introduced. This is what I call a ‘Meritocracy’, or ‘Rule of the Brainy’ or some other fancy name I will think of later. (Gotta search for fancy Greek words to go with -cracy ). Assign a weight to the vote according to the IQ of the voter, those above hundred getting more than one and those below 100 getting less. Now here comes the catch – most IQ tests are designed by the West – which may not give a true estimate of a non-English educated/ uneducated Indian intelligence. So, what is to be done – we could design non language based tests, as used in the case of uneducated. Or, verbal questions can be asked audibly in the language of the voter, who is to press buttons according his choice in the objective type test. But won’t the ‘higher class’ get organised together, and use its increased voting power to marginalize the ‘lower class’ issues, and perpetuate an IQ apartheid. Of course they can. Till now I have considered that the higher class needs to be benevolent and dedicated to the long term greater good, but if you see the chat threads on the India community on Orkut, this belief is shattered violently. So what is to be done now? Simple! Include personality type tests in the judgement criteria in deciding whether to weigh a person’s vote up or down – the questions need to be subtle – as in MMPI or Rorschar tests etc. We could put the positive personalities (whose judgement is deemed to be pro-development) for a 1+ voting rights, while the negative personalities could get 1- voting rights. To avoid the organization of ‘Super Intelligent Tyrants’, the tests could be done at the time of polling itself – after all, it is a long process – verifying ID’s, striking off the names, taking the ballot papers, voting and putting it in, getting the fingers marked. Introduce another stage – taking of test – make it quick, and do not even disclose the result of this intelligence-aptitude test – so that the person does not know the amount of voting power he has as he enters to the next station – the polling machine. Just multiply his vote by a Correction Factor CF, and put it in to the account of the candidate the person has voted for.
Still, a big question remains – how to calculate the CF? Well, the purpose of the CF is to make the buying of the higher end votes profitable for the netas, i.e giving them their efforts worth. Now I will be going a bit technical to answer this technical question – we have assumed that the demands of the intelligent/development oriented are more money/effort consuming as compared to the demands of low end/dimwitted/chauvinism oriented. Now efforts can be monetized, and we can say that the cost of satisfying a voter want is a function of his IQ, where IQ now means an overall coefficient, a combination of intelligence and aptitude – perhaps more of the later. i.e. Cost/vote = f (IQ). This cost can be calculated if the system is actually to be brought in – just tabulate the cost of chicken and daaru, the cost of organizing riots (Molotov cocktails, spears, swords, sabers), the cost of subsidies & the cost of pursuing long term economic policies etc. against the IQ level of the people to whom the ‘effort’ is aimed at, and plot a recursion curve to get the trendline – this is the Cost/vote(IQ) function. Now for break even, the cost = the income. That is, the pay-off to the netas should be commensurate to the cost incurred in satisfying that vote bank – i.e the CF(IQ) curve should model the Cost/vote(IQ) curve. So, it means:
CF(IQ) = [Cost/vote(IQ)/Cost/vote(100)]
Well said, but how to get this system into place – now that is a question I do not have an answer for at this stage!

LIVE FROM LIFE - SAVE THE ENGINEER

SAVE THE ENGINEER

Well readers, the time has come, the time for which I have been waiting for from aeons (that would be 2004). The time to stop being an undergraduate and to become a graduate. Hell, that tells that you have arrived. You turn adult legally on your 18th birthday, but for those studying in educational ( and social ) backwaters like the place where I am, you are not treated like one till you call yourself a student of the campus. So finally I am about to taste real freedom, and I feel like the immigrants approaching New York who have just spotted the Statue of Liberty. So what’s that tinge of sadness. Am I feeling pulled apart from my alma-mater. Hell, no! If I had it in my powers I would make it so that no one remembers where I graduated from – they would say – he did his schooling at Oak Grove, Mussoorie, and did his Post graduation from so and so place, but we know nothing about his graduation college! Like some sort of Lord Voldemort, I would remove all traces of my origin, my middle years. Sadly, I am no Dark Lord, and I guess this would remain just wishful thinking. I am not sad, but a bit apprehensive. Apprehensive of the great unknown called ‘responsible life’. I have got my job, and to tell you, that’s almost as good a job as you could expect around here. Moderate salary and good perks. For those who are born motorheads, this would be a job to kill for – you are making more than thousand cars a day ( about 2000, in fact), at the heart of the car making behemoth of the country – good learning on the job, and a chance for advanced learning in exotic lands. Well, what’s the problem dude? Why am I not really pulled towards it ? Reasons could be many – I am not an automaniac, and I have stated it before also. So this job is not that special to me. I have a classmate who is dumping a government job, that would involve just 8 hours a day, and is going to pay at least 25 % more (and further more, subject to the Sixth Pay Commission), in face of vociferous opposition from folks, for the same job. That’s because he is what we call a motorhead – he eats drinks and breathes petrol, he is a moving talking Automobile-101. I wish I could feel the same way about it, but I just can’t. Earlier, I had not thought much about tit, as we still had a very grueling medical test to go through, where many big ones had fallen – where no GPA or automania could sail you through, but now since even that is over, I have to set my priorities very clear. Let’s see the options I have. Soon I would be a graduate, but even before I heave a deep sigh of relief and good riddance, I could become a Graduate Engineer Trainee. Or I could go on to become a post graduate (PG) – that really sounds too academic – and in that I would have two choices – a post graduation in engineering, or a post graduation in business administration, or management, to the layperson. How to weigh the options – that’s easy, man. Just check out what my job holds for me – some four hundred and thirty grands a year, minus taxes. Or it could be some seven hundred and fifty, if I am chosen eligible for the exotic training. It could also give me a chance to live in what goes by the moniker of the ‘Millennium City’, and is the backyard of a bigger city, a city which I love to hate. Is it worth signing up for four years of it? Mind you, it’s nearabout the highest my sort of engineers are expected to get. If that is what a grad makes, what about a post-grad. I had the call for interview from the best post grad institute in the country, which ranks something on the world level too. Post graduation in engineering, I meant. It meant going south to the ‘Garden City’, more south than I have ever traveled, clocking more continuous train hours than I have ever clocked, in such crowded circumstances that I had to get tickets for the highest class one could ever travel, to get a seat. It meant leaving a week of classes unattended, leaving myself at the mercy of Professors, a fickle species. Lots of investments, plus the risk of flunking for the first time in my whole 19 year long educational life. (I really suck at Mathematics, and I know I can’t be getting lucky forever.) So I decided to check out how my life will change with this PG – I traced on Orkut communities, and contacted those in know how, got a number and called. That was ‘the call that changed my destiny’. ( I love Backstreet Boyz – not in that way – I am straight) It was all fine for the time we were discussing the interview and stuff, but when I discussed ‘package’, I discovered it wasn’t a ‘big package’. Seeing how the place is a ‘riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma’ ( I love Churchill, too), I won’t reveal the figure here, but that is in no way compensating anyone to rack his head over more sines, cosines, exponents, differentials and integrals for two more years! I love science and technology, and the place I am talking about is to an engineer what Mecca is to devout Muslims, what the Holy Grail was to those Knights, what the Champions’ League is to Manchester United fans and what the Deathly Hallows were to Albus Dumbledore. Sadly, dreams are just dreams, and life does not feed on ideals, it feeds on currency – crisp banknotes, and sadly, not much here. That leaves me with the third option. Become a management PG. It’s called MBA, and it’s more of a pandemic than influenza could ever be. What is management – getting things done by the others. That’s not a smart alec definition – I swear by God and my GPA, that is the textbook definition! How blunt! Why would one do that – getting things done by the others? To take credit for it. After all, the great Taj Mahal was not built by teams of labourers in teams of 20,000 over a decade and a half, nor was some poor chap called Essa involved. To us, the Taj was built by Shah Jahan, the Great Moghul. How to do it – politely, its called directing – but I call it bullshitting. Doling out crap to workers and engineers so that they think you are the Boss, and without you the enterprise would simply collapse, and blinding them to the fact that it’s their skill and expertise that is actually making things happen, doling out crap to media to show how buoyant it has been under your charge, doling out crap to all and sundry. If you do not believe me, look at how they select B-School grads – first they have a test, where you must do questions in half the time required. Oh, you must be smart to get to a B-School, real smart – you have to think clever ways to see that your dolings of shit are not mistaken for shit – understood ? Once through, you go through GD-PI. That’s group discussion and personal interview. I have nothing more futile and more hilarious (even if I am down and out) than GD – ten-fifteen guys packed in a room and given 10 minutes to ‘discuss’ a topic, which, in a normal canteen discussion, would leave all silent, with no thought to speak out. But since this is a selection procedure, thoughts do come out, thoughts unencumbered by a rational mind, thoughts presented half baked, half mixed. It is said that when opinions collide, freedom rings (that’s from Adlai Stevenson). But in a GD, opinions do not collide – they run parallel, and take opposing curves, go on tangents, swerve, bounce off the walls, levitate and fall, and then annihilate together like electrons and positrons. You know what rings out – not freedom, but stupidity. Stupidity enrobed in sagacious phrases is passed off as sagacity, just as caramel enrobed in chocolate is being passed off as chocolate. Anyway, it’s not the thoughts that matter, but the words – those who have difficulty with words ( did I hear you cough - **engineers**) take it for granted that those with the words are meant to rule over them. Anyway, engineers come way above ‘workers’. Even engineers read a course or two on management – by God, the way ‘workers’ are written about, one might think we are talking about dogs or something – doesn’t a discussion on ‘how to reward worker so that the production does not go down’ sound frighteningly similar to ‘how much salt you can feed your dog so that his hair does not fall off’? Or those Hawthorne experiments, on how workers react to changing light level in their rooms – aren’t they similar to works of Pavlov with the dog? Don’t I hate this profession – they are worse than lawyers, and better at it – have you ever heard of manager jokes? I have an offer from a B-School, not the exact top dog, but still a significant one. It is in the city I hate with all my heart. So why is this option even in the picture? Just because if a put myself through this cesspool and wade out to the other end, I might be making 1.2 million or more, at the average going rates! Are you kidding me – did I hear – an exotic land trained auto engineer gets nearly half, and these crap cannons get 1.2 millions? Exactly, and that is an irony. What am I going to do. Earlier, I was all for my job, or a technical PG and an honest day’s job, but in all that B-School fever, I took a few steps closer to the other side, and now I am steadily being pulled by the gravitational pull of all that money. But what about my dreams, and my revulsion for this ‘side’? It is said that there is a bit of the whore in all of us, so let’s just quote our price. (that’s from Kerry Packer, I think) So simply think it that way, if despite all my efforts, an engineer dies, and a new manager is born – all suited up.

LIVE FROM LIFE - ENGINEER ABOARD

Hello there, and thanks for visiting this post. I feel the most honoured that you have taken minutes off your busy schedule to look at what’s been posted on ‘Live from Life’. Though remote, chances are that you might have visited this page a few times before this occasion and wondered if the owner of the blog had expired. Well, dear Sir, (or Ma’am), I had not died, but barely so. I was fighting a few big battles in the Great Patriotic War of Career, and have returned, scarred but experienced. Not that I had forgotten about the blog- how could I? This blog had entitled me to mention ‘Blogging’ on hobbies column in my CV, and that must have given me an edge over routine stuff like reading, music, philately etc. So why have I suddenly returned to revive this blog when its purpose seems to be over (embellishing my resume, that is). I have returned as I have some real nice stories to tell. This particular instant occurred on 29th March, 2008 – the day I fought the Battle of DMS – IIT Delhi. First of all, let me make it clear, I hated Delhi, from the bottom of my heart and from the heart of my bottom. I am fascinated by Calcutta, I have never been to Madras and I am awed by Bombay, but I simply can’t put into printable words what I felt about Delhi. Why? That’s because I felt that in Delhi, everybody was out to make an ass out of me. Some examples – in Bombay, you ask a cab driver the location of some place you do not know, chances are high you would get an honest reply, and an honest estimated charge for getting you there. (‘Estimated’, as in Bombay, cabs run on meters – for Delhi guys, that’s the funny thing dangling on the left flank of the auto, because chances are you have never seen one being used) Do the same in Delhi, and you would hear that the place is very far, and it would take a fortune to transport you there. To give a more concrete example, this one happened on 27th February en route Bombay for the Battle of SJMSOM. Have you seen the DMRC Chandni Chowk station? How far is it from Delhi Railway Station? Far!! It is on the same campus! That I did not know, and I managed to ask an auto wallah about it. Well, he told me the nearest Metro was 5 kilometers far, and offered me a ride there at a small price of Rs. 50 only! How sweet! Luckily I was in no hurry, and I thought that maybe I would wait a while before going to New Delhi, and as I turned to my left, there was the Metro station, just where we were standing! Be fair to me, I was new in the city, and DMRC does not really mark its stations in bright colours, they look like a crossing subway stands. Anyway, the auto wallah was not new to the city, and yet he had tried taking advantage of the ignorance of a stranger. Cut to 22nd March, after the Battle of VGSOM. It was Holi, and any means of conveyance was hard to find. So we found this auto, who agreed to drop me to New Delhi Station for Rs.120 ( the normal fare is Rs.70, never mind) So we were off. On the way I reminded him to drop me at Pahargunj Terminal and not the Ajmeri Gate Terminal. Well, the two are separated by a rail underpass, and it takes hardly 5 minutes to go from one to the other by auto. It so happened that we were approaching from the AG end, and the guy decided he did not want to do those extra 5 minutes. Well, he could not refuse outright, I hadn’t paid him. So the rascal racked his brains, and came with a story that really showed his IQ level. He told me that the police had closed off Pahargunj station, because of Holi, and all the trains are leaving from Ajmeri Gate station. May be he had never been inside New Delhi station, or he would have known that it was one station only, with two sides, and it was not really possible to close one of the ‘stations’. Well, I told him to drive on, and that I have got curfew passes to get into the besieged Pahargunj ‘station’! All this, just to avoid five more minutes of driving (in a one hour drive)! So naturally, whenever in Delhi, I always keep my guards up, seldom ask for locations and advice from people, and even if I do, I take them with a pinch of salt. So it so happened that on 29th March I was in the city again. I had already fought two battles: The Battle of DMS IITD and the Battle of MSIL Medical, and I had already won the latter. So I had gone to Nehru place, to get spare parts for my ailing PC. (That’s one reason I have to give points to Delhi – Nehru Place!) Well, I had to return to Delhi Railway Station to catch a train back, so I started my search for auto – and I got some really obscenely exaggerated demands- Rs. 150, Rs.200. Now I was in no mood to fork out that kind of money in the situation- I was in no hurry. It was 3:30, and my train left at 10:30. Hell, I could walk to the station in that much time! It was then I met this guy, who had not parked his auto near the rest. He told me to hop in, and pay what the meter shows. I could not believe my ears. Meters, in Delhi? I asked him again, what would he charge for dumping me at DLI. He refused to go that way, and said the law was to go by the meter, and he would respect the law. Okay, fine by me. We started. I asked him how did I have this pleasure of riding by meter in Delhi. He said that all Delhiwallahs are ‘chor’, ‘haraamkhor’ and lots of other things I cannot type here. He said that they are fleecing unknowing commuters with impunity, and they did not have a soul. My feelings, actually. But then, wasn’t he a Delhi wallah himself. No, he said. He was from Ayodhya – the birth place of Lord Ram, and one who hails from the birthplace of the Lord does not indulge in ‘do number business’. I nodded my head in agreement, but for me, he was still a Delhi auto wallah, and I was not going to fall for his sweet talk. I was wondering why was he so keen on going by the meter. I glanced at it. It had already clocked about Rs.40. I thought, this was it. His meter was running free of the wheels, and it was going to conjure up some really big figure in the end, in the most lawful way! We stopped at a red light. I kept on glancing at the meter. If it was free of the wheel, it should have been clocking away at the stop. Strangely, it was not. It seemed the meter was working as it was supposed to. Still there was the possibility that it was clocking away at a higher rate than normal. I checked the fare against the kilometers and ran a few numbers through my mind. It worked out to about Rs.4 per kilometer – not unreasonable. Now, only one thing was possible – his meter was showing more kilometers than we were actually moving – not much needed to pull that one off, just separate the meter shaft from the drive shaft by a step up gear train. Well, I could not demand to see his auto’s innards then and there, so I sat and waited for my destination. It was when he asked – Sir, are you working or studying? Studying - I replied. What is your highest degree? – he asked. B.Tech – I lied – technically I was still 3 months away from being a Bachelor of Technology, but telling him that I was a Class XII pass was also an understatement! He exclaimed – O, that means you are an engineer. I needed an advice sir. I tell you, that’s one ‘O’ moment engineers from regional colleges like mine dread, when some layman asks for engineering advice. I must digress to elaborate. Once a few of my mates were returning to the hostel from the University market on a rickshaw, and were discussing some stuff from the last paper. The rickshaw wallah asked – Are you from the College of Technology? Yes – came the reply, and the ride became hell for the hapless guys. The rickshaw wallah asked them about advice on how to improve his ride quality by tampering with the springs and stuff like that. Had it remained till that, it would have been fine, but then, the rickshaw wallah left ranting about his springs behind and began discussing some tractor back home. Our guys, who had completed three years of engineering education on one night fights before the papers, were made to look like total morons. So here I was, in an auto rickshaw, in nearly the same situation. Not that I was completely ignorant of what I was supposed to learn in these four years. The Great War of Career had made me battle hardened – but still, one could not know the extent and variety of a question a layman can field – after all, genius has limits, but stupidity is unbound. I braced myself for it – but the question was totally out of the blue. He said – I have a kid in Class X. Can I make him into an engineer like you? Wow, an engineer like me! That felt good. Of course – I replied – nowadays, anyone can become an engineer, with a bit of hard work and determination. I was feeding the guy the same dog crap anybody of some minor success feeds tip-seekers – hard work and determination indeed. I hoped I had buzzed him off, but I was wrong – he had dodged that lump of crap and asked me to be specific – how could he make his son into an engineer. Well, since the station seemed nowhere in sight and we seemed to be stopping a lot at lights, I decided to help him out – but what could I say – I could never figure out how the hell I was studying engineering when my original love had been particle physics. I am still not sure if I would remain an engineer after this June, or would I turn into a manager, and administrator, or God knows what. How could I, then, tell somebody how to become an engineer? I started at the basics. How is this kid in class – I asked. Sir, he is a topper – came the reply. Well, I thought to myself, nowadays everybody is a topper. If you are not a topper you are nobody. It was alright till I was in school. 80 percent marks were considered very good, and only few got 90’s. In my brother’s batch, there were guys getting 100 in social science and literature! So I thought – another topper! Well, I could not be blunt with a guy dreaming big for his kid, so I asked - how is he in Mathematics. Mathematics, my biggest bugbear, my biggest roadblock. Sir, he gives tuition to other kids of class X in Mathematics – said the cabbie. Now this was some serious stuff – guys who can teach others are something to be serious about. I, with all my grades, can’t teach anything to save my life, leave alone teach Maths. I hold Maths teachers in the greatest awe, same way Harry Potter was awed by Dumbledore, or the way the Mancs are awed by Sir Alex Fergusson. They have mastered Maths, which in itself is a big achievement, and then they are helping others do it, which is simply unbelievable! I said – Wow! He teaches Maths to kids his own age! What is he doing now. He is studying at the village school at Ayodhya only – replied he – but I am planning on bringing him here soon. I said – This boy shows potential for engineering. Then he asked – Sir, do not give me these clichéd answers. I am a man of limited means. Considering that, please tell me if I can make my kid an engineer. Now that was a tough one – how much money does it take to make an engineer. As much as one can put in – I know persons who have taken 5 years of coaching, at about 60 to 80 thousand p.a. or more, to arrive here, and I can’t imagine how much more these guys would have had to shell out if they had not rested before cracking the JEE! Still, I replied – your son sounds good in studies, so he does not seem to need any coaching. I personally did not join the Kota queue despite lot of coaxing, so I felt this guy should take his shot raw. Then, if he made it to a state funded institution, the expenses would come to about 30 grand p.a. He said – 30 to 40 grands, I can handle it – beyond that, I would have to think. Well – I said – hope your kid makes it to a state college then. Then I wondered if this was possible. State colleges are for high ranking students only, and unfortunately, in these days, it means students who can avail coaching. This kid, no doubt bright, would find it hard to rub shoulders with the coaching bred contenders. Chances are that he may clear the entrance exam, but with a low rank, which leaves the private colleges – where education could cost an arm and a leg. Clearly this cabbie was not in a position to give donations and pay six figure fees. So chances were high that one good candidate for engineering would lose out, just because his dad was a cabbie and not an officer. These kids do need help – maybe financial, maybe reservations. But I did not ask this man if he was an SC, ST or an OBC. In this great country of ours, we have not learnt from past mistakes – we are trying to annul the caste based negative discrimination of the past by caste based positive discrimination. Economic criterion based reservations are not talked about, as they are not vote-effective for the politicians. But is this a fault of the politicians, when they tender to vote banks- aren’t they supposed to do that only, what their constituency wants? Till the time the masses identify themselves by caste and religion and region, the politics will be based on the same. So a non SC, ST or OBC poor kid will not get into an engineering college – as he would not have coaching enough for a state college and money enough for private college. Soon, we passed the Red Fort, and I saw the old station at a distance. Here we are, Sir – said the man – would to alight here or at the gate. I glanced at the meter – it was in 80’s, and I thought that better take it to the gate, and make it near 100 to avoid change hassles. So I asked him to take me in. If I was suspecting foul play in his meter before, now I was thinking the other way – it hardly crawled into the nineties and we were at the gate. Anyway, he had been a good hassle less cabbie, so I pulled out a 100 note and gave it to him and left. Soon I felt a tap on my shoulder, and it was the same man, offering me loose change from my 100. I said – there was no need for it. To that, he replied – Sir, one who earns from hard labour would never accept others hard earned money for nothing. That was humbling. I felt bad for myself, how I had stereotyped Delhiwallahs and Auto wallahs as crooks, and how I had doubted the man’s well intentioned actions and sayings, looking for the trickery where none was involved. We shook hands as friends, and bid farewell after wishing each other well – he wished me success in my interview and I wished his kid the best in engineering. Now, sitting in my room, I am typing this piece as his wish has come true. In fact all the things I had planned for that Delhi trip in a single day had gone very well, and now I have an offer from the Institute. So I write this article praying to the Powers that be to let my wish for him come true, and implore any reader who has read this far to pray for the same.

P.S: After this article was finished, I came across an interesting piece of news – now they are offering coaching kids coaching to crack the entrance exams to the elite – wait for it – coaching institutes at Kota! God help the next generation!

LIVE FROM LIFE -RANTINGS ON DEMOCRACY

Let me begin with a very famous joke from the end of the Cold War period. (Circa 1990; it may have been in currency even before that, but I read it in a publication from the said period.)
An American (yes, it always has to be an American, I don’t know why) and a Soviet were discussing the merits of their government systems. The American says, “Hey man, in the US we have got democracy, and hence freedom. For example, I can go to the center of the town square any day and yell, ‘President Bush is an asshole’, without any fear.” To this, the Soviet replied, “What’s the big deal about that? Even I can do that.”
Let me follow up with the disclaimers. First of all, I am no writer/ columnist/ journalist or whatever else one is required to be in order to have one’s works read and criticized. I am a simple Mechanical Engineering undergraduate, and by the nature of my trade, I am supposed to know absolutely nothing about how the ‘great minds’ which lead our nations (or businesses, colleges, or anything which can be ‘led’) work. I have had political science only till junior high school, so it might happen that I occasionally overstep my jurisdiction and mistakenly refer to one thing as another. So a handy reading tip would be that it is all about ideas- the terms may not mean what their classical definition means them to be. ‘What’s in a name? A rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.’ Secondly, I have not taken English after school- so just don’t expect what the highbrows call ‘classical writing’ to flow from my pen (or keypad). I had thought of rendering this piece in the best and the richest of language, going to my highest limits (which are very modest, relatively speaking). Then I had a second thought, and switched to common, layman’s parlance, for two reasons- firstly, I know as much about serious, formal, ‘inspiring’ writing as a eunuch would know about the Kamasutra. Secondly, I am posting it on a far corner of the great, big blogosphere, where it has to compete with many other, ostensibly more interesting blogs, like lonely girls and their lonely machinations, for attention. Let me explain mathematically (don’t think I know my maths?? You are so right..). At the time of writing, the web has got about 60 million blogs. If I give my blog a catch attention value of 2 out of 10, i.e 2 out of every 10 who come across it will have a peek at it (I know I overestimated!!), the chances are 1 to 120000000 that somebody will read this article. A highbrow writing will surely piss the poor guy off (a 99 to 100 chance), so I decide to stay clear of it. I forgot to mention that I am writing this piece when I am really bored up on a Sunday afternoon, and have seen all the movies and played all the games my PC has got. So the writing may go astray at points, winding up nowhere before returning to track. So forgive me as you would forgive your roommate/ girlfriend / boyfriend / spouse / boss / customer, or any other person who has had a bit too much of booze last night. With that we are over with the disclaimers, and we can get down to business, really serious business, business that would ruffle up feathers, business that would get people calling for a ban on the blog, business that would set people demanding my head. All this is expected, because I am going to present my ideas about democracy.
Abe Lincoln said, “Democracy is a government of the people, for the people, by the people.” Did he say that it was good for the people? No. Great men seldom give the complete ideas to lesser mortals, leaving us to guess for ourselves. Most guessed that it was good, so it became good, and those against it became bad, and thus began a classic good versus evil clash, and heads began to roll- Charles I, Louis XVI, Adolf Hitler, Mussolini, Mullah Omar, Saddam Hussein, to name a few. ( No points for spotting that a few of these heads had rolled before great Abe had uttered the magical formula) Did these heads necessarily have to roll? Is democracy worth the fuss being made about it? To put it mildly, is democracy the right thing for everybody?
Let’s start by examining what democracy means to laymen like us (assuming a specialist won’t be wasting valuable time going through this). Since the days of grade one we are being taught that democracy is about liberty, equality and justice. The three hallowed pillars of democracy (may be there are more hallowed pillars of democracy, but they were not hallowed enough to register on my radar screen). The three great principles have guided the famous French revolutionaries, the American freedom fighters, the Nepalese anti monarchists, to name a few. Yet, it takes all but a cursory glance at the three words before one spots contradiction. Let’s set aside justice for a while, and examine equality and freedom. Aren’t the two mutually contradictory? If you have not got it, let me explain, in detail. Freedom means one’s guarantee to ‘life, liberty and pursuit of happiness’. In a free society, one cannot stop another from ‘pursuit of happiness’, as long as it is through legitimate, fair efforts. So far so good. Now another thing is that no two human beings are similar in all characteristics. So it is sure that one’s effort at ‘pursuit of happiness’ may be better than the others. Now let’s bring in justice. If there is justice, the person whose legitimate efforts in ‘pursuit of happiness’ are better than other’s is bound to get more of ‘happiness’- higher remunerations, higher grades, higher status. Concentrate on the word ‘higher’-‘higher’ implies that there has to be a ‘lower’ to be compared with. That screws up the equality. Now let’s begin with the equal, egalitarian society. In this society, everybody is equal, which means that all have equal wages, equal status. That means those putting in better efforts in ‘pursuit of happiness’are getting the same returns as those putting in feeble attempts. That screws up the justice part. Now let’s assume the third case. It is an egalitarian society, where every body has equal status and equal wages. Justice is taken care of by making everybody put equal efforts in the ‘pursuit of happiness’. Now, since the laggards cannot match the efforts of the frontrunners, it is front runners who have to come down to the level of the laggards. So the better part of the society is forced to under perform. That screws up the freedom part. This analysis, in a nutshell, is the difference between a capitalist democracy (e.g. the USA), a socialist democracy (e.g the Republic of India) and a communist state ( e.g. the USSR). Of course, there are many more ways to solve the problem. In place of reining in the frontrunners, one could just cleanse off the laggards - that screws up both freedom and justice, and the result is a fascist dictatorship (e.g. the Third German Reich). All I wanted to show by this long series of assumptions and hypotheses is that one cannot have all the three pillars of democracy standing under the same edifice, as long as the individual humans are unique. So that’s something similar to the second law of thermodynamics, as it defines an upper cap to the level we can achieve democracy in the real world. It was meant to simply show that there is nothing called an absolute democracy- we just have different blends of democracy. Don’t you commit the mistake of not counting the communists in the list of democracies, it’s just that they do not confirm to our ideals of the first kind of democracy. If everything else is discounted, the communists are the most fond of wearing democracy on their sleeves- the Red China styles itself ‘ Peoples’ Republic of China’ and the East Germany was also known as the ‘German Democratic Republic’ !! ( By the way, I just remembered that North Korea is also called something with ‘democratic’ in it)
Let’s get back to the Lincoln quote. Which one of these contenders for the title of ‘Democracy’ was he referring to? Since we do not have the means of accompanying Bill and Ted in their excellent adventure (if you do not get the last one, watch the movie by the same name- not related remotely to the topic, but a good entertainer), we must guess- and the obvious guess is the American form of democracy- which stays primarily on the posts of liberty and justice. Equality is confined to political one, and not force-fed down people’s throat as our leaders would have here in India. Obviously, the system has its merits and demerits. Merits are just hard to ignore- the country with hardly half a millennium of history is the world leader. Its military is the strongest ever assembled on the planet. Its economy continues to lead others by a huge margin. Its culture (yeah, the culture which has been developed in a short span of 100-200 years) is spreading throughout the world without any prodding, worrying all those swamis and mullahs all over the world over the ‘degrading’ western influence. It won’t be altogether wrong (although it will be politically incorrect) to state that today we are living in a sort of superstate led by the USA. Believe it or not, it is my view that world history has entered one of those long phases of relative large scale peace, e.g. Pax Romana, when large scale power struggles cease e.g. WW II, the Cold War, and one big power minds over the smaller ones. The journos have dubbed this phase as Pax Americana, and not wrongly so. There will continue to be small skirmishes, and Uncle Sam would be really irked by the way some of his recalcitrant nephews work, but one good hard spanking on the derriere would do the trick of putting them down, and none of them is really going to grab his collar and chuck him out of the house, at least in the foreseeable future. What the hell drives such huge machinery so efficiently? Liberty, for sure. People there are free- free to call Prez Bush an asshole, free to worship the God, or to spoof Him, or to have nothing to do with Him, free to decide if they want to watch sexy commercials or Tom n Jerry, free to take their girlfriends out to the city park if they want to. I may be getting a bit emotional here, counting the blessings of those Yanks, as most of these have been denied to us in the ‘world’s largest democracy’. Yet one cannot deny that nothing has been muzzled in the US. The industry is free to produce whatever it wants, and they may include death dealing machines like the F-16’s and the F/A-18’s- Uncle Sam will keep the large part, and for the rest, there is always some small scale conflict going on somewhere, isn’t it? Nobody is told what to do, what to make, what to sell, what to watch, what to eat, as long as it does not really cross the line .( You cannot really expect to assemble a nuke in your backyard and get away citing the right to freedom.) What happens next? All and sundry go on in their ‘pursuit of happiness’, and since happiness is something which is to be pursued very keenly, all go for their best chasing shoes. The best of efforts, statistically speaking, bring out the best of results. The results are out for every one to see. As we had previously derived quite mathematically, this total liberty has given rise to inequality- and definitely there are the poor guys out there, but then, they are not so poor as poor can be. While going through the Times of India a few weeks ago I read an article about poverty and came across an astonishing fact- the income level that determines the poverty line in the USA is what is considered middle class here. If that’s what poverty is, it is not so bad a poverty. It has been said that it’s better to rule in hell, than to slave in heaven, but I guess the guy who said this had not seen hell firsthand!!! What I mean to say is that in a whole perspective, most of the West’s poor are better than the middle classes of the third world. So why not take on this system and be done with it?? Did I hear you mutter Iraq? Or Afghanistan? Yeah, strangely, the Yanks and Brits type of democracy does not seem to function everywhere. The reason is simple- for a world class sophisticated machinery to be installed, one needs world class infrastructure. The western democracy is based on the strength of general education, a sense of nationhood and responsibility, and above all, a morbid fear of wars close home. The education makes one aware of one’s right- so that no one tramples them, and of other’s rights , so that they are not trampled by mistake. (Just another digression, but how many of you know that the cops who participated in the Meerut and Aligarh moral pogrom actually thought they were doing their legal duties!!) A sense of nationhood and responsibility is needed to allow for a bit for self policing, so that we do not cheat our fellow citizens, and the nation, and do our best for a positive growth. A fear of war will avoid daily brawls ending up as communal clashes. The last two together go into eliminating the need for eliminating a heavy policing- which means a true liberated society. Needless to say, Iraq hardly qualifies, and Afghanistan would be a poor joke if even compared on this scale. What about India? I think at least twenty more years are needed. That’s the least- I’ve not accounted for the socialists and moralists yet.
Let’s examine the third type of system at the second place, because the third one hits closer home, and shall have to be taken in detail at last. The communist model-all work equally, all earn equally and all rot equally. This type of model had a really short shelf life and has gone out of stock in 1990’s ( a few of them have been kept preserved in India, of course). I say this because China has left that communist market model at the time the communist edifices were going crashing down in Europe. Now it’s a case somewhat like the fourth minor form of ‘democracy’ I had described. Yeah, we do not have any parallel for Herr Fuehrer in the Chinese government, but essentially the system is same. The market is free, the governance is not. The government leaves the market alone as long as the market does not mess with the government. Symbiosis, anyone? Of course, we are digressing. I was writing about communism- not much to write in layman’s terms. It was an enforced equality at the expense of liberty, and may be sometimes even justice. The standard of living was low-across the linguistic, national or any other sort of boundary. e.g. the GDR was the most economically developed of the Warsaw Pact members. ( You must have guessed it why- because they were Krauts- really these guys have a thing for development.) Yet, the GDR economy did not even came close to comparison with FRG economy, and that economic polarization was so severe that even 17 years after the reunion, the west is pumping money into the east to bring it up to scratch. So that shows the difference between a free Kraut and a commy Kraut. Yeah, the commies were all equal, and all equally poor. Were they happy at their equality, at the thought that the neighbour next door, and the one next to him, were feeling as deprived as they were? If the records of the no. of persons who died trying to scale the Wall show any thing, the answer is a big no. The mere presence of the wall showed that the entire system was repulsive. Obviously its creators had got their priorities wrong. Now I haven’t read Marx’s ‘The Capital/ Das Kapital’, nor much about his ideas, but I’ve heard he thought communism was the next step in the evolutionary ladder, after feudalism and capitalism. Well, as history has shown us, it was not as much of an evolution, as that of a genetic engineering job, that too horribly botched up. Their intentions might have been good- they saw the proles starving, while the bourgeoisie swelled their bellies. So they thought, lets kill these fat GFN’s ( good for nothing- for the uninitiated- go learn the SMS lingo, that’s what we will speak in late 21st century) Then these GFN’s wealth could be divided amongst the proles, who would now get their daily bread, and would be happy. Unfortunately, they did not see beyond this point while planning their system. They did not see that once the proles got their daily bread, they would try to have bit of butter too. May be some cocoa or red wine. Why not meat? Unfortunately , the system was already built, to ensure that each of the prole- the hard working prole, the lazy prole, the pious prole, the drunkard prole, the eastern prole and the western prole, the prole who has the potential to rule, and the prole who is surviving on grace- in short each of the prole, could get the bread- whether their efforts were bread worthy or not. Well, the breads do not rain, they are made by efforts- one bread per one bread worthy efforts, two for a ‘bread-n butter’ worthy effort, three for a ‘bread, butter and cheese’ worthy effort, and so on. Initially, all worked to their full strength, and on an average, the non bread worthy attempts were cancelled out by ‘bread and butter’ worthy attempts- and in the end, all had bread-but just the bread. The writing on the wall was clear- YOU GET JUST THE BREAD. So the one’s capable of ‘bread and butter’ worthy attempts moderated their efforts to match the yields. In the aggregate, this meant lesser no. of breads, and hence all got less than one bread-even those who had made the ‘full bread’ worthy attempts. This led to gradual resentment. Some capable of ‘bread and butter’ worthy attempts fled, others were shot while fleeing. The result- continuously lesser and lesser number of breads-until an implosion occurred- the reaction time was approximately 70 years, a wink in the long history. Communist system, though the best in theory, has failed most miserably in all the places it took roots. Worker’s took just 20 odd years to get disenchanted with the Worker’s paradise, and 50 more years to overthrow it for the humble ‘earthy’ freedom. Communism is best when everybody is very poor and hardly gets a subsistence, because then any sort of help from the government will be welcome. Life is definitely more important than standard of living. Yet, once the life attains a certain degree of security with respect to food and shelter, a man craves for more- and this ‘more’ cannot be achieved in the shackled communist regimes. Kudos to the comrades for lifting the czarist Russia and the largely underdeveloped China of 1949 to the present level of standing. However, the roads further cannot be traversed by muzzling the human free will, but by channelizing it properly in a free market.

Just for the moment imagine what would have happened if the writing on the wall had not been so damning. What if it had said- YOU GET THE BREAD, AND YOU MIGHT GET THE BUTTER. This is the second form of democracy, the socialist model- welcome to India. In this system, you can get the butter, at least theoretically so. So the people do not try to flee the system as much as in the communist system- they hang on to that hope of butter. Sometimes, they feel frustrated at the bread they are receiving in lieu of ‘bread and butter’ worthy efforts, and rein in their efforts. The number of breads goes down, and all get less than usual share of bread. However, in the long run, the optimists win, and again efforts are made to get to that fleeting butter. Meanwhile, such system evolves such people who subsist only on the butter, some who denounce the butter as evil- against the morality of frugality our forefathers have been teaching. In the end, some of the lucky ones do get the butter, but majority get less than the required share of even bread. However, the writing on the wall remains unchanged. While living under this sort of system is less torturous physically as compared to that under the communist regimes, it can be argued that it is much more frustrating mentally. So I cannot clearly say which form of democracy falls behind. The commies were bad, but so are ones running the show called ‘world’s largest democracy’. In the words of the great KS, the politicians here are congested with too much of power and often let out puffs of malodorous gases. In my opinion, this ‘socialist democracy’ is the worst form of democracy after the demise of the Nazi state and the communist bloc. Time and again, history has shown us how people have risen against tyrants and tyrannies to put in a better system. However, these socialists are no tyrants in the sense of the word, but they are killing the country. Don’t think of a stab or a gunshot wound- think gangrene or consumption, or in words of Lyngdoh, a cancer. One can either run away from the tiger, or fight it with all one's strength, or get mauled by it; but one faced with a barrage of mosquitoes often gives up after a few swats here and there. Same is the condition here. No great stalinist purges, no tsarist pogroms, but quite obviously, the State is at a battle against its own people, with the help of its own people. It has happened before- white colonists have done it before, and now the brown colonists are doing it. Yes, we still have some examples of a few exceptions, who dare challenge this system and get their bread, butter and cheese despite the system, but the majority is still like the horse on blinkers. If this is democracy, then God help us!
[P.S. This one article has been written over a cumulative period of many damned hot holiday afternoons, when one does not have just anything to do. So there may seem to be really big chasms in various ideas put out there. The problem is that I really have so much to say about all this (yeah, I just love yakking) that I cannot put them serial wise one at a time. If you do care to read this one and want to know more, just contact me.]