For want of a better name..

Rahul — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 11:08:00 +0000

Its been over a year, and seeing that I have way too much free time on my hands, it’s time I made some use of it.

I have been struck by the blogging bug again, and hopefully this time it lasts. Maybe this time the posts will be wiser, more sensible, and more fulfilling than the claptrap that preceeded it.

One can hope…

Two paise’s worth….

Rahul — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 11:32:36 +0000

The Prime Minister’s speech at the CII meet oh-so-many-moons ago threw up a number of valid points which have been debated to death and beyond in the mainstream media. The very fact that these issues have found some space in public discourse is a welcome thing, and for that the PM’s speech scores high in my book.

(For a cooler and way more incisive speech regarding these issues, click on the blue words.)

Seeing that the dust has settled on these issues, my two paise’s worth might be coming a little late, but better late than never, I always say. It’s a motto that I adopt with unfailing regularity during exam-times. A couple of points have emerged tallest amidst the din and have claimed central space. The idea that the government should set its own house in order before lecturing is something I may comment on later, seeing as how the following two ideas need to be dissected and placed in their proper context. One is the idea that economics merely consists of ratcheting up the growth rate and any idea of distribution is merely a matter of ‘political’ or ‘socio-economic’ concerns. The other is that the PM’s speech has let in ‘ideology’ by the back door, and any discussions which are coloured by ideological considerations threaten to derail the Great Indian Juggernaut.The first consideration was given shape in an editorial in the Times of India some time back by Arun Maira, head of Boston Consulting Group. The article does make all the right noises about the catchword du jour ‘inclusive growth’, but the article begins with the premise that :

However, the need for more inclusive development is complicating policy choices and pace of reforms. Some suggest that policymakers should push harder on the accelerator; others caution that growth without equity will affect the consensus for reform and growth could stumble.It seems that purely ‘economically correct’ choices are not feasible. ‘Political correctness’ must be factored in.

Production and distribution have formed the core concepts around which classical economics have been built. Considerations about distribution have found expression predominantly in the works of Karl Marx, but also in more ‘economic’ economists like David Ricardo and Piero Sraffa. By attempting to divorce distributional aspects from that of production, we seem to be trying to construct an image of economics as being a science more than anything else, and any considerations that are not strictly related to our definition of economics can be dismissed as being ‘unscientific’ and motivated by forces that cannot stand the scrutiny of the strict rigours of ‘science’. There is nothing wrong in recognizing distribution (of goods, wealth, resources) as a valid field of economic study. Most economists may agree that the division cannot be drawn; this point must be brought to public attention and must be raised in public discourse. The idea that a scientific and positive approach to public policy can simply be brought about by adhering to the dictates of ‘economics’ is a dangerous fallacy. Concentrating on a higher growth rate is not ‘economically correct’. Recognizing that classes are deprived is not just political, it is economic as well.

The other point I wished to raise was the fact that most commentators in the mainstream media seemed to have a problem with the fact that PM’s speech had an ideological tinge to it. Socialism is being let in through the back door. Horror of horrors.The mainstream media seems to think that any talk of curbing extravagant spending and restricting individual freedoms (the freedom to hire Shah Rukh Khan to dance at your wedding, for example) is ideological and hence bad. Not surprising, since they are one of the biggest beneficiaries post liberalization. That the mainstream media caters only to one section of our country explains a lot of things.

But I digress. The point I wish to make is that everything is ideological. Capitalism is as much an ideological consideration as it is economic. Ideology is a set of ideas according to which a society must live and function and it is normative in nature. According to Marx, that class in a society which controls the means of production decides the dominant ideology prevalent in society. Any other ideology or system of thought is seen as radical and different. The problem nowadays is that we perceive a radical new ideology, but we do not recognize the fact that this has arisen in opposition to the prevalent ruling system of thought; in fact we don’t even recognize the fact that there is a ruling ideology in society today. Ideology is a dirty word because of its subjective nature. Our society is functioning at the moment on an ideological foundation which is as subjective as any other. I am not attempting to debate the relative merits and demerits of the opposed systems of thought, I am merely stating that any talk of ideology being introduced as a result of the PM’s speech is flawed since we are operating according to the dictates of one.

Strays

Rahul — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 07:30:35 +0000

1. Cyber centres across Pune and Mubai have been shut down because certain despicable elements on the social networking site Orkut had the gall to criticize Fearless Leader Bal Thackeray. The very same crusaders for truth and justice had earlier demanded that the restaurant ‘Bombay Blue’ repent for its mistake of being so woefully and criminally behind the times by changing its name to ‘Mumbai Blue’.

How do you spell intellectual bankruptcy and goonda activism? S-H-I-V space S-E-N-A

2. You’ve all seen VH1, right? And it’s inundated with hip-hop and the like, right? While a few years back our international music channels were filled to bursting with fresh faced teenagers crooning packaged pop for the ~~suckers~~ audience’s pleasure, it’s now hip-hop’s turn. This is not a post on the relative (de)merits of hip-hop vis-a-vis other music forms. Though that’s an idea.

On nearly every video aired these days that I’ve seen, they seem to follow the same formula. Pack the screen with incredibly beautiful women dressed in clothes that leave precious little to even the most prosaic of imaginations and…. well that’s about it really. It may be just me, but I don’t think I can distill an ounce of genuine creativity in the half a million music videos I have seen.

The sheer display of riches and gratuitous ostentaiousness on display in most music videos nowadays serve to hide a basic fact, that the easiest way nowdays to sell a song or an artist is by grabbing eyeballs, and by grabbing male eyeballs in the easiest way possible. With a half naked female body.

Let’s not just blame hip-hop and phoren videos. Let’s accept the fact that its the same here as well. When we start using sex to sell as innocuous a product as ice-cream, there is something wrong with us.

But I digress. The point of this stray thought is not to bemoan the death of creativity (though to me, that is a worrying enough development) but to point out the fact that the male gaze and the male eye has completely coloured society’s way of looking at the world.

I elaborate. Its bad enough that women are used as little more than background props in most videos, but what’s really insiduous is the fact that most female artists I see on television seem to think that its an acceptable and necessary way to promote one’s self in the music business today and in society at large. I cringe when I see the latest starlet haughtily stating that she will expose ‘only if the role demands it’. When women themselves perpetuate the myth of reed thin bodies being the new idea of beauty, the male victory is complete and total. (This last point is based on second hand information, but its a second hand that I trust. A friend of mine brought up this point after watching Channel V’s Get Gorgeous programme where even though the jury members are female, they seem to advance traditional ideas of beauty deemed acceptable by the mainstream media).

Empowerment is not about deciding when one will expose or not. The very fact that exposure seems to be a pre-requisite for success shows that it is not empowerement one is enjoying, but an utter and complete slavery of sorts, where one’s mindset has been completely turned around to the ideas of the dominant class. Here, men. Because let’s face it. Its men who stand most to gain when women decide to expose ‘because the script demands it.’

Can I be faulted because I speak as a man and not as a woman? Are my ideas here misguided because my reality is quite different from that of a woman? Maybe, and if they are, please do let me know. Maybe its a good thing that women now do have greater control over their bodies. But the very fact that those bodies are still put out on display in all channels of the mainstream media does not seem like much of a victory to me.

We didn’t start the fire

Rahul — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 06:54:35 +0000

So my bags were packed and I was ready to leave, I heard my bus a-comin’ and a day later, I was walking in Bangalore in my blue suede sandals.

While hunting for an auto after getting off the bus, with my bags weighing me down, I happened to come across the crew of a nearby fire station readying themselves for the day ahead. Morning drill, I said to myself. Synchronized marching, I said. A group of men whose individualism has been supressed to the extent that they think act march like a perfect machine, minds and reflexes acting in superior synchronicity.

There are times, it is said, when the illusion is much more preferable to the truth. This was one of those times.

I should have known something was wrong when they began to assemble themselves into lines for a morning marchpast. It took a whole five minutes before the concept of ‘one-arm’s distance’ begin to filter down to them. Gradually, at the blinding speed of evolution, a parade (of sorts) began to coalesce and take form. For the most part, it remained but the idea of a parade rather than its physical representation.

Once the dust had settld and order (of sorts) came to reign, the drill sargeant (of sorts) barked out his ‘right turn!’ that carried to me over the din of the traffic. As a whole, the group turned to their right. Save for one solitary dissenter, who suddenly found himself staring face to face with his comrades having executed a smart left-turn. And was rewarded for it by a sharp smack across the head.

“About turn!” A voice loud enough to rise above the cacophony of bus horns and coughing birds. And once again, the unit turns as whole (of sorts). But for our solitary dissenter, who once again chose to turn the other cheek. He must have listened to CSNY. Or he must have been a Gandhian.

One more slap across the head.

I shall not write about the actual marching. Instead, I suggest you watch a recording of the Russian army marching. Or even the North Koreans, both of whom execute their tasks with bloody-minded determination and terrifying synchronization. This occupies one end of the spectrum. I was witnessing the other end. The end that lies so far away you’d think it was unexplored.

What upset me throughout this whole display was that the drill sargeant was unperturbed during the entire display. Yes, he shouted. Yes, he screamed. Yes, he heaped abuse on his charges’ mothers. But beyond that, he didn’t seem to want to do anything about the situation. I had just witnessed the first step in the decline of civilization. When the powers that be decide to just let it be.

And then they dispersed. And a couple of them began to chase each oher around the premises. Please keep in mind that these are not young straplings tasting their first taste of manhood. These are men who have drunk deep from the cup of life. A little too deep though, as was evident.

It was like being back in school. The same discordant symphony of co-operation. The same dissenters who know not that they are dissenting. The same general feeling of carefree bonhomie that exists beneath the skin of all involved.

It made me feel nostalgic for a second. And that’s not a good thing.

Next time there’s a fire at my house, I’m calling my friends over to put it out. At least they march better together.

You’re in the army now

Rahul — Tue, 15 May 2007 05:17:49 +0000

Scene : Young, idealistic student (henceforth known as TC) calls up a contact at CRISIL, Pune, to enquire about internship opportunities at said institution, and is put through to speak with grizzled, tough-as-nails old army veteran (henceforth known as Jack). And so it goes:

(Note : All names have been changed to protect identities)

(Further note : That some poetic licence has been taken)

(One more note : Jack is a bastard)

TC : Hello, may i speak to Mr Jack, please?

Operator : Please hold on.

5 second silence

Jack : Hello

TC : Hi, I’m calling from (censored) Institute of (censored)…

Jack : Good morning

TC : Hi, I just wanted to know if you got my e-mail?

Jack : I wished you good morning, you wished me Hi.

TC : Eh?

Jack : There is a certain etiquette to be followed in these procedures.

TC : I’m very sorry sir.

Jack : I have served in the Indian army for over twenty years. I am your senior, and there should be some etiquette followed in these matters.

TC : I’m very sorry sir.

Silence.

TC : Sir, did you get my mail?

Jack : I did.

TC : So you will let me know as soon as possible when you have shortlisted the candidates?

Jack : I will.

TC : Thank you sir.

Click.

Poor boy. He couldn’t handle the truth.

If only real life were like the army. Where there’s always someone to command and someone to kill.

Left of the muddled

Rahul — Wed, 09 May 2007 14:17:11 +0000

Truly, the only other woman besides Whoopi Goldberg that can make me laugh as hard is the Indian Express’ very own Tavleen Singh. If you’re feeling down on a sunday morning and need a bit of humour to spicen up your day, nothing can be more entertaining than this bit of delightful columnspace.

Tavleen Singh’s object of a freewheeling rant this time, like most other times, is the greatest evil to visit India since muslims on an amsterdam flight, i.e the Left front and others of its ilk. This article really has to be read to be believed. If the Indian Express wants to position itself as a right-of-centre newspaper, why hire a rabid foaming ideologue like her?

Her opinions and objections to the left are, it has to be said, downright silly. Sample this :

The Left was delighted, and even more delighted when she (Indira Gandhi) came up with ‘Garibi Hatao’. It was a time of innocence and we did not realise then that poverty could not be removed by slogans and that nationalised banks were going to be just as mean about giving loans to the starving masses as private banks.

Why blame the Left for foisting slogans upon the electorate? Haven’t we seen this similar bit of legerdemaincy practiced before in the shape of the BJP’s ‘India Shining’ campaign? And does Tavleen truly believe in an India that shines for the majority of its citizens? I quote :

They (the Left) say they do this for the sake of the ‘aam aadmi’, they say that they speak for those ‘700 million’ Indians who do not know yet that India is shining.

I am confused here as to whether she actually believes in the truth of an India that shines for all. I would sincerely like to believe that she is not near-sighted enough to do so, but seeing as she is Tavleen Singh, it wouldn’t be so hard to think that such is the case.

Granted, she might have raised a couple of pertinent points on the extent of Indians actually below the poverty line, but the rest of the column is so filled with glaring gaffes and blinkered opinion that it ceases to be an informed and erudite piece of writing and emerges instead as a vitriolic attack against a pet peeve. Read:

Much has changed since. India has prospered more in the past 15 years than in the 45 that went before, the Soviet Union has collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions, Europe has thrown Marxism in the garbage bin of history, and ‘socialist’ China gets more foreign direct investment (FDI) from the Americans than we do, but our Leftist friends remain magically unchanged. They remain ideologically where they were at the height of their glory.

India has prospered, yes, but for whom? While a section of society might see themselves enjoying higher standards of living than any possible a decade or so back, the instances of farmers and peasants taking their own lives in Vidharba, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka is definitely evidence that there is a deeper malaise affecting our society which no-one seems ready to talk about.

Secondly, Europe might have thrown Marxism into the dustbin (I bet she stood up and cheered when Sarkozy won the election), but has she heard of a little continent called South America where leftist parties have won popular polls (Hugo Chavez notwithstanding)?

And this was the best of all : “the Soviet Union has collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions”. And the years post-communism have been kind to them, haven’t they? Never mind that a majority of Russia’s population have voted the period under the helmsman-ship of Boris Yeltsin as the worst in recent memory. Yeltsin’s shock-and-awe tactics in moving Russia from a state-controlled to a market-oriented economy caused more harm than good, including side-effects like a high rate of inflation and a rise in food prices that affected a majority of the population. Russia’s post-communist experiments with capitalism has not been a happy or successful one. In fact, many would say that Russia’s economy survives mainly due to the high prices of oil prevalent in the world today.

Moreover: “Privatisation is on hold and every time there is a sign of the government allowing more private or foreign investment in retail, insurance or whatever, the Left publicly threatens to pull the plug. ” Her obsessive right-wingedness has never been more in evidence.

But, wait, this takes the cake and the whole damn bakery :

When it comes to the Left, I am a conspiracy theorist. I believe that our Marxist friends are working to an agenda whose objective is to ensure that India’s economic reforms stall sufficiently for China to not be threatened in any way. China is 20 years ahead of us anyway, and mostly because it abandoned socialist economic policies at least 10 years before we did. It has already made the reforms we are still struggling to make, but what is all right for China is not good for India unless it’s West Bengal. This seems to be the Marxist view and we ask too few questions.

Replace “a conspiracy theorist” with “stupid” and it seems to make sense.

I am a kind person. I hope to god that she at least possesses a sense of humour and the above comment was made in jest. I refuse to accept the fact that the Indian Express or any other national newspaper for that matter would continue to hire a person who would forward such an inane and ludicrous opinion as the one above.

It is always a pleasure reading a well-informed ideologue with a viewpoint diametrically opposite to yours, for this generates and sustains intelligent discourse and allows one to be exposed to a world-view beyond one’s blinkers. But the key words here are ‘well-informed’ and ‘intelligent’. When faced with the issue of Tavleen Singh, I find myself asking the same question that I ask myself with respect to Shashi Tharoor and Shoba De:

“How do these people manage to get columnspace?”

Cheaper by the dozen

Rahul — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 15:47:22 +0000

Angry fix has already done it, and so have others more qualified than you and I. But its the season for Tharoor bashing, and I don’t want to be left behind. Wander your eyeballs, if you will, over the latest piece of Tharoorvianism to hit the mean streets.

Actually, I’m being uncharitable. I don’t have a problem with Tharoor as much as I have a problem with the sentiment he is espousing. In his latest column, he firmly takes up the cause of the call-centre crowd and tells the rest of the country to like, back off. Sample:

It has become fashionable of late, amongst our bien-pensant classes, to sneer at the success of India’s business process outsourcing industry the call centres and the like which have become the visible face of globalisation in our formerly protectionist land. Some 700,000 Indians work in the BPO business, which contributes an estimated $17 billion to the burgeoning Indian economy.

The call centre has become the symbol of India’s newly globalised workforce: while traditional India sleeps, a dynamic young cohort of highly skilled, articulate professionals works through the night, functioning on US time under made-up American aliases, pretending familiarity with a culture and climate they’ve never actually experienced, earning salaries that were undreamt of by their elders (but a fraction of what an American would make) and enjoying a lifestyle that’s a cocktail of premature affluence and ersatz westernisation transplanted to an Indian setting

He seems to find it heartening that nowadays the cybercoolies are the ones who have begun scheduling the trains, and the article is filled with stock cliches as regards the achievements of India’s tech-happy generation. Your standard globalization catch-phrases, things we’ve heard a million times before.

(He even ends it on a most embarassing cliche, the kind always employed to demonstrate the smaller canvas the world has become as a result of globalization : just throw in a couple of geographical locations as incongrous as possible and lean back because you’ve made your point. I quote : “Perhaps the next level of outsourcing will come when smart scientists in Bangalore farm out processes to young engineers in Dharwar to cater to the needs of consumers in Hubli”).

So maybe the call-centre industry is not just a glorified sweat-shop employing coolie labour to do the dirty work of the West. The stats can be made to prove this, and you will always get revenue figures thrown at you with venom when you try to bring this sunshine industry down a peg. But sometimes, I get the feeling that we’re missing the point.

The fact of the matter is we’re such a preferred destination because we’re so bloody cheap. Its a happy accident as a result of the globalization process, and make no mistakes about it, we’ve milked this advantage to the fullest. But we seem to be drifting towards a make-believe la-la land if we think that this will last forever.

The business process outsourcing industry is not so special, Mr Tharoor. India is trusted as a BPO destination simply because the work can be done at a fraction of the original cost. Our limitless talent pool and lower wage levels relative to that of the West is all that keeps this industry going. Technical knowledge might be a point in our favour, but it would count for naught if the costs of doing business in India would be higher than the profits to be made. In a world being built on the foundations of a knowledge economy, knowledge has ceased to become such a scarce resource. Cost is the primary factor.

Presuming that the boom in the industry continues, and the economy doesn’t lapse into one of its temperamental moods, the increasing demand for BPO services in India is bound to jack up its wage and price levels. While we may rule out the possibility that the wage levels in India would soon meet Western standards, what happens if another country emerges as a favourable destination now, and their costs of doing business with the West turn out to be lower than the West’s costs of doing business with India? All we need is a country with a seizeable talent pool of English-speaking labour adept at computer skills and willing to do business with the rest of the world. What happens if such a country emerges, and the entire industry decides to offshore again to the shores of a new paradise? I doubt that we could expect them to be conscientious enough to keep a mindful eye on the effects that such a move would have on our domestic economy.

The BPO industry arose and survives as a result of this cost difference. There is really nothing exemplary about it. Maybe I’m being a bit too harsh, but I think its time we stopped looking at it as the miracle drug to all our nation’s ills. It would be dangerous to treat it as a permanent fixture because, by its very definition, it is temprorary and impermanent. It is a cash cow, no doubt, but lets not treat it as anything more.

All’s not lost!

Rahul — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 14:18:27 +0000

See now, its a shame and all that our boys have been sent back with their tails between their legs from the West Indies. But all’s not lost! Being Indian, being us poor villagers from the third world slum of the subcontinent, there’s still plenty we can find that binds us with the teams left in the fray. I submit :

1) Pakistan: Ooh this is a toughie. I thought I’d grapple with the biggest bull of them all first.

I mean, its always hard to convince most people that there’s something to love about Pakistan. You’d get a grudging acceptance though if you bring in the fact that Pakistani women (the ones captured on screen, that is) are hot, but I don’t want to do a Shashi Tharoor, so i’ll leave this argument out of the way.

There has to be some sort of subcontinent bonding, shouldn’t there? We should be feeling proud about our brothers from the subcontinent, even though we might have had a couple of spats along the way from Independence to here, shouldn’t we? We shouldn’t be feeling so good because they’re out of the tournament because hey, it could have been ourcoach killed by fans/bookies! I mean, underneath it all, we’re really indistinguishable. We’re all called Pakis by everyone else! So we really should be getting behind them every match they play and cheer for them as loud as we can and….and…

Fuck it. Their women are hot. Period

2) Bangladesh : If its not subcontinent love, then the eternal fascination for the struggle of the underdog should prevail. These boys have proved that they can play with the big boys! Surely they deserve a little bit of support. I know, I know, they did send us home from the party early, but look at it this way : post 9/11, both Bangladeshis and Indians might have been shot by raving redneck lunatics. If nothing else, rascism should bring us together.

3)Sri Lanka : Yes, they spanked us nice and proper. But see, they’re from the subcontinent. That should be enough. If them palefaces claim they’re better than us, then why can’t we band together?

And I like Ravana. If the Ramayana can be read as an allegory of the upstart aryans from the North attacking them peace-loving innocent blameless Dravidians in the South, then being the loyal Southie that I am, I’ll stand with the ten-headed dude. Isn’t class affiliation a wonderful thing?

And if not for the above reasons, then do it for Lasith Malinga. The worst haircut this side of Carlos Valderamma. That surely deserves our support.

4)Bermuda : The love for the underdog can only go so far. The only thing that endears me to them is the fact that the entire team looks like a cross-section of the Indian police Force.

5)West Indies : I’m sure there’s a Mallu there. That’s enough for me.

6)South Africa : Refer above.

7)England : Let’s face it, there’s a little bit of a colonial hangover in all of us. Don’t deny it now. Why else would most of us support them when it comes to the footer World Cup? Eh?

And you have to admit, they did give us good governance. And the railways and electricity.

8)Australia : The wonderful thing about being an ex-colony of the British is the fact that iut offers you membership to the largest club of the world, that of the Stand Up if you’ve been Whipped by the Brits Before But Can now Do It With One Hand Tied Behind Your Backs (At Least on the Sporting Field) Club. Every member of this club deserves our support in any form of sport. And so we must support Australia. Exceptions to this rule are when we play Australia or when England play Australia. Colonial hangovers still rule, you’ve got to admit.

And considering that we’re a nation who love our convicts so much (they’ve all been elected), it’s hard not to feel a little love for a nation full of them.

9)Ireland : They hate the British. They’d spit on their football team. And Roy Keane is from Ireland. If I weren’t Mallu, I’d rather be Indian. If I weren’t Indian, I’d rather be Irish.

10)New Zealand : It’s as close to Middle-Earth as you’ll ever get in life, and that places them head and shoulders above any competetion (though Kurla station in the rains makes a better Mordor).

Moreover, if there wasn’t New Zealand, there wouldn’t be a Kaho Naa Pyar Hai. If there wasn’t Kaho Naa Pyar Hai, there wouldn’t be Hrithik Roshan. If there wasn’t Hrithik Roshan, there wouldn’t be a Dhoom-2. If there wasn’t a Dhoom-2, there wouldn’t be peace on earth and goodwill to all.

So you see, there’s still fun left in the World Cup. Like I”ve shown above, there’s plenty more teams left to support. And they all deserve our support one way or the other.

Um…

Rahul — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 12:06:28 +0000

The funny thing about modern economics is that most economists are in such an hurry to put things in a neat, observable, pretty little scienitfic format that they end up tripping over their own feet.

While reading thorugh a textbook on Law and Economics, I came across a discussion on why exactly people commit crimes when they are aware of the penalties it entails. An interesting question for sure, but the explanation of it was..well…just read on.

(A note for the non-economic readers…. the process of discounting involves converting a future value of some asset into its present value by means of an appropriate discount rate. If a sum of P rupees transalates into Rs 100 at the end of one year at an interest rate of say i, then since P + iP = 100, the present value of the asset is P = 100/(1+i) for a period of one year. The future value gets divided by a fraction (1+i) for one year, or (1+i) squared for two years and so on.

And now we return you back to our show.)

So what did the book have to say? That people generally choose a range of discounting rates when calculating the present value of some future punishment, the discount rates chosen conforming to a probablility distribution. Youngsters however, are more prone to being swayed by emotion and as such their emotions spread the probability distribution, leading to the choice of inappropriate discount rates.

So what you’re trying to say is that teens tend to commit more crimes because they’re by and large hot-headed? Well, fancy that.

While the scientific merit of the above can be debated, I doubt that the same can be said for the following example. The example below was advanced to caution against the process of redistribution of resources and to state that the transaction and bureaucratic costs involved leads to loss in the value of the resource. Read on…

Suppose there are two oases in the desert, one filled with ice cream and the other empty. Suppose the decision is taken to transfer ice-cream from one oasis to the other. The procedure involves choosing a youth who’d fill up ice-cream in a vessel and run to the other oasis to deposit the ice-cream. In the process, a good amount of ice-cream is lost. The appropriate procedure involves choosing the youth who can run the fastest, and even this does not guarantee that some ice-cream will not be lost.

Truly, I am flabberdegasted. Are you flabberdegasted?

This just isn’t cricket

Rahul — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 06:14:24 +0000

Short post written in machine gun joycean rant format as I don’t have time and I have a microeconomics test tomorrow and I need to kickstart this blog again and thankfully this computer has decided to shrug off its perpetual PMS-mood to give me some love and actually work. This explains the oh-so-cliched title.

So we’re out of the world cup and our cricketers are fair game and let’s all burn their houses and rape their women because they dented our glorious national pride and its because of them we can’t get the SEZ’s implemented. Thank god that at least Pakistan didn’t make it and their coach died. (Its a pity he wasn’t Pakistani. I would have felt a lot better.)

Let’s not blame the media here for blowing things out of proportion and pouring on the hype-sauce. Let’s not even blame the cricketers themselves for allowing the hype to carry on and not cash in on it. Honestly, you’d be a complete loon to silence a screaming crowd who all think you’re the greatest thing to happen to them since chicken curry and led zeppelin (not necessarily in that order). And if people are willing to pay them potsandpots of money to grin like an idiot on television and prove that they really can’t dance (think dada in a motorbike ad), well what’s wrong with grinning like idiots and dancing like loons? They’re only making the most of an opportunity, and isn’t that the mantra these days? Greed is good, Mr Gecko.

The problem with cricket is not the BCCI or Sehwag’s mom or the corporate whores who control the game or wall-to-wall media coverage or even Mandira Bedi (though I might make an exception in case of Mandira). Its you, me and chaman charlie down the road. We’re a bunch of little children who don’t know when to adulate in moderation and express anger in moderation. If a defeat to Bangladesh provides suitable justification to tear down someone’s house, there’s something really wrong with us all. At least shave your heads like intelligent idiots and don’t cause damage to others.

Expressing disproportionate anger is not just confined to the lumpen lunatic fringe. Forwarding e-mails which have cricketer’s faces morphed onto tea-stall owner’s bodies to indcate suitable alternate careers is a waste of someone’s time and bandwidth. We’ve suddenly turned Gandhian after this debacle; have you received the sms which insists that all of us adopt the old boy’s Non Co-operation strategy with respect to the goods they endorse?

Cheer with them, criticize them, praise them, call them idiots, but stop at that. If you behave like kids and break your favaourite toy just because one day it refuses to work, then get ready to be treated like kids. The media feeds off the juvenility of its audience. Look at the lovely cricketers, children! Aren’t they super-duper! They’re the best in the world, let’s do some pujas for them, kids! Wait a minute, oh no! They’ve lost? Isn’t that horrible, my babies? Show them how angry you are, go on show them! Do you want to thorw something at them? Well, ok…just make sure no-one sees you doing it. And don’t tell anyone I said its ok.

Nationalistic pride is good, fanaticism and hysteria is not. Its a lesson I think we’ve forgotten.

Ok bye bye.