All for a Brand IIT
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/IIT_physics_cut-off_down_to_zero_as_seats_increase/articleshow/3316557.cms
I had no plan to write blog today, but the article made me write.
It hurts! You increase the seats, You pull the OBC up, You pull the poorer people up, You do anything that you want to do but not at the cost of the quality.
The brand IIT is only because of the quality and quality is what people value. It has taken at least 40 years to build the brand IIT, if not more. One wrong decision can undo all this. I feel very sad if all this happens for votes and politics.
I am not against increasing the seat, giving ‘allowances’ to some, but do the politicians care about people not making it in the IITs. They can push people in, but believe me it’s not easy to get out. I have seen people spoiling their 4-7 years and not making it out. Those who are getting the all sympathy for increasing the seat will be responsible for spoiling the lives of the same people who they think they care. Media only covers when politician (decision makers !) announce ‘increase in seats’ for the benefit for ‘Aam Aadmi’, media fails to cover how these students are performing in IIT, I think they should start presenting that picture to the public. It’s only us, the insider who know the truth.
This will only increase the pressure on the ‘not so elite’ students once they are in the IITs and competing among the other ‘competitive’ ones.
Just by pushing them in does not mean the job is done. This will increase the drop out rates in IITs, another intelligent politician will then order IITs to relax on the academic rigour to help people get out of IIT!
They will sight reasons for increased pressure amongst students, increase in number of suicides (believe me I won’t be surprised), and I am sure they will succeed in lighten the academic rigour.
There are very few things that world values for India, preserve it, I want to preserve it and am sure every alumni do as well.
Friday, 1 August 2008
Saturday, 26 July 2008
Scratch Pad - Genius, Then and Now
We have read many theories that are universally accepted, many theorists who proposed such theories are admired in their respective fields. Sometimes they are referred to have being contributed in other fields as well. While I was going through the many theories of motivation suggested by many ‘Researchers’, every theory different from the previous one in some aspect still there is a consistent need for new theory because group behaviour is such a complex process that you can not really put it in the framework of theories.
No, do not get afraid, I am not proposing a new theory for motivation. What I am thinking is that whenever I come across any big researcher, inventors, scientists etc. all those theories existed for a long time. Take an example, Newton Laws of motion, Ohm Law, Fick's law of diffusion, Bernoulli's principle etc. Pardon me for my engineering background, is that the reason! There are no new theory coming up, I am not saying that the research is not happening these days, the research is definitely happening and even at a faster rates but there are not breakthrough theories coming up, that are widely accepted and universally recognized. Well, you may disagree with me here because my knowledge may be very limited.
Still I am puzzled, is it that all the research that could have been done is already been done in all the fields at macro level and whatever research is currently being done is all at micro level for e.g. particle dynamics, nanotechnologies etc. So there are no theories of say solid mechanics or fluid mechanics or thermodynamics, conduction, convection, mass transfer etc. (Again pardon me for sounding a bit technical).
There is a huge scope of research if we go deeper and I believe that we are yet to find any universal principle at this micro/nano level that can be accepted as universal law. Every hypothesis gets refined every five year or so to improve on its applicability and accuracy. Is it what it should be or our research is actually not able to converge to one direction? Is it that while researching on these micro/nano aspects we ourselves are doing Brownian research (getting some inspiration from Brownian motion), and therefore it being happening in every direction and actually difficult to converge.
Or is it that the earlier scientist/theorists were well capable to take their research in one discrete direction and finally result in a universally acceptable law. Or is it that there were lack of scientist community to actually counter a theory proposed by someone. Or is it that there are no more theory left at the macro level that hasn’t been proposed yet and therefore we have successfully explained all macro level phenomenon.
I am sure that there are a lot more number of researchers/scientist today, with a lot more knowledge at their disposal, working on a lot more complex and efficient equipment and driven by a lot more funds and motivation. I am also sure there are a lot more technical papers published in international journals and this trend is going to be the same in the years to come.
Still, isn’t there is one macro level phenomenon that is not yet been discovered or observed and hence there is a scope of at least one new law that will be quickly accepted universally. I am definitely not the person who can comment on this question.
No, do not get afraid, I am not proposing a new theory for motivation. What I am thinking is that whenever I come across any big researcher, inventors, scientists etc. all those theories existed for a long time. Take an example, Newton Laws of motion, Ohm Law, Fick's law of diffusion, Bernoulli's principle etc. Pardon me for my engineering background, is that the reason! There are no new theory coming up, I am not saying that the research is not happening these days, the research is definitely happening and even at a faster rates but there are not breakthrough theories coming up, that are widely accepted and universally recognized. Well, you may disagree with me here because my knowledge may be very limited.
Still I am puzzled, is it that all the research that could have been done is already been done in all the fields at macro level and whatever research is currently being done is all at micro level for e.g. particle dynamics, nanotechnologies etc. So there are no theories of say solid mechanics or fluid mechanics or thermodynamics, conduction, convection, mass transfer etc. (Again pardon me for sounding a bit technical).
There is a huge scope of research if we go deeper and I believe that we are yet to find any universal principle at this micro/nano level that can be accepted as universal law. Every hypothesis gets refined every five year or so to improve on its applicability and accuracy. Is it what it should be or our research is actually not able to converge to one direction? Is it that while researching on these micro/nano aspects we ourselves are doing Brownian research (getting some inspiration from Brownian motion), and therefore it being happening in every direction and actually difficult to converge.
Or is it that the earlier scientist/theorists were well capable to take their research in one discrete direction and finally result in a universally acceptable law. Or is it that there were lack of scientist community to actually counter a theory proposed by someone. Or is it that there are no more theory left at the macro level that hasn’t been proposed yet and therefore we have successfully explained all macro level phenomenon.
I am sure that there are a lot more number of researchers/scientist today, with a lot more knowledge at their disposal, working on a lot more complex and efficient equipment and driven by a lot more funds and motivation. I am also sure there are a lot more technical papers published in international journals and this trend is going to be the same in the years to come.
Still, isn’t there is one macro level phenomenon that is not yet been discovered or observed and hence there is a scope of at least one new law that will be quickly accepted universally. I am definitely not the person who can comment on this question.
Sunday, 6 July 2008
Next Scarce Resource
I was contemplating to write on this for long. Recently when the UPA govt. increased the petrol/diesel prices, our PM addressed the whole nation trying to educate people that the government had no option left but to increase the prices. Trying to educate the people that there is little that govt. can do as these are global factors affecting all the countries and India in one of them. He also shared with the citizens what were the possible alternatives that the govt. could have tried and their limitation and finally they increased the prices. Some people may disagree with this saying that government has levied so many duties and taxes on petrol/diesel at the first place and they should first give concessions on that front. Well I am not writing this to detail out the proportion of taxes, their objective, their requirement and etc. So pardon me for this.
What I want to discuss is the vision that Mr. PM has, one should listen to that message he delivered to the citizens on that day. He is truly an economist because economics is all about efficient and effective use of scarce resources. He is also a true leader because he made a point to make people aware about another daily resource which is not scarce at this point of time, but the early indication are visible on the horizon. Please forgive me if you feel/perceive that I am praising Mr. PM too much. Believe me, I do not have any vested interest in politics and I am not planning to join the concerned political party (because in that case I should be praising someone else!).
What I want to highlight is that he is planning for the future, crude is the present, he is taking necessary steps, but at the same time he is warning people to be aware that such situation might arise again in future and we should start planning for that right from today. I am not that skilled yet to sense if this ‘future problem’ provide any opportunity for business idea, but I am sure key people in the industry must be having some plans to address the situation in the future for the benefit of the people, of course if they take in the philanthropist context. You can relate few M&A in this space by one of the big Indian houses, though the scale of operation as of now is very small. It may take may be 10-15 years before people do realize and accept this as a major challenge but it is always good to start planning now, especially in India where the execution take so long, may be this is the reason Mr. PM mentioned this right away without waiting.
I do not think I mentioned earlier in this post that he said ‘Water’. Thanks Mr. PM for hoping against all odds.
What I want to discuss is the vision that Mr. PM has, one should listen to that message he delivered to the citizens on that day. He is truly an economist because economics is all about efficient and effective use of scarce resources. He is also a true leader because he made a point to make people aware about another daily resource which is not scarce at this point of time, but the early indication are visible on the horizon. Please forgive me if you feel/perceive that I am praising Mr. PM too much. Believe me, I do not have any vested interest in politics and I am not planning to join the concerned political party (because in that case I should be praising someone else!).
What I want to highlight is that he is planning for the future, crude is the present, he is taking necessary steps, but at the same time he is warning people to be aware that such situation might arise again in future and we should start planning for that right from today. I am not that skilled yet to sense if this ‘future problem’ provide any opportunity for business idea, but I am sure key people in the industry must be having some plans to address the situation in the future for the benefit of the people, of course if they take in the philanthropist context. You can relate few M&A in this space by one of the big Indian houses, though the scale of operation as of now is very small. It may take may be 10-15 years before people do realize and accept this as a major challenge but it is always good to start planning now, especially in India where the execution take so long, may be this is the reason Mr. PM mentioned this right away without waiting.
I do not think I mentioned earlier in this post that he said ‘Water’. Thanks Mr. PM for hoping against all odds.
Friday, 23 May 2008
India Growth Story?
The recent IIP numbers are in the downward trend. Analyst are citing these are temporary set backs, comparison to high base numbers (IIP data) from last year, and global slow down.
Crude has touched $135 and Indian basket is around $122. With OIL marketing companies making a loss of Rs16/- and Rs27/- per liter of petrol and diesel and Rs320/- (approx) per LPG cylinder, I wonder if there is any more stem left! BPCL and HPCL are talking of quota set of each individual oil distributor based on the sales last year.
There was a BRIC report sometime back, now people are talking about report by a Goldman Sachs analyst who predicted that crude will touch $200.
Government is doing well by artificially controlling the prices but this is not a permanent measure, they should be doing (I hope) more than this. They should explore various methods of transferring the crude burden partly to consumers who can afford it and at the same time not impacting the inflation. They have to selectively subsidize the core functions of economy from the crude burden but leave the affluent class (and the emerging middle class) to pay for their petrol bill. By core functions I mean transportation of industrial goods, power generations etc.
Rupee surged to all time high of around 39.5 w.r.t $ and it is back to 43.5, thanks to high crude import bill.
Indian agriculture growth statistics are not exciting, this coupled with shrinking land under irrigation, dismal condition of Indian farmers and unpredictable nature of monsoon only indicate that situation is going to get worse.
Though it is projected that the wheat production is set to increase but I am not really sure it would be able to satisfy the ever increasing need of growing economy. And what about wheat production for coming years! Do we have plan for that in the pipeline or we are just relying on the monsoons of those respective years.
Not only agriculture, other building blocks of economy, capital goods, power sector, inland transport and ports & harbor infrastructure, all of these need significant investments, I wonder how government will fund these requirements.
Recently there was a news that Thailand was planning a cartel of ‘Rice Exporting Nations’ and there was a huge cry among the international community. I feel the way OPEC is able to monopolize the Crude market; the day is not far where the other commodity producing nation will form the other sorts of cartel and the world will again move back to the barter system.
Crude has touched $135 and Indian basket is around $122. With OIL marketing companies making a loss of Rs16/- and Rs27/- per liter of petrol and diesel and Rs320/- (approx) per LPG cylinder, I wonder if there is any more stem left! BPCL and HPCL are talking of quota set of each individual oil distributor based on the sales last year.
There was a BRIC report sometime back, now people are talking about report by a Goldman Sachs analyst who predicted that crude will touch $200.
Government is doing well by artificially controlling the prices but this is not a permanent measure, they should be doing (I hope) more than this. They should explore various methods of transferring the crude burden partly to consumers who can afford it and at the same time not impacting the inflation. They have to selectively subsidize the core functions of economy from the crude burden but leave the affluent class (and the emerging middle class) to pay for their petrol bill. By core functions I mean transportation of industrial goods, power generations etc.
Rupee surged to all time high of around 39.5 w.r.t $ and it is back to 43.5, thanks to high crude import bill.
Indian agriculture growth statistics are not exciting, this coupled with shrinking land under irrigation, dismal condition of Indian farmers and unpredictable nature of monsoon only indicate that situation is going to get worse.
Though it is projected that the wheat production is set to increase but I am not really sure it would be able to satisfy the ever increasing need of growing economy. And what about wheat production for coming years! Do we have plan for that in the pipeline or we are just relying on the monsoons of those respective years.
Not only agriculture, other building blocks of economy, capital goods, power sector, inland transport and ports & harbor infrastructure, all of these need significant investments, I wonder how government will fund these requirements.
Recently there was a news that Thailand was planning a cartel of ‘Rice Exporting Nations’ and there was a huge cry among the international community. I feel the way OPEC is able to monopolize the Crude market; the day is not far where the other commodity producing nation will form the other sorts of cartel and the world will again move back to the barter system.
Tuesday, 13 May 2008
P.P.
Remember the term!!! What comes to your mind when you read this title?
This was very prevalent term in my childhood days. I have sympathy to this term that has lost its existence in the rapidly growing Indian economy. The changes in Indian lifestyle may not have been really significant but when it comes to this technology, it has been drastic. I am trying to steal some time before I start discussing about the term, just trying to give you sometime to start thinking in back of your mind about this term. If you are able to recollect, it’s great and if not, then this will provide more impact to the next paragraph where I have given some sort of tribute to this ‘not so frequently’ used term nowadays, and I have complete sympathy for it.
It used to be an acronym for non-personal phone number. The local language full-form used to be “Padosi Phone”. Now you realize how abandoned this term has become. With the increasing number of mobile phone connections day-by-day, still reducing tariffs and increasing competition in the market, everyone has a mobile,
Monday, 21 April 2008
Earth Day
Thanks to the autorickshaw strike, I took my vehicle to the office. Later I realized that today is earth day (thanks to google), and I thought I should have used public transport instead. It’s a separate story that all the public transport buses are overcrowded today, again because of auto-rickshaw strike.
I also started thinking am I doing something from my side to reduce my carbon footprint. ‘Carbon footprint’ a nice term coined by some nice people who care for the planet. But how many of us are actually aware of this. Rather how many of us actually bother about the same. I believe the time has come for all of us to move upwards, those who are aware should start bothering and those who are not aware should develop awareness.
I am not a environmentalist, but I can certainly recollect few of the past events that was lucky enough to have given coverage by media.
· There were non seasonal rain in some part of Delhi, TN (or Andra).
· India is facing huge shortage of food grains, should be worldwide problem
· There was a recent fight between two Indian states regarding setting of one water project
· Drought in Australia….. I mean Rice production (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/17/business/worldbusiness/17warm.html)
· And everyone know about melting of glaciers
· And many others that I am not probably aware of….
If you pull out some of your precious time and think about all these events together they indicate one and one thing – a global imbalance.
Once I was watching discovery and I remember the episode focused on new buildings that are ecofriendly – they require less lights inside and are well lit by sunlight during the day, they recirculate the water used etc.
You already must be aware Honda is testing hydrogen powered car somewhere, tata has launched green batteries, two days back there was news that India’s largest private sector company was probably in talks with world largest fuel cell manufacturer to set up a plant in India….. so that means people are doing some stuff around cutting down emissions, partly because it gives huge publicity, partly it readies you for what can become a necessity in future and partly (I hope) morally as they have the right resources with them (capital, manpower, technology etc.)
At the same time I also believe time has come that we ourselves change our daily activities to an extent that we are able to reduce our own carbon footprint. How do we do that, I leave it to individuals.
I also started thinking am I doing something from my side to reduce my carbon footprint. ‘Carbon footprint’ a nice term coined by some nice people who care for the planet. But how many of us are actually aware of this. Rather how many of us actually bother about the same. I believe the time has come for all of us to move upwards, those who are aware should start bothering and those who are not aware should develop awareness.
I am not a environmentalist, but I can certainly recollect few of the past events that was lucky enough to have given coverage by media.
· There were non seasonal rain in some part of Delhi, TN (or Andra).
· India is facing huge shortage of food grains, should be worldwide problem
· There was a recent fight between two Indian states regarding setting of one water project
· Drought in Australia….. I mean Rice production (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/17/business/worldbusiness/17warm.html)
· And everyone know about melting of glaciers
· And many others that I am not probably aware of….
If you pull out some of your precious time and think about all these events together they indicate one and one thing – a global imbalance.
Once I was watching discovery and I remember the episode focused on new buildings that are ecofriendly – they require less lights inside and are well lit by sunlight during the day, they recirculate the water used etc.
You already must be aware Honda is testing hydrogen powered car somewhere, tata has launched green batteries, two days back there was news that India’s largest private sector company was probably in talks with world largest fuel cell manufacturer to set up a plant in India….. so that means people are doing some stuff around cutting down emissions, partly because it gives huge publicity, partly it readies you for what can become a necessity in future and partly (I hope) morally as they have the right resources with them (capital, manpower, technology etc.)
At the same time I also believe time has come that we ourselves change our daily activities to an extent that we are able to reduce our own carbon footprint. How do we do that, I leave it to individuals.
Wednesday, 9 April 2008
Cricket League
ICL has already completed few matches, IPL matches are schedule to start very shortly and I was once thinking that it can very easy for any influential person to do Match-Fixing in these kind of scenario.
Given the different stakeholder in international matches, different authorities, different cultures, different languages and different sentiments, even then if people are able to do match-fixing for international matches……… in national league its anyone’s game.
Anyway, I am not convinced that cricket league in India is focused on nurturing new talent…. I think it is a factory to generate cash.
Government should levy a tax on BCCI, and the amount should be used for development of other cash-deprived sports in India.
Given the different stakeholder in international matches, different authorities, different cultures, different languages and different sentiments, even then if people are able to do match-fixing for international matches……… in national league its anyone’s game.
Anyway, I am not convinced that cricket league in India is focused on nurturing new talent…. I think it is a factory to generate cash.
Government should levy a tax on BCCI, and the amount should be used for development of other cash-deprived sports in India.
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