india – Page 5 – Pertinent Observations

Surveying Priorities

Earlier today the Lowy Institute put out the results of a survey it conducted on “India’s views of the world ahead”. While the report contains some excellent insights (including Indians’ perception of various countries), the problem is that it doesn’t establish what people’s priorities are.

For example, there is a question that asks people how important it is that “India has the largest navy in the Indian Ocean”. Some 94% of respondents think it is important, but neither the question nor the answer acknowledges the cost of being the largest navy in the Indian Ocean. Of course, having the largest navy in the Indian Ocean is a great thing to have, but what about the cost?

This is the problem with “uni-directional surveys” – where questions are independent of each other and no relation between factors is established. For example, everyone wants low taxes, high level of government-sponsored welfare, full employment, good wages and a strong military. The reason differences between political parties occur is because it is impossible to have all of it at the same time, and different parties have different positions on the trade-offs.

Table 24 of the Lowy survey illustrates this. The question is about domestic policy goals, and respondents are asked about the importance of each. Is it of any surprise that over 90% of respondents think each and every one of these goals is important?

Extracted from the Lowy Institute report on Indian Views of the World Ahead (http://www.lowyinstitute.org/files/india_poll_2013_0.pdf)

In order to capture trade-offs, I propose a different kind of survey. One where the respondent is told “The government suddenly gets an extra Rs. 100 which it has to spend on either strengthening our military or providing food security. What do you choose?”. The survey I propose will have a series of such “binary” questions, where respondents have to allocate the government budget between various programs. That way, the true preferences of the respondents can be captured.

One last point on the presentation of the above table. The survey uses a “4 point Likert scale” (“not at all important”, “not very important”, “fairly important”,”very important”) to record responses. First off, marketing research theory recommends that such scales have an odd number of choices (3 and 5 are the recommended numbers). Secondly, the report has chosen to group the first two choices under “total not important” and the latter two under “Total important”. As you can see from the table, these “total” columns are presented in boldface, thus drawing attention. Consequently, given the amount of information in each table, no one really looks at the columns not in bold face. In other words, the Likert scale could have had only two points (important – not important)!

Nokia Lumia: Phone or Camera?

If you look at all the Nokia Lumia 920 advertisements you might be forgiven for thinking that it’s a camera and not a phone. Ads talk about “optical image stabilization”, low light imaging and stuff that might make sense to a geeky photographer but not to someone who wants a nice phone with such apps.

Nokia Lumia 920 ad

The communication suggests that Nokia’s perception of the problem with its phones is the lack of camera power. What it absolutely fails to address is that the primary reason people don’t buy Nokia phones any more is the perceived lack of apps on the Nokia-Windows8 ecosystem.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the company continues to not do well in India.

Archery tournament design

Over the last couple of days, I switched on the TV in order to “jinx” two of India’s more promising archers in their respective games at the Olympics. On Monday evening, I switched on the TV to see R Banerjee (forget his first name) lose a close game in the round of 32. Yesterday, I watched Tarundeep Rai shoot well but still get well beaten by an absolutely in-form guy named Kim (from Korea, where else?). As I watched these matches, I was thinking about the nature of competition in archery.

Archery is a fundamentally single-player event. You are competing against yourself, and how well you do is not supposed to be affected by how well someone else does. There is no direct opponent you are playing against who tries to prevent you from scoring. In some ways, you can consider it to be similar to running. The only element of competition is the pressure that is exerted upon you be opponents competing simultaneously. In this context, it is indeed surprising that the archery event has been designed as a one-on-one knockout, like you would expect for a direct-opposition sport like tennis.

An event directly comparable to archery in terms of fundamentals is shooting – there again, there is no impact of one player on another’s performance but for the pressure exerted by means of simultaneous competition. Shooting, however, goes the “races” (running/swimming) way by means of having heats where only one’s absolute performance matters in terms of score matters (there is no limit on the number of the number of finalists from one heat; the best 8 or 10 participants across heats make it).

Then why is it that archery, which is fundamentally similar to these sports in terms of fundamental concepts, relies on head-to-head competition, and that too with no repechage? Yesterday, I watched Tarundeep Rai come up against an absolutely inspired Kim – Kim was in such imperious form that irrespective of how well Rai would have done he wouldn’t have qualified. Rai didn’t play badly, “against” any other opponent or on another day, he would have definitely done better. In a “direct combat” sport (such as tennis), one can point to the luck of the draw and similar matters. But in a distinctly non-combative sport such as archery why should artificial tournament standards be designed and that extra bit of luck be introduced?

I hope the archery administrators realize the stupidity of the curent format and move to one that is similar to what we see in shooting today.

On age and experience and respecting elders

A lot of commentary about the financial crisis of 2008 spoke about there not being anyone around who had experienced the Great Depression of the 1930s. The American Economy was largely stable till the end of the 1970s, they had argued, because the memory of the Depression was fresh in the minds of most policy-makers, and they made sure not to repeat similar mistakes. With that cohort retiring, and dying, however, in the 1990s and 2000s there emerged a bunch of policy makers with absolutely no recollection of the depression (in the 1990s, most policy makers would have been born in the 1940s or later). And so they did not hedge themselves and the economy against the kind of risks that had brought America down to its knees in the 1930s.

Now, think back to a society which was far less networked than ours is, and there was little writing (“no writing” would take us too far back in time, but think of a time when it was fairly expensive to write and store written material). This meant, that there were no books, and little to understand and experience apart from what one directly experienced. For example, one would never know what a storm is if one had never directly experienced it. One wouldn’t know how to light a fire if one had never seen a fire being lit. You get the drift. Back in those days when societies were hardly networked and there wasn’t much writing, there was only one way in which one could have learnt things – by having experienced it.

I suspect that this whole concept of elders having to be unconditionally respected had its advent in one such age. Back then, the older you were, the more you had experienced (naturally!), and hence the more you knew! There was no other way in which one could accumulate knowledge or understanding. In places like India, even education didn’t help, for “education” back in those days consisted of little more than learning the scriptures by rote, and didn’t teach much in terms of real knowledge. So taking the advice of elders naturally meant taking the advice of someone who knew more. It is natural to assume that these people who knew more than the ones around were respected.

With the advent of books, and later (post Gutenburg) the advent of cheap books, all this began to change. It became possible for people to know without having experienced. It became possible for people to get more networked, and the direct impact of both of these was that it became possible to know more without having really experienced it. In this day of highly networked societies and wikipedia, it is even possible to know everything about something without even pretending to have experienced it (attend some high school seminars and you’ll know what I’m talking about). There is no connection at all now between age and how much you know.

Culture, however, doesn’t adapt itself so quickly. It didn’t help that “elders”, whose position as the “most knowledgeable” was being threatened thanks to writing and networking, were also the people in power. In any case, the real reason of respect for elders had probably been lost, so it was easier for them to extend their reign. And so it continues to extend.

Older people nowadays fail to recognize that younger people might know more than them, and get offended if the younger people tend to argue with them. Yes, experience is still a great teacher, but the correlation between experience and knowledge has long since been broken. As the pupils sang at the beginning of the Vishnuvardhan starrer Guru Shishyaru (the teacher and the pupils), “doDDavarellaa jaaNaralla, chikkavarellaa kONaralla, gurugaLu hELida maatugaLantoo endoo nijavallaa” (elders are not wise, youngsters are not buffaloes, what the teacher says is never true).

PS: As I was writing this, it struck me that this whole “respect for elders” paradigm is more prevalent in societies (such as India) where education was largely religious. Societies where education was more secular don’t seem to have this paradigm.

Sachin’s 100th

In the end it was quite appropriate. That the needlessly hyped “false statistic” of Sachin’s 100 100s came about in a match against a supposed minnow, in an inconsequential tournament, which didn’t even help India win the game. The hype surrounding this statistic had become unbearable, both for normal cricket fans and also for Sachin, perhaps. And that could be seen in his batting over the last one year, in England and in Australia. There was a distinct feeling that every time he just kept playing for his century, and not for the team cause, and the only upshot of his “100th 100” is that the monkey is finally off his back and hopefully Sachin can go back to playing normal cricket.

Unfortunately, there are a couple of other milestones round the corner. He now has 49 ODI 100s, so now people will hype up his 50th. And as someone pointed out on facebook yesterday, he has 199 international wickets! Hopefully that means he starts turning his arm over once again, with his lethal spinning leg-breaks and long hops.

The thing with Sachin is that he has always seemed to be statistically minded (irrespective of what he says in his interviews). The mind goes back to Cuttack during World Cup 1996, when he played out two maiden overs against Asif Karim while trying to get to his 100 (against Kenya). Even in recent times, including in 2007 when he got out in the 90s a large number of times, it is noticeable how he suddenly slows down the innings once he gets into the 90s. He gets nervous, starts thinking only about the score, and not about batting normally.

In that sense, it is appropriate that this meaningless statistic of a hundredth hundred came about in a game that India lost, to a supposed minnow. It was a “batting pitch”. As Raina and Dhoni showed in the latter stages of the innings, shotmaking wasn’t particularly tough. And yet, what did Sachin do? Plod at a strike rate of 75 for most of the innings, including in the crucial batting powerplay just so that he could get to his 100. I don’t fault his batting for the first 35 overs. He did what was required to set up a solid foundation, in Kohli’s company. But in the batting powerplay, instead of going for it, the only thing on his mind was the century. Quite unfortunate. And appropriate, as I’ve said a number off times earlier.

Again, I want to emphasize that I’m NOT an anti-Sachintard. I’ve quite enjoyed his batting in the past, and there is no question that he is one of the all-time great cricketers. I’m only against meaningless stat-tardness. And it was this retardation about a meaningless stat that prevented Sachin from giving his best for the last one year.

Offshored

Two of the four full-time jobs that I’ve done have been “offshored”. They’ve both involved working for the Bangalore office of American firms, with both jobs having been described as being “front end” and “high quality”, while in both cases it became clear in the course of time that it was anything but front end, and the quality of work depended on what the masters in the First World chose to throw at us.

In between these two jobs, I had done a “local” job, at an India-focused hedge fund based in India, which for the most part I quite liked until certain differences cropped up and grew. While doing that job, and while searching for a job while looking to exit it, one thing I was clear about was that I would never want to do an offhshored job again. Unfortunately, there came along an offer that I couldn’t resist, and so I ended up having not one but two experiences in offshored jobs.

Firstly (this was a bigger problem in the second job), I’m a morning person. I like to be in at work early in the morning, say at eight. And I like to be back home by the time the sun in down. In fact, for some reason I can’t fathom, I can’t work efficiently after the sun is down – irrespective of when I start, my productivity starts dipping quickly from 5 pm onwards. Huge problem. People say you can take calls from home and all that but that blurs the line between work and life, and ruins the latter. You are forced to stay in office even if you don’t have anything to do. Waste of time.

Then, there is the patronizing attitude of the “onshore” office. In both my offshored jobs, it turned out that an overwhelmingly large portion of the Bangalore offices actually consisted of employees who were there because even the stated reason for their existence in the firms was labour cost arbitrage. It was simple offshoring of not-particularly-skilled work to a cheaper location. I don’t know if this was a reason, but a lot of people in the “main” offices of both firms considered Bangalore to be a “back office”. And irrespective of the work people here had done, or their credentials, or record, there was always the possibility that the person in the foreign office assumed that the person in the Bangalore office existed solely because of labour cost arbitrage.

And then you would have visits by people from the onshore office. Every visitor who was marginally senior would be honoured by being asked to give a speech (without any particular topic) to the Bangalore office. In the first offshored company I worked for, people would actually be herded by the security guard to attend such speeches. The latter company was big enough to not force people to attend these talks, but these talks would be telecast big-brother style from television sets strategically placed all over the floors.

And these onshore office people would talk, quite patronisingly, about how Bangalore was great, and the people here were great, and they were doing great work. Very few of them would add actual value by means of their lectures (some did, I must mention, talk concrete stuff). Organizing this lecture was a way for the senior “leaders” in the Bangalore office (most of whom had been transplanted from the firms’ onshore offices) to etch their names in the good books of the visitors, we reasoned.

Then there was the actual work. Turn-around time for any questions that you would ask the head office was really high, unless of course you adapted and did night shifts (which I’m incapable of). In the earlier offshored firm, there would be times when I would do nothing for two or three days altogether because the guy in the onshore office hadn’t replied! Colossal waste of billable time! Also, if your boss sat abroad, there would be that much less direction in whatever you did. In my second offshored job, there were maybe two occasions when I was on two-hour phone calls with my boss (in the onshore office), where he patiently explained to me how certain things worked and how they should be done. Those were excellent sessions, and made me feel really good. But only two of them over a two year-plus period? Apart from which, most one-to-one interaction with the boss was with respect to “global” stuff. Yeah a local boss can get on your nerves by creeping behind your back every half hour, but at least you get work done there, and can learn from the boss!

Then there is training. Because of the cost-arbitrage concept on which most offshored employees are hired, the quality of training programs in the offshore offices are abysmal. During my second offshored stint, I happened to attend one training program in Hong Kong, in common with people from onshore offices in the rest of Asia. None of the numerous training programs that I attended in the Bangalore office attained even a tenth of the quality of that program in Hong Kong. The nature of employees in Bangalore meant all programs had to start at an extremely basic level, so there was little value added.

I can go on, there is a lot more. But I’ll stop here, and let you tell me about your stories of working in an offshored environment. And I certainly won’t make the same mistake third time round – of working for an offshored entity.

FDI in retail

I’m trying to figure why that is turning out to be a big deal. Given that we have over 5 years of history of “organized retail” in India, and that it hasn’t performed particularly well on a lot of factors, I don’t know how permitting FDI in multi-brand retail is going to make a difference.

In my personal experience, the performance of “modern retail” over the last 5 years has been underwhelming at best. I can’t recall a single time when I’ve gone to one of these chain stores (Big Bazaar/ Reliance Fresh / More) and come back without getting annoyed with the checkout staff. While the variety available at these stores is massive, which is why I go there at times, the stores are all staffed with a bunch of imbeciles. Yes, all of them. They have made an attempt to overcome the unskilled staff by means of “software systems” and that has only added to the problem, rather than helping solve it.

On countless occasions, staff at modern retail outlets have refused to sell me something that I wanted to buy because “the item code wasn’t found in the system”. The other day the customer in front of me wanted to cancel an item midway through checkout, and the checkout staff had to call the store manager to reverse the transaction. I don’t know why the systems have been designed so badly. The fundamental problem with most of these “modern retail” outlets is that the staff there have no real incentive to actually sell you stuff, and the impression one gets is that the only thing staff strive to do is to avoid mistakes. Perhaps their incentives are structured thus. I know of a case from some 4-5 years back, when a family-owned opened across the road from a More outlet and in the course of a year, the latter had shut down.

Given this lacklustre performance of modern retail, I don’t know how much of a difference permitting FDI in the sector will achieve. Yes, it is argued that if Walmart invests directly the “know-how” it has accumulated over the years will be introduced to India. However, there is no reason to believe that this “know-how” has not already been implemented. Major players in organized retail such as Reliance and the Aditya Birla Group (More) have demonstrated in other sectors of their willingness to acquire know-how from across the globe, and implement it better than their global counterparts. Then, most major management consultants in India have established retail practices, which is another route for “knowledge import”. It is also not an issue of capital – Indian investors in various sectors have time and again shown that they are willing to invest in companies with strong business practices.

The problem with modern retail lies not with either know-how or investment. The problem is one of implementation, and I don’t see how bringing in Walmart (who have little idea of Indian markets) can make a difference there. FDI in retail is not going to solve this problem.

The real problem lies in bottlenecks higher up the food supply chain. Various states are yet to repeal the archaic APMC Act which gives certain people monopoly over food trade in certain areas. There are various restrictions on movement of goods across states (though this should be lesser of a problem once the GST (Goods and Service Tax) Regime comes into play). Time and again, the government acts arbitrarily in changing the rules concerning movement, import, export and “support price” of commodities, and this creates uncertainty in the market and scares away investors.

It is reforms higher up the supply chain that are crucial in order to make the food supply chain more efficient and reduce wastage. The government would do well to put the topic of retail FDI on the backburner (especially since it’s controversial) and instead focus on enabling the rest of the supply chain to become more efficient.

Vishnu and Shiva temples

This post may add to Aadisht’s contention of Shaivism being superior to Vaishnavism. Earlier this month I’d gone with family to this place called Avani, some 100 km east of Bangalore. The main centre of attraction there was this 10th century Shiva temple that had been built by the Gangas.

As we got off the car, I was pleased to see the signage of the Archaeological Society of India. I’m in general not a big fan of temples. I find them to be overwhelmed with “devotees”, and way too noisy, and more importantly for some reason I’m not allowed to use my camera inside temples. So I was pleased that this being an ASI temple there won’t be any worship in there and so I can take pictures peacefully.

As we entered, though, I saw a number of priestly figures standing around the entrance, and one of them shouted “no photo in temple, no photo in temple” (i was in bermudas and a t-shirt, and wearing a backpack and camera bag so looked foreign types). I just nodded and went on. And then another priest accompanied us, and performed the pooja to the idol.

The temple at Avani is that of Ramalingeshwara, a version of Shiva. Now, the studness with Shiva temples is that the idol is extremely simple. It’s just a penis. And it’s not hard to make, and more importantly it’s hard to break, since it’s monolithic, and usually without any portions that can easily break off. Contrast this with Vishnu temples, where the idols are of actual human figures, with arms and legs and ears and noses and fingers – all made of relatively thin pieces of stone, which makes it easier to break.

So think of yourself as an invader who for some reason wants to defile a temple by destroying its idols. The very nature of idols in a Vishnu temple makes your job simple. All you need is to give one strong hit which will break off a nose or a toe or a finger – not much damage, but enough to defile the temple and render it useless for the purpose of worship. But get to a Shiva temple, and you see one large penis-shaped stone in there, and you realize it’s not worth your patience to try break it down. So you just loot the vaults and go your way.

And hence, due to the nature of the idols in these temples, Shiva temples are more resilient to invasion and natural disaster compared to Vishnu temples. Aadisht, you can be happy.

Mutter Paneer for Breakfast!!

So when our newly-recruited cook told us last week that she knows how to cook North Indian dishes, and when we bought Paneer and Frozen Peas at the supermarket yesterday, I assumed that we’ll be having Mutter Paneer for dinner tonight. The cook comes in around 6am, a little after I leave for the gym, so it’s usually the wife’s responsibility to tell her what to make.

And so I return from the gym and find out to my horror that we’re going to have Mutter Paneer for breakfast instead! I mean, who has mutter paneer for breakfast? Or even, who has chapati for breakfast? Isn’t it a dinner item? Well, that’s been one of the longest standing disputes the wife and I have had ever since we started living together.

She comes from a family of rice-eaters (she’s technically Gult, I’ve told you right?), without anyone in her immediate ancestry suffering from any lifestyle disease (heart/diabetes/cholestrol/etc.). And so, they’ve been used to having rice for meals. Rice for lunch, and rice for dinner. And occasionally chapati for breakfast.

I remember this being the case in my family, too, when I was a small kid, but things changed sometime in the 90s. My parents were both plump by then, and for a variety of other reasons, we switched to having oil-free chapatis (phulkas) for dinner. And now that chapati had become a dinner item, it automatically stopped being a breakfast item, and so for breakfast we restricted ourselves to the “traditional stuff” like dosa, akki rotti, uppit, avalakki, etc. (I hate homemade idlis so that was never a part of the menu). And for dinner, apart from chapati, we also started having ragi mudde (ragi balls, made world famous all over India by former PM HD Deve Gowda).

And so the battle begins. She, who has grown up always eating chapati for breakfast, and never for dinner. And I, having been looking at chapati as solely a dinner item for the last twenty years. Ok, chapati and onion-potato palya for breakfast is acceptable. But Mutter Paneer for breakfast? You gotta be kidding me!

Anyways, the Mutter Paneer was good, and I did need a high-calorie meal after the gym session, so this cribbing here is more for the sake of cribbing rather than a genuine crib. Also, it is possible that it’s healthier to reserve the high-density food for breakfast, and have something light for dinner (I admit mutter paneer for dinner isn’t that good for health). But mutter paneer for breakfast and then rasam rice for dinner?

I’m sorry but I’m not a big fan of rasam. I find it too low-density and not filling enough. And in order to fill myself I need to eat a lot of rice, and eating a lot of rice at night makes me sometimes feel gross as soon as I get up the next morning.

Ok I’ll stop cribbing now. And I guess I’m a CHoM.

On Learning At Home

Recently, India has enacted this Right To Education Law, one of whose provisions dictates that schools must reserve at least 25% of seats for kids from economically backward communities. This post will be tangential and will not be trying to examine the merits and demerits of the law.

So earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal published a long (and pretty good) analysis of the impact of the law (it was published in India in Mint). While I might discuss the rest of the article in another post, the paragraph that caught my eye was this one:

Sumit’s father and many of the poorer parents are troubled by the fact that their own limited literacy prevents them from helping. Some wealthy parents, meanwhile, chafe at the slowed pace of learning. They have suggested segregating the poor kids.

Made me wonder how much primary learning actually happens in school, and how much happens at home. Looking back at my own childhood, I learnt most of my “concepts” at home, and before any subject was taught in school I was well prepared for it. In fact, I would be so ahead of my class that I’d frequently get bored, and would think that my classmates were dumb because they weren’t able to keep pace with me.

My parents were no “tiger parents“. And I wasn’t a particularly industrious child. Of course, there would be times when my parents would make me recite tables of two-digit numbers as I traveled wedged between them on our Bajaj Priya, but never forced me to study (until maybe till there were a few months left for the IIT-JEE). And still, somehow, they managed to teach me everything at home. And that proved to be a massive advantage over kids that were encountering the concepts for the first time in school.

Of course, as I went to advanced classes, there was only so much they could teach me at home (since we were going beyond the basic fundamentals here, and there was only so much they could remember), but the head start that I got in primary school was, I think, really useful in my being a topper for most of my schooling, with there being a significant positive feedback.

So what do you think? How much do you think parents actually contribute to their kids’ learning in early age? Is there a positive correlation of kids doing well in school with whether their parents are well-informed, have time for kids and can teach well? If there does exist significant correlation, what are the policy implications of it? Does it defeat the purpose of reservations in school?