Ramachandra Guha (via) writes that the Indian public opinion has is changing its preference for icons from Gandhi and Nehru to supporters of violent revolution like Savarkar, Bhagat Singh and Bose. I disagree with the notion that any real change in attitude has occurred. It is more likely that those attitudes have come to the fore among English speakers. We are also much less polite to national icons than our parents were, so instead of saying “Gandhi was a great man, though he had some flaws”, it is much more acceptable to say “Gandhi was an idiot”. But there was always a substantial faction that preferred violent revolution to the non-violent movement that took place.

Was that faction right? Would we have gained independence faster if our great-grand parents had staged a violent revolution? I think that the answer to that is yes, but no, there was no chance at all that a violent revolution could have taken place on a scale that would have forced the British to leave.

I don’t want to minimize the suffering and sacrifices that the freedom fighters went through – enduring prison and lathi charges, staying away from their families, not being able to complete their education – all these were no jokes. But I doubt if a sufficient number would have been motivated to take the far greater risks that an insurgent or a terrorist movement would have entailed. Bad as the British rule was, the things they did were not so bad that it generated the level of outrage required, especially among the educated, who would be the leaders of the revolution.

There were some exceptions of course – the most significant one was Jalianwala bagh – I don’t think that it is a coincidence that Punjab gave birth to the most number of violent revolutionaries.

Secondly, a violent movement would probably have alienated the people. Even with the best care the revolutionaries could take to avoid targeting “civilians”, if the movement had reached a large scale, causing difficulties to the uninvolved population would have been unavoidable. Also, the revolutionaries would be mostly fighting other Indians – they would have lost public sympathy quite soon, just as the Punjab terrorists started losing sympathy when the dead bodies of policemen returned to their villages. Again, this has to do with the nature of the British rule. If the British had been really brutal rulers, ordinary Indians would have put up with considerable amount of difficulties. But they weren’t that brutal.

Finally, any violent movement that goes on for long runs the risk of going out of control. If you have a gun, the temptation to turn it on your own people, or to turn it on your comrades for trivial reasons, is huge. Witness the Naxalites, the LTTE or any movement that started with understandable intentions.

So notwithstanding my contempt for the rest of Gandhiji’s views, I must say that keeping the freedom movement as a non-violent mass movement was a masterstroke.

A five page interview. Go read.

I really feel that for somebody who loves software and is a good developer, there’s a lot of benefit to working in a software company, mainly because the things that you know about and are good at are directly aligned with the things that the business is good at and the kinds of things that you get promoted for. But, actually, banking is sort of interesting, because when it comes right down to it, 95 percent of what you’re doing actually is information technology in a certain way. Even a derivative is a form of code in some ways, although there’s a trading aspect to it as well. So it’s actually conceivable in the banking industry that somebody who started out as a developer might be promoted to the point of actually running a bank – and that has happened. So, you don’t feel completely misaligned.

On the other hand, if you go to an entertainment company as a software developer, such as when I was at Viacom working on MTV, or any other kinds of companies such as insurance, you’re really a subcontractor/service provider. The things you think about every day are not the same things that the CEO thinks about writ small; they’re actually a very different kind of thing

…

There aren’t many books on the state of the art in software development and software management right now, which are the kinds of things that I like to write and read about. Unfortunately, we haven’t moved beyond the anecdote phase, and attempts to move beyond the anecdote phase are usually just anecdotes with statistics.

Part of the problem is there really isn’t a science going on here, which is very frustrating. The same applies to an awful lot of business writing. It’s very easy to write a book called, for example, The Starbucks Principle or The Dell Way, and just bring up a whole bunch of random anecdotes and somehow tie them together thematically and pretend that this is a real thing that you can do and be successful at.

And, lo and behold, another moron then is going to try to attempt the same thing in his or her own company. It doesn’t work because it doesn’t apply or because it didn’t work in the original company, either – it’s just an anecdote that somebody pulled out of thin air. That’s one of the problems that this particular field has been suffering from.

…

The interesting thing that I discovered is that people often underestimate. But you might think they overestimate, too, so if you have 10 things to do, just add up all those estimates and some of them will be late and some of them will be early, and you should still end up with the same date. You’ll make up for the late ones by doing other things early.

But when you think about software tasks, when things go wrong, they take three or four times longer than expected. If I told you I’ve got an eight-hour feature, it’s about eight hours of work. Now, could it take eight hours? Yes. Could it take six hours? Sure. Could it take two days? Definitely. Could it take a week? Yes, probably with a 10 percent probability because you’ve discovered some huge problem, and it’s a new thing you have to write code for, and you just completely forgot about it and it’s going to take you a week.

Now, could it take zero? No, that’s impossible. Could it take negative 32 hours? It could never take negative 32 hours. You can go over 32 hours; you just can’t go under by 32 hours because that would cause you to go backwards in time.

The last bit reminds me that I need to read Fooled By Randomness…

The post at Churumuri has gained some fame. It contains the line:

90 per cent: The Asian Development Bank said two years ago that “at least 90 percent of people” live on less than $1 a day in India, China and some Southeast Asian countries.

This is what the actual article says:

At least 90 percent of people living on less than $1 a day live in India, China and some Southeast Asian countries.

Come on people! We are Indians. We invented the decimal system! And the zero! It is not that hard.

It is stated in our scriptures that truthful words should be celebrated, even when uttered unconsciously or in jest. Those who do not believe in His greatness should now repent! How else will one explain this?

We should get rid of our totally counterproductive anti-dumping laws, and allow Asia’s manufacturing biggies to just dump their goods at rock bottom prices: Barbies, GI Joes and Holi water guns, bicycles, motorbikes and cars, computers, mobile phones and MP3 players, … ! It makes perfect sense because manufacturing accounts for only a small share of our GDP and employs a far smaller workforce than our agricultural does. On the other hand, we have a BILLION consumers who have a gucking-fod-given right to enjoy their cheap toys and low-priced gadgets and dumped cars!

In “Yes Minister” (or “Yes Prime Minister”) there is this priceless sequence:

Hacker: I have been a minister (or Prime Minster) for a week now.
Humphrey Appleby: And you’ve been a very successful minister, if I may say so.
Hacker: How do we ensure that this run of success continues?
Appleby: May I suggest masterly inactivity?
Hacker: But a minister ought to be firm.
Appleby: How about firm masterly inactivity?

I am off on a vacation and will return on September 4. Expect masterly inactivity on this blog till then.

Aadisht, who I have annointed one of the smartest Cartelians, is on to something in this post. I think that we can generalize the problem. In India, we are poor at closing the design feedback loop. We are good at theory. We have very good practical thinkers, but we do badly when it comes to formulating theories based on practice and then applying the theory to see if it works in practice.

I could think of many structural reasons for this, but I am short of time and want to stir up controversy, so I will blame the caste system. The Brahminical attitude that thinkers and actors should be different is responsible for this.

Those who were interested in the post on Genes and economic development will be interested in what Tyler Cowen has to say about the subject. Cowen is running a book club and the book is the first one he is reviewing. I haven’t followed the discussion very closely as I lack time right now, but it seems to me that Greg Clark commited the fallacy that I pointed out and avoided in my seminal work on the Cause of Unhappiness.

I declare that Aadisht is one of the smartest members of the Cartel, and by extension one of the smartest human beings alive. There are other extremely smart people on the pro-free market side of the blogosphere, such as my friend Neelakantan, but Aadisht is one of the smartest.

The Lefty side of the Blogosphere is of course handicapped by the presence of the Jagadguru who, like a permanent nuclear explosion, displays the brilliance of a thousand suns thereby outshining the intelligence of everyone in His vicinity. The Jagadguru is the only being who has escaped the ravages of the Indian education system and retained His capacity for critical thinking, which indicates just how smart He is.

Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia Eastasia.

Somnath Chaterjee thinks that criticism of an MP is an attack on his freedom of expression, deserving of “action”

Speaker Somnath Chatterjee also made a strong plea to members to take their seats, saying, ”Parliament is in the position to take action if it found anyone showing disrespect to MPs and casting an aspersion on their freedom of expression”.

“If he (Sen) had said so, I will take action. I assure you no one can go scot free. Parliament of India is not powerless.”

Yet, because it [life] cannot be valued, we ignore what we have achieved. Life expectancy in India is estimated to have gone up from 31 years in 1947 to 64 years in 2005. The death rate, which used to be around 45 per thousand, is down to just about 8 per thousand. Hundreds of millions who would have died in earlier times are alive.

You might think that is cause for celebration, but we saw no sign of it on Independence Day. Indeed, many people still talk gloomily about the population explosion, and come close to implying that India would be better off had millions more died.

Statisticians who measure GDP and poverty are silent about the rise in life expectancy. They are interested only in what can be measured and valued in rupees. An increase in years of life cannot be converted into rupees. And so the most precious thing of all is ignored.

Indeed, our measurement of GDP and poverty looks absurd when we consider matters of life and death. If a young couple has two children, per capita income is halved. That shows up statistically as an economic disaster that possibly pushes the couple below the poverty line. Yet, the couple will feel doubly blessed by their two children, not impoverished at all.

If on the other hand, the couple owns a cow that gives birth to a calf, statisticians will record that as a jump in their income. Our conventional way of measuring GDP per head regards the birth of a calf as a blessing, but the birth of a child as a tragedy. Further, the death of a calf is a tragedy (since it reduces measured wealth) but the death of a child is a boon (since it raises income per capita). How farcical!

That is Swaminathan Aiyar in yesterday’s Swaminomics. As long as his suggestions are not operationalised, I share the sentiment.

It is commonly believed that the Indian Left is in the pay of the Chinese. I think it is more likely that they are in the pay of the 24-hours news channels. What else did you expect? Prannoy Roy and Prakash Karat are brothers-in-law.