Wow!
Wow!!
Proof of God’s existence

Although others have done it ?oo, I think that it is almost my patriotic duty to link to this series by Arun Shourie (via Varnam) Here is part 2. and don’t miss the part 3 expected tomorrow.
The articles are combative as well as logically well argued – a rare combination, but nothing less than what you expect from Arun Shourie. Excerpting any part of the articles would do injustice to the others, so makes sure that you read it from end to end.

Shourie is one of the few ministers who realises that liberalisation is a good thing and not an unhappy compromise we’ve had to make because we bankrupted ourselves in 1991.
I can only hope that when developed India looks back, it will look upon his role as a turning point and not as a person who tried hard and failed.

Update:
Part 3: This is India’s moment but it’s only a moment, can we grasp it?

Next we should be alert to what the critics of reform are doing where they are in power. In New Delhi, the CPI(M) shouts against even the slightest attempt to reform-for instance, privatise-a public sector unit, they bring woe upon anyone who may say that repeated revival attempts having failed, such and such firm has to be shut down.

But in West Bengal the state government has already shut down two state-owned units, it is disinvesting 10 more. It’s just that the state government does not talk of “disinvestment”, it says it is just turning the firm over to a joint venture partner!

Remember Ajit Jogi’s hysterics over Balco? Remember his threat “Should anyone from Sterlite enter Chattisgarh, we will break his legs”? Since then his refrain is “`Sterlite is scripting the success-story of Chattisgarh”! More important, he is today the leader in public sector reform! Including privatisation! The Indian Express reports he has already closed thirty seven public sector units.

I suspect some people are not going to like this. Please do read everything

Yesterday was the first anniversary of my blog. Commemorating such an important occasion ought not to have been delayed, but what to do, life is like that.
14th August 2002 was also the fifteenth anniversary of our first TV purchase. This fact stays in memory mainly because the first thing that showed up on the screen was the tricolour. This nugget has been left here for my biographers to pick up.

I picked up this domain and hosting service much before I had thought of which blogging service to use. I didn’t want a future biographer to ask: “Why didn’t you snap it up when ravikiran.com was still available?

In my first post, I made a sort of contract with my (then) future readers. I’m afraid I’ve violated every one of those terms one time or the other. Nonetheless I think that such a contract is important because it forces you to think of what exactly you are doing. And this reminds me that I have to write a new one.

Swami was the first person to comment on my blog. He was “impressed”. That was the last thing he ever agreed with me on anything.

My second post was on advertisements. Strangely enough, I mentioned Coke and Pepsi. That established me firmly as a lackey of Capitalism and an advocate of crass commercialism, facilitating my later recruitment by the CIA. There I had my first discussion with Lakshmi who later went on to marry the aforementioned Swami. I am quite sure my blog had nothing to do with it; they were in love even before. But?I just leave this nugget here for my biographers to pick up. By the way, I am still waiting for my film role in a Tamizh Movie.

I wrote more in defence of brands here

My third post was on the PM’s independence day speech. This was a day late. Thereby I set a tradition which continues to this day.

I later realised that my hosting service does not support Movabletype. Not being able to use its features will be one of my abiding regrets.

I’ve been trying to teach people basic economics in many subtle devious ways. Unfortunately people aren’t getting the hint.
I have also written about why psychohistory won’t work in practice.

I also posted a probability puzzle which hasn’t yet been answered, but which has made my site the google magnet for people looking for average heights of men and women, especially in India.

I find that I don’t have to comment on Sachin and his Ferrarri now because I had already done so back then.

I tried to give elementary foreign policy lessons to countries here

I dissect the lump of labour fallacy without mentioning lumps here

I violated my contract for the first time here.

I posted on Iraq for the first time here.

I slandered Gandhiji for the first time here.

I predicted that the dollar will go down here.

I claimed that the scientific spirit is incompatible with a belief in God here Then I wrote about why I pretend to believe in God here. (Do I contradict myself? Very well I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes. Who wrote this?)

My readership moved up to 2 here

I wrote a thank you speech here.

If only people listen to my solution to the Kaveri dispute.

This is my famous post calling the Dissent Globalizer a verbal terrorist. I explained why here BTW my site is on top for verbal terrorist This post keeps ?ttracting commentors. Unfortunately, all of them speak in a strange language.

I posted on Iraq for the second time here.

This post probably got the largest number of comments from a single person.

I can’t make sense of this post now.

I posted tangentially on Iraq a third time here.

(BTW, The best way to navigate my whole site is by going to the “previous” and “next” links at the bottom. But no one does that. My archives links are badly broken. No one goes to my archives. I don’t know which is cause and which is effect. )

I posted on usability of computers here.

I opposed human cloning here.

My 100th post was on 24th December 2002. I conducted a survey then.

I posted on why I dislike Kannada movies here.

I attacked Praful Bidwai for the first time here.

I am sure no one understood what I was saying here.

I posted on the Golden section here.

I posted for the fourth time on Iraq here., fifth time here and the sixth time here

I posted something on names here.

I posted on Iraq for the fourth time here. Notice the subtle shift. That’s when the CIA payments started trickling in.

I criticised the US for once, but ended up defending it in the comments section.

I posted something on the IITs here.

I posted my Iraq blogathon here, here and here.

I defended fairness creams here.

Iraq post no 8 and 9

I posted on Glass houses and stones II

I once again predicted that the dollar would go down as it did later

Iraq post no 10, no 11 , no 12, no 13., no 14 no 15 and no 16

I made a sceptical post on the greatness of the Vedas.

I tried my hand at dissent globalisation

You can learn more about Giffen goods here.

I supported the US here but ended up fighting with its defenders in the comments.

Did no one get the subtle joke in the headline of this post?

My SARS conspiracy theory series 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

A dog named Bedi

I posted on why it is a bad idea to legislate against consensual crimes. More here

How I became a capitalist

Iraq post no 17

Something on Ends and Means

Why I opposed sending troops to Iraq (no 18)

Something on self-sufficiency, Coke and Pepsi (1, 2)

In the comments for the this post, Swami asks:
…if you can follow a standard for safety elsewhere why not here?

Kingsley responds, claiming that to expect higher standards for MNCs than for Indian companies indicates that we have a colonial mentality. Swaminathan Aiyar(via Yazad) makes the same point. I suspect plagiarism.

However, I disagree with King?ley. We do expect better from reputable companies, not just MNCs. It is worse to build up a reputation of good quality and then failing to deliver than to deliver consistently bad quality, because in the former case you wouldn’t have taken precautions.

Where I disagree with Swami is his assumption that offering anything less than the safest option possible is negligience regardless of your reasons for doing so.

Unfortunately, in life, you have to make choices even over life-or-death issues. We do so all the time.
Will you vaccinate yourself against a fatal disease that you have 0.01% chance (1 in 10,000) of catching, if the vaccination is going to take up half your savings? It is a fatal disease right? What is a few lakh rupees when it comes to your life?

But you realise that the chance of your getting the disease is small (though that is cold comfort if the 1 in 10,000 choice does come through). You recognize that the few lakh rupees that you are considering spending would otherwise make life livable. That is the money that you would otherwise use to buy a house or pay for your child’s education. If you get rich, you’ll probably afford the vaccination.

Coke too faces similar constraints. It has to use Indian bottlers, work with Indian infrastructure, face Indian competitors who charge Indian prices and sell to Indian customers who pay Indian prices. These issues don’t go away just because they have an international brand.

Customer pressure is also needed Our chalta hai attitude is certainly one of the reasons we get lower standards, but not the only one. As we get richer, we will demand better and get it.

But demanding international standards right away or trying to force the issue through government action will have a perverse effect. You will penalize good quality for not being perfect while leaving the bad as it is. You will waste government resources and hire sanitation inspectors to check Coke bottling plants instead of using the resources to provide better water supply.

Apropos of this column by Rajeev Srinivasan where he basically says that all Hindi speakers pronounce their Sanskrit-derived words wrongly, I have three random thoughts.

Mostly I am a language descriptivist, i.e. I believe that to learn the meaning or pronounciation of a word, you have to hear native speakers use it and not derive it through arcane rules of grammer or by looking at how the word originated.
But then I have this nagging feeling that Sanskrit words should follow different rules. Besides, I’ve lived in Lucknow and seen “It’s your language too. You too should learn to speak it” (when a North Indian is confronted with a South Indian who doesn’t know the language) change to “It’s my language. The way I pronounce it is Hindi.” when faced with a Tambram co?recting his Sanskrit derived word.

When a North Indian wants to simplify Hindi, he wants heavy Sanskrit-laden words to be taken out and “simpler” Urdu words to be used instead (This is not to say that all Urdu words are simpler, but many are) But a South Indian is more likely to understand Sanskrit derived words.

One thing that always irritates me is the “mispronounciation” of Jnya by North Indians (i.e. everyone north of Karnataka) They always pronounce it gya (as in gyaan) and they won’t listen when I correct them.

Finally, here’s a quiz for Examined Life readers. Give the Ancient Greek equivalent of Jnya which means the same thing. It is a common part of many words – pretty workoutable.

Look what Yazad Net has caught in his Jal

And look at his choice of logo. Coincidence? Not likely.

Yazad invited Mahesh out for dinner at a seafood joint.

Unfortunately, Yazad ditched Mahesh. He didn’t turn up. Frustrated, Mahesh had dinner all by himself.
Then he wrote about his experience in an essay which he titled Jal bin Machhli

As you might have noticed, I’ve sorted out some problems with the site and I am back now. Thanks to Yazad for having me over at his place. (Not that he had a choice really)
While I was there, I posted something on theUniform Civil Code.

It seems that Coke and Pepsi contain pesticides!

How Shocking! People are rightly outraged. They’ve decided that they will never ever have a cola drink again. After all, it is Bad For You.

Sure, its not as if the cola companies add pesticide to their produce because they hate their customers and want to kill all of them. The pesticide comes from the water they use. Their bottling plants don’t filter this water sufficiently well, because they are greedy MNCs who are concerned only with their profits and are callous about human lives.

On the othe hand, I’m ?ure the water my municipality supplies is perfectly safe to drink. After all, their filteration plants are run by government officials, whose single-minded dedication and commitment to work has made India what it is today.

Sorry, I normally don’t get snarky, but I get irritated when everyone piles on MNCs just because they get a chance. We should put pressure on them, but we should also note that most of the time they raise standards, not lower them. And how about hearing their side of the story once in a while?
Also, Smorgasbord has a non-snarky defence of the cola companies.

My long time quest to make sense of Gandhiji’s policies got a boost today when I saw this post by Vikas Kamat. He criticises a column which, rightly in my view, points out that self-sufficiency is a bad policy. Kamat says:

“Self-sufficiency means that you look inside, not outside for survival and growth. It is a profound concept and has deep roots in philosophy (as in strength of character), religion (carrying one’s own burden), and economy (a self-sufficient body is a strong body). It is a time-tested formula, that is as relevant today as it was thousands of years ago.

The idiots are saying ‘We can’t grow our own food anymore, so self-sufficiency is bad. We can’t make our own cloth, so Gandhi was a fool.’

Self-sufficiency means only that you will not consume more than what you ca? produce, or will not spend more than what you can earn. It just means that you will stand on your own feet. It has nothing to do with exchange of services, in fact, exchange of products and services at a fair value is an essential characteristic of a self-sufficient economy”

All very well, except for a few problems.

• Gandhiji, unfortunately wasn’t a woolly idealist. He had clear and practical ideas – clear, practical and wrong. It was Gandhiji who wanted to grow his own food and weave his own clothes. He performed practical experiments to test his ideas. So it is Kamat who is creatively misinterpreting Gandhiji’s ideas, not the columnist.
• “Self-sufficiency means only that you will not consume more than what you can produce” – This statement is imprecise. I “consumed” more than I “produced” till the age of 23. (I am “paying back” now in many ways. ) I will do the same after I retire. So you need to specify the time-scale. And no I am not indulging in sophistry. The principle of not consuming more than one produces has been used to try to stop poor countries from financing their growth through borrowings and through foreign investment.
• Now if you reinterpret Gandhiji sufficiently, you can certainly make him out to be a supporter of free-markets, capitalism and individualism. Just interpret “self-sufficiency” to mean that an individual should earn his own living, not live beyond his means or borrow beyond his capacity to repay.
• But then how does one justify the existence of a government-subsidised KVIC? Why should my taxes pay for Khadi which people mostly don’t buy? Ah.. that’s because in Nehru’s time they had a different interpretation of self-sufficiency. Not that an individual should be self-sufficient, but its okay if the country as a whole is self-sufficient. So how do we know that our current interpretation is right but Nehru’s was wrong?

Apparently the right way to interpret Gandhiji’s views is to
a) Eulogise him. Argue that he propounded a deep philosophy which you can’t understand unless you study it deeply and/or believe it first.
b) Distort his views to fit whatever it is you believe in in the first place
c) Be amazed at how timeless, relevant and right his views were.
d) Accuse his opponents of betraying his ideals.

Mahesh is back and he wants to pick up a fight with me by kicking me in the back.

Whoever said installation [of movable type] takes only 5 mins deserves a kick in the rear. That’s untrue if you take customisation time into account

Sorry, but this is like blaming MS Word because it still takes you hours of editing before your prose comes up to your high standards of perfection.

PS. I really like the new layout.

Busy at work
Fighting the ElKern at home.