Year: 2007

So afterakshata_rao 2 years back, and

and

last year (you need to be manu’s friend on LJ to see this), it was my turn this time. Judging the school science seminar that is. I’m not too enthu about making a nice essay out of it, so let me do it in bullet points

• The reverence for Sri Aurobindo and “The Mother” seems to have gone up big time. Aditi aunty (the principal) invokes them much more often than before and quoting passages from savitri seems to be the in thing to do in school today. There was one right at the beginnign, after the prayer and stuff, and a lot of people also quoted Sri Aurobindo. Oh, and this thing is new. Every time a speaker rises to speak, he/she has to go near the photos of Sri Aurobindo and “The Mother” and bow his head and pray for a minute. We’ll soon be giving good competition to the Christian missionary schools i guess.
• The school hall has finally been completed nad we had the competition there. Unlike in our years where we had to make do with the “dining hall”, “meditation hall”, etc.
• Some topics that the students chose were downright obscure. Ranging from stuff like “Insula – the brain chip” or something to some “Nanoputins”. And in my evaluation at least, that went against these guys.
• While on the topic of topics, some 5 of the 7 people had biology/medicine related topics. Probably that’s the reason they got a doctor to be my co-judge (my junior Tejus Tatachar’s father, for the record).
• Now with most of the topics being medicine-related, and with a doctor as judge, he ended up answering most of the questions. I was forced to give everyone equal marks in the Q&A column in order to avoid bias.
• Along with the seminar, all participants were asked to submit a report. And it turned out that seven out of seven participants had mugged up their respective “reports” and spoken it out. Or rather, they had drafted their speeches and then submitted the draft as report. I forgot to tell them this at the end when i gave my “expert comments”.
• So now they have a computer and a LCD projector, so they can make PPTs. And there is also a board where they are supposed to (compulsarily) stick charts of what they are doing! And hte charts were hardly visible and none of the seven used them. So as part of my expert comments i questioned the very need for that. And aunty seemed adamant “no no that’s necessary. no way we are scrapping that”.
• A lot of speakers spoke as if they were giving an election speech. with full emphasis (mostly in the wrong places) etc. Was tough to concentrate on the speech part. Finally i told them that this is good for elocution but they need to speak normally in a seminar.
• Midway through the seminar there was a 20 minute tea break. Aunty took us to some room on the first floor and fed us chowchowbath (kesri bath and khara bath for the uninitiated) and coffee. Must’ve been sourced from the nearby SLV. A strangely good feeling that the school still has it’s KT foundations.
• Finally when it was time for results, I tried (obviously in vain) to convince Aditi aunty that we need to use non-parametric methods in order to aggregate results across the judges. I tried to tell her that if we simply sum up scores, the scores given by those who have used a larger range will get higher weightage. She refused to listen! 😛
• Later, I went to my 10th standard classroom. Some Sanskrit class was going on over there (yeah now you can do sanskrit also in 10th, no need to take hindi.
  manubhardwaj

  , you should’ve been born a few years later!). Went in and took a couple of pics.

• The loos have been interchanged – what was the boys’ loo is now for girls and what was the girls’ loo is now for boys!
• Contrary to expectation, I found quite a few teachers who I knew – Shyamala (the only one who had taught me in 10th who still remains), Nirmala Rajesh (who had taught me Hindi in 5th but now teaches Health Science), Jayashree (she has been teaching geography from my junior batch onwards but i knew her though she hadn’t taught me), Roopashree (she taught English for 2 months in 8th standard before she fell down a flight of stairs and had to go on long leave. I’m still afraid to run down stairs after that), Padmini and Murali from the sports department, Lakshmi (admin), Veena (office), etc.
• I confessed to a few of the pranks we’d played in school, such as hiding Shyamala’s spectacles. I also told her that we had nicknamed her “dhing”. Her reaction was ‘how the hell can you name me that? i say “thing”! “thing”. not dhing!’
• Dhing told me that my generation was full of angels compared to the current batch who she said are damn troublesome

I just had a look at manu’s account of last year’s thing. I noticed that i have repeated a few points – such as the spiritual bit. Serves to emphasize i guess…

Overall a damn good experience.

“It’s Electronics and Communications at RVCE”, screamed the Deccan Herald, covering the ongoing CET counselling. The paper went on to explain the other “trends” that are popular among students who have cleared the engineering entrnce this year.

My mind goes back seven years. As soon as the JEE results were announced, I was clear that I wanted to take Computer Science at IIT Madras. My parents had made a vain attempt to convince me to take electrical. I had put a “well left” on that and my father watched silently as I filled out the choice form. That a few friends who had comparable ranks had also done the same probably provided some solace to my parents.

Then the vote seemed overwhelmingly in favor of computer science, with Electrical opening only after the last CS seat had gone. And this trend wasn’t restricted to the IITs alone. All over the country, CS opened first, though there were a few who had bucked the trend and taken Elec.

Eight months later, I was home for a weekend and watching some news channel with my parents when reports of the IT slowdown came in. “See, I told you so!” said my mother. “You should have taken Electrical. that is an evergreen subject. Now with IT slowing down you won’t get a good job”.

Three months later, my mom’s stand was replicated by thousands of parents all over. In my batch, E&C at RVCE had opened only after the last CS seat had gone. This time the first CS seat was taken only after E&C had closed (i’m not sure of this statistic, but it was somewhere thereabouts). The IT slowdown meant CS had lost it’s charm. “Electrical, Electronics, Mechanical are evergreen subjects. They will never go out of fashion, unlike CS. Anyways you can learn Computer Science by doing a course at NIIT!!!!” was the popular voice (exclamation marks mine). IITs though had bucked the trend, with CS closing much before Elec in all IITs.

Till that batch (2001), Kharagpur would be the last major IIT to get its seats filled, with respect to CS at least. The last KGP CS seat would usually go much after the last CS seat at Madras or Kanpur, which used to usually be second last. 2002 changed all that. Kgp had suddenly become hot, thanks to some India Today report. It had been ranked as the no. 1 IIT after being in 5th for a while. Students (parents rather) had bought the bait. CS in Madras that year closed somewhere in the 200s, much more than double the closing ranks in previous years (and more than 4 times the closing ranks in 96 and 97).

Recently I got a call from my mother’s cousin’s friend’s cousin’s friend. Her son has cracked the JEE, getting a rank within the top 200. The mother, however, is worried shit that IITs are losing their reputation. Now through the JEE he can also get admitted in X Institute or Y institute (brand new institutes which have opened this year whose names I forget. one in ahmedabad and one in trivandrum and one in pune i think). And she thinks that it would make much more sense to take one of those than join an IIT. And she had asked my mother’s cousin to ask for my opinion (IITians living in India are hard to come by among KTs, so I still have to field such calls).

Thankfully I wasn’t speaking directly to the parents of the person who had cracked, so I could be direct in my opinion. And I asked my aunt to pass on a mouthful to the boy’s parents (and she was in full agreement). Still, it rankled as to why some random personwould think that IITs had lost their sheen. Only until I read some recent issue of Outlook somewhere. The cover story there was about IITs losing their reputation. Imagine the impact the article would have had on thousands of careers. Maybe that’s the reason the IITs this time gave out 8500 ranks, as against 3400 in my batch adn 4500 2 years back.

Computer Science losign to E&C… Kharagpur trumping Madras… Now the IITs supposedly losing reputation…

Students… parents… trends… impact… the media… reports… careers…

Acute shortage of parking space means I usually take an auto rickshaw whenever I have to go to the M G Road area. The usual fare is Rs. 35, so when the meter shows Rs. 45 (as it did last week), I demand an explanation from the driver. And the last time round, the driver’s explanation was quite interesting.? “You can pay what you think is appropriate, sir. But what to do? There are so many traffic jams nowadays we are forced to tamper with the meter”.

What the driver pointed out is an interesting concept when it comes to pricing something like an autorickshaw ride. The basic concept is that there is not one (fuel, as is generally assumed) resource that gets consumed in ferrying a passenger, but actually two – fuel and the driver’s time! And it is important that both these are taken into consideration while setting fares.

However, what is currently being done (at least in Bangalore – not the case in Mumbai) is that fares are loosely linked to fuel prices, and whenever there is a major hike in fuel prices the auto drivers’ unions demand and get a fare hike. The last increase I remember was maybe a couple of years back, when the fare was set at Rs. 6 per km. To their credit, the regulators (the government) also fixed rates for “waiting time” (I usually don’t make autos wait, so I don’t really know what it is).

Coming back to the problem of two resources, suppose an auto driver works fixed hours. Say 10 hours a day. On an average he travels 20 km every hour, and if his margin is Rs. 2 per km, he makes Rs. 40 an hour, or Rs. 400 a day. Now, suppose the speed of traffic suddenly slows down and our man can do no more than 10 km per hour. His operating profit for the day is effectively cut by half!

This problem, of a “two-dimensional resource” (dimensions here being distance (or fare) and time) is similar to the one that we face in Cargo Revenue Management (where weight and volume of the goods are the dimensions). In the cargo scenario, we work around the problem by taking into account the “density” of the shipment, and having separate fare structures for different ranges of densities. Could we think of a similar solution in the context of auto-rickshaw?

Just to elaborate, the way we deal with this problem in cargo is by fixing a “standard density” (us cargo guys are funny people – we define density as volume/weight! and in the airline context, standard density is usually 6 m^3/kg). Now if the density of the shipment in question is greater than the standard density, it means that it is in a way “heavy on volume”. And the way we deal with them is to charge them based on volume and not on weight. Shipments with density lesser than the standard density are charged based on weight (they are clearly “weight heavy”).

If we want to incorporate this concept in the auto-rickshaw world, the concept analogous to density would be “average speed” – the average number of billable kilometers an autorickshaw runs during an hour. We could pick a “standard” value for this average speed. If the average speed during the time of travel is greater than this standard speed, charge the customer by distance. Else charge by time.

Of course, implementation of such a complex system is not at all feasible so we need to look at simpler options. Mumbai has its unique way of solving this problem – in that the meter runs even when the auto is stationary (provided the engine is running). So in case of slow moving traffic/ traffic jams, the driver is adequately compensated. There are a couple of issues with this system too? – that the driver could deliberately go slow, and that the engine needs to be kept on during jams.

Are there any other simple solutions to this problem? One option could be peak hour rates – at times of the day when traffic moves slower than average (average is quite slow nowadays), auto-rickshaws should be allowed a premium. A premium in order to compensate for the greater strain on the resource that is driver’s time. It would be something like if you get into an auto between 8 and 11 am or 5 and 8 pm you have to pay a 20% premium on the meter fare. Implementation of this could be through fare charts like those they have in Mumbai.

Of course, note that this peak hour premium is very different from night fares. The latter is in place because the supply is low at that time. The former needs to be there to compensate for strain on additional resources in a regulated market!

I’m not saying peak hour premiums is the perfect solutions to this problem (please leave comments with what you think would be a good solution). All I’m trying to say is that the constraints on auto-drivers’ resources need to be carefully noted, and adequately compensated (i’m reminded of some post in the Indian Economy Blog sometime back regarding directional demand for auto-rickshaw traffic). A lot of people might say they are high, but I believe the current auto-rickshaw fares in Bangalore are unrealistically low – creating unrealistic expectations from the consumers on one hand, and encouraging cheating by the auto drivers on the other.

Remember that fair deals are far easier to implement than unfair ones – which take an extraordinary degree of policing. It is hence an expectation that cheating on the part of auto drivers will reduce in case of fair setting of prices. Of course, there will still be nothing to stop the driver from cheating, but in case of a fair deal I believe that policing should become easier which will further reduce possibility of cheating.

Oh, and for the sake of not leaving a story hanging, I paid that auto driver Rs. 35 – what I believed was the “fair” or “normal” price (and btw, it was an off-peak hour ). And he happily accepted it and moved on.

Cross posted at the Indian Economy Blog. Usual rules apply with regards to comments.

During theFrench Open final yesterday, the cameras briefly focused on Nadal’s shoes. And imagine my surprise when I saw “Bata” written on them!

Later, I thought it could’ve also been “Rafa”, but how many people write their names on their shoes?

I’m still wondering – is it Rafa or Bata??

Help!??
?

some funda because of which i’ve to put this string on my blog

46EE9460C57242FFD863D3D83DC8ECDB

and people, beware! you are being watched henceforth??

Amazing. Awesome. Too good. I’m referring to this piece by Gene Weingarten, who some of you might know as the journalist responsible for the experiment with violinist Joshua Bell performing at the new york Grand Central L’Enfant Plaza Station in Washington DC.

I don’t care about outsourced news, or the parody. I just love the way he has covered Somnathda’s speech in the TN Assembly. Dr. Haminahamina…. Somnath surrounded by attendants in white hospital garb… comic elopement! Wish our journalists would get ideas from this. Unfortunately, making fun of someone is a crime in india 🙁

\bows