Author: SK

Corruption and Communism

In an article arguing why Kolkata is best placed to be India’s “best city” in another 20 years, Aakar Patel (I’ve started looking forward to his columns in Mint Lounge) mentions that there isn’t much corruption in the governments in Bengal (at both the center and city level). I don’t know the reasoning for this, but I wonder if this is primarily responsible for the long run that the Communists had at the helm in that  state.

I had argued in a not-so-recent piece in Pragati that big governments tend to be bad governments . I had argued that big government means more ways in which government employees can seek rents, and hence one way of reducing corruption is by reducing the size of the government. Now, assume that for some magical reason, a certain section of the population is sincere and incorruptible. In that case, big government need not be bad government. In other words, people don’t really resent the presence of government everywhere since they don’t see any rent seeking by the government officers. And since they are not unhappy with the size of the government, they don’t mind voting in every time the communists, who will keep the big government!

So I wonder if it is the incorruptibility of the Bengali (for whatever reason; I’m drawing this inference from Patel’s article) that has led to the long communist rule there. Incidentally, the one time the government was seen to be corrupt (in discretionary land allotments in favour of the Tatas, Salim Group, etc.) it wasn’t voted back to power!

Library Membership

While on a long lonely walk today (ironically, immediately after watching Liverpool play) I saw this library not too far from my house. It was called Just Books, I think, but I’m not sure of the name. With my British Council Library membership due for renewal in a couple of months, and doubts about whether I want to renew it (the library is too far, and I’ve stopped getting excited by the collection there), I’m considering membership to this library.

I took a look at the books today, and there were two major turnoffs. One was a section labeled “non-fiction” (whatever that is supposed to mean!). I don’t remember the other one right now – but I do remember having one other turn off while I was there. Apart from that, though, the collection seems good, which makes me think I should take membership there.

I found a lot of books there that I’ve read, or want to read, but wouldn’t borrow because I already own them. Now, I don’t know how to interpret this. The positive way of looking at it is that given that I like a lot of books that are there, they’re more likely to get other books of “my kind”, too. The negative way of looking at it is that I already own all the interesting books there that I want to read, so the membership wouldn’t add much value to me. The clincher, I guess, is about the frequency with which they update their collection. If they are going to buy new books on a regular basis, then I guess this will work out for me.

The other thing I liked about the library is that it has multiple copies of a lot of books. I think that is always a good thing, for you wouldn’t want to wait forever for someone to read that book that you want to read. They follow the netflix pricing model, where you pay a fixed fee (Rs 150) per month and there are no late fees. So by taking longer with a book, you are essentially denying yourself bang for the buck that you’re going to be paying them regularly (In the past I’ve “bailed out” of a library membership that followed this model. I didn’t go for a while, and then realized that the amount due was so high that I didn’t mind losing the deposit I’d placed there and I never bothered returning the books I’d “borrowed” from there).

And do any of you use Justbooks already? Do you like it? What are the odds that you go to the library and find nothing that you want to read?

The problem with private provisioning of public goods

… is that private players who are providing those goods have an incentive in blocking attempts by the public sector to provide those goods. For the purpose of analysis, let us take the example of Gurgaon, both because I’m reasonably familiar with it and because it has been in the news in the international media thanks to a recent profile of the city by the New York Times.

Now, Gurgaon has a major problem with power supply. It is said that (I don’t have first hand info for reasons you’ll soon understand) the “city” faces about four to six hours of regular power cuts every day. I don’t know the exact reasons for it (surprisingly, Haryana sells power to other states so it appears there is no power deficit per se in the state), but it could be a pricing issue, with free power for farmers and all that. Anyway, the reason for the power cuts doesn’t matter so much.

In reaction to this, apartment societies have taken it upon themselves to provide “power backup” to the residents (for a fee of course). Even in that, there are three grades. I used to live in a DLF complex that had “one hundred per cent power backup”, which meant that I was assured of 24/7 power supply. Every time there was a power cut, the generators would start in a matter of a few seconds, and with “one hundred percent backup”, I could run just about any device on the “backup” power supply. In return, I would pay the apartment association six rupees per unit (as opposed to 3 rupees I pay here for sarkari power in Bangalore).

Then, there as “eighty percent backup”, in which you could use the generator-power supply to run all appliances except air-conditioners and geysers (both extremely important in Gurgaon given the weather). Then, there was another level with fifty percent backup, though I didn’t particularly understand it. The individual houses in the city, though, had no backup, and people living there had to make do with inverters.

Now, suppose that magically Haryana were to become a power surplus state, would the state government be able to provide uninterrupted three phase power supply to Gurgaon? I would think not, for there are several “private players” in that city whose source of profits and wealth is derived from the fact that they provide backup power supply. Think of all those people who invested in DLF flats because they had “one hundred percent power backup”. Now, with power backup not being a distinguishing factor, these flats will lose in value since they cannot command the same kind of premium as they used to (rather, the supply of “apartments with assured power supply” goes up, thus reducing demand for the only ones that offered this luxury earlier). Then, there are scores of generator and inverter dealers in Gurgaon, who again depend on the power shortage for their livelihood. And so forth.

It doesn’t appear as if Haryana has power shortage any more (recently, Karnataka bought power from that state to tide over its power crisis). However, there are enough powerful lobbies in Gurgaon who depend on power cuts (!! ) for their income and wealth, and it appears they have managed to lobby the government there (officially or unofficially) to block the provision of assured power supply. The moral of this story is that once “public goods” start being provided by private players, it is hard to displace them, and this results in a lifetime of inefficiency.

When will my courier reach?

Earlier today, I had to urgently send a package to Mumbai. I was recommended that I use Bleudart since they guarantee next day delivery, and off I went to the Bluedart collection centre near my house. There, I learnt that there were 3 options.

For two hundred and eighty rupees (what I ultimately picked) I was guaranteed that the package would be delivered tomorrow. However, there were two premium offerings – promising 1030 am delivery, and 12 noon delivery. Given my payoffs I settled for the “normal” next day package. Now, I wonder when my package will reach.

What are the odds that the package would reach before noon? I would say the odds are very slim, for if my “normal” package were to reach before noon, there would be no reason for me in the future for me to pick the 1030 delivery or 12 delivery package. Even if the package would have reached close to the destination tomorrow morning (I expect that it’ll be sent on a late evening flight today or early morning flight tomorrow), the delivery person would be instructed to wait till after noon before delivering, I think.

What do you think? If you think it’ll reach before noon, you can bet on it. Leave a comment and we can discuss odds. I’ll give you the airwaybill number so we know when exactly it got delivered.

Update

I win the non-existent bet.

Pickup Date 12 October 2011
From Bangalore
To Mumbai
Status SHIPMENT DELIVERED 
Date of Delivery 13 October 2011
Time of Delivery 12:15


Detail

Detail is the devil. That’s my big problem in life. I’m fundamentally clumsy and prone to errors, and don’t have much of an eye for details. I tend to make a lot of silly mistakes. So whenever I’ve to do some task that requires precision, it requires me to put in way too much energy, so that I don’t commit any mistakes. This is why I have a problem with “routine” tasks. Routine tasks being routine, you are expected to complete them with one hundred per cent accuracy. Ninety five percent won’t do. That transformation from ninety five percent to hundred, though, takes up a lot of energy, and I tend to get stressed out.

Essentially, for a routine task to be done with one hundred percent accuracy, the mental energy I spend is far more than what the average person does. This means that if I do even a small bunch of routine tasks, all my mental energy is exhausted and I have nothing in store for anything else I’ve to do. This is the reason I’ve had an indifferent corporate career so far. Essentially, I face a competitive disadvantage in performing routine tasks.

This is something most people don’t appreciate. Most people assume that it doesn’t take much effort to perform routine tasks, and if you don’t do them well, you’re a good for nothing. And I must admit I’ve also not played to my strengths so far, routinely getting into situations where I’ve to show “detail” and “one hundred percent accuracy”, and not saving my energy for things I’m actually good at. Detail has been the devil.

PS: The motivation for this post was some small form I’d to fill (by hand). The space was limited and I knew I’d to write carefully without any mistakes, and that drove me completely  nuts!

Vegetable shopping – It’s not about percentages

Some habits are hard to change. One that is especially hard to change is bargaining for vegetables. I was trained well, I must say, in the bazaars of Jayanagar 4th Block Shopping Complex. I was taught that one needs to do a full round of the market before making any purchase, in order to understand the “market price”. I was taught  techniques that would make the shopkeepers give the goods for the price I offered, I was told what demographics to approach for what kind of vegetables, and over time I must say I became an excellent vegetable shopper, when sent to Jayanagar 4th Block that is.

Another thing that is hard to change is willingness to pay, and this is where I see some irrationality. For example, I’ve just returned from the fruit and vegetable shop close to my house, having refused to buy a cucumber because the shopkeeper asked for Rs. 10 for it, a 100% markup on the not-so-longterm average price of Rs. 5. And that is precisely the problem – looking at it as percentages.

We don’t usually consume too much cucumber. If I’d bought that cucumber it would’ve lasted about a week. So by refusing to pay the “100% premium” for it, I’ve essentially saved my family a maximum of five rupees over the course of a week (and this is in the best case – conditional on my being able to procure cucumber at the “normal rate” soon. Else the loss is larger). And given our not-so-inconsiderable weekly expenses, and the fact that our “discretionary spend” is an order of magnitude larger than the five rupees I’ve saved on the cucumber, this just doesn’t make sense.

The mistake we make here is to look at the percentage increase in weekly budget of the particular item, and base our decision on that. Instead, if we were to look at the increase in the “total weekly budget” (across all items), that could help us get a more realistic figure for our willingness to pay for certain things.

Of course, the big problem here is that even if my rational mind says this, there’s a behavioural issue in paying much more than the price we’ve been “anchored” to. I don’t know how we need to get over this.

Opening up, yet again

I go through these introverted and extroverted phases. I started off as a loner, and then something happened during a class picnic to Coorg in 1997 that changed me, for what I thought was forever. I suddenly started opening up, made new friends, talked more to my existing friends, gave up all my inhibitions and basically had a good time. That phase continued maybe for a year and half, or maybe more, and then I shut down again. In IIT, I started oscillating wildly. At times I’d be aloof and keep to myself, at other times I’d walk across to the coffee shop in front of my hostel, buy myself a cup of cheap Nescafe and sit down, with random people, and talk and talk and talk.

Between five and two years back, I went through an “online extrovert” phase. I’d forever be online. When available, I’d have an average of four GTalk windows open, chatting with different people about random things. The first thing I’d do when I switched on my home computer would be to find people who were online and message them. It was a lot of fun, though the person who ended up being my wife found it weird that I spent most of my time online, chatting (it did help, though, that she would often be one of the people I was chatting with).

Certain “life changes” and redefinition of priorities and some unexplainable stuff meant that I shut down once again around two years back. Ironically this came only a couple of months after I thought I’d truly opened up and gotten rid of my inhibitions. I suddenly had less time to just “be online”. I’d hardly talk to people. GTalk being blocked in office meant that I disappeared off so many radars which were tuned in my direction. I had less time for “frivolous chatting” after work, and one by one I got “out of touch” with all those people I would chat with regularly. Things were quite good otherwise in life so I didn’t exactly bother, I must mention. Among the side effects of this, I think, was that my writing quality suffered. As did my network, of course.

To illustrate, I spent three weeks in New York City in January 2010. Then, I made every attempt to contact friends and acquaintances who lived in that area. And met them for lunches and dinners fairly regularly. I tried counting the number of people I met during that trip, but it was easy to lose count. I had a good time, I must say. In February 2011, I was in New York City yet again. This time, though, I didn’t make any effort to meet anyone, didn’t inform anyone I was in town. I had most of my dinners alone, in a list of restaurants I’d gathered from a few friends. I met one relative, and one friend (this was by chance), and that was it.

Over the last few days I’ve started making a conscious effort to open up again. Once again, whenever someone suggests we meet, I make it a point to go. I’m making an effort to not bail out of social engagements citing “NED”. I met a friend for tea on Friday, another for tea on Saturday, had a long phone chat with yet another on Friday night and met a whole bunch of people I don’t often meet for dinner on Saturday. And I had a lot of fun in all of them! I do hope I can continue with this streak for a while, and also need to figure out how to expand my network. Anyway, the more perceptive of you would have noticed by now that I’m blogging a lot more nowadays.

The “Per Person” catch

Every time a travel agent sends you an itinerary for a tour package, look for the units of the cost. Usually it’s quoted in US Dollars per person. The funny thing is that this is how it is quoted even when it is just an accommodation package where two or three of you are going to share a room.

I wonder if this is a way to encourage more spending, since the customer perceives the total cost to be a much smaller number when he sees “per person” than when he sees an all-inclusive number.

Like for a forthcoming trip, the travel agent sends me an email saying “the hotel will send a taxi to pick you up at the airport at a cost of EUR 50 per person”!!

On a similar note, I realize travel agents love to bundle. When costs across several hotels and trains and taxis are bundled together and presented to you as an aggregate (“per person”, again), it is easy for them to pass on overheads to you without you figuring out where exactly that overhead went.

There have been times in the past when I’ve received packages from travel agents, then tried to purchase each component of that package online, and found that the total cost of buying the parts separately is approximately half the bundled cost that travel agents impose!

Indoctrination methods

I’m suddenly reminded of some “competitions” I took part in back when I was in school, which in hindsight seem like indoctrination methods. The basic structure of the competition is this. An organization announces an inter-school competition – either a quiz or an essay writing contest, or even a debate. These weren’t “normal” quiz/debate/essay competitions, though. All of these had a pre-requisite, and that was reading a certain book that was prescribed and marketed by these organizations. I don’t know if one had to pay for these books – if I remember right, they were given away “free” once you paid the nominal fee to register for these competitions.

It was an easy way to indoctrinate over-enthusiastic kids, or kids of over-enthusiastic parents, who wanted to win every competition in town, and gather as many “bullet points” as one could (though this was far before anyone really thought of careers and the like). All you had to do was to announce a competition, with the promise of a certificate and nominal prize, and thousands of kids would sign up, and do anything in their capacity to win the contest.

I remember two such competitions well. One was organized by the Ramana Maharshi Ashram, where we had to mug a book about him, and then had to write an essay. I remember the topics well. It was something of the kind of “my thoughts after reading about the life of Bhagavan (sic) Ramana”. I don’t remember reading the book too well (I’d forgotten to collect it, I now remember) and wrote some random stuff. I didn’t come close to winning that.

The other was by ISKCON, and this included both a quiz and an essay, if I remember right. Again we had to mug a standard-issue ISKCON book. I remember less of this than I did of the Ramana Maharshi thing (I don’t know why), and again I didn’t do too well, and that hurt my pride as that was around the time when I used to be pretty good at quizzing (and still didn’t know to distinguish between a good and bad quiz, and not worry much about my performance in the latter).

Organizations like ISKCON or the Ramana Maharshi Ashram are incentivized to get more “followers”, and one way of gaining followers is to feed impressionable young minds of material that shows the organization in positive light. And then make them undertake activities that hammer in that message. In that sense, events such as these that tap in on students competitive spirits are a big win for these organization. It’s an easy way to reach a large unsuspecting audience, and even a “small” conversion rate is enough to drive “membership” signficantly.

On a similar note, I remember Gaurav Sabnis writing about debates that the VHP used to organize in Pune in a similar sort of effort. The only difference there was that there you didn’t need to mug any boooks.

Dhobi Ghat

It’s been a long time since I got a movie that I got so involved in that I never once even felt like getting away. Given that I have a very short attention span, that’s a really hard thing, I must say. Frankly, I don’t remember the last movie that I saw in a non-theatre environment which I watched without any distractions.

This is the best “Mumbai movie” I’ve seen, I must say. By the end of the movie, as the end credits rolled, I had the same feeling that I did when I watched Taxi Driver (incidentally, that was on a plane to New York), which I consider to be the quintessential “New York movie”. It’s hard to explain what it was about this movie (Dhobi Ghat) that got me so hooked. But the movie did make me miss the (mostly miserable) four months I spent in Mumbai back in 2006, and any movie that does that deserves credit.

There was a combination of things that got me hooked to the movie. Firstly, there was a weird connect I felt with the Aamir Khan character, especially in an aspirational sort of way (given that I aspire to a “hippie lifestyle” like his in the movie). Then, Monica Dogra plays an investment banker on sabbatical, and it’s only natural I connected with her. And then there was  the length. At an hour and half, the movie is extremely “crisp”, and when the movie ends, it leaves you asking for more.

Then, there was something about the Monica Dogra character here that reminded me of Poorna Jagannathan’s character in Delhi Belly (I had a huge argument with the wife, btw, about Poorna’s hotness. The wife believed I was getting turned on only by her character in the movie and she’s not “inherently hot”, and that I’m a wannabe. I won’t go into furhter details here). And the way she (Monica) speaks Hindi reminded me of Yappings. Don’t know why.