Author: SK

Frequency of Temples

Earlier today, I realized that each temple has its own “frequency”. Frequency of doing the pooja and giving the mangalaarathi and tirtha and collecting offerings from the visitors. If I can generalize, I can say that the more popular temples featuring “standardized deities” are more likely to have better turnaround time in conducting poojas and archanas.

So I have based this study on two data points. On one hand, there is the Ganesha temple in Jayanagar 4th block (intersection of 30th cross and the diagonal road and 7th main; opposite Maiya’s). This is an extremely popular temple and draws thousands of visitors every day. And you must note that Ganesha is a “standardized deity” –  he is perhaps the most common deity across Hindu temples (if you count each avatara of Vishnu as distinct).

And this temple is quick. Despite getting hundreds of visitors every hour, the priests there work hard to serve everyone in quick time. The Mangalaarathi is held at a frequency greater than once every five minutes. Thus, you can just walk in, watch one round of mangalaarathi-and-bells, take the mangalaarathi, put in your offferings, drink the tirtha, go round and round, sit down for a minute and get on with your business, all within ten minutes. Maybe this efficiency (apart from the awesome location) is what gets this temple so many visitors.

Towards the other end of the spectrum is the Subramanyeshwara Temple in VV Puram that I visited it this morning. I had to get some pooja done there in order to kick off my wedding preparations (Subramanyeshwara is our “family deity”; one of the several reasons as to why I’m named my name) and went in at around 10 am. There was already a decent crowd there and I duly purchased my archane slip (oh how much I loved getting archane done when I was a kid – if not for anything else but to get the sugarcandy prasada) and tried getting the attention of one of the priests (there are several there) only to find that they wouldn’t accept the chit for another hour or so (the idol was being bathed at that time, and being scrubbed using one of those brushes used to clean brass instruments).

Considering it’s not too far from home, I duly disappeared and appeared an hour later, and by now the crowd was larger. I had to get my large frame between a considerable mass of people in order to reach a priest and hand in my archane slips (one for the self and one for the fiancee; I had purchased both during the first visit to the temple earlier today). And some further minutes later, there was a grand round of pooje after which they brought the mangalaarathi plate. A cycle time of a full two hours!

I don’t know how popular this temple is (I’m told it’s pretty popular), but I suppose one reason it doesn’t attract as many visitors as it might is because of the time commitment it demands. Due to the large pooja cycle time, only the most committed and devoted visitors visit the place. Maybe the temple loses out on contributions because of this, but maybe gains in terms of having only the more devoted devotees, which gives it an increased “average puNya per devotee”. And it is a choice that the temple and its priests have made, and I’m sure they have good reasons for the same.

Oh, and keep in mind that Subramanya is an uncommon deity when it comes to temples (definitely not when it comes to naming one’s kids).

PS: The tirtha they gave at the temple today was milk-based, which I think is quite messy since temples don’t really have places to wash one’s hands. Water-based tirthas are more appropriate since they can just be wiped on to one’s head after drinking.

PS2: I like it when the archane is done in front of me, when the purohit asks me for the details (name, gotra, nakshatra) rather than like today when it was all written on the chit and they performed the pooja inside. I like the personalized service of the former case.

PS3: To bring up a now-taboo topic, have I mentioned that Ganesha is a stud and Subramanya is a fighter? Just sayin’

Keeping Transaction Costs Low

The Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike’s coffers aren’t Bruhat, it seems. For the up-coming road widening project, for which considerable amounts of land need to be acquired, it seems like the BBMP can’t afford to pay in cash. Hence, it has been proposed that compensation will be paid in terms of Transferable Development Rights (TDRs). The basic funda is that when your land gets acquired, you get rights to construct more in some other existing site, or on the remaining part of your site, or some such.

Quoting

According to a BBMP official, TDR is an instrument through which the Palike facilitates landlosers to construct additional floor or building in the remaining portion of the property or anywhere in the City.

…

The BBMP would issue a Development Rights Certificate (DRC), which can be either be utilised for personal need or can be sold to anyone who wants to construct an extra floor. The owner gets the right to construct a built up area 1.5 times over and above of that the property acquired for development. For instance, if 600 sq ft built-up area is given up to the BBMP, the property owner will receive a DRC for 900 sq ft built-up area.

This is interesting on several counts. Firstly, do you realize that what the BBMP is paying for the land is effectively an option? A TDR is nothing but an OPTION to construct more than what would normally have been permitted. The valuation of this option hinges upon the fact that current building laws are highly restrictive (in terms of the built up area as a proportion of the site area) and so the option of constructing more will actually be valuable.

It would be interesting to see how these options get valued. You can trust that there will be a lot of litigation concerning this since you can expect most people to have problem with the valuation. First of all valuation of financial options is itself so tough, you can imagine how hard valuing these TDRs can be.

Then, there is the whole supply aspect. The whole model of these TDRs will hinge upon the unwritten promise that more such rights will not be given away any time in the near future, since that will cause the value of existing TDRs to drop sharply. Given that there is one single agency (the BBMP) that controls the supply of such rights, and that the potential supply of such rights is infinite, there is a chance that valuation of these rights might be depressed.

One important thing the BBMP needs to take into account while issuing these rights is to make sure there are no transaction costs for trading these rights. The “transferable” bit needs to be emphasized in order for the value of these rights to be truly unlocked. I can see a large number of individuals who will be compensated with these rights who will want to trade them away, since they are unlikely to possess another site to utilize them. And given the number of big buildings coming up on small sites, I can foresee there being a decent demand for it.

I do hope that investment banks (or their equivalent) come forward in order to make markets in these rights. I’m sure banks won’t miss opportunity to step in here, but the important thing is for regulation that will enable such intermediation. It is in the interests of the BBMP to keep these transaction costs low, since that is going to have a positive impact on the valuation of these rights, and eventually less such rights can be given.

Postscript: It would be interesting to study the impact of these rights on bribery rates of BBMP officials. I’m sure that currently a lot of money is made in illegally granting rights for buildings that don’t conform to regulations. Since there will now be a legal way of getting similar favours (I’m told that the Akrama-Sakrama scheme has similar intentions) it would be useful to see if bribes do drop.

JEE Results

Exactly ten years ago, they used to give a sum total of 3400 ranks for IIT-JEE. Typically, to get an engineering branch at one of the “big 5” IITs you needed to be in the early 2000s or better. Back then, there were ~40 people from Bangalore who made it to the merit list (I’ve forgotten the exact numbers but if I remember right, at least 30 people from Bangalore JOINED some IIT or the other). About 1.2% of all successful candidates back then were from Karnataka (for IIT/JEE purposes Bangalore = Karnataka since there are no other centres in the state).

JEE results for this year came out yesterday. Most of the second page of today’s The New Indian Express is spent in giving footage to people from Bangalore who got a rank. This year, they gave out 13,100 ranks, of which 58 were from Bangalore – 0.5% of all successful candidates. And you have the New Indian Express which puts the headline “City Students crack IIT by the dozen”. Yeah, five dozen out of thirteen kilopeople is worse than three dozen out of three kilopeople. But anyway…

Back in my days, there was one decently established factory and a couple of fledgling factories in Bangalore. The established factory (a small scale industry by national standards) had 100 students, of which over 30 got ranks in the JEE (and about 20 actually joined IIT). Today the same factory has some 500 students. And surely not more than 58 of its students could have cleared the JEE! And then there are several other factories in the city. Don’t know if any of them have done significantly well.

Madness. Sheer madness. I had written about this before.

Postscript: I must admit there is a small bit of hotteuri (stomach burn) at the amount of footage toppers get nowadays. Back then, it was an advertisement by the coaching factory in all major English dailies in the city, and little else.

Postscript2: This post might sound like one old thatha sitting in his armchair and ranting. It is meant to be that way.

The Importance of Online News

Reading Deepak Shenoy’s excellent article on insurance this afternoon the first thing I wondered was about why I had never read anything like it before. It was so intuitive and insightful, and so obvious, yet I didn’t recall reading anything like it elsewhere in the “mainstream media” (quotes because that implicitly implies Yahoo! is not mainstream). And then I started thinking about Ajay Shah’s brilliant blog post about the undersupply of criticism.

Ajay mentions in his article that most articles on China (which need cooperation from sources in the Chinese government for information) tend to be favourable to the country, since no one wants to risk cutting off the supply of information (or worse) by antagonizing the Chinese government. A similar relationship, either implicitly or explicitly, is enjoyed between media and advertisers.

A quick glance through any business newspaper, or even a mainstream broadsheet, would tell you that financial institutions (this includes banks, asset management companies, insurers and brokerages) are heavy advertisers in these media. Given the amount of money papers make from these sources, it doesn’t make much business sense for them to publish opinion pieces that are critical of these heavy advertisers. There are papers (especially some broadsheets) that claim to enforce neutrality and fairness in their reporting, but even there it is hard to come across articles that are highly critical advertisers. The potential loss in revenue is too big a risk to take.

The biggest advantage of new media is that it provides alternate channels which depend on alternate sources of revenue. Think about the number of times you’ve seen banks or insurance companies advertising in the Yahoo! sidebar, and then compare that against the number of times you’ve seen such advertisements in newsprint. Similarly, there will be companies who are heavy advertisers online, but not so in broadsheets so you will find the latter to be more willing to be critical of them.

From the reader’s perspective it is important to get news and opinion not only from several sources, but also from several kinds of sources in order to get a balanced view.

Business Model for DD

Flipping channels an hour back, I happened to stop at this never-heard-before channel called “DD Bharati”. Usha Uthup was giving a concert that was  clearly recorded for television. Looking at her, and considering that the program had been recorded in black-and-white film, I would suppose that it was ancient indeed. Maybe from some time in the 70s.

The program itself was nice. The sets, for the time, were excellent. Usha was backed up by a bunch of men clad in suits – one on keyboard, a couple on guitars, one on trumpet, one drumming, one on the cymbals and another just swaying from side to side. The songs were all quite good, most of them Usha’s own compositions, and I didn’t think twice about giving up on ESPN Sportscenter Asia, Roland Garros and three not-so-bad Hindi movies in order to watch this program. And while I was watching I thought of this business model for Doordarshan.

The basic idea is that there is a whole lot of footage – all that was shown all through the 70s and 80s – that is quite popular among people and nostalgia-inducing, which is held by Doordarshan. I would be surprised if DD would have licensed out any of its old content to any other channel, if not for any other reason but because so much bureaucracy would have to move for that to happen. Stuff like 80s soaps and sitcoms, shows like the Usha Uthup performance I watched today, etc.

So I think DD can truly profitably run a “nostalgia” kind of channel. The market of people who grew up on these programs in the 70s and 80s is large, and most would prefer to watch re-runs of those ancient shows rather than watch the tripe that is dished out by most channels today. And then there is an opportunity for people to catch up on stuff they missed out on back then for various reasons – for example I missed out on so many cool programs back in the late 80s because our antenna didn’t catch DD2, and I wouldn’t really mind watching those today.

And then those ads – yeah they are available on youtube (and on dd’s own site) but then I’m sure it would be profitable to run those ads now as programs in themselves! The opportunities, I think, are endless. Unfortunately it is a sarkari company that is not interested in profits that is sitting on all these options. The loss, I think, is for us potential viewers.

Fixed and variable scales

One major point of difference I’ve noticed between Indian and Western classical music is about the starting point of scales. Western music has a fixed starting frequency, and all instruments and voices are supposed to be tuned to that. Every guitar is tuned identically, and I’m talking about absolute frequencies of various strings here. Similarly with other instruments.

Indian classical music on the other hand doesn’t bother as much about absolute freuqencies. The frequency of the base Sa doesn’t matter at all, it’s only the relative frequencies of various notes that matter and as long as those are perfect the music will be good. This allows greater flexibility to artistes, especially vocalists and allows them to find their own range rather than having to conform to set standards.

Related to this is the individualist nature of Indian music (you usually have one lead performer here, accompanied by two or three others) and the orchestra nature of Western classical. When the “band” is small, it is not so much of a big deal to retune instruments to match each other and because of this it is not so much of a problem to coordinate. When you are part of an orchestra, however, it is important to have a standard and have everyone conform to that, rather than have a large number of musicians retune for every performance.

What I wonder, however, is which came first – synchronized tuning or the orchestra.

The Value of Fatwas

With random ulemas here, there, everywhere (and maybe nowhere) issuing fatwas left, right and centre, I wonder if the value of the fatwa hasn’t gone down.

The thing with religion is anyone who is mildly religious will try to follow as much of the traditions and customs are possible. However, if one puts way too many restrictions, there is the chance that the follower might “do a ramanamurthy” * and just snap and decide to not any of the customs. AS long as you keep things reasonable, though, there is a good chance that the follower will continue to follow.

Now that the context has been set, I reiterate my question as to whether there isn’t a law of diminishing returns for fatwas. Things I suppose were fine when the fatwa was a rare entity. For example, twenty years ago when someone issued a fatwa to kill Salman Rushdie, it was a rare event (the fatwa) and hence got taken seriously and Rushdie has to go into hiding.

But look at the kind of fatwas that are being issued nowadays and I would be really surprised if these are getting taken seroiusly. For example, read this article (HT: Nitin Pai). There is a fatwa against buying insurance. There is a fatwa against working in banks. There is a fatwa against families accepting income earned by female members. And so forth.

Don’t the ulema understand that there exists a law of diminishing returns, and so people are not likely to take fatwas seriously if too many of them are put in place? Ok I suppose they don’t teach economics in Madrassas. Or is it that Islamic society is still in the part of the curve where slope is significantly positive ? (imagine a curve with the total “degree of acceptance” on the y axis and “number of religious restrictions” on the X axis. You would expect that the curve initially rises and then flattens out, and if you stretch things too far maybe even bend downwards).

All religions and all sects of all religions have their share of loonies. People who come up with random fundaes and then claim it’s part of the teaching of that particular religion and everyone should follow it. But I suppose that most other religions are decentralized enough that loonies are treated as just that, and people go on leading their lives without taking cognizance of the loonies.

PS: Check out this hilarious essay from The Dawn about this bunch of guys who tried to take along a Maulvi to Afghanistan to fight Russians.

Dal Fry

Have you noticed – about how most Indian fried snacks are protein rich?

Vada – check (urad dal)
Maddur Vade – check (besan)
Boondi – check (besan)
Pakoda – check (besan)
Bajji – check (besan)
Sev – check (besan)
Papad – check (urad dal)
(you have several varieties of papad, and most are heavy in some dal or the other)

Even Chakkli and kODbaLe which are thought to be rice-based have a major proportion of Urad Dal flour in them. Go on and make a list. List out any popular traditional Indian fried snack, and you will find that it is protein rich!

Wonder what it is about protein and fat that they so commonly enter the stomach together!

Democracy

So next Saturday Shivamma, my aunt’s full-time maid, is going all the way back to her village near Challakere (Chitradurga district, Karnataka; six hours away from Bangalore) just to cast her vote in the Gram Panchayat (village council) elections.

My aunt can’t let go of her for more than a day but Shivamma’s relatives are really insistent that she exercises her franchise. They say that her visit to the village would be worth it even if she won’t be able to spend much time there apart from casting her vote!

Shows how much every single vote matters when the number of voters is low!