Over the last few days I’m feeling extremely charged up. Everything I touch seems to shock me. The most common culprit is the door of my car. The treadmill at the gym is a close second. And on a couple of occasions it’s been my mother’s arm!
Hopefully I’ll be able to earth myself quickly.??
Today it’s the turn of a bandicoot to die in my garden. It’s fairly huge – almost a foot long, and about five inches in diameter. And extremely furry. And smelly.
The immediate problem at hand is to get the thing thrown out – we don’t want crows devouring it inside our garden and spewing bits of meat all over the place. The maid refused to move the body. The garbage guy didn’t turn up today. And my mother calls me up to tell me that flies have already put attack.
In the worst case, the thing has to be done late this evening – after I return. Hopefully there is a pair of disposable gloves lying around.
And just to clarify, despite my expertise in rat kill, I didn’t kill this thing. Just found it lying somewhere in the garden this morning.
Update
My mother just called me up. The garbage guy eventually arrived. And for a small matter of ten rupees, he picked up the body and took it away, along with the rest of the garbage.
Just thought I should let you people know regarding the background of my IPL? pragati piece. It all started with this blogpost. I initially wrote it for this blog, following a comment by
on an earlier post. Then, towards the end of that post, the words “policy implications” flowed. And a few more paragraphs followed. Now, I decided it was worth publishing in the Indian Economy Blog. Without even editing it, I published there.
Then, the policy implications seemed to be significant enough to merit a post by themselves. This, I thought, might be superior to what I put on the IEB. I quickly mailed Nitin with the idea, and he replied in the positive, and I got about a week to write it.
If any of you thought that piece was good enough to be the equivalent of 241 runs in a test match against australia, then I must say it was like Sachin’s innings in Sydney in 2004. Words just refused to flow. I’d construct sentences in my head, but by the time I typed half of it, I’d forget the rest. It took me some two days to figure out how to start writing it. Even after I started, it would get hard to find words. I remembered what Kodhi told me about what Paul Theroux told him. Write using pen and paper – was the advise. I must admit it did help.
There were several points when I considered giving up. Most of the times, a few minutes’ of break would do some good. One occasion, after I’d written about half the article, proved especially painful. I just wanted to abandon it. I knew I had spent enough time on it. But then, I remembered
and his sunk cost fallacy.
There is the other side of the sunk cost fallacy (or i haven’t understood it well). On one hand, the time you’ve spent is already spent. Adn gone. And you shouldn’t worry about it. However, looking at it another way, things are ‘cheaper’ now. Because of what you’ve already done, you need to spend that much less time in order to get what you want. You’ve already done so much research. So, now, you’re significantly better off than you were when you started. You are suddenly prepared to put more effort on it.
I was over the top when the thing got published. I was so thrilled I could’ve screamed, however I took pity on the neighbours. I “screamed” in a different way. I decided to give massive publicity for myself. I was so thrilled i decided I deserved this. And I mailed anyone and everyone who I thought might be interested. It was quite a motley list. And a long one. And I just kept adding to it, unmindful of whether the recipients had the least interest in agricultural futures.
Now, there were a few things I had to learn to accept. There would be scores of “congratulations; really nice article” messages. Many from people who didn’t really understand the thing. I would have to accept the wishes gracefully, without displaying any arrogance. There would be scores of questions raised, both from people who understood the thing and those who didn’t. I’d have to patiently sit and explain the stuff to each of them. It was my responsibility, having asked them to read this piece.
A number of people in my “list” are grad students in the US. People who live and breathe journal papers. I don’t know what they’d’ve thought of me publishing something in a non-academic journal and going to town over that. There would have been a few others also who would’ve assumed I was way too arrogant for blowing my own trumpet like this. Anyways I decided not to bother with this, and just go ahead.
Regarding this particular post, I thought about it some ten times before I finally decided to go ahead and write it. Seven times I decided it’s not a Lagaan that i’ve made to release a “the making of Lagaan” DVD. thrice I started writing, only to face the writer’s block. Anyways, you just read it.
Rashmi Bansal’s cousin has written an insightful (and scary) story about the Bansal Factory in Kota. Just reading through that was enough to make my hands go numb, and to give me goosebumps. I’m so glad that I didn’t go through this kind of an experience in my last two years in school.
And after reading this article, I’m not too surprised that people from “outstation factories” such as those at Kota don’t do well at all at IIT (in general, people from “mass-production factories” don’t do too well at IIT. However, those who stayed at home during the preparation have a significantly higher chance of doing well when compared to those who stayed away).
I wonder if people actually do something of a cost-benefit analysis (everyone does that in most situations; you dont’ need an MBA to do this analysis) before they join these outstation factories. I think it’s more likely that they follow the herd.
There has been no shortage of conspiracy theories regarding the finance minister’s announcement of the Rs. 60000 crore farm loan waiver. Let me add one more theory to it.
According to a survey done by the Business Standard, which got published today, the total outstanding bad farm debt in the books of commercial banks totals Rs. 11000 Crore. The rest of the Rs. 60000 Crore of bad debt is held by sundry co-operative banks and regional rural banks.
The BS article also mentions that the compensation to the banks is going to be in the form of cash, and not in the form of a mixture of cash and bonds as was speculated earlier. There is no mention of the timing of the transfer of money from the governments to the banks. Also, the article says that the government will allow the banks to transfer their provision for doubtful debt to the bottomline as profits.
Now, name one Indian “leader” who you would associate with co-operative banks.
This entire announcement of the farm loan waiver is nothing but a conspiracy to transfer taxpayer funds to random cooperative banks, whose main business is to dole out (note that i’m not saying loan) funds to politicians who back them and their families. Starting from the honourable President of course.
Aadisht had written that this waiver was a conspiracy to recapitalize PSU banks. That in itself, as a first step of privatisation, might have been remotely acceptable. However, now it seems like it’s more like a conspiracy to fund politicians using taxpayer money – indirectly by way of funding co-operatives and regional rural banks. A fantastic plan, one must say. One that has all of the President’s blessings.
Literally. I woke up this morning to find one random drunk guy lying drunk in my garden, making random noises. I tried to? shout trying to wake him up so that he would go. But to no avail.
He had been first sighted last night at around ten o’clock. He was lying in front of my neighbor’s house. Groaning. I remember taking special care to make sure all gates were locked. I had also been slightly relieved – that he was in front of my neighbors’ house and not mine. So it was their job to do the clean-up act.
Later in the night he had apparently gained entry into my neighbor’s compound. They had tried to chase him away but to no avail. They’d dialed 100 (at 3 am) but no cops arrived. And sometime in the middle of the night he had scaled the walls to enter our compound.
It took some 3 calls to 100. Each time a lady would pick up, ask what the problem was, and then take down my full address (though I thought “opposite upendra’s house” was a better indicator of the location of my house than the postal address). And then say that the cops would be there in 15 mins. On the third call, the lady was like “oh so he’s still lying around? i’ll send the cops”. Maybe she’d assumed that the situation would take care of itself and precious police resources needn’t be wasted on this! Maybe she’d assumed the same when my neighbor called her at 3am.
There was a call from the “south control room” when a polite policeman confirmed our address and location and said that the cops would be in in 5 mins. This time the promise was kept. A couple of policemen arrived on a “cheetah” and started poking around this guy with a stick. Thankfully he was alive. and then they managed to beat him till he woke up and he was sent off.
The policemen told me that this unresponsiveness of the control room was a common occurrence and henceforth we should just get in touch with the police station directly.
On the whole a mildly scary experience??
One piece I wrote has got published in the latest issue of Pragati. Download and read it. It’s about futures markets being an efficient mechanism to enable decentralized agricultural planning.
Initially I’d planned to write more on futures in the same post when I told you about my publication. However, right now i’m way too thrilled to sit down and write anything. After all, this is my first decent bullet point in ages.
So that other post on futures markets will have to wait. Hopefully you won’t have to wait for too long. Till then, read and digest the Pragati?
you raise the blade
you make the change
you rearrange me till i’m sane
read the above lines again taking into consideration “blade” in the sense of “putting blade”. takes on a whole new (and nice and non-dark) meaning.
reminds me of this 1980’s duet Kannada song. don’t exactly remember the lyrics so will just put the approximate translation
heroine: this madness won’t go until you marry me
hero: i won’t marry you unless you get rid of your madness
That for five straight years in a row, Lalu’s budget has been significantly superior to Chidu’s
A month or two back, outlook carried this cover story that Bangalore is dying, unable to take the weight of the sudden influx in population due to IT. that it is losing it’s culture. and all such. it was a fairly controversial story and created a lot of “group discussion”.
I support the story. I believe that IT has spoilt bangalore. ruined it beyond recognition. there has been simply too much influx of outsiders, and the city hasn’t been able to bear it. and despite the pathetic situation of the city now, people continue to set up companies here and the problem jsut gets worse. There’s a network effect you see – bangalore already has a large number of IT coolies, and it’s a fertile ground to poach for anyone else who wants to set up shop here. it’s a kinda perpetual motion machine.
A couple of years back there was this controversy involving deve gowda and narayana murthy, among others. the IT companies alleged that the state isn’t doing enough for them. that it isn’t building good enough infrastructure and it’s not a good thing. the politicians responded by saying that the companies aren’t doing anything for the local community and that they should help pitch in to build new infrastructure, etc. that they aren’t doing enough in terms of corporate social responsibility.
I’m firmly of the opinion that the greatest social service that businesses can do is to do good business. and pay a part of the profits to the government in the form of taxes. the best that the government can do is to allow businesses to do business. AND COLLECT TAXES. and then use the proceeds of those taxes to build the necessary infrastructure, etc. the problem with IT currently is that the government isn’t collecting taxes. that they’re getting away by paying some abysmal minimal alternate tax.
also there needs to be some kind of improvement in the tax mechanism. let’s look at it from the point of view that companies pay taxes in order to compensate for all the negative side effects that they cause – for which the government needs to clean up and hence deserves taxes. is there a way in which tax revenues can be distributed in order to reflect this?
or do we try to collect tax at each externality? say there is one income tax which covers general public goods such as policing, defense, foreign policy expenses and all such. can we collect the rest of the taxes where it hurts? For example – a big problem that the IT guys have created in Bangalore is in terms of traffic. Is there a way in which we can effectively tax these guys for all the traffic trouble that they cause? in this specific case, of course, this can be collected in the form of a toll. and the tolls thus collected should go into rectifying this particular problem – such as widening roads or building a metro etc.
right now the central government, for whatever reason, refuses to tax these IT guys. and is even creating new loopholes for them – for example there is an SEZ on outer ring road (cessna business park or something) which is no bigger than ITPL! they were building a software park, and then realized that the STPI thing is expiring next year and this is a new loophole. and voila!
can the local government do something in order to compensate for this? so that the local resources that are being drawn out can be adequately compensated? and can this be done in a manner without loopholes, and wtih a good set of incentives? and without too much side effect to others?
ok that was a random collection of thoughts in this topic. hopefully sometime i’ll sit down and make a better post out of this. for now only one thing – i just hope Chidu doesn’t extend the STPI scheme beyond 2009.
PS: i don’t understand this funda of giving tax breaks for exporters. aren’t we effectively subsidizing foreigners that way?
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