general – Page 9 – Pertinent Observations

Gurgaon

I had initially been very skeptical about relocating to Gurgaon. Most of my friends who landed up here after graduating from IIM happened to flee within a few months. They went to several places, in lands far and near; but no one stayed back in Gurgaon. Around that time, the central theme of Allen’s blog was cribs about Gurgaon.

There were a few that managed to hang on, and they continued to crib about the place. One of my aunts relocated from Delhi to Gurgaon 5 years back, and she is yet to stop cribbing about the latter location. Yet another aunt (a grand-aunt, actually) had briefly visited Gurgaon for a few days, and declared that it is “as good as America” and people here had no right to crib.

When I got this job offer roughly six months back, there was only one question I was trying to answer on my flight back to Bangalore. “Is this job good enough for me to relocate to and endure Gurgaon?” Two hours of deep thought followed and I answered that in the affirmative, and here I am. So far, on the job front, there are no complaints – which, coming from me six months into a job, is saying a lot.

Having heard enough cribs about Gurgaon from various sources, I decided I needed to hedge, and I was willing to spend a little money in order to do that. I transported my car here (I got here and realized that car is a hygiene factor here and not an “enhanced life” product). I stretched my rent budget and got myself a nice house – I reasoned that it is important to feel comfortable at home, and so I shouldn’t compromise on that front. The day I moved into this house, I got unlimited Airtel broadband. I got Tata Sky. Did a few book binges. And so forth.

Of late I havent’ been very happy (ok the skeptics will ask when was the last time I was really happy, and that isn’t an invalid question, though I typically give the answer as “october 2005”). Some people misconstrue this and point out to all the good things that I have, and say that given all this, I have no right to crib. However, I believe that given all the good things that I have, my life is not as good as it can be, and so I need to push the limits as much as I can, and so temporary unhappiness in this quest is not an issue.

I’ve been cribbing about various things. About how I hardly meet “people” (I must point out that in my first month in Gurgaon, I made conscious effort to meet new people. Then NED happened). About how I end up spending most of my weekends at home, doing nothing. About how I sometimes feel that my life is too regimented. I mostly get standard replies. “Get yourself a new hobby”, they say, and list out a dozen “standard” hobbies. On my part, I think I already have enough things that give me a “kick” and I don’t want to make my life more regimented, so this won’t help. Then they say that I should actively seek out and meet new people, but they don’t say how. They say I should just get out of the house, but what should I do then? Hang out in a mall?

Frequently I lapse into introspection. And frequently, this introspection brings out an insight. The latest one might sound escapist to the skeptics, but I think it is the truth. It tells me that my life was no different when I wsa back in Bangalore. Then toom, I used to hardly meet any “people”. I would end up spending most of the weekend sitting at home, laptop on lap and watching football. I used to meet friends once in two or three weekends then, and it’s no different here. And I’ve picked up new hobbies here – such as reading and watching movies. So there seems to be a delta improvement.

The problem, I now realize, is that Gurgaon has denied me my favourite single-player hobby – of taking long and lonely introspective walks. Which is what I would do almost on a daily basis in Bangalore. Get out of the house and start walking, usually on main roads. Abruptly stop, and “observe life around me as it happened”. Make a few mental notes (mostly to forget those notes when I sat in front of a computer) and move on. Eat roadside food. Buy random stuff. When I get bored of walking, hop into a bus or into an auto. And then, when I’ve gotten really bored, walk back, or even take an auto back.

Every Saturday and Sunday evening I would do this. A version of this used to be done on weekday evenings also, when I’d do the long walks carrying my laptop on my back. Even now, I sudddenly get that spring in my stride when I start walking, taking giant steps. Unfortunately, given Gurgaon’s skewed geography, this can’t be done on a sustainable basis. In fact, there is no place to walk around in Gurgaon at all, unless of course if I’m inside the mall, but then there is so little else to do there.

I wondered if Mainland Delhi might be better, but people are skeptical about that, too. People simply don’t walk much in Delhi, I’m told. Even if they have to go 100meters, they take the car. The only place in Delhi that I’ve visited so far, and which I think offers me good walking space is Connnaught Place, but I have to go through a long drive in order to reach there, which leads to NED. Hopefully once the metro construction to Gurgaon is done, I’ll be able to get there easier. Till then, I don’t know. I think all I can do is to crib. And try and develop some alternatives, none of which is striking my head now.

Interior Design

Recently it has been reported that former ML MD John Thain spent some 1.2 million dollars in decorating his office. And people say that this is very conservative by normal CEO standards. Normal people (like me) might wonder why one needs to spend so much on one’s office. Even if you were to list out what needs to go into an office, and then go on to buy the best possible item in each category, this kind of money seems obscene.

So if you are still wondering why people end up spending so much on their offices, you will need to get in touch with someone from the profession called interior design. It’s quite fascinating. The way these people think is extremely instructive, and actually it would make sense for an investment bank CEO to learn this from the designer and then use such ideas to trade. They way these people imagine stuff, they comparisons that they make, the associations that they draw, are incredible. Actually, I think interior designers might be good people to partner on a quiz team.

So it cannot be any random painting that needs to go on the walls. The painting needs to have a theme, and this theme needs to fit in with the general theme of the company. And interior designers being interior designers, will develop their own idea of the company’s theme. And then use this to design the office. So coming back, the painting needs to conform to the ideals of the company. Next, the painter who painted this painting needs to conform to the ideals of the company. Put these two together and the painting will cost a bomb. Doesn’t matter, they need to get everything right. And perfect. And in order

Interior designers also seem to be proficient in stuff such as vaastu, feng shui, numerology, and all such. So each and every desk in the office needs to be oriented in the right way. It’s ok if the employee doesn’t have space to stretch his legs. Doesn’t matter if the position of one particular desk means they can’t play gulli cricket in office. It has to be that way.

It is excellent that interior designers do their jobs so diligently. The way they think, their attention to detail, the way they see the big picture, is all extremely good. In fact, interior design is probably one profession where, to succeed, you need to be both a stud and a fighter. So kudos to the entire community. However, there is a small issue.

The biggest problem with interior design is that it’s all so subtle. Ok, the colour of this wall matches the theme colour of the company. But who would notice? Ok, the painter who painted this exquisite painting just outside the CEO’s door might belong to the same moon nakshatra as the CEO. Excellent attention to detail. But does anyone notice it? it is quite a pity. These designers spend so much time and clients’ money in bringing out the perfect design, but most of their excellent thinking, and work, goes unnoticed.

There is this story about Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel. He was painting an extremely dark corner, which was out of eyesight of most visitors, or maybe all visitors to the Chapel. Someone goes up to him and asks why he is taking so much trouble in painting this particular nook when no one will notice it. He replies that he is doing it because God is watching. Extremely commendable. And I suppose interior designers also work on the same principle. However, I’m not sure if Michelangelo billed any additional amount to the Chapel for painting this unseen corner.

The other day, I was talking to my uncle about the design of his drawing room in his Gurgaon house. He mentioned to me that soon after he bought the place, he had called an interior designer to help him design the drawing room. The lady broadly told him about her plans for the house, which my uncle seemed to appreciate, and they sat down to discuss fees. The deal was that the interior designer would instruct my uncle about where he needs to get each and every piece of his furniture from. She would determine the design, the designer and the shops. And my uncle would have to do exactly as she said. And here is the clincher: the interior designer’s fee would be 2% of my uncle’s total expenses on his drawing room.

I don’t think incentives can be more misaligned than this. You get paid to help your client spend his/her money, and the more money you make your client spend, the more money you make. So it is always in your best interest to make sure that the client spends as much as possible. The only limitation might be the client’s budget, but your incentives make sure that you will stretch it to its limit. In case of professional CEO’s, they don’t really have limits, and it is their shareholders that pay. Which is why you get situations like Thain’s expense of $1.2mm on his office room being considered low by industry standards.

It intrigues me as to how interior design fee structures have settled down this way. And the only thing I can think of is that most people are spending someone else’s money. Their shareholders’ money, in most cases. If I were to engage an interior designer some day, I would try and structure her fees differently. I would tell her (numbers here are indicative only) “I’m willing to spend Rs. 10 lakh, and I will pay you a minimum of 20,000 rupees. For every lakh less than 10 lakh that I end up spending, I will give you Rs. 10,000 more.” Or maybe not. I may just negotiate a fixed fee.

NED can be a good thing

Ever since the concept of NED was invented/discovered two years back, it has been painted as a bad thing. I have occasionally described it as a frankenstein – which, after being invented/discovered by me, has come out to consume me. There is a friend who refers to it as “the unspeakable” as she thinks even uttering the word “NED” will send her into NED. NED has been seen as an undesirable state, which everyone wants to get out of as quickly as possible. It is seen as encouraging sloth, and inefficiency, and has only grudgingly been accepted by people as an inescapable fact.

I’ll keep this short and provide only one example, but my point is that NED can also be occasionally a good thing. It is that “balancing force”, which prevents you from being over-aggressive. It is that force that helps cool down your blood, and makes sure you don’t act hastily. It is paramount in making you think twice, and maybe thrice before doing certain things. It makes sure that you are never over-efficient at work, and that will help in keeping your boss’s expectations low enough for you to meet them.

I had thought about one or two examples to quote here, but NED means there has been a long time since I started writing this post, and now. And now that I think about it, I don’t particularly want to mention those two examples. Let me generalize. Certain stuff happened. Some people said some things, which I didn’t like. And I felt like hitting back. Hitting back at a high level. That hit-back would’ve led to an escalation of the situation. And might have been harmful to me. But in the heat of the moment, my cost-benefit analysis would’ve shown this action to be producing positive results.

NED happened. I didn’t do what I was supposed to do. I didn’t do what I had planned to do, rather. Implementation was a bit of a pain so I put it off. And by the time I thought again about it, my analysis of the situation had changed, and it seemed like I would be better off not doing what I had planned to do. Things are all good now. All thanks to NED. If not for NED, I don’t know what I might have done, and I would’ve been in an inferior position right now compared to where I am now.

Two days back, I got a mail saying “sorry if this sounds silly, but what the hell is NED.” I suppose this is a good time to do a check-back. To revise our concepts. So I would encourage you to visit the about page of this blog, and read what NED is all about. And assimilate. And internalize. And recognize the fact that it’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Lazy Post – Statistical Analysis

I call this a lazy post since I didn’t originally write it as a blog post. I had written this as an email to a mailing list, and now thought it might make sense as a blog post. The reference to context: a prominent and well-respected member of the group had written a fairly lengthy argument, and ended it by saying “Maybe this calls for a good regression analysis….” . My reply is here.

I need to mention here that this mail to the group wasn’t responded to (apart from one tangential remark by Udupa). I don’t know if it simply got lost in the flood of mails on the list today, or if people on the group (in general, a very intelligent lot) don’t care for this kind of stuff, or if, for some reason, this caused discomfort of some sort. Anyway, I begin:

I think I had raised this point before in a similar context. it is about the use and misuse of statistical analysis. i think one lesson that ought to be learnt from the ongoing financial crisis and the events leading up to this is that statistical analysis, when misused, can have dangerous consequences, and this is not just for the people who are misusing the analyses.

there is this popular view that if there is data, then one ought to do statistical analysis, and draw conclusions from that, and make decisions based on these conclusions. unfortunately, in a large number of cases, the analysis ends up being done by someone who is not very proficient with statistics and who is basically applying formulae rather than using a concept. as long as you are using statistics as concepts, and not as formulae, I think you are fine. but you get into the “ok i see a time series here. let me put regression. never mind the significance levels or stationarity or any other such blah blah but i’ll take decisions based on my regression” then you are likely to get into trouble.

i think this is broadly the kind of point that is made by people like Paul Wilmott. that the problem is not with statistical analysis, but with the way people use statistical analysis.

ok, now that i’m done with my rant, I’m very sceptical about regression yielding any kind of conclusive results here. i think the number of data points we have here is too small to produce any meaningful results. of course i’m saying this without really looking at all the data that you want to might want to include. and i won’t be surprised if a few tens of papers get published on this topic. all based on statistical analyses. and the results all being orthogonal to one another.

Bastardization Of Indian Society

Sometime in the middle of last year, I had written a controversial blog post on Caste and the Gentleman Class. I had written that post after I had read Gregory Clark’s “A Farewell to Alms”. In that post, I had argued that that the reason India failed to develop a large “gentleman class” was due to our caste system – that given the link between caste and profession, competition for survival happened within castes. To quote myself:

On the same lines, one wonders why this kind of development didnt happen in India, and the answer lies in the caste system. Given the rigid caste system here, it wasn’t possible for people to ‘downshif’t’. Given its tight linkage with profession, what the caste system did was to freeze the proportion of various castes in the total workforce.

Hence, even if the upper caste/class people managed to produce more surviving offspring, these offspring weren’t able to migrate to other ‘lesser’ professions. In other words, the survival of the fittest happened within castes. It was not until much after the industrial revolution and urbanization and the development of modern medicine, that people of different castes started professionallly competing with each other.

In this post, I hope to build upon this earlier theory, and in the process perhaps make it more controversial. The basic idea here is that in the middle ages and perhaps earlier, and definitely later, it was okay in India for a man belonging to a higher class to procreate with a woman belonging to a lower class (ok more controversy here – i am using class and caste interchangably since in those days they were tightly linked) (and the opposite was not permitted. a man could not procreate with a woman belonging to a higher caste).

However, it doesn’t seem likely that the upper class man and the lower class woman would be living together. The upper class man would have a wife of the same class with whom he would live with, while the lower class woman would live in what was called in Tamil Nadu as “chinna veedu” (small house).

Given this kind of arrangement, it is likely that the results of such unions would be brought up by their (lower class) mothers, while they themselves would end up belonging to their father’s class (remember that Indian society has been mostly patriarchal). Culture is not something that you are born with. You pick it up from people with whom you grow up. And thus, these kids of the “chinna veedus” would end up picking the culture and habits of their lower-class mothers.

So what effectively happened in India is a reversal of what happened in Europe. In Europe, since there were no class barriers when it came to competition in professions, people from higher class backgrounds would proliferate in society, thus creating a “gentlemanly” society. In India it was the reverse. It was the case of lower class values percolating into the higher classes. Given the process by which this happened (which I’ve described here), we can call it the Bastardization of Indian Society.

Twenty Six

The reason I’m writing this so late in the day is that I’ve been confused as to what to call this post. I started from a short list of maybe a dozen names, and then brought the list down to two – “twenty six” and “twenty fucking six”. Finally I decided to go for the former since the swearword in the latter doesn’t seem to add much value.

If I were to count my years using letters of the English alphabet, I would today increment it from Y to Z, taking into consideration that the Gregorian calendar may not be perfectly accurate. However, for this kind of a time horizon, and given our desired least count, it is definitely more accurate than the Hindu calendar so we will stick to it. Ok, if you have still not got the point, “aaj mEra happy birthday hai“. Imagine me wearing a yellow suit and shouting that line upwards as you look down from your balcony.

My original plan was to write about birthdays itself, as to how they seem to have lost significance, and as I’ve grown older, and started feeling old, they seem to have been reduced to a counter. I was planning to write about how I have to go really long back in order to find a memorable birthday, and about how it’s generally been a disappointment in recent time.

Vyshnavi Doss, who is older than me by ten days, decided to use her Twenty Sixth by writing something on these lines. It was as if she was exploiting her seniority by taking away words from my fingers. Here is a quote, but I urge you to read the whole thing. I completely empathise with the first part of the essay.

Now this is going to sound nutty, but I used to feel more pressure than elation on my birthday. Not counting my school years of course. That was when by default, either you distributed sweets to everyone at school, or your mom hosted a party for you and you got all the attention and gifts. Your birthday was announced at the assembly, your classmates sang for you, and you pretty much owned the day! Those were the protected years. Then I got into college where I had to work my way up towards making friends. I am a confirmed ambivert. I am a friendly person, but not necessarily popular in the zillion people on my friend-list sense of the term. So the birthday situation after I left school had always been very iffy – there was noone to really ensure it was special. To give me that “Surpriiiiiiseee!!!” People have always mattered a lot to me, and I believe that a good birthday is made up by the people around you. And while my birthdays after school were simple and pleasant, my expectation of something utterly out of the world remained the same. So the worry on my birthday could be attributed to mainly two things – a small closeted social circle, and high ambitions. Often my expectation has been met with disappointment. Don’t get me wrong – of course my parents, my relatives and my close friends have made all the effort in their capacities to make my day special. And I have been happy. But I think I’m quite a tough-to-please person. I’ve always wanted that climax.

Instead, I think I’ll do one of those this-day-that-year things. Given my superior long-term memory, I think this is the kind of stuff that I’m likely to be good at. Here are some excerpts.(rest under the fold)

Continue reading “Twenty Six”

Madman theory redux?

Madman Theory refers to the policy employed by the US in the 1970s during Nixon’s reign. They convinced the Russians that Nixon was mad, and that he was liable to act irrationally if provoked. And this led to the US getttig an upper hand in the Cold War.

It seems like Pakistan is unwittingly doing the same nowadays. Given the general chaotic nature of the political “leadership” in that country, and also the fact that they have access to nuclear weapons, India dare not launch a full-scale offensive against Pakistan, irrespective of what the terrorists do.

So what this means is that Pakistani terrorists can come here and continue to have fun, and even if we know that they have been backed by Pakistan, we can’t do a thing because we are afraid that some madcap in Pakistan has control over the nuclear button and might end up nuking us.

And given that the democrats are in power in the US (irrespective of Biden’s pro-India leanings) you never know how relations between India and Pakistan shape out in the next few years.

If you have a bright idea as to how one can combat this Madman technique (I’m not sure if Pakistan is playing this deliberately), let me know. Actually, letting me know is of no use. I can’t do a thing. So do what you think is the best, but also let me know.

Bangalore Trip

So I went to Bangalore on Thursday. And returned yesterday afternoon. It was a fairly eventful trip – just that most of the events that took place during the trip were planned. There weren’t too many surprises – either positive or negative, and this lack of volatility meant that it was a good trip overall.

I had ended my last post hoping that my bike would start. And start it did, dutifully. Unfortunately, it was to tell Jai later during the day, when it abruptly stopped somewhere in Gandhibazaar market. It was quite hot and I had to push it around a fair distance to find a garage that was open in order to get it repaired.

The thing with automobile repair shops is that most of them are owned by Muslims, and thus have their weekly holiday on Friday. While it might be convenient in normal times since you can leave your bike for service on a Sunday, it can be death when your bike breaks down on Friday afternoon. I had to go past two or three closed auto repair shops that day before I found a “Sowmya bike point” where my spark plug got replaced.

Two of my three breakfasts were consumed at Darshinis. Actually, on Friday, I had my breakfast in three installments. Saturday was the usual Masala Dosa at the Adigas in Jayanagar 4th block. Dinner on Saturday was at Shiok, the first time I was visiting it at the new location. The food, as usual, was excellent. One extremely under-rated starter at Shiok is Choo Chee Potatoes. I strongly recommend you to try it out the next time. I left the choice of my drink to Madhu Menon, and he recommended some pink stuff for me.

I met Baada, Harithekid and PGK at Shiok. I was meeting PGK for the first time. I was already a bit disoriented when I had arrived at Shiok (my head had gone blank a couple of times earlier that day, leading me to take an auto to Shiok rather than putting bike), and combine that with the pink drink and I think I’ve forgotten what PGK looks like. All I remember is that he too had a pink drink – which was different from mine.

I managed to submit address change requests at most of the places I had intended to. I went to SBI and Karnataka Bank, and extended my fixed deposits – taking advantage of the insanely high prevailing rates. I visited one aunt for dinner on Friday, and another for lunch on Saturday.

The only time during the entire trip that I was consumed by NED was when I went to inspect my house in Bangalore. It was after a gap of almost ten years that I was seeing the house empty. It was at that moment I think – three months after I moved to Gurgaon – that it hit me that I don’t live in Bangalore any more. And that I don’t intend to return for a while. It took a maddening auto drive to Shiok to cure me of this bout of NED.

Friday evening was spent in the cantonment area, though I regret to inform you that I visited neither of MG Road and Brigade road. I met Udupa and Woreshtmax Vishnu for tea at Koshy’s, and on either side of tea, raided the Premier Bookshop. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pics as I had planned. The only picture of Premier that I now have is the one taken with Neha Jain’s wrist that appeared in the ToI on 26th July 2004 (I don’t have a scanned copy; a few hard copies of the clipping are there somewhere in my house in Jayanagar in Bangalore).

I spent all my coupons, and Shamanth’s coupons also. I still have Lakshana’s coupon with me, and I intend to mail it to her. Here is what I bought:

The Human Zoo – Desmond Morris
The Selfish Gene – Richard Dawkins
An artist and a mathematician (a book about the fictional mathematician Nicholas Bourbaki; forgot the author)
India: A History – John Keay
Longitude
The Stuff of Thought – Steven Pinker

Once again, thanks to all those who recommended books to me. Unfortunately, a large number of those were not available at Premier. i’ll probably order them from Rediff Books once I’ve whittled down my have-and-unread list.

God, Religion, Diwali, etc.

I’ve never been the religious types. I haven’t been too rebellious either, though I’ve had my fair share. Back when i was a kid, I would demand breakfast on the morning of important poojas when nothing was supposed to be consumed. I would insist on touching the person doing the pooja (usually my mom since my dad was hardly religious) just to break the maDi concept. And as recently as six months ago, during my father’s annual death ceremony, I cut up my sacred thread.

But I’ve mostly been harmless. I’ve never cribbed about going into a place of worship, though in most cases I’d just mechanically go through the motions. I have hated the really crowded and popular temples, such as those in Tirupati and Mantralaya, and promised not to go back there again. Some other temples – the more quieter ones – have made me feel spiritual. I can’t exactly describe the feeling, but let me tell you that it identical to what I felt when I had my first cigarette (no, i’m not a smoker; I smoke on an average one cigarette a year).

Diwali weekend has started, and I have no plans. I haven’t gone home to Bangalore. I’ll be attending work on Monday. Today was spent like every other lazy weekend – didn’t do much at all. Seems like tomorrow, too, will be spent the same way. I have no plans for Tuesday. And have no plans of making any planas. If I look out of my window, I can see some celebrations going on in the neighbouring complex (it has low-rise buildings so I can see pretty much the whole thing). There is some kind of a fair. Stalls have been set up. People look all decked up. Some “cultural programme” is happening. There was a fireworks display.

Apart from the food and holiday bit, festivals have never really meant much to me. Yes, there has been the odd fun thing – such as decking up the Ganapati mantapa, making shapes out of sugar syrup (Sankranti), bursting crackers, etc. But it has mostly been yet another day. Only special things being the special food and holiday from school. In IIT, I used to especially look forward to festivals as they’d more often then not give me an extended weekend to run off home to Bangalore.

I wonder if my indifference towards festivals has been because of my family background – where the stress has been more on rituals as opposed to the fun part. I wonder if my indifference is because I was in a very small family (no siblings), and with parents working for PSUs and hence returning home early every evening, the “family getting together and eating” was no big deal. Or maybe if my indifference stems out of my un-religiousness in general. That if I were religious I might have found more meaning in the rituals than I do now. I wonder if my indifference has to do with my being a process-driven person rather than a result-driven person.

As I’ve grown older, I’m seeing less and less values in most of these festivals. Of course, the incremental value of a holiday has gone up ever since I began working. On the other hand, stuff I used to find fun are not fun anymore. I fail to be charmed by crackers, though I must confess I still love the smell of them. I don’t have the patience anymore to sit and decorate the Ganapati mantapa. And after I’ve started watching my weight, the thought of making shapes out of pure sugar syrup has also become much less appealing.

The last really fun Diwali I can recall was in 1995, the year when there was a solar eclipse on the middle day. I remember going to see The Mask that day, and Rangeela the next day. I remember getting together with cousins and bursting hordes of crackers. I remember going to a chess tournament the preceding weekend and doing fairly well.

After that, I have just been going through the motions. Buying crackers, bursting them, pretending to enjoy them, but feeling empty at the end of it. In one of those years (1997) I’ve ended up nearly blasting my hand. In another (2001) I have played teenpatti, and made a princely sum of Rs. 3.20 . I have written exams on Diwali (2004). I’ve gone and attended quizzes (2005 and 2006), and even fallen in love (2005).

Ok I know this has been an extremely long and incoherent post. I would be really impressed if you are still reading this. There is one little way in which I plan to celebrate this year’s Diwali. My newest hobby is cooking. So far I’ve been cooking mostly basic stuff. Rice, chapati, sambar, rasam, curry, etc. I’ve made the odd sweet also – I’ve made Kesari bhath twice. But I think I should use this opportunity, and also those two ancient packets of milk lying in my freezer, and make some nice sweet. So yes, that’s how I’ll celebrate Diwali. I don’t know yet if I’ll share the sweet that I’m going to make. I’ll let you know on wednesday.

Extending the effects of the Bangalore bug

A few months back, Ravikiran had written about what he called the “Bangalore bug”. He said that due to the outsourcing revolution, most of our best web designers and engineers end up serving foreign markets which offer better margins, and thus Indian websites are the scum, as is software designed for India.

I think it is much deeper than this. Check out this article by Janmejaya Sinha about cashing Travellers Cheques. If any of you have tried to get some work done at an Airtel or Vodafone service center or call center, you’d have noticed that most people manning this are fairly incompetent. It’s likely that you would go through the same experience at the Big Bazaars and Food Worlds. You must have also definitely noticed this in college – in terms of your teachers there.

What the “bangalore bug” has done is much more than what Ravikiran had talked about. It has diverted the reasonably smart people who might have gone into banking, or teaching, or become shopkeepers, and has made them switch to IT or other services which can generate export revenue. The “export industry” pays reasonably well so jobs which had been respectable half a generation ago are not so respectable any more. And the quality of service that we get has gone down drastically.

Thinking about it, there’s nothing much we can do about it. We can’t stop exporting becasue that destroys the quality of goods we consume here (actually this has been implemented in the case of some foodgrains). The only way smarter people will come into the service industry which serves local markets is if this industry pays as well as the export jobs that they’re currently doing. And for this to happen, service fees have to go up significantly. And i’m not so sure too many people are willing to pay too much more just for the sake of superior service.