Idle Thoughts

The Hindu reports that the nation paid Rs 60 Cr to subsidise MP's lunch during the last 5 years. The numbers are revealed as a response to an RTI petition. Let's look a bit deeper into the numbers. Rs 60 Cr in five years translates into Rs 12 Cr per year or Rs 1 Cr per month. If we take that the canteen functioned 20 days a month , with 500 MPs eating at the canteen on an  average per day (considering that the parliament is not in session always, I think these numbers are quite high) , the subsidy amounts to Rs (1 Cr)/(20*500) or Rs 1000 per MP, per day. The report quotes typical subsidy for some of the dishes: Non Vegetarian meal : Rs 66 Stewed Vegetables : Rs 38 Fish Fried with chips: Rs 70 Mutton cutlet : Rs 52 Mutton curry : Rs 60 Masala Dosa : Rs 24 Roti is sold at a profit of Rs 0.23 per roti and khomani ka meetha is sold at cost price. Remember that these subsidies are at today's cost. The subsidies during the previous years would definitely be less as ...

Recently Dilip Gandhi claimed that there is no India specific study that proves linkage of tobacco (specifically Beedi) habits in India and cancer. Shyam Charan Gupta chipped in with his two cents that there are other products like sugar that pose health issues. Can we warn the people about the harmful effects of everyone of these products? News channels have been covering these issues for the last couple of days. Congress leaders, Trinamool leaders, doctors and many others came on TV to testify that Tobacco usage is indeed bad for Indians. There were many comments on the intelligence of Dilip Gandhi and Shyam Charan Gupta. But other than indignation there was hardly any content in these responses. I spent some hours browsing channels looking for some answers in vain. There was no detail of specific studies on tobacco usage and cancer in India. There was no discussion on the issue of educating the public on the harmful effects of specific food items. Just more and more people appe...

Before I start, let me make an admission - I have used the terms RSS/Hindutva and secular quite informally to describe specific views. Hope this does not offend you one way or the other. One of the charges that the ‘hindutva’ camp (as well as many others) level against the 'seculars' in this country is that their values are not really free of religious thought, but are rather closely aligned to Christian values. We can not dismiss this charge lightly as the seeds of secularism was nurtured in a culture where Christianity was the de facto religion. I don’t know if it is too early to announce that the tides are turning, but I have some evidence to show the influence of RSS thinking in the ‘secular’ response to Mohan Bhagwat statements on Mother Teresa. Mohan Bhagwat mentioned in one of his speeches that Mother Teresa did indeed help the destitute but she had an ulterior motive to convert them. According to him, this motive made her service less selfless and hence somewh...

Recently there were multiple incidents that in one way or the other brought forth the discussion on freedom of expression. Penguin pulping Wendy Doniger's book, massacre of the french cartoonists, protests against the Tamil novel Madhorubagan, Mohan Bhagawat's speech about Mother Teresa and the documentary 'India's daughter' were some of those. What was fascinating was the fact that many who defended the freedom of expression fiercely in some of the cases were not so liberal when it came to some other issue. I am not talking about everyone. There are some true liberals who are consistent with their views. But there were many who wore the liberal skin when the issue at hand did not offend them. But when it came to their own sacred cows, they were aghast at the lack of taste and sensibility of the offender. Then the issue transports itself from the freedom of expression space to the space of basic decency, good taste and sometimes plain simple sensitivity. Here is ...

Today measures and numbers have become essential inputs to any decision, whether it is personal decisions, organizational decisions, or decisions by experts like doctors. This has significantly improved the ease of taking decisions as well as the objectivity of decision making. People today can look at the performance numbers  for their MPs before they vote, doctors have many vital measures and counts that they look at before they diagnose or prescribe remedy, managers have many performance numbers that they can look at before they take their decision. But like all good things, this has some bad side effects as well. The sheer availability of so many numbers and the over-dependence on ‘objectivity’ sometimes lulls us into letting numbers take its own decision. Here I have attempted to list down some cautions that we need to exercise to avoid the common pitfalls of over-dependence and misuse of data. It’s mostly written in the context of management decision making, with occasion...

While talking of evolution, Richard Dawkins lamented that many still consider evolution as a theory and not as a fact. He was surprised that people hung on to ideas that were scientifically proven wrong. Unlike Dawkins, I am not surprised. As I see the reluctance of some of the ‘rational’ and ‘scientific’ minded in letting go of theories in the face of facts, it does not surprise me that the 'believers' are still hanging on to various religious ‘theories’ on the topic. For example, consider how a so called fact based discipline like history hangs on to its ideas in the face of contradicting evidence. A century back, some Europeans ventured into learning Vedas and Sanskrit. They were stricken by the similarity of the language to their own. In the absence of any other fact, they postulated that Aryans invaded India and spread their language and culture in India. This was not founded on much, but we can’t blame those who made this theory because there was no other fact to cont...

Historian Romila Thapar, while delivering the 3rd Nikhil Chakravartty Memorial Lecture organised by The Book Review Literary Trust in New Delhi, this November talked about the hesitation of free thinking Indians to question the authority. See Swapan Dasgupta's response to this speech here . During this speech, she expressed concern on the narrowing of liberal spaces in the last couple of decades. Though it was fought back, she laments that it is upon us again. She does not specifically name the events that led her to this conclusion, but indicates the types of events.  To quote a summary of the speech from Rediff: “This is evident from the ease with which books are banned and pulped, or demands made that they be burned, and syllabuses changed under religious and political pressure, or the intervention of the state .” Let us inspect each of these cases. Subramanyan Swamy recently called for burning Romila Thapar’s history books. It appears a gross exaggeration to pronou...