Everest, here I come.

Every now and then one gets to read about someone having climbed Mt Everest. As climbing the mountain, by itself, is no longer newsworthy, some other unique achievement needs to be tagged. This takes the form of “ first to climb from the Southern side”, "first Indian woman to climb Mt Everest”, “youngest Indian to climb Mt Everest”, “first from Tamilnadu to climb Mt Everest”, “ youngest woman from UP to climb Mt Everest”, “first to climb with a Supersuit on”, etc.

Without doubt, climbing the tallest peak in the world is a formidable task and a test of endurance. The achievement cannot be belittled. But, why the hell do these people do it? What are they trying to prove? What purpose does it serve? The novelty value is long gone and the story barely gets into the newspapers ( or even Reader's Digest). Is it to prove to oneself that he/she is capable of doing it? Why risk one's life to do it?

George Mallory is supposed to have replied “ Because it is there”, when asked why he wanted to climb Mt Everest. If a thousand people after him give the same reply, it can get a bit tiring. ( As an aside, when a writer, I don’t remember who, was asked why he kept writing, he replied, “ because it isn’t there”.)

Soon, to paraphrase Yogi Berra, nobody will go to Mt Everest any more. It will be too crowded.


Update 29/06/10 : An article in The Telegraph explains the attraction of Mt Everest:

"Dr Tim Woodman, co-director of the Institute for Psychology of Elite Performance at Bangor University who has studied what motivates mountaineers, believes many climbers do it to fulfil a basic human need.

“A lot of people who climb mountains like Everest struggle to explain why they do it,” he says. “Mountaineers tend to be people who don’t feel in control of emotion in their everyday lives. Emotions are a basic human requirement, and mountaineering allows them to feel fear, a very strong emotion, and be responsible for controlling that emotion.”

This might explain why Everest still has such appeal. As the world’s highest mountain, it represents the ultimate challenge and battle against nature’s forces. "

Joined the twitteratti

I have been trying my hand at Twitter for the last few days and have found the experience fascinating.

If blogging is akin to an ODI game in cricket, and anything longer than a blog post comparable to Test cricket, Twitter is the T20 equivalent of writing. As in cricket, switching from one format to another requires a complete change of mindset. Not all can manage this transition well.

A blogger whose posts I used to like quite a bit, proved to be a crashing bore when he took to writing columns. He simply struggled to expand on his ideas and tended to ramble. When he became more ambitious and wrote a novel, I couldn’t get past the first few pages. He is now into Twitter too, but mercifully uses it only to provide links to his columns which I don’t read anyway. Clearly ODI is his forte and he should stick to it. Not for him the T20 game or Test cricket.

Even among famous authors, very few have excelled in both formats- the novel and the short story. I have found Somerset Maugham very good in both. P.G.Wodehouse was another. Arthur C Clarke, Roald Dahl, Ray Bradbury were brilliant with their short stories, but their longer ones or full-length novels failed to grip me.

At Landmark, the other day, I came across this book called Twitterature in which several classic stories have been retold in a series of Twitter-style messages ( about 20-30 of them per story). I believe that there’s also a book written solely in text-message format. Tailor-made for the limited-attention-span generation of today.

Vacuous and Verbose-18

In a statement , soon after the conviction of gunman Ajmal Amir Kasab and others, including Pakistan-based LeT masterminds Hafiz Saeed and Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, in the 26/11 case, Mr P.Chidambaram said:

“The verdict (against) was a clear message to Pakistan. “If they do (export terrorism) and we apprehend the terrorists, then we will bring them to justice.”

I would have slotted it at the top of the list of stupid statements of the year. Then I decided that this was more pathetic than stupid. The Home Minister is seriously under the delusion that terrorists who come here on suicide missions ( probability of death = >90%) would be deterred by the thought that they might get caught, tried, convicted and hanged to death ( assuming charitably that each step has a probability of 80%, the overall likelihood becomes 41%). And that people who send the terrorists across on suicide missions will also realize the folly of their ways and abort future missions.

But , as it is the stated policy of Plus Ultra to proffer solutions and to not merely criticize, let me make a suggestion that will guarantee success. Every terrorist who is caught should be subjected to regular, long sermons by the likes of P.Chidambaram, Abdul Kalam, etc. Now, if word gets around to other budding terrorists across the border that this is the terrible third-degree torture that awaits them if they are caught, it might make them give up their plans completely. (True, this might also induce them to put in extra effort not to get caught, but we’ll take that chance)

Woods number

That Tiger Woods had confessed to having 121 affairs is old hat. His wife, hereinafter referred to as Tigress Woods, had still let him off with a warning.

Recently, she seems to have learnt that Tiger Woods had not revealed details of his 122nd affair with their neighbour’s 22-year old daughter. This seems to have upset Tigress a good deal. (source).

At the time I am posting this, it is not clear what exactly has upset her. Is it the fact that Tiger had an affair with their neighbour’s 22-year old daughter? Or that he had had an affair with their neighbour’s 22-year old daughter? Or that he had had an affair with their neighbour’s 22-year old daughter?

What exactly are her objections is not material to this case. Or germane to the larger issue I am going to discuss. Suffice to note at this stage that the 122nd affair was the proverbial straw that broke the proverbial camel’s proverbial back.

For centuries, the male of the human species has been testing the marital waters, wondering what the threshold limit is when it comes to the number of extra-marital affairs one can get away with. Thanks to Tiger Woods, it is now known that the threshold is 121. Upto this magical number, the wife is tolerant ( “boys will be boys after all”). Beyond 121, she blows a fuse.

I propose that we refer to this number, henceforth, as the Woods number. It would be a fitting tribute to the man. Those of you who want to start a wiki entry on the subject may provide the definition that Woods number (121) is the number of affairs a man can safely have before his wife says ‘enough is enough’.

But wait. Just as Dunbar number ( 150 for human beings) can vary with species, can Woods number vary with race, religion and nationality? Is the number 121 valid only in the USA? What about India?

To establish the results following rigorous scientific methods, I invite male, married bloggers from India to participate in an experiment to determine the Woods number for this part of the world. Carefully document the affairs that you are having and allot serial numbers. When your wife files a petition for divorce, let me know the serial number of the affair that made that happen. I will add my own inputs and share the findings with the rest of you.

Vacuous and Verbose-17

"The Defence Minister Shri AK Antony has called upon the top brass of the Armed Forces to coordinate closely with various national cyber agencies and prepare crisis management action plan to counter cyber attacks and cyber terrorism….( source).

Referring to the use of large-scale energy resources in the Armed Forces, Shri Antony called upon the top brass to bring about strict energy conservation discipline. He also asked them to look for alternative sources of energy…

….he asked them to control the Revenue Expenditure in the Armed Forces by adopting various mechanisms such as increased use of technology, integration of the three Services, adopting joint training / procedures and uniform inventories. Shri Antony said there also exists considerable scope to improve the quality and efficacy of Defence Expenditure through increased Private Sector engagement, import substitution and indigenisation, improvement in procedures and practices and better project management within the parameters of the Government’s Policies."

I can imagine the scene. The Defence Minister making this long and completely vacuous speech, packed with motherhood statements,  and the ‘top brass of the Armed Forces” looking in his direction ( not the same as listening) with as much solemnity that they can pack into their facial expressions and nodding their heads in agreement, but praying that the damn ordeal would get over soon.

Heads of Army, Navy and Air Force are equipped to handle nuclear wars, infiltration, mutinies, terrorist attack, guerilla ambush, threat from inter-continental ballistic missiles and enemy aircraft carriers that have entered Indian waters, but I doubt if their training manuals provide them any tactics or weapons to counter such verbal volleys from Ministers. Just for their endurance of this torture, they deserve all the medals that they wear on their uniforms. I look at them with new admiration.

High-Fives and Ass-Pats.

A forthcoming paper by Michael Kraus and Dacher Keltner at UC-Berkeley investigates the correlation between "tactile communication" and success in the NBA. In essence, the paper demonstrates that "touchier" teams - and this includes everything from pats on the ass to high-fives - are also more likely to win. “Tactile communication, or physical touch, promotes cooperation between people, communicates distinct emotions, soothes in times of stress, and is used to make inferences of warmth and trust. Based on this conceptual analysis, we predicted that in group competition, physical touch would predict increases in both individual and group performance “say the authors ( via Frontal Cortex).

What I find incredible about this paper is that the researchers have sat through so many of the NBA games, observing if players are touching each other’s ass and if so, how many times, and concluding that the team that recorded the most number of ass-touching was more likely to win.

I wish I had read about this correlation, before IPL3 started. I would have spent my time more productively, keeping count of the tactile touches rather than the runs scored.

I could have used the sensitive information to make a killing off the bookies this season.

By the next season, I will come up with a counter that would record the number of ass-pats among the team members based on feedback from electronic sensors/transmitters secretly fitted on the backside of all players. As I mentioned in my previous post, this is an age of hi-tech data mining. Human observation alone will not do.

Numberology

The book “ Super Crunchers” by Ian Ayers explained how statistical evidence obtained through data mining is fast replacing human intuition in decision-making. “ Cutting-edge organizations are already crunching increasingly larger databases to find the unseen connections among seemingly unconnected things to predict human behavior with staggeringly accurate results. From Internet sites like Google and Amazon that use filters to keep track of your tastes and your purchasing history, to insurance companies and government agencies that every day make decisions affecting your life, the brave new world of the super crunchers is happening right now”.

Credit card companies use data mining extensively to send out the right mailer to the right group. If your spending pattern shows that you like Chinese food, they can send you a mailer when a new Chinese restaurant opens in the city. The connection will not even register in your mind, but you will be led subliminally to the ‘Wong Fu” or the “ Fong Chu” or whatever the new restaurant is called.

Now, the field of  data mining is getting far more advanced and nuanced. This article that I read (via) says that Visa Card can actually predict when someone is going in for a divorce. Other seemingly strange correlations have been unearthed from the data. Passengers who prefer aisle seats on planes spend more money on others than on themselves and so, I guess, will be the prime targets for ‘gift’ shop brochures.

Below the article, a commenter adds, “British airways are understanding consumer behaviour in a different light. Passengers now look to the airlines not simply as a mode of transport, but to catch on movies they've missed. That seriously resonated with me, am often guilty of that. With the average traveler facing a lack of time, behaviours shift with the passage of time and the way entertainment is presented will start to shift radically.”

Flights not as mode of transport, but as movie theatres! Where are we heading?

Is it all about computers/data/numbers/super-crunching? Is there no value to human intuition? A Little Birdy has commented on the article :

"After working for 10 years as a bartender and 20 years in the legal field, I can tell you that it's amazing the things that all people do and share no matter what their race, religion, gender or socio-economics. It's very easy to predict behavior. I used to be able to take one look at a couple who came in to the bar where I worked and tell if they were married, if so how long, if the were on their first date or if they were cheating lover and I could do it in about 60 seconds. We used to bet on how long it took for certain behaviors to occur.”

Thank you, Little Birdy. There’s hope for the human race.

Killer BMWs

“A speeding BMW driver ran over a 62-year-old morning walker near the Akshardham temple in East Delhi on Thursday morning”, reports the Times of India. The title of the story is " Speeding BMW kills elderly man".

As I wondered in a post earlier ( be warned that I have more than 650 posts up my belt and can link back to a post on any subject), why is BMW singled out for special attention? Was BMW responsible for the accident? Hell, there have been many accidents involving Mercedez Benz, Toyota Corolla, driven by rich kids, but these cases have not been referred to as the Toyota case or the Benz case.

An incident in Feb this year, in which a rich woman rammed her Honda CRV into a police jeep and killed two persons, has been reported by TOI thus:

A woman driving allegedly under the influence of alcohol rammed her car into a police jeep and a bike, leaving an assistant sub-inspector and the biker dead and four constables seriously injured early Saturday morning. A local court remanded Nooria Haveliwala (27), arrested for drunk driving, to police custody till February 5.

This is now being tagged by the media as the Mumbai drunken driving case, not as the Honda CRV case.

Curious.

Coward! Stop fighting elections, come fight us in the forests.

Calling the Maoists “cowards, Union home minister P. Chidambaram launched a direct attack on the ultra-left rebels and their front organisations during his first visit to their bastion at Lalgarh, in West Bengal’s West Midnapore district, on Sunday. “Why do they live in the forests? If they have courage, they should take part in democratic processes and face elections. Who is stopping them from winning elections?” ( source)

Of course, as Arundhati Roy would love to point out (and she has in a recent 32-page essay in Outlook, after spending some time in the forests, walking with the comrades), perspectives can vary. For the Maoists, living inside their forest may be a way of life. Why should they accept the Home Minister’s notion of courage – that of taking part in democratic processes and elections?

The Maoists can ask the question: “ Why is P.Chidambaram such a coward? Why can’t he step into the forests here, without his sten-gun toting Black-cats and settle things with a man-to-man fight?

In any case, why describe the Maoists as ‘cowards” of all things? You can call them anti-national, immoral, unlawful, unresponsive, unrepentant, etc but how can they fit the description of coward?

To quote Paul Krugman for the third time (earlier quoted here and here) from a column in which he was discussing President Bush's description of 9/11 as an act of cowardice.

“In truth, notions of "cowardice" and "bravery" are entirely irrelevant when we contemplate the horrors of terrorism. To call a terrorist “cowardly” is to substitute testosterone for morality. Somehow it isn’t enough to abhor an act of terrorism or even to promise to make the terrorist pay dearly. The rules demand that the terrorist be branded a sissy. This is not only a childish reflex, but one that weakens the moral force of the condemnation and thereby dishonors terrorism’s victims. After all, we don’t want brave people to slaughter innocent people any more than we want cowardly people to do so. Still, the public seems to demand that our presidents call terrorists cowards, and our presidents are too–well, cowardly–to deny them.”

Update 07/04/10: The post rather flippantly got into the semantics, but reading about the tragic event involving the killing of 74 CRPF men yesterday, made me reflect a bit.

“Bravery’ and ‘cowardice’ were traits that were part of a Code of Honour in the past. If one was labeled a coward, and therefore ‘unbrave’, that was the ultimate insult as per the Code of Honour. This code of honour was deeply implanted into the collective psyche and therefore was accepted unquestioningly. Whether it was the Samurai warriors fighting each other or the Kuruskshetra battle, the Code of Honour provided the coward-to-bravery scale to judge soldiers with. Even the thought that one was going to be described as ‘brave’ posthumously was enough motivation to take on the risk of dying .

Cut to today. How do you get people to sign up for the Army, when there is no Code of Honour that is held sacred by all? With money? No way. When you consider the high risk of being killed in the prime of one’s youth, soldiers get a pittance. And there are options of less-riskier and better-paying professions. So when you can’t lure them with money, you need to appeal to their sense of glory and fame- a modern day equivalent of the Code of Honour. And the glorification of military acts must be done relentlessly. Genuine acts of bravery do become part of legends and folklore. At the same time, a Commando-officer who meets his end at the Taj Hotel has to be called a ‘braveheart”, even if he did nothing spectacular in military terms. A Police officer who merely put on his bullet-proof vest and got shot after removing it must be spoken about in glowing terms. Vir Chakra and other awards will have to be bestowed too. The ‘brave’ image of the Army and the Police force must be kept alive.

To enhance the ‘brave’ shine of the Army, the ‘enemy’ must necessarily be branded a coward. The ‘terrorist’ who might have shown extraordinary daring to blow up a plane must be described as a pusillanimous poop. Maoists who carry out attacks with precision and with solid planning must be dismissed as cowards. This is the ‘done’ thing and the tradition must continue.

Off with the gown; hand me the Japee and the sorai

The no-nonsense Union Minister of Environment and Forest, Mr Jairam Ramesh, on Friday called the practice of wearing convocation gowns a “barbaric colonial relic” and removed his gown at one such event. (source)

“Why can we not have a convocation in a simple dress, instead of coming dressed up as medieval vicars and popes,” he asked, removing his gown worn over his trademark white kurta.

Two days after pocketing these swadeshi brownie points, Mr Jairam Ramesh went to the Guwahati Zoo to inaugurate the night safari. Here he was felicitated with a traditional Assamese Japee and Sorai, which the grinning MOEF donned on his head and clasped in his hands and sportingly posed for photographs.( source) 

If you will, for a moment, keep aside the swadeshi vs colonial angle , both the practices – that of wearing colourful, flowing convocation robes and the one of carrying the traditional Japee and Sorai can be viewed as meaningless and stupid. You can’t condemn one as barbaric and endorse the other as traditional.

That is because human beings have an innate need for rituals. Probably this shared belief in rituals improved the survival value of the race by providing a common purpose, even if the said purpose had no specific functionality.

Given this legacy, whether we are a tribal society in an island in the South Pacific or we are engaged in a Board Meeting in a Corporate office in London, we continue to observe rituals. Where religious rituals are absent, surrogate ones take their place. The Opening Ceremony at the Olympics serves absolutely no purpose, if you take a rational view; the organisers can start off straight with the events. But without the ritual and the pageantry of the Opening and Closing ceremonies, Brand Olympics will lose its shine and appeal. The changing-of-guards ceremony at Buckingham Palace or the daily show of saber-rattling at Wagah are other examples of ‘meaningless’ rituals calculated to capture people’s attention.

Sworn atheists in the DK and DMK parties in TN may frown upon religious rituals and label them barbaric, but they will not hesitate to garland a statue of their long-dead leader, forgetting the absurdity of venerating an inanimate block of granite chipped away to look like and symbolise a human being.

Those who get absorbed in the nitty-gritty of rituals and get lost in the symbolism would miss out the big picture and the larger social purpose. Equally, those who dismiss rituals as ‘barbaric’ or ‘medieval’ are only kidding themselves. They would be unconsciously observing several surrogate ones in other areas of their lives..

It is easy to ridicule the convocation ritual. But, without the attendant ritual and the induced air of solemnity, the aura will simply not be there and you will not find anyone attending. The graduates would rather take their degrees by mail.

If you object to the colonial hangover, replacing the robe with the “kurta’ won’t do. You must substitute it with an Indian equivalent that is ornate and resplendent in colours and hope that this will gradually become a tradition.

Update 26/04/10 : Santosh Desai, in a column in TOI today, expresses similar views.

Do you love dogs, children, cricket and travel?

I had an uncle who was a veterinary doctor. By all accounts, he was very good in his profession. As a child, I have tagged along with him a few times to his hospital and have seen him treat assorted animals with total commitment. But what I remember most about this veterinary uncle was that he hated animals. I have never seen him pat a dog caringly.

For years, I used to take my daughters to a pediatrician, who again was very professional and quite reliable. But he used to view children almost with disdain and would make no effort whatsoever to put them at ease. It could be concluded that he hated children.

These examples illustrate that being good at your job or in your profession does not mean that you should love what you are doing. Or love the object that your job is centred around or concerned with. I may be highly competent in my job as a power sector professional. I may even love my job, but I don’t need to love the boilers and turbines and the other objects that I need to deal in or the people that I need to deal with.

Prem Panicker, in a recent post, writes that he is repeatedly asked why he has given up writing on cricket and he cites ‘ennui’ as the reason. When the questioner protests and remarks that his is a job that others would kill for, he replies “You want to try doing it, day in and out, for a year, mate. Then let’s talk.’ Prem adds : “Doing this for a living’ is not all it is cracked out to be. How do you explain, for instance, the difference between kicking back and watching cricket as a fan and sitting in front of the TV or in the press box, laptop open, scrutinizing each moment minutely for technical points to make, for “turning points” to identify and use to season your report, for broader narratives to expound on? After a time, you see only the trees — the greater beauty of the forest is lost to you.

Prem links to an article by Tom Swick who expresses very similar sentiments about travel writing. “Travel writer” may be the one title everyone wants except the people who have it. The travel writer, when thought of at all, is regarded as a charmed figure, never stymied in front of a customs officer or a computer screen. The travel writer, when he reflects, sees himself as aimless, clueless but nevertheless underappreciated.” A travel writer is too busy picking up minute details for reporting later that he has no time or inclination to enjoy his travelling.

On a related note, Prem cites a mail from a friend, Siddharth Vaidyanathan of Cricinfo.

We all began as cricket fans before becoming professional cricket writers. Being in the profession, though, takes away a lot of the fizz….At some point, … you start watching the game through a different prism. It’s no more the innocent past-time that made you jump up and shriek or kick the floor in anger or sulk all day. It’s now the sport that you trying to be detached from (though you’re actually very close to the epicenter). It’s a sport you think you have figured out (though you actually have very little expertise on the subject matter).

Gradually you begin to view it as another job – I’ve actually felt really frustrated when a cricketer died on a Sunday, simply because it meant more work. Soon you ask yourself – just like Swick says of travel writers – what (the heck) am I doing here? And over time, you gradually forget why you got here in the first place.

That’s why, says Prem, he has given up writing about cricket. He loves the game too much.

Loving your solitary pet dog is fine. But, when you are a veterinary doctor who has to treat hundreds of diseased dogs day in and out, your perspective on dogs may undergo a change. Similarly, your children may be the apples of your eyes, but for a pediatrician, they are merely objects that need to be repaired and sent out of his garage. You can love’em or treat’em, but not both. You can be a cricket fan or a cricket writer, but it is difficult to be both.

' We are too self-absorbed"

"Why are Indians poor at team sports? Why don’t we win at hockey or football?"  The answer, according to Aakar Patel’s column in The Mint, is that “we cannot understand harmony. That’s why we are poor at things that require selfless interaction, like team sports. Indians do not have the instinct of acting in concert. We find it difficult to put the other person ahead of ourselves even if both might benefit. This lack of harmony isn’t limited to sports, it is inherent: We see it every day in our mindless traffic sports.”

We might win at cricket, but that’s hardly a team sport. A twenty over match is nothing but an aggregate of 240 one-ball encounters between batsman and bowler. So, someone like Sachin I-don’t play-for-records- I-play-for-my-country Tendulkar can be perfectly happy with his century, even if his team doesn’t win.

To perform harmoniously as a cohesive unit, different components of that unit must come to the self-realisation that they are in it together for a common purpose. In this case, the common objective is that the team must win. How does this sense of collaboration emerge in each of the components?

Nicholas Humphrey, on 'watching his baby son thrashing around in his crib, two arms flailing, hands grasping randomly, legs kicking the air, head and eyes turning this way and that, a smile followed by a grimace crossing his face', wrote a brilliant, meditative piece wondering when and how the different parts of the baby would perform together harmoniously as in an orchestra? 

Ask any orchestral player, and he’ll tell you: although it may perhaps look to an outsider as if the conductor is totally in charge, in reality he often has a quite minor – even a purely decorative – role. Sure, he can provide a common reference point to assist the players with the timing and punctuation of their playing. And he can certainly influence the overall style and interpretation of a work. But that is not what gets the players to belong together. What truly binds them into one organic unit and creates the flow between them is something much deeper and more magical: namely, the very act of making music; that they are together creating a single work of art.

Doesn’t this suggest a criterion for “belonging” that should be much more widely  applicable: that parts come to belong to a whole just in so far as they are participants in a common project?

Try the definition where you like: What makes the parts of an oak tree belong together – the branches, roots, leaves, acorns ? They share a common interest in the tree’s survival.What makes the parts of a complex machine like an aeroplane belong to the aeroplane – the wings, the jet engines, the radar? They participate in the common enterprise of flying. Then, here’s the question: What makes the parts of a person belong together – if and when they do? The clear answer has to be that the parts will and do belong together just in so far as they are involved in the common project of creating that person’s life.

  To go back to Aakar Patel’s column, teamwork cannot be brought about by a team leader or imposed from above. It can come only when there is self-realisation in every member that he/she is collaborating on a common project of winning a match. Perhaps, such a realization evades Indians. That’s why we may produce an occasional world champion in billiards, badminton or chess, all in individual capacities. But team events such as hockey and football leave us thrashing around, arms flailing, legs kicking randomly, head and eyes turning this way and that…………….

Aam Aadmi.

“For the aam aadmi, costs go up again” screams the headlines in Business Line.

Now, this term ‘aam aadmi’ is a cliché that is frequently used by the media and I have always wondered who they are referring to. Apparently, they have the Great Indian Middle Class in mind.

Do the newsreaders count themselves as part of the aam aadmi brigage? If so, why do they use it in a neutral, third-party sense? Am I an aam aadmi or not? Should I then write, “ us aam aadmi” instead of implying “they aam aadmi”. I find myself in such existentialist dilemma.

According to Wikipedia, “ for an Aam Aadmi, his set of aspirations include three essential things: Food, Clothing and Shelter”. Trust me, my set of Maslowian aspirations include these three essential things too. I can't live without them.

Be that as it may, when costs go up, they don’t go up selectively for the aam aadmi, as the Business Line headlines seem to convey. Costs go up for the rich person ( the gender-neutral, opposite of aam aadmi) too. Maybe, it hurts the aam aadmi more. Too bad for them, sorry us.

Update 02-04-10 : See this cartoon in The Hindu today

The Budget in brief

Covering  the Union Budget is such a ritualised process for newspapers. Year after year, the format followed is the same.

Publishing the photograph of the Finance Minister arriving in Parliament to make his Budget speech, brief-case in hand, is an important  Budget-day ritual. The cameras tend to focus more on the briefcase than on the FM. The next morning all papers have to compulsorily carry this photo.

As with many Indian Parliamentary traditions, this too was borrowed from the British, as is evident from this photo and description in “Iconic Photos”:

“The most important day in a chancellor’s calendar is of course the Budget Day, now set on a Wednesday in March. The night before, he would have a dinner with the monarch, who is the first person to be told on the new budget.

 The next morning, he makes the short journey from Number 11 to the Commons after showing the assembled crowd the battered budget box. The beginning of this somewhat silly photo-op tradition dates from 1869 when Chancellor George Ward Hunt opened the Budget box in the Commons only to find that he had left his speech at home.

Why can't our FM go ethnic and carry the Budget papers in a jute bag?

The secret to having happy employees....

"Fire the unhappy employees" . (via)

Vacuous and Verbose-16

“It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it” says Al Gore in this article in New York Times.

I am reminded of an incident cited by Albert Einstein in one of his speeches, soon after World War II.

I recently discussed with an intelligent and well-disposed man the threat of another war, which in my opinion would endanger the existence of mankind. Thereupon my visitor, very calmly and coolly, said to me: “Why are you so deeply opposed to the disappearance of the human race?

I  calmly and coolly, pose the same question to Al Gore: “Why are you so obsessed with the idea of protecting human civilization as we know it? And, why are you so deeply opposed to the disappearance of the human race? I suspect that you have a sinister, hidden agenda in keeping humankind the way we know it.

Close shave

All the TV channels today have been flashing the news that Mulayam Singh Yadav had a close shave today. It appears that a cyclist suddenly appeared on the runway just as his plane was landing at the Saifai aerodrome in Uttar Pradesh's Etawah district.

But hey, what about the poor cyclist? Didn’t he have a close shave too, poor chap? You may argue that he had no business to be there on the runway, but you won’t be right. According to what a police official told the reporter of Hindustan Times, said cyclist was someone who had been deputed to shoo away a blue-bull that had strayed close to the runway. So, the blue-bull had a close shave too, though the TV channels won’t report that.

IBN’s website gets the headlines almost  right ( “Close save for cyclist as Mulayam jet hits runway), but then goes on to report what a miraculous escape Mulayam had had.  

According to India Today’s site however, the cyclist was actually trying to intercept the plane as it was about to land and was even following the plane after it had landed. The only explanation for this behaviour, of course, is that the cyclist mistook the plane for the blue-bull and was faithfully obeying instructions that he should shoo it away.

Can we refer the matter to a third umpire ( say, someone from Gillette) to decide who among the three had the closest shave? Mulayam, the cyclist or the blue-bull?

Another Reservation Bill.

 Parliament should be a microcosm of society. The mix of elected representatives must be reflective of the regional, linguistic and religious demographics and – thanks to the Women’s Reservation Bill- even the gender demographics of the nation. I am all for this.

A demographic dimension that doesn’t seem to draw much attention, however, is the age profile. According to a report published in September 2009, 30.1% of India’s population is between 0-14 years of age. The median age is 25.1. So, it is fair to conclude that half the population is less than or equal to this median age. Whereas the average age of the members of the Lok Sabha is 53.2. (I couldn’t get the median age that would have avoided the distortion caused by outliers like Ahmed Hamdullah Sayeed who is only 26 or Ram Sundar Das who weighs in at 88.)

But the good news is that the women can make a difference. The average age of the women MPs is 47, while that of the male MPs is 55. As the % of women MPs goes up from 10% at present to 33%, the average age will come down.

To force the issue, how about a Bill that will mandate reservation of 33% of the seats for candidates below 35 years of age? A Venn diagram of a circle representing 33% of seats for women intersecting another circle of  candidates below 35 will ensure a good percentage of young women in Parliament. The TRP rating of the Lok Sabha TV channel will also go up.

"On the state of female society in India"

On the occasion of Women’s Day (ok, I am a day late), here is an extract from the chapter titled ‘the state of female society in India” in the book “Essays relative to the habits, character and moral improvement of the Hindoos” published in the year 1823. It discusses the practice, prevalent then,  of getting girls married at the age of six or seven.

The natives contemplate the birth of a daughter with far less satisfaction than the birth of a son, more care and attention being requisite to secure her early settlement in life, and more disgrace being attached to delay. Hence her parents are occupied with solicitude on this subject from the moment of her birth; and at the time when in civilized countries her education would commence, arrangements are in progress in India for her marriage. The young female is therefore not only deprived of every opportunity for mental cultivation, but is snatched at an early period from all the benefit of paternal instruction. Long before her intellectual faculties are matured, she is buried in domestic avocations, to the loss of all future hope of improvement. Subjected to no course of rigid discipline, and, except in the unimportant vagaries of childhood, to no parental direction, she is dismissed into life, and becomes mistress of her own actions with all those evil propensities in full vigour which inevitably entail misery; for though she continues at home for some time after her marriage, her parents have parted with the power, and perhaps with the wish, of correcting her follies. Thus she takes her station in life years before she is fitted for it, and is elevated to the state of a wife amidst the follies of infancy.

It is melancholy to reflect on the early extinction of happiness which this system occasions. In the life of a female, what season is more calculated for enjoyment than that which elapses between the period when her mind begins to expand, and that of her entering upon the severer duties of life? At this season every thing wears an aspect of gaiety and loveliness; the absence of care induces the highest cheerfulness, and gives free scope for the enjoyment of that unalloyed felicity, which comes but at one season of life. The pleasure which a married state affords from a conscientious performance of its duties, however serene in its nature, is still tempered with the burden of its cares. In India, this season of youthful enjoyment comes not for the female: scarcely has she time to look abroad, and inhale the sweetness of life, ere she is plunged into the rigid duties and severities connected with Indian wedlock. At the early age of six or seven, her happiness is often sacrificed at the shrine of family honour, while she herself is an unconscious spectator of the transaction.

Later, in the same chapter, the writer observes that this horrible practice had not existed in India in ancient times.

From the early records of Hindoost'han there is strong reason to conclude that in ancient times many of the odious peculiarities in the present system of educating and marrying females had no existence; that women, at least the daughters of kings and the wives of heroes, were taught to read; and that their own inclination, not that of their parents, influenced the selection of husbands. In the historical records of the Ramaywna, the Mtthabharwta, and the Pooranas, we meet with no heroine in the disgraceful situation of modern females. They are generally represented as deeply skilled in learning, often willing to display their attainments, and not averse to a combat of skin with the other sex. Nay, in many cases, they enjoin a literary victory over themselves, as  the only price at which the suitor can expect success.

The spirit of that age must have been much more liberal than that of modern times; since few writers who courted the attention of their fellow-countrymen, would have ventured on so bold a departure from popular practice. And though the heroines of the song were the daughters and relatives of rnonarchs, no one who estimates the power of influence which irresistibly draws the lower orders into a servile imitation of their superiors, will conclude that a knowledge of letters was then confined to palaces, or that a practice which received the praise of poets and the sanction of princes, was not in some degree of general application. A different spirit must have animated the ancestors of the Hindoos, to have produced such splendid results of the cultivation of female intellect as exist on record. The contempt with which they are at present treated, could scarcely have existed in an age which owed some of its literary splendour to their compositions. Nor can we suppose, that the female authors of that period were the only individuals of their sex to whom a knowledge of letters was communicated ; the beneficial result of granting them an education, must have contributed to render the practice more general.

India's national game

On the eve of the Hockey World Cup, a TOI columnist asks, “Can India give its national sport a new lease of life?”

As I wondered in an earlier post, how or when was hockey ‘appointed’ our national game? And who, for that matter, selected our national bird, national animal, national fruit, national flower, etc? Were elections held? Were committees formed for this purpose? What were the criteria?

(An aside: Responding to the argument that Hindi was our national language because it was spoken by the most number of people in the country, C.N. Annadurai is supposed to have said, “If numerical strength is the criterion, the rat and not the tiger should be our national animal”.)

The Hindu calls itself India’s national newspaper. It has a right to call itself a national newspaper (as opposed to a regional one), but the words “India’s national newspaper” seems to imply that it was chosen from among many newspapers and conferred the title.

Anyway, I hope that I’ll soon be reading in India’s national newspaper that our team playing India’s national game has excelled.