Of Voodoo statistics, Arhar tears and shifting goalposts..

It all started when the little prince who slept all throughout the inflationary UPA decade was forced to wake up from his afternoon siesta/power nap in the parliament. And when this child's ignorant cribs about arhar daal, etc was promptly responded to with statistics from the Finance Minister, this is the best that we could get from the Ex-FM:

PC's Voodoo Statistics!

While reminding the ex-Finance Minister that June 2014 was well within Modi tenure, my intention is not to prove as if the current PM is some kind of a Harry Potter, who just used some wizardry after being sweared into his job and voila' the CPI Inflation came down to 6% levels. The intention here is to show how the Ex- Finance Minister, even when wanting to prove the inflation during his tenure was benign had to pick and choose a best-case number from a month that was not even a part of his tenure.

I think who practises voodoo statistics becomes amply clear when the numbers are seen in the correct perspective. So here goes the historical record on the CPI inflation across last 2 decades (including a few years of a non-descript alliance loosely called as the third front supported from outside by Congress, the entire tenure of NDA under Vajpayee, a complete decade of UPA and 2 years of BJP under Modi):

Official Statistics

Assuming you know the periods of the various regimes during this period, you be the judge on who is practising voodoo statistics.

But this brings me to a different issue of why and how the whole political and economic discourse changed its focus from Wholesale Price Index to Consumer Price Index. One may remember that during those good old days (acche din) of UPA tenure and even before that, all the eyes that cared about inflation tracking used to be focussed on the weekly and monthly publication of WPI inflation. While CPI was very much being published, it was not much talked about. Very surely it was not being used by the policy makers. Most notably, the interest rates and monetary policy of RBI mainly took into account the WPI numbers and the CPI was ignored. So when did it all change? How come the nation is now looking at the CPI of 5.5% and calling it inflationary?

It turns out that something/someone caused this change well in advance (but very much after the opinion polls started predicting) of a change in government and BJP coming to power:

Shifting Goal Post - Rajan Effect!

In simple words, the goal-post was shifted according to someone's convenience. While fixing the repo rates and deciding on the country's monetary stance, the RBI always used WPI in the past. So in other words, the 9-10% interest rates on fixed deposits that the senior citizens and the risk-averse savers got during UPA tenure were bench-marked against a WPI inflation that was slightly lower than these interest rates. Picture this: In December 2009, when the CPI inflation was ruling at 14.97%, these senior citizens were losing money to inflation while they were getting 10% interest.

Throughout the 2 years of Modi regime (both years of failed monsoon and hence probably the worst case inflation scenario), the WPI is in the negative. Had the goal-post not changed for some strange reason, the interest rates would have been at less than 4-5% (at least). On the other hand, had CPI been used as the benchmark, can you imagine what would have been the repo rates in 2009 or 2010 or for that matter in any of the UPA-II years?

So what is your kid eating today?

Maggi 2-Minute Noodles - Masala flavour, I guess. It is yummy. The kids love it and Mummy loves it, too. After all, it gets prepared in just 2-minutes. The ads say that it is healthy, too. A perfect win-win for all, right? WRONG!

Much beyond the ads featuring your favourite actors and actresses, there is a commodity called facts. The facts are available for free. You don't even have to buy the product to know its facts. All you have to do is turn the wrapper around and see the Nutritional Facts. Let me put the numbers here:
Serving Size: 80 gms
Calories: 360
Total Fats: 14gms of which 6gms is Saturated Fats
Total Carbohydrates: 47 gms
Protein: 7gm
Sodium: 950mg
(Reference : http://www.fatsecret.com/calories-nutrition/maggi/masala-noodles)

Yummy? Yes, of course it is. I have eaten it and I love the taste. But that yumminess is nakli or shall I say, NaCl-y (those from chemistry background would know what I mean). The Sodium content is 950 mg. 950 mg of salt coming from just breakfast. American Heart Association recommends daily sodium intake of less than 2000 mg. (Reference: http://www.fitday.com/fitness-articles/nutrition/healthy-eating/how-much-sodium-should-you-consume-per-day.html#b)Almost half of that, your child is getting just from this "healthy" breakfast! Keep your kids away from future heart ailments. Stay away from this yummy poison.

Healthy? 360 Cal. by itself not a harmful dose of energy intake so long as it has well-balanced distribution across fats, carbs and proteins. But most of the calories come from fats and carbs in this case. The 80gms of noodles contain 61gms of fats and carbs and mere 7gms of protein. A great chunk of the 14 gms of fats are of the dreaded saturated kind (6gms). And what about the much talked about fibers that they claim in the ads, that make this instant food so healthy? There are just 2gms of it! To be anywhere close to healthy, it needs to have at least 6 gms of fibers per 100gms.

Parents love it? Sure they do because as the the ad says "So fast to cook..". But I guess based on the facts above, you would want to think again.

Kids love it? It is for the parents to design the eating habits of their children. One may say that it is too early to think about long-term impact of food they eat now. But the eating habits that are formed in the early ages will stay with them for ever. It is less likely that a child fed on junk food at an early age will change to eating healthy balanced diet consisting of vegetables and fruits later in life.

It is OK to choose eating junk food after knowing that it is junk. After all, you have made an educated choice to mess up your health. But what is dangerous about such products is that they deceive the gullible masses into believing that they are healthy whereas they are not.

Lessons from Team Anna Faux Pas at Jantar Mantar

1. No one wants to die for the nation.
If someone says s/he is willing to die for the nation, it is to be assumed that s/he won't. That's barring a few notable aberrations like Bhagat Singh, Chandrashekhar, Rajguru, Sukhdeo, et al. So when someone takes to Fast Unto Death, rest assured - No one's dying. And that's true, not only about Anna Hazare and Arvind Kejriwal but also about Gandhi. The demands would typically be vague enough so that before it comes to dying, one can back out of the fast.

2. You need to know when to use this weapon and when not to.
The greatest champ of this weapon, Gandhi knew this well. He understood that he would be able to bring the British to their knees by going on fast - because though they enslaved the nation, by and large, they were relatively humane. Yet another time, Gandhi had gone on fast was in Noakhali when the hindus had decided to avenge the killings in Bengal an year ago. They were out for the blood of Shaheed Suhrawardy. Again, Gandhi knew that the hindus would relent to the pressure of his fast. And they did. It may be noted that when Muhammed Ali Jinnah was hell-bent upon partitioning India, Gandhi had famously said, "Partition only on my dead body". This had provided a false assurance to many Indians across both sides of the border that eventually came up, that Gandhi is going to fast and Jinnah will then give up his demand. However, Gandhi knew that there is no way Jinnah can be convinced and he might have to die if he were to go on fast unto death. So there was no fast. A partition happened and it did not happen on Gandhi's dead body. Anna's fast an year ago was a success because Congress was caught unaware of the will-power of those behind Anna movement. It did not succeed this time because Congress was in better position to read the bluff behind their fast.

3. Keep it vague.
The demands at such a fast need to be kept vague. So that you can express satisfaction at the end of 10 days of fast and break your fast even if technically speaking no demands have been met. That's how negotiations end. You may have the opponent down on his knees and meet all your demands or the opponent may not meet any of them but allow you to back out gracefully, or anything in between the two possibilities. That happened in Anna's first sally, one year ago. The fast had almost brought Congress on its knees but then Anna's condition had worsened to the extent that they could not carry on any longer without losing Anna's life. So the two sides agreed to something that appeared to be a good win-win solution (but in hindsight it can be said that Congress pulled it off).

4. Back-out should be well-planned
No one knows why Arvind Kejriwal's fast at Jantar Mantar really ended. It was embarrassing to the movement and its followers (which by the way, has shrunk quite sharply and that's quite worrying). It appears that all the above lessons were forgotten. Congress knew the bluff about willingness to die for the nation, Kejriwal probably did not know that it was not a wise idea to repeat the use of this weapon because a. Congress will not agree to your demand and b. The public support has come down to a new ebb (thanks so some deft media-management by their opponents and some self-goals by Team Anna) and the demands made by Team Anna were not vague enough to make a good back-out from the fast. What came out was a hurried and a very embarrassing end to the 6-day fast with nothing to show in terms of achievement. Their opponents gave them a cold shrug!

Clearly, the nation needs a strong fight against corruption and its perpetrators. I am all for Team Anna movement. But the movement needs to be backed by a good strategy in place. Anti-Corruption is too important a war to be lost, the way it seems to have.

Sonia - The sole saviour of secularism in India!

So what's behind the coincidence of having two autobiographies getting released almost simultaneously and both squarely blaming Late PV Narasimha Rao for the demolition of Babri structure and portraying Sonia as the secular lady who was deeply disturbed by this incident? I don't know. Maybe pure coincidence or may be yet another attempt by Congress to salvage itself before the elections.

One is an autobiography of Late Arjun Singh, called "A grain of sand in the hourglass of time". He describes Rao as a modern day Nero who kept fiddling while Ayodhya was burning. This comes from the guy who was caught fiddling while thousands were dying on the mid-night of December 1984 from the poison that leaked from Union Carbide's plant. The chief minister of Madhya Pradesh - Arjun Singh mysteriously was nowhere to be found. Throughout his life he had absolutely no achievement to his name except for subservience to the only family that mattered and dividing Indians on casteist lines. In death, he continues to desire posthumus  glory.

Another one is from Kuldip Nayyar, by the name "Beyond the lines" in which he recalls how Narasimha Rao actually connived to bring about the demolition of Babri. He goes on to say that while the Babri was being demolished, Rao was having a puja at his home, apparently praying for the demolition and he emerged from the prayer only after he got the news of the demolition. He describes how Sonia came across as the only secular person, who was deeply disturbed by the mosque demolition and her secularism was genuine. Yes sir, this secular lady continued to be with her husband when, under his able leadership, the locks of the Ramlalla temple at Ayodhya were opened after so many years and Shilanyas was performed to reiterate his commitment to build a temple at the disputed site. Neither is this secular lady known to have objected when Late Rajiv Gandhi went on record saying, "When a big tree falls, the ground will shake" in response to what he thinks about the anti-Sikh riots. It turns out that the ground shook so much that thousands of sikhs died as a result. They are yet to get justice.

What say? Redefining secularism - Kuldip Nayar and Arjun Singh way!

Help needed on Special Theory of Relativity

So I understand the basic premise on which Special Theory of Relativity hinges:
1. Speed of Light is the same no matter from what frame of reference it is measured. So a guy inside a moving train measures it at 300,000 Km/s as much as a guy standing still at the railway station
2. There is no experimental setup that can prove one object to be stationary and the other one to be moving. In other words, there is no preferred constant speed. It can always be argued that object A is stationary and another object B is moving at 5 Km/Hr as much as it can be argued that object B is stationary while A is moving at 5 Km/Hr in opposite direction.

These two postulates throw up a set of equations we collectively refer to as Special Theory of Relativity. One of these equations explains time dilation:
T' = T * SQRT(1 - v^2/c^2)
where, T is time at rest, v is the speed at which the object is moving and c is the speed of light. T' is the speed of light while the object is moving at speed v.

Here's the problem that I have not yet been able to comprehend:
Assuming two brothers A and B were at railway station. At exactly 3PM, B boards a train that travels at 99% the speed of light only to return back after 2 seconds according to B's watch while A is still at the railway station. The way I have been told how theory of relativity will manifest itself is:

Once B is back to the station and the two brothers check the time on their respective watches, B sees that it has been 2 seconds past 3 PM while for A, the time is about 10 seconds past 3 PM (T' in above equation is B's time and T is A's). Apparently for B, time slowed down. Turning this problem around, can it not be argued that B and the train were stationary and that it was A who traveled at 98% the speed of light in the opposite direction? In that case one would infer that the time slowed down for A and not B. If the example is correct then it appears that Special Theory of Relativity is contradicting itself and that indeed there is a preferred frame of reference and A is to be treated at speed 0 only and B is to be treated as the one that is moving.

I am sure I am missing something. Can someone please help me as to what is going wrong here?

Plight of Indian Rupee

It does not take too much of an analysis to conclude that the assets in India, especially the real estate were grossly overpriced. However, here's some analysis to prove the point.

In order to buy a humble 2-bedroom abode with small sized rooms, one has to shell out Rs. 10-15 million in the suburbs of Mumbai. The closer you go to the city, the price goes up even further. This in a city with miserable infrastructure, connectivity and chaotic quality of life. It takes just a breakdown in the railway signalling system to bring the entire city to a stand-still! When the rupee was priced at 45 to a dollar, this humble abode translated to approximately USD 225,000 to USD 335,000. For that kind of money, you could have bought a palace in a city in US with much better connectivity, infrastructure and a peaceful quality of life. The facilities like free county library, public parks, etc come as a bonus.

Something had to correct to right-size the real estate in India. Now the rupee is undergoing a sharp devaluation.  At Rs 55 to a dollar, how does the same apartment price in dollar terms? It now comes for a price tag of about $180,000 to $270,000. Still expensive but we are getting there - where we belong. A complete right-sizing is yet to happen. It can take shape in either of the three ways - A bloodbath in the real estate market, an even sharper devaluation of Indian Rupee or both.

Fuel Price Hikes

What causes the Indian middle-class to rant on the Facebook and Twitter against the Indian Government? Yet another fuel price hike. So when the government announced a steep Rs. 7 hike in petrol prices, the Facebook is flooded with cartoons and humourous one-liners to express the cynicism against this move by the government.

(Image courtesy www.LifeSnap.in)

This creates a picture of a frustrated middle-class that is finding it impossible to make its ends meet. Assuming this picture to be correct, it makes me wonder:

• Who are the people I see every single evening sipping a lavish coffee at Barrista's or Cafe Coffee Day? I hear even Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts are planning their entry into Indian markets. Surely, they are tapping a market large enough to accommodate all of these players. Their market definitely can not constitute just the rich and the affluent.
• Every single friday, at least two or three new trashy bollywood movies are released into the multiplexes that charge tickets no less than Rs200 per head. The trashiest of Salman Khan movies are a block-buster hit. Who are the people  flooding the cinema halls despite the steep inflation?
• The list is endless - malls abuzz with people buying things ranging from the bare essentials to the lavish perfumes and ray-bans, cars choking up the city roads, rickshaws getting so many long distance passengers that they refuse to ply shorter distance passengers.

I am sure there is a vast majority of Indians who are terribly impacted by fuel price inflation but I doubt if the people venting their anger in Facebook and Twitter are amongst them. 

One statistic that is often played out is the fact that petrol prices in India are much higher than in other countries. This is true. Price of petrol (gas) in US is $4 per gallon that translates roughly to  Rs.58 per liter. But consider also the fact that diesel in US also is about $4 per gallon (Rs.58 per liter). The diesel prices in India are Rs. 46 per liter. Kerosene in US costs about Rs.42 a liter. The heavily subsidized kerosene comes at Rs.13. It is these and many other subsidies that the government has to fund in some way or the other. 

Instead of fuming and fretting over the petrol price hikes, I suggest these people to pressurize the local municipalities to do the following:

• Create a better infrastructure of public transportation. There were lot many BEST routes and much better frequency of buses once upon a time in Mumbai. Slowly a lot many of these routes have been closed down and the frequency reduced. I smell nexus between auto companies and governments behind this!
• Short distances need to be traversed either by walk or bicycles. Ask the municipality to create more sidewalks and make them exclusively available only for pedestrians and not to be shared with hawkers. Encourage people to use bicycles by providing exclusive bicycle lanes and stands for parking cycles.

Crude oil and its products are a finite commodity and the prices to some extent reflect the fact that the commodity is getting rarer by the day. Accordingly, it needs to be used more prudently. Also, the inflation signals the fact that more money is being spent rather than saved and invested. If the voracious appetite for consumption by middle-class comes down, automatically the inflation will fall.

FDI In Retail...

Frankly, I am not competent enough to figure out the pros and cons of the decision to open up the retail sector to Foreign Direct Investment. So I have absolutely no bias for or against this decision. I am willing to accept that the decision may help the nation in the long run as much as I am willing to accept that this decision is a sell-out to the interests of multinationals. So I am not even delving into the merits or demerits of the decision, for now. What perturbs me is the sheer haste with which the government wants to move on this.

This same government was shying away from taking decision since last three years on almost anything. So when the Team Anna with full might of the people of India behind it, applied pressure to pass the Jan Lokpal Bill in the monsoon session of the parliament itself, the same government's response was prompt. It is a bill that would have long-term repercussions and hence it needs time to be studied and debated amply before it can be passed. For some strange reason, this same government apparently thinks that the decision on FDI in retail does not require such due diligence. Its almost like Rip Van Winkle woke up from a deep slumber of three years, one fine morning and said "Hey, we need to do FDI in retail..quick!"

Here's what happened while the government was sleeping. We had a big real estate bubble - both commercial as well as residential. While the interest rates were soft, builders aggressively borrowed to buy land and build residential and commercial structures. Property prices kept going up like never before. A lot of this business flourished on the back of ill-gotten wealth of the politicians. Now we are in a situation where commercial realty has already crashed and residential is in a deep mess. Don't ask me the source of my information. I am not in the habit of maintaining links and references to my information source. You just have to search for real-estate inventory in the 4 metros and the numbers are available all across the internet. The builders will hold on to the inventory so long as the real investors behind it (the politicians with black money) are willing to stay put.

These politicians will soon need the money. You need money to fight elections and election season is round the corner. First some major states that are going to polls, and then the grand finale' in 2014. Where will this money come from if it is stuck up in inventory that is refusing to get sold? This is where FDI comes in. Walmart is going to need space, a hell lot of space to open its malls. Initially, the malls are going to get permission only in the big cities. The same cities where land is scarce and where the ill-gotten wealth is stuck up the most.

This explains the haste with which the FDI needs to happen, no matter its long-term impact. As I said earlier, I have no problems with opening up retail to foreign kirana-wallas, provided it emerges are a well thought out decision after proper study and adequate national debate.

Anna's protest is naive and simplistic says Nandan Nilekani

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/annas-protest-unjustified-nandan-nilekani/176743-3.html
It was interesting to read this interview given by Nandan Nilekani to CNN-IBN. Its good that the intellectuals from Corporate India also participate in this debate. Irrespective of the side they take, their views deserve all the respect. To that extent, I appreciate Mr. Nilekani for having given his honest opinion.

In the interview, the ex-CEO of Infosys and current chairman of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) puts forth an argument based on the notion that Jan Lokpal is not going to eliminate all the corruption and hence the protests by Anna are naive and simplistic. He goes on to say how Aadhar (UID) will go a long way to bring in transparency in people's interaction with the State.

Mr. Nilekani, you have made an assumption that the protesters believe that Jan Lokpal, to the exclusion of all other things is going to make the nation corruption-free. It would be foolish to believe that Jan Lokpal is going to eliminate all the corruption in the country. No one, and certainly not the Team Anna is saying that. Just like Jan Lokpal, even the project under your chairmanship, Aadhar (UID) is not guaranteed to remove corruption from its roots.

The company Infosys on whose rolls, you served as CEO and Co-chairman, has earned a lot of prosperity for its stakeholders and above all, made India proud in many ways besides just being the IT bellwether of India. It is under your and Mr. Narayan Murthy's leadership that it introduced a whistle-blower in its system. Your organization set a trend for all the IT and non-IT companies of India to follow. Ombudsman now exists almost in all major organizations in India. Did you ever question your colleagues at Infosys as to how an Ombudsman is going to solve all kind of issues related to corporate ethics in its work environment? Does the top management at Infy enjoy immunity from this Ombudsman?

It is good that the government accepted the idea of Unique Identification Cards and went ahead with its implementation. But hypothetically, if it would not have agreed to it, do you or don't you agree that it is the job of citizens of India, including yourself to make the government realize that they are wrong in not implementing this project? Would you then, accept someone else's line of argument that UID is not a magical mantra that is going to solve all the corruption related issues and hence it would be naive to protest against its non-implementation?

Aadhar (UID) is a good thing that has happened to India, under your able leadership. So is another piece of enactment - the Right To Information Act (RTI). Likewise, the nation needs a strong ombudsman to whom all public offices will be held accountable. Each one of these are a building block and not a complete structure in itself. There may be many such blocks required. But it does not require a Construction Engineer to figure out that if one of the building blocks is weak/missing, the structure is incomplete! So please don't say that the protests against a weak Lokpal draft are naive just because Jan Lokpal by itself, can not eliminate all the corruption in this nation.

The nation certainly expects much better line of thinking from the best intellectuals it has got. But I guess, since you are currently on the government payrolls, probably your tongue is tied!

COO of SpeakAsia, Tarak Bajpai detained

"But please tell us, how will we get back our invested money?", lamented one gentleman in Comments section of an article in the website of a prominent Indian News Channel. The article reported the detention of Tarak Bajpai, the COO of SpeakAsia. Like this guy above, there are many others who got lured by the promise of easy money. If the numbers are to be believed, there are about 20 Lakh panelists of Speak Asia, a scheme that pays money to its subscribers (panelists) for filling survey forms, online.

I empathize with this gentleman. Make no mistake, I being from a humble middle-class family, understand how it feels when hard earned money gets lost to a dubious scheme. However, truth be told, this money is not an investment. An investment happens as a result of researching a particular business model, an analysis of expected future cash flows, the profile and trustworthiness of the promoters of the business. On all these counts, money chipped in such schemes can not be called an investment. Even after doing all this research, you may end up losing some money in your investment. But not researching any of this, surely is not an investment. Yet this is not the first instance where a large number of gullible masses have lost their money to ponzi schemes, online lotteries, etc. Bernie Madoff is a living proof that people across the world, irrespective of their educational background can be lured into schemes that certainly are not investment.

A recent episode of a prime-time Hindi TV show "Tarak Mehta Ka Ulta Chashma" (coincidentally sharing his first name with COO of Speak Asia!), showed how Bhide (a middle-class Maharashtrian guy) got lured into an online lottery scam and almost lost his entire net-worth as well as his wife's jewellery. Fortunately, it was a serial that is known for happy endings. However, this is unlike life. In such instances, more often than not, life throws up rude shocks.

I sincerely hope, the guy above and many others like him, get back their money. But a lesson that is never learnt despite the numerous ponzi schemes in the past is that whenever some money scheme appears too good to be true, it most certainly is a fraud.

My Love For BJP formally ends today

Either Yeddyurappa must resign or the BJP government in Karnataka must go. An arrogant attitude from the party that is visible from its stance that Yeddyurappa will continue to be the Chief Minister, on the back of some very serious charges made by Karnataka Lokayukta, pertaining to the nexus with the mining brothers of Bellary means that the BJP does not provide any serious alternative to the corrupt Congress. It is lamentable that while Congress has provided the nation just 60 years of misrule and corruption of the worst kind, BJP ditched the very masses that hoped that it would provide a credible alternative to the Congress. Gradually it drifted from the moral high ground that it took during its formative years. But now it has reached a point at which there is absolutely no difference between the Congress and the BJP.

This comes from a typical urban middle-class guy who has always been a BJP supporter all the way since early childhood till Jharkhand alliance happened. Though, I thought that the alliance with Shibu Soren is just an aberration. But now with Karnataka, it is clear that the BJP is just Congress in Bonzai form. Given 50 - 60 years in power, its corruption may as well have been the size of Congress. The party is dead. Now all that I have is an admiration for certain few individuals in the party, like the Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi.

The nation is in a hopeless state. An ordinary voter, who can think and have an independent view of his own based on what he thinks is national interest, has absolutely no choice to make between the BJP and the Congress. For those who can't think, they still have choices based on which party offers what to his/her religion, caste, creed, or language. I think it is these people who will influence the nation's politics. It is these people who will matter to the politicians of today.

I have already made up my mind for Lok Sabha 2014. I will cast my vote for an independent candidate from my constituency. No more BJP, no more Congress or any of their numerous alliance partners which by the way, keep changing every now and then. I hope some independents, supported by the Civil Society Movement take a plunge into politics. At least that will motivate people like me to go out and vote.

Khan, Who?!

Seems like Shahrukh Khan was shocked by the fact that those officers could not recognize him. I mean, how audacious of them that he could not recognize THE King Khan of Bollywood?!!

Shahrukh Khan needs to know that he may be the uncrowned King of Bollywood but for the rest of the world, he is just one of the millions of strangers that arrive at their port of entry every year. The officer was only doing his honest job of scrutinizing him based on whatever intelligence that is available in their system. What is at stake is the security of their nation. Maybe the officers at our port of entry are not that diligent. That does not mean you have the same expectation of carelessness from the security personnel in other parts of the world.

Nuclear Deal - Part 2

No Hollywood movie is complete without a sequel. True to the spirit of its Hollywood, US has unleashed the second part of the nuclear deal with India. It was so very predictable that the deal was not an end in itself. It was a means to achieve some other ends.

It all started with the G-8 summit, where the US raised its tone and tenor to prohibit non-NPT nations from being supplied nuclear technology. This ran sharply against the things agreed upon in the Nuclear deal, or at least what Indian Government made the people believe about the deal.

Then came the dialogue between the Pakistani and Indian PM at Sharm-El-Sheikh, Egypt. That, by signing the nuclear deal, India would be made subservient to the US interests, was a foregone conclusion but little did we know that the Indian PM will stoop so low, so soon. The pressure from the western forces, to come up with a joint declaration was so very visible. Terrorism of its worst kind has been unleashed upon India and it is no secret as to where its master-minds are located. Yet, the composite dialogue between India and Pakistan is to be decoupled from terrorism. So may we ask, what are all the future composite dialogues going to discuss about? Kashmir Issue and weather. And as a filler, they will discuss Balochistan terrorism.

Not surprisingly, after the joint declaration, US reassured India that the G-8 statement had no bearing upon the 123-agreement.

If the faux pas at Sharm-El-Sheikh was not enough, close on the heels came the End User Monitoring Agreement (EUMA) with USA. Thanks to this agreement, the Phirangs will be seen snooping at our defense locations smelling/spying for all the confidential information that any sovereign nation should not be sharing with another nation.

All of this makes it so very obvious that the 123-agreement was just a sales pitch to sell to Indian masses, something that runs contrary to its strategic interests. This was Part-1. The second part starts now. The US will exert all kind of pressures on India. I suspect I know the climax of this part. Very soon the Indian government will sign the CTBT and the NPT, thereby putting to an end, whatever remained of India's strategic nuclear interest.

Sonia Gandhi Budget !

There may have been a lot of people surprised or shocked with the projected 6.8% Fiscal Deficit in the Budget Year 09-10. I for one, am not. The budget reflects exactly, the mandate received by the Congress in the Lok Sabha Elections 2009. The mandate is to talk not of economic liberalization, disinvestment of PSUs, etc. The mandate is to follow the leftist stance that the Nehru-Gandhi family always represented. To this extent, this is not a Manmohan Singh budget. This is a Sonia Gandhi budget.

Social Sector spending obviously was expected to escalate. We are back to pre-1991 era. The fiscal deficit is not going to be a concern for the government. The government will continue to be the biggest borrower of money. All that one can hope is that the money laid out for the intended improvement in the standard of living of rural India does not go down the drain, as it has in the past.

Meanwhile, the biggest casualty is the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act (FRBM). The goverrnment is going to just pay lip service to FRBM and continue with its extravaganza. Expect the Bond Yields to shoot up. Those who are long on dollars - continue to do so. The rupee should be devaluing even further.

The Tale of Two Monuments..

Two interesting developments happened last week. A marvellous piece of engineering and hard-work resulted in the Bandra Worli Link Bridge. Another marvellous piece of construction and art resulted in the spectacular statues of Ambedkar, Mayawati, Kanshiram and the BSP elephant!

The bridge has now been opened for vehicular traffic. This bridge took a pretty long time, lot of sweat and blood of thousands of labourers and huge cost overruns to eventually complete after 10 years and $325 Million. Despite the cost and the painful wait, at last we have something in which India and Mumbai can take pride. The immediate beneficiaries are the people of Mumbai. Along with the other such projects put together, it is expected that there should be considerable amount of traffic decongestion.


Talking about the other marvellous piece of design and artistic work in the Mayawati statues - as per the latest estimates the tall statues of the equally "tall" personalities come at a cost of about Rs.2000 Crores! A little bit of scribble-pad calculations, assuming Rs.50 to a dollar leads me to the conclusion that the bridge in Mumbai costs somewhere around Rs. 1600 Crores. Thus the monumental statues in Uttar Pradesh beat the bridge by a whopping Rs.400 Crores. No prize for guessing which one is a bigger monumental achievement! Besides, the statues are a great piece of art-work. I mean, look at the statue of Mayawati. The compassion and empathy in the eyes of the lady's statue is in sharp contrast to the villainous body language of the real lady. Whosoever has designed the statues has done a commendable and a challenging job!


So how do the two structures plan to recover their respective costs? We are told that the toll for the bridge is going to be Rs.50 one-way. There are going to be monthly passes as well. As per estimates about 100,000 vehicles are going to use the bridge, daily. Again, going back to my handie-dandie notepad, my calculations suggest the bridge will break-even with its fixed cost in about 10 years.

There is no estimate on how UP plans to recover the costs of those statues. In the absence of any known methods of recovering the costs, here are a few suggestions I would like to make. A statue is no good unless there are those people who answer the nature's call at the foot of the statues. So lets put a toll of say, Rs. 100 on those who are in a state of urgency and need to use the statue. We can also introduce monthly passes and life-memberships! Also, there can be tolls for those romeos and juliets who have to scribble their names and graffities on the statues. You have some interesting suggestions to make? Go ahead and make comments to this article. If the suggestions are good enough I shall use all the channels available to me for reaching out to Behen Mayawatiji and give the list of all the valueable suggestions to her.

The King of Pop is no more

Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009)

For all of us who have grown up watching him perform, this comes as a piece of shock. His controversies notewithstanding, he remains one of those icons who have inspired an entire generation, throughout the world. Be it his songs or his famous moon-walking. Everything about Michael Jackson was emulated by the youngsters.

I am sure, in his death, he will be remembered as much as he was when alive.

Time to ponder over some missing links our school Physics text-books did not talk about..

So you know the quintessential force that exerts between two point masses (M1, M2) separated by a distance d. Do you? Lets see..

What is the speed with which the information from mass M1 propagates to M2 while traversing the distance d, so that M1 tells M2 - "Hello, I am here. Now exert the force upon me in this direction." - T seconds? Is T = Infinity or T is finite?

Lets make it easier. Earth is at a distance of 500 light seconds from Sun. It is orbitting the sun. While it was at point A in its orbit, sun has to know of Earth's presence at point A. Does the sun come to know about it instantaneously? Are we saying that gravitational information traverses distances instantaenously and hence faster than electromagnetic wave information?

If yes, then why are we constrained by the speed of light? Why not use gravitational waves to get our information from distant galaxies?

If No, then read further..
So sun comes to know about earth's position some <= 500 seconds. But within that amount of time, the earth has moved and moved a lot to reach a point B. Apparently, in Newtonian model of gravitation, sun's gravitation will not be able to catch up our earth and for that matter any other planet. Yet, our solar system exists. What provides stability to the solar system if gravitational waves take finite time to travel?

Surely there is lot more to Physics and this marvellous universe than our text-books have taught us.

Bubble?!

Yes..India is growing at 9+% growth rate and it will continue to do so in the time to come. But every future growth has a present value. So the indices at a particular point would factor in the rate at which we are growing. So are we above that point, below or just have made it? My guess is that we are grossly overvalued and are a bubble waiting to burst. Whether the burst happens today, tomorrow or 2 years from now? I don't know. For that matter, no one really knows. No matter what the so called analysts in the pink newspapers say or what crap, the 24x7 financial news channels dish out. The fact is that this is the kind of market that a conservative investor like Warren Buffet would want to stay away from. Watching the way the indices are breaking each 1000 point threshold, it almost feels like watching 20Twenty cricket. But just as 20Twenty is not real thing so is the case with the current mania on the bourses. Sooner or later, the earnings are not going to meet up with the expectations built up in the prices.

Glancing at the favourite blue-chips quoting at 50-60 x their current earnings (in some cases, even triple digit P/Es), you know that they are no longer your favourite blue-chips. That is, if you are investors. For the thousands of punters out there, they still continue to remain so. So calling the way Mr. Market is behaving as bubble or a growth story depends upon which side of the divide you are on. I, for one, being a compulsive contrarian have sold off most of my portfolio for the time when better sanity prevails. Hope it happens soon.