Reserve Bank of India is going to increase the interests rates for the Nth time this year (where N is large number) to correct inflation. Hmm… Might as well send more money home before 1 SGD goes down from the current value of 28.87 INR.
Am I doing the right thing?
It worked! She replied to the email I had sent on 25th October. This is her reply:
A face recognition algorithm at MyHeritage, compared my face with a database of famous people and found that I look most like Salman Khan (67% similarity). Other’s on the list include: Norah Jones, Bjarne Stroustrup and Emma Watson. (See the sidebar on the right).
Recently my obsession with the girl I had a crush on since [year] really started bothering me. So I wrote her an email (although, she never reads her mails):
[Name],
I don’t know whether you will read this but I got to write it anyway.
I have had a crush on you since [year], and the obsession is really
starting to bother me now. I don’t want to be obsessed about you
anymore, but trying to get out of it seems impossible.I would really appreciate if you could help me here by telling me that
you are not interested in me or something like that… I feel that
would help me to elbow out these infatuations that I have.Thanking you in advance,
Edwin
Newspapers often have articles that say “Young children who sleep with the light on are much more likely to develop myopia in later life”. The public is often fooled into thinking that “sleeping with lights on” causes “myopia”. Correlation implies causation is a logical fallacy by which two events that occur together are prematurely claimed to have a cause-and-effect relationship.
Correlation alone does not necessarily imply causation. For example, two events might co-occur because they have a common cause, rather than because one causes the other. But when two events or changes do co-occur, and the time sequence is such that one always follows the other, people often infer that the first caused the second. Thus, inaccurate perception of correlation leads to inaccurate perception of cause and effect.
Judgments about correlation are fundamental to intelligence. For example, assumptions that worsening economic conditions lead to increased political support for an opposition party, that domestic problems may lead to foreign adventurism, that military government leads to unraveling of democratic institutions, or that negotiations are more successful when conducted from a position of strength are all based on intuitive judgments of correlation between these variables. In many cases these assumptions are correct, but they are seldom tested by systematic observation and statistical analysis.
Most of the time intelligence is based on prior-experience-based assumptions(common sense) about how systems and environments normally behave. The strength and weakness of a human mind is that it possess a great facility for invoking contradictory “laws” of behavior to explain, predict, or justify different actions occurring under similar circumstances. “Haste makes waste” and “He who hesitates is lost” are examples of inconsistent explanations and admonitions. They make great sense when used alone and leave us looking foolish when presented together. “Appeasement invites aggression” and “agreement is based upon compromise” are similarly contradictory expressions.
When confronted with such apparent contradictions, the natural defense is that “it all depends on. …” or “… is relative”. Recognizing the need for such qualifying statements is one of the differences between subconscious information processing and systematic, self-conscious analysis. Knowledgeable analysis might be identified by the ability to fill in the qualification; careful analysis by the frequency with which one remembers to do so.
“Isn’t it better to triumph by the strength of your muscles than by the artifice of a derailer? We are getting soft…As for me, give me a fixed gear bicycle!” — A previous generation Indian cyclist
“It is better not to use a calculators, slide rules or the abacus… The best brains are the ones that are used the most. And calculators simply make you less brainy. Use the Clark’s (clerk’s [?!] ) tables if you need to.” — My math prof back at a university in India. [Digression: why was OLPC rejected in India?]
“A true power user uses a custom Linux from scratch without any GUI or package management.” — My linux mentor who introduced me to linux back in India.
“Do not use a Computer Algebra System. All symbolic math operations like long integration problems must be done using your brain not a computer. The best brains are the ones that are used the most. And CAS software simply make you less brainy.”
– My math prof back at a university in India.
“We should lift & move these huge rocks with our muscle power when building the Stonehenge. Do not use these artificial mechanisms like people in Europe.” — ancestors of east indians who couldn’t build the Stonehenge.
“The concrete is mixed well when it is mixed with the hand. Concrete mixing machines do a bad job. We must declare a strike if the contractor tries to implement technology.” — an Indian construction worker
“We Indian’s are so brainy compared to the rest of the world because we are vegetarians. Non-vegetarian food makes you less brainy and weak.” — people of the land who fail to realize that almost everything is a meat eater’s science or technology and that most olympic winners are meat eaters.
“Fair skinned people are not strong and will not excel in sports… They must be humilated in front their colleagues if they try to participate.” — my high school P.E teacher back in India, a land which does not have many achievers (w.r.t China with same population) in sports.
My favorites
“It is very difficult for rich people to go to heaven. So “involuntary” poverty is good thing. And we must thank God for this fate and should do nothing to change it.” — Church Priest. [BTW, what christ wanted is voluntary poverty, i.e what Bill Gates is doing].
“There will have been no poverty if all rich people simply gave away all the money to the poor. Give the beggar some fish and he will never be hungry again. So we should confiscate all the property owned by this rich and give it to the poor” — post independence Indians.
“So many people are starving around the world, so we must be happy with what we have” — My grandma. [BTW how does our complacency solve the world's hunger. Shouldn't we export seeds and help foreign agriculture instead of fasting?]
“Everything is fate so we ’should’ do nothing to change it. We being in such a state of idle observation is fate so we ’should’ nothing to change it. We being idle makes everything more fate like” — a typical Indian when faced with difficulties in life.
India’s economy had virtually stagnated over a quarter-century until the early 1980s, with autarkic policies on trade and direct foreign investment. The expansion of the public sector had turned into an epidemic, trespassing into most areas of industrial activity, and not just utilities; and the licensing system had become a maze of irrational restrictions. With growth at 3.5% and population increasing at 2.2% annually, per capita income grew at a snail’s pace (the infamous “Hindu rate of growth”). It therefore failed to pull the mass of people out of poverty and into gainful, sustained employment. We should then have expected a “revolution of falling expectations”: The poor could have risen in revolt, bundling the ruling Congress Party out of power because there was no hope of improvement.
Yet this did not happen. Perhaps, when little progress takes place all around, the centuries-old Indian fatalism takes over. But when the poor begin improving, then the “revolution of rising expectations” is likely to arise. This is a direct result of the perception of real possibilities. Indeed, one of the finest members of the ousted BJP government, former Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha, remarked on how difficult it was getting to find the resources to fulfill the demands that he found in his parliamentary constituency for greater financial allocations. This is also the view of people who work at the ground level: The young of India, including children from the lowest classes and castes, have enhanced expectations from life; and so do their parents, who vote. And this phenomenon — of expectations aroused but unfulfilled — has cut across the much exaggerated rural-urban divide.
India cannot grow into a major economy on services alone. Since the industrial revolution, no country has become a major economy without becoming an industrial power.
Arvind Panagariya, a professor of Indian political economy at Columbia University, USA, puts the issue clearly. He noted that some have argued that India can focus on IT, grow rapidly in services, skip industrialization, and yet transform itself from a primarily rural and agricultural country into a modern economy. He dismissed such ideas as “hopelessly flawed” and “far-fetched”.
“The right strategy for India is to walk on two legs: traditional labour intensive industry and modern IT. Both legs need strengthening through further reforms ….”
Industrialisation cannot take off without adequate infrastructure: By one estimate, economic losses from congestion and poor roads alone are as high as US$4 to 6 billion a year. Cost of most infrastructure services in India is about 50% to 100% higher than in China. The average cost of electricity for manufacturing in India is about double that in China; railway transport costs in India are three times those in China. China has spent over eight times as much as India on its infrastructure.
If there are budgetary constraints, the answer is to privatise these infrastructure projects.
Job creation is much slower in India and will continue to remain so until India’s infrastructure is brought up to date to attract the many manufacturers who will come to use India’s low cost workers and efficient services.
The average Indian civil servant still sees himself primarily as a regulator and not as a facilitator. He has not yet accepted that it is not a sin to make profits and become rich. The average Indian bureaucrat has little trust in India’s business community. They view Indian businessmen as money grabbing opportunists who do not have the welfare of the country at heart; and all the more so if they are foreign businessmen.
Politics is a fact of life in any country. And coalition politics is a fact of Indian political life. But democracy should not be made an alibi for bureaucratic inertia. There are many examples of authoritarian governments whose economies have failed. There are as many examples of democratic governments who have achieved superior economic performance. The real issue is whether any country’s political system, irrespective of whether it is democratic or authoritarian, can forge a consensus on the policies needed for the economy to grow and create jobs for all, and can ensure that these basic policies are implemented consistently without large leakage. India’s elite in politics, the media, the academia and think tanks can re-define the issues and recast the political debate. They should, for instance, insist on the provision of a much higher standard of municipal services.
