Month: August 2011

I had plenty of time to think over many of these points with Atanu during my US trip. Being away from the action, one could take a different perspective. The problem is much deeper than we think.

It starts with freedom. Not the freedom we think we won during the regime change of 1947. Not the freedom which is now redefined as ‘not being in Tihar jail.’ The freedom we are talking about here is personal freedom. In India, we have no idea what it is and therefore do not even realise it is worth fighting for. We think we are free. In reality, we have a government that so deeply penetrates the world around us that our freedom is a mirage. 1947 = Freedom is what is ingrained into us.

The great revolutions of history (American, British/Industrial, French) have all centred around the notion of freedom. Our Indian revolution ended with a skin colour change. And the result – a country that still counts hundreds of millions amongst its poor – is there for us to see. But even that is changing. We are building enough cocoons and gated communities that we will not have to see the poor. For this select set, India has arrived and is an IT superpower on its way to becoming an economic superpower.

India’s lack of freedom is at the heart of India’s lack of development and central to the issue of corruption.

Continued tomorrow.

Let’s take a brief look around us in India. Of course, this is a crib sheet, but stay with me. There is an important point coming up. Try and figure that out.

The government controls all radio news broadcasts. The prices of petrol and diesel are still set by the government. Education continues to have end-to-end government  Control. Make a trip abroad and try getting an iPad back to India through customs without paying duty or a bribe – no Lok Pal bill to the rescue there. The potholes on the streets continue to be there. The government controls which movies we are allowed to watch. Air-India continues to be given a blank cheque so it can fly our Maharajas. The public sector telecom provider, BSNL, is well on its path to emulating Air-India. Many of our public sector banks keep giving loans to favored parties and conveniently take write-offs a few years later.

When cities are going vertical worldwide, our Floor Space Index limit is set unreasonably low . NREGA has put India on an inflation treadmill, but the talking-heads blame it on external factors. Right to Food is all set to join the growing list of unaffordable entitlements:  Right to employment and Right to Education. The real cash-for-votes schemes are in front of us, but we cannot see them. We have a prime minister who falsely takes credit for liberalizing the economy in 1991. Inflation is rampant, threatening to slow economic growth but the blame, according to the government, lives somewhere else – the US, Europe, the world, perhaps the stars – anywhere and anything but misgovernance.

We the people are content that the resolution of a few scams is that some scapegoats have been identified and put behind bars; it does not appear to matter that those who are the real prime movers behind all those scams continue to loot the public. New malls and tv shows are the opiate of the masses.

So the fight appears to be over. Who won?

Continued tomorrow.

I was away in the US when the Anna Hazare movement was at its peak, so I missed the on-ground excitement. Seeing Middle India come out in numbers would have been a good sight. A fight to the finish for what is seen as a right cause against a corrupt, bumbling government always makes good story. Of course, the point to note is that a fast never killed the First Gandhi, and a fast will not kill the clone.

So, let’s play this out. The government gives people a Lok Pal Bill with lots of clauses they like, and the people are thrilled that their street fight has yielded results. The seemingly unwinnable battle against the Ravan of corruption has been won. The media has loved this because of the spurt in TRPs. Everyone is happy. Maybe, the Congress is a bit sad because their image has taken a beating, but public memory is quite short and the next elections are a long time away. And of course, they can now claim to be the party that give the Lok Pal Bill to the masses.

In the background, the politicians and bureaucrats can continue with their business as usual, now that this distracting interlude is over. After all, the control they have on the economy has not changed, which is the key to making money. With Middle India is euphoric about the win and now seemingly content that India is well on  its way to being free of corruption, the  magic formula of Monopoly + Discretion – Accountability = Corruption can now be given it’s due attention.

The Fight is over. Who won?

Continued tomorrow.

From a post I wrote a year ago:

As voice becomes a commodity on mobile networks, the action is shifting to mobile data services. In this context, India’s user base is only second to China. This availability of a domestic market can help India become a large market for mobile data networks as networks become faster (3G and 4G), and as devices become cheaper and better. Since mobiles and data services are a global phenomenon, Indian companies can also emerge as global leaders by leveraging technology platforms, content and services they create for the large domestic market. India thus has a unique opportunity to create an industry in the next decade that can replicate the success of IT services in the past two decades.

To make this happen, there is need to encourage the creation of off-deck mobile data ecosystem. There are three pre-requisites that need to happen to drive this ecosystem:

• a guarantee of Net Neutrality, so that operators cannot arbitrarily block services they believe compete with them
• remove the WLL and spectrum charges of 13-15% that are levied for VAS, so that the cost of mobile data comes down
• the operator’s billing platform to be available as a service for a fee of 10% or so for micropayments, a la Docomo’s i-mode in Japan

Taken together, they can drive innovation like what has been in Japan and some other countries.  The first two will open up the creation of new services, and the third will give service providers a way to monetise by making available a micropayments infrastructure leveraging the cash balance that mobile users in India already have.

This week’s links:

• Why Software is eating the world: by Marc Andreessen. “Six decades into the computer revolution, four decades since the invention of the microprocessor, and two decades into the rise of the modern Internet, all of the technology required to transform industries through software finally works and can be widely delivered at global scale.”
• How to fix Math Education: from NY Times. “A math curriculum that focused on real-life problems would still expose students to the abstract tools of mathematics, especially the manipulation of unknown quantities…Imagine replacing the sequence of algebra, geometry and calculus with a sequence of finance, data and basic engineering.”
• Scientific American special issue on Cities: “This issue…celebrates the city as a solution to the problems of our age. We have tried to present it in the true urban spirit: best ideas forward.
• The Three-ring Anti-corruption Circus in in Town: by Atanu Dey. ” So how do one explain India’s poverty and corruption? Is on the cause and the other the consequence? Which came first? Or is there another hidden variable which is the cause of these two? It is my belief that the hidden variable is India’s lack of freedom.”
• Two Arvind Panagariya articles: Unsteady at the top and On a historic parallel.

 

Having travelled to both Bali and Binsar in July, I am convinced that there is a much untapped tourism opportunity within India.

India gets about 18 million foreign tourists each year, according to Wikipedia. China gets three times as many. With better infrastructure and promotion, India’s numbers can easily match that of China.

For example, it is easier for me to get to Bali in Indonesia than to get to Binsar in Uttarakhand. This needs to change. We need to upgrade domestic infrastructure – better roads, more airports, faster trains. This needs to be combined with a bigger promotional push. More than half the people I mention Binsar toi haven’t heard about it – and neither had I till a couple months ago. India has many places of great natural beauty – which feature among some of best known secrets!

Tourism as a services industry can be thus not just a big forex generator but also a big employer, as Arun  Maira wrote in the ET recently.

I was wondering if anyone has suggestions on how to get miniature O Scale models of Indian engines and trains.

Abhishek and I are quite fascinated with the Lionel models that we have seen in the US. What we want to do is to build a collection of Indian trains. So far, Abhishek has been playing with the Thomas wooden tracks, but I guess its time for him to graduate!

Any idea on where to find such models?

Thanks in advance.

I have experienced this so many times. A book that I am reading helps me think through a conundrum I have been contemplating and creates the space for coming up with interesting ideas and solutions. The book doesn’t even have to be directly linked to the topic – what it does is forces deep thought, and then the associations in the mind create something that wasn’t there before.

That is one of the reasons I love to read. Just the act of sitting for an extended period of undisturbed time with a book is guaranteed to push the mind in many different directions – some intended by the author, some unintended by the reader!

I don’t necessarily read every book immediately after I buy it. I let it stay around, and then some day, I will pick it up – and the book opens up its treasure chest of ideas. It is a wonderful feeling.

I live in a building which faces the sea – the Arabian Sea. It has been so for the past 37 years. But there is a big gap between seeing the sea, and walking close to it. Mumbai doesn’t have too many places where one can actually enjoy the closeness of the sea. As a result, over time, the sea has become like a painting on the wall that I have stopped noticing. Which is a sad thing.

Mumbai could have done so much with the sea. But other than building on and around it, we have not really made it part of our lives some other cities like Hong Kong have. For one, we could have built nice promenades like Shanghai has done. But in Mumbai, the sea remains quite distant – an optical artefact.

I hope that changes in the times to come. Mumbai’s history is closely tied to the sea, and it would be good to have the sea interwine our future.

A few days ago, I heard a new phrase to describe the world’s three biggest challenges: FEW Problems, to refer to Food, Energy and Water. I loved the FEW monicker. And the W part hit home when I was talking to a friend in the suburbs of Mumbai.

He is living in a new building (constructed about two years ago). Everything is good about it – except they get very little water from the municipal corporation. The result is that they have to get water via water tankers for the bathrooms, and get Bisleri big water bottles for the drinking water. When I probed further, he said that the corporation seems to have an unstated policy of providing a limited supply of water to new buildings.

That I found quite shocking. If a building has been given permission to get constructed, why make life difficult for its residents? Maybe, we need a national Right To Water Act!