Category: Tech Talk

Dear Abhishek,

Recently, we went to Dubai for three days. It was your first international trip. Dubai is a short three-hour flight from Mumbai. It was a great experience with you in the aircraft and roaming the malls of Dubai. The first day you ran around excitedly shouting Dubai shopping, embarrassing your mother no end! Youd fall asleep in the afternoon, so I would put you on a sofa in the mall and sit next to you as your mom went around the malls. We bought lots of cars and trucks for you and some trains (though we havent given them all to you yet).

Ill remember the Dubai trip because it was the first time we got a lot of time together away from home. It was just us. Now that you are a little grown up, we can sit and talk. Just the other day, we sat at the window in our chairs and chatted about people and the world outside. It is an absolute delight being with youto the extent that I try and avoid overnight stays and dinner meetings. There is no greater joy than coming back home and being with you as you sleep.

You appeared in Newsweek a couple months ago. They were doing a story on me, and the photographer was shooting me near our home. I called your mom to send you down so you could see me. The photographer then asked me to hold you against a quintessential Mumbai backdrop of some neighbourhood stores. And lo and behold! A few days later, there I was with you in my arms on the Table of Contents page of Newsweek.

Your language comprises of a mix of English, Hindi and Marwari. Your mother and her parents speak to you in Marwari. My parents speak to you in Hindi. I talk to you in English and Hindi. Its fun watching you piece words together now to make meaningful sentences.

A few months ago, you started recognizing alphabets and numbers. It happened quite suddenly. We had bought one of these wooden toys, and you kept asking us what the various letters were and before we realised it, you were telling them back to us. Your memory astonishes us at timesor maybe we are still used to thinking of you as a little baby we just got back from the hospital.

One disappointment I have is your total lack of interest in reading books! I used to buy a lot of books for you, but we barely get past the first few pages. Maybe some day you will realise the joy of the world of books

The coming year is going to see you go to school probably in September. As you grow up, there are times I wonder if we should live somewhere else. I grew up in the same neighbourhood as you are growing up now. It all seems so stagnant. Perhaps, we need to reinvent the world around us in more ways than one.

Happy Birthday, Abhishek. Have a great third year!

Continue reading TECH TALK: Letter to a Two-Year-Old: Memories (Part 2)

Dear Abhishek,

We have done quite some travelling this year. In May, we went to Pune twice to attend my cousins weddings. In July, we went to Bangalore. In December, we went to Sankeshwar (near Ahmedabad) and Surat (where your SaifaliMasi lives with her husband and Niyati-didi). We also went to Bangalore and Chennai. Most visits have been short ones about three days or so.

I like taking trips with you because it gives us more time together. You also get to see different places and people. I dont know how much you will remember but that is not the point. All of these become experiences for you. Travelling in trains and planes, seeing the world outside, sleeping not on beds but perhaps on a dinner table or a shoulder these travels help make you more adaptable.

There is this one evening I remember. We had gone to the National Handloom Exhibition in Bandra in Mumbai. Your mom was window-shopping at the various stalls. That left the two of us to walk around. You saw another, slightly older kid playing with a ball. And you instinctively went to him and started playing together. Suddenly, without saying a word, you both were happily kicking the ball around. Two complete strangers, laughing together, oblivious of the world around. Why cant we grown-ups learn from you?

There were a couple of scares we had with your health. This was when you had bronchiolitis in August. Your mother called me in he afternoon saying you are going to have to be admitted to the hospital. I was a little shocked you seemed quite okay in the morning. In the hospital, they had to clear your chest congestion by nebulisation and put you on the drip. Seeing you there with all those medical things around scared me. But you were brave. You didnt cry. You just patiently waited till you got better. And in two days we were home.

This February, we had to get an operation done for hernia. It was hard making you go through it, but we had no choice. We were in the hospital for a day. You dont remember much about it, but it was a tense period as you were getting operated. We knew nothing untoward would happen, but still

Another evening I remember is New Years Eve. We went to Granth bookshop in Juhu. And then, we (just you and me) went to Little Italy for a little meal. Can you imagine that just the two of us together in a restaurant on New Years Eve! We ordered some bread and nachos, ate the stuff, and came back home. You played around the restaurant as if it belonged to you! (We were early so there werent others in the restaurant.)

You first identified yourself as Aapap. Its a word which means many things, but it mostly means you will do things yourself! Its a signal of your growing independence. Its a sign you are growing up. Its a reminder of your increasing confidence. It feels nice to hear that. Now, you call yourself Abhi.

Of course, there are times, when I wish I could freeze time. And then, I look at you. You are so happily living through each moment. And thats when I let that thought pass you are growing up, minute by minute, day by day. I have to be more like you enjoy the present and not worry about the future. Well live it as it comes, right?!

Tomorrow: Memories (continued)

Continue reading TECH TALK: Letter to a Two-Year-Old: Memories

Dear Abhishek,

In the evening, I try and come home on most workdays by 7 or 7:15 pm. You wait for me. You know I am coming. Because you want me to take you outside! And on many days, I do. I guess you also need a little change. After dinner, which like lunch is a major exercise for your mom, we play till you want to sleep. It is a mix of all kinds of fun games. Nowadays, cars are your life and so we create games around cars. And then, finally, it is time to sleep. You first go fetch your three blankets (or biyas as you call them), and then get your baby pillow. Then, your mummy pats you to sleep. We now sleep on a mattress on the floor (new bed) so theres little chance of you falling out of the bed.

And so it is that your day winds down. You take each day on its own merit. No great thinking about the past or the future. Looking at you, I wish I could do the same. Just live for the present. Enjoy each moment. Live life to the fullest now. I guess I too was like you once upon a time.

On Sundays, we normally end up going out. Either to the malls or to Bhavanas parents home, so your other set of grandparents can also see you. (You get plenty of face time with my parents since they stay with us.) We try and meet more people for you to learn from and have fun with and delight with your expressions and smiles.

When we take the car, nowadays you always want to be next to the driver. You sit on my lap or stand. I guess you like that because it gives you a clear wide-angle view of the world outside. I show you a few things but I mostly let you be. You will point to some things and Ill label them for you. Then, you remember.

You love watching Boowa-Kwala on the computer (uptoten.com). There are times when you will wake in the middle of the night and want me to switch on the computer and play the songs there. I hated the songs at first but gradually began to like them!

Youve started communicating a lot more as the year has gone by. It started with single, indecipherable words. Now, you manage a mix of two-three words quite well, even sentences. And with actions, you can get across your point rather nicely. Sometime during the year, you became a person I could have a little conversation with. And we started doing that as we went out together. Of course, most of the time you had monosyllable replies for me. But I knew that you were listening.

So, each sunrise brings forth a new set of experiences for you. Each day is unlike the other for you and for us. I couldnt ask for more.

Tomorrow: Memories

Continue reading TECH TALK: Letter to a Two-Year-Old: A Day in Your Life (Part 2)

Dear Abhishek,

I love your life. You wake up whenever you feel like sometime between 6 and 7 am. Unless you decide that 5:30 am is also a good time to be up and about. The responsibility of managing you early mornings is mine. We sit at the window, read books, play with toys, or simply do our pillow-fights. As your mom works downstairs in the kitchen, we have our own little fun. Your attention span is incredibly low. So, I have to be quite creative in keeping you happy and entertained. (Presumably, you think the same about me!)

On the few days that you are not here (away with your mother to her parents place), life is just not the same. I wake up feeling lonely and depressed. I miss you so much. Like today. It reminds me of how life was for so long before you were born and I dont want to go back to those memories. I just want to be near you all the time!

Back to your day. Around 7:30 am or so, your mom will get your breakfast. Milk and khakras mixed together. Feeding you is an incredible challenge. It is almost like you are doing us a big favour by eating. It takes a long time for you to finish your breakfast as you wander all over the place with your mother chasing you. Once in a while, when you are real hungry, you gobble it down fast but those days are rare.

After breakfast, it is time for your bath. We had a bai till December who would bathe you and give you a little massage. Now, it is between your mom and me. You like baths with me because of the shower time that we have together. Then, its the process of getting the clothes on you or you in the clothes. Of late, youve been trying to make the decisions and that at times can cause consternation. You decide youd like to wear two pants, for example. Once you are ready, we go to the temple. We leave home at 9 am or so and go to the Jain temple at Babulnath. You are in your element in the temple. Then, I drop you and your mom home and I am off to work.

At home, you play around on your own for the most part. You create your own imaginary worlds, singing and talking, and perhaps thinking. You flit from room to room, toy to toy. And then it is time for lunch. On most days, you then sleep for a couple hours after lunch. Unless of course, youve slept in the morning which typically happens when youve woken up very early. Post-lunch, its back to play. Either by yourself or your cousins (my sisters kids who stay in the flat next to us). Siddharth is three years elder to you and Maya is a year older. You play and learn from them, and of course fight. But it is good to see you being social that was a worry your mom and I once had. How would you interact with other kids? You werent very outgoing when you were younger.

Tomorrow: A Day in Your Life (continued)

Continue reading TECH TALK: Letter to a Two-Year-Old: A Day in Your Life

Dear Abhishek,

Happy Birthday! This is my third letter to you (2005 2006). As you turn two on April 19, it is once again time to reflect on the year that was and whats to come. [Here are some recent photos of Abhishek.]

This has been a year when you have created some wonderful memories. There are times when I am away from you when I just think about those delightful moments that you created for me (and your mom) to savour. Of course, you didnt know that you were just being what you always are a sweet, little baby!

I remember the first time I took you out for an extended period of time without your mother. It was October 2, Gandhi Jayanti. Your mother had caught chikungunya, one of those rare tropical diseases transmitted by a mosquito bite. When I look back at it, perhaps, that was one of the better things to have happened for our relationship. Since Bhavana could not carry you (her joints ached and she had very little strength in her arms and legs), the responsibility of taking you out fell on me. Bhavana needed rest, so I decided to take you out. And from that day onwards, we have never really looked back.

That day, we went on a bus ride. Youve always liked buses. Sitting at the window of our house every morning, you want to see one more bus. So, I decided that sitting inside one of them will be a good experience for you. We took the first bus which came and went for a long ride. Of course, you fell asleep rather quickly sitting on my lap with the warm October wind blowing in your face. When we reached Churchgate, I woke you up and we went for a little walk around ending up at Oxford Bookstore. And then, after some time walking around the store, we took a cab and came back home. You had been away from your mom for four hours and didnt worry about it. We had something going!

After that day, I started taking you out a lot more. Most Sunday mornings, we would go out somewhere or the other just the two of us. At times, it was random bus rides to nowhere in particular. At other times, it was to the nearby bookstore (Crossword at Kemps Corner) or the grocery store (Akbarallys). All you wanted was to go out (or bar, as you called it in Hindi.) There was the time we went to Infiniti Mall in the suburbs that day you were without your mom for a half-day.

It all culminated with you coming with me for the office picnic. That was in the last week of December. You stayed happily without your mother for an entire day. You didnt eat much I just dont have the perseverance and patience that your mom has! But you managed quite well with the junk food I gave you. It was a great experience. You grow up a little that day. And perhaps, so did I as a father.

Tomorrow: A Day in Your Life

By Atanu Dey

There is something in the nature of the world that it is sometimes paradoxically more difficult to make small changes than to make big ones. Logically consistent big changes are more likely to succeed because of the interconnectedness of the world.

At times, big changes are forced on the system from external shocks which make the transition unavoidable because the old order is destroyed. It is suggested that around sixty-five million years ago, the Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction (referred to as the K-T event) where 70 percent of all living species disappeared was the result of an external shock which was delivered by a 10-km diameter chondritic asteroid slamming into the earth. That extinction destroyed the dinosaurs but cleared the land for the rise of the mammals we belong to that class. Less dramatically but more palpably, India was forced to liberalize its economy when the external shock to the system arrived in the form of an external balance of payment crisis.

India is unlikely to face an exogenous shock to the system large enough to force it to build the cities that it needs for the hundreds of millions who are currently trapped in villages. The existing cities are dying and although the situation within them is dire and unbearable, it is the result of continuous adjustment to gradually worsening conditions over a sufficiently long period. These cities will not collapse in the next few years but if if present trends continue, in a decade or so, they will be dead. It is better to consider alternative plans now rather than when the collapse eventually happens.

In this series on the need for the urbanization of India’s population, I have explored the idea of deliberately building new well-planned efficient beautiful livable cities. I am convinced that it is possible to do so even in the face of the obvious challenges that such a gigantic undertaking would entail. I believe that the resources that are required will be created during the process of building the cities.

Cities generate wealth. That is, they produce stuff. That wealth itself can be used to produce the cities that generate even more wealth. With only a relatively little amount of resources but with a lot of gumption, one can start a process a self-catalytic process which can most certainly engage the considerable talents and resources of the country. Like the vision which impelled a nation to seek political freedom, the time is high that a bold vision was outlined for the nation for economic freedom. It is time to think big because the Indian people have what it takes to make a big vision a reality. We have done it in the past over two and a half thousand years ago with cities like Harappa and Mohenjo-daro.

I conclude with the words of a great visionary and urban planner, Daniel Burnham (1846 1912).

Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty. Think big.

Continue reading TECH TALK: Creating Indias New Cities: Think Big

By Atanu Dey

It began with a simple realization that no one is as smart as we are. That is, a collection of very smart people is smarter than any one person however smart. Experts and expertise matters, and therefore amateurs and novices cannot be as good in figuring out the choices that confronted them. The collective wisdom of a group of smart people articulated a vision and an associated roadmap.

Who were they?

The best. From every field such as industry and business, development, economic growth, urban planning, resource management, science, technology, governance, finance, etc, they got the best from around India and the world. They got the most successful entrepreneurs and business tycoons to add to the group of experts. They got the most respected academics. The challenge to this group was simple: what is the best way for a large economy to transform itself given the resources available? The expert committee took their time and in one year came up with a recommendation.

How much did it cost, this bunch of experts? And why experts? Dont we know that amateurs do make amazing contributions?

That was the problem. India was stumbling around because every amateur and his brother was coming up with vision which with 2020 hindsight we can say was how shall I put it amateurish. It had become a cottage industry of sorts. Sit around, write a book, and there was the so-called vision. That changed when a few industry leaders said enough is enough. They got together and put in I think some paltry sum, I guess around $10 million to convene this panel of experts. And then they aggressively sold the goal to the country. Of course, they did not do it for altruistic reasons. They all became fabulously wealthy from the accompanying growth. But that is another story.

Surely, $10 million is not paltry?

Actually it is. If you consider that the spending was crucial in generating more than $10 trillion of wealth which would not have otherwise happened, that is what makes it paltry. Do the arithmetic.

And the recommendation was?

Like I said, cities. Transform India by building new cities designed and built using the best planning. Just by credibly committing to build these, it engaged every resource available. Recall that India was a very young country demographically. The people came from there. The capital came from everywhere. Businesses around the world realized that here was a market that the world had never seen. There was a mad rush to invest in India. On average, US$1 billion a day was the foreign direct investment for the last 10 years. India mopped up a significant part of the investment that used to flow into the US and China. So it was not just internal resources but global resources that flowed into India.

But why didnt that happen before?

India was there at the right time. The demographics were right. But until the credible commitment to actual economic growth was made, there was no reason for investors to invest in India. So when that commitment was made, it galvanized everyone. See, the thing is that wealth is created by human action. But human action is goal directed. Setting a good goal requires deep thinking, not political amateurism. If the person doing the thinking for the country is an illiterate scamster, you are in trouble.

But if skilled people put their minds together and set the agenda, then the goal is interesting enough, difficult enough, rewarding enough to channel all sorts of resources to its fulfillment. It creates it own dynamic, like a forest fire. The more it grows, the more resources it sucks out from the surrounding and grows even more. The wind feeds a forest fire while the same wind would snuff out a candle. To make use of the winds of change, we needed a forest fire, not a candle which we were protecting from the wind that far.

So how does one start a forest fire?

Tomorrow: Think Big

Continue reading TECH TALK: Creating Indias New Cities: Flashback (Part 2)

By Atanu Dey

The year is 2020. For nearly 12 years, India has seen an average annual GDP growth rate of over 12 percent more than quadrupling the per capita GDP from US$500 in 2008 to $2000, placing India in the league of middle-income economies. Stark poverty is a thing of the past. In much less than a generation, the population transitioned from being 70 percent rural to being less than 20 percent rural. Agricultural labor is only 15 percent of total labor participation, down from 60 percent in 2008. Farm incomes are six times what they used to be. The $3 trillion economy shows no signs of slowing down.

So how did this seemingly impossible transformation happen, I asked the man on the street.

The cities. I am hazy about the details but it appears that there was a change of tack. Somehow they figured that they had to think different, think big. They had been stuck in a rut created by a poverty of imagination. The problem was that there was no compelling vision to light a fire in the bellies of the hundreds of millions of people. Then somehow inexplicably they got out of the rut.

Can you be a bit more specific? What was the turning point? What did they specifically do? What made the difference? Who was responsible?

I was coming to that. Like I said it was the cities. But that was just the instrument, just the visible part of the transformation. The creation of the cities was the equivalent of the challenge to land a man on the moon. Remember all that talk about an Indian manned mission to the moon? Well, how lunatic was that? Nothing new in attempting to do in 2012 what the Americans had done over 40 years ago. Not just that, with all their trillions of dollars, the Americans themselves thought it was a pointless waste of money to keep doing manned missions to the moon. And yet, impoverished India was willing to spend a few billion dollars repeating that. I ask you, how retarded is that?

Why drag in all this talk about missions to the moon?

Actually, think about it for a second. The challenge that JFK presented to the nation was the important bit. Recall his words. Quote: We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too. Unquote. You must read that speech to get a sense of what the articulation of a real vision is all about. http://www1.jsc.nasa.gov/er/seh/ricetalk.htm

The bit about doing something not because it is easy but because it is hard is important. And the bit about choosing. The operative word is choosing you choose to do this as opposed to that. The Indians finally woke and decided to choose. It was a choice. They thought through what the options were and then made a choice to do what made the most sense. And the choice they made best organized their resources and their skills.

But tell me, how did it all begin.

Tomorrow: Flashback (continued)

Continue reading TECH TALK: Creating Indias New Cities: Flashback

By Atanu Dey

Pune DeCi is a designer city started in 2010 and completed by 2016. Just 30 kilometers outside the old city of Pune, about 100 square kilometers of land was acquired. The government of Maharashtra, the state where Pune is located, was a partner in the Pune DeCi Development Authority and had a stake of 20 percent in the project for which it supplied all the land which was basically non-prime land. Long term bonds raised the approximately $1 billion initial investment required for the first improvements.

The anchor tenants were Bharat Forge and Tata Motors. Assured that they will be able to draw their workers from the one-million strong new Pune DeCi population, they agreed to build their new modern high-capacity factories at the outskirts of the proposed city. These anchor firms were expanding their output since they anticipated that the economy would grow rapidly as new cities were being built. To build these across India, the demand for trucks and the derived demand for forgings would be high, they estimated. That pattern of increased demand for manufactured goods kept pace with the capacity building of manufacturing facilities around the new designer cities.

With the growth of the cities, demand for labor went up. The labor for construction of Pune DeCi came primarily from the agricultural sector which had become highly productive and therefore released labor in non-agricultural sectors such as services and manufacturing. The building of the city thus provided employment and the wage goods required for the labor came from the high productivity farms around. Thus even though the economy of the region was growing at a very fast rate, there was no inflation.

People started living in the new well-designed apartments in high rises located in well-planned neighborhoods littered with parks and other amenities. Pune DeCi grew rapidly as all sorts of service providers moved in, from schools to shopping arcades to banks to bakeries. Manufacturing kept pace with increased demand and thus provided sufficient incomes to the workers who were able to purchase the products of the manufacturing units. The demand for services went up. Thus demand for education provided employment to teachers, who used their incomes to buy housing and food, which provided employment to the construction industries and farmers, and so on.

It is a long story. The title of the story was Urbanization Demand Led Economic Growth. Another way to look at it is to consider it the equivalent of a Marshall Plan which the US put together at the end of the Second World War for the reconstruction of Western Europe. By aiding in the reconstruction, the US helped build capacity in Europe. But as a side-effect, it provided employment to Americans within America to supply the goods that Europe needed. And when Europe regained its feet, it was a ready market for American goods and services, and became its biggest trading partner.

India needs a Marshall Plan where the urban part helps construct cities for the rural part. In the next bit, I will explore what needs to be done for creating one.

Tomorrow: Flashback

Continue reading TECH TALK: Creating Indias New Cities: Pune DeCi

By Atanu Dey

When I first moved to the US, I was struck by the phenomenon of shopping malls located far away from the city, about an hour along some highway. Land, it occurred to me, was cheap outside the city and what they did was to build these huge malls that were in some sense islands of urban activities in the middle of rural areas.

Because of the cheap land on which the mall was built, the rents that businesses paid to locate themselves there were low. Because lots of businesses located at the mall, every business found it worthwhile to locate there. Because of the presence of so many businesses at one location, people found it worthwhile to visit even if they had to drive an hour or two. They could catch a movie, buy stuff, grab dinner, hang out and watch people, and just have a good time. Malls looked like well-planned micro-cities where people worked and did stuff but nobody actually lived there. Malls were made possible because people had cars to drive to them.

Malls come in different sizes in the US. There is the Great Mall of America, for instance, along interstate 880 in the SF Bay Area, occupying a few hundred acres. Then you have the humongous mall in Nevada occupying thousands of acres better known as Las Vegas. The general pattern is straightforward. Some developer buys a large tract of land, gets into agreements with a few anchor stores such as JC Penny or Macys, builds the mall, and the rest of the stores and other service providers such as fast food restaurants and movie theatres follow dutifully. In the case of Las Vegas, the anchor stores are the casinos and hotels. It is important to recognize that malls, large and small, are micro-cities whose economy is entirely service based, not based on manufacturing or agricultural production. But there is absolutely no reason that you cannot use the same micro-city model and blow it up to the size of a city and base the economy of the city a combination of manufacturing and services.

The basic model is simple. First, acquire a sufficiently large piece of cheap land. Second, make improvements on it such as adding utilities, roads and buildings. Third, get a few big commercial interests to locate themselves on this land. Finally, sell or rent subdivisions of the improved land to whoever wants it at such a price that you internalize the positive externalities you created by improving the land and coordinating the co-location of numerous businesses on the property. The profits made by the developer accounts for only a small fraction of the total wealth created by the process.

The same process can be followed for creating the designer cities that India needs by the hundreds. Briefly, a sufficiently large, perhaps 10 kilometer square, cheap land is acquired by a developer. The developer could be a public-private consortium. The developer then persuades some anchor tenants sufficiently large to give credibility to the later arrivals that this will be a going concern. Improvements on the land are begun and as the work proceeds stage by stage, smaller bits are sold off to interested parties to pay for the on-going improvements on the land.

In the next bit, lets explore this a bit more with a hypothetical example.

Tomorrow: Pune DeCi

Continue reading TECH TALK: Creating Indias New Cities: Land