The two Ls

IIM results are out and I guessed it right.

I had talked about my performance and the results have been very much different atleast relatively. So, the results are

IIMA – No
IIMB – No
IIMC – No
IIML – Yes.

IIMK and IIMI results are not out but I am damn concerned. What I now have to select is from the Ls. So, it would either be L (as in IIML) or L (as in Lehman Brothers).

Yes, I am disappointed at not clearing into one of the top 3 IIMs. I expected to crack atleast one. But then God has his own way. In the first place, no one had expected me to clear the first phase of the selection process but then God had his plans. So, though I am sad but I know that someone is in charge and I believe he has the best intentions for me. As Amitabh Bachchan has said,

“What happens as per your wish is good, but things which does not happen as above is more than good”

Though in the coming few weeks there would be much discussion about the pros and cons of the two Ls, at present I think Lehman should be the way to go. Any suggestions?

Conspiracy or Conspiracy theory

With every major event, people assign more than one conspiracy theories. Sometimes the evidences given for these theories are so compelling that one is bound to think along those directions. The evidences and doubts raised have the entire responsibility of taking the conspiracy theory to a conspiracy.

A famous conspiracy theory is about the possibility that we have still not landed on the moon and it was just an effort by NASA to show its space supremacy and that the world audience was actually bluffed. The BBC documentary ‘Did we land on the moon?’ has been widely watched and according to some estimates 25% of the US population believes in the conspiracy theory. However, a much smaller proportion of the rest of the world’s population has a similar belief.

Saddam Hussein has been captured by the US army. I believe he had intentionally made himself available to the US army. I am not trying to initiate another theory – many are already going around. But a look at his lifestyle and actions before and after the capture might seem indicative.

Saddam had lived a life of luxury before the US set its eyes on Iraq. He had been doing anything and everything he liked. But after the US invasion, he had to flee. He could not sustain his old methods of life – he may have had the money to do so. So, when he saw that there was no use of fighting with the US and that nothing much would go his way from that point on, he decided to give up.

But surrendering would go against his very nature and also the respect of the few men he still enjoyed would have been quashed. So, it was better to change the means as long as the same ends are achieved. He leaked information about himself and was caught in a scenario where everybody would believe that he was indeed trying to hide.

And after getting captured he knew that he cannot be directly given any sentence but a formal court proceeding would be mandatory. The same thing happened. After some initial delay, various charges were levied against him and he was to defend those in a court.

In the court, Saddam does whatever he wants. He tells the lawyers, judges that the court and they themselves do not have the authority to prosecute him. He calls on his Allah and criticizes everyone from US to UK to the court itself. Saddam wants always to be in the news. So, he knows that his hunger strike would be flashed in every arm of the media across the globe. By talking in the court, he can take his voice to those people with whom he could not have made any contact if he had not been caught.

Iraq is on the verge of civil war or as some would argue in the middle of it. Every day atleast 5 to 6 bombs explode and atleast 20 to 25 people die. Who are behind these bombings? Aren’t these the same people who had earlier been under Saddam and been doing his ‘work’? Saddam directs them and they act accordingly.

Finally, recently an Iraqi lady’s blog has won various literary prizes.
She had started her first post as

“A little bit about myself: I'm female, Iraqi and 24. I survived the war. That's all you need to know. It's all that matters these days anyway.”

A Cleansing Service

I was away for the extended weekend at my aunt’s place. One news which I got was that there had been a marriage proposal for me. I had mentioned about my eligibility but to get a proposal is flattering. The news had been concealed from me by all my relatives and my parents for they were worried that I might go out of control. But finally I got the news and accompanying was a lot of leg pulling by my cousin brothers and sisters.

I do realize that the proposal is not for me but for the B.Tech degree in Computer Science which I am hopefully completing this May. With this degree what you require is just a decent face and then a proposal would follow from any family. Obviously the family should satisfy two conditions, namely, there should be a girl of marriageable age in the family and that the family knows the value of the degree.

Enough of marriage talks. My uncle – whom I visited - has bought a new laptop. The laptop is mainly for the use of my younger cousins. Though it had the good old Microsoft Windows as the operating system, the browser was something that I was surprised of. It had both Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. Considering that no one in their family is very tech savvy, I consider it a major achievement for Firefox. Also, though my cousins did not know of all the advantages of Firefox, yet that was their choice for the web.

When I returned to my home, a cleansing spree was awaiting. The cleansing spree was more of removing unwanted materials from the house including books, clothes etc. which were taking up a lot of space. No one remembered when these were used last, if ever. All the members of the family were thinking of newer and newer areas which could be covered in the house for removal of older and unused materials.

After that, came the hunt for people who could actually make use of these products. People do not want to throw all the things. They like to give it to “less fortunate” ones even if the first thing that the latter do is to throw the things. The latter cannot say ‘no’ to the former, or rather the former do not like to hear a ‘no’ from the latter. So, the above procedure works for everyone.

For things like old books, magazines etc, you need persons professionally employed to handle these things. I am talking about the guy who takes your newspapers and pays you by the kilo. The day being Sunday, we had not much of a problem finding such a person. However, he cleared only the paper stuff from the house. Other things like cloth etc were still awaiting their new fate.

I am a firm believer in such kind of activities of cleaning houses of things which are not required. But people do not tend to involve me in these activities for sometimes I get various anxious at such kind of events. I am of the view that if an item has not been used for say, 5 years and is only probable to be used once in a blue moon, then it belongs to the category of things which need to be shown the door. The duration may change depending on the item.

Finally, an integrated service which helps in these activities in homes would be not a bad idea. The unwanted things which need to be thrown out and which people find difficult to part with are almost the same – old magazines, plethora of books for which a separate book is required for indexing, old clothes, small electronic items etc etc. What the people fail to realize is that these days it is preferred to buy new items instead of re-engineering old ones. The integrated service needs to be given some authority when it enters a home. The service should also consist of buying of all these materials at reasonable prices so that they could be disposed off then and there and the materials do not end up staying in the houses to be found again in another such cleansing spree after two years.

Oiling the Markets

I received various complaints, especially from fellow IITians, regarding my mentioning IIT Delhi as the 4^th best of the IITs. This came rather as a shock to me. I thought that it was kind of well known. However, now I know that it is not and I welcome arguments from people who so not believe this. I think people would agree that IIT Bombay and IIT Kanpur are better though some may have problems with the claimed superiority of IIT Chennai.

We all have heard of the rise of the Indian stock exchanges which is refraining from stopping atleast in the near future. The BSE Sensex has crossed the Dow Jones which like a benchmark index in the US. Another important statistic not very well publicized is that the m-cap of the entire BSE 500 index pole-vaulted from Rs 15,79,802 crore as on March 31 2005 to Rs 26,56,913 crore in March 2006. At the same time, India’s GDP, which was at Rs 23,93,671 crore at factor cost for 2004-2005 is estimated to grow to Rs 25,87,558 crore assuming an 8.1% GDP growth rate for 2005-06. Considering the above figures the m-cap (BSE 500) to GDP ratio, too, has improved from 0.65 to 1.02.

So, now the money involved in the stock markets of India is greater the GDP of the country. I do not know what to infer, but as a layman I feel that the markets are atleast a little overvalued. The Price to Earnings ratio of the markets is also around 20, not a good sign at all.

Continuing with economics, these days the entire economics of a country vests on one commodity. Yes, you guessed it right, it is oil. A good place to get started on this topic would be my friend's post. The prices of oil are increasing everyday. There was a time when the prices would hover around 28$ a barrel of oil (1 barrel of oil = approx 159 litres). Now, it has not gone below 60$ for quite some time and even manages to touch 70$ once in a while.

Previously the production of oil by the major oil producing countries was conditioned in a way to keep the prices stable. These days the conditioning (read, cutting of production) is done so that the prices only go in one direction (read, up). Everyone has realized not only the importance of this commodity which is set to become more important than even water but also that it is depleting at a rate where we may have to do without it maybe tomorrow.

Though the common man is feeling the pinch with the ever escalating prices of petrol, diesel and kerosene and with the accompanying increase in the prices of all products; the pinch would be the greatest once the commodity is no longer available. Recently, I was in our car with my cousin brother on my way to a pool joint and half way down the car refused to move even a bit. Thankfully, we were not very far from our house; But that may not be the case when we utilize the last drop of the commodity assigned in our quota.

The Four Factor

My previous post received a lot of attention with people thinking that I was actually going for marriage. I want to make it clear that though there are no proposals as of now, I am definitely open to them. Also, I have promised my friends that I would be the first one to get married from our group. So for fulfilling that promise I am of the view that it is high time and I should start looking for someone.

Further, various IIMs have increased their fees. Now that is certainly bad news for me and other IIM aspirants. But there is hope since IIML has not increased it yet but is being speculated to follow suit before June. Though at this point of time, I am not sure if I would like to go to IIML but you never know. IIML being the 4th best IIM actually increases its chances of having me as a student. Why is this so?

Consider this. In Maharashtra, after the secondary examination (X standard), we have to take admission in a junior college for the higher secondary examination (XII standard). After my secondary examination results, I was so confident that I purchased the forms of only the top 3 colleges for admission. Only when my father insisted, I purchased the form for the 4th best college thinking of it as a waste of money and effort. Guess what; I ended up in the 4th best college since other colleges did not offer to me Computers as a vocational subject (which I wanted to take) given my ‘low’ percentage.

After that, I prepared for IIT-JEE and secured a decent rank. But the rank was not good enough for getting a seat in the Computer Science stream at what most would argue are the top 3 IITs. So, I had to be satisfied with the 4th best IIT i.e. IIT Delhi (Though various surveys have shown IIT Delhi to be the best, I and other IITians would tell you the real rankings).

Given this, I think IIML may be the one. I hope the 4 factor is not repeated but then I would have liked to hope the same before.

Now for some things, I doubt you would hear/read anywhere else on the web. Firstly, do you know the highest rated movie at the Internet Movie Database? It is Gunda. At the time of writing of this post, the rating was 9.9/10. Some time back it was a perfect 10/10 but some unscrupulous (or rather scrupulous) elements did not like that.

People preparing for IIT entrance examination would know of FIITJEE, which is a coaching centre with branches all round the country. However, what they would not know is that the mock tests’ papers, which are taken by the coaching centre, are actually not checked by teachers of the coaching centre. These could be checked by anybody. The coaching centre gives some money per paper checked and so various IITians try to redeem the benefits. But then we have a concept called greed. So, people try to check these papers as fast as possible so that maximum amount of papers (and hence maximum amount of money) can be checked in the smallest amount of time. At that time they do not think of the aspirants who have given these mock tests and are hoping to get a good measure of their performance with the help of the marks in these tests.

Marriage on my mind

So, I went to this engagement ceremony that day. It was for the same person, my cousin uncle Mr. AG, I have mentioned in some previous posts. Though he was not able to awe us by his presence, the ceremony went on very well. I was kind of a heavy weight, representing my family who is in Mumbai and cannot attend the function.

But the good news did not end there. Now, I was officially the next boy in the family who would be married. This eligibility was on the basis of my age (apart form my pleasant personality and a list of other traits too long to be mentioned in a single post). Mr. AG is the last of my uncles to get married and along with his; the series of marriages would end for my previous generation. Also, I have an elder cousin brother, who is around 32 and already married. Now, it is upto me to marry and help in the proliferation of our family.

It feels nice. At this moment, I have the control to even direct the course of other people’s lives. Till the time I marry, my younger brothers can only wait. After the ceremony, I was told that many people were asking about me. My aunt who did the honours (of introducing me) was also excited about this fact. I was introduced to the bride’s mother and she enquired about my education. I felt she was quite inspired and that the eligibility part might have easily struck her. After that I saw her talking to her relatives. I am quite sure the talks were about me as the relatives were definitely looking at me during the conversation (See the disclosure).

I wonder, if I should start looking for girls who would like to marry me. But going by the large expected number of such girls, maybe finding those who would not like to marry me would be easier.

I have chalked out a plan. The first thing I am doing is to make the announcement through this blog in the form of this post. Second, I would register with a number of matrimonial sites and upload my bio-data (i.e. what they call your resume in the matrimonial world) so that the girls and their families can find me and start enquiring. Third and the most important would be to tell every relative that I am considering the thought of marriage and that it would be nice if they could find a perfect match for me.

I also wonder if I am lucky like Irfan Pathan and girls have already started chasing me. Or whether my aunt, who has played a pretty important role in the bride selection process for Mr. AG, has already started work on this project of mine as well.

Disclosure: I may have exaggerated some of the events that occurred.

Stamp of IIT, IIM

There have been some comments about my previous post being not very articulate. I am trying to work on that and would be more than happy to get your suggestions on this issue if you too feel the same.

There have been two reports related to IIT (my current alma mater) and IIM (my expected future alma mater). Firstly, the issue was if IITians should vie for IIMs and the second was regarding the much talked about reservation issue in educational institutions especially IIT and IIM.

IITians looking to join IIMs, and for that matter other top B-schools, should not be looked at with skepticism since it is their choice and their wish. Arguing that they are taking up someone else’s position and quashing other people’s dreams lacks maturity. If this is the case, everybody should move hand in hand with everyone else and there should be no hierarchy of any kind. Everyone should have equal salary, equal status etc.

If a person performs well and is promoted once in his life then that is it. Promoting someone a second time would actually be quashing the dream of someone else. All employers should definitely not look forward to employ from IITs or IIMs since the positions being offered can be helpful for students of local colleges. Infact the government should not provide any funds to the IITs or IIMs since they have already developed and it is now the turn of other local colleges to catch up. Even if this means, the former institutions taking a step backward, it would be good since equity can be achieved faster between the former and the latter.

Talking about reservations, we have already achieved a stage where the word ‘GENERAL’ has lost its meaning completely and is being specifically targeted. Every reservation happens on the cost of this dreaded ‘GENERAL’ category. Even the topper of some exam from this category has to ensure that he has some other option to fall back on, if after sometime he is made to realize that he does not stand a chance.

On a lighter note, recently while reading the newspaper, I came across a rather interesting suggestion which could be a boost the advertising world even further. How about using stamps for emails! The stamps would obviously be free; otherwise there is little scope for any progress on the issue. The users can customize their stamps. They can choose from a variety of size and shapes as well as the content. The content can either be companies willing to put their advertisements in the form of stamps or maybe some messages in the interest of the public from the government or other world bodies like Red Cross. The email service providers can charge companies for each stamp and thus open another source of revenue.

This would also give kind of a real and traditional look to the mails.

P.S.: You may say that I composed the post such that I get a good title.

Drink, Drink till you Sink

Some believe that India is a poor country in terms of the money the people have. Yet what we do with the little money which we have is far from being commendable. We have traditionally considered giving water and quenching someone’s thirst as an honour and a virtue. However, now that we are progressing, it is not very far when we completely get rid of these feelings.

Consider this; India consumes 1.4 billion gallons of bottled water per year i.e. 5.299 billion litres of bottled water. Assuming the prevalent price of Rs 10 per litre of bottled water, the total amounts to an outflow of Rs 52.99 billion or Rs 5299 crore or $1.19 billion from the consumers’ pockets. The trend has become so much prevalent that even ordinary restaurants have started asking their customers if they would prefer ‘normal’ or ‘mineral’ water.

Adding to all this we have the consumption of soft drinks increasing at a rate unmatched in the entire world. This again is mainly water with ingredients which, though are not completely disclosed, but have been talked out at length. If you consider the outflow corresponding to this industry then you might change your perception of India as a poor country. Also, at Rs 10 per 300ml this water is more costly than diesel in many states of the country.

Also, there is a perception that Indians are one of the most intelligent human beings. Consider this; the soft drinks sales do not drop even when it is confirmed in the laboratories that they contain pesticides and other chemicals which would be harmful for the body. We are indifferent to the proved allegations regarding the consumption of the country’s ground water reserves, which are as it is scanty for the population, by these companies. We do not care about the price at which we get the soft drink even after knowing the fact that it costs the company only Rs 0.70 for a 300ml bottle.

From childhood, we have been taught that we take in oxygen and leave carbon dioxide. Also, how active deforestation is harming, apart from other things, the availability of oxygen and how the percentage of carbon dioxide is increasing in the atmosphere. Yet, here we are consuming soft drinks which are nothing but water with carbon dioxide and some other harmful chemicals pumped in.

Also, now-a-days everyone is health conscious and tries to avoid sweets or anything that would be fattening. But they cannot say no to a soft drink which constitutes of 10 teaspoons of sugar, if not more, per 300ml.

Finally, I personally like soft drinks as would you but I wonder, considering all the things if it is a good idea to drink one.

Nationalism and Communalism

I did not post yesterday and was sad because though I had the time for the same, somehow I managed to skip. Recently, I have been getting so much content to post that it kind of stacks up if you do not post regularly.

French President recently walked out of an European Union summit after a French business leader abandoned his mother tongue. Now that was bold but probably not against the prevalent attitude of the world governments. We have various recent events which show nationalism being the prominent feeling even in this age where widespread globalization is being claimed.

We have the US Congress opposing the control of their ports by a Dubai based company. The Luxembourg, France and other governments opposing a takeover bid for a company, in which they have a stake, by an Indian business tycoon.

Though the French President’s behaviour is a little outrageous, he is not alone. And I do not consider these feelings to be unjust in any way if they do not criticize other people who are in the same boat or do not try to propagate the opposite feelings if it suits them.

So, I have no problem if the US and the EU keep providing subsidies to their farmers but I do have a problem if they oppose a similar venture by the Indian government in the name of globalization and free trade.

These feelings many a times also extend to communalism. So, we have some papers ready to mock at other religions but not that of the religion of the people of their country. But before looking outside, I should first reflect within India i.e. my country. And I would find almost equal, if not much more, to speak.

Everywhere around me, I see people following the same path that I have condemned above. So, if you speak Hindi, which is my mother tongue as is of the majority in India, you are considered not that sophisticated. Watching Hollywood movies is fashion and criticizing them reflects your lower taste. Opposing the foreign channels, which are promoting values opposed to those proposed by our traditions, is taken as an act of naivety. And if government brings in a law to curb forceful conversion of religion or a law banning cow slaughter, which is taboo for Hindus, it is considered as an act of communalism.

To sum it all, this is what an article at Wikipedia has to say

“Thus, in India, there exists a peculiar situation where the opponents of a secular law are called "Secularists" while those in favour of a secular law are termed "communalists" or even "fascists"”

Statistics everywhere

For the past few days, I have been bombarded with statistics.

Firstly, we received a mail from one of the professors of our department that the proxy access provided to us is being used for stuff which severely deteriorates the performance of the server resulting in extremely slow access speeds for everyone (the technical reason for the same was that the server runs out of file descriptors). As such, three users were barred from using their accounts.

After sometime we received a mail from someone else who wanted written applications from 20 students. These were the top 20 students whose accounts have seen the maximum activity. They were to explain why such a thing was happening. One of them was a guy from our group. The mail contained a link to a page giving all the statistics regarding the proxy usage for this month with details about the hits, the files and the Kbytes in question. It contained bar graphs and pie charts as well as the top sites being visited.

One strange thing (as I see it) is that Wikipedia was not present in the top sites being visited. I myself am an avid user of the same (as you might have noticed from the links in my post) and if it were the statistics of the sites I visit, Wikipedia would have been the clear winner.

So, a little depressed, I open the main page of the site. As if it had responded, the site’s main page had undergone a change for good. There was colours and categorization and yes, statistics. So, I moved on to the Statistics page to see what was in store for me. What I saw, I am quoting here:

“Wikipedia currently has 1,040,724 articles.

That number excludes redirects, discussion pages, image description pages, user profile pages, templates, help pages, portals, articles without links to other articles, and pages about Wikipedia. Including these, we have 3,709,474 pages. We have 399,806 uploaded files.

Users have made 46,789,105 edits, an average of 12.61 per page, since July 2002.

We have 1,133,674 registered user accounts, of which 855 (or 0.08%) belong to administrators.”

There were other charts and tables. And I was again confident that sooner, if not already, it would be the most visited site.

Criminals reduced and debt incurred

The effect of my last post was quite evident.

Firstly, the efforts put in by my relatives for marriage of my cousin uncle gave fruit and his marriage has been fixed. The dates are not yet decided but the bride is. Secondly, the idea of surrender and get paid put forward by Mr. Nitish Kumar was kind of successful with over 200 criminals surrendering with few days of the announcement. The surrender and rehabilitation package would be worth Rs 200,000 for each person, of which 25 percent would be government aid and the rest would be an easy loan to them. This includes housing, land and education. Also, special courts are being set up for speedy disposal of the pending cases against these former criminals.

Also, today was my last IIM interview (namely, IIMB). I would like to make a summary of how all the group discussions (GD) and personal interviews (PI) went. Lets see if all these match with the final calls I receive, if any.

	IIMA	IIMB	IIMC	IIML	IIMK	IIMI
GD	<>	> OK	OK	OK	BAD	OK
PI	OK	BAD	> OK	<>	BAD	OK

Note: (BAD) is less than (<>

Finally, some facts which people can find informative and useful.

Did you know that the "Big Apple" is a nickname for New York City? Its popularity since the 1970s is due to a promotional campaign by the New York Convention and Visitor's Bureau. Its earlier origins are less clear.

Stop yawning for this one is interesting. Every Indian owes Rs 30,000 (674$ approx). This is on account of the total debt taken by the Indian government which is more than Rs 30 trillion. And we are not backing in any way. In the last year itself India’s debt increased by around Rs 1.5 trillion. When I heard it I too was quite surprised for I knew the figure was around Rs 10000 per person but did not knew it has reached Rs 30000. Also, one important thing to note is that the GDP per capita of India is 622$ (less than the loan per person). So, if the entire value of goods and services produced in an year within India were to be made available for loan payment, we would not be able to repay the loan completely.

Marry and reduce crime

My last weekend was entirely devoted to match making. It all started with my cousin uncle (but I consider him my elder brother, due to the small age difference) flying back from the US to have the traditional match making session for himself. He was to meet a few to-be-brides before he again left flew from where he came. One of the girls was, selected would be presumptuous, found by himself through the net (through some matrimonial site, I suppose. I wonder how much the scope and reach of these sites have increased in recent times). After all the meetings and the much more lengthy discussions (of which I was not a part of as it has been traditionally restricted to the elders) the girl mentioned above has been chosen to take the process further. However, discussions are on as there were some differences on the dates of marriage etc. It is worth mentioning that my elder brother is an IITian and is currently doing his MS and as such, no girl’s family would like to leave such an opportunity (Not that I am boasting about my family, but that is how we are. You will get one of us when you search millions … may be more).

Now for some current affairs.

Mr. Nitish Kumar has come up with a good (I do not know if it is novel) idea of reducing, or at best removing crime from his state of Bihar. He has offered cash to all criminals surrendering. Also he has offered varied amounts of cash for the weapons that they bring along. These offers are a good opportunity for the criminals. It may not only lead to surrenders but the criminals would want to bring along large number of weapons as well to fully cash on the offer. I have always believed that the people from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar are the most intelligent in India. Also, Indians are considered the most intelligent people in the world and so that make these people the most intelligent in the world. Look at Mr. Laloo Prasad Yadav. He and his family combined has ruled Bihar for nearly 15 years. He has managed to create such an aura for himself that the situation is that if an Indian citizen knows the name of just one politician then it has to be him. One may not remember the Prime Minister, the President but one definitely will remember him. Going back, what the people of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar lack is direction. And such an offer plans to provide one. The plan can easily be extended to other states so that the benefits can be reaped.

Also, there was news regarding Mr. Jaswant Singh, who has been the Finance Minister of India recently, being made a professor at UK’s University of Warwick. The accompanying announcement described him as a man of tremendous experience. This is a good precedence which could be followed by Indian Universities and Institutions. We have various people like Mr. Jaswant Singh of valuable experience and knowledge. These people would be ready to share these with the students who could make ample use of them. Before these mighty personalities start being ‘drained’ towards other countries, we need to be proactive and retain them. Mr. Jaswant Singh teaching a course in Finance in one of the IIMs would not be that of a bad option. As such, other personalities like economists, ex-military personnel, people from industry etc. can take up such positions. Not only would students be inspired by their presence but it would be a good exercise for the entire country.