Desicritics Category: BizTech: Globalization

Tarbela Dam & Karkoram Highway Threatened in Pakistan

C N Anand — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 01:09:57 EST

In 1840, upstream of the Indus, in the Shyok tributary, an ice bridge collapsed to form a dam resulting in the creation of a lake 19 Kms long, 800 meters wide, and 120 meters deep. When the dam breached, a 20 meter high wall of water and mud barreled down the gorges of the Indus, and burst into the plains at Tarbela, and reached Attock in two days time. The massive flash flood of mud devastated the Sikh army camping on the banks of the Indus near Attock! History would have taken a different course if the Sikh army had not been devastated!

In 1858, a similar landslide on the Hunza river (tributary of the Indus) created a reservoir. This also burst. Cultivated land was scoured out and villages flattened. When the flood waters reached the confluence of the Kabul river and the Indus, a reverse flow up the Kabul river, up to 50 kms, was created.

Coming to very recent times, two months ago, on 04 January, 2010, a portion of a mountain gave way to block the Hunza river at Atabad, in the Gilgit-Baltistan area. After hitting the lowest portion of the valley, the land-slide climbed up the opposite hill side and damaged the Karakoram Highway (KKH). Trade with China on the KKH remains disrupted since then. Fortunately, the water flow in the river is low in January, but the flow picks up as temperature rises and snow starts melting. By 27 February, 43 days after the landslide, the longest Bridge over the Hunza, 11 Kms upstream of the landslide area, got submerged. The water level is expected to rise another 30 meters above the bridge. The Karkoram Highway hugs the banks of the Indus and Hunza, crossing over at regular intervals to the opposite bank and back on bridges. Upstream of Atabad, the KKH is now submerged for a length of 15 Kms.

The final size of the lake is expected to be bigger than the lakes formed in 1840 and 1858.

The block in the valley at Atabad is long but narrow like the cork of a champagne bottle. It is 3000 meters long along the valley, and 200 meters wide. On top of the block, earth moving equipment has been placed to doze down the height to meet the rising waters at the earliest. The narrowness of the block restricts the number of dozers that can be deployed. Snow melt and water seepage has made the top of the earth block slushy and boggy, hindering the functioning of the earth moving equipment. The water flow is increasing day by day as temperature rises, resulting in the water level rising faster. In the race against time, the Pakistani engineers seem to be loosing. When the water level reaches the top of the landslide and starts spilling over, erosion will occur. Hopefully, the dam will be washed out slowly and not burst.

The difference between the earlier two situations of 1841 and 1858 and now is that Pakistan has created a lot of assets in the form of the Karkoram Highway (KKH) with many bridges, and the world's largest earth and rock-fill dam, the Tarbela dam. If the dam at Atabad bursts, the wall of mud will rip the KKH along the entire length of the Hunza and the Indus, till Tarbela. Bridges will be devastated. If the Tarbela reservoir is at the dead level as it is now, the wall of mud will push the sand delta over to overwhelm the off take tunnels, and clog up the turbines. The Tarbela dam will have to be written off, which will spell economic disaster to Pakistan.

Pakistan is advised to stop letting out water at the Tarbela dam immediately, and store water to a height of 30 meters above the dead level. The cushion of water in the reservoir will absorb the wall of mud well upstream of the dam and not allow the existing delta to be nudged forward and spill. The catch is that the Rabi crop will have to be allowed to wither away. Unfortunately, Pakistan is facing a drought.

The question that should be boggling every Indian's mind is how can India help? In the impending chaos, what will happen to the nukes? How will China be effected? Will history take another wrenching turn?

IT Outsourcing Can Actually Increase a Firm's IT Spend

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Sat, 6 Mar 2010 17:40:55 EST

I have learnt the hard way that trying to outsource on the basis of “manage my mess for less” is a sure fire way of crashing and burning at worst and being more expensive at best. Anything that is crucial to your firm’s success, you do not outsource. In other words, only outsource which is a commodity and it is easy to switch suppliers such as perhaps storage management, electricity supplies, sewage, catering, cleaning, etc.

Lo and Behold, here’s a paper which provides some more data to back up the idea that outsourcing actually pushes up your costs. The data used is crucial and I quote:

ITOS and IT spending data were obtained from InformationWeek magazine, a weekly print magazine aimed at business technology professionals. Since 1991, InformationWeek has conducted annual surveys to gather current year IT budgets from a variety of the largest US public and private firms and government entities that use IT. It has supplemented this with firms demonstrating innovative use of IT. In 1999, InformationWeek began asking firms what percentage of their IT spending is outsourced. InformationWeek recently provided the additional firm-level data for the 1998 to 2005 time period for this study with strict disclosure restrictions on the authors precluding the sharing of specific firm responses. Data are used from respondents who provided both IT spending and ITOS information for one or more years between 1999 and 2005. Observations for non-public firms were eliminated and merged with corresponding Compustat financial data to calculate the various control variables shown to affect IT budget levels in Kobelsky et al. (2008b). This reduced the overall sample to 1959 firm-year observations for 647 firms in the period 1999 to 2005

The model comprises of variables:

• itb/sls = firm IT budget for each year per InformationWeek data divided by sales for that year (Compustat data12);

• itos dummy = 1 if IT outsourcing percentage per InformationWeek data is positive in Current Year, 0 if not;

• size = log of Current Year sales;

• ind_conc_ratio = four-firm concentration ratio for four-digit SIC;

• uncertainty = standard deviation of earnings before extraordinary items for previous 5 years scaled by sales;

• rel_divers = related diversification (within 2 digit SICs);

• unrel_divers = unrelated diversification (across 2 digit SICs);

• op_ros = operating return on sales, before depreciation (compustat data13/data12);

• debt_ratio = debt ratio (Compustat data9/data6);

• ave_sales_growth = average sales growth for last two years;

• automate = 1 for firms in automate industries, 0 otherwise;

• transform = 1 for firms in transform industries, 0 otherwise;

• hi_tech = 1 if high-tech firm, 0 otherwise

• lo_tech = 1 if low-tech firm, 0 otherwise.

• year = 1 for each year 2000-2005, 0 otherwise.

90% of the sample companies partake of outsourcing some or all of their IT activities. The authors find that while on a project level, they might see a reduction in the IT costs and spend, on an aggregate firm level, the IT spend actually goes up. Note that they do control for scope and volume changes by looking at the sales growth. Within two years of outsourcing, the IT cost level of firms who have outsourced is correspondingly higher than firms which have not outsourced. While the authors suggest that this is because of capabilities are enhanced, I have my doubts. One cannot improve IT capabilities in 2 years, it is simply not possible to evolve the business and IT side so quickly that a statistically significant improvement in productivity and quality can be observed. It is, in my opinion, clearly aimed at the fact that the business case is frankly wrongly specified and outsourcing doesnt really help as far as cost control is concerned.

Business cases are rarely expressed in terms of ratio’s, in other words, you will very rarely find that the managers concerned or the IT outsourcing firm are quoting you IT costs as a ratio to say the sales revenue or operating costs or profits of the firm. This is why I am very nervous whenever I hear that outsourcing is happening which is going to drive down costs.

There is a good argument to outsource to improve efficiencies, drive a centre of excellence, to improve productivity, but for cost purposes, the figures do not bear out the benefits.

Free Countries and Lower Cost of Debt

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 20:11:58 EST

Now here’s an interesting research paper which popped into my inbox. In short, the more the political rights, the more free the country, the level of property rights, free and fair elections, competitive political parties, important role played by opposition, minority group rights, a system of checks and balances across the legislature, judiciary and executive, etc, the lower are the costs of debt. To be precise, a one standard deviation in political rights is equivalent to an 18.6% decline in bond spreads. Now that is a serious chunk of change. The authors concentrate on Eurobonds and come up with the following main countries within their study: USA (799 issues), Japan (231 issues), Australia (214 issues), Germany (213 issues), and the U.K. (180 issues). India is also there which surprised me because the Indian bond market is generally anaemic but then the Eurobond market is slightly different. So what are the correlations like? Some very interesting results pop up:

	Log yield spread	Bond rating
Log yield spread	1
Bond rating	-0.65	1
Political rights	-0.25	0.3
SPI	0.08	-0.18
Freedom of the press	-0.31	0.37
Corruption	0.39	-0.46
Expropriation	0.33	-0.39
Creditor rights	-0.09	0.16
Log GDP/capita	-0.24	0.33
Sovereign rating	-0.34	0.42
Cross-list	0.03	0.02
Log total assets	-0.34	0.47
ROA	-0.13	0.06
Leverage	0.06	-0.05
Public	-0.46	0.48
Floating	0	0.08

Not going to go too deep into the analysis of each factor to each other and please bear in mind that correlations do not mean causality. But interesting results none the less. One can do couple of PhD's just on this :)

The researchers then do some rather complicated regression testing. One of their regressions is to analyse the joint impact of creditor rights and political rights on the bond yield spread. This is what they find out.

Pretty stunning visual results, eh? reduce the political and creditor rights and the surface starts to peak. And the gradient is pretty smooth, no lumps or bruises or troughs or peaks. The authors go about doing much more in terms of determining firm level impacts, checking cross listing implications, and other confusing things to me. So I am going to ignore them as the basic answer seems to be pretty clear. I quote 1 paragraph from their paper:

This paper examines the impact of country-level political rights on credit markets while controlling for legal institutions. Higher political rights are associated with significantly higher ratings and lower spreads for corporate bonds issued in both the Eurobond and the Yankee bond markets. A one standard deviation change in political rights is associated with an 18.6% decline in yield spreads on average; political rights impact international debt markets as much as creditor rights. We find that the interaction term between political rights and creditor rights is positively associated with yield spreads, thus, political rights and creditor rights partially act as substitutes.

We also consider the channels by which political rights impact bond markets. Freedom of the press appears to capture much of the effects of political rights, suggesting that part of the advantage of political freedom to credit markets may be due to greater information availability. Socio-political instability in the 25 years prior to the bond issue impacts the cost of debt, but does not capture the effects of political rights, suggesting that political rights are more important as a forward-looking measure of bondholder risk. Corruption and expropriation risk are also priced in bond yields; however, the effects of these variables appear to be more independent of political rights.

Now here’s the interesting take which I took away. Now that firms are becoming more and more globally footloose and capital becoming more and more aggressive, it is but natural that people will try to move these types of firms to countries which have more political rights so as to raise cheaper finance. On the other hand, think about what governments go about doing. They actually give tax benefits and a whole host of other benefits to attract FDI and capital. Here’s a silly thought. Instead of going about offering these kinds of tax breaks, why not try to improve the political rights? That will kill two birds with one stone, improve the society as well as attract firms. Neato, no?

Making Universities Independent Makes Them More Productive

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 04:47:27 EST

Universities are usually under very tight control of the governments, which is a shame and is of a comparatively recent origin. From a historical perspective, universities were independent bodies, privately funded, and having high standards. Ever since we ended up having education, specially tertiary education, as an element of state policy, the universities have become tied to the government purse strings, which frankly sucks.

Recently, the UK announced cuts of up to $500 million. Broadly, this just continues a tradition of poking their noses into something that should be left independent and to their own devices. Why on earth would a government desire to tie up the independence of universities? I dont understand this, but because of this behaviour, quality has dipped, many subjects are no longer taught, core sciences get hammered and generally the universities are a pit. And because of this, the output suffers.

I have seen similar situations in USA, in mainland Europe and of course in India. The case of India is really shameful, between the UGC and the other accrediting institutions, they have stopped the growth of universities. While the funding aspect is important, just see the difference between institutions which are independently managed (IIM’s, ISB, IIT’s etc.) and compare that to where everything is government controlled. Having been inside one of these jails, it's highly surprising that any kind of research emerges. Forget about teaching, which is pathetic anyway. Just think about it. If we had managed to make our universities independent post WWII, we would have had sixty years of more research from two generations, more papers, more patents, more discoveries, more improvement of humankind and advancement of human knowledge from independent universities. So that's the opportunity cost that we are paying for the governments control of the universities. And then we want all to be knowledge societies The shameful thing is that because of this stranglehold, we have missed out on so much productivity. And that’s criminal - to actually kill off so much research which could have helped our lives to become so much better.

Here’s an interesting research paper and its abstract.

We test the hypothesis that universities are more productive when they are both more autonomous and face more competition. Using survey data, we construct indices of university autonomy and competition for both Europe and the United States. We show that there are strong positive correlations between these indices and multiple measures of university output. To obtain causal evidence, we investigate exogenous shocks to US universities' expenditures over three decades. These shocks arise through the political appointment process, which we use to generate instrumental variables. We find that an exogenous increase in a university's expenditure generates more output, measured by either patents or publications, if the university is more autonomous and faces more competition. Exploiting variation over time in the 'stakes' of competitions for US federal research grants, we also find that universities generate more output for a given expenditure when research competitions are high stakes. We draw lessons, arguing that European universities could benefit from a combination of greater autonomy and greater accountability. Greater accountability might come through increased reliance on competitive grants, enhanced competition for students and faculty (promoted by reforms that increase mobility), and yardstick competitions (which often take the form of assessment exercises).

The researchers use the Shanghai and HEEACT rankings of world universities to compare them. Shanghai uses the following metrics:

The number of alumni from the university who have won Nobel Prizes in physics, chemistry, medicine, or economics or Field Medals in mathematics (10% of the overall index).
The number of faculty of the university who have won Nobel Prizes in physics, chemistry, medicine, or economics or Field Medals in mathematics (20% of the overall index).
The annual number of articles authored by faculty of the university that are published in the journals Nature or Science (20% of the overall index).
The annual number of articles authored by faculty of the university that are in the Science Citation Index-expanded and Social Science Citation Index (20% of the overall index).
The number of Highly Cited Researchers (copyright Thomson ISI, 2008) in the university's faculty in 21 broad subject categories (20% of the overall index).
All of the above indicators divided by the number of full-time equivalent faculty (10% of the index).

The HEEACT adds the following metrics to the equation:

The number of research publications in the relevant field in the last 11 years (10% weight) and the current year (10% weight).
The number of citations to research publications in the relevant field in the last 11 years (20% weight) and last 2 years (10% weight).
The number of highly cited papers in the last 11 years (15% weight), the number of articles in 'high-impact' journals in the current year (15% weight), and the H-index for the last 2 years (20% weight).

Quite a simple answer if you look at the correlations. The researchers have also done some regression analysis to confirm what we know. Autonomy, competition and independence from government clutches helps in the productivity of the universities. The overall impact is startling, they produce more patents and publications, and I quote specially for the US universities:

“expenditures are more than twice as productive in states with the most autonomy and competition, compared to states with the least”

The situation in Europe is more complicated, but still there are pockets of good behaviour (Switzerland, Sweden and UK!!!) where more competition and more autonomy are good drivers of university excellence. But will it happen? I doubt it, because the governments in these countries have a stranglehold on this sector of the society, which is a shame really.

The less said about ME universities the better. While I was closing this, I came across this Memri report. Pretty interesting what it said:

In TV Debate on Arab Universities, Arab Students' Union Head Ahmad Al-Shater Says Western Universities Are 'Laboratories for Weapons... Who Created Swine Flu, Bird Flu, & the Financial Crisis?'; Jordanian Professor Adib Al-Zu'bi Says Arab Countries 'Imported All the Prostitutes [After the U.S.S.R. Fell]... Scientists Imported by Israel & the U.S

I wouldn't even repeat what the student said, but the professor was quite right in many ways. I loved this bit:

There is a well-known example from an Arab country, which goes like this... A teacher asked: Who can give me the name of a creature that flies? One student said: A cow. The teacher said: You idiot, cows don't fly. Whose son are you? The boy said: I'm the son of so-and-so, who's a colonel in the army. So the teacher said: Cows fly, but they don't rise up from the ground. That is the situation.

Again, no exceptions, it's just relative across the world. Here the universities are tied to the government purse strings, in India and the ME, they are tied in even more ways. Forget about publications and research, they can't even teach properly if the foaming of the student above was any example.

Where the BRICs Stand Today

jay — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 02:47:53 EST

In 2001, Goldman Sachs released a report which projected that the four economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China were expected to become the main drivers of economic growth for the world in the coming decades. It was highlighted that these four economies which account for half the world's population would eclipse the current economic leaders in size by 2050. It will be useful to look at where these countries are today 8 years after the publication of that report.

This is not a comparative assessment of the various economic parameters to measure the progress of these countries. Rather this is my subjective opinion of how far each country has moved up the ladder of progress and influence in the world.

China: China is the one country that has moved up the ladder the most among the BRICs and in fact in the entire world. Thanks to its authoritarian regime, it has focussed all its energies to attain its professed goal of being one of the most powerful countries of the world. China understood early on that economic upliftment of as many of its people as possible is the only way to get there. With money comes power, and it has focused on this like a sharpshooter on his target. It was not willing to be distracted by any other irritants like allegations of human rights violations, currency manipulations and massive pollution of the atmosphere. As a result, today China stands tall as the number 2 economy in the world right behind the US eclipsing Japan, Germany and several others.

China Facts:
GDP = $4.3 trillion ($8 trillion PPP)
Per capita income = $3,000 ($6,000 PPP)
Population = 1300 million

Brazil: Brazil, a resource rich country, has been a laggard for most of its existence even after its independence from the Portuguese in the 19th century. It has been behaving erratically for more than a hundred years drifting between strict and loose government controls. As a result, many businesses have been loathe to invest in Brazil and those who did, burned their fingers (Fordlandia in the Amazon is a prime example). However, since 1995 they have got their act together and the country has been showing tremendous progress in the past decade. It has begun vying for high stakes in the world especially under President Lula - the 2016 Olympics being the latest example. It is still precarious to predict how it will fare in the future (because Brazil has promised a lot before, but failed to deliver), but the lamp seems to burn the brightest now more than ever in its history. Brazil has a very consumer oriented economy and is the richest among the BRIC countries in terms of income.

Brazil Facts:
GDP = $1.6 trillion ($2.0 trillion PPP)
Per capita income = $8,300 ($10,000 PPP)
Population = 200 million

India: India's promise has been long heralded but never has it been able to get its act together to benefit from that promise. India's democracy is rather chaotic. All democracies go through arguments but in the end resolve to solve problems one way or another. It appears that Indians culturally cannot come to an agreement on anything and therefore drift along blaming fate for everything that is wrong. This has resulted in India still languishing on various aspects of progress. Although the net result of the past two decades of progress looks reasonably impressive, given the talent and resources available in India it is a pity to realize that much more could have been accomplished. What India lacks is strong leadership with a vision and mission that could guide the country in a specific direction of progress.

India Facts:
GDP = $1.2 trillion ($3.3 trillion PPP)
Per capita income = $1,000 ($3,000 PPP)
Population = 1200 million

Russia: Russia is an enigma in this four nation BRIC cartel. A resource rich country, it is still undecided about breaking away from its past of socialism while trying to get rid of the excesses that accompanied it. Russia's influence today is a far cry from the power wielded by the Soviet Union in the past. The one bane of this country is its over-dependence on oil. It prospered in the earlier part of this decade when the oil prices were quoted in three digits, but has sunk far down the charts since the oil prices tanked. This is an odd ball in this group and may explode or expand spectacularly one day.

Russia Facts:
GDP = $1.6 trillion ($2.2 trillion PPP)
Per capita income = $1,200 ($1,600 PPP)
Population = 140 million

Overall, from a perception perspective, when one looks at the developmental stage of a country, this is where I think each country stands in terms of the quality of life in each country in general.

China = looks more like the USA of the 1980s - they are probably 30 years behind the US - the most advanced country in the world.

India = looks more like the USA of the 1960s - 50 years behind the US and 20 years behind China

Brazil = looks more like the USA of the 1950s - 60 years behind the US, 30 years behind China and perhaps 6-10 years behind India

Russia = unknown

So, BRICs should probably be represented more appropriately as

C-------I--B--R(?)

with China way ahead of the pack, India and Brazil bunched up behind and Russia a question mark.

Many of you may have a different take on this. Your comments are welcome.

Book Review: The Process of Software Architecting

Ganadeva Bandyopadhyay — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 07:26:24 EDT

Software architecture developed as a profession with the increasingly high-level and comprehensive understanding required for OOP paradigm. There is a plethora of definitions available for these two words in different contexts and mentioned in various standards and consulting company documentations.

In the The Process of Software Architecting, the authors start with discussions of the various definitions and terminologies associated th the Software Architecting field and go on to illustrative test cases and project scenarios where the issues and possible solutions are discussed.

The book is divided roughly into three parts. The first part gives briefly the core concepts of architecture, architect and architecting, documenting a software architecture, and reusable architecture assets. The second part provides a guided tour through a typical software development project. The last part brings out how the concepts described in the preceding parts apply to architecting complex systems.

The task of the software architect comes in between the requirements phase and the development phases in a software development project. Initially the architect has to make a logical architecture based on the requirements which have to be made into a logical detailed design in the development phase. Based on the inputs of requirements, logical architecture and logical detailed design, it is the job of the architect to create physical architecture taking the available technology into account.

Some of the architecture related best practices in the industry are the Rational Unified Process, IBM Unified Method Framework, OpenUP, eXtreme Programming(XP), Scrum, etc. In addition to these, one of the standardization initiatives like the Software and Systems Process Engineering Meta-model Specification(SPEM) is also considered for the discussion on method elements.

Few of the other notable aspects of this book is the need for accommodating differing viewpoints through accounting for the political landscape within the respective organization, the necessity to avoid ivory towers by a team of architects too engrossed in discussions to get the feedback from the end-users/management and taking the decision to reuse architecture assets or not based on several factors.

To summarize the review, with a highly condensed text and examples, an experienced software architect would keep coming back to this book to have the improved understanding of principles, best practices as well as avoiding the pitfalls in this developing field. Drawing heavily from the software engineering principles, the book goes beyond finalizing the perfect software architecture document into the evolution stage of software architecting as an art to software architecting as a science.

The Obsession with Cleanliness

Vinod Joseph — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 14:04:52 EDT

The other day while travelling by train, a lady sitting next to me started complaining (to the man she was travelling with) how dirty the train was. ‘Why don’t the cleaners do a better job?’ she asked.

To me, the train didn’t seem to be particularly dirty. True there were a few specks of dust on the windows and the seats, but there wasn’t any dirt that was visible to my eye. The bins were not overflowing, rather they had just been emptied, and there was no litter scattered on the floor. Did the lady expect the cleaners to vacuum the windows and the seats during the thirty minutes or so when the train rested at London Waterloo before starting its journey back to Bournemouth? I wondered.

The lady supplied the answer to my thoughts when she told her travel companion, ‘they ought to spray everything with disinfectant at least every alternate day.’

I think the woman’s travel companion was as much fussed about cleanliness as I was, and he gave the woman a tolerant and amused smile. I had visions of travelling in a train where everything was spotlessly clean and smelt of anti-bacterial disinfectant, like a hospital ward. I shook my head to get rid of that image. I much rather have a little bit of dust and dirt around me rather than the smell of disinfectant in my nostrils. Surely not all bacteria are harmful? Some of the microbes that are killed off by spraying disinfectants are bound to be the useful ones.

The woman’s comments had me thinking. Are we, at least in parts of the world which have achieved a relative degree of economic prosperity, moving towards unnecessary cleanliness? The sort of nitpicky and fussy cleanliness that only damages the environment and causes global warming? No, I am not a scientist and don’t have technical knowledge of chemicals, but I do know that spraying disinfectants causes global warming. No, don’t ask me how, but I know.

I have friends (mainly English) who will not drink water from a tap, even though tap water is potable almost everywhere here. In the almost seven years I have lived in England, I have always drunk tap water and have never suffered as a result of it. If it were up to me, I’d ban bottled water wherever potable water is freely available, as Bundanoon, a rural Australian town has recently done.

I know of people who will always carry tissues with them just in case they are in a ‘dirty’ place. I know of one chap who avoids shaking hands with people as much as he can just in case they pass on something dirty.

There are lot more allergies in the developed world than in the third world. Even in the ‘west’, people have allergies that were unheard of till thirty years ago. ‘Nut allergy’ is so very common in the UK and other western countries that practically all food products contain a warning regarding this. Most people hadn’t heard of this allergy till a few decades ago.

There was this interesting study conducted in what was once East Germany, which showed that prior to unification with West Germany, East Germans had lower rates of allergies. Apparently after the merger, East Germany became cleaner and neater and less polluted and the people living there consequently became a lot more finicky, which caused an increase in allergies.

It is a proven fact that exposing children to dogs, cats and other animals at a young age reduces their chances of developing common allergies.

Within the developed world, the Japanese are supposed to be the fussiest of the lot, when it comes to (unnecessary) cleanliness.

However, there are certain aspects of hygiene and cleanliness where the West ought to be emulated by the developing world, even if it adds to gaia’s burden. For example, in all the ‘developed’ countries, people dispose of their garbage in plastic garbage bags, which aren’t biodegradable. The garbage is collected in special vans or trucks that take them to landfills or in some cases to recycling centres. In most developing countries, garbage is left in the open, is picked up by trucks or manual collectors, who carry it away exposed to the elements and dump in at vacant sites. In the developed world, the use of garbage bags and special collection trucks does add to the damage cause to the environment. However, I would say that such use is justified since it reduces the spread of disease. One only has to see the poor state of garbage collection and disposal in the third world to realise how important it is to collect and dispose of garbage in a hygienic manner. Of course, it would be great if bio-degradable garbage bags that are not too expensive could be made available all over the world.

Home is Home, Warts and All

Deepti Lamba — Fri, 29 May 2009 12:23:16 EDT

There is a saying in Punjabi – apna ghar hag hag bhar, duje da ghar thukan da be daar (you can fill your house with shit but in another’s house you can’t even spit).

Indians who cross borders and live in foreign lands for whatever reasons inevitably find themselves the targets of racial abuse one way or the other at some point of their lives. The truth cannot be denied and there is no reason why we should accept it with the hota hai attitude.

Call it cultural clash or economic frustration of the unemployed no one has the right to physically assault another but time and again the hooligans get away and rarely does the Indian community living abroad take a consistent stand against the hate crimes committed against them nor does the Indian government lodge travel advisories against those countries where hate crimes against its citizens are on the rise.

Those of us who have travelled via Hong Kong have found ourselves sitting in shanty little custom rooms where we are interrogated before being given the visas or while travelling to Europe made to stand in separate lines where as those with ‘white countries passports’ are allowed to breeze past.

Some say we bought it upon ourselves with our devious unlawful actions but I ask why should we all pay the heavy price of humiliation due to the actions of a few?

While we can demand our government take concrete actions and offer support to citizens abroad we at the grass root level have to boost our own self image. The bully is not rampaging in our backyard so why go looking for trouble where it’s bound to give you a black eye, stab you or leave you traumatized?

If you can make the same amount of money in your own country then why live abroad? The fact is we have reached a point thanks to the globalization that we can make little San Diegos in our own backyards, and enjoy the same designer tags that only the few rich industrialists of the socialist era had accessibility and they mocked our middle class ignorance and even hated the Third World tag that was pinned on our chests.

Times have changed. Few of us suffer from the supposed ‘Culture Shock’ when we visit Europe or America. All is the same except the lands of the predominately Judeo-Christian countries are cleaner and more methodical.

So why suffer the violence or the fear of it when you can avail the same opportunities in your own country, where you can literally shit in front of your own house and no one would think of calling the ‘services’ against you?

Home is home for better or for worse. It is the only place where you can really be yourself - Indian warts and all.

G20 Declares $1.1 Trillion Agreement - The End of The Washington Consensus

Aaman Lamba — Thu, 2 Apr 2009 10:48:14 EDT

The club of nations that aggregate over 80% of the Gross World Product, the G-20, wrapped up their summit in London, which primarily focused on the global economic crisis, with the announcement of historic agreements totalling over $1.1 trillion, and the declaration by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown that "the old Washington Consensus is over."

A majority of the funding, over $750 bn will be apportioned to the International Monetary Fund, and an additional overdraft facility for the world's poorest nations will be created using Special Drawing Rights. The group also resolved to "name and shame" tax havens and countries protecting them. The usual promises to protect free trade, avoid protectionism, and tighter financial regulations through a financial stability board were made, which will mostly be watered down or interpreted as may be convenient by member countries to suit local political compulsions. There was also evidence of fractures between the Anglo-American axis and the Franco-German camps, centering around the balance between greater stimulus and enhanced regulation. Sino-Indian involvement did not seem to indicate much of an increased role for either country in the global leadership thus far.

The age of regulatory capitalism may have dawned, with the IMF as a gatekeeper for the struggling world economy. The world leaders face challenges in realizing their goals, with people in many countries wondering if they have collectively got a raw deal out of globalization, with increased shared risk and decreased security, and little to no increase in collective prosperity.

The "poor of the world" could care less about grandiose agreements unless it gave them a significant share in global wealth. The resource investments will help engender confidence in the global banking system, but as Gordon Brown said, there would be no "easy fix" and there was a long road ahead to full economic recovery.

The G-20 London summit was also marred by multiple protests, that saw the death of one man on Wednesday and numerous arrests.

Technorati Tags: G20, Economics

Butchermania

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 10:38:12 EST

It was an invite to attend a luncheon of the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists. But this time, the luncheon was at the Worshipful Company of Butchers. A beautiful place. Unfortunately, I had to take a call in the middle so I was shown into an office.

Here’s the back of a leather backed chair with the logo emblazoned on it.

Here’s me during the call, with the laptop open. Can you see the chair? Beautiful handiwork.

The luncheon was held in the Great Hall.

Can you see the table plan? pretty complicated. I was sitting half way up the middle table on the left. Then, after the call, I hot footed it back to the lunch. The food was absolutely delicious. The Angus Beef was so smooth, I think it has to be rated to be one of the best steaks I have eaten in London. But to be expected, if you dont get good beef in the Butcher’s hall, where else would you get it?

I took a sneaky picture of the main window as I was leaving. Can you see the stained glass showing the butchers on the bottom? The top window shows the various animals which are used in the trade, like sheep, lambs, cattle, etc. It was full of grandees and thus felt a bit embarrassed in clicking away…

But outside the hall, down the stairs and the hall has the most amazing dioramas. This was showing a butchers diorama, with cuts of beef, pork and lamb hanging.

I am afraid this photograph did not come out quite right, but shows some kind of a letter of patent relating to the fact that the Princess Royal became some kind of member.

Turning my head, there was another diorama with a huge cleaver on the top.

Took a close-up of the note. There are two flags, first the flag of New Zealand and then the flag of the United Kingdom, some kind of an association, I guess, established in 1809. It says:

“This chopper was used by Mr. Edward Jeffreys at Buckinghamd Palace to cut up the first New Zealand Lamb carcasse shipped to the United Kingdom in the S.S.Dunedin and presented to Her Majesty Queen Victoria in May 1882”

Pretty neat, no? to capture all this history? I know this is not big news or a big historical event, but it actually is very big news once you think about it. This lamb trade has impacted the history, economy, and culture of New Zealand for more than 100 years. And this cleaver was there when the trade was born.

Another diorama with the tools of the trade.

Here’s the Hall.

And here’s the Smithfield Market where you would get the butcher’s with their stalls.

And on the way, saw this, the Kinky Barber, who gives you a beer with every haircut! :) As long as you dont worry about the type of haircut, you should be happy with the beer :).

But lets take a side trip, its the history which interested me. The history of this company goes back to 975AD. Now that’s impressive and goes deep back into the hoary mists of time. When we eat a steak or a chop, do we know that there is this level of history of professional attention paid to how to deal with meat? I did not. This company is deeply involved with the meat industry, it deals with a variety of industry issues ranging from hides to food hygiene, etc.

It is a fine art, this bit about dealing with meat. You simply cannot kill an animal and hack it about. Oh! no. You have to know the physiology of animals and there is a whole terminology around which cuts of beef comes from where?

I was taught how to carve meat by my ma, she used to hunt in her childhood with my grandfather. So dealing with poultry, goat and beef was very interesting. It was almost like surgery. Which you should not find surprising, after all, for quite a long period of time, barbers and butchers used to be the surgeons of those ages. Anyway, it was quite interesting to sit there looking around at the crests, the stained windows, and know one was sitting amongst the ghosts of butchers past for a thousand years. The next time one see’s a big juicy medium rare sirloin steak on the plate, one would know that there is quite a strong possibility that the way it was prepared had some links of some sort to the Worshipful Company of Butchers.

The full slide show here.

Technorati Tags: London,History,Buildings,Animals