Category: Social

A Question of Ethics

Prasad Ajinkya4 Comments

Disclaimer: I do not have anything personal against IITians, in case you are one, then I am not judging YOU, do not take this personally. This is certainly not an IIT bashing post, but I prefer to think of it as a call to action. In case you have some clout in those areas, please think this through and do correct me if I am passing assessment based on the wrong sample set.

In the last couple of years, I have had both the fortune and misfortune of knowing IITians. Fortune because these people have raw brain power … the CAT although is the most competitive exam, but the IIT-JEE is the real test of thinking and application. Anyone who has cracked the JEE on his own merit, is definitely intelligent (although I can’t make such claims for all the people who have cleared the CAT ;-)).

The national institutes (IITs and the IIMs) are a haven of variety, and were created to be an incubation center of the nations next generation of talent. Due to it’s separation from the surrounding environment, and policies … these institutes have also become an eco-system having their own flavor.

Yes, talent is nurtured and given guidance. Some of them do great things … but do they teach things like Ethics in such places? I doubt it.

Of all the IITians I have met in the past (and there’s a lot of them), all of them have indulged in unethical behavior. From simple copying someone else’s notes, to downright corporate espionage. From avoiding taxes to downright embezzlement. From speaking a harmless lie to generate some laughter to downright filing a wrong criminal case.

It’s not a one off case that I am citing here, its 7-8 different people of different ages and in different circumstances. There is absolutely no qualm for breaking the law, or what’s ethically right. Perhaps its ignorance, but it could also be indifference.

You may say that they have their own set of moral code, but that code seems to be based on the premise of individual superiority over the rest. Which seems logical since they have been hearing the same thing over and over again – a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. I am not the moral police, but a basic level of ethics needs to be inculcated into the raw talent of the country.

They should follow the Spiderman quote –

With great power comes great responsibility.

India Bandh, A waste of time and money

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The entire nation was in uproar with the recent price hike in petrol prices. A 10% hike essentially meant that suddenly the 14 litres of petrol I bought with INR 1000 would be reduced to 13. Agreed, that the uproar seemed to be fueled by the opposition party, but hey, that’s why they are there in the first place! To keep the ruling party in check.

A nation-wide bandh seemed like an appropriate action. 31st May was set as the D-Day and the entire nation waited.

The employees of the nation waited because of the undisputed holiday that they would get.

The shopkeeper’s waited because of the surge in sales before and after the strike that they would get.

Media waited (with baited breath) to create a highly hyped event out of this.

I woke up late hoping that it would be a holiday in our company. Sadly, it was’nt and I had to reach office. Due to my family’s concern for my safety, I was asked to walk the distance to my office. The only reason I agreed was that I could see first hand how things were there out on the roads. On TV the strike had taken its toll, all channels were talking about the mediocre success of the strike throughout the nation. With the exception of Aurangabad (and possibly Kolkata), the rest of the cities seemed to be working in swing.

Shops were closed till 5pm (with the exception of chemists), and PSU units were kept closed. Most of the private enterprises were open and local transport was working. All in all, this strike had gone to the dogs.

Yesterday, the efforts of the strike had borne fruit. Finally, some results! To my chagrin, the margin by which the hike was reduced was a measly 2 INR per litre. Meh! Not only was this strike a waste of time, but also a waste of money. The only person who would really be affected by this is the common man. All the others will hike up their prices … the employees will have to wait for their poorly done appraisals.

I wonder if there is a correlation of the inflation rate of the country to the attrition amongst employees?

Corrupt Administration!

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The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men. – Plato

In an earlier post where I was complaining about the lack of revolutionaries in the system, little did I know that in a few days I would be experiencing the wisdom of Plato first hand.

We are in the process of shifting our offices from Goregaon to Andheri. The office is within 2km of my home, and pretty much what you call my locality. Due to my efforts in securing kindergarten admission for my daughter, I have also come in touch with our local administration.

Now, the person in charge of the sprucing up of the new office did not do his homework, and started the interior decoration of the office without any checks with the local authorities. Three months down the construction, when we have shifted into a makeshift office (its going to be our computer lab in the new office), and have no other alternative offices to go to, the local authorities intervened and stopped the construction.

Upon enquiry, we found out that a permission needs to be taken from the Buildings and Industries department of the Bruhanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). Without this said permission, construction cannot go on.

Since the BMC officials refuse to parlay with “north-Indians” and they are from the Shiv Sena party, guess who has to liaison between the organization and the BMC :)

When I went to the officials, I was made to wait indefinitely biding for my time to come. Fortunately, I knew someone higher up in their chain of command and not wanting to play the waiting game, I made the required calls, and got to meet the concerned person.

I do not know whether it was my fortune or misfortune, but the person with whom I had clout in the administration was also the source of my predicament! It was his department that had raised the issue and was waiting for my organization to respond.

So began the diplomatic dance. The dance where you avoid saying the obvious and stick to the unsaid protocol. All said and done, I was presented with two choices – one, the way of the right, wherein we would have to chase this permission across the city for 3-6 months. The other, the way of the corrupt, wherein we have to pay for silencing the officials.

The sum mentioned was in the right range … I don’t know how these officials do it, but someone needs to learn pricing from them. The amount was not too high for us to outright say no, it was lower than the opportunity cost of keeping our employees at their homes :), and yet it was high enough to grease the right palms and keep their pockets filled.

We are PWN’ed and most likely will give in to their demands. The price of sheer negligence on one senior partner’s part is a 2 lakh bribe. Talking about corruption is one thing, but when the efforts to fight the system means you will lose more than what you will save, then does it make sense to fight it? We would be writing it off this year.

Where are the revolutionaries?

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In the first half of the 20th century, when India was struggling to achieve it’s independence, the nation was under going two revolutions.

The primary being a change in power, a struggle to overthrow the British Raj and to stand on it’s own feet. This was possibly the right time for reform as well, social norms such as sati and child marriage were being questioned. Female education was one such issue that was also being addressed. The country was undergoing a change, and a large socio-cultural change at that. Revolutionaries were there who foresaw a future where these harmful practices were no longer the norm.

I am not saying that all of this happened overnight, in fact I am sure that in some of the rural areas these practices are still being done. But the goal was achieved for most of the nation and mind-sets were transformed.

It has been over 50 years of independence for India now, and somehow I feel things have gone astray.

Where are the revolutionaries these days? If you are going to tell me that there is Anna Hazare, then I will reply that he is a politician and not a revolutionary. There are these hordes of NGOs who in the name of doing good demand charity from the citizens. Asking for charity is not the bad part, the bad part is that setting up a business processing unit to run this charity.

The interesting part is the only place where you will get to hear the word transformation is either in corporate board rooms, or in medical surgery units! When the revolutionaries of yore used to write, they used to put forth their manifestos … a call to action for the society. Nowadays the only call-to-action that I know of are gradient buttons on websites.

The revolutionaries are out there, busy writing blogs and tweeting about society.

It’s not as if we as a social collective have forgotten about reform, if you search on the internet you will find enough rants such as this … on blogs, on twitter, etc. The point is that after we have vented and ranted, we let it go and that’s that. The easy access to vent our frustrations ensures that we never reach the tipping point!

KhanAcademy: Saviour of the American Youth

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When I first heard of KhanAcademy (KA), it was a collection of Youtube videos. Each video was lucidly explaining simply fundamental topics in Maths, Science and even some in Finance. That was back in 2002 when Salman Khan (no, not the actor) was doing these videos in his free time and was giving them away for free. To see one man create such a rich set of learning media was inspiring.

The day KA received a 5 million USD funding, marked the critical change in the system. With the funding came a responsibility towards a greater good, a need for a vision that encompassed the funding and the need for a team who would embrace this vision and deliver this system.

And they haven’t disappointed. As I sit writing this post, I am also downloading the Python-based system of KA (which they have released as open-source). There are simple step by step instructions on their wiki to deploy the system as an offline server.

The KA CMS (pre-uploaded with the KA content) is given to the teachers and instructors of this world. For free! Not only that, but there is a dedicated team working with schools in the US to adapt these awesome set of exercises for their students.

Now, a celebrated speaker and a visionary in the field of education, Sal is often invited as a keynote speaker in different conferences, here’s on from the RSA conference (Courtesy: Rajat Swarup).

 

In the past, the US education system has received a lot of flak for not helping the students. So much so that there are more students who are losing faith in the system every year. When you lose faith in the system, thats the point when that system stops working.

KA, has restored faith of the American Youth in Education. The generation which was planning to drop-out of college (because thats what their heroes do) are now learning that the system is not flawed and that they can really learn something new when going to school. The lost generation has found its way.

New social network on the block So.cl

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On 2nd Feb 2012, I received a mail from FUSE Labs. It was about Microsoft Research team’s new experiment. Happy to get a beta invite, I jumped on-board – it was 7am early in the morning when I had decided to check my mail. I got so absorbed checking out the site that I hardly noticed an hour fly by!

Up front So.cl is less confusing than Google+, here’s what it seems to do –

  • You can get in touch with random people and can follow-unfollow them (ala Twitter, G+)
  • Rich media looks really good on the site
  • A new feature which I found really cool was Video Parties (crowd-sourced video playlists which keep playing in one section of the site)

Here’s the catch!

To add posts on this social network, you have to search for terms … on Bing. Yes. on Bing.

They have really taken search social. Something that Google+ is doing slowly and carefully, Microsoft has twisted the entire approach and done a bold step under the name of an experiment.

It’s definitely worth a shot, do give it a whirl here.

You will require a Facebook ID to register and login, which kind of acknowledges FB as the king of all social networks.

Why this Kolaveri Di?

Prasad Ajinkya3 Comments

I am sure that by now most of you have heard of this song.

If you haven’t yet heard the song, then do give this video a look-see –

There is a huge hype around this song, for a multitude of reasons –

  • It’s written and sung by the son-in-law of Rajnikanth
  • The main keyword of the song, kolaveri actually has no meaning per se. It’s sort of an accepted slang which means rage … murderous rage to be exact
  • The song is half in tamil (no frilly lyrics there), but simple casually strung lyrics, and half in english … in fact I do not understand Tamil, yet I could make out the gist of the song
  • The gist of the song itself, is identifiable by the multitudes of youth
  • The beat of the song is catchy, in fact I can imagine this song being put on full blast on speakers on a lazy afternoon in the locality
  • Is this simply a good song bolstered by viral social media or is this an internet meme ala Rebecca Black’s Friday? Well, it’s a viral phenomenon for sure.
  • Dhanush seems to be enjoying the creation of this video as well, and you can see the support of other stars such as Shruti Hassan in the background
  • The part where the song goes “pa pa pa paan, pa pa pa paan … ” that’s enjoyed by both my daughter and wife :)