{ On Second Thought }

[pankajagarwal-blog]

The Newsroom

Why you must watch the show

The show is definitely spot on when it comes to featuring knowledge based entertainment. Every single episode talks sense about the events leading to incidents that made the world over pay attention — BP Deep Water Horizon explosion leading to spill in Gulf of Mexico, Arab Springs, Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, Osama Bin Laden killing etc. The coverage scope of the stories varied, but I got to know quite a few things that I did not know about these global incidents.

The best part of the show is that they used actual recordings of the Senators, Governors, Party Representatives etc. to make a point during the story. In one of the episodes, Will McAvoy (lead of the show, played by Jeff Daniels) is deconstructing whether Obama spent $200 million a day of taxpayers’ money for his trip to India back in 2010. To prove the absurdity of the number and tendency of the Tea Party Representatives to lie, they played an interview by Michele Bachmann (Congresswoman) where she is asked about how she proposes to reduce the deficit — and she says the trip that the President is taking is costing $200 million a day, a check should be put on such extravagant expenses! Will McAvoy then gives an ultimate punch line — putting the liars in the same category as sexual offenders (and must be made to carry a board saying that they lied to that extend).

One more instance is when Gabrielle Giffords, US Congresswoman from Arizona was shot in Tuscon in 2011 after a constituent meeting. If you go through the whole story, some news channels back then had actually announced that she had been killed, but in fact she had survived and was taken for a surgery right after the shooting. The show covers this quite emotionally with the whole caste standing against announcing it (the other channels had pronounced her dead), even after the pressure put by the President of the company.

Overall the screenplay is well structured and closely knits the plot with characters. Some would say that Breaking Bad manifests the same, but then its easier to do that when the show has the story revolving around two characters as opposed to half a dozen. And plus the genre and surrounding is completely different so a comparison won’t be really fair.

The only other show which I feel comes close is Boston Legal, show about Civil Law cases of a Boston based law firm. But it, at times, tends to stretch too much into the characters alone rather than keeping a close pace between the two. The Newsroom avoids it mostly, and achieves it while not forcing the audience into a make believe.

Although the show is criticized widely for being too preachy. But then it is Aaron Sorkin’s way of writing. Every show that he has written —The West Wing, Sports Night are peachy in certain sense and it is his trademark of building up on what wrong is faced by the common man and how they should stand up to get it corrected. I would definitely not hold it against the show.

In all, I would highly recommend watching this show if you haven’t already.

[pankajagarwal-blog]

Indian Education System: Reforms on Anvil

The below article is co-authored by me and Mr. Vijay Shukla, Managing Partner at Eduvisors Consulting Private Limited. The article is a commentary on "The Prohibition of Unfair Practices in Technical Education Institutions, Medical Education Institutions and Universities Bill, 2010" which seeks to address the malpractices in the higher education stream that the providers resort to in their race for RoI (return on investment) - from false advertising to opaque fee structure to misrepresentation of key information.

Full Disclosure: The article is the part of "Expertise" for the September edition of the EDU magazine, a platform that helps decision makers at higher education govern the sector smartly.

Download the pdf here.

[pankajagarwal-blog]

Indian Education System: Scholarship Market

[Previous posts in the series: here and here]

With the ever growing economic reputation of India at the global level and the paradigm shift of the social mentality for the professional activities from primary to more sustained and secured ones, the education sector in India is on an exponential rise. The whole process though, from the institutions, infrastructure, funding is still very flawed and disparate. For example, the funding from state and central government is now granted mainly to state run universities and is not able to give any kind of coverage to the private ones. This leverage is put in place with the expectation to avoid the financial pressure on the student base and let them pursue the higher education at a subsidised price in a state run institution. But given that there is a proliferation of private higher education institutions in India since last two decades and the numbers are constantly growing, the financial burden to run a private institution falls mainly on the incoming students. This leads to the high levels of tuition fees and other charges that the students have to incur to get education.

Scholarship Segment in India

With the limited scope and accessibility of the educational loans (only 9 percent of students, with a majority of them belonging to the middle-income families, seek loans); the alternative of the scholarships seems a better one. At the same time, financing for scholarship and fee reimbursement, despite the rising cost of the education (especially higher education) making it beyond the reach of a large section of Indian society, still seems like a faint effort to make education affordable to all. The main focus of the scholarship initiatives is at the higher education level with only a handful of them supporting the school education. The scholarship market in India, which is still far from making an impact on a larger front, needs to grow its base to establish and sustain a more conducive environment for impacting the education demand at the individual level. 

Government-Aided Scholarships

Almost all of the government scholarships are managed by the Ministry of Human Resource Development with the assistance of the sub-departments. Some of the aid programmes run by the government are:

INSPIRE Scholarships offers 10,000 scholarships every year at Rs.80,000/- each for undertaking Bachelor and Masters level education in the Natural & Basic sciences and is managed by the Department of Science and Technology.

Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund provides assistance for doctoral studies with the per month stipend of Rs 12000 for scholarships and Rs 50000 for fellowships.

Central Scheme of Scholarships for College and University Students aims at providing Rs 1000 per month for graduation and Rs 2000 for post graduation for higher studies in engineering and medical to around 82000 students.

The government expenditure on education is already considered highly inadequate and is the lowest among the global peers of the similar economic and growth aspects. Government support to students in terms of scholarships and grants schemes is even more alarming (for higher education, less than 0.5% of the total expenditure on education and it is consistently declining). The amount of the scholarship earmarked for the college and university students was Rs 250 million in the year 2003-2004 and was increased to Rs 450 million in the year 2008-2009 (with the objective of covering at least 2% of the student population pursuing higher studies). This considerable absolute increase looses it significance when it’s mapped relative to the growth of other sector parameters (increase in Gross Enrolment Ration, flooding of educational institutions etc) during the period. The amount of scholarship accounts for a proportion of the tuition fees at maximum. In many cases, due to cumbersome disbursement procedures and various leakages in the procedures, the assistance option is not received in time.

Private/Corporation Aided Scholarships

The private players and some corporate houses are performing an influential role in shaping the country’s next generation leaders. Renowned business houses like Jindal Group, Birla Group, Tata Group, Reliance and many other high net worth individuals are mobilising huge sums of capital to leverage the students in pursuing their educational dreams. Motivated by their sense of social responsibility or gratitude towards their alma mater, every year they are providing financial support for the studies of students in India and abroad.

Aditya Birla Group Scholarships provide considerable sums to selected candidates for their studies in the partner institutions (Rs. 175,000 per annum for Management and Rs. 65,000 for Engineering). OP Jindal Group provides Rs. 125,000 for Management and Rs 65,000 for Engineering studies at their partner institutions. Sir Ratan Tata Trust and The Allied Trusts have dedicated funds providing financial support for studies at all the education levels with some funds specifically for the marginalized groups’ education and development. KC Mahindra Trust provides support for school education as well as for higher studies. Apart from that, there is a merit cum need scholarship option in almost all the private institutions which covers substantial amounts of tuition fees. The whole process is very smooth and is uncluttered with red tapes.

This segment still presents a wide room for a much better coverage with the adequate support from the governments and an unbiased channel to induce efficiency and equity in the whole aid process.

International Scholarships

The increasing importance of the inter-governmental relations and the attention of the association and councils in bringing equilibrium in global standard levels has provided students with resources to carry out their studies abroad as well.

Rhodes Scholars, a fund sponsored by Rhodes Foundation provides all expenses paid scholarships for post graduation studies at Oxford University. Reliance Dhirubhai Ambani Group covers all the expenses of 5 Indian students every year for their MBA at Stanford Graduate School of Management. The Gates Cambridge Scholarships provides all costs covered aid for graduate studies at University of Cambridge. British Council in association with various universities and administrative houses (both in India and the UK) has grants, mostly, in post graduation studies at various UK universities. Most of them are an all expenses paid gateway to the arena of one of the best global provider for education. Victoria State Government in Australia provides 10 scholarships of AUD 90,000 each for doctoral studies at elite universities in the state. Sir Ratan Tata Scholarships provide a grant of GBP 20,000 to each candidate for masters in the UK and US universities.

Apart from that there is a whole bunch of government aided international scholarships provided in collaboration with the administrations of Asia Pacific and European nations.

Room for More

With the framework developed by constructive collaboration between the government, promoters, educational industry players and the management of the institutions, there is whole range of initiatives that can be put in place to target the problem of education affordability. A centralised administration of merit based scholarship schemes for example can be deployed to streamline the whole process. This provides the possibility to administer the scholarships process more efficiently while curbing the analogous expenditure on administrative handlings as incurred by every aid scheme. The sentinels to refine the process can provide for a better approach to the issue and thus incentivise more players to dive in.

[pankajagarwal-blog]

Books and Tea

During my recent trip to Germany, to attend the 14th World Business Dialogue, on one of my random walks I stumbled upon this small second-hand bookshop in Cologne - English Books and Tea. I spent a couple of hours browsing through an assorted collection of books and sipping a couple of varieties of fine English teas. A wonderful place, owned by Christian Potter, it has a very uncommon collection of English books than any other bookstore I got to visit in Germany. It was a peaceful place and had the air floating with a different tea aroma every few steps one takes.

I recently found out that they have their own webpage. It says -

English Books and Tea is a little bookshop in Cologne, Germany, specialising in new and secondhand English books and fine English teas. If you live nearby, why don't you come in and browse through our books whilst enjoying a nice cup of English Breakfast Tea or any one of dozens of other varieties (let's face it - a good cup of tea is a rare thing indeed here in Germany!).

The idea is quite simple, so utterly simple that it is more or less overlooked in most of the places. The clean mixture of the most widely consumed beverage in the world (next only to water) and equally popular leisure activity assumes a very different cultural shape when put together. In fact, environment like this not only tunes one's reading discipline but also restricts the lurking of web-induced sense of reading to the printed page reading.

As one of the blogger I follow comments on the interruptions caused in reading by the 24X7 access to internet-                                                                                                                                [Image Courtsey - Flickr]

As with others, there are two states I swing between when reading a novel. The first, of immersion: of being drawn into and inhabiting the author's world, one that supplants ordinary laws of time and space. The other, of being aware that I am reading: of peripheral vision, of turning the pages and of occasionally checking to see how many more are left. Sadly, it's the latter state that prevails and more and more nowadays.                                                             

There is no doubt that the web is one giant repository of information that one can't afford to plainly ignore especially with its enhanced role as a key influence in our day to day lives. But with this high scale cultural shift in the individual's lifestyle, and needfully so, one tends to embed that manner in other activities as well; activities that can't be mutated to account for this paradigm shift while still absolutely justifying their motive. For example, now the social interaction has been discounted if one dives every five minutes to check his smart phone as the other party itself is accustomed to that conduct. But an activity like reading demands for a better attention capacity to be able to perfectly achieve the sense of immersion that the blogger talks about. And I think the surrounding like the one I encountered in English Books and Tea takes us closer to experiencing that.

In Delhi we have some similar models, especially around Ansari Road, the most popular one being Manohar Books.

I wish we had more trends, than the current levels, similar to the English Books and Tea model. A good book and a cup of tea and bliss.

[pankajagarwal-blog]

Vinod Khosla at MIT

(Via Nitin Rao)

[pankajagarwal-blog]

Indian Education System: Reforms Failure

[Previous post in the series]

Goldman Sachs factors education one among the other 10 impediments to the rapid development of India. India's working force of around 400 million has 40% illiterates and 40% school drop outs. So, the reasonable advantage of the demographic dividend which we often argue when comparing the development scenarios in India and China in 2020s and 2030s, is just a laughable paradox given that we have only 20% of the whole working population is engaging into some or the other economic activity. The illiterates and the drop out levels can be distinctively mapped to the failure of Indian education system as the prime reason. Given the pledge of achieving literacy that the administrators of the independent India swore to, we still don't have a lot of medals to flip over for our accomplishments.

The main reasons that attributed to and still caste the gross inefficiency in the sector - strict government regiment, austere illusion of self-competence and shifting priorities based on political contingencies and adminitrative needs - are still being carried over as the pivots for the policy reflexes. These reflexes, which are faulty to the core, will continue to strangle our inclusive education dream until and unless a fundamental modification is performed. After adhering to the same policy frameworks for more than half a century, failing drastically, there still doesn't seem to be any intent of making a deliberate leap towards a more conducive framework.

The Government is in fact channeling resources towards the upliftment of the system - given the fact that India already has the highest number of colleges and universities in the world and the government has plans to more than double the higher education capacity within a decade. The problem, although is of the reliability and the efficiency at the enforcement side. It is a chain of highly integrated events that need ultra potency at every single link to make an impact. For example in this case, the lack of availability of adequately qualifies faculty members is a major constraint. India has one of the worst student to faculty ratios of any nation (26:1), almost double that of China. So even after having close to 26000 colleges across the country, the missing link of enough well-qualified faculty renders that physical infrastructure pointless. Why do we lack the faculty is altogether a different topic for discussion.

Sam Pitroda, currently involved in formulating a road map for India’s education sector as chairman of the National Knowledge Commission (NKC), states the undue red tape that we see in the education sector -

Our systems are always resisting change. That’s the nature of (our) system. Organizations have become old...and we really need to think if we should restructure.

The structure and the psychology of the system needs some profound alterations to generate a tangible change in the policies spinning out of the system thereof. The osmotic relationship between the system behaviourism and the policy frameworks it resorts to makes it cardinal to brutally refine the former first to inflict the latter. The key untapered fringes that the current system has created are discussed below. These fringes are delaying our claim on the visible impact in the sector.

The Right to Education Act

On April 1, 2010 India joined the league of 135 nations by making education a fundamental right. The primary goals of the RTE Actare -

bringing children of marginalized sections of our society into the ambit of school education,

ensuring that all schools and their teachers meet certain specified norms, and

ensuring that all children receive education of reasonable quality, free from any discrimination.

The intent of the Act is noble and deserves lauding, but the Act in itself is just another legal instrument; a coercive mandate which at its best can bring in students who are out of the system back to the schools. The meaningful learning and implementation is far fetched issue and is more or less circumvented by the Act. The Act comes out as a mere rhetoric with the total oblivion to the fundamentally nuanced and deeper order consequences of a policy based approach.

For example, there are norms introduced in the Act concerned with the minimum requirements on school infrastructure, teacher student ratio etc. and deems the school as "unrecognized" if it doesnt qualify the criteria. This would lead to the closing of around 300,000 low-budget schools in the cities responsible for secondary level education of around 90 million middle class children. "These schools are mostly the entrepreneurial response of the parental choices - the antibiotic response to dysfunctional government schools", and undeserved hindrances in their functioning will be a major set back in the already dire situation. In regard to the teachers' qualifications, it specifies that the primary teachers must have a 2 year education diploma; meaning that 33% of the teachers have to be fired. So following the terms of the Act stringently will lead to lowering of schools by around 25% and teachers by 33%; an ironical mist around the Act's concerns of school infrastructure and teacher student ratios.

The Act compromises in the capacity building, induces higher cost, and opens Pandora's box for corruption prone acts. A bunch of statistics and details adversely skewing the quotient of reliability of the RTE, with its current mode of action, are here, here and here.

Government Territory

RTE just illustrates the breadth to which government wants to spread its wings in the management of the sector. Before this enactment also, the administration has been quite liberal in twisting and turning the sectarian policies to suit its will. The government's extended regulation of fees and interference with enforced guidelines take the price competition away; which prevents the explosion of education entrepreneurship by private players. The maximum uplift this kind of environment can catalyse is the entry of NGOs which has an extremely low upper limit in its impact scope and value creation. And given the amplitude of the scale required in India's context, fundamental business measures should be given a chance, especially when the odds are lined up favoring them. But it is an infuriating thought for the government to open the education sector for the businesses to make a foray into. It is an outrage to suggest the autonomy and decentralization of education institutions. As Pitroda says,

All I am saying is that in this globalized world, we need to welcome anybody who wants to come and educate our children. Japanese, Chinese, Koreans—it doesn’t really matter. Let there be more openness. We definitely need private players in education. Some will misuse it, some will make money but that’s all part of the package. We know the government alone can’t meet the needs of the society. We have a huge gap between supply and demand. So we must increase supply substantially. Inefficient, corrupt people will fall by the wayside over time. In between, there will be problems so one has to accept that.

It is shocking to see that there have been cases when teachers in government schools were ordered to compromise their prime responsibilities to provide assistance in election duties (evaluating, updating, printing voters' lists). In rural and semi-rural areas they are also saddled with paper work related to panchayat and other development agencies. These gross defiances induce spill-over effects in the functioning of the sector.

We are done playing with the old rule book, especially in matters as critical as education and human resource development. With the limited range of natural favors upon us in terms of the resource base within our geographical limit and the rat-race for the ones beyond it, human capital is the only absolute advantage we have against the others on the global map. And looking at the status-quo regarding the attention type to that resource, I don't think we are doing enough to exploit it to our benefit.

[pankajagarwal-blog]

Indian Education System: Status-quo

This is a series of posts where I try to understand the Indian Education Sector, the role of the government induced reforms, various inconsistencies embedded in it and the aspects that need to be modified to structure a sound system.

Lately I have been reading a lot on Indian Education System and the circulating policy measures that need to be adroitly included in the governance approach as suggested by various think-tanks and scholars. The policy suggestions, although converging with a phase difference are primarily tackling the two main reasons behind the current education system predicament - infrastructural imbalances and the power of free markets and competition that the policy makers overlook.

Education standards (measured in years of schooling) in the country has a positive correlation with the GDP per capita, as Atanu Deyargues -

Education matters immensely when it comes to the health of an economy. There is a positive correlation between years of schooling and the GDP per capita. Let’s look at the numbers that are indicative of the generalization. In 2001, “school-life expectancy” and the ppp GDP per capita for Ethiopia were (4.3 years, and $675); for Indonesia (10, and $2,844), for China (12.4, and $4,065), for South Korea (14.6, and $17,048), Japan (14.3, and $25,559), and the US (15.2, and $32,764).

Also, it is equally important for the education system to adapt itself to the changing global environments in order to synchronize the domestic labor army with the skills and knowledge of the global work force. A time-prone evaluation and amendment of the system is of course required to keep the internal forces at par with the world-wide trends to cope up in the rapidly changing business arrangements and innovations outflow. As Pawan Agarwal observes -

Role of higher education in India has evolved with time. In colonial era, it served the interest of the British; in early years of independence, higher education was in support of nation building; and now higher education provides the country, a competitive edge in the global knowledge economy through skills and innovation.

Unfortunately, Indian higher education has not responded to these changes and the main reason for this appears to be rigid institutional setting and curriculum structure, much of which is inherited from the British. In a world permeated by science, future shape of things is unpredictable that calls for built-in flexibility in higher education provision. Way back in 1966, Professor D.S. Kothari, while submitting the report of the Education Commission that he chaired, pointed out that the ‘single most important thing needed now is to get out of the rigidity of the present system’. He added that ‘in a rapidly changing world, one thing is certain: yesterday’s educational system will not meet today’s, and even less so, the need of tomorrow’. Thus, adaptability is one of the basic features of higher education.

Government spends close to 10% of its expenditure (around 5% of the GDP), amounting to around US$ 30billion on education every year. Although it is quite low in comparison to education spending of other nations, it is indicated that the other developing countries are getting better results spending much less than India (Nepal has a primary school drop out rate of 35% in comparison to India's 53% for spending of 2.5% of its GDP). Even if we keep aside the relative comparison on spending and concentrate, for argument's sake, on the absolute amount, India has more than 1 out of every 3 citizens still considered illiterates. The government seems to be inefficient in the real implementation of both the cash and the assembled reforms.

It is quite obvious that the inconsistencies in the cash flow and its intended usage comes out because of the several leakage channels (in place because of the rent-seeking and corrupt political set up) comfortably in place for civil servants to claim their gains. But the administration's reforms framework and sectarian regulation too are stagnating the spread of the education coverage across the nation.

The Right to Education for example, has been envisioned to provide free and compulsory education for all the children till 14 years of age. But in contrast, this reform, until and unless substantially modified, is on its way to cause a permanent damage to the already abysmal situation. The major problem with the reform formulation is that the administration inherently puts education in the basket of public good without as much as peeking at the other side of the spectrum. If anything, such reforms give the government monopoly in running the sector, a position which can be exploited for political, economic and other tangible benefits. The consistencies of the reforms seem to be highly adulterated with the adverse political will and the communist principles that the government follows mindlessly even after having more than half a century worth of knowledge about its (ill)impacts.

How the reforms have been and will conflictingly impact the status-quo of the Indian education system rather than boosting it will be argued in the next post.

 [Update: Next post in the series]

[pankajagarwal-blog]

The Making of Osama Bin Laden

From a piece in Tehelka on the rise and fall of Osama Bin Laden, an abstract as below answering "Why did a kid born with a silver spoon in his mouth end up as the most dreaded terrorist of all time"? -

The answer to the first question is to be found in Osama’s own experiences. He was an unremarkable teenager who, like most wealthy Saudis, used to spend his summers in the mountains above Beirut with his parents and visited ‘liberated’ Sweden with 22 of his siblings in 1971, when he was 14. He began to change when he joined King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah in 1975. The faculty at the university, which had been founded in 1967, contained a large number of alumni of Al Azhar University in Cairo, which had rapidly become a centre of Islamic radicalism after the defeat of Nasser and the discrediting of Nasserism in the Six-Day War against Israel in 1967. The university sensitised him to the tortured history of Arabia’s relations with the great powers: the betrayal of the Arab cause after World War I; the Balfour declaration and the formation of Israel; the role that the oil companies had played, and the way in which the flood of petro-dollars after 1973 was corrupting the newly minted Arab elite. Osama must have been a sensitive and intense young man because in 1979, shortly after finishing at the university, he joined the jihad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

In another piece, the interviewer asked him about Muslims who do not agree with his religion based violence -

We should fully understand our religion. Fighting is a part of our religion and our Sharia. Those who love God and his Prophet and this religion cannot deny that. Whoever denies even a minor tenet of our religion commits the gravest sin in Islam. Those who sympathise with the infidels — such as the Palestine Liberation Organisation, or the so-called Palestinian Authority — have been trying for years to get back some of their rights. They laid down arms and abandoned what is called violence and tried peaceful bargaining. What did the Jews give them? They did not give them even 1 percent of their rights. Hostility towards America is a religious duty, and we hope to be rewarded for it by God. To call us Enemy No.1 or 2 does not hurt us. Osama bin Laden is confident that the Islamic nation will carry out its duty. I am confident that Muslims will be able to end the legend of the so-called superpower that is America.

I wonder about the gravity of the role both his education, thrown intentionally in partial-context, and his religious fanatism played in making him, from a Saudi Arabian millionaire, the central character of the longest man-hunt in the history. The education he received in Saudi Arabia, which was convoluted to the extent of exclusively advocating the Islamic radicalism coupled with the extremism he adopted in his religious beliefs for Islam and against the western nations crisply shapes the underlying moral decrees and principles behind his doings.

It would be delinquently interesting to read about the cultivation of his emphatic doctrine in his inner-self, the self-assembled frame of reference which came about as a result of a rather uncoventional but self-chosen life. The education and religion bias, I guess, merely provides one order of his whole persona and the higher orders are open for exploration. We have written lengths on the Hitlers and Saddams and I guess we will soon have Pulitzer winners, among many, to direct their attention into understanding his mind by digging up archives and frisking the individuals he once knew. There are quite a few works talking about what happened around in his family (including the one written by his wife and son) and his social engagements but as of now there does not seem to be any attempt to comprehend his mental perception.

As for my thoughts on his death, I want to reflect Mark Twain's words - I've never wished a man dead, but I've read some obituaries with great pleasure.

[pankajagarwal-blog]

Book Review: Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely

It had been quite sometime after ordering the book when I actually started reading it. With Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely explores the hidden elements of human behaviour in decision making. The elements which we either deny or ignore or are just blisfully unaware of for influencing our decision making process are in fact the hidden factors that shape them. And Dan Ariely proves his point in style. All his goofy experiments trying to understand the rationality (or irrationality) of human behaviour questions the market-knows-best psychology of the conventional economics. All his experiments, although through different explorations, arrive at the same conclusion - we are irrational, but are predictably so.

Ariely wrongs the assumptions that shape the market approach - assumed rationality and coherence in human behaviour, exhaustive information availability and a cent percent self-comprehension. "Standard economics assumes that all of us know all the pertinent information about our decisions” and “we can calculate the value of the different options we face", he argues, 'Yes, you have a rational self, but it’s not your only one, nor is it often in charge. A more accurate picture is that there are a bunch of different versions of you, who come to the fore under different conditions. We aren’t cool calculators of self-interest who sometimes go crazy; we’re crazies who are, under special circumstances, sometimes rational."

He lined up a bunch of eccentrically exciting experiments to derive statistically profound conclusions but managed to solemnly address his core ambition of convicting the presumption of "rationality". Through his experiments he tried to acquire the possible influence of external factors - the zero price, the relativity bias, social and market norms and also the unexplored impact of the internal biases and emotional curves that we frequently cruise on - the influence of arousal, ownership sentiment (even the unrealized one), impact of expectations and many more. The smooth transition from the experimental conclusions to inspecting the broader social implications checks the practical relevance of his psychological and behavioural research. 

The take-aways is to guard your irrational shelf against impacting your decision making too often and to let your better and more-informed-not-aroused-or-too-emotional side to make important decisions - buying/selling a house or a car and the most important decision of all, choosing the beer when you go out in a group.

[pankajagarwal-blog]

The Middle Class Matter

There are countless pieces written and sentiments put forward on the eruption of anti-corruption movement led by the for-time-being-middle-class icon Anna Hazare. A huge proportion supporting the movement instinctively, a considerable few exhibiting their reasonable skepticism and some fundamentally rejecting the so called anti-corruption revolution.

As for my take, I think that the thrust required to root out the corruption can't possibly be provided solely by another institution in the environment where the institutional infrastructure is known to be highly inefficient in the past, if not absolutely unsuccessful. It is quite clear that the way forward to reduce corruption is to remove the extensive discretionary powers into the hands of these politicians and bureaucrats. For that, we need to pay sincere attention to the supply side of the corruption as well along with attending to the demand sides of the issue. [Kaushik Basu's recent paper proposes to address the issue in a rather unconventional way. Thisargument in the Economic times offers a more commonplace solution. A crazy thought of a paperless economy was posted by me previously.]

The middle class not only rose to the center stage during this whole undertaking, but also managed to grab its share of prestige at the end of the magician's show. The success of the movement is attributed to, in a wholesome manner, the great Indian middle class which made the fast-till-death a success with their resolute support mainly through signing online petitions and their facebooks and twitter statuses - "I support Anna Hazare". Being a heresy among the middle-class populace regarding the general opinion on the revolution's success, I was satirized by most of my colleagues and peers for my cynicism and an innate impotence to appreciate an old man's sincere efforts.

Well, I do sincerely appreciate his intentions, but I am incontrovertibly against both his methods and demands. While I still respect, if not agree with, the peers who truly and reasonably believe he and his ways can stimulate a change, what irks me is the mere presumption by the others who support this just because it seems relevant. I agree that positivity is the most important aspect to get any initiative up and running, but this unsupported realm of a false sense of confirmation can only make the things worse if anything. And this false sense of positivism among the rapidly growing social strata of the country further intesifies the problem. That is a serious issue as the fake confirmation takes the attention away from the possibility of working on better measures. This diversion could lead us to face-off with the bigger scandals in the future because our fixes were not exhaustive enough to cover all trenches. Clearly, the unquestioned indulgence of the middle-class, key driver of positive change in the country's economic landscape, with the proposed measure would not incite any other channel to be worked upon in search of addressing the issue at hand in a better way. This fake positivism will only calm us down by inducing the surreal sense of non-existing reliability and inefficient efficiency.

I am concerned about the middle-class's hands down indulgence in the matter because of two connected reasons. First, it is alarming to see the adequately educated to be satisfied with an undemocratic system which chooses the self-appointed officials as civil representatives of the biggest democracy rather than the elected ones. Second, even if they did show some skepticism to endorse the method of civil representation, they have been highly uninterested in electing their leaders. [The city of Mumbai, during the elections of 2009 saw the lowest voter turn out since 1977]. According to the electoral statistics from last 3 decades, election booths are mainly stirred by the presence of citizens at the lower level of income and social hierarchy, while the more educated and wealthier laze around in their houses. Yet the issues and policy decisions influencing the middle-class are given more limelight by media (they have high viewership from this demographic class) than the problems of the people who actually elect the government.

Online campaigns and the adroit platform of social media has definitely struck a chord with the youth motivating them to fulfill their civic duties, but its long term effects still need to be seen.

So, as of now the Indian bourgeois is blissfully stuck between a rock and a hard place. They have an opinion on every Ayodhya, rage on every 2G scam and support for every Anna. What they don't seem to have is the sense that them performing the democratic exercises is capable of influencing the country administration for the absolute good. They have had their entertainment with this one also and are ready to move on already, of course until and unless Anna goes to Jantar Mantar again.

[pankajagarwal-blog]

India's Sex Ratio Trouble

While the Punjab government is all cheerful for the 48 point increase in the sex ratio in the 0-6 years' population category, from 798 to 846 females per 1000 males, it still is considerably below the national average of 914 females per 1000 males in the same category [source]. Melting into the partial success of the pro-girl child based policy initiatives and gender sensitive schemes, the administration seems quite satisfied achieving 3 times better results than the neighbouring state of Harayana (which gained 16 points increase). The policy measures taken by the state government seemed quite effective but I still doubted whether they could have been more impactful given the wealth that persists in the two states. This certainly blocks poverty as a reason for the commiserable sex ratio in the country as the states with the worst statistics are among the richest [source]. Refering to an abstract from the source -

The ratio is most distorted in the states of the northern Gangetic Plain, such as Punjab. Haryana. More worrying, places that used not to discriminate in favour of sons, such as the poorer central and north-eastern states, have begun to do so. Economic success, argues Alaka Basu, a demographer, “seems to spread son preference to places that were once more neutral about the sex composition of their children.” The new census showed a worsening sex ratio in all but eight of India’s 35 states and territories (though those eight include some of the most extreme examples, for instance, Punjab).

Since 1981, the ratio has steadily fallen below that point: there were 945 girls per 1,000 boys in the 1991 census, 927 in 2001 and now 914. Fast growth, urbanisation and surging literacy seem not to have affected the trend. This makes me question as to which direction of development are we heading towards. Education and development have not changed the mindsets in the country, putting more wealth in the hands of people is merely bolstering them to afford ultrasound scans and sex-selective abortions which is illegal since 1994.

Another issue that intensely attributes to the dire sex ratio is the parental discrimination towards the girl child. They are partial against girl child in allocations of food, spending on healthcare and, if the girl survives long enough, expenditure on her education. The result is the death of more girls within their first years. The child mortality rate is 64 per 1,000 for boys, and 73 for girls, even though there are considerably fewer girls to begin with. [source]

Contrasting the current census's statistics with that of otherwise normal levels, an article in The Economist makes a relevant observation -

Without intervention, just a few more boys would be born than girls. If you compare the number of girls actually born to the number that would have been born had a normal sex ratio prevailed, then 600,000 Indian girls go missing every year. This is less distorted than the sex ratio in China, but whereas China’s ratio has stabilised, India’s is widening, and has been for decades. Sex selection is now invading parts of the country that used not to practise it......

........If sex ratios stay the same, 600,000 missing girls this year will become, in 18 years’ time, over 10m missing future brides. Robbery, rape and bride-trafficking tend to increase in any society with large groups of young single men. And because in China and India men higher up the social ladder find wives more easily than those lower down, the social problems of bachelorhood tend to accumulate like silt among the poorest people and (in India) the lowest castes. This is unjust as well as damaging.

The article also argues that parents choose to abort female fetuses not because of the absence of affection towards the girl child but because of some "social reasons" (which I really dont understand the meaning of, especially in regard to the educated class of the parents).

Government has been implementing a series of social laws and policy instruments to tackle the problem. Dowry, which can be considered as a major factor (perhaps the only factor) of worry, at least among the poor families, of having a girl child, has been attempted to be reigned at the constitutinal level by introducing Anti-Dowry Law in 1961. The government also prohibits the use of technologies to detect the sex of the foetus which leads to sex-selective abortions. But all these laws seem to be ineffective as people find ways to get away with not following any of them. 

So what are we missing? Where does the problem lie? In the implementation and enforcement of these laws and other instruments? Or the key policy measures need a complete review at the fundamental level? If we can bring an impactful rise in the literacy levels of the citizens and the growth aspects, at least at the economic and business platform of the country, why is it harder to bring that augmentation in the social uprising too? The growing literacy rate (65 percent to 74) should only help in that, right? Or worst of all, do we even have any real political will behind the pro-girl child policies?

We can brag standing on our heads about the almost 2-digit annual growth rates since a couple of decades now, or boast about extraordinary development in every single business and economic process, but like any other development, our development seems to have a dark story attached too. Actually in our case we have a whole bunch of dark stories running in parallel.

 [Update - An interesting piece in Livemint on sex ratio disparity, Why we hate our girls]

[pankajagarwal-blog]

Book Review: A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

I am still stuck with the numbness that first lashed me when I finished the book yesterday. Rohinton Mistry comes to his finest with hisA Fine Balance, a novel set, to the most part, in the 1970s sketching the lives of Dina Dalal, Omprakash, Ishvar, Maneck, Ashraf, Dukhi, Nusswan and many others into a wholesome yet torn-here-and-there canvas. In fact Rohinton Mistry's are the only fictions (this and Such A Long Journey, another masterpiece) I have read in past few months given my pledge to stick to the more implied non-fiction ones for sometime.

The book comprehensively paints the village lives and the cast system deeply rooted within which makes Dukhi, a chamaar by profession (read caste), and his family take major turns in their lives by sending their two sons off to the city to learn tailoring. Indira Gandhi declares the state of internal emergency across the nation when the opposition and hence the Allahabad High Court accused her of cheating in the elections. Dina Dalal's husband dies and she is finding ways to put her life back in place, get some income channel to avoid taking favors from her ever-hyper-conscientious-with-his-social-image brother Nusswan Shroff. All these events and many others bring the protagonists and situations together and the compelling story unfolds. A must read.

Mistry handpicks the significant events from the past and builds a very provoking and corporeal structure for the readers that they can actually extrapolate the probable life that they would have lived/suffered under the circumstances. Specifically in this book, he brings out a very comprehensive social configuration that existed during, what can be said, one of the most terrible times in independent India. From adversely changing civil rights and freedom terms, a hardcore fascist regime (The Lady) constructs an anarchy; the law and order is randomized, justice is shoved up the shelf as an aesthetic artifact by the financially blessed, and accepted as a forbidden fruit by the other extreme on the social and income scale. Democracy is fundamentally and antagonistically redefined with an utter disregard for even a little sense in the administration and judicial system at any level. The whole caricature seems to be inclusive to the most extent as Mistry who was born in 1952 would have been adequately equipped, in his mental perspective and intellectual aptitude, to understand and retain the blueprint of the events and (il)logics during the emergency.

A character named Vasantrao Valmik, who has only few pages dedicated to him interested me in better proportion than his extent of mention in the book. A lawyer by profession who has worked as a proof reader and then campaign slogan copyrighter, he encounters two of the protagonists in different situations and presents his perspective of life, ongoing emergency, struggle, hope and many more trivialities. 

This book is a ruthless sketch of two guys' struggle with corruption, thugs, caste bias, despicable politicians and adultered system in every possible regard. A bold statement in the title, this book highlights the nation's fine balance between hope and despair. Again, a must read.

PS - I already ordered Mistry's third novel, Family matters, really looking forward to reading it.

 [Update - Review of A Fine Balance play here]

[pankajagarwal-blog]

Book Review: A Fistful of Rice by Vikram Akula

My latest read, A Fistful Of Rice by Vikram Akula talks about his experiences, accidents, gambles, decisions in achieving SKS that we know today. His journey presents his ruthless self belief and a steady vision to lead one of the most prominent and credible development eneterprise ever. From his hitch-hiking experiences across US to a face-to-face with Mohammad Yunus in Bangladesh to his name in Times 100 most influential people in the world, every single page contains an interesting and equally relevant story to map his skills and talents in running something like SKS. A must read.

[pankajagarwal-blog]

RIP - Uncle Pai

As a kid, the release date of new edition of Tinkle used to be one of the sought after days of the month. I remember running to the door everytime the newspaper wallah came and inquiring about whether the latest one is out yet. More often than not, he used to reply with an obvious look of pity and self disappointment, "nahi bhaiya abhi tak nahi aaya". But on the days when he did get it, a look of appreciation for his job was obvious on his face, probably because he could positively answer, even if he couldn't understand, a kid's query for a particular subscription.

I used to forget the count of reading and re-reading the edition before the waiting for the latest edition started and the same cycle of inquiring was repeated.

I wrote Uncle Pai three letters with short stories when I was 10 years old. All of them were a creation of a normal 10 year old's imagination being put in a very limited sense and knowledge of words. I got a reply for one of them from him praising me for my efforts and that I could go a really long way if I kept such imagination coming. That was one of the happiest days of my childhood even after realizing that he could just be amusing a 10 year old with his words to induce self-praise and pride in the kid.

You will be missed Uncle Pai. RIP

So long, and thanks for all the memories

Also read: A letter to Uncle Pai

[ Update - The immortal Uncle Pai . ]

[pankajagarwal-blog]

Impact Assessment: An Asset Class

Via Beyond Profit by Lindsay Clinton

Market Opportunity in Impact Investment

..................India has become a fertile landscape for impact investing: in a survey of 31 social investment funds conducted by Gray Ghost Ventures earlier this year, about 30% of investment capital focused exclusively on India.  But, until now, sector practitioners have not had reliable indicators of market potential for India or in other emerging markets. With the launch of this report, the market opportunity has size and scope.

This report approaches the challenge of sizing the diverse impact investing marketplace by analyzing five sectors across emerging markets: housing, rural water delivery, maternal health, primary education and financial services—for the portion of the global population earning less than US$3,000 a year.  The projections focus specifically on companies that provide products or services to BoP customers, but not ones that BoP entrepreneurs run themselves. In each sector, the researchers have determined the amount of invested capital that would be required to fund such businesses, and the profit potential.

The numbers are sizeable and compelling, with profits across the five sectors over the next ten years projected between US$183bn and $667bn.  The affordable housing sector makes up the majority of this profit, comprising US$177-$648bn, notably a rather wide range.  The next most promising sector, education, indicates a profit potential of US$2.6-$11bn—tiny when compared to housing.  Clean water delivery is on par with education, with a potential profit range of US$2.7-$7bn. Health comes in at US$.1bn-$1bn................

[pankajagarwal-blog]

Female Literacy and Sustainable Development

The emission causing activities can be somewhat exhaustively mapped to two main factors, human footprint and the energy sources. The key to curb the macro level issue of the emissions though should take up a more fundamental approach – addressing at the micro level and following the bottom-up approach.

As I have mentioned in my previous post about a developing nation like India's dilemma over strictly addressing the issue of climate change, policies addressing the dichotomous objectives of sustainability and development are the need of the hour. These policies will need a well structured infrastructural and institutional landscape to leverage the existing civil status and psychologies and change them for good.

A latest study by the Center for Global Development provides economic evidence by performing a cost-benefit analysis between investments in clean energy technologies and female education and fertility reduction to address the emission phenomena. In India and other developing nations, where social policies and schemes take away a huge chunk of government expenditure, the increased investment in clean energy technologies will mean, due to budgetary limitations, reallocating that chunk of socio-economic development fund. This reallocation is neither justified nor impactful to address the climate change problem. In fact, as the study in a way shows, the reallocation can compromise with both the development and sustainability motives.

The authors David Wheeler and Dan Hammer argue that financing social outlets to support female literacy and family planning contributes more towards climate change mitigation and adaptation than abatement options through technical means. Their calculus and econometric approach suggests that “both female education and family planning are highly cost competitive with almost all of the existing options for carbon emissions abatement via low-carbon energy and forestry/agriculture”. For 80 out of 88 developing countries which they sampled, carbon emission abatements costs via family planning and female education are significantly lower than nuclear power and the widely discussed renewable energy options. Comparing their estimates with the technical abatement options that have been estimated by Nauclér and Enkvist in a major study for McKinsey (2009), Wheeler and Hammer deduce that,

The population policy options are less costly than almost all of the Nauclér/Enkvist options in low-carbon energy and forestry/agriculture, and far less costly than the renewable energy options that are receiving the lion's share of current attention.

Through a credible list of data sources and approaches, they formulated a country based matrix stating the per ton of carbon abatement costs of these two policy responses and compared it with the numerous options and the costs of the McKinsey report. They calculate that every $1 million spent on these two metrics would save 250,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emission. In comparison, investing the same amount in energy-efficient buildings would save 50,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide; in nuclear energy, 40,000 tonnes; and in carbon capture and storage, a lowly 26,316 tonnes [source: Wallstreet Journal].

The results clearly highlight the significance of women in achieving the sustainability in development and climate change addressing. So what is the rationale behind the study's results? As I said, the climate change problem can be mainly mapped to human footprint and energy sources. Women are solely responsible for the two issues at the household level in a developing nation. Education will directly and positively influence the adoption of sustainable practises while addressing the energy needs of the household. Literacy and family planning also slow population growth, thus reducing the human footprint.

 [Originally written for TH!NK4: Climate Change blog]

[pankajagarwal-blog]

India's Global Initiative on Climate Change

The global climate change concern, which mostly brings into news the statements and agreements made by the diplomats and convoys of the nations often overlooks the arrangements made at the lower levels. The global phenomena which needs to be addressed through every single crevice asks for something more than hand-shakes and mere words on paper.

Following the same philosophy, India's efforts directed towards making it as a global destination for training and research on the contemporary global concerns needs recognition. Well implemented initiatives taken by Ministry of External Affairs, the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC) programme and Special  Commonwealth Assistance for Africa Programme (SCAAP) have directed much needed resources to approach the problem in a more conventional way; through Education.

TERI University, located close to New Delhi offers a variety of courses on understanding the climate change, mitigation, adaptation, energy efficiency and sustainable development. The ITEC-SCAAP offers the global intercultural class a variety of courses at the cross roads of development and the environment. The courses stretched over the duration of two-six weeks cover national and international responses and policies on climate change, strategies for sustainable development and similar other issues. Apart from the classroom training, the course structure manages enough room to take students for excursions and trips. It certainly brings a practical inference to the whole set up which is required to deal with the issue.

Check out the University website for more details.

[Via Indian Diplomacy website]