DIWALI OF THE DARK NIGHT

i went home for Diwali , i did a lot of adventure and took a lot of effort to reach But then going home is never an effort. sorry sir.. it took a lot of effort from my parents who were constantly worried about me and my travel ... as i adventured to my home.

however Diwali was touching with the touch of love and the tension of happiness .. yes happiness is in a state of tension till it breaks into a laughter :) ....

Diwali was touching for my elder brother was home after many years..

but you know DIWALI is celebrated on the day of NEW MOON NIGHT.. a DARK NIGHT.. yes it was sad.. all the sons and daughter in my colony have left town and the parents wait for their sons and daughters to return home on Diwali and as the children leave (their parents waiting for their return) the parents often tell their children "it was good that you could come, it rejuvenated us and we loved this time together."...this is the dark moment... i hate modern life and economics for doing this to us. i wonder why do parents have to bear this pain ... when growing up a child is enough of a pain in itself and seeing them go away for their lives and destinies.

DIWALI is definitely a dark night.... hope the diyas will bring in light. Ganesha are u reading?

The village beauty ...

The Data collection is as elusive as it can get... the village a beautiful place as beautiful as it can get despite the flies that live "harmoniously", the increasing amount of plastic waste that makes me wonder why is Bangalore making plastic roads.. Indian villages don't have roads and too much plastic.. if we could use the plastic waste within them maybe all villages will have metalled roads in India ...and this is no lols..

Today started on a mixed note and the day was a mixed note day no doubt.. my bus got delayed thanks to a very long goods train that was crossing the road. lols well this is lols. cause the train came to the unmanned crossing and then the assistant driver got down and walked ahead of the engine clearing the traffic and impatient bike car drivers away and the engine roared its whistle and moved behind the assistant driver just like a little toddler learning to cross the road behind its mother. lols.. the log 60 Bogey goods train was thus taught to cross the road in about fifteen minutes.. the next railway crossing was manned but the meter gauge train took its own sweet time and the impatient jeep drivers created a traffic jam and so my usual 2 hour journey took an extra half hour.. then comes the task of moving from the taluka place to the village and the shared auto took 40 minutes to move and budge as it did not have enough passengers.. and i discovered a girl wearing a skirt and moving in an auto in visnagar :)

In the meantime my partners in crime in mean in the data collection were administering some questionnaires and we were getting some data. i saw the huge village pond . We even spent a full hour in the village temple of Umiya Mata and i discovered beauty in there.. beauty that usually we all will ignore.. see the pics... the temple is built majestically though not very grand in size and it has beauty in many aspects the gates, the pillars the design and best of all the charm in the idol of the deity . it is a sight for all of us to see and realise how realistically charming deities we have in India in villages and most forgotten corners as well. we just don't have time and eyes to see it most of the time . I hope you enjoy the data collection pics. lols the birds and the buildings.

In the meantime i shall worry about my worst fears being confirmed.. the youth have lost touch with agriculture in this village and there is a rising incidence of males well past marriageable age not getting brides due to the high pressure on land.

Another beauty i noticed today was that of a full grown tree with a round foliage that had not been cut or shaped by something else. the original tree as we might call it today in the cities and this sad lols.

The life and issues of Adaptiveness in Bharat or Rural India

What does one do in a village, if you come from a city and not a village?

Wif your PhD thesis takes you there .. there is enough to figure out and time is always short. This is precisely what has been happening with me while i tell people about how i accomplish very little work in a day of fieldwork. let us look at how this unfolds.. why? well cause i want to explore the pace of life in a village..even for an urbanite like me who is overplanned lols!!! yes Over planned and you will see how.

Today, like usual, i started on time but my partners got delayed. The reason was simple. The bus they had to take was cancelled. the first reality of "Bharat" within India hits you. there are two things which get cancelled so easily these days - the flights of Kingfisher and Jet Airways and the Buses to rural India. No wonder the airplanes are called "air"- "buses"...lols..

I decided to make the "most" of time on my hands and i decided to pay a friendly visit to the Visnagar office of Development Support Centre (DSC) . i was met there by Shri Vijaybhai and it was a more than welcome reception and i tried my best to cooperate with him as well. i got some good information as in the name and location of a few villages which coudl posisbly be my sample unit villages for data collection and also the names of main contacts. That was more than what i had bargained for as i landed in without prior information. If you have'nt wondered how i reached the visnagar DSC office unplanned is not cause i carry a list of contacts with me or because the internet penetration in Gujarat is very good and i have used the internet in Visnagar and trust me the internet cafe there has better speed than the sify iWay in lucknow:) sad :( but true. i had the DSC ahmedabad number and i called them up to get to DSC visnagar . That brought me to vijaybhai who connected me to mohan bhai and rajandra bhai :) phew already too many characters and offices and location..well this Gala-head story is just beginning to take shape.

My mobile got a charger easily in the DSC officer but it fell and it stopped working . The repair shop guys were more polite for my more than 5 year old mobile phone there than i could ever find in the city. I was happy at that. I rushed to village Kansa and was met there by the Secretary of the irrigation cooperative called the "shri kansa Irrigation Cooperative for the sale of Canal Irrigation Water". I wonder who named that...

I was met by Gowdabhai . a very helpful gentelman who also doubles up as the operator of the irrigation cooperative. i decided not to "waste" time and i requested him if i could interview him as a farmer member of the cooperative. I was almost through when i was joined by my partners and then we tried to catch others in the village.

we searched on institutions and farmers for our sample and as we searched we got to know they were gone to a meeting for the irrigaiton canal. some others were gone out on personal or family errands. from one to four we talked about the irrigation cooperative to the secretary and corrected the information that i had collected earlier. a critical part of this was understanding new services like the washing ghat for women which i had mistaken as an activity of the irrigation cooperative. it is only tactfully supported by them.

beyond four we had no option the secretary was showing the laurels won by the cooperative and himself. Soon we realised the world is a small place. my IRMA juniors Shweta Kolluri and Shweta Prasad had visited Babubhai and we discussed sweet melodious memories from thier visit to his name. the next hour was spent on this.

We were forced to decide further work was not happening today. and we decided to move out of the village. While we made the plan for the next day i got a friendly visitor on the road and i decided to help myself.

so at the end of the day in a Indian village you can click a Peacock in its glory :) if not anything else. If you agree with this you miss that i was living the slow rural life for a day and trying to understand the changing needs and aspirations of people and hence the need of the Water Management Institutions to adapt and be successfull by fulfiling the expectations of the farmer-members. I was exploring the rate of adaptiveness that existed in the institution. In such a village the institution can respond to any exigency like a breach of the canal minor in less than two hours and a change of rule or procedure in less than two days where the decision is with the consensus of all the members of the institution. ..so now think twice about whats fast... whats slow.. and how important it is know the context before we conclude something as fast or slow.

the house of Research and its mess of responsible Researchers

Hmm a long absence from the blogosphere.. and I'm trying to be back. Well what brings me back this time is none less than a Nobel laureate Dr. Paul Krugman. My friend Avinash Kishore Shahi did not find him interesting as a teacher ( for more log on to http://www.avinashkishoreshahi.wordpress.com) and the Nobel committee found him very exciting. They even lauded his teaching. That is not what brings me here.

What truly brings me here is the fact that he is a popular writer in the New York Times with a regular column where he criticises Mr. Bush and makes himself interesting to a Global audience. My interest has always been in doing work that connects to real lives of people and since the time is ripe i can take a dig, unlike the virtual finance world. Krugman does connect to a popular sentiment of the masses, even if most of the masses are not of the US, it would still be valid in an increasingly globalized world.

How many of us researchers ever try to take our work to the common man and make sense for him?

How many of us researchers want to place our work in popular literature so that a mass of people can benefit from it without our worrying about dissemination of our research and its findings.

How many of us researchers are confident that we can tackle the layman questions and show the connection with the real world of our research?

How many of us researchers are capable of not losing sight of the actual real life problem, we touch upon in our research ,in the maze of epistemology, validity, reliability, sampling design and so many other arguments and counter arguments?

How many of us are still excited about the problem we are trying to tackle when we are finishing our thesis and have not made the compromise of hitting a deadline cause it had to or altering the design or sample cause of some "practical" issues like operational funding etc.

I am not saying that i am beyond this or i have not done this or that but is it a more important question that our research is based on reality as it exists rather than a method proclaiming my religion of "good" "rigorous" "research". The vote is open now and we all have to cast our own vote . If relevance is achieved by compromising rigour (as many will vouch for relevance vs. rigour) why do we need rigour at all. If rigour is what is research is about (as many will vouch about purity of research again ) then why do we need to tell the implications and managerial implications or policy imperatives of our research at all. i guess its been long the research house needs to set the house in order. also i know this wont happen. Veblen had tried the same 110 years ago and we still live in the mess he had wanted to clear.

Amidst all this i wonder what Krugman does to this debate? apart form kick it up in my mind.

The Princely Experience

It doesn’t rain much in Ahmadabad. Definitely not for someone who spent his life in Lucknow and Dhanbad before coming to Ahmadabad. So when it started raining yesterday, my heart was all joy and contented at the sight of a familiar but recently rare pleasure giving phenomenon. When the rains continued through the night my hearts joy knew no bounds and then when today the rains yielded the skies to a cool breeze with the relaxing touch on the skin I was ecstatic. Yet there has to be a spoilsport in a PhD scholars life and work it was for me. I had to review this document sent by abhishek. But me being me , my mind leaped and jumped form here to there in an attempt to find a magic solution to emerge out of the anomaly of life and enjoy the beautiful evening.

With heavy steps and a heavier heart I trudged the weary way from my room to the new LAN at the other end of the campus a good 700 m walk. My mind was restless. As I came to the LAN I realised my mind was not restless it was not at rest. And behold an idea flashes. I open the door to the balcony of the LAN and take my chair with wheels out to the balcony knowing that I have a laptop to work on. Sadly the balcony has no room for a breeze when I am in there in a mood to enjoy. I needed an alternative and soon there was one. I put my laptop on the chair and skilfully guided it through the work space to outside it to the portico and corridor above the main ramp in the new campus. Where the breeze flows in from a neat half km free flow and crosses to the other half of the campus . the brilliance of the idea could not be mixed. My feet firmly rested on the railings and my self on the chair began the review of the document and then I remembered the wonderful gift of rashmita – soothing music from the land of ladakh and I instantly clicked on Nawang Khechoggs favourite collection. The setting was complete.

I was seated like a maharajah with half a km of approach road leading to my high perch – the main lounge area of the new campus. I was taken back to old memories of castles and palaces and movies and dream theatres of the prince sitting on his balcony overlooking the beautiful gardens in his palace as he waited for the next adventure in his life which took him to his princess as well. More strong was the princely feeling of a kingdom on earth with free flowing air, beautiful rain , greenery and flowers, long wide roads , and the luxury to enjoy it all. And I silently thanked god for two things – one for my bringing me to IIMA and the second for the love that nature has always showered on me in blessing me with these luxuries of life.

So come join me… lets create luxury in life.

a fun post.. not all of this is true

I Lie down on the grass, green and serene in the Louis Kahn Plaza, as i write this piece that i don't know what shall be. the moon is there - a full moon and it reminds me of so many faces, sound and beautiful, all lost to the vagaries of life. Pretty much like the moon that fades behind the dark clouds. The majestic buildings stand tall and firm having seen battles and Earthquakes- battles of a corporate and academic nature. The moon peeps on me from between two clouds and as i look back it hides behind the cloud and a cool breeze embraces me in congratulating me on my victory over the moon. The cool breeze and the lovely but rainless weather take me to my own self inside.

The structure stands firm having seen and endured many a battle and earthquake. Yet the bricks are all tattered and old. A new fabric is needed and a new look to the structure over due. the metamorphosis (this is the year of the metamorphosis) is proving to be painful and surely a test on many accounts. Patience is just one of it.

I lie down and look at the vast sky and huge clouds above, ready to fall on me. My heart knows no fear and it knows not a friend either. My hears sees beyond the clouds into outer space for it is like the outer space - distant , dark, remote, existing but never seen or realized. Person after person that i have met and friend after friend that i have failed reminds of the expectations (that died long back) i had that someone will understand my heart.
People closest to me have had no inkling of what is happening within me or why? Where i am floating and on what? The search for my own self has become a pursuit of the self of others. I know the moon feels no joy in the sky when clouds fly by and it is lost to the breeze and games of nature. i know how inspiring the moon is and how it is capable of bringing tides to the mighty oceans. i wonder if some celestial being ever asked the moon , does it want to do so?

Every night it sets out. Lovers of the world feel that it is there to remind them of romance, inspire the poets they feel, to predict the weather the meteorologist thinks and for the kids to hear fables and fairy tales. having done this why does it need to move out again the next night on the same path and night after night in a seemingly never ending pursuit. Maybe it just wants to ensure that all is well with its beloved, somewhere, she might be.

seeing me write about itself the shy moon has hid behind the clouds and i lying on the grass in LKP (Louis Kahn Plaza) amidst the tall buildings and distant trees feel like falling in a big deep pit... of eternity and oblivion... in a world of my own.

The Value System of the Media... are they opinion builders or scam creators?

how many times as a 14 year old did i think my parents were curtailing my freedom and strangulating my creativity and expression...i guess once almost every week...
how many beautiful 14 year old girls have guys queuing up to "patao" them.. in the age of today talking of 2008. i guess more than 80% of the 14 year old girls have someone flirting with them..
how many professionals in high stress jobs do not like to take stress home and discuss with some colleague who can understand it irrespective of whether the colleague is male or female? i guess about 70 % in metros..

you would be wondering why am i writing all this where the title suggests that it should have something to do with media. well I'm talking about arushi talwar and Dr. talwar and the family. AND

HOW ASHAMED THE MEDIA SHOULD BE AT ITS ROLE...

given the figures i estimate above and a lot of people agree (yes i have informally surveyed this with my friends..) so given the figures above.. i never found reason or rationale enough to frame Dr. talwar in the whole affair. and the finger points at only one direction for the same. THE MEDIA.

it was the media which wanted to show evidence and circumstantial information on the TV before even the police had gone through it.
it was the media which thought that probably having read enough detective novels they could play sherlock holmes this time ..the reporters went into elaborate analyses beyond the "expert" investigators that they got on TV in explaining how and when Dr. rajesh talwar had killed his own 14 year old daughter....can those reporters today stand in front of a crowd on thousand odd people one side and the talwar family on the other and beg forgivenness for the trauma they have inflicted.

just because some 20 something year old reporter reads the wrong magazines and stories. s/he thinks that a doctor in a detective novel should have an extra-marital affair and it would shock the people most if the father killed the so young and delicate daughter. i wonder if they think the same way about their own families and friends.. id be happy not to have some such friends..

a media which is responsive to society can also do business seems to have been erased from the memories but what remains is a business that can also manage the media. sadly enough the latter is true for the times i have to lift a newspaper and watch a television.

the first day Dr. talwar had been indicted by the media i was stunned.. i remembered the arguments that i had with my parents in my teens and i knew a father cant hurt a child without reason but these are not the values that the media believes in . it seems to believe in incest, homicide, murder, motive, fraud, scam and scoop more than anything. i ask "what are the values of the media?"

last but not the least.. i turn my attention to the family.. a mother and a father who lost a darling child after 14 years of nurturing her in this world where values are askew and in turn get blamed for nothing short than murder.. a 60 day trauma of being in jail for Dr. talwar and he has only his wife.. and the two are separated on two sides of the jail. in the loss of a child the husband and wife so much need each other and the media ensured that they had no such avenue to come to terms with the loss. i wonder if there is an avenue where we can put the media on trial and yet i rest that idea cause the trauma for the family has only now begun. they still have to come to terms with the loss of a teenage daughter while for the media the story has ended.

may god bless the departed soul.

a lily of a day is fairer in may.....

ECONOMICS OF PEOPLE

I have thought about writing this many times but then people are not what i relish writing about so i always let go of it. However this recent new experience makes me think twice about doing that and here is a post.

Well its about how economics is applied to daily life in our interaction with people.

When two strangers meet and a common platform is discovered to keep the conversation going ..initially there is a lot that they have to discover about each other .. these are new things and facts or projections not known earlier by one about the other. As such the marginal value returned by every added moment of interaction is pretty high and as such there is a desire on part of both to spend more and more time with each other. As such it is evident that a lot of time is spent together and some exceptions are made in schedule. (the given graph is from http://www.davidfriedman.com)

As more time is spent with each other, more facts and aspects are discovered about each other and the new things to learn keep on reducing unless new experiences are created. What this means in practical terms is that the focus needs to shift from learning or talking the past to the living the present and building the future. If that does not happen then the incremental learning from new facts decreases as they are linked to now known facts and also the probability of coming up with a fact not now already known reduces. In economical terms the marginal value added by every moment of interaction goes down. Asuch the incentive to spend more and more time with each other goes down and new options are sought priorities are reset , the exceptions disappear, and what some people call it as "distances creep in".

So next time this happens in your or our life don't worry .. don't fret about it don't feel cheated it is a perfectly rational approach in the larger frame of bounded rationality.

In simple humanitarian terms the economics of people is about a utility function of deriving added value.. in other terms its plain utilitarianism.

The rains are here :) HURRAH

Ever since Yahoo 360 started misbehaving i had no option but to move to some other blogging avenue and that brought me back to this old experiment of mine. and so now its time to revive this and return to my blogging times..



so lets start with some happy news.. it finally rained in Ahmadabad .. and it rained cats and dogs... and true to my spirit i was out under the clouds getting drenched like a kid.. i roamed in waist deep water... found a football and played and made thirty others play with it in ankle deep water lol so much fun and then i also rolled on the floor on the ramp to let the waves of flowing water hit my head .. by the way that is very soothing like a head massage after a hot and tiring day.



so what i can write in few sentences is two hours of fun and a parting gift to a hardworking boy trying to make his place in this world. someone who has slogged and worked hard and came to iim as an employee to find that the students are very much like him but no one taught him to speak good English or build his cv. so it made me happy to give him the happiness.



rain always seems like gods love and i feel as if mother nature is embracing me so it is very very difficult to keep me away from it. my own mother always keep me away from rain as i was delicate as a child but now every time i get drenched i remember her love:) strange are the ways we associate things and justify them to ourselves.

it also brought many people on campus to see the kid in me. i am sure not many would have noticed that there is about a decade between me and them and yet we are all kids inside.

the rain made me miss a lot of people that i have enjoyed with in the rains... the fun the frolic the eroticism the ecstasy the legacy of paper boats and the wild splashing of dirty water lols i feel so energetic again.
the worst is all good things have to come to an end so two hours and i had to gt back to my room to sleep.. and this post has to end to make way for another soon :) till then keep Yo-ing

im back

after a long gap.. yeah years to go by .. ill be back.. :) and the cosmic dance will never stop...