Viswanathan K's Thoughts

On tricky, thorny issues, you’d expect our politicians to wiggle and find a way to not make a decision either way. But it is amazing that our courts can do the same to0. No, not by delaying the trial indefinitely but by delivering a ruling on the case that is effectively the equivalent of not ruling either way! Let me elaborate. The Aadhar case verdict was watched with great interest by many. Our courts ruled that privacy is a fundamental right, subject to reasonable restrictions. Ajay Bhushan Pandey, the CEO of UIADI (Unique Identification Authority of India) cited the exceptions allowed by the court ruling: “The Court has given examples of legitimate state interests such as national security, preventing crime, encouraging innovation and spread of knowledge, and preventing the dissipation of welfare benefits.” Ok, but does that mean Aadhar can or cannot be made mandatory? And what does that mean about the current usages of Aadhar? Are they ok or not? Here’s Pandey’s take o...

Remember Dieselgate, the scandal where Volkswagen cheated on the emission tests? Well, an American court convicted someone for that recently: a top engineer. You were probably thinking the same thing that this guy commented : “But the President who instantly retired the moment diesel gate broke. Took his 50 mil pension plan, walks away Scott free. Sounds legit.” The anger wasn’t about the engineer getting convicted; rather, it was that the manager(s) weren’t: “The engineer is the one who wrote the code (metaphorically, he pulled the trigger) and so it's not silly to prosecute him. It doesn't matter if he was doing it on orders. Just like how a hitman should be prosecuted for doing the hit, and it doesn't matter that he was doing it on orders. In both cases, the one who gave the orders should be prosecuted as well.” Few had sympathy with the Nuremberg Defense (aka “I was just following orders” defense). While everyone likes to bring that up, what would have be...

Here’s how the term “identity politics” is defined: “A tendency for people of a particular religion, race, social background, etc., to form exclusive political alliances, moving away from traditional broad-based party politics.” Until recently, it was almost always restricted to the oppressed (real or imagined) and minorities in the respective democracies (blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, lower castes etc). What’s changed now is that the majority have adopted the same technique. Whites in America, Hindus in India, you get the idea. Mark Lilla, a Columbia University professor, gave a very interesting interview on the topic . His statements are in the context of America but replace certain words and you can see the parallels to India: “As soon as you cast an issue exclusively in terms of identity you invite your adversary to do the same. Those who play one race card should be prepared to be trumped by another.” Even if such stances were necessary at some point, they soon become ...

“The next billion” that is coming onto the Internet for the first time is totally different from the first billion that came onboard. Often, they are illiterate, so typing is not an option. So they use voice based commands instead. And communicate more via images and emojis. It is also driving companies to add intuitive icons for all actions. In India, this category of users is on the rise, thanks to the ridiculously cheap data plan launched by Reliance Jio (which then triggers price wars) and the free Wi-fi made available at many railway stations. It has also resulted in a new kind of apps being developed for this new market, where minimizing data consumption is key, and data speeds aren’t the fastest. Apart from the usual suspects (Google Search and WhatsApp), here are some of the unheard of apps that have been in the Top 10 downloads in India for the last 30 months: -          UC Browser: Optimized to use less data for low-speed con...

When one is young, one is convinced of the black and white’ness of many topics. We start off intending to be the way Angela Davis described: “I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.” Then we graduate, enter the “real world” and our attitude towards those topics changes. Sometimes it’s because we realize the difficulty of changing anything At others, it’s because we understand what André Gide described thus: “The colour of truth is grey.” Ok, nothing new so far. And then I read Isaiah Berlin’s perspective on the evils of the 20 th century (Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot etc). Berlin’s take on why these deeds happened? He accepts the contribution of the usual suspects (“fear, greed, tribal hatreds, jealousy, love of power”) but feels the major contributor was: “They have been caused, in our time, by ideas; or rather, by one particular idea. It is paradoxical that Karl Marx, who played down the importance of ideas in...

Who hasn’t encountered Amazon’s famous “People who bought this product also liked…” recommendations? More often than not, those recommendations aren’t annoying shots in the dark guessing what you might like; they are actually pretty good. But the algorithm wasn’t always this good. In fact, in the beginning, when Amazon didn’t have a history of your previous purchases, they had human critics recommending “the Amazon voice” on its site. Sounds so quaint now, doesn’t it? Then, when the algorithms replaced the humans, they weren’t exactly smart. As James Marcus described the initial algorithms in his book, Amazonia : “It felt as if you had gone shopping with the village idiot.” Then Amazon realized it didn’t have to customize suggestions based on individuals ; rather they could just identify correlations between products ; and make their recommendations based on the latter! But even as the algorithms got better, there remained several problems for Amazon to improve their recommen...

The other day, my wife woke up sick and so the job of preparing the kid’s snack and lunch (they have a separate break for each) for school fell on me. My daughter didn’t believe I could prepare any thing, even though the plan was to just make a sandwich! If you replace “frozen waffles” with “Maggi” in the strip below, you’ll get exactly how our exchange went: Like all men who can’t cook, I told her that she should consider it a privilege that the Great Master Chef was preparing her lunch that day. And that I would be throwing in a (readymade) cake piece for her snack. Now her school is quite particular about the “no junk food” policy, and so she got hauled up that day. As instructed, she told her teachers that her mom was sick and that’s why she had brought junk food for lunch that day. Obviously, the teacher had to let it go (what else could she do, starve the kid?). But then, in passing, the teacher told the other teacher, “See, every time a kid brings junk food, she’ll say...

Recently I read a book (supposedly) on Cleopatra by Jacob Abbott. I say “supposedly” because the book is about far more things than just that one queen. In an earlier series of blogs on ancient Rome, I had written of Julius Caesar’s rise to power and his clash with the general Pompey during that struggle. Pompey fled to Egypt with Caesar in hot pursuit. This put the ruler of Alexandria in a fix. Here is how the book describes it: “If they were to receive Pompey, they reasoned, Caesar would be made their enemy; if they refused to receive him, Pompey himself would be offended, and they did not know which of the two it would be safe to displease.” Their solution was well thought out… and horrifying: they beheaded Pompey when he landed. The book describes their reasoning: “’But by killing Pompey,” they said, “we will be sure to please Caesar and Pompey himself will lie still.” But if they thought presenting Pompey’s head on a platter would please Caesar, they were in fo...

The same (place) name is used to refer to geographical areas whose size and location changes over time as a result of wars, treaties and internal restructuring. All this can lead to immense confusion and misunderstanding because your association with those place names today may be totally different from the areas that were referred to by the same name decades back! Consider how North Indians often refer to all South Indians as Madrasis . How dumb, we fume. Do these people really think all South Indians come from Madras? Turns out that the term Madrasi may have been coined when Madrasi meant someone from the British era Madras Presidency, not modern day Madras city! Let Salil Misra explain the geography of that age: “Madras Presidency (consisting of most of present-day South India minus the princely states of Hyderabad and Mysore) had a large number of Telugu, Oriya, Malayalam and Kannada speakers.” Or if you are a visual person, perhaps a map would help see how Madras Pres...

I'd bought this science kit for my 6 year old, using which she could make a periscope and a pin hole camera (Sorry, kiddo, this is what you get when both parents are engineers!). She likes to build such things – sometimes as something to play with, and always as something to brag to her friends. Of course, not satisfied with this, I insisted on teaching her how a periscope works. By drawing a pic of how light reflects off the angled mirrors of the periscope: Unfortunately, the lesson was lost in what followed: She : “What is that thing you’ve drawn at the bottom? ” Me : “An eye. Of the person who is viewing through the periscope. ” She : “Humph… you don’t even know how to draw an eye. ” Me : “Oh yeah? Like you can draw any better. ” She : “Of course I can.” To prove her point, Ms.Michelangelo drew some eyes for me: Were her drawings good? Sure, but I was not going to be distracted by art in a science lesson. But also, I also got why she thought my d...

Maruti faced a chicken and egg problem. To create a mass market car, it needed an ecosystem of vendors and suppliers. But without a mass market, there weren’t too many vendors or suppliers. To add to that, Suzuki didn’t trust Indian vendors to supply good quality parts, and feared it would dilute their brand. Government regulations for PSU’s, like changing vendors every couple of years, acted as a disincentive to vendors to invest into any company. So Maruti tried partnerships with vendors. It started the concept of testing parts for wear and tear, a new concept back then! Vendors didn’t understand the term “quality”. They thought better specs meant better quality. Maruti had to educate them that quality meant exact matching of specs for almost every piece. Root cause analysis was taught to vendors, at Suzuki’s insistence. Eventually, vendors jumped onboard sensing that they were on the cusp of something big. Maruti introduced vendor rating systems, a norm these days. It informally a...

In a country where cars for the masses was still a novelty, Maruti faced many problems. Like transporting cars. The Railways were not interested in customizing for transporting cars from factory to dealers. So it got done by trucks. Causes for damages during transportation were identified and fixed. General insurance taken for such damages was stopped and instead paid by the company: this acted as an incentive to find, fix and prevent damages. Maruti soon launched the Gypsy. It was a big hit, replacing the jeep among Delhi Police. It became the preferred vehicle of the Indian Air Force and later the Army. In 1987, Maruti started exporting cars. To Hungary. Why Hungary? Because Maruti wasn’t sure if they’d meet stricter Western standards yet. And also, India had a trade deficit with Hungary; this would help adjust that to some extent… In 1989, when they passed the tests in France, “that was a day of rejoicing”. It was sold as the Alto. It soon became the largest selling car in...

The Maruti Story by RC Bhargava is written the way a Western guy would write: a fast-paced narrative, the right level of detail, never boring and yes, with pride in having done something that was very hard. A great read, in short. Sanjay Gandhi was interested in making a people’s car, ever since he apprenticed at Rolls Royce from 1964 to 1967. His own company named Maruti got nowhere before he died. After his death, a new PSU was formed by Indira Gandhi with the same intent… and the same name. Formed in 1981, its mandate was to get cars rolling within 2 years. A private company head was appointed CEO and chairman, something unheard of for a PSU. An Indira relative, Arun Nehru, was appointed the pointsman for the project. The message in all this? This wasn’t just another PSU; so politicians, stay away; and bureaucrats, don’t get in the way. Multiple foreign car manufacturers were considered for partnership. But the terms, the target price point, the need for a small car, the ...