Viswanathan K's Thoughts

In The Golden Road , William Dalrymple mentions something strange - No Buddhist text or inscription survives from the times before Ashoka and Kalinga. (Dalrymple snarkily contrasts Ashoka’s “I am sorry” with other rulers from that time to present day, who will never acknowledge a mistake or express regret). But once Ashoka embraced Buddhism, a “waterfall” of records cascade from Kandahar to the Deccan. Ashoka was to Buddhism’s spread what Constantine was to Christianity’s, he writes.   But post-Ashoka, Buddhism never spread by any ruler’s recommendation or by the sword. “Instead, perhaps counter-intuitively for a faith that embraced poverty and renunciation as an ideal, it was spread around the globe most effectively by wealthy merchants engaged in trade.” For many Buddhists, wealth “could be taken as a sign of good karma ” and “poverty could be interpreted as a sign of moral failure”!   At the famous caves of Ajanta, the Buddha is shown less in his “monastic mil...

There is this joke about a dairy farmer wanting to maximize his cow’s milk production. So the farmer goes to a physicist who comes back with a stack of impressive looking equations and says, “Well, first assume a spherical cow…”   At first sight, it just sounds like yet another theoretical simplification to the point of absurdity. But there is a lot to this “spherical-cow philosophy”, writes Sean Carroll in The Biggest Ideas in the Universe 1 . Specifically in how physics is done: “Idealize a difficult problem down to a simple one by ignoring as many complications as you can. Get an answer to the simple problem. Then put the complications back in and calculate how they affect the answer to the simple problem.”   Physics is famous for this method e.g. ignore friction, build an idea, then add friction into it. For no apparent reason, this technique works in physics. Even though it obviously does not work in so many other fields: “In fields like biology and economic...

A t work, I remember being told to remember that we had translate our English UI to both Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese. Separately – the two were that different. While reading Gaston Dorren’s Babel , I learnt that while the vocabulary is 99% common, the pronunciations are seriously different, so much so that it not even the same language anymore!   Dorren still counts them as one though (#7, 275 million speaker). Most of his chapter on Portuguese is about a question he asks himself: Why did Portuguese spread across the world (remember, it is 7 th in the most spoken languages list)? Whereas Dutch language hardly spread?   In fact, neither power tried actively to instill their language in their colonies (the French put a lot more effort on that front; and it never yielded proportional results. French is #10, 250 million). Nor is Portuguese an easier language to learn in any way (it is as hard or easy as any foreign language).   One reason is where they ...

Does the advent of AI mean we need new laws and regulations? When I read two of Rahul Matthan’s posts, I realize they are entirely different questions. The same answer need not apply to both!   Take the laws aspect first . Consider fake news, he says. AI can generate fake content, both audio and video. Does this mean we need new laws? Surprisingly, no. We already have existing laws to cover all this (impersonation of others is a crime; so is harming someone’s reputation). Or consider how AI can be used to trigger communal tensions. Already a crime, covered under the law on using electronic communications to promote disharmony and enmity. Matthan says there is a reason why we can find existing laws for most scenarios: “Pretty much any harm that you think is exacerbated by AI—be it misleading advertising, election interference, forgery or bias—is covered by existing provisions of law. In almost every instance, since these laws have been drafted so broadly as to cover a wide ra...

Admission tests for new kids at my 13 yo daughter’s school are held in a way where the existing and prospective kids can see each other, even talk to each other (if they want to). The parents of the prospective kid can walk round the school, and check out the facilities after the test.   The existing kids have this tendency to evaluate the prospective kids for their “worthiness” – could they be members of their gang, should they be selected. Unsurprisingly, all new kids will be dismissed as un-cool, ugly or stupid and totally unworthy of joining the exalted ranks of the Cool Gang.   Recently, there was this fat girl who took this entrance test. After the test, as her parents went round the school, they spoke to the Sports teacher and said that the girl played basketball. One of the Cool Gang smirked, “ She plays basketball? Does she play the role of the ball ?”. To which another responded, “She’s a size 20, we only use size 7 balls here”. Uproarious laughter ensued. O...

When the state doesn’t have the capacity to deliver services to all and/or its quality is poor, it is inevitable that private players will emerge for some fraction of those services – water delivery, security guards, hospitals, schools etc.   Having a mix of private and public service provider makes things murky, says Karthik Muralidharan in Accelerating India’s Development . How? Because the government then plays policymaker, regulator, and service provider. These roles are often contradictory, which creates confusion and accusations of bias.   We tend to confuse qualifications with quality. But both the education and health sectors prove this wrong – the private sector qualifications in both are lower, yet they produce better outcomes. Why? The carrot (bonuses) and stick (job insecurity) approach of the private sector drives greater effort. The correlation of effort to outcome is far higher than that of qualification to outcome.   The private and public sect...

The largest Austronesian language is Malay (#9, 275 million speakers), spoken in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore. Gaston Dorren’s Babel on Malay focuses on Indonesia because it is a segue into an interesting question. In countries with multiple pre-existing languages, which one dominates? Is there a pattern? (In case you were wondering, Indonesia, spread over a thousand islands, has over 700 languages. Yet, the adoption of Malay as the official language has never created problems.)     Group 1 are countries with one clear dominant language e.g. Saudi Arabia, the Koreas, Bangladesh. These are no-brainers in the choice of language. At the other end of the spectrum is Group 4 – a lot of languages, with one as the largest spoken one but nowhere near an absolute majority e.g. Philippines and many African countries. Here, any one language is unlikely to dominate since the others can unify in protest. They usually pick a former colonial language as the VIL (Very Imp...

Africa has a huge number of languages, but most of those languages are used in a limited locale only, writes Gaston Dorren’s Babel . Hence the need for a lingua franca - a common language between speakers whose native languages are different. Enter Swahili (#12, 135 million speakers). Very few of those (just 15 million) are native speakers though; the overwhelming majority of speakers use it as the lingua franca! Earlier, it used the Arabic script, but after European colonialism, the script has changed to Roman.   Africa then is a continent where almost everyone knows a minimum of 3 languages – the mother tongue, a lingua franca, and what Dorren calls the VIL (Very Important Language). The VIL is the official language of the country, education above primary school is in the VIL, and urban folks use it a lot. The VIL is almost always a foreign language – English, French, Portuguese or Arabic (introduced much earlier, but still, not a native of the continent).   Why is...

Karthik Muralidharan next looks at why India so centralized in Accelerating India’s Development . Turns out it is rooted in the Constitution itself. There were 3 reasons for why the constitution was framed this way. The first one was political – at Independence, there was a strong (and justified) fear that the nation would disintegrate. After all, 500 erstwhile princely states had come under the union, not always happily. And Partition had only aggravated those fears. Hence the center was given a lot of powers, including the infamous Article 356 to dismiss state governments.   The second reason was economic. Centralized planning and investment was deemed necessary for economic growth. In addition, a strong center was necessary to accomplish “geographically balanced development”.   Third , social reasons. Nehru and Ambedkar did not trust the local elites to promote reforms like eradicating untouchability and enabling women’s rights. Ambedkar famously said: “What is ...

How did ancient Rome change from being a Republic to a monarchy? Not to take “credit” away from Julius Caesar or Augustus Caesar (who cemented the transformation), but a contributing factor is what Andrew Sullivan mentions: “Little abuses of power in the Roman system slowly multiplied, as rival factions exploited loopholes, or made minor adjustments, for short-term advantages.”   The other “model” for changing a Republic to a dictatorship is the (German) Weimar Republic which was overthrown by Hitler. That was a short-lived Republic that collapsed under the weight of sanctions and war damages imposed by the victors of World War I.   America, says Sullivan, if it were to stop being a Republic, is likely to go the Rome way, many small steps adding up over time. And Presidential pardons is looking like the most likely candidate for abuse. He points out other Presidential pardons have been questionable too, from Clinton (his half-brother) to Trump (his son-in-law’s fathe...

We got our 13 yo daughter her SIM card finally. Too early? Maybe (time will tell), but so many other kids seem to have gotten one at a much younger age. The other reason was the expectation that she’ll over-do/over-use whenever she gets her own phone number, and we will all take time to settle down on her usage (Time she spends? Which apps? Sharing her number with who? Learning to deal with unknown callers? Recognizing scamsters? etc). Better that the (team building) phases of ‘forming’, ‘storming’ and ‘norming’ get done long before she gets to 9 th standard, or so we hope. (I didn’t mention the ‘performing’ phase of team building because, well, she’s a teenager).   That’s the plan. But as Clausewitz said, “No plan survives contact with the enemy”, so let’s see… ~~   It reminded me of this recent Australian bill to set the minimum age for social media accounts at 16. Social media companies will be expected to enforce this law. My initial reaction was that this is a...

In Accelerating India’s Development , Karthik Muralidharan looks at the Indian experience with federalism. It is not comparable to most other countries in many ways because most Indian states have huge populations: “Each of India’s fifteen most populous states would rank among the forty-two most populous countries in the world.” This means the first level of federal drilldown, the state, is still too large a unit of governance. Which is why states are split further into districts, blocks, urban and rural bodies. But even districts, on average, have far more people than 85 countries in the world! Therefore, Indian federalism needs to go several layers deep to achieve the intended purpose.   Two examples support this idea. The smaller states (Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh) formed out of large states (UP, Bihar and MP) have fared better. And when NT Rama Rao split blocks into even smaller units called mandals, they did better. (Nationally, blocks have around 2-3 la...

Two of the languages in Gaston Dorren’s Babel have an abnormally high political component to them.   The first one is Tamil (#18, 90 million speakers). While an ancient language, for a long time, he says, it has become very political. The language is considered sacred by many of its speakers. This adoration is a relatively recent phenomenon, starting off when British scholars started to study the language and old documents in the 1800’s. That showed that South India had been ruled by many mighty dynasties from the Pandyan to Cholas to Cheras. The newfound association of the language with such ancient and powerful empires triggered a surge of pride.   After independence, states were created on linguistic lines and multi-language Madras state got split. Tamil Nadu became the home of Tamilians only. Later day attempts to make Hindi the national language provoked outsized protests in the state and cemented the role and position of Tamil within the state.   And i...

Federalism. Center-state split of responsibilities and finances. To understand the right split for it, Karthik Muralidharan starts from first principles in Accelerating India’s Development .   What are the pros of being a large country? Large countries can have economies of scale – their economic size can be larger, tax from which makes for powerful armies which means they are less threatened by enemies. Large countries can spend more on defense investments, some of which may find civilian applications (think of satellites and the Internet). A large geographic size means a bigger market within one’s borders without the hassle of negotiating inter-country trade agreements. Natural disasters are limited in their scope; and people can move elsewhere. Conversely, the unimpacted parts of the country can supply the money to rebuild the impacted areas.   How about the cons of being a large country? Large countries will inevitably host diverse identities, but national policies...

There are around 6,000 languages in the world, writes Gaston Dorren in Babel . His book covers the top 20 spoken languages in an unsystematic manner. Understandable, since nobody can analyze so many diverse languages in the same way. That approach results in very different info about the languages. ~~   He tried learning Vietnamese (#20, 75 million speakers). Strangely, it uses the Roman script, even though 30 to 60% of its vocabulary comes from Chinese! It has an abnormally high diacritics (symbols on top of letters e.g. ć, ĉ, č, ē etc). Unlike English, its spellings match the pronunciations – thanks to all those diacritics. Like many East Asian languages, it is highly tonal (different vocalizations can change the meaning of words significantly). And like many Asian languages, there are lots of different personal pronouns – use the wrong one and you are being disrespectful. ~~   At #16, with 95 million speakers, comes Javanese . Never heard of it? That’s probabl...

In India, a very tiny fraction of the population pays taxes. But if you look at its GDP per capita, then India is not an outlier, writes Karthik Muralidharan in Accelerating India’s Development . In simple terms, that means poorer countries tend to have a low tax paying base. Conversely, more people pay taxes in richer countries. It may be hard to believe but: “Our revenue collection is in line with global and historical benchmarks.”   But why is tax base related to the richness or poverty of a country? “These patterns reflect greater formalization of the economy in richer countries.” The good news is that as poorer countries get better off, their tax base increases (this is a historical trend). One reason for this is that the administrative capability to tax increases as a country grows richer.   Further, the richer a country grows, the more the government can do (it has more money, after all). And the more the government does, the more the number who are will...

Harish Mehta writes the story of the Indian IT industry in The Maverick Effect . In the beginning, the common problems of the industry were far too many and seemingly insurmountable.   Back then, brand India was a major problem. We were still considered a dirt poor country of snake charmers. Socialist. License raj. Pathetic product quality. “Against the backdrop of a poor nation on the brink (of bankruptcy), Indians were standing in American boardrooms, making lofty promises to help them conquer their most complex, technological challenges.” No wonder the pitches rarely succeeded in winning any projects. Even worse: “How to you help a nation-wide scatter of companies that suffer from the West’s reluctance to put ‘India’ and ‘software’ in the same sentence?”   The answer came in the form of a problem that nobody in the West wanted to work on. Yes, the Y2K problem (Older computer system stored the year in 2 digits. Come the year 2000, the last 2 digits of the curre...

The biggest problem in how the government spends money is not corruption. Instead, it is inefficiency – the spending of money on the wrong things, writes Karthik Muralidharan in Accelerating India’s Development .   For example, 50% of public spending is tied to salaries, pensions and interest payments. That leaves only 50% to spend on providing real services to the people. Even within that 50%, less is spent on investments (roads, schools etc) that boost future productivity. Instead, more is spent on subsidies .   Muralidharan acknowledges that welfare schemes must exist, but they need better targeting . Both inclusion and exclusion errors (including the wrong people and excluding some of the right people) need to be reduced. (A broader definition of inclusion error includes not differentiating rich and poor farmers.)   Another problem is leakage . It refers not just to corruption, but also over-invoicing (billing for non-existent individuals) and under-pay...

Why does America have such a long period (2 months) before the winner of an election takes over as the President? No other democracy has such a ridiculously long transition period. This could be dismissed as an American quirk, except when you see what has happened in the Ukraine war since Trump won.   Biden gave Ukraine the “green light for Ukraine to strike Russia with US-made long-range missiles”. This is very dangerous for obvious reasons. How would Russia respond if an American missile launched by Ukraine hit deep inside Russia? Will UK and France follow (or be forced to follow) the American policy and authorize Ukraine to use their missiles to hit inside Russia? Would Russia decide to strike a European manufacturer of missiles in such a scenario? Would NATO then be forced to declare war on Russia? Would nukes come into play?   You’d think Biden’s team would cite a good reason why they have set things off on such a dangerous and unpredictable trajectory when he is...

Government salaries are too high. On average. Thought not all are overpaid, top government officials are severely underpaid compared to their private sector peers. Such high salaries (on average) creates multiple problems, explains Karthik Muralidharan in Accelerating India’s Development .   A lot of people try to get a government job desperately. Such demand invites corruption in hiring. In addition, since the attraction of government jobs is so much (higher pay + job security + pension), a lot of people take any government job they can land. Regardless of their area of expertise or interest. Since many of these jobs have some minimum qualification, it leads to the sprouting of colleges to fulfil the need for a degree. The poor quality, and disconnect from employability of such colleges is of no concern even to the student because they view that degree as the minimum qualification to land a government job.   With the ratio of applicants to government jobs so low, ...

This blog is based on two interesting titbits from Harish Mehta’s The Maverick Effect . ~~   A surprising cameo in the NASSCOM story is the actor, Shammi Kapoor. Even though he was in his 70’s, he was connecting to the Internet (long before the Internet took off in India) to access world news. “He was an Internet enthusiast with an incredibly curious mind. He took to new technologies like a fish to water.” NASSCOM tried to enlist him to pitch the benefits of the Internet in India to bureaucrats and policy makers in government. He agreed to do it. For free. His celebrity status was a big attraction. He spoke passionately of the world it could open up, how he connected to his kids abroad via the Internet. “His personality and presentation skills helped us communicate the potential of the Internet to even bureaucrats.” ~~   In the 80’s and 90’s, there was the huge problem of terribly slow data links from the West to India. Even the laughably slow 64 kbps link co...

NASSCOM (National Association of Software and Service Companies) is a trade association. It started by serving the needs of the still-in-infancy software companies, but has expanded to include BPO’s, R&D centers, and startups. “(NASSCOM is) India Inc brand builder, a think tank, a lobbyist group, an interventionist or more.”   This may sound like a reviled lobbying and backroom dealing entity, but as Harish Mehta writes in The Maverick Effect , back in 1988 (when NASSCOM was founded), it was a necessity. “NASSCOM was incubated at a time when it was an uphill battle to even get software recognized as a tangible product or a service, and something different from computer hardware.” Hard to even imagine such a confusion today…   Back then, the Indian body representing software companies was really a body for computer hardware companies, MAIT. MAIT treated software as the poor cousin. Mehta and a few others wondered if the only way was to form a dedicated body to...