Viswanathan K's Thoughts

Even before taking power the second time, Trump announced imperialistic plans – to take over Greenland, and the Panama Canal, t0 make Canada the 51 st state. Some Americans feared such statements legitimize the imperialistic plans of others – Putin in Ukraine, China in Taiwan.   The moral sanctimonious of the West is reflected in this line they love to repeat: “The international legal order is based upon the notion that states are sovereign and borders are inviolable.” Really? The West has always been ok with Israeli expansion. What the West is saying (as always) is that imperialism by the West and its allies is OK, but not by others.   When Trump’s close ally, Elon Musk, openly expressed his preference on which party should rule the UK, many Americans and Europeans were aghast. (Musk said he was considering giving $100 million to a British political party, if they moved in the direction he wanted). Interference in other countries is not OK, they yell. They seem t...

Some welfare schemes are good, some are OK, and others are bad, writes Karthik Muralidharan in Accelerating India’s Development . He suggests using Efficiency (efficient or not?) v/s Equity (reduces inequality or not?) metric to evaluate different welfare schemes in the country, split among the 4 quadrants, R1 to R4.   Some schemes are good only on one count (Efficiency or Equity), others on both, and yet others hurt on both counts.   Take free electricity for farmers (#10, in R3). It is bad on both counts. How? The richest farmers (5%) account for 50% of the subsidy money. The poorest in farming, the landless labourers, get absolutely nothing from the scheme. Further, free electricity encourages cultivation of water intensive crops (since borewells become practically free), which reduces the water level progressively and aggravates the water problem. (The Delhi smog connection to free electricity is also well known). There are more indirect negative impacts of this...

When the adoption agency showed us our 4-month daughter-to-be, we were asked to take the baby for a medical checkup. This will sound silly, but back then, I was worried if the baby was, er, deaf. I guess the way I asked the question to the doctor, the intent didn’t come out clearly. She misunderstood it as a crazy parent asking whether the baby had any special hearing capabilities, something that might indicate a musical career! She gave me a mouthful about how such things cannot be identified in babies, how they acquire skills as they grow up (you get the gist).   So I had to get creative. When we came back to the car, and my wife and the baby had gotten into it, I banged the car door hard. Intentionally. The baby visibly flinched – my question had been answered: she could hear, she wasn’t deaf.   It was only later that I realized that children may hear but they never listen. Many attributes of children improve as they grow older. But not the listen-to-parents faculty...

In Accelerating India’s Development , Karthik Muralidharan says: “Resolving disputes and delivering justice are fundamental roles of a state.” In India, the judicial system moves too slowly. On most other topics, it is the executive’s responsibility to fix and improve things. But when it comes to the judiciary, there is pushback. By the judiciary. Sometimes because the constitutional boundary between the two arms is being violated. And at other times, out of pure self-interest. What then are possible solutions?   One non-controversial measure the legislature can take is to simplify the laws and repeal outdated and conflicting laws. Another measure for the legislature is to keep in mind the practicality and costs of enforcing laws that they pass.   Most cases in India are at the state level (80% of cases are below district level), so improving judicial efficiency requires states to take the necessary measures. Focusing on the lower judiciary will yield the maximum b...

True to form, the day Trump took over, he announced a slew of executive orders.   One executive order reclassifies thousands of government employees as political hires. This will make it easier to fire those employees. And make that entire category of employees have their employment tied to who the President of the day happens to be. Trump had done this during his first term, Biden rescinded it, now Trump reinstates it.   Take the decision to withdraw the US from the 2015 climate change agreement. Wait, didn’t Trump already do that in his first term? Yes, he did and then Biden un-did it, and Trump is now re-doing it, dismissing Biden’s policies on clean energy as “the new green scam”.   Related to that, Trump has declared a “national energy emergency”. What does that really mean? It will allow the government to fast-track energy fossil-fuel projects.   On similar lines, he revoked Biden’s (non-binding) order to have half of US vehicles go electric by...

Starting from a little before the 2024 national elections, more and more politicians and a lot of common folks seem very interested in the Constitution. But when you hear them speak on the topic, it is hardly inspiring, as Nitin Pai points out .   One set of Opposition parties equates the Constitution to reservation policies. Pai hits the nail on the head when he says: “Social justice is one of the first objectives of the Indian republic, but a reservation policy is just one of several possible ways to achieve it. It is not hard-coded in the document.” It is also a slippery slope, he says. Very quickly, anyone who opposes reservations will be branded anti-Constitution!   Then there’s the word “socialism”. It was added to the Preamble during the Emergency. The timing of that amendment should make one squirm, but in a polarized country, that’s not what happens. And few remember this: “When asked in 1949 why ‘socialism’ was not written into the Constitution, B....

This blog is based on assorted observations about Malaysia. Like India, they number their floors – Ground, 1 st , 2 nd  etc. And they drive on the left side. Turns out the number of countries that drive on the left isn’t as small as I had though. Our ride back from Batu Caves had a driver of Punjabi descent, though he was 2 nd or 3 rd generation Malay, and had never been to India. He told us a lot about the country. Metro coverage in Kuala Lumpur (KL) is poor, so everyone has cars, which then leads to all the congestion and jams. People working in KL also live in KL (same as India, but unlike the US). That too adds to the jams.   A lot of apartment complexes have come up near the highways and equivalents of Outer Ring Road around KL; and they have built sonic barriers to reduce the noise that reaches the living areas.   The cost of living is fairly low, he told us. That surprised me – so much of what we saw felt first world standard. Yet medical expenses are ver...

Police and public safety. That is another topic Karthik Muralidharan covers in Accelerating India’s Development .  Unfortunately, he says, Indian policing is built on the same structure as the British colonial police system, so it is designed to rule over people, not to serve them.   To add to that, the fraction of the budget spent on the police is tiny, which in turn translates into staff shortages. Even that low ratio of police to population is an inflated one because it includes reserved police forces. “The combination of overwork, unpredictable hours, frequent time away from family, and poor working conditions leads to severe mental health challenges among the police.”   Many committees have pointed out the need for training the police in soft skills like how to interact with the public. The budget for training, unfortunately, is ridiculously low, just ₹8,000 per employee during their entire career . This weakness in training impacts everything else too, fr...

Search on Instagram for “sky mirror photos” and you will see beautiful pics of people in colorful clothes and their perfect reflections on a thin film of water. Malaysia has one of the few places in the world where those pics are possible in Kuala Selangor, about an hour’s drive from KL. We left a little before 6 a.m.   The cab took us to the place from where we had to take a speed boat. Another hour on that going into the open sea and I could see no land (or island) anywhere. How much further, I wondered. And then suddenly, in the middle of the sea, we could see a lot of people standing… on water! No land anywhere, in the middle of the sea: how were these people standing in ankle deep water?   When we got near them, our boat stopped and we were told to walk in too! Turns out there is a land mass there which starts to show up with the tides. It was a surreal experience, standing in ankle deep water, the sea on all sides, no land anywhere (not even where we stood, at le...

Farsi , the language of Iran (#15, 110 million speakers) is a very old language and Persia was a mighty ancient empire, says Gaston Dorren in Babel . You’d think Farsi must have expanded its coverage and influence on the back of the mighty Persian empire. But no, it didn’t. Why not? Because Farsi was not the language of the court. It was the language of the masses…   With the rise of Islam, the Arabs conquered Persia. Farsi’s script changed to the Arabic one, and a lot of Arabic words became part of the Farsi language. Yet Persian culture thrived since the “Persians had thousands of years of urban life and empire-building under their belt” whereas the Arabs were, er, just conquering tribals. And so: “Arabic remained the language of religion, but Persian (Farsi) became the language of fine culture throughout the Middle East.” When Islamic rulers, both Sunni and Shia, conquered more and more lands, the language of culture and the ruling class was Farsi. Which is why the infl...

N ext we went back to Kuala Lumpur (or KL, as it is called in Malaysia). The airport, like Bangalore, is way outside the city. The roads were excellent but we experienced jams as we got closer to the city center. While the traffic crawls close to the city center and the tourist/ mall/ office areas, everyone follows lane discipline and you never hear cars honking.   The first day in KL, we had the Petronas Towers visit booked. Since we didn’t know the walking route from the hotel and didn’t know how bad KL jams are, we took a cab. Bad idea. Anyways, we got to the Towers on time. The towers are right next to a very popular mall, so we made more trips to the mall on other days. Those times, we walked to avoid the jam - it took a predictable 15 minutes.   The view from the Petronas Towers was a bit disappointing. Why? While the Towers are very tall, KL is full of high-rise buildings, many right next to the Towers. So wherever you look, your view is obstructed by the other ...

With Chinese/Mandarin (#2, 1.3 billion speakers), Gaston Dorren’s Babel focuses on the script. There are a lot of misconceptions about the script, and they never go away because they contain a kernel of truth. Let’s learn more.   Chinese is written top to bottom; its columns then ordered left to right . Long, long ago, both statements were true. But for a long time now, it has been written left to right on horizontal lines.   Chinese characters are pictures or ideograms. A very small fraction (2%), yes. But the majority (98%) are not.   Chinese characters are over 3,500 years old. Yes, writing in China is that old. But the characters have changed a lot over that period, so much so that most modern Chinese readers cannot read the ancient texts.   Chinese has over 50,000 characters. As per some official dictionaries, yes. But in practice, many of those are very niche used only in some places or professions. Only a quarter of that is relevant to dai...

One of the reasons for picking Malaysia for our year end vacation was that it offered visa on arrival. And the scheme was expiring by the end of the year (2024). A lot (and I mean a lot) of Indians were thinking the same(!) and so clearing Malaysian immigration took a long time as they had to check everyone’s documents (bank statements, return tickets etc), not an already issued visa.   We got a taste of how much Malaysia values tourism upon landing in Kuala Lumpur (or KL as the locals call it). Upon disembarking from the flight, they give every passenger a welcome kit, which thoughtfully included a power adaptor and a USB charging cable (for the phone). Accompanied by a cheerful namaste .   From KL, we took a flight to an archipelago of 99 islands called Langkawi. We went go to the Langkawi Wildlife Park. You can literally feed the birds off your hand. There’s even a python that you can drape around your shoulders for a great photo op, though we were too scared. For ...

Today, almost every kid uses ChatGPT or similar AI to do homework and assignments that involve research and writeups where there is no right or prescribed answer.   I’ve read several articles that ask the pre-ChatGPT era folks whether (1) they can remember even one such assignment they did ever having any use in real life? And (2) Since the answer to that is almost certainly No, what is the harm if kids today use ChatGPT for such assignments?   One counterpoint to the “what is the harm” is that it was never the specifics of any such assignment that was useful in life. Rather, its intent and benefit was to teach one how to search for information, cross-check multiple sources, and then how to collate things into a meaningful answer.   Paul Graham writes of another problem with kids (and adults) using ChatGPT to frame entire articles and long form answers. Writing well, he says, is a skill relevant to most workplaces and it isn’t easy. But now, hey, we can all u...

Karthik Muralidharan has a chapter on the healthcare system in India in Accelerating India’s Development . Unsurprisingly, across India, the majority of healthcare providers are private players.   In the private sector, both in rural areas and in poorer urban areas, the private sector practitioners are not MBBS qualified. “How then do they learn what to do?” By being in roles like compounder, ward boys or assistants. Many also “learn” from pharma representatives who tell what medicines do as well as their dosages. You’d think the pharma guys would exaggerate the effectiveness, but that tendency is balanced by their need to maintain long term relations. Overall, the private providers do have a decent amount of medical knowledge.   How effective are these unqualified practitioners? At least for primary care, they are comparable to MBBS doctors. But as things get complex, an MBBS is definitely better. How to measure the effectiveness of medical practitioners isn’t ob...

From present day perspective, it is astonishing how far west Buddhism had spread, as William Dalrymple describes in The Golden Road . Most of us probably didn’t know that were such gigantic statues of Buddha in Afghanistan until the Taliban destroyed the Bamiyan Buddhas. But Buddhism had spread even beyond Afghanistan at its peak.   In 2022, archaeologists in Berenike on the Red Sea found the head and torso of a magnificent Buddha in the storeroom of an Isis temple (Egyptian god). The statue hadn’t been transported from India – it was made of stone found in Turkey and was in a combo of styles – part Indian, part Roman-Egyptian. In that same temple, they found a stone memorial of the trinity of Hindu gods. There were also bilingual inscriptions in Greek and Sanskrit. Indian influence had spread very wide indeed.   The trade between Egypt and India was enormous. How do we know this? From the tax records of the Romans (who ruled Egypt). While sea travel and trade had its...