Viswanathan K's Thoughts

The story behind why Aadhar was launched is well known. Sonia Gandhi wanted a system that would enable subsidies to reach the people, ergo a unique identity for everyone. She brought in Nandan Nilekani, who demanded a cabinet minister post, so he would have the clout and power with the different ministries and bureaucrats he knew he’d have run-ins with. The book, The Aadhar Effect , describes the two options Nilekani had: build a pipe, or build a platform. But, first here’s the difference between the two options: “In the pipe model, value gets created at one end (by the producers) and it gets consumed at the other end (by the users)… A platform, on the other hand, just attracts producers and consumers to it, and enables transactions between them.” YouTube, Uber and Facebook are platforms. See what a platform can do? “Platforms can scale up… (they) can cater to a range of services… Platforms can nurture diversity… (They) can gain momentum very fast… (And they) can dramatic...

As a kid, my brother and I loved playing with Lego. Best toy ever, in my opinion. It’s been ages since I played with them last, which is perhaps why I missed this trend wrt Lego “minifigures” (that’s the term used to refer to those toy figures of Legoland; popularly shortened to “minifigs”). Apparently, the trend started in 1989 as per some study at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand: the minifigs shifted more and more to “scowling, frowning or snarling rather than smiling” . Have a look at this pic to see what they mean: Wait, did I just say university study? Yup, that’s not a typo. Apparently, play is too important to be left to the kids (to paraphrase that famous saying about wars and generals). As this Telegraph article put it: “The report is full of scatter graphs and tables that show the “results of the linear curve estimations across the six emotion categories” and a comically obtuse k-cluster analysis of spacemen versus cavemen characters… I kid...