Viswanathan K's Thoughts

ROI. It stands for “Return On Investment”. To put it crudely, it’s the “How much do you get in return?” question. A must-ask question in business, but considered a mark of selfishness in other fields. Like aid, philanthropy or charity. That is why this comment by a reader of the Dish was so thought-provoking: “Aid itself is a brilliant idea, and one with far-reaching and lasting effects, but there are basically no metrics for ROI, and nobody is acting to direct it intelligently. This happens because of the phenomenon Easterly notes, wherein people truly donate to feel good, not to actually effect change (which requires much more work).” And when doing good becomes an end in itself (without caring about the results), people sometimes stop asking whether they are even focusing on the most important problem: “The fact of the matter is that diarrhea is still the number-one infectious disease killer in the developing world, with HIV/AIDS so far off in the distance as to be virt...

I read this Scott Adams blog where he talked about how he kept forgetting to take his 5 items to the gym. Stuff like keys, iPod and so on. He wondered why his brain can’t seem to remember a simple list of 5 items? He never got around to answering that question because his blog focused on finding a way to remember, not why he couldn’t remember in the first place. So I will give it a shot instead: why is it that most of us can’t seem to remember such short lists when we can, at the same time, remember much more complex things? I feel the answer is that a checklist activity really has 2 parts to it: first, remembering the list; and secondly, finding and carrying each item on that list. I feel it is the time gap between the 2 parts which makes us forget. I am guessing we get bored by the time we perform the 3 rd part of the activity. Or maybe we don’t allocate time to do so many pairs of actions at the last minute! Oh, if you are interested, Adams’ solution to remembering suc...

Why did the Indian government give $5 million to Pakistan for flood relief ? Pakistan’s Mr.Ten Percent, Zardari, will swindle 10% (how do you think he got that nickname?) of the money. The ISI, Pakistani Army and their terrorist groups will swindle much of the rest. And use it to launch the next 26/11. Or to kill Indians in Afghanistan. Even if a small fraction is left over after all those groups take “their share”, do you think the Pakistanis getting aid purchased with that money would be told it came from India? Yeah, right, keep dreaming. Some countries even suggested India should have given more. And offered it earlier. Really? By this “logic”, I am guessing the same folks would have criticized the Jews for not funding the Nazis! Some suggest we give them items of use instead of cash. Newsflash: we already tried that during the 2005 earthquake in Pakistani Kashmir. Guess what the Pakistanis did? They removed the “Made in India” labels to avoid any goodwill from being cre...