Viswanathan K's Thoughts

I was amused that a North Indian like Devansh Malik could write about how Udupi restaurants and hotels spread across the country (It’s because he has lived in Udupi for 2 years).   As someone who lived there, he knows the local cuisine: “No, I’m not talking about the typical dosa, idli, sambhar kind of south indian comfort food. That’s what most people (read: my fellow North Indians) picture.” The local cuisine specialities of Udupi are all non-veg . Chicken ghee roast. Kori roti . Chicken sukka with some neer dosa . Fish curries. And yet, he says Udupi restaurants are almost always vegetarian! “They don’t serve the non-veg food I just described.” What was the story behind all this? How come everywhere? Why only veg? ~~   The tale starts with Udupi, the temple town, built around the Sri Krishna Matha. “Krishna is worshiped as Anna Brahma, the god of food. And feeding people is one of the core religious duties of the temple. Every single day, the temple k...

John Zubrzycki’s book, Dethroned , is the tale of how the princely states were integrated into India at independence by the combo of Sardar Patel and VP Menon. Patel was a mix of “charm and persuasion with coercion”, complemented well by VP Menon’s “skills as a tactician”.   The terms and conditions of accession kept changing during that chaotic period. Mountbatten started off by saying the princely states would have authority on all matters, except defense, foreign affairs and communication. In the same breath, Mountbatten also added that while in theory, the princely states would have a choice, in practice, a majority of the 565 states were geographically and inextricably tied to be part of India. Why no mention of Pakistan here? Because, as this map shows, almost all the princely states lay on the India side. Also, the few princely states on the Pakistan side were Muslim-majority and Muslim-ruled, so Jinnah wasn’t too worried. Contrast that with India, where several princely...

The last topic in Vandana Vasudevan’s OTP Please is courage.   If gig workers cannot unite (they aren’t employees, and they don’t meet each other, nor is there a physical office), how can/do they hope to improve things? Well, some of them have turned activists getting in touch with MLA’s and sometimes CM’s to ask for upper limits on the number of cabs. They tell the government of the risk of so many jobs being tied to private companies that are often unprofitable for years on end and run the risk of shutting shop.   Some have lobbied for new laws to protect and give benefits to gig workers, like insurance and health benefits. Social media can be used as a forum to vent about the worst practices, and sometimes it helps move the needle.   Such gig work related problems (and solutions) aren’t unique to the subcontinent. Europe has its share of both problems and attempted solutions for gig workers. Sometimes, they flow from one region to the other.   Som...

Way back in 2002, an Indian non-profit organization named Simputer Trust created by 7 scientists and engineers created the eponymous Simputer. It stood for “simple, inexpensive and multilingual people's computer”.   It included very-advanced-for-the-time features. Text-to-speech software. Linux operating system. Size of the Palm Pilot. A touch sensitive screen! Operable via a stylus. Even a simple handwriting recognition software. A serial port. USB connections. Both a color and a black and white (greyscale) version.   The creators hoped it would enable even the poor to get familiar with computers, and eventually, get onto the still emerging-in-India Internet. Agricultural and fertilizer info was one obvious use. The market could have been not just the poor - sales teams on the move, insurance agents on the go could have stored content on it (Remember, laptops were very rare and expensive; the smartphone and the tablet had not yet been invented).   S...

Horsepower. A unit of power. Devansh Malik tells the story behind it and it is very interesting.   When the steam engine was invented, it served one purpose only. For 50 years! “(A steam engine) did only one job: pumping water out of coal mines, which flooded quite often. They could only move up and down, which is perfect for a pump but useless for anything else.”   James Watt (“the same dude from your physics textbooks”) was a builder of things – barometers, compasses, toys, musical instruments etc. Once, someone asked him to fix a broken steam engine. Those initial steam engines were very inefficient. So Watt decided to both fix it and improve its design. “His version did the same amount of work while burning about 75% less coal. He also worked out a gear system that turned the engine’s up-and-down motion into a spinning one. Which meant a steam engine could now turn a wheel.”   This hugely expanded the possible uses and applications of the steam engin...

Another aspect described in Vandana Vasudevan’s OTP Please is isolation.   As everyone orders meals, members of the same house begin to order at different times. Gone is the catching up time as a family. On a related note, as one interviewee told the author: “Coffee shops are no longer places to socialize. People come to cafes to be alone with their laptops.” Quick commerce makes going to the grocery store redundant. And with fewer people coming to the shop, some of them close down, setting off a cycle.   Unlike those of us who work at offices, schools or colleges, gig workers don’t even get to interact (much) with co-workers since they are all on the move. Plus, attrition is high, so even the few one may know switch work frequently. Interactions with HR are through the app only.   Loneliness and lack of human contact aside, this also leads to the “atomization” of the workers. If they don’t know each other, how can they possibly group up to raise grievanc...