Viswanathan K's Thoughts

Who are the top players in the semiconductor industry today? Pranay Kotasthane looks into that in When the Chips are Down . We instinctively think of the chip design companies only, but there are a lot of other elements.   A technology node in semiconductors can be taken to represent the size of a single transistor. In 1965, one chip could hold a few tens of transistors. Today, it can hold more than a billion transistors. The smallest technology node today is 3 nm (nanometers).   The smaller the size, the more expensive it is to manufacture. “Tools must be able to print the design onto a silicon disk precisely, and lasers must cut it finely.” Achieving this required both technological and economic revolutions. The latter was done via the creation of lean supply chains. Each stage has become more and more specialized over time, and different countries are the apex in different steps.   Start with chip design . Some firms design for their own use; while ot...

In recent years, the US has started the “Chip Wars”. No, it’s not a physical war with planes and bombs. Rather, it is a war over various aspects of the ubiquitous semiconductor chips. For now, it focusses on these aspects: (1) Which kind of chips should be on the forbidden list? (2) Who should they not be sold to?   In When the Chips are Down , Pranay Kotasthane analyzes this new war. He concludes there were 3 major triggers for this. First , geopolitics. With China snapping at America’s heels, the US is very worried. Since China is far, far behind in the chip design and chip manufacturing sectors, the US decided to try and lock the Chinese out now, before it is too late. The other factor here is that the world’s highest-end chip manufacturer (TSMC) is located in Taiwan. The aggressive Chinese stance on Taiwan worries the US. If Taiwan were attacked or blockaded, the availability of all highest-end chips would be at risk.   Second , geoeconomics. The COVID-19 afterm...

United Breweries suspended beer supply to Telangana recently, the reason being: “Despite our continuous efforts over the past two years, there has been no increase in the base prices offered for our products. This has resulted in escalating losses.” This got Pranay Kotasthane thinking. Why couldn’t the company increase beer prices in the state?   The answer is revealing. State governments don’t just want the tax revenue that comes from alcohol; they also want that revenue to be predictable . “In Karnataka, for example, alcohol-related duties alone comprise 11 per cent of the total budget.” Being such a significant contributor, one can see why state governments would hate to see fluctuations in it. And fluctuations are inevitable if alcohol prices can be set by alcohol companies. After all, an increase in alcohol prices could result in additional revenue for the state; or it may cause a drop in demand and thus a dip in tax revenues to the state.   So state gove...

As mentioned earlier, India’s first-past-the-post (FPTP) system leads to bad governance. To recap Karthik Muralidharan in Accelerating India’s Development , FPTP incentivizes governments to focus on the sub-groups who are “enough” to win elections instead of trying to deliver for everyone.   One alternative to that is called ranked-choice-voting (RCV). The idea is that voters rank candidates in the decreasing order of their preference (They can rank as many as they want, not necessarily all the candidates). “If a candidate wins over 50% of first-choice votes, they win. If not, the lowest-ranked candidate is dropped and the votes of those who ranked them first are transferred to their second-choice candidates. This process continues until a candidate receives over 50% of the votes.” An example helps. Say, there are 3 candidates, A, B and C who gets 36, 34 and 30 votes. C got the least, so he is dropped. The second-preference of the 30 votes for C are checked. In this case, s...

As the Roman empire fell apart, Indian traders started to look east. Sanskrit place names in South East Asia like Takkola (Market of Cardamom) and Karapurdvipa (Island of Camphor) indicate there were important ports attracting Indian merchants, explains William Dalrymple in The Golden Road .   Since the intent of trade with South East Asia, whether by India or by China, was trade and not religious evangelism, a “free mixing of Hinduism and Buddhism is a striking feature of South-east Asian religion”. The Buddha, Hindu gods and local religious practices all intermingled.   The “Indosphere” now didn’t end in Tamil Nadu, but extended to the other side of the Bay of Bengal. South East Asia was becoming a “Sanskritic union of monsoon Asia” (the monsoon winds were what powered the ships). Cultural and religious transformations were underway.   How much trade was happening though? Was it tiny? Or large? How can we know? A 10 th century shipwreck just 25o feet deep ...

Historically, countries moved jobs from agriculture to manufacturing and then to services, writes Karthik Muralidharan in Accelerating India’s Development . The move from agriculture to manufacturing increased worker prosperity for 3 reasons: (1) Enabled specialization and economies of scale; (2) Goods could be exported to other countries, which meant production wasn’t limited by domestic demand; (3) Jobs became more reliable.   India’s trajectory has been different –Manufacturing never took off because of the kinds of government policies we had. India went directly into services (think IT, BPO, Uber/Ola, Swiggy/Zomato etc). One reason for going to services was timing. As India liberalized, the Internet started to take off transforming “many non-tradable services into IT-enabled tradable ones”. Another reason was India’s decision at independence to focus on high quality tertiary education in English. And lastly, many folks who worked for outsourcing arms of the best Western ...

If a region has a well-established and ancient belief and value system, whether one calls it a religion or not, it is hard to replace it. Since China had Confucianism, how was Buddhism able to replace it? The starting point for the transformation, as per William Dalrymple in The Golden Road : “It was war and devastation.” Not external war or devastation by external forces. Instead it was triggered by the fall of the Han dynasty in 220 CE. This power vacuum was soon followed by natural disaster like floods, famines and plague. The power of the Confucian elite eroded, and the general belief in Chinese cultural superiority too got chipped away. A vacuum now existed for new ideas…   Buddhist missionary work exposed the population to Buddhist practices, art and imagery. The emperor Wen soon became the most “enthusiastic champion” of Buddhism in Chinese history (he had been born in a Buddhist temple and raised by a Buddhist nun). He ordered the construction of many monasteries ac...

All roads lead to Rome. All supply chains lead to China. As the global mood changed and such heavy dependence on China began to be perceived as a risk, it was also clear that total decoupling from Chinese manufacturing was impossible. Hence the West has started aiming for what is called “China + 1” policy (China + one other major manufacturing country).   This was considered an opportunity for many countries to get manufacturing jobs, including India. But while India has benefited only a little, Vietnam has benefited a lot. Why? The biggest reason turns out to be that Vietnam has a much better work force relevant to manufacturing . India does not, and its poor primary education system is a major cause for that. Which raises the question as to why India’s primary education system is so much worse?   While looking into that question, I found Apurva Kumar’s post comparing China and India’s education systems. In 1950, both countries had a literacy level of around 20%. Chi...

Someone asked Benjamin Franklin, one of the framers of the American constitution, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” His famous answer was: “A republic, if you can keep it.”   Pranay Kotasthane says Franklin’s response is not understood even today across democracies. Sure, we hear a lot of people talk of democracy being at risk. This is confusing and misleading because the response usually goes something like this, “Elections are happening as scheduled. Power transfer happens peacefully based on the outcome (other than Trump’s supporters running riot when he lost in 2020). In which democracies have any of these things stopped happening? So how exactly is democracy at risk?”   Those who are concerned are not articulating their concern correctly. When they say things like “majority rule is not right”, they don’t seem to realize democracy has always been about the rule of the majority! After all, democracy is a system by which the people who g...

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 ...