blog@Yantrajaal

Pratap Bhanu Mehta's article in the Indian Express on the devil being in the detail of educational reforms is very interesting. It makes us look around for successful models and one that strikes the eye is obviously the Stock Exchange mechanism -- that is perhaps one of the most successful model that has emerged from Indian reform process. To see if this model can be used as a reference, let us see some of the regulatory issues that a "company" needs to address before it can transact business and earn money. At its minimum, a company must adhere to the conditions of the Companies Act and register itself with the Registrar of Companies. We note that the RoC does not really approve or reject the application on the basis of the quality of the companies products or that of its promoters. All that the RoC ensures is that the company meets certain basic disclosure norms in terms of ownership and financial issues. The focus is on accurate disclosure -- or transparency -...

The IIT system, that was born in the early, optimistic years of the young Indian state, was truly one of kind. It articulated the scientific and technological aspirations of a nation, that had just found its feet in the global community , and exemplified -- what Thomas Friedman would later refer to as -- the process of "drilling for talent" : the search for the best and finest minds in the country -- irrespective of where they came from and who they were related to. By raising the bar on exclusivity and fairness, the JEE , that guarded the portals of the IIT system from the general mediocrity of the population, has become such a legend in itself that Brand JEE dominates Brand IIT by miles ! This is evident in the difference in the market esteem ( if not market value ) between IIT students who have cracked the JEE ( undergraduates) and those who have not ( for example the M.Techs, PhDs and what not ). But like all other institutions in the country, the JEE is under at...

Text books define history in terms of events and individuals. Hari Sheldon -- the epicentre of thought in Isaac Asimov's Foundation series -- posits an alternate perspective where the ebb and tide of the human saga is independent of both events and individuals and follows what others call the flow of destiny -- the inevitable. But what sets Asimov's interpretation stand apart from those of others is that he packages destiny in the garb of statistical inevitability. What does this mean ? It means that even if specific individual were not present, or specific events did not happen, the tide of history will -- by and large -- be the same. If Hitler was not born then the circumstances in Europe in the first half of the twentieth century would still have resulted in something like the Second World War. If Isaac Newton was not around and the apple did not fall on his head, it is very unlikely that we would still not have known about gravitation. Some one else would have figured t...

Mamata Banerjee should send a big bouquet of red roses to Komrade Karat because it is to him and his arrogant intransigence that she owes the 19+ Lok Sabha seats that she has won yesterday. The Communist Party of Bengal ( and Kerala and Tripura, if you please ) came to power in 1977 and has since been stuck leach-like to this state. While its intial entry was on the basis of certain ideologies, its uninterrupted continuance has been because of (a) its proprietary process of scientific rigging, that I explained in an earlier post and (b) its skillful division of the anti-left vote between the Congress and its offshoot, the Trinamool Congress. This second policy was perpetuated first by supporting the Congress at the centre and second by planting watermelons" in the Congress party in the state -- watermelons being fruits that are are green, the Congress colour, on the outside and RED at heart ! Trapped between the distant machinations in Delhi and the activities of saboteurs in Cal...

In an earlier post on I had tried to explain why in the study of astrology it makes more sense to observe, track and validate correlations between events in the celestial sphere and that in personal life. An analysis of correlations is a standard tool or technique in statistics and so it makes sense to apply this technique in astrology as well. However, there are certain challenges in this approach because the format in which astrological charts are created or stored is not amenable to the kind of statistical analyses that we are familar with. To overcome this limitation and I have come out with a new way to store and retrieve horoscope charts using sparse matrices and relational database management systems. You can read about this mathematical technique in my paper Statistical Testing of Hypotheses in Astrology . An unexpected byproduct of this effort was my introduction to the Scribd service that allows you to convert any form of document OpenOffice, MS-Office, PDF and what not int...

In general I do not follow the antics on the cricket field but since the IPL is good tamasha and KKR is ostensibly based out of Calcutta ( or god forbid, Kolkata !) I have been wondering why they are putting on such a uniformly bad show. The chatterati have come out with two streams of thought to which let me add my own ... First, SRK after his nationwide success with Chak De India, has come to believe that it is the coach that makes -- or, as in this case, breaks -- the team. In CDI, he portrayed -- albeit on the screen of fantasy -- that the players hardly matter, it is the coach and his strategies that matter in the end and he has applied this philosophy through Buchanan. But he seems to have forgotten completely that the game is actually played on the field -- not in the strategy session -- and it is the players who score runs, take wickets and finally win or lose a game. So now he has a whole team of coaches in addition to a team of players and the tooth-to-tail ratio, both in num...

I have been using Zoho at the Praxis Business School, Calcutta and have written about it in my blog posts Zoho : Amazing Web Based Applications and Zoho : The Continuing Saga but is great to know that the University of California at Berkeley has also woken up to the enchantment of this wonderful platform. Please see the presentation below.

A man is known no more only by his name, address and phone number -- an email address is mandatory on a visiting card that one presents as a part of the process of getting acquainted with a stranger. But the email is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg that represents a person in the emerging, expanding and evolving world of digital relationships. The Internet is a network of computers and more. As technology gets more sophisticated and 'computers' gets embedded into devices and imbibe them with what passes for intelligence, the Internet is being redefined as a network of devices or Yantrajaal : in Sanskrit, Yantra = device & Jaal = web. While this is valuable in itself, and needs no further elaboration, what is even more interesting is how individuals latch on to this web and spin for themselves a new, soft web of relationships -- both with the devices themselves and the software that runs on them, as well as with other individuals who have also latched on to the...

A widely held perception about astrology states that astronomical bodies influence events in human life and this influence can be benefic or malefic. This CAUSALITY is extremely difficult to justify in scientific or rational terms and has led to vague and vacuous explanations in terms of mysterious "rays" that emanate from planets -- and can be focused by gems and jewels -- or in terms of as yet unexplained gravitational and electromagnetic "action-at-a-distance" mechanisms. But strangely enough, even though astrology does not lend itself to a rational explanation we find that some of the most rational and scientific people on the planet, many of them renowned mathematicians, have a strong belief in this phenomenon. How is it that very rational people subscribe to this apparently irrational body of knowledge ? The answer is very simple if we replace CAUSALITY, as the operating principle of astrology, with the concept of CORRELATION . What does this mean ? Su...

Massively multi-user on-line role playing games (MMORPGs) may, in India today, be restricted to teenagers who have access to broadband but there are two powerful reasons why this is about to change : first – broadband is becoming ubiquitous, more so with 3G and WiMAX on the horizon and second – the teenagers themselves are becoming adults and hence significant ! But the advent of MMORPGs like World of Warcraft and EverQuest are harbingers of a far more subtle but significant shift in the way we humans perceive ourselves and the world around us. If you think that social networks like Orkut, Facebook, MySpace and professional networks like LinkedIN have changed the way people know and keep in touch with each other then 3D virtual worlds like Second Life represent the next generation ( or the third generation !) in relationship management. Based on the technology that is responsible for the intense and immersive 3D experience of MMORPG, and offering the flexibility and personalisatio...

With Pakistan succumbing to the Taliban and the US blindly stumbling around in an economic graveyard, we in India must start looking out for ways to defend our way of life from the misery that is engulfing the neighbourhood -- but the question is what and how ? No political activist in any party -- whether the Congress, the BJP or any of the satraps now jostling for an opportunity to loot the country after the elections -- has any clear idea on how to ensure the security of life and limb and so it is up us to try to figure out a way forward. When India was threatened by food security in the sixties and seventies, we used technology to pull us out of the mire. Despite the adverse impact on the environment, the massive use of fertilisers and irrigation techniques -- the Green Revolution -- helped us evade the immediate crisis of mass starvation and allowed us to live and fight another day ! Today it is physical security from terrorism that is emerging as a threat as big as the food secur...

The use of Mr Vijay Mallya's wealth -- that has been generated by selling liquor in India -- to recover the relics belonging to MK Gandhi -- one of India's most ardent anti-liquor prohibitionists -- reveals the hypocrisy that is endemic to the Indian psyche. But first let us thank Mr Mallya who has made us proud for (a) being rich enough to have told the NRI crowd that we in India do not need them to fund our petty desires and (b) being generous enough to have the magnanimity to donate these relics to the government. Now for the hypocrisy : First, let me state up front that I am no blind idolatrous fan of MK Gandhi. He was a shrewd and cunning politician and many people have raised serious doubts about (a) his real contribution to the cause of India's independence and (b) the real depth and substance of his moral postures and (c) the efficacy of his much vaunted philosophy of Ahimsa and Non-Violence. No real debate on this issues is possible because his supporters...

Trust the Government of India to come out with the most ham-handed response to the Islamist attack on Cricket : the youngest and most widespread religion in South Asia. The stupidity of the proposal to defer the IPL is on par with thoughts of asking Tata Steel to shut down the blast furnaces for a week at Jamshedpur, or ONGC to stop pumping oil from Bombay High for some time because of the preoccupation of the security forces with the elections ! IPL is not a 'game' anymore, something that can be deferred till the next weekend ! It is a big business which generates income, results in taxes, creates jobs and provides fun. Just because it provides fun does not mean that its economic impact is any less compared to any other business activity. If we defer or cancel the IPL it means that the Islamists have managed to shut down an important business activity and the Government of India should hang its head in shame for being brow beaten into submission by the combined might of LeT-J...

I had the pleasure and privilege of speaking at INFOCOMM0809 Conferance organised by Ananda Bazar and Business World at the ITC Sonar @ Calcutta Imagineering - Virtual Worlds View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: virtual worlds )

When we talk of India under seige, who do we usually think of as our beseigers ? The obvious culprit are the various terrorist outfits operating out of Pakistan, next in line is the Peoples Liberation Army in Tibet and then you have the various terrorist outfits operating from Myanmar, Bangladesh and of course the LTTE in Sri Lanka -- who were the first to create a maniacal cadre of suicide bombers of whom one was used with devastating effect against Rajiv Gandhi .... But if we think again, we will find the real culprits lurking -- or actually not lurking, but parading proudly in our legislative assemblies and in our administrative structure ! This has been reiterated once again with deadly effect in the murder of Uttar Pradesh PWD Engineer M K Gupta by the MLA of the Bahujan Samaj Party, the ruling party in the state ! And why ? because he could not provide Rs 50 lakhs for the birthday party of the state Chief Minister. With such enemies residing in our bosom who needs Kasav & P...

While we wait for Mr Ratan Tata to come out and present us with the Nano here comes news of a real nano-car that has been built -- but is not quite on sale as yet. These cars, created by Prof James Tour, Professor of Chemistry at Rice University, Houston, USA are approximately four nanometers across and includes a chassis with an engine, a pivoting suspension and rotating axles attached to rolling buckyball wheels, each made of 60 carbon atoms ! For more information see Computerworld or USNews for more details

Not one, but TWO of India's formidable enemies were in the newspapers today even though the Islamic terrorists and their assault on Mumbai were by far the most prominent. Politically correct readers would of course take offense at my reference to Islamic terrorists and would point out that Hindu terror also exists and that is precisely the point made most loudly by our pseudo-secularists that I want to debunk first. For the past couple of weeks the Anti Terror Squad is being used by the UPA government in a vain attempt to find these elusive Hindu terrorists who are claimed to be the most dangerous people in the country. I have no doubt that anyone who bursts a bomb and kills people is a criminal and should be punished. But when resources are limited the focus should be on the bigger problem !! Despite all claims to the contrary it is an indisputable fact that if you exclude the Naxalites-Maoists, then 95% all terrorist attacks in the country are carried out by Muslims with the acti...

All hail Vishwanathan Anand -- the undisputed chess champion of world. On a day when the whole of India celebrates and shares in Anand's spectacular win at Bonn, news comes of a czechmate of another kind and this is in a sense that is hilarious if not downright poignant. The rule of law in India as articulated by the police and the judiciary is shown up to be the sham that we in India know so well. When terrorists are exploding bombs all across the country and Raj Thackeray's thugs are beating up Biharis in Bombay who does our police jump on ? a Czech entomologist, Emil Kucera who is collecting insects in Darjeeling ! Ok, perhaps he was Chinese spy or a Pakistani terrorist in disguise but since no has even hinted anything like that it, is unlikely to be so. What is more likely is that fell foul of the law and local sarkari babu felt that this was too good an opportunity, to make money, to let go so easily. Had Emil been wise to the ways of the India he would have cooll...

Politics in Tamil Nadu has taken an unparalleled and unprincipled turn towards hypocrisy with the naked espousal of terrorism. For years India has been crying hoarse about Pakistan and its overt and covert support for the insurgents in Kashmir -- first of the indigenous JKLF variety and then the imported Jihadis of the Taliban, and just when the world has started to listen to us ... the Dravidian parties want us to do what we have been criticising Pakistan about !! The LTTE represents the most venal and vicious brand of terrorism that has menaced the planet -- they were the first to deploy a human bomb and have devalued the concept of motherhood by having their lady cadres conceive a child so that they can take advantage of their pregnancy to elude security checks while carrying bombs strapped to their bodies !!! Whether such depraved terrorists have a genuine cause to fight for or not is none of our concern. There is a democratically elected government in Sri Lanka and they are ...

Now that a motley menagerie of politicians that includes the apparent "leader" Mamata Banerjee, shadowy Maoists, the thuggish cadres of the ruling party and an utterly incompetent yet hugely arrogant political leadership have managed to drive the little Nano out of Bengal ... it may be useful to think back on events that have happened in and around the dying city of Calcutta. Folk wisdom says that it is the militant trade-unionism of the CPM that has led to the de-industrialisation of Bengal. Those of us who are old enough to remember the tumultous -- or anarchic -- 70s and 80s might remember slogans like "Tata Birla'r kalo haath, bhenge dao, gunriye dao" -- break and destroy the evil hand of the Tatas and the Birlas. And then there was the mindless opposition to computers : "Automation, rokto diye rukhtey hobey" -- Automation has to be stopped with bloodshed ! However, a close look at recent events would tell a different tale. Nirad Chaudhury had a...