blog@Yantrajaal

The roof of the central hall. A policeman tried to stop me from taking this picture until I pointed out that a foreign tourist was merrily taking pictures right in front of him! Saheb cchobi toolley kono apatti nei aar Bangalir belaye joto aparaadh? Fellow kept quiet after that.

By clamouring for a Lok Pal, the anti-corruption campaign is barking up the wrong tree. We have laws against corruption for citizens. We have police and the other government agencies to enforce these laws but they are corrupt as well. So we have higher agencies like the CBI and CVC but they are corrupt as well. Now we want another layer, the Lok Pal, but by recursive extension there is nothing to stop the Lok Pal from being corrupt. We can go higher and higher, Parliamentary Sub Committee, President of India …  but even if we involve the Divine Lord Krishna himself, the nation will surely find a way to make him corrupt as well! So let us look at another model -- that of the notorious American gangster, Al Capone. and read the story of how he was caught and brought to justice, not by some muscular policeman but by some very nerdy, if not wimpish, men from the IRS -- the US equivalent of our Income Tax Department. Mr Capone was too smart to be caught out on his main crimes, namely...

adjacent to the dakshineshwar temple

where humanity transformed into divinity

 Ever since the Independence of India, Kashmir has been the leitmotif of the hostility that has poisoned the relationship between the two South Asian neighbours. Born in the crucible of Hindu-Muslim antagonism that is erroneously attributed to the British policy of Divide & Rule but in reality has its origins in the clash of civilisations that has reverberated through the past 800 years, the Kashmir "problem" has been in the headlines for nearly half a century. The Himalayas are an important part of the cultural heritage of India and Kashmir is no exception. Unfortunately, the Muslim rule of India that began with Qutb-ud-din-Aibak in Delhi (around 1206 CE) and ended with the deportation of Bahadur Shah Zafar to Rangoon (1857) has had the effect of rubbing out most of the Hindu footprint from Kashmir. Today, despite the uniqueness of Kashmir of being a beautiful valley situated high in the Himalayas, a geographic feature that is found nowhere else in the region, Kashmir...

After a long time I saw a double decker bus - actually a fleet of them - on their way to Bangladesh. Photographed at the Dhulagarh toll booth on NH6

Presidency college has plans for  a tough, new, two-tier entrance examination to select high quality students for its UG and PG courses. This is funny, considering the fact that IITs -- that had pioneered the concept of an exclusive entrance examination through the JEE -- are hoping to dilute them strongly in the near future. A quick review of the rise and fall of the JEE is very instructive in this context.   image from http://dreamylives.blogspot.in/2010/11/how-to-solve-multiple-choice-questions.html Despite their many failings, the five original IITs have played a stellar role in redefining the educational landscape of the country. While IIT engineers may have played some role in building the nation, their main contribution was to build a mystique around “Indian Brilliance” particularly in the United States, a country that recognised their worth far more than their own nation ever did ! In fact, before the IT industry pushed India into the international limelight, i...

Baitanik -- a cultural organisation that believes that culture can be a source of livelihood in India's rural heartland -- has a bi-weekly event every other Sunday, where Neepabithi Ghosh and her team of Chau Dancers put up an excellent performance today. Here are some pictures of the event. While Neepabithi Ghosh is an established and renowned singer in her own right, what stole the show was the way she blended a different genres of Bangla music -- from Tagore through folk and right up to contemporary tunes -- with the traditional Chau dance of Balarampur and Baghmundi, from the Purulia district. In fact the anthem of the football World Cup, Waka Waka by Shakira, was also blended in very beautifully with this traditional art form of Bengal. Thanks to Baitanik for a wonderful evening and all the best to Neepabithi and her Chau project

  as shot on my Sony Cybershot click to expand to full size

People working in the private corporate sector are familiar with the process of annual appraisal and know that annual increments and bonuses are directly linked to this exercise. There may be some disappointment with the way that these appraisals are conducted but (a) no corporate has found an alternative to the process and (b) despite all its faults, companies have not collapsed and died because of appraisals -- in general they have done well. Net-net this means that the strategy of deciding on annual increments and bonuses on the basis of an appraisal process has stood the test of time and reliability in India. Strangely enough, this concept is totally absent in state and central government departments and institutions. The salary structure for all government employees is determined by the Pay Commission and both pay and annual increments are cast in stone. So there is no direct and transparent way to recognise good performance and reward the same. Neither is there any way to ident...

Unless you are Rip Van Winkle who has just woken up from long sleep, it is very unlikely that you would be unaware of how social media frenzy has been and is sweeping through the ecosystem. Facebook, Twitter and Youtube is the new trinity that everyone is interested in, not the Brahma-Vishnu-Maheshwar or the Father-Son-HolyGhost that our ancestor talked about. While usage and consumption of social media is what most of us are interested in, social scientists and market research professionals have a deeper interest in this amazing phenomenon. In the past, such research was carried out through traditional tools like questionnaires but given the vast quantity of data and the speed with which it changes we need newer and better tools. As a part of the curriculum of the MBA program at the Vinod Gupta School of Management, IIT Kharagpur students were required to explore and present newer tools -- that are legitimately available at no cost -- for extracting and analysing social media da...