Stat(u)e of the nation

 

As children, we used to play that game called statue. When the ‘IT’ yells ‘statue !’, everyone else had to hold their actions and not move a muscle. Blinking eyes was allowed, but nothing more. Who ever moved, was out.

I think this game is only played in India, and the country too loves statues. There are new coming every-year. Indian states find it easier to release funds to build huge stone and steel statues, than for actual governance and policy implementation. The other curious thing Indian politicians love to do is to rename things. Places, states, cities, towns, even roads and maybe even rivers.

 

Its pathetic. I think the reason is that people will die, but statues are going to stay.

Reads like fiction : The oracle executive who changed his identity to escape law.

 

I had the habit of reading detective fiction, and espionage novels during high school and college. But later the hobby died a gradual death as I got busy with work. Now I just read the news. But gone are the days of simple, straightforward news. Now the crimes being reported are stranger than fiction.

This week I read this bizarre news of this murderer who changed his identity from a Malayali to a Gujarathi to escape law for 15 years. He was finally caughtcaught because he was still in touch with his loving mother, of all people.

On Thursday, Pravin Bhateley, a senior manager working with Oracle Private Limited on Bannerghatta Road in Bengaluru, was arrested by the Ahmedabad police. But strangely, Kiran Chowdhury, the inspector dressed as an employee of the IT company who came to arrest Pravin, said, "Hello Tarun, it's over... Let's go."

 

Read TNM’s excellent coverage of the news.

 

Oracle ! Seems like a right fit for him.

 

 

 

The world’s fastest growing economy has the world’s most toxic air

 

Not surprised.

 

 

Faith and Reason Are Irreconcilable

 

Faith is a tricky subject. Once people believe deeply in some stories, they are not available for reason any longer. I think its best explained by the scientist of our times.

 

Well, so let me say that differently. All efforts that have been invested by brilliant people of the past have failed at that exercise. They just fail. And so I don’t, the track record is so poor that going forward, I have essentially zero confidence, near zero confidence, that there will be fruitful things to emerge from the effort to reconcile them. So, for example, if you knew nothing about science, and you read, say, the Bible, the Old Testament, which in Genesis, is an account of nature, that’s what that is, and I said to you, give me your description of the natural world based only on this, you would say the world was created in six days, and that stars are just little points of light much lesser than the sun. And that in fact, they can fall out of the sky, right, because that’s what happens during the Revelation.

You know, one of the signs that the second coming, is that the stars will fall out of the sky and land on Earth. To even write that means you don’t know what those things are. You have no concept of what the actual universe is. So everybody who tried to make proclamations about the physical universe based on Bible passages got the wrong answer.

So what happened was, when science discovers things, and you want to stay religious, or you want to continue to believe that the Bible is unerring, what you would do is you would say, “Well, let me go back to the Bible and reinterpret it.” Then you’d say things like, “Oh, well they didn’t really mean that literally. They meant that figuratively.”

So, this whole sort of reinterpretation of the, how figurative the poetic passages of the Bible are came after science showed that this is not how things unfolded. And so the educated religious people are perfectly fine with that. It’s the fundamentalists who want to say that the Bible is the literally, literal truth of God, that and want to see the Bible as a science textbook, who are knocking on the science doors of the schools, trying to put that content in the science room. Enlightened religious people are not behaving that way. So saying that science is cool, we’re good with that, and use the Bible for, to get your spiritual enlightenment and your emotional fulfillment.

 

 

 

 

“God is the name people give to the reason we are here” – Prof Stephen Hawking

 

 

Portarlington Trip

 

Have you heard of Portarlington ? Its a little coastal township in the Port of Phillip Bay, right at the entrance to the sea.  A short ferry ride away from Docklands, Melbourne, the place has amazing views of the bay, and is the perfect place for a short holiday. It reminded me of those picturesque British coastlines often seen in movies. A village by the sea. And thats where we went for a holiday during a long weekend.

 

 

Hiked the 1.3 km Rambler’s walk. Best part is that all the attractions are within walking distance of the port, and we saw a lot of visitors walking and cycling across the coasts. What continues to surprise me is that these idyllic holiday points are within a few hours travel from the city, yet the place itself is like stuck in time. It looks and feels as if one has gone back in time to a quieter , calmer time.

Tourists, mostly families visit the place in groups, yet they are mindful of the cleanliness of the place. There is no rubbish on the ground, and no crowds rushing in a hurry. The vehicles drive slowly, giving way to hikers and cyclists, and children have a blast in the children’s park. There are public grilling areas free for use, people can bring in the foods they want to cook and eat. And everyone is expected to clean up afterwards. There are affordable eateries across the street, nothing is over priced.It is a historic town, and they do have their own museums and churches to show. But there is no graffitti defacing public property.  The free restrooms are clean, and there are fountains providing drinking water.

 

We in India still have centuries to go before we can reach this level of maturity. And love for nature, things old and new.

Kayamkulam Kochunni

 

This was one of those rare weeks when I watched two movies. In theatres. In the same week. After having damaged my eyes permanently watching First Man, I needed something..err…soothing. Something completely in the opposite end of the spectrum to negate the..er…negative effects. My news feed told me that this Malayalam movie was breaking all records, so I looked it up. No chance I could watch it in Melbourne, I thought. No way they would be showing it in the first week of its release here.

Dead wrong.

Turns out, Mallus take their movies wherever they go. From the facebook page of the movie, I found that they where showing the movie to a small audience in a few small theatres across Australia. The closes one to me, a place called Backlot studios, near Southbank !

 

And so we went. Onnum parayenda, puttaakee, it was a day of surprises. Mallus ! They move in herds ! They do move in herds !

In a small 70-something seater theatre in the back, which looked more like a shady production company, they were showing this movie.  It was as if one was invited to an exclusive party. Luxrious seats. Air-con.

The movie was ..well, what I was expecting. A glorified re-telling of the fable of the famous robber who lived  150 years ago, with the modern treatment of slow-motion scenes and chorographed action scenes. For a while now, directors have found this format to be the safest. It had everything one would expect from a contemporary movie. Everything was checked.

Flash back scenes to his childhood  ? Check.

Superstar cameo ? Check

Two heroines ? Check.

A rocky-style training sequence for the hero ? Check !!

British baddies ? Check.

An item number ? No really ? No one was expecting this, but check.

The hero, is a thief, but he is not really a baddie. So he escapes in the end. Check.

A theme discussed throughout the movie is the caste system prevalent during the time in Kerala, which was different from the rest of the country. The system was carefully orchestrated to oppress the poor and hard working, while the rich and influential enjoyed luxuries. Rules of untouchability was severe, but that did not stop the higher caste males from having ‘relationships’ with the lower caste females. Then there was the very high level of taxation on the poor, levied by the king and landlords.

Of course, this was all part of the Hindu religion, and Kochunni, being a Muslim, had an oustsider’s perspective. As the legend is told, he becomes a saviour to the lower caste and the poor, and steals from the rich to provide for the needy.

This is what Vivekenanda said when he visited Kerala during the late 19th century.

 

I got carried away. Back to the movie, its a good one time watch. Despite the artificiality and macho heroism, they have really worked hard on this one. Of course many things could have been improved.

 

‘First Man’ destroyed my eyes

 

Man, I was really looking forward to this movie. Its a subject matter I am close to, and had high expectations from the director and studio. But all that was destroyed last week, when I watched this movie on the big screen at Hoyts.

I hated it. I hated it so bad that I walked out half way through it. The reason was not the story, or the acting. It was the cinematrography. Shaky camera. Too much shaky camera. WTF , Damien ? Its as if you just discovered the shaky camera effect. The idiotic director and cinemtagrapher chose to shoot every scene on two legs, right in the actor’s faces ! One could see the hair in their nostrills. And with the camera constanly shaking and moving, I was soon overcome with dizziness. Specially in the lauch sequences, I shrill music and shakes almost made me throw up.

I walked out just after Neil was chosen to the Apollo program.

I will catch this movie on torrents when it becomes available, because I really wanted to see his walk on the moon. But I plan to use some kind of image stabilizer software at that time.

I understand this was the perspective of Neil Armstrong, who took such a big risk for a mission guided by the cold-war politics of the time. But I didn’t want to see the actors noses all the time. I wanted to see the rest of the world too.

Space. And everyting else.

Summer’s back !

 

Something funny happened this week. It got hot. Temperature went about 20 degrees ! That means, summer is back ! Also rained ! Through the night. Just the way it should be.

I am still getting used to reverse climate trend here in Australia. Its like an exclusive club, the rest of the world are missing out on .

So here’s to summer holiday !

 

Word’s largest recruitment drive !?

 

Quick question, where could the word’s largest recruitment drive be ? No points for guessing: India. But where specifically in India. It is at Indian Railways. 23.7 million candidates applied for 120 thousand jobs. Thats a selection percentage of 0.5 !

 

 

 

I was reading this fascinating and depressing article which made me sigh and crackup simultaneously about a day at one of the exam centres. As I have mentione earlier, a job in the government, otherwise public sector, is the one thing that attracts everybody in India. It is the peak of aspirations. But actually landing the job is a tedious task , with mulitple levels of exams, eligibility criteria, further complicated by reservations and age limits. The article documents a day in front of one of the exam centres in Delhi, where youngsters have been arriving upto 12 hours before the start of the 90 minute online computer based exam. Most of them have repeatedly applied and tried earlier, and it has become something of a routine to prepare and appear for such an exam.

They come prepared.

 

Tests are held online in three shifts every day (9 am to 10.30 am; 12.30 pm to 2 pm; 4 pm to 5.30 pm). In every shift at this Noida centre, 3,450 have been taking the test — a 90-minute, multiple-choice paper, covering Maths, General Intelligence and Reasoning, Science and Current Affairs — since September 17, and will do so till December.

This has indirectly created jobs for others feeding on the exam queue. An enterprising younster has setup shop to safely store the bags of the candidate for the price of 50 rupees. Another young boy from a neighbouring slum has hit upon the idea of selling gum/glue to the candidates, five rupees for a single application ! And then there are the usual suspects, the auto driver who ferry candidates up and down the centre. Those who run the nearby cybercafes and instant photo booths. Hawkers selling food, meals , snacks and cigarettes. If it starts raining, there will be hawkers selling umbrellas.

Theres also a snippet about the kind of questions the government of India expects the candidates to know about current affairs. They actually expect them to know who the brand ambassador of makeup brand L’Oreal is in India !

The bleak picture being painted here is the harsh reality of the world’s largest democracy. For most of the candidates, landing a government job is the last hope of emancipation, of a chance of a better life. They actually believe that it is one of the responsibilities of the government to take care of them. Such a job would provide them stability, because such jobs don’t have the same requirements of on job performance evaluation, and retirement being years away. But the numbers clearly are not in their favour. With a half-percentage of success, which further decreases every year, the vast majority of applicants won’t get through to their last hope.

To wait, or not to wait

Actually, this is not such a difficult question. Those who can’t wait, should go ahead. And those who are willing to wait, well, can wait as long they want.

But should not convince others to do so.

What Young India wants: ‘Sarkari Naukri’

 

In one of the largest such exercises ever conducted in the world, millions of applicants are appearing this month for an online recruitment test conducted by the Indian Railways.

The Railways Recruitment Board (RRB) has received more than 24 million applications for roughly 120,000 vacancies in the organization. Most recruitment drives by government departments across the country generate similar enthusiasm among job seekers and it is quite common to find thousands of applicants, including PhDs and postgraduates, for low-end government job vacancies.

 

 

Data from the successive rounds of nationally representative youth surveys conducted by the Lokniti research programme at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) shows that the attraction of a sarkari naukri(government job) has not shown any signs of declining over the past decade. In fact, the share of youth who prefer a government job has grown slightly to 65% in 2016.

The share of youth who prefer a private job has nearly halved to 7% between the two rounds of the survey conducted in 2007 and 2016. The share of those wanting to start their own enterprises has risen marginally to 19% over the same period.

The 2007 and 2016 surveys covered 5,513 and 6,122 individuals, respectively. We compare the responses of individuals in the age group of 15-34 years.

Rural and urban youth hardly differ when it comes to job preferences. But the share of youth in big cities who prefer a government job shows a sharp increase between 2007 and 2016.

The rising preference for government jobs in big cities could be driven by a search for stability as well as the declining income differential between the private and public sector, especially in entry-level jobs.

Big cities here include the 10 most populous cities of India (Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Surat and Pune) spread across eight states and the most populous cities of 11 other states surveyed. Other cities have been classified as small cities in the analysis.

Among all groups, preference for government jobs is highest among the college-educated rural youth (82%). It is this segment that has also been at the forefront of recent agitations for extending reservation benefits to new groups. Urban youth who have studied beyond high school were relatively more likely to look beyond the public sector as compared with their rural counterparts.

Interestingly, there are no substantial differences in opinion based on economic class or social groups. For instance, 63% of respondents from poor households said they prefer government jobs while 65% from the upper middle class said so.

In the latest survey, respondents were also asked to choose between a permanent job with a relatively low salary, a job with like-minded co-workers, a well-earning job, or a job with high job satisfaction. A plurality of respondents (33%) chose job stability while high job satisfaction was the second most popular option. This explains why public sector employment remains so sought after among the youth. Almost half of the respondents who preferred governments also prioritized stability.

On the other hand, youngsters who preferred private sector jobs and self-employment mostly prioritized either job satisfaction or good income.

The sentiment on job creation has been the Achilles’ heel of the Narendra Modi government and it continues to remain tepid. In the successive rounds of the Mood of the Nation surveys conducted by Lokniti-CSDS over the past year, it has consistently emerged as one of the most important issues for the public.

Providing permanent government jobs is an even bigger challenge given that public employment has been shrinking in post-liberalization India.

The pre-liberalization wish of liberalization’s children will not be easy to fulfil.