India

It’s hard to find what Indian mutual funds charge their customers to manage their money for them. The so called “expense ratio.” Try to find it on, say, the UTI website, or SBI’s MF website. Also, since January 2013, SEBI (the market regulator) made it mandatory for all mutual fund houses (AMCs) to offer what is called a direct plan. Every fund offered by every AMC will have a direct plan where the AMC will charge you a lower expense ratio. This is the money saved by the AMC because you went directly to them, and not through your neighborhood bank branch manager or ShareKhan. This lower expense ratio is also hard to find. ...

Or is it just a dark room? The Nandigram SEZ was supposed to be developed by Indonesia’s Salim Group. Preliminary web searching indicates that Salim group has very close ties with Dow Chemical. And of course, Dow Chemical owns Union Carbide. It’s up to investigative journalism to figure out the extent to which Salim and Dow are bedfellows; what I find most surprising is that this has not found mention in any major column/article or news coverage of any other form anywhere. I read about it in an Arundati Roy interview in Telelka, and after some serious digging on the web, the best I could come up with was that Dow Chemical was actually invited to bid for the Nandigram SEZ. The collective enormity of these two ironies evokes a very deep and profound rage. ...

People keep telling me how good things will happen to India if we stop complaining and start doing things. I agree. No amount of armchair philosophy and acerbic cribbing can beat direct action on the ground (italics inspired from The Direct Action Day). NGO’s are doing their bit. Examples like Barefoot College, which do transform lives en masse are inspiring. But the question which bothers me is how viable it is as a career alternative? Can I work full-time for an NGO and sustain a normal family on that income? I doubt that. This has a two fold impact. Either people do it part time, while debugging Java code for their day jobs; or highly inspired people take it up no matter what, and don’t bother about better living conditions for themselves or their families. Why is working for a good cause not a viable career option? Why does primary school teaching pay so less? Why is the media coverage for these causes so restricted. ...

My striving for abstractness and ambiguity is all gone and the real context emerges. Next time, I will write in even more cryptic tongue using only pronouns and articles. With that said – now for the real discussion. 1 – Why do we assume that the British were any better than Chengiz Khan or Muhammaad Ghazni? They did build railways, educational institutions, and postal departments – but we need to investigate why they did it? Was it to help us? Beeeep!! Wrong answer. ...

It’s been a long time since they left us. It’s been somewhat long since we allowed them to send stuff back to us again. Now, we are also doing things for them at half price. We love their football, we love their movies, we love their currency, we love their literature, some of us even try to speak like them, notwithstanding that we are already speaking their language. It hurts. ...

I haven’t been able to live up to a few of my own magnanimous gestures at times. Having given myself more credit than I deserve, I have fought hard to live up to my promises; sometimes, to others, but often, to myself. I am just one person, responsible for my own actions, and the only one to bear the consequences. Imagine Gandhi, Nehru, and others, who took a few such magnanimous decisions for 700 million Indians. Was Gandhi fair in asking the Indian Government to give Pakistan the money India technically owed them, so that they could fund their on-going proxy tribal war in Kashmir? Was he trying to be fair because India had to be fair to her neighbours? or was he exhibiting some personal gesture to himself? – that the people he leads are always fair to others. What statement was he trying to make? ...

Well, somewhat….

ended up being this. Do check out Cosma Shalizi’s Notebooks. What amazes me is the amount of reading a person can do. And the diverse range of reading interests anyone can hold. This is by far the widest range of reading that I have seen anyone accomplish. I wonder where time passes us by. Passed me by. I need to rework my schedule. In other news, Aishwarya Rai has been asked to present an Oscar. Why her? and why this? Of course, she is beautiful, artsy, speaks good English, hazel eyes, brown hair, high cheek bones, the works. First, Cannes, and now Oscars. I guess she is just what the media wants; here, as well as in the west. The clueless reader from Bangalore will be proud about how India has finally arrived on the World Stage and fold Bangalore Times, finish her donut, exit a Starbucks like coffee shop, and don her headphones, and become Melanie again. ...

Currently a very heated discussion is on in the IITB.general newsgroup here at IIT-Bombay. The topic is somewhat pertaining to the lack of academic and research interest of undergraduate (UG) students (as compared to postgraduate (PG)), and their building interest in extra-curricular activities. Replying to the “IIT-B.Tech-praised-by-press-across-the-world” comment by some UG, one of the professors replied that both the Indian and the US presses are biased and self serving, or serving some kind of big-brother of sorts. These presses want go glorify BTech education in IITs, and not bother about MTech and PhDs, and esp any form of research conducted in IISc, and IITs. Why is it that we never hear about IISc in the Indian Media? Is it cuz it is sub-standard? Think again! ...

The Indian Railways is so fascinating. Mesmerising legacy, mindboggling scale, unbelievable efficiency and of course, the romance of a train journey. My earliest memories of train fascination is that of Gopi: a very close friend from high school days. He used to rattle the starting and ending stations of all train names from the Railway Timetable. Believe me, I used to actually quiz him with that book. There is this very cooL urban legend about Gopi that made its rounds in our high school corridors (I think its due to Dhruva, but he might claim innocence, like always ;-> ). Legend has it that when some friends had been to Gopi’s place to call him for a customary game of cricket. Gopi and his brother were all dressed up and ready to go somewhere. They were pestering their father about how they would be late for some train and would miss it and all. The unsuspecting friends assumed that their pal was going out of station or something, and decided not to include him in the next day’s game. But it so turned out later (much to their amazement) that the party was going to the Bangalore City Railway Station not to travel soemwhere, but to check out some train that would halt there for some half an hour, and had some “cool” technical specification!!!. Whoa, now, that is a true enthusiast, considering that we were around 12 that time, and his brother was barely 10. Imagine being 10 and being interested in Railway Gauges. Anwyays, thats just the legend. I wonder if Gopi still has his passion for Indian Rail. ...