An ANT and A GRASSHOPPER

(This is not written by me, but I found it worth posting)
Sharing an old story, and the new version of the same story.
Story of an ANT and A GRASSHOPPER

OLD STORY
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The ANT works hard in the withering heat all summer building its house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The GRASSHOPPER thinks, the ANT is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Comes winter, the ANT is warm and well fed. The GRASSHOPPER has no food or shelter so he dies out in the cold.

NEW STORY, INDIAN VERSION
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The ANT works hard in the withering heat all summer building its house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The GRASSHOPPER thinks, the ANT is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Comes winter, the shivering GRASSHOPPER calls up a PRESS CONFERENCE and demands to know why the ANT should be allowed to be warm and well fed, while others are cold and starving.

NDTV, BBC, CNN show up to provide pictures of the shivering GRASSHOPPER, next to a video of the ANT in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.

The world is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be that this poor GRASSHOPPER is allowed to suffer so!!
ARUNDHATI ROY, stages a demonstration in front of the ANT's house.
MEDHA PATKAR, goes on a fast along with other GRASSHOPPERS demanding that GRASSHOPPERS be relocated to warmer climates during winter.

MAYAWATI states this as 'injustice' done on MINORITIES.
UN & KOFI ANNAN, criticize the Indian government for not upholding the fundamental rights of the GRASSHOPPER.
The INTERNET is flooded with online petitions seeking support to the GRASSHOPPER(many promising Heaven and Everlasting Peace prompt support as against the wrath of God for non-compliance).

'BENGAL BANDH' in West Bengal and Kerala demanding a JUDICIAL ENQUIRY.
CPM in immediately passes a law preventing ANTS from working hard in the heat so as to bring about equality of poverty among ANTS and GRASSHOPPERS.

LALU PRASAD allocates one free coach to GRASSHOPPERS on all Indian Railway Trains, aptly named as the 'GRASSHOPPER RATH'

Finally, the JUDICIAL COMMITTEE drafts the 'PREVENTION OF TERRORISM AGAINST GRASHOPPERS ACT' [ POTAGA ], with effect from the beginning of the winter.

ARJUN SINGH makes 'SPECIAL RESERVATION' for GRASSHOPPERS in Education Institutions and in Govt. Services.
The ANT is fined for failing to comply with POTAGA and having nothing left to pay his retroactive taes, its home is confiscated by the GOVT. and handed over to the GRASSHOPPER in a cermony covered by NDTV.

ARUNDHATI ROY calls it 'A TRIUMPH OF JUSTICE'
LALU calls it 'SOCIALISTIC JUSTICE'
CPM calls it the 'REVOLUTIONARY RESURGENCE OF THE DOWNTRODDEN'
KOFFI ANNAN invites the GRASSHOPPER to address the UN General assembly.
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MANY
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YEARS
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LATER
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The ANT has since migrated to the US and set up a muti-billion dollar company in SILICON VALLEY, 100s of GRASSHOPPERS still die of starvation despite of reservation somewhere in India,

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AND
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As a result of loosing lot of hard working ANTS and feeding the GRASSHOPPERS,
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INDIA IS STILL A DEVELOPING NATION

IPL Matches are Fixed

I am writing this blog after watching the Rajasthan Royals batting against Mumbai Indians, when it clicked to me that most if not all matches in IPL are fixed. RR got out for a mere 103 that too against MI. The match has not ended yet but I am sure that MI would easily win this match without losing many wickets. 

So what made me think that the matches are fixed ?

If one look at the results of all the matches of IPL we would notice that teams who are the favorites to win and go to semis suddenly start losing matches while teams that are written off as duds start winning matches. 

Lets start from start...

Kolkatta Knight Riders were hot favorites and they started with a bang too, but as soon as they made their mark in the IPL they started losing matches. 

Initially most people have thought that RR would be a dud team and it started predictably too losing their first match, but after that it stunned everyone by winning 5 matches in a row. Now it has made a mark in the IPL and has started looking like a semis material with 5 wins under their belt. We know that any team winning 7 or 8 matches can easily go into the semis. Then we saw the total surrender of RR against MI. If one look at how most batsmen have got out then one would realize that they had thrown their wicket in a premeditated action. Look at Smith's wicket. He did not even care to look back and simply walked away. The keeper was up even when Pollock was bowling. Even other wickets too look more like thrown away rather than taken by good bowling. Look at the wicket of Warn or Trivedi who could not bring the bat in front of ball even when the bowl was considerably slow. It looked more like he was waiting for the ball to hit wicket before he could swing the bat. 

Now look at other teams. 

MI - They were total duds with losing all of their matches. But as soon as they reached a point where any more losses would mean being out of race of semis. All of a sudden they started wining matches. Both CSK and RR batted very badly and gave a very easy win to MI keeping their semi hopes alive.

CSK - They too started with a bang. They were too hot favorites for the semis. When everyone thought that they would cruise all their matches even winning all 14 of their matches, then they started losing matches even against MI and DC who have been losing very badly till then. And now they have lost 3 matches in a row giving people doubts whether they can make it to the semis or not.

DC - They too started with a bust. Losing all of their starting matches. Now when their obituaries were almost written they beat CSK and kept their semis hope alive. They had pretty good lineup initially with the likes of Symonds but they still could not find any wins. When he left and the team was looking more orphaned they pulled out a rabbit out of their hat and defeated CSK. Now they too are semis hopefuls.

Looking at other teams we would notice that other teams too are following the same pattern- wining teams start losing while losing teams start winning.

So why are the matches being fixed ?

Their is a simple logic to this. If all teams played according to their initial predictions then by the mid of the round robin matches we would have 4 clear winner and 4 clear loser ie we would know which teams are going to the semis and which are not. This would make the remaining of the match uninteresting and the teams would lose the valuable ad revenue as people would stop watching subsequent matches. All teams know that their is more money in playing high TRP matches then winning the IPL. So it is in their interest that matching remain interesting to the people and they have high TRP. Winning and losing does not help or hurt teams much apart from a little loss of face which I think any able manager would know. 

So it is quite clear that all teams want the matches to be interesting as only interesting matches bring good money to their managers. And the only way to keep the match interesting is by making it critical in the quest of the semis. If a team has won so many matches that its place in the semis is fixed, then its matches would not be interesting as most people would believe that they would win their next match and secondly even if they lose then too it wont hurt them. Similarly if a team has lost so many matches that they cannot make it to the semis again its matches would become uninteresting. So it is quite clear that, if any team manager wants to make the most money in its matches then it has to make its matches interesting even at the cost of losing the matches. And I am pretty sure that the last league match too would have a major affect in deciding which teams finally go into the semis.

So what will happen next ?

Now it is time for BRC, DC and KKR to start winning matches else they would be out of the semis race. So they will win some more matches to keep their future matches interesting. By time DD and CSK would be under fire for not performing well and would face prospects of being out of the semis race. Then they would start winning again. Following which KXP and RR would reverse their losing streak. And this cycle would continue till the last league match.

After formulating this theory I realized that other dramas that is being played on and off the field like the Harbhajan slapgate or the firing of Charu Shrma by Mallya, both are efforts to attract eyeballs to the matches and nothing else. It seems that IPL has become one of those reality shows in which their is less singing and more roothna and manana drama. 

So it is quite clear that IPL is nothing but money making machine where teams win and lose matches just to keep the TRP high. I do not think their is much interest in actually winning the IPL as teams are happy if they are making good ad money.

When Time Halts

Can time halt or become irrelevant and meaningless?

Is it possible that the whole concept of time breaks down?

Can we see future?

The answers to all of these questions are considered to be No. if you any layman these question, he will directly say that these are ridicules question and it is impossible to do so. If you ask these questions to the likes of Steven Hawkins and Albert Einstein, they may give you some very complicated theory and you will find yourself more confused than you were before asking the questions. Either way people will say that the answer of these questions will lie in some complicated physics equations and theories.

But I beg to differ. I think that answers to these questions could very well lie in completely field; our ability to collect and process information, things we already know.

Confused…?

Let’s start with basics. We know that if we drop a ball, it will hit the ground. How can we say that? Were we able to see the future? Were we able to travel through time? Even though the answer to all these three questions is no, still we were able to claim with certainty that ball will hit the ground. One can even argue the event of ball hitting is so certain that it is as good as already happened. The reason for the argument seems trivial, the universal laws of gravity. Everyone knows them, and we know they never fail. So what has happened here, we know the information of ball being dropped and we also know how to process this information and hence we came to the conclusion that the ball will hit the ground even before it actually did. So were we able to see the future? One can argue that in a particular sense, YES.

Let’s take another example. We all know about the weather forecast that various meteorological departments across the world do. Are they more accurate today or were they more accurate 20 years ago. Anyone would claim that indeed they are much better and accurate today with respect to 20 years ago. But if we compare their accuracy from today to (say) 20 years from now, even in this case we would argue that we will certainly be much better 20 years from now than we are today. How can we say so? This is because in 20 yrs time we will undoubtedly have more ways of gathering weather information and thus will have more information and also will have better ways of processing the information.

We can clearly see that with more and more information and better and better ways of processing that information we tend to know more and more about the things that are going to happen in future that too more preciously.

Now think of a scenario, what if there is some one or something (say a computer) that has all the information there is in the world. And it also has all the ways of processing that information. I know that such thing in not possible today as we do not know many things that happen in this world. But slowly and slowly we are learning new and new things about the world. So it would not be wrong to presume that in the near future we will be able to understand the world completely; Whether it is our DNA encoding or whether it is different antics of monsoon. With more understanding and knowledge we can predict the future more accurately.

So with all the information in the world, can’t we predict the future with a certainty which was reserved for past events only. I think we can.

Now if we know what is going to happen tomorrow, who will be born, who will die, how much rain would fall, what would be the temperature. Will time have any significance left? We already know what will happen, so how does it matter that the particular event has taken place or not.

Then time would be reduced to just one of the variables in our life. Time has been often called the fourth dimension, but it rarely shows any similarity with the other three. But after this event, time would be like the other three dimensions, very much predictable. In true sense the time will halt as the meanings of present, past and future will no longer be the same as they are today. They will merge together to form one entity. The fact that a particular event is happening, already happened, or going to happen will have no meaning at all as we will be looking at the big picture and consider things as a whole and not in terms of present, past and future.

This is something to ponder over. As we do not have much time left before this imaginary scenario becomes a reality.

Diary of a Non-OBC man...

found it on the net, but consider it worth enough to put it in my blog

An excerpt from Emcee's diary exactly 50 years from now



Ahmedabad, 30 April 2056: I attended the bash at the IIM-OBC Alumni Association to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the reservation of seats for OBCs (Other Backward Castes) in IIMs. Since I'm not an OBC, I was not supposed to attend, but at present, we MBFCs (Moderately Backward Forward Castes) together with the Non-Scheduled Tribes have a political alliance with the OBCs. We sipped champagne and talked about how so many of us had progressed from reserved seats in the IIMs to reserved jobs to reserved promotions. Unfortunately, the party broke up when a Non-scheduled Tribes faculty member objected to the OBCs dancing with all the pretty girls — he wanted equal opportunities for every caste at each dance. I pointed out that the Non-scheduled Tribes had exceeded the quota of champagne reserved for them. The party ended in a pitched caste battle.

1) May 2056: Today, I became president of the IIM Board of Directors. Under the present rotating presidency system, a member of each caste is made the president by turn. When it was the turn of the MBFCs for president, they had to choose me because I'm the only MBFC on the campus. True, I'm only the campus dhobi, but then every caste must be given an equal opportunity. All those centuries of oppression by the OSBFCs (Only Slightly Backward Forward Castes) and the OFCs (Other Forward Castes) must be rectified. I hope to restore the high standards at IIM — I overheard some foreigners calling it the Indian Institute of Morons, the other day.

2) May 2056: They've announced the cricket team for the series against Australia. I was overjoyed when they chose an MBFC man as captain. But my hopes were dashed when I realised he was a Most Backward Forward Caste and not a Moderately Backward Forward Caste. The selection committee lamented that it was gross discrimination that no member from the Jarowa tribe (the Stone Age tribe in the
Andamans) had ever found a place in the Indian cricket team. A squad has since been dispatched to the Andamans to capture a Jarowa tribal to play in the national team. I hope he will improve their performance — they had an innings defeat against the Maldives recently. I would have played myself except for the fact that I lost a leg some years ago when I was in hospital with a toothache and a doctor recruited through the Unscheduled Caste quota extracted my leg instead of my tooth.

3) May 2056: There are too many NFCs (Neo-Forward castes) in the IT business. Under the terms of the Business Reservation Act, their firms will now be taken over by the other castes. I hope they will be able to restore the Indian IT industry back to its former glory. For some unfathomable reason, it has gone down the drain after job reservations were implemented. I went for a movie featuring star actor Mungeri Ram. He may lack teeth, be four-feet-three and have hair growing out of his nose, but this year it's the turn of the EBC-RYs (Extremely Backward Caste-Rural Yokels) to be stars and Mungeri Ram is the best of the lot. I wonder why foreign movies have become so popular.

4) May 2056: A truly great day. We now have an OFBMBC (Other Forward But Moderately Backward Caste) general as the Head of the Armed Forces. I hope he'll be able to win back the territory we lost ever since reservations were implemented in the Army. Since then, the north has been taken by Pakistan, the North-east by China, the east by Bangladesh and the south by Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Only last winter, we lost the war against Bhutan and free India is now limited to the western coastal states. But I'm sure the OFBMBC general will turn the tide.

5) May 2056: My wife and I have been blessed with a bonny daughter. Since my wife's an SBBNSBC (Slightly Backward But Not So Backward Caste), my daughter will be an MBFC-SBBNSBC. I must lobby for reservation for her caste. She's the only member and I'm sure she has a great future.

Prince of Clowns

The prince of clowns is dead, and so are 4 other clowns. When I first heard this news, I was saddened. A part of my sadness was because a popular actor had died on natural causes, but a major reason for my sadness was that a whole city was hijacked due to this expected event.

The prince was neither in the best of his health nor was his death caused by some accident or evil intention. It was plain natural death due to heart attack, nothing fishy about it. But still the whole city was hijacked. Businesses were forced to shut down, shops looted and offices closed. What the hell people want by doing such acts of vandalism. A busy day of work in the IT capital of India was converted into an extended weekend.

In older times India used to have SATI system, where wife used to accompany her husband in his last journey. Well is this a new type of SATI system where the fans and followers of a popular person are to follow him in his last journey. If that is the case what will happen when people like Amitabh Bachchan or Shah Rukh Khan started their last journey. Half of India’s population will accompany them. What will happen to our economy if the whole country were to close down for a weekend or whole week? All the progress we have made in these years would certainly do down the drain. What is the message are we sending to the people across the world, or as a matter of fact people like me or you who are not in Bangalore or are not a fan of the deceased.

Who was Rajkumar? As far as my memory goes, he was an actor, an entertainer. Anything else? I don’t think so. I could never understand the urge of Indian especially the south Indian to “DIE” for some one they love. And what struck me the most is that it is not the first time such thing is happening in the country. From a post in Telegraph article I found out that hundreds of people had already died in hero mourning like the one which happened the other day.

While going through some stuff related to Rajkumar, I found out that he didn’t even passed out from high school still he used the title of Dr. Rajkumar. Just like our Dr. J. Jayalalitha. How on earth do you award an honorary PhD, an academic title, to a movie superstar? Rajkumar has won a national award for singing, a padmabhooshan and a dadasaheb phalke award. (The last 2 are lifetime contribution awards). No acting awards! It clearly indicates that he was a popular actor, not necessarily a good one. E.g.: Mohanlal has 4 national awards, Shabana Azmi has 4, Mammooty has 3, and Naseeruddin Shah has 2-3, and so on. None of these actors have honorary doctorates. Among singers, Bharat Ratna Lata Mangeshkar doesn't have an honorary PhD! Neither do we ever hear news about Dr. Amitabh Bachchan or Dr. Mithun Chakravorty.

So why am I saying all this. Well I don’t want to sound rude, but am I one of the few people who are finding it odd, or as a matter of fact stupid. Some people might think that throwing dirt on someone who has died is not a good thing, but I don’t think that he being dead makes it any less stupid. All I wanted to say is that death is a time for mourning and not the time for playing violent games as who is the (I mean who was the) biggest fan of the deceased. In one newspaper I read that while in majority of the world people show their love for film stars by writing letters with blood and other such stuff, killing themselves and looting shops have become the trademark of southern India. Had he been some political leader or a religious one and had he been murdered by opposite party or community then such rioting would have been rational if not appreciable. But being just a movie actor does make my mind spin.

Alternate Reservation Policy

There has been so much hue and cry about the new reservation policy of the government. It is no doubt that any kind 0f reservation would kill merit. Number of seats in prestigious institutes and not increasing as fast as our population. And now with this new reservation policy in place the number of seats to general category will further reduce making it impossible for a normal student to get into these prestigious institutes.

The main question is why should there be reservation. Is it good, or is it bad?Does it serve any purpose or not?

In my opinion there is nothing known as perfectly black or perfectly white. Everything has its pros and cons. And it is upto us that we must find what is the best way so as to make the most of it.

In the context of reservation. As many politicians claim that reservation help the uplift of backward classes. But what are the backward classes? They claim, people belonging to SC/ST/OBC. Are they really backward? I dont think so. Ok, they may be still economically backward but the major benefitter of the reservation are the people who have been benefitted by it once and know how to find their way around. Same family are repeatedly using the reservation policy for their benefit, depriving other [economically] backward people to enjoy the fruits of reservation.

So I believe that this reservation policy should be based on economic status and not on the place of birth. The advantage of reservation based on economic status is that, people belonging to upper castes but are economically poor too will get the benefits of reservation. While people of so called backward class, who are not economically backward will not get the benefits as they any way can afford it.

Many people directly relate the reservation system with the quota system, but I beg to differ. Having a reservation policy and going for a quota system are two independent things. Reservation policy is an policy while quota system is the implementation. One can always find other methods of implementing the reservation policy.

Alternative to quota system.

In US, the reservation policy is implemented by giving extra time during the examination to the targetted group, which is mainly comprising of physically and mentally handicapped students. That system too is being abused because rich children are now a days buying a certificate stating that they are mentally challenged, hence getting extra time during examination gaining a clear couple of hundred points during their SATs

So one need another system to implement the required policy.

Reuirements of the system:
Merit should be given utmost importance, but still taking care of weaker sections of the society.

To fulfill this requirement, first we need to define merit. Merit is not all about scoring more marks in the exams. Merit is the product of intelligence, hard work, talent and exposure to knowledge. And the system should be able to take into account all these factors in right proportion.

We can say that current system of exam takes care of intelligence, hard work and telent, as these traits does not depend on ones financial background. But exposure to knowledge is not taken care of properly in the present system. That is why children from rich and middle-class gets away with all the meritorious seats because they are more aware of the things around them and not because they are more intellient or more hardworking.

So, I propose a new system to take care of drawbacks of our current system. The bonus system instead of quota system. In bonus system all targetted students would be given some bonus marks in the exam, and then treated at par with the general category.

For example: If a student is entiltled for 5% bonus and he scored 72% marks.

His new marks would be 72% + 5% of 72% = 75.6%.

Hence the students earning good marks inspite of their drawbacks will be awarded more handsomely that others.

Now the question arise is how to decide the bonus percent and who should be entitled for it.

If we go directly by economic status of the family then we may not able to target the right category. There are instances of poor people sending their children to good schools because of some kind of scholarship, etc. Similarly, There are indeed not so poor people who are sending their children to not so decent schools, esp. the girl child.

I believe that level of education at schools is directly proportional to the fees they charge. Secondly level of exposure of a student is directly proportional to the level of education at the schools. So i believe that the reservation policy should be based on the level of education one recieved at the schools. And as it is directly proportional to the fees they charge, it will indirectly cater poor sections of the society, while carefully leaving out the students which are getting good education on some kind of scholarship.

All the schools should be classified into four categories: A, B, C and D.
A: the best and the most expensive kinds of schools like DPS RKpuram, Doon School, Scidia School, etc
B: all major kind of schools, convent schools, private schools, etc. which charge a reasonaly amount of fees and offer a decent quality of education.
C: the lower end, cheap private schools and medium level govt. schools. Which are not so good, but certainly not the worst.
D: a typical govt school, where half of teachers dont know which class they are teaching, rural schools, which work under palm tree or in one room schools, etc.

These types should be assigned to schools by an independent agency. It will serve two purposes.

Firstly the parents will know the standard schools before sending their wards to them. Today parents face really big challenge in deciding which school to pick. If such categorisation is aviable, it would be great help to parents. To help them more sub categories could be introduced in the major four categories depending upon other criterias.


Secondly reservation could easily be given to students on the basis of school they went in. I believe that category A and B students do not need any kind of reservation. They are well prepared and well aware of the world around and giving them reservation would be a bad choice independent of their economical status, caste or religion.

Category C could be offered 2% bonus while D could be offered 5%. This way they will be equally rated and come at par with other students, and can over come the problems they faced due to their poor status.

Children of rich kids would be discouraged for going to lower level schools as middle and high class people care about their status-symbol too much to send their children to C or D kind of schools.

Indo - US Nuclear Deal

Much has been said and done about the Indo-US nuclear deal.

Many point out the growing china as a reason to this deal. Many feel that US is trying to counter balance china by giving this deal to India.

These are not the main reasons for the deal.....

US wants to put India’s nuclear weapon on hold...... all the claims that our PM n US president are making that the deal wont affect Indian nuclear weapon program is total nonsense...

if u read the finer details of the deal... u will find that it requires India to send the nuclear waste generated from the nuclear power plants back to the US....

till now all the nuclear waste was used in the fast breeder reactor to make thorium isotope that is then used in building nuclear weapons..... With no uranium waste to process, what will our defense nuclear cites do..... There research will stop......

with all 14 civil plants coming under international safe guard... using the technology for defense purposes would also be difficult......

India is presently 20 years behind in attaining nuclear self reliance..... if the scientists were given adequate support for research.... we wouldn’t have needed the US help which is being offered now.....

But with the deal signed.... the stress on nuclear research will reduce as India will be importing technology from US... With a clause which makes sure that the imported technology is not used for defense purposes.......

nuclear energy constitutes only 3% of our energy needs..... even with this deal it wont affect India’s energy needs in a long term basis as our energy requirements r increasing pretty fast.... so the nuclear energy will not constitute more than 5% of the total energy produced in India....


had India not signed the deal.... it would have some problems for its nuclear development program .... But situation will never come close to what it is in Iran as India is too powerful both military wise n economically to face any international sanctions etc..... but without the deal... India would have developed its own nuclear technology...and used it for both military n civil purposes equally without any problem......

now developing nuclear technology only for military use would become too costly.... and hence will slow down....

India has second largest reserves of thorium in the world next only to Australia......

It is true that we do not have sufficient technology to use our thorium now..... but if in near future we were do develop it.... India would have become a real super power......

Some might think that 20 yrs for developing nuclear energy is too much.... but I believe that in case of nuclear technology it is not a very long time.... as things take time to evolve.....