A Visit To Nawabganj Bird Sanctuary.

I recently visited the Bird Sanctuary at Nawabganj.  It is a little less than 30 kms from Lucknow Airport (Amausi) towards Kanpur. Though I have lived in Lucknow for a long time, I had never earlier visited this place.  I had always imagined it to be far from the hustle-bustle of the highway and difficult to access.  So it came as a pleasant surprise to find that the sanctuary lay right next to the Lucknow-Kanpur Highway.  The sanctuary is on your left if you are travelling from Lucknow towards Kanpur and the very first gate is the way to enter.  From Kanpur, it is on your right and the first gate is at the end of the sanctuary from your point of view.

I had booked a room online in the Rahi Tourist Bungalow (RTB.)  The manager told us on enquiry that it was inside the sanctuary complex and that we had to enter from the first gate.  My wife is a little finicky about cleanliness and the hotels that we can afford seldom offer the kind of cleanliness that will meet a half-hearted approval from her.  I was quite apprehensive as it was a government run hotel.  However we were pleasantly surprised by the overall upkeep and quality of service which were good if not great.  The lone housekeeping staff willingly removed the old sheet, used it to wipe the headpost of the bed and then spread a fresh and clean sheet.  Towels were clean too.  The bungalow also has a big and well maintained lawn and a Shiv Temple in that lawn.

The housekeeping man who was my namesake, told us that it used to be a great lake some three decades ago when he got employed there.  He said that the lake has now turned into a number of small ones separated by patches of dry land.  He said that a lot of money was being poured into maintenance of the place but the authorities were using it building structures and other wasteful things instead of cleaning up and reviving the lake.  Some borewells had been repaired and a couple new ones were being constructed to feed the lake which had, unfortunately not received much rainfall over past several years including the current one which saw a good monsoon elsewhere.

The RTB has its own restaurant and there is another bigger restaurant with a beer bar about 100 m away from it and next to the ticket window and entrance to the sanctuary.  We walked up to the ticket window.  There is a semi-developed park with play structures across the road.  It is infested with monkeys.  We sat there on a bench for a while watching the monkeys and then proceeded to the ticket window.  There is a small museum like room next to the ticket booth.  It was locked.  The gatekeeper opened it at our request.

The man at the ticket window cautioned us that there were not too many migratory birds and issued a ticket when we insisted nonetheless.  A valid id was required to purchase the ticket priced at INR 30 per person.  For foreigners it is a steep INR 575 if I remember the figure correctly.

The entrance starts with a walkway adjacent to the restaurant, named Surkhab.  The walkway is fenced on both the sides with what look like wooden logs but is actually made of RCC.  But the look of wooden logs is pretty convincing and it must have taken much effort and technique to simulate the real thing.  The tiled and fenced walkway runs for perhaps a couple of kilometers and has observation towers and resting platforms with benches every 200 m or so.  Each platform was occupied by a couple engaged in amorous activities.  It reminded me of Residency in Lucknow.  There too, each nook and corner is occupied by young couples.  I am sure that boys from Lucknow and even Unnao will not be so surprised as we were when we visited the Law Gardens in Ahmedabad about 45 years ago for the first time.

The walkway lines the lake on one side and on the other side there is a green forest patch separating the sanctuary from the highway.  Though, you can see and hear the traffice from the walkway and it reminds that you are not too far from what you tried to escape.

We didn't find many birds except the usual geese.  Finally we made a digression on to a dirt track which was yet to be tiled and fenced.  Some distance away we could see some Saurus Cranes.  However there were no migratory birds to be seen.

We returned and enquired at the window the time it opens in the morning.  The replies ranged from 7 am to past 9 am!

Next we entered Surkhab restaurant.  It looked good.  We ordered lunch and I started chatting with the cashier.  He too repeated the same story that we had heard from the housekeeping man.  He also added that many migratory birds have stopped coming to the place as the villagers from surrounding villages hunt them down.  The few surviving ones must have carried the message back to their flock.  This is what the cashier felt.  The food that was served was quite good and we paid using an INR 2000 note that the cashier happily accepted and returned us the balance in INR 100 notes.

We went back to RTB and sat in the lawn chairs enjoying the feeble sunshine.  The manager exchanged greetings and asked if we could see any birds.  We told him that we wanted to try our luck again early next morning but the ticket window opened quite late in the morning.  He said that it was possible to enter the santuary from one side of the Bungalow even though it wouldn't be proper to do so without a ticket.  We thanked him for the information and said that we would purchase the tickets at the time of exiting.

So we got up early and got ready.  We entered the sanctuary from the unguarded point next to RTB much to the shock of the RTB watchman, and roamed along the walkways.  However, though it was pleasant and the sight of sunrise was charming we didn't see anything that we hadn't already seen.  It was 9 am when we finally walked down to the ticketing window.  It was still unmanned and the front gate closed!  We walked back to where we had entered from and exited.

Then it was breakfast, packing up and a drive back to Indira Nagar.  Home, sweet home!

Could We Have Demonetized In A Less Dramatic Way?

In the current heated debate over demon (short for demonetisation), it is being contended that the whole operation was highly confidential with only a handful of people at the very top planning it.  These people could not visualise the operational hurdles and consultation with lower level people was ruled out. This is the reason for the chaos and the people at the receiving end should put up bravely with it in the larger interest.

I feel that it is not the lack of knowledge of minute operational details, but extremely poor conceptualisation coupled with uncalled for bravado that has led to the current mayhem. And I will be too happy to be proved wrong.

The countrywide state of panic that is causing huge disruptions and drawing much flak is mostly because of the dramatic announcement that all OHDs have been suddenly reduced to pieces of paper (that could only be deposited or exchanged in a bank but not used for transactions.)

Let us consider a case where some highly wanted criminals are hiding in a city and a manhunt has been launched to catch them.  Now the sensible thing would be to impose rigorous checks at each and every exit point from the city.  If an overly aggressive police was to block traffic at each intersection, you can easily imagine the chaos that will result. This is what is happening all over the country.  Further if the police knew for sure that the criminals had only a couple of months lifespan left, heavily manning all the exit routes for a couple of months was all that was required.

On these lines, the sensible thing thing to do would have been to stop all cash transactions in gold, luxury items - anything costing above say 10K, property, commodity stock, foreign exchange and even purchase of financial instruments like drafts, mutual funds, insurance policies, also disbursement of loans in cash et al, while allowing OHDs in day-to-day transactions in the normal way for a period of one or two quarters. Individuals could be encouraged to use their entire holding of OHDs for such normal transactions.  The traders and service providers could be asked to deposit all proceeds in OHDs into their account periodically and withdraw into NHDs.  It would be even better if there were no NHDs and all withdrawals were only in notes of INR 100 or lower denominations.  The government could have printed large amounts of OLDs with a little less concern about secrecy.

On the appointed date all holders of residual balance of OHDs could be asked to deposit it into their accounts.  The banks could then be asked to report those accounts where the credit turnover has been more than 2 * the turnover in the equal preceding period. These persons could be given a chance to explain and unexplained deviants penalised.  Additionally, individuals who had made any heavy withdrawals because of marriage etc. could be permitted to deposit it back without any fear of being reported.  They could then be encouraged to make payments through cheque / electronic transfer.

Before I close I would like to add that in some debates on TV channels on the second day of demon, some speakers had suggested that traders could continue accepting OHDs in normal transactions as these could after all be deposited into their accounts up to the given date.  This only underscores what I have said.  That the trader community chose to disregard this advice is specifically because of the alarming bravado that marked the demon exercise.

I grant that this relaxed scheme could permit some leakages. But would it be more than the money converted today using hired manpower and without being routed through an account?

The Dice Is The God!

Einstein once famously said that God doesn't play dice with us.  This was a reaction to Quantum Mechanics which considers matter as waves of probability.  Einstein's world was one of absolute order and predictability.  Most humans know from firsthand experience that the world, as we experience it, is not really so.

These days I spend some time each day playing Sudoku.  When playing at the evil level, I am seldom able to solve the puzzle without making a few, sometimes upto half a dozen guesses.  I find that each game seems to have a probability tag attached to it, though it is mostly binary, i.e., 0 or 1.  So when the tag is one, nearly all my guesses turn out to be correct.  When it is 0, nearly all guesses go wrong.  Only in an insignificant number of games do I find some going wrong and the others correct.  Each game is either like a good day when everything seems to be going your way or like a bad one where everything is going against you.

Each human life, too, seems to be marked with a probability tag.  The value on the tag is determined by the country, the period as also the family in which you are born.  Yes, each place has a tag and each time period has one too.

This probability is what we adore and what we fear.  It is this probability that we pray to be raised in our favour when we worship whichever God we believe in.  In a sense this probability is the God!

And this is why in societies that manage to reduce inequalities and insecurities to the bare minimum, people tend towards atheism.  There is no dice to worship, except, perhaps the genes that determine the quality of your existence.  In India we do consider parents equivalent to deities - मात्रृ देवो भव, पित्रृ देवो भव.

It seems that here is a hierarchy of probability tags too.  I may be born with a tag of below 50%.  But I may go to a place at a time that have high value tags attached to them.  These tags, though subordinate to my life tag, may cause a higher overall value attaching to my existence in that place in that period.  If the dice is the God, this could be considered to be polytheism.

To be sure favorable and unfavorable have meaning only for the sentient beings.  So essentially my surmise is that each frame of reference (place and time) and each consciousness therein has a probability value that has a definite bias peculiar to it.  The favorable and unfavorable occurrences are seldom equal over the entire lifetime, but have a definite skew one way or the other.

If you subscribe to this conjecture, there is a beautiful corollary.  After all, it is just a game, a game of dice, that we are playing even if it seems to be going decisively against one.

De and Re - monetization

I happened to be watching news when PM appeared and made the demonetization announcement.  I thought this was going to be the precursor to implementing the much debated Banking Transaction Tax.  I was thrilled.  Then came the announcement that new series of notes of Rs.500 and Rs.2000 were to be introduced instead.  The thrill was gone.

The dual steps only introduce an asymmetry.  Those who had stashed currency up to the demonetization date were struck a blow while retaining the opportunity for new aspiring corrupts or those who held their assets in other forms or abroad.  This is exactly what the then RBI Governor had accused the then PM, Morarji Desai, of doing when he had demonetized high value currency notes in 1978. Read this article.

All the trouble that the public is going through would still have been worth it, had the re-monetization not been done and the public encouraged to use electronic payments for most payments.

Again, things have changed since the demonetization done by Morarji Desai.  Now it is only petty and middling black money holders who keep their ill-gotten wealth in cash.  The more sophisticated ones build protfolios comprising of benami accounts, real estate, gold, diamond and what have you.  These petty and meddling people are the ones who will bear the brunt of this exercise and they don't deserve any sympathy just for being small.  The real big players have much better tools these days.  We now live in an era where powerful, even though misguided, financial engineering could shake the world economy in the 2008 meltdown. The same engineering tools enable huge sums of money to be stashed abroad.  Then it is made to visit India as FII for growing itself and then goes back.  While visiting India it is also, at times, converted into cash for funding elections or other political activities.  Though, I must confess, I still don't fully understand how all this is done.  Well, this is why investment bankers are paid so well unlike ordinary bankers like me.

There is a suspicion that this exercise has been so timed as to kill this visiting black money that had already been converted into cash for funding the impending state elections.  Simultaneously it also leads to a suspicion that those who were not in too much of a hurry will benefit from the fact that the highest available denomination has now been doubled.

It makes me happy if some of the parties have lost sizeable election funds and I do hope that they will get even with the current ruling party if and when their turn comes.

As regards putting a brake on fake notes, it will only be for such period as it will take the fraudsters to learn to forge the new series.  Further, I doubt if the current action will be able to purge the existing fake notes in circulation.  This would have been possible if all cash counters were equipped with sophisticated currency checking and counting machines, which they are not.  The sudden jump in work pressure too will come in the way of detection of forged notes.  Thus a good amount of forged currency is very likely to get coverted into genuine currency.  Discontinuation of all denominations beyond INR 50 is the only way to save the economy from the forgers who are said to have the backing of a hostile nation.

Before I close, I wish to express my solidarity with those housewives who have been setting aside a part of household expense money and are now forced to disclose it.  In some cases it is beyond the INR 2.5 lakh limit for deposit into account, and the husbands are truly furious.  Bank employees who will be toiling like mules for quite a few days have my fullest sympathy.  The re-issue of high denomination notes makes me unsure of any noble motives behind the current strike.  Correct me if I am wrong.