An Obituary

This is an obituary for my brother-in-law (bahnoi) Sri Prem Narain Pandey who passed away on Sunday, the 2nd April, 2017.  He was on his regular morning walk when he was hit by a speeding Activa.  We later learnt that the driver was an youngster.  He was, perhaps, trying to overtake a heavy vehicle from its left and revved up and hit Mr Pandey with massive force.  The force broke both of his legs, one of his arms was slashed through by the iron fencing runnind alongside the shoulder of the road and the back of his skull was broken.  He died on the spot.  A most unfortunate death for a person so full of zeal, in very good health and enjoying his retired life to the fullest.

All of us are unique in one way or the other, but Pandeyji was known for certain qualities that are rather rare amongst us Indians.  He was an Electrical Engineer and got employed in the far away state of Mizoram and spent his entire working life there.  He worked with the Electricity board, a department of the state government.  Electricity Boards all over India don't rank very low when it comes to corruption.  Pandeyji was truly like a lotus in the muddy waters of the Board.  He was honest to a fault.  Not only he did not accept any bribes, he never allowed personal use of his official vehicle even by his wife - my sister.  Sons of soil in Mizoram are exempt from Income Tax.  At the time Pandeyji joined the board there were very few outsiders working there who were liable to pay tax.  There was no TDS and many outsiders took undue advantage of a weak Income Tax presence in the state, but not Pandeyji, never!  Mizoram is a rather small state and though some thought that he was an eccentric, his honesty and professionalism became legend and were known not only to the power ministers but even to the chief ministers of the state.  And it was respected by them too.

Pandeyji once  confided to me that as he progressed in his career he became a little disillusioned.  He would find that despite his personal squeaky cleanliness, the subordinates continued in their ways.  At times he was very sad when he had to acquiesce to decisions that he didn't think were in the best interests of the department or the state.  He had to do so under tremendous pressure from the very top.  He told me that once some new contractor, who perhaps didn't adequately know his background tried to bribe him.  He said to the contractor, "You see, it is not that I can't do with some more money.  Nor is my personal honesty making much difference.  But I have built up a tremendous reputation for myself and have an overly sensitive conscience and there is no way I can even think of hurting them."

He was very reclusive and an introvert.  He enjoyed and relished solitude.  He used to say that I was one of the very few persons whose company he enjoyed and I feel honored in that.  His demise is a personal loss to me in more than one way.

Pandeyji retired a few years earlier than my sister who was a professor of maths in Aizawl.  He moved to Lucknow a little more than an year before my sister retired.  He carried a recipe book with him that he had himself penned down after learning the recipes from my sister.  He could cook excellent meals though he had never done cooking earlier in his life.  And though he missed the company of my sister, he thoroughly enjoyed the solitude and had his new home organized in an excellent way by the time my sister retired and joined him.

He was finicky about punctuality.  He had a strict schedule that he followed all his life and wanted people to be just as punctual.  At times he refused to entertain people who took punctuality very casually.

He had an excellent self-control.  He used to smoke occasionally, chew paan, and even enjoy a rare drink. But he wasn't addicted to any of these and could and did give up any or all of these for extended periods.  He was a light eater and maintained a very healthy weight till the end of his life.  Though a man of very limited needs, he was a real connoisseur and appreciated quality in whatever he used or consumed.  Whenever he gave me a gift it was invariably of the highest quality available.

He never developed a taste for modern IT gadgets and stuck to the print versions of books, magazines and newspapers.  He was an avid reader, used to gift me books and give me cuttings from newspapers and magazines.  His choice of the material that he regularly gave and our subsequent discussions clearly showed how deeply he studied all that he did.

All of his acquaintances, friends and family agree that none of us have ever met a person who was so well organized and methodical in his personal and professional life.  Just to illustrate the degree to which he organized his belongings and everything around him, I will narrate a recent incident.

Way back in 1990 my wife had suffered a severe bout of sciatica and finally got some relief from an Unani medicine prescription that was obtained by Pandeyji from his uncle who claimed to have been cured by it.  Recently, 27 years later, a family member enquired about a home remedy for her sciatica pain.  I could vaguely recall the names of the medicines.  My wife suggested that I check with Pandeyji.  I was skeptical despite being aware of his superhuman capabilities for storing and retrieving things and information.  I called him, he said he will call back.  And I couldn't believe it when he called 10 minutes later and said that he has been able to retrieve the prescription!!  Even in his office, if some information could not be retrieved from the huge office records, he could be relied upon to get details from the records he maintained personally in his office.

He used to miss Mizoram where he had spent 4 decades.  He was full of praise for their social customs, the way church influenced all spheres of life in a very positive manner, and, of course, the excellent climate.  Though spiritually oriented he abhorred all rituals and orthodoxy.  This made him give a miss to many events in the family and some found his ways strange too.

He was an evolved man and if there are other universes where the consciousness migrates based on one's merits and degree of evolution, he must be in the highest one.  All of us down here will always miss him. Adieus, dear brother-in-law.

What winnable: Not even knowable!

I am writing this post on 13-Feb-2017 and will be casting my vote for Assembly elections on 19th in the Lucknow - East constituency.  Today morning I was chatting with my elder cousin and he wondered who are the candidates from the main parties in our constituency.  The only one both of us could immediately recall was the BJP candidate.  Well, unlike others, the BJP candidate and his organization have made some minimal efforts to reach out to the voters.  After scratching our heads for some time we could recall another name, that of the BSP candidate.  The name, Saroj Shukla, led to speculation about the candidate's gender.  As regards the SP candidate, no amount of scalp scratching helped.

So finally we decided to Google out the information using the free data on our Jio enabled phones.  BSP candidate's full name, Saroj Kumar Shukla, resolved the confusion that we earlier had about him.  And it was a surprise to find that SP had not fielded any candidate from our constituency.  It seems that this one has gone to their ally, Congress.  We found a few independent candidates and also discovered the existence of a few parties that we had never heard of.

Yes, there is a total lack of communication from our candidates.  They aren't using even the low cost channels like SMS and other sundry messengers.  But then it could be my DND subscription that is to blame.

What is clear is that there is no canvassing whatsoever from individual candidates: Well, at least, not in the urban areas.  All our inputs are either from televised rallies or the debates on TV channels.  If the rallies, which are a big public nuisance, could be eliminated the present scenario will represent a very low cost electioneering with costs far below the prescribed limits. Another desirable change in such a case would be to give some airtime to independents and nearly unknown parties too to level the playground.

As all canvassing is being done by party chiefs only, one fails to understand why the parties are fielding tainted candidates in the name of winnability.  People are focussing merely on the parties and not even looking at the candidates, (nor are the candidates looking to the public for winning.)

I think the time is ripe for implementing the suggestion that I had mooted earlier in THIS POST.

My cousin did point out that the scenario could be very different in the rural areas where perhaps bulk of the election expenses were being incurred.

Air(ports) and Water

Recently I had to stop over at Delhi airport on my way from Bengaluru to Lucknow.  I was traveling with Indigo, a low cost airline with high cost onboard food.  Like a true mango-man I was carrying my own paratha and subzi for lunch.  The transit period was a good time to have my lunch.  After lunch, I looked around for tea / coffee and spotted Star Bucks.  I asked for brewed coffee, the lowest cost version of the concoction, but was informed that no creamer or milk will be available with it.  So I moved up to a Cappuccino.  The difference in the price of a small and the grande was very disproportionate to the difference in the sizes and  grande offered a much lower per cc price.  So, I opted for grande which I shared with my better half and co-passenger.  The price I paid was almost the same that I would pay in USA, the equivalent of USD 4.

After a while we felt thirsty.  There were no water fountains to be seen and so I went to the food court and discovered that bottled water was available only at the Pepsi counter.  A small bottle labelled Himalayan, perhaps 500 ml, was available for INR 50!  I checked at Star Bucks too and found that they had the same bottle to offer at the same price.  So I paid up and got a bottle.  Both of us took a few sips of the precious liquid with full awareness of its khas aadmi price, and saved some for later.

This makes me wonder whether the likes of Pepsi have anything to do with water bottles not being allowed past the security check.  Why can't the security staff just ask the passenger to take a swig from the bottle to make sure that it is water and not some explosive?  Then again, why aren't cheaper options of bottled water available in the airport?  Is this a case of one monopoly (airport) promoting another monopoly (water?)  Why can't water fountains be installed in good numbers, say outside each toilet block?

But a bigger question is how has Pepsi managed to keep its arch rival Coca-Cola out?  Is there a Rail Neer like scam going on in our airports?  Finally, as Himalayan is from Tata-Pepsico, does Mr. Mistry or Mr. Tata has anything to say in the matter?

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.