Bhaskar

Personal Account. Interested in lean startups, fintech, India and innovations in education !!

[Bhaskar @bhasky]

Still looking

@BloodDonorsIn

[Blood Donors India @BloodDonorsIn]

#Kolkata A+ve #blood donor required at Manipal Hospital E.M. Bypass for senior citizen undergoing kidney surgery.

Please contact [phone]

Via @bhasky

[Bhaskar @bhasky]

@BloodDonorsIn I have already got 2 spam calls , one I have already paid some money to. How do I differentiate real callers vs spam with a public number ?

[Bhaskar @bhasky]

A+ve blood donor required at Manipal Hospital E.M. Bypass for senior citizen undergoing kidney surgery. #Kolkata #manipal
Please contact [phone]
@BloodDonorsIn

[Bhaskar @bhasky]

@BloodDonorsIn Kolkata

[jss @jsensarma]

Independence Day without Independence

One of my batchmates, a well known author, used to send a small Independence Day note to our batch every Aug 15th, with a homage to Gandhiji. He stopped a long time back.

Perhaps it's the descent from somewhat dignified email lists to Whatsapp hell. Or perhaps it's that the day stopped meaning anything. We will never know. He keeps to himself.

In the US, Independence Day was synonymous with "Life, Liberty, Pursuit of Happiness", Burger parties, long drives, Fireworks and Tom Cruise.

One struggles to spot the equivalent in India. "Secularism, Socialism" are shady alternatives to the American ideals. We don't exactly have a desi Tom Cruise. Fireworks, the American kind, are an impossibility. Neither do we have the empty spaces, nor the means to get to them en-masse. Let's not mention beef burgers. It will cause a riot.

What we do have are the morning flag hoistings - with the last-of-their-generation Uncles of Uncle jis. Monologues on the sacrifices of freedom fighters. You don't have to be Gen-Z to yawn at this. Get over it guys - the Brits are long gone.

What could Independence mean today for us? I tried to list down some things, and mostly regretted:

- Independence from the Babucracy.

I realized over the years - we aren't really a Democracy. We are ruled by a shadowy bureaucracy, that is unaccountable, un-fireable and even sets its own pay-scales. I had gotten many a laugh from the "Yes, Minister" show, but not really understood it back then.

Independence from Babucracy then would be an awesome national goal.

But then I remembered half the country wants to become Babus and Babushkas (or whatever the opposite-gender of Babus is). We didn't want freedom from the British, we just wanted to replace them with our own and get Govt. jobs for life with ample opportunities for graft and bonus oppression of fellow countrymen.

- Independence from dogmatic thought

The ability to think independently, from first principles, with empirical facts being our Gods. To not enslave our thinking to pre-ordained political, ideological or religious viewpoints.

But then I remembered that while our founders promised "One Man, One Vote" - what they really gave us was "One Vote-Bank, One Appeasement".

If you are not part of a Vote-bank, you are statistical noise. So find some dogmatic tribe you hate the least and extract what you can, with it, from the teats of the Indian state.

- Independence to simply do what we want.

Now, admittedly, we do a bit better here. We are free to go wrong side on an Expressway. We are free to talk on speakerphones in buses and trains. We are free to throw trash on road-sides (corollary of being independent of dustbins).

On second thoughts - perhaps we have a little too much of this type of Independence. The Babus are missing, just where you actually want them.

- Independence to pursue Excellence (and its rewards)

Yes the kids are making rockets. The heart swells.

But then I remember a large section of the population has been convinced - not to pursue making the pie bigger, by working harder or smarter or gathering courage and taking risk - but to simply take more of the existing pie.

"Jitni Abadi, Utna Haq" as they say - our post-Independence euphemism for "Proportional Representation" - and it's various avatars - whether quotas, reservations, caste census and so on.

And how really can we even blame this thinking? When we see ordinary clerks in Tahsildar's office with crores in cash. Grabbing what you can from the Pie works, its everywhere, in every Govt. office, in every Govt. contract.

Corruption has not just broken up the asphalt, or sunk the bridge - it has eaten up the very ideal of Excellence.

-----

As I wrote this - I realized the answer to what we rally around, what Independence Day is best reduced to today, is much simpler really.

For the most part, it's the Independence from Pakistan and the idea of Pakistan. Nothing rallies India like being anti-Pakistan. (Brits, Jeremy Corbyn excluded, are our friends now).

-----

Perhaps this is why my friend stopped sending his obligatory annual emails.

Perhaps he sensed that the frail old man, once revered, had become irrelevant faster than even Ozymandias.

Perhaps he too struggled to put in words, even in spite of being a brilliant author, what the day stood for.

Or perhaps, he finally sensed, that nobody actually gave a damn.

[Bhaskar @bhasky]

@BillBrooklyn10 $INTU

[Bhaskar @bhasky]

@dhwaninanavati The positive outcome being how you feel about yourself. If it is fortunes you are looking for then it goes beyond integrity ..hard work, right place, right time, luck, your associations, spunk and perhaps other things

[Bhaskar @bhasky]

@OPPOIndia Whose hand is that ?

[Bhaskar @bhasky]

@ThierryBorgeat Why would you give someone who hallucinates all your financial data at the cost of high penalties in case it screws up..

[Bhaskar @bhasky]

@jsensarma I wonder how it merges bangla to with উল্লেখed..add one more language and literally no one in India would be secular enough to understand this guy !

[Bhaskar @bhasky]

@jsensarma Taking Hinglish to a whole new level !!

[Bhaskar @bhasky]

@rishrox19 @CMofKarnataka @siddaramaiah @BlrCityPolice @Karnatakapolice Gundappa Road, Nagashettihalli, yellama devi temple

[CA Rishika Gupta @rishrox19]

Dear @CMofKarnataka @siddaramaiah @BlrCityPolice @KarnatakaPolice
How are loudspeakers and firecrackers being allowed at this hour? Residents need peace and enforcement of noise rules. Kindly look into this immediately.

[Aakanksha @aakancvedi]

Bengaluru has India's most expensive metro system, over Rs 75,000 cr spent for 96.1 km across 68 stations

Yet it carries least people/km/day and Bengaluru's traffic is now ranked 5th worst globally

So why is India's most expensive metro system the least utilised?

1/10

[Bhaskar @bhasky]

@_amitbehere Mere paas gaadi hai bangla hai....tumhare paas kya hai..was quite a piece of literary history!!

[Bhaskar @bhasky]

@BOLDJOE @GitaGopinath This is really an OR condition...what is the probability that at least 1 of the above will happen ?

[Bhaskar @bhasky]

@DKShivakumar ORR from Hebbal to Silk board has become torturous and a time sink. Metro will take its time, please get your best minds to find solutions now !

[Bhaskar @bhasky]

@TopDriverIndia +1 Bengaluru has the worst roads for a large metro in India. Metro construction aside it is a museum to bad infrastructure design and road development fund leakage. I wonder how they get away with it

[SheetalArcher @ArcherSheetal]

World Champion - the world title is ours. With all my heart, for my country. ♥️🇮🇳🏹

[jss @jsensarma]

The US-India spat is just very bad and very sad. But I hate to say it - Trump is doing the right thing for his country. From his perspective:

"If you need my country to develop and get rich - play by my rules. Else you can do whatever you want, my doors are closed".

Hes not invading India or meddling in our internal politics (something the Democrats did). He's just cutting us off.

Sadly, Trump and his buddies are exposing the brutal truth about India. We cannot grow *without* rich Western markets buying our goods. That is because our internal political economy is still fucked up.

Economies at our PCI can grow very fast very easily. You just need to

- welcome capital and technology
- setup factories by the dozen
- create goods that people want,
- allow capital to make money.

That sets up a virtuous positive cycle of profits, investment and demand. The state has to support this with law and order, good public infrastructure (including HDI investment), fair taxes, reasonable regulation.

Its really not that complicated.

But growth depends on rewards accruing to producers (whether capital or labour). So that growth can compund fast. Instead India suffers from two crippling pathogens.

- Socialism.
- Corruption.

Both of these divert the rewards from those that produce it - to parasites who leech off the hard work and investment of others.

Add to this lack of state capacity and incompetence in creating basic public infrastructure and enforcing laws (abetted by corruption listed above). So we have found that simple positive virtuous economic cycle hard to get spinning fast.

The richer markets abroad have been a savior. Functioning rich societies outside can buy our goods (particularly the US) - even while our own people stay largely penurious. (Europeans also suffer from one of those pathogens - Socialism - and the results are there to see as well).

Shuffling GST taxes around doesn't address India's root problems (some additional deficit spending can help though - if that's what it translates to).

Nationalists blaming the US and putting on a false bravado of "we have been here for 5000 years" - should ask themselves

- why our growth and economy are so critically dependent on Western economies?
- Why we don't have a functioning political economy? Why of all people the Marathas asking for reservations?
- Why young kids want to emigrate first chance they get?
- Why foreigners are cleaning the garbage in Gurgaon even while triple-engine nationalist sarkar is ruling?
- Why so called nationalist politicians seem no less corrupt and inefficient - except masking their corruption with the flag?

Socialists of course, should get a mirror. They are to blame for most of the problem to begin with. (The less said about liberterians the better. They are a joke stuck on "unlimited FSI" and everyone knows they are such a joke that they can't emerge from extinction levels)

Perhaps a hard reckoning here is needed - to make the Elephant realize it's quite naked (even though it has a very very thick skin).