Sumit Mandal

Developer #children #gut #autism #healing #mathematics #lifelonglearning curiosity around intersection of different disciplines.

[𝓼𝓪𝓷𝓴𝓪𝓻 @yansan]

On this day, June 2, 1806,on a hot and humid summer afternoon in a bustling corner of Calcutta, a quiet financial revolution began with the founding of the Bank of Calcutta.
​As Asia's first modern joint-stock bank and the earliest ancestor of today's banking giant, the State Bank of India (SBI), its origins were far from populist. It wasn’t built to help everyday people save money, rather, the East India Company established it to fund the soaring military expenditures of General Arthur Wellesley.
​Just a few years later, in 1809, the institution received a royal charter and was renamed the Bank of Bengal. Over the next century, it merged with the banks of Bombay and Madras to become the Imperial Bank of India, which was ultimately nationalized in 1955 to become the SBI we know today.
​As the bank evolved, its ledger read like a Who’s Who of Indian history. From Prince Dwarkanath Tagore and Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar to Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore and pioneering scientist Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose...who wasn't there?
​Yet, despite its elite clientele, the bank remained fiercely disciplined and risk averse. In a legendary display of bureaucratic spine, it once returned a cheque issued by the Governor Gen himself, Lord William Bentinck, simply because he had exceeded his credit limit by a mere four annas.
It is a fascinating history, forever inseparable from the legacy of Kolkata.

[Muthukrishnan Dhandapani @dmuthuk]

This one image explains how difficult it has become to own a house even for top 5% of the population.

Even for the richest 5% of the population, it takes many decades of savings to buy a house.

For example, in Chennai, Rs.10.2 lakhs of household income would put you in top 5%. Even for them, it needs 37 years of savings.

When top 5% is struggling, what to even say about balance 95%.

In future, a house would come only through inheritance.

Everyone is being priced out of the market.

[Muthukrishnan Dhandapani @dmuthuk]

For a huge country with 1.45 billion population, data is very critical.

We need to first set say realistic quantitative benchmarks for poverty and every other socio economic parameters.

Need to train tens of thousands of people in data gathering. Those data need to be processed and analysed by competent analytics firms. The whole exercise may take say 2 years.

Data is not luxury. We'll know where we are only if we have reliable data. Only when we know where we are, we can realistically plan how to reach where we want to reach.

After 2011, there has been a huge slack in data gathering. Some of the datas captured after the above period are simply not being made public.

For example @zerodhamarkets mentions quoting economist S.Subramanian that government gathered data on poverty in 2017 but did not subsequently release it.

Subramanian says the leaked report mentioned that poverty has actually gone up. During covid, many fell into severe financial distress. We have no real clue as to how our people are doing.

Shamika Ravi is not the authority to claim that poverty is mostly eradicated in India. There should be institutions with verifiable processes need to be doing this job and publishing results.

[Street & Sensex @StreetSensex]

Worth remembering: every major economy that grew rapidly - US, Japan, Korea, China - invested heavily in statistical infrastructure first.
India spent the 1950s-70s building the NSSO, ASI, and Census architecture. The 1990s-2010s used them.
The 2020s have been quietly dismantling them.

You can't fix what you can't measure.
You can't claim what you can't prove.
You can't plan what you don't know.
India's missing data is a national strategy problem.

[Gaurav Dalmia @gdalmiathinks]

Very good piece on the global semiconductor industry. (It's one of the better analysis that I've read on the subject. And it's in an Indian newspaper!)

[Bengal's untold tales @Gramergolpo]

Just a beautiful railway station in Bengal.

#WestBengal #Indianrailway

[indianhistorypics @IndiaHistorypic]

1960s :: Map Showing Education and Scientific Research Institutes Established In India When Shri Jawaharlal Nehru Was PM

[Muthukrishnan Dhandapani @dmuthuk]

As a country, we've never dealt with corruption seriously.

When you realise how difficult it is to build a wealth of Rs.6 crores in a developed nation, we come across news items where even low level government officials are caught with unaccounted wealth ranging from tens of crore to hundreds of crore rupees.

I mentioned how Singapore and China brought death sentences for what are routine in India like selling adulterated food and spurious drugs.

Not that we should give death to corrupt. The numbers may be huge in our country. Long jail terms coupled with confiscation of entire wealth is the way to go. That would send a strong message to rest of the people to give up corrupt practices.

[Bengal's untold tales @Gramergolpo]

Siddheswari Kali Mata Temple, Behala, Kolkata

[Bengal's untold tales @Gramergolpo]

Kolkata finally got the rain we were all waiting for! 🌧️❤️

After days of unbearable heat and humidity, today’s weather feels like a blessing. The cool breeze, cloudy skies, and refreshing showers have completely changed the mood of the city.

Kolkata looks beautiful when it rains. ☔️

[Muthukrishnan Dhandapani @dmuthuk]

Country's focus and narratives need to shift to:

Affordable housing
Managing high cost of living
Prohibitive healthcare and educational costs
Unaffordable rents
Unemployment
Mostly low income, getting decent income is becoming more and more difficult
Poor roads
Messed up urban planning right from drinking water to foot path to sewerage
Corruption faced in day to day living
Lack of social safety net

The narratives of civilization, religion, caste, region and language can wait till we improve our day to day living.

[West Bengal Diary @WestBengalDiary]

🌳RABINDRA SAROBAR RENOVATION🌳

4 of India’s 10 largest urban parks are in the Kolkata metropolitan area.

1️⃣ Eco Park — 480 acres, New Town
2️⃣ The Maidan — 400 acres, Central Kolkata
3️⃣ Rabindra Sarobar — 192 acres, South Kolkata
4️⃣ Central Park, Salt Lake — 152 acres

BJP MLA Swapan Dasgupta has hinted at a major renovation — including a potential Olympic-standard athletics track — following the recent clearance of encroachments from beneath the stadium galleries.

At 192 acres with a stunning lake at its centre, Rabindra Sarobar has the potential to become one of Asia’s finest urban park and sports complexes — combining competitive athletics infrastructure with preserved green space, walking trails, and the iconic rowing lake that generations of Kolkatans have grown up beside.

#Kolkata #RabindraSarobar #WestBengal

[Bengal's untold tales @Gramergolpo]

Vande Mataram in WB school.

[Bengal's untold tales @Gramergolpo]

Darjeeling ♥️♥️

[Sumit Mandal @sumitma]

Any form of #life is a #statistical wondrous entity, who carries the #knowledge of #universe

[Surjit Bhalla @surjitbhalla]

Indian Agents are in a deep comfort zone - sadly, that prohibits meaningful reform.
The need for course correction was never larger; when die-hard optimists lose hope....

https://t.co/auLIMRvn1R

[Muthukrishnan Dhandapani @dmuthuk]

There are many reasons as to how successful Asian countries grew. No model is perfect and no society is flawless. But in these countries corruption in the form of even adulterated food can get death sentence.

When Singapore was growing, corruption means death.

In China too, corruption is considered as a very serious crime.

In India, as a society, we admire people who made it big through corruption.

This is one of the reasons why it would be a big challenge for India to become a developed nation.

[sunetra choudhury @sunetrac]

Best piece to read today is by former RBI gov D Subbarao on freefall of rupee. How it started before Iran crisis

[Bengal's untold tales @Gramergolpo]

The heritage architecture in central parts of Kolkata 🇮🇳

📷Rohanpal

[Anurag Shukla @Anuraag_Shukla]

India cannot govern its cities effectively unless it gives local bodies real power, money, and administrative capacity.

These bodies are closest to citizens, but they remain weak, underfunded, understaffed, and controlled by state governments.