Hunger Be Hanged

Dear men-who-matter,

India, as I am sure you have now read, ranks 97^th on the latest Global Hunger Index published last week.  Such top-line data is provided by rather dubious organisations like the International Food Policy Research Institute, with the obsessive intention of shaming us; never forget that there are many envious folks who have looked at our GDP growth with increasing despondency. 

We are celebrating the 25^th year of Economic Independence (liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation, as the new wave was called), that has unleashed entrepreneurial magic, created Gurgaon (though we do apologise for that) and propelled the Sensex to twenty seven thousand (and counting).  Our per capital GDP has grown from $324 to $5730 and, among other accomplishments, we are now the diabetic capital of the World. 

It is critical therefore that we ignore the myopic presentation by the IFPRI, sieve through this data carefully and arrive at fair conclusions.  In other words, we must look at the resplendent bright side.  So, here goes:

    a)       There are 21 countries whose hunger is worse off than ours. 

    b)      One of them is Pakistan. 

    c)       Liberia, our biggest competitor for world market share in software services and business outsourcing, is slightly behind us as well.

    d)      Zambia, which also got independence from England, though later, should have done much better than us, because it is a smaller country.  Their Hunger Index is 39 and we must cheer that we are at 28.5 (the bigger the number, the worse the hunger), though we were about the same when liberalisation set off in 1992.    

    e)      Mali, with a GDP per capita (income per head per year) of about $2300 – which is less than half of India’s – is only slightly better than us in hunger, not significantly better.  Given that they have just waged a nasty war with extremists, many hungry people must have died which improved the average, else they’d be behind us.

    f)       The People’s Democratic Republic of Laos – which is, in reality, neither democratic nor a republic – has the same ratio of Hunger to GDP per capita, which should give us much cause to cheer, because, you see, we are both a functioning republic and a democracy.  Our country is one where you have unrestricted freedom to go hungry.    

   g)     Rwanda has (percentage-wise) fewer hungry people, but don’t look down on India.  Our GDP is over three times theirs.  We should focus on GDP per capita, not on hungry people.  Also, remember that we belong to the BRICs trading block, while Rwanda can only have modest dreams of, at best, exporting feathers to South Africa.   Another oft-forgetten point: we have a 5000-year old culture that has included a form of hunger in it called fasting.  More people fast in India than go hungry in Rwanda and these things matter – they add to the Hunger Index.  

    h)      You should be relieved to hear that, despite the best efforts of DreamWorks, Madagascar’s hunger situation is alarming.  So is the hunger in Zambia and Chad.  Yes, don’t forget Chad and thank your stars that you live in a country like ours which has only 28.5 points stacked up on the Hunger Index.  The only thing good about Chad is that it isn’t Zimbabwe.

    i)        So what if Tunisia is only 5.5 on the Hunger Index; it’s a really dangerous country to live in and you could die of other reasons than hunger (Travel Mortality Score of 61.5).   Likewise for Ukraine, that just got part taken-over by Russia.   In India, we are much safer and many only die of hunger. 

    j)        Data released by the Thai Rice Exporters Association suggests that India has beaten Thailand to become the largest exporter of rice in the world. According to the reports, India has exported 10.23 million tons of rice in the year 2015 as compared to Thailand's 9.8 million tons. In terms of imports, China remains the number one importer of rice.  As China scores only 7.7 on the Hunger Index, India has done much, no doubt, to ameliorate hunger in that deprived country.  Other countries we have hugely helped are Nigeria, Iran, Malaysia and some in the Middle East, all of which rank better than us in the Hunger Index.  

    k)       Djibouti – which country's name we should all learn to pronounce correctly and learn more about, as it is one of our largest competitors in laundering money – is much worse off as far as hunger goes, I am pleased to report.  They speak French there and are not very good at cricket or kabaddi, and therefore, will stay behind us for a while to come.

    l)        At least two countries that play cricket are worse off than us – Pakistan and Zimbabwe – and, while, in the others, hunger is less prevalent, their Cricket Boards have much less money than ours, which is something we should be deeply proud of.

    m)    Mukesh Ambani, who has been named India's richest person for the ninth year in a row with a sharp increase in net worth to $22.7 billion, has a fortune that is equal to Estonia's GDP, says Forbes India. Estonia scores less than 5 on the Hunger Index, but that is pathetic in comparison to Mr Ambani – he scores 0 on the Hunger Index.  And, that is again something, we should all be proud of, but why does no one focus on these things and go on and on about hunger?  

    n)      We have set one record that no international organisation - damn them - gives us any credit for : as per the response of the Food Corporation of India to a request for information, at least 1,94,502 metric tonnes of food grain was wasted in India due to various reasons between 2005 and March 2013. 

    o)      We must also be deeply respectful of the ability of the FCI’s bean-counters to keep detailed information – down to the last tonne - of such wastage.  Our records of people who have died of hunger are sketchy and exaggerated though – the Iron Lady from Bengal is absolutely certain that no tea garden worker in the closed gardens of North Bengal has died of hunger or malnutrition.  And, since the Iron Lady is always right, those who recorded such data – journalists, fact-finding missions and others –are liars, with mendacity bordering on the criminal.

    p) India has also engendered the most extensive body of original research on hunger, which has resulted in the most books published anywhere on the subject.  Books such as "Hunger and Famine in Kalahandi: An Anthropological Study".  Such research has provided valuable employment to a number of doctoral students. 

If you are reading this, the chances are you do not know anyone who has died of hunger.  No one who has a Linked-in or Facebook account in India has died of hunger as well.  So, should we not wonder at IFPRI’s objective in publishing this stuff?

2016 Global Hunger Index

The Maths Teacher I never knew

The tall, thin and shy young man seated at the dining-cum-study table had the thick spectacles and genteel demeanour of an earnest khadi-clad socialist; he looked briefly up at me – then a little boy of ten – and went back to the Maths text book in front of him, while my brother, who was studying for his IIT entrance exams with the assiduity he normally reserved for his tennis, concentrated on the entirely unfathomable heavy book in front.  

The young man was good at his subject, of this there was no doubt; indeed, if anything was his world, it was the arcane planet of formulae and he had a good Brahmin’s brain to negotiate the treacherous pits that math sums (as problems were then called) hid in your path.  

My parents were delighted at having him teach my brother maths, of course, and my mother, as moms are prone to do, alternated between praying for the IIT seat and praising the maths teacher every day, though she hadn’t the faintest clue to what was being taught (she would, however, announce to the world that Calculus was not for the faint-hearted).  For in Digboi, the World’s finest little town, nestled amidst the tea bushes of Margherita and the oil fields-and-forests that stretched to Burma, a maths teacher of his competence was quite a dream come true; possibly, the only thing that might have bettered this would have been an invitation from IIT on a bone-china plate with a lemongrass, rosemary-and-thyme dressing (but, of course, one must be realistic, particularly about the lemongrass, rosemary-and-thyme dressing). 

Purkayastha did not set out to be a professional teacher; he was studying Chartered Accountancy and had a modest job in the Finance Department at Assam Oil, where Dad was the head of Internal Audit.  He looked up to Dad and had volunteered to teach my brother maths, when Dad had passed the question around.  And, so, that was that.

When my brother got into IIT, I saw Purkayastha for the second time (I was banished from the dining room when he normally came in to teach, as ten-year olds are deemed a nuisance to society in general and to older brothers in particular).  Purki (the name that stuck with him for life) had a broad smile on his face, and his quiet tone conveyed satisfaction.  And, one can only speculate that this early success was a deciding factor in his decision to become a high-school maths teacher at Carmel Convent, the local ISCE institution.

He never taught me: a couple of years later, we left Digboi for good just after I had finished my sixth standard. Family friends who visited us in Bangalore said that, while he had left his finance job at Assam Oil, he hadn’t quite left finance; his goal to become a Chartered Accountant had only been strengthened, and he prepared twice a year;  CA exams, I will add, may be termed the most arduous of all punishments invented in the Twentieth Century. 

Occasional reports informed us that he hadn’t yet cleared CA, though he came close, even as his reputation as a Maths whiz began to grow and  everyone spoke of him with a touch of awe.  And then, the odd report from Digboi stopped coming and I assumed that Purki had probably moved out of the town, possibly to Calcutta or elsewhere. 

In 2012, I went back to Digboi, thirty five years after I had left it and met with my old – and among my dearest – friends, Rajiv.  We had much catching up to do (and some ribbing, for the water that had flowed under the bridge over the years had taken a lot of our hair as well) and then, the conversation inevitably moved to our teachers.  When Rajiv spoke about Purki, his normally-genial expression underwent a change and he turned grim and forthright.  For Purki, he said, had been a terror, a monster of sorts, for my old classmates when they reached their tenth standard and had remained one ever since.  He would set problems in tests that were harder than the hardest and was harsh and relentless in his assessment; often, only one student – Vineet, acknowledged now to be quite a genius – consistently met his grade.  For the others, there would be vitriol, scathing sarcasm and nasty predictions of failure and it seemed that many in the class were deeply emotionally impacted by what was said and, more, by who said it (a maths teacher is a touch below God in the Hindu pantheon).  A few years of personal failure – that damn CA exam -  seemed to morph this genial, shy, young fellow into a dark, embittered man.  Rajiv ended his possibly justified tirade with a mild warning – he has retired from the school and is still somewhere in Digboi, he said, but meet him at your own risk. 

I decided at that moment to meet Purkayastha.  It was an impulsive thought, of course, and strange, for I had seen him just a couple of times, had smiled at him once thirty five years ago, had never been taught by him and knew nothing about him.  A silly decision?  Perhaps.  Or perhaps, I believed that a word of appreciation on my brother’s behalf would make a retired teacher’s day come alive.

 Events conspired interestingly.  I met a lady with the same surname as his, asked if she knew him and, voila!, I had his number.  When I called the next day, the voice was non-commital and hesitant; he would be ok to meet me, he said.  Walking up to the busy market area of Charali, I sipped a cup of tea at a ramshackle little hotel and then strolled down a nondescript street asking passers-by for the way to Purki’s home.  It wasn’t easy to find and I lost my way a bit but, when I did get there, the tiny little house on a narrow by-lane presented itself.  I stood for a moment to contemplate if I was indeed nuts to do this and then rang the bell.

This was the second time I had met Purki and, of course, he had changed; he had put on more weight and had a heavy chin, but, above all else, I saw a tired and unhappy man.  After we had sat down and exchanged small talk, I spoke of my father, whom he remembered well, and passed on the compliment I had come to deliver.  

It was as though I had opened up a tap of turbid – and complex - emotions.  Purki began to ramble, with more than a trace of dejection, his rant reserved for Carmel School that had been his life but had in the end treated him badly, even as he recalled some of his students fondly while being indifferent to others.  He spoke of his integrity as a maths teacher, of how he had hardly ever missed a day of school in decades of teaching, and of being isolated by other teachers and of the hurt caused by this loneliness.    He spoke of his frustration with the CA exam, the abandoning of which had sealed further opportunity.  And, he spoke of his son, a bright student he said, but languishing in the Government College as there was no money to pay for private education.  

I listened. 

Isn’t it true that beneath many exteriors - many sustained exhibitions of hubris, derision, harshness and criticism – there is a great sadness?  Anger masks sadness and nostalgia enlivens it. And for many who do not see a different tomorrow, this sadness offers the meaning they once were seeking.  

After a while, the conversation, as it unwound, began to seem forced and it was time to say goodbye.  He asked for help for his son and I promised, leaving my number behind, but knowing that he probably would not call. 

As my palms came together and I said Namaste, I knew that we would not meet again.  Some meetings are meant to be this way.

 

  

A flask of vitriol

“You are the kind of fellows,” he said, leaning forward, his face intense “who would barter your sisters for a promotion.”

And having made this apparently pernicious, entirely provocative allegation, the Professor – a short fellow, wearing a sweater in the middle of a summer day – leaned back with satisfaction and waited for us to react.

This was typical of Skroy, which is what we called him.  He was the senior professor amongst a bunch of Organisation Behaviour teachers, each of whom, when he was not opening a Johari Window, could have been a  founder member of a loony bin, no questions asked.   And in that bunch of demented stars, Skroy was Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry. 

Skroy used to shuffle into class with a flask in his hand, which was most intriguing: I spent the first couple of classes asking around just what was in that decrepit flask and it was most disappointing to hear that the flask contained just hot water (How boring is that?  Yeh dil maange more).  But the water – or possibly its temperature – seemed to galvanise him: he would take a sip from the flask and move into missile-launch-countdown position, following up with utterly outrageous statements.  If Skroy had any compassion for his students, any thought that they were part-human, he hid the emotion well and, in the few classes in which he inflicted himself on the unsuspecting public, allegations, insinuations and impertinence ruled.  Oddly enough, every institution has such fellows, with strong views, who are anti-establishment - even when they are the establishment - and make provocative statements that excite and irritate everyone.

Some years earlier, Skroy had apparently had a couple of heart attacks (my sympathies are entirely with that organ) but the fire of some long-misplaced idealism continued to burn: we were the pampered bourgeois , the wavering nouveau riche proletariat, the faltering scum, the greedy rampagers, the harbingers of capitalist anarchy.  You get the picture.    

So, when Skroy spoke these words – the ones at the beginning of this article - each of us had mixed thoughts ranging from indifference to annoyance; we were yet to grasp his provocative nature.  It was early days in our IIM tenure and I, for one, was way too timid to stand up to this incitement (in fact, I was far from affronted and did have a pesky cousin brother up for barter at that time, if Skroy was interested).  But, Arpana, an intrepid classmate took this all rather personally – she stood up and walked out of class, followed by a couple of other girls, while the guys – who were the target of Skroy’s ire in the first place – blinked in silence and pondered on just what they were expected to do.  Arpana was (and remains) a quiet, unassuming person, but in that moment, she exhibited the guts to stand up to an anserine bully and this was the subject matter of much discussion in the months to come. 

The predictable post-script to the walk-out was that Skroy did tone down his vitriol and we were spared much of such nonsense though attendance in his classes increased in the hopeful expectation of more drama and the back benchers were deeply disappointed that he seemed to have had not much more to allege.

Skroy did not live very much longer after the trimester with our class (no, not because Arpana and others walked out.  Correlation and causation are two different things).   Had he lived for another twenty seven years and strolled through the Management Development Block on the night of August 13^th or 14^th 2016, he might have seen fifty of the most pampered bourgeois, some of whom were delighted to be wavering nouveau riche proletariat (wavering, because gravity and lightheadedness were going at each other), a mass of faltering scum having a whale of a time in each other’s company, a handful of greedy rampagers as they raised their twenty-fourth toast and the captains of capitalist anarchy in boisterous mayhem.  …and he would have nodded his heavy head, sipped his hot water with a I-told-you-so look and possibly got into missile-launch-countdown mode. 

So, as they say, all’s well that ends well.

The Fox

The face that looks back at me from the photograph in our Year Book is youthful, of dark complexion and sits lightly on a thin body.  The hair is neatly combed - indeed, I rarely saw a tousled head of hair on him in the two years on campus.  He is wearing a T-shirt and his trademark skin-tight jeans many years before it became fashionable to get your daily exercise and leg-muscles massage by battling with the denim trouser on the bed.  But what is most arresting in the photograph are the smile and the eyes: the smile is benign and teasing and the eyes have a hint of mischief, a trace of childlike naughtiness that we see in some truly special children, who are as troublesome and non-conforming as they are sharp and wonderfully deviant.   

When I got to know him on campus, the first image that came to mind was of an endearing, rather saucy fox, one who would be up to no good because, well, he wanted to be up to no good.  I shall therefore refer to him hereon as the Fox.

He was with us at D Quarters, being a Bangalorean, and, when the two of us compared notes, we found that I had actually spent a few months in his class in the 7^th standard, before switching schools.  Later, when I spoke to our common friends about the Fox, they would immediately have a mildly startled air about them, as if I had suggested that their house had been selected for the forthcoming landing of a payload satellite. 

It took me, and the others who spent our happy two years years in DQ and G-top together, very little time to find out why.  For the Fox was the mimic of our batch, an outstanding, exaggerated imitator when in the company of friends (which included a diminishing Old Monk), and a careful performer when in not-so-comfortable company. 

We read nowadays a great deal about method-acting; actors observing others’ mannerisms and then duplicating them on screen.  The Fox needed none of this, for it came to him easily, just as dismay came naturally to an academic topper on knowing the grades of others, just as revulsion came to me when double beans were served for dinner, just, indeed, as cows belch.  He was, in other words, a Natural and would choose some daring moments to display that ferocious talent.

In the first year, we had an Economics professor, whom I shall simply called Bala; there is no point in identifying someone you intend to describe (hopefully) to comic relief.  Bala had the most astonishing mannerisms and, in the rather arduous pursuit of the subject, most of us missed these gems of idiosyncrasy.  For one, he would snort at frequent intervals, rather like a wild buffalo that is cross with its next meal, - the poor fellow, I suspect had asthma or certainly something else that blocked his air passage and the snort had begun as a determined effort to keep the engine going; over a period of time though it had become a habit and now, even when the engine was purring away and conforming to Euro 4 standards, the snort ensued at regular intervals.  His second habit, and this was so fascinating to watch that I nearly failed in the subject, was to swing a leg (alternating between the right and the left) to and fro, in the manner of an elephant contemplating its next course of action.  When he had to smile, the muscles around the lips seemed to cause indefinable agony and he kept the effort to the minimum. 

Well, the story is that, on a particular occasion, before the class began, the Fox walked up to the podium of a semi-empty class and began to snort and swing his legs.  Now, you see, we can all snort and swing our legs, but few can do it in precisely the same way that Bala did.  The observers erupted into laughter, even as the Fox turned to the board behind to begin a mock session and observed Bala watching him with a rather puzzled air. 

In the brief silence that followed, I am told, the Fox gave Bala the same smile – the agony of muscular strain exemplified – and quietly walked up to his place in front.  That he passed Economics implies that either the good Professor did not catch on, or, if he did, is worthy of canonisation.

But the Fox's best acts – his piece de resistance, as it were – were the imitations of the many couples on campus that were dating or certainly of fellows who had set their eyes on a girl.  With uncanny precision, often with us discreetly watching, he would walk past the guy or indeed the girl, imitating the mannerisms of either or both parties.  There would be no advance notice, no ‘watch me do this’, just a natural slippage into a role that he would click out of in a minute, as we rolled over laughing at the sheer audacity of the whole thing.  To this day, of course, most of those subjects have no idea of the Fox’s manoeuvres. 

When he mimicked each one of us at G-Top – his best friends (if such chaps can actually retain best friends) – it was to much merriment, generally after we had downed a measure of warmth from the bottle in regular State of the World Round Tables.  As the evening progressed, the Fox would warm up, his rendition of the day’s ordinary events, embellished with rip-roaring imitation.  Godfy, whose endearment for the 555 cigarette is the stuff of legend, was one of the Fox’s favourite subjects.  He was always, with exaggerated panache, imitating the Godfather’s style: he would pretend to puff away, walk with an air of supreme importance, looking out at the sea of humanity and drawing the conclusion that on him depended any improvement in the national average.  He made fun of me regularly of course, but it was impossible to be offended.  The trademark of genius is when you have the subject helplessly laugh in disagreement.

The thing about the Fox is, we could take his ‘trip’ as well, and did so in considerable measure, for the small of his back – his bottom, in other words – had been constructed generously and the tight jeans made it all come to life. 

On campus, he got himself a marketing job, and we re-lived much of his mischief when we met later in 1992 and, perhaps, 1993 (the way I get dates mixed up, there is reason to suspect prefrontal cortex decay), but you know how it is: you lose touch and people go their separate ways, some in pursuit of a dream,  others a livelihood, yet others, in search of meaning.  At times I think that we should have had today’s mobiles on campus, to capture this hilarity for good, but perhaps, all in all, it’s a good thing that it is what it is. 

I have been staring into space for much of the last few minutes, and I now look down with a start.  Is it my imagination or is the face in the photograph now sporting a Bala smile, of gentle, momentary imitation? I feel a surge of emotion and, I will confess, a lump in the throat – for those days, for those moments when a sportive, naughty, mind would put on an impressive display because it was fun, because it was mild, perhaps even because it needed to be there.
But one cannot go on and on, isn't it?  It is time to turn the page.

Sampy, when we all meet in a few days time, those who knew you well will miss you and your splendid, warm, enchanting company. 

But some of us will try to imitate you, that is for sure. 

Malsum wocs her talk

If I asked you to define just who a good teacher would be, the answer would possibly revolve around things such as erudition, communication ability, empathy, humility and so on.  On campus at IIMB, we had our share of such profs, but they are, for the most part, most uninteresting to write about.  What can one write about a splendid teacher, other than the fact that he or she is indeed a splendid teacher? 

Malsum was different, vastly so.  Writing about her is most motivating, only because she was supremely incompetent.  Indeed, any race for ineptitude would have been horribly one-sided, and any bets placed on others done, no doubt, by those entirely ignorant of facts or unable to afford the Official Guide to the Races.

It’s not that incompetence was absent on campus; if anything, it was significantly pervasive.  But none were in her league.  To stress the point further, we had some profs who were far from erudite, others who spoke but occasionally in English (including the redoubtable Bosky, who insisted on spelling 2 as ‘tow’ and would have imploded if you had asked him to spell balloon or Mississippi), a few who had been put out to pasture (notably in Personnel Management, as it was then called), who spent their time in class awaiting their retirement momento, and a large section of profs who saw the teeming humanity in front of them as an interference to their obscure research work on algorithms for logisitics optimisation.  But those who lacked knowledge made up, sadly, by their communication, others like Bosky inspired compassion and the algorithms-fraternity occasionally even smiled when students slipped on wet floors; they too, as you can see, had a few strands of human DNA.  All these folks didn’t quite combine their sterling incompetence in one field with that in another and hence may be excluded from analysis.  Malsum, I repeat, was different. 

She taught us Written and Oral Communication. At the best of times, this isn’t a subject you teach grown-ups who have passed a competitive exam that included an English language section and it struck me that the selection process for a faculty member for Woc had been simple.  There is no doubt that all those present and on the rolls had refused to teach the subject and the Director in charge then had put up a signboard by the backgate that read ‘Trespassers will be recruited’.  The rest, you will concur, is history. 

Also note that these were the days before email.  Hence, the days before clean wholesome entertainment such as flame mails, escalations at the touch of a key, sending mails to the wrong person, particularly when you were writing things about him that you shouldn’t have and so on.  We had none of these examples of hilarity, so this sterling lady had an uphill battle.   

When Malsum fetched up in class and took her chair (actually she didn’t, she just sat on it), what struck me was the long, pointed thingy that had been poked through the bun at the back of her head.  It was a particularly sharp instrument – the sort that you’d keep handy when you expected trouble – and the visibly finished keen tip suggested an attention to detail.  This spear fascinated me and absorbed much of my attention, for there was not much more to do.  In one class, this prolonged concentration prompted an outburst of creativity, resulting in my first nonsensical ditty at IIMB: 

No spear in this bun of hair

We have looked, I promise, everywhere

Just how do we tell Lady Malsum

That the bones have lost their calsum 

The students in her class – when they did attend, for in those days the Attendance Register wasn’t the Holy Grail and was not infrequently doctored – ranged from the distracted to the somnolent, from the fidgety to the fretful.  In the quarter of a century following her classes, I am yet to meet anyone who remembers anything of what she is alleged to have taught in communication– written, oral or in any other unexplored form – yet they all remember that she had a modest vocabulary and worked hard at keeping it modest and limited to words that had no more than five letters (and not more than one vowel); anything beyond this was truly overwhelming. 

Malsum would spend all her time in class seated in her chair on the podium, getting us to write entirely meaningless stuff or make presentations, while she thought of, well, whatever it is that she was capable of thinking of (it is unlikely to have been research insights into contemporary literature).  Her real skill was in grading, as the instances below will conclusively prove.

A classmate who had studied literature and is known to have read Kafka, Whitman and possibly Shaw was once berated by her for incorrect salutation in his letter to branch manager requesting a transfer of goods to warehouse.  When he saw his grade, I saw him cringe in horror and disbelief and he spent the remaining few classes with his head in his hands, avoiding the eyes of his fellows. 

When it was my turn to make a presentation, I did one on marketing and branding, ending with a recitation of a ditty that I read somewhere: 

A lion met a tiger as they drew beside a pool

Said the tiger, “Tell me, big boy, why’s your roaring like a fool?”

“It’s not foolish,” said the lion, with a twinkle in his eyes

“They call me king of beasts because I advertise.”

A rabbit heard them talking and ran home like a streak

He thought he would try roaring, but his roar was just a squeak

A fox came to investigate and had his lunch in the woods

The moral: if you advertise my friends, be sure you have got the goods.

Having recited this with flourish and to the modest applause from those who were awake, I turned to look at the lady herself.  The entirely impassive face suggested that I had probably made a presentation in a dialect spoken north-west of Reykjavik.  In essence, an entirely wasted effort.

Yet, her high point arrived when another classmate made a presentation on sunsigns and proceeded to describe, with gentle humour, the characteristics of those born under these various signs.  Malsum, of course, got it all wrong; she had written the title of the talk down as ‘Sunshine’, paid careful attention to the presentation with its description of Virgos and Saggitariuses and stuff, saw the clear correlation of all of this with the sunshine above the building and gave the student an ‘A’.    

This is the stuff of legends, the sign of unforgettable greatness.

Srini's List

Srini was, very possibly, the most competitive loser in our batch at IIM.

I distinctly remember my first impressions of him – a tall fellow, with a big belly that clearly advertised his weakness for all things carbohydrated, a neatly combed shock of hair with a lock of it falling onto his forehead, a moustache that was never allowed to fulfill its potential and a prominent, out-sized bottom much like the stomach but in the reverse direction, which caused much merriment over the two years he spent on campus. Yet it was his voice that was the most distinctive feature. It was a scratchy, harsh voice, much like the drongo’s and more indicative of a rough barrel making its way down a road, a voice devoid of humour, with a flat tone that rose to an unpleasant pitch when his competitive spirit was aroused to a challenge. The overall impression of the man was of a bull in a china shop, albiet one with a rather sore throat.

An early indication of the competitive spirit was provided when the first party was hosted on campus. This was a getting-to-know-you sort of event, where we, the freshers, put up the usual stuff like Hotel California and the odd jamba. Srini was horrified (as indeed any true TamBrahm would like to be) and dismissive, and shunned it with the words “I am here to study, not to party”, words that immediately acquired cult status. This is exactly the kind of thing you don’t say on campus. The one thing that you are expected to do but expected to pretend that you never do is study. Such niceties were lost on him and this, we realised over the next many months, was typically Srini. He would not hesitate to speak his mind, most often saying precisely the wrong thing at the wrong time to the wrong person at the wrong place or publicly dismissing those he saw as inadequate (in front of them, needless to add).

In class, Srini was intensely competitive, scanning the horizon for the brainy and the studious, the ones with a history of ranks and those in the ranks of history. If any of these folks asked a question, Srini's would be the next. When he asked a question, his mellifluous voice was much like the movement of finger nails on glass. The strong willed would clench their fists, most would grind their teeth and cross their toes. Presumably, the faculty felt the same way as they were (occasionally) human, so it was no wonder that his many queries were often answered in a tone of finality, with no second question entertained.

My paths with Srini crossed right in the first trimester, where a key subject was financial accounting. Now, I was at best an average guy at academics, reserving my hidden genius for such intellectual pursuits as putting up posters of events, imbibing midnight tea, practising for a future speech that I would make as a Chief Executive and the like (as you can see, I still don’t admit that I did study). Yet accounts was a forte, having done my undergraduation in it. When I did well in the first accounts quiz, Srini had me in his sights. I recall a moment one evening when I went to his room to pick up a handout and saw a list that he had put up on the wall. It was a neat list of the classmates he considered to be competition, with their grades in all subjects. My name, I was mortified to see, was on it. I went back to my gang of friends, in some agitation, for grades are confidential and about as personal as your toothbrush. The gang, having adequately dosed on spirits, was waiting for me to join them and the list became a subject of intense discussion; some of them suggested that we lodge a complaint against this restrictive and unfair trade practice. In the end, we chose to stay silent (while the next day’s hangover went away).

Interestingly, for all his competitive zeal, his hundred percent attendance, the copious notes, the determined use of the library and the relentless pursuit of past questions, Srini never really was a topper, though he was, I will happily admit, a darn sight better than I could have been. The more he saw himself as a loser the more competitive he became as I discovered when, sometime in the third semester, more by necessity than by choice, I happened to drop by his room again,

The list was there, of course. Some names had been added to it. My name had been neatly scratched out. If there was anything that could have caused greater mortification, intense chagrin and wrenching indignity than having my name on that list, it was having my name scratched out from that list. With my ego in terminal decline, I slunk back to the room determined to undo this affront, this inconvenient truth. My place on Srini's list was my only goal.
The feeling lasted for about a couple of hours after which I slept well and found the next day far too beautiful to spend on a text book.

Srini, of course, did not change in all the time I saw him on campus. Years later, when I thought I saw his form emerge from a chair at an airport, I stood behind a pillar with my head buried in a newspaper till the danger had passed and all was well. He works, I am told, with a large manufacturing company in New Delhi. Some classmates have allegedly met him at airports over the years (and not hidden behind pillars), and most reports indicate that the two protrusions on either side have only grown. Yet, frustratingly, no one has asked him if he still keeps his list on a wall; now possibly a list of potential competitors for the top job in his company.

Social Welfare - a case of perverse incentives and unintended consequences

The text of my letter to the Commissioner, Social Welfare, Government of Karnataka.
Dear Sir, 
This letter is to bring to your attention the misuse of free rations being provided to tribal households living around the periphery of the Bandipur National Park.  The tribal households here are extremely poor, suffer from severe malnutrition and chronic alcoholism and live in lamentable conditions. 
I understand that each such tribal household is provided every month with the following rations : toor dal, ragi, green gram or horse gram, jaggery, oil, eggs and, occasionally, ghee.    
I am deeply appreciative of the Government’s intent on improving the nutrition value of food consumed by the tribals, yet what I reliably learnt was that most of these provisions were being sold by the beneficiaries to middlemen, in exchange for cash and/or alcohol, or occasionally towards the repayment of loans.  These provisions therefore re-enter the market in various forms and are not having the impact that the scheme intends to achieve.  Indeed, as a result of the scheme, the increased purchasing power due to sale of free provisions is resulting in increased alcohol consumption and indebtedness – quite the opposite effect to what is intended and, hence, an unintended consequence. This diversion by the tribal population is estimated by some locals to be as much as 75% of the total supply of provisions to the area. 
After some study and discussions with local school teachers, I am therefore volunteering the following suggestion – rather than provide free rations, could the Government provide free meals to the tribals, keeping in mind
- Local food preferences around a pre-agreed simple menu
- Addition of nutritional supplements if necessary, and locally-grown vegetables ? 
This will significantly
a) reduce diversion
b)reduce the expenditure on alcohol
c)improve nutrition; and
d)provide nominal additional employment opportunities in the area 
This could be either directly done by the Government (as in the case of the mid-day meal scheme there) or in partnership with credible non-governmental organisations that have experience in this service. 
I look forward to hearing from you,

 

The Selfie Captain

There is much to learn from playing a team sport as a recent set of volleyball games that I played indicated. 

Volleyball is not my thing, honestly.  I started it late in life; I used to walk or run around the volleyball courts on weekend mornings earlier, but was persuaded by a friend who plays there to join in the game.  The rest, as they say, is history (of the forgettable kind).  My arms and the ball don’t quite seem to understand my intent – when I wish to pass it to a team mate, who could then go for the kill, the ball sails over the net, allowing the opposition to achieve what I set out to do.  When I try anything minutely out of the ordinary, my fingers hurt for the rest of the week or the muscle becomes a tomato-red for the day.  Over the last few months, I have improved though and can now get the ball over the net eight times out of ten (aided by a fervent prayer), which is a tad better than some who try to pummel a winning shot each time.   

This week, two teams faced each other off in a friendly set of six games – each team had six players.  Our team had one very good player, four average players and the lone downtrodden (my ego preventing any further acknowledgement).  The other team had precisely the same profile, with the sixth player being average, so you could expect a broadly even contest. 

A chap in our team – the very good player -  had assumed the responsibility of captain, which title  the others seem to acknowledge (I named him therefore the ‘selfie-captain’).   

He – the selfie-captain - chose to position himself in the centre of the court, directed us to our stations and decided that he had to plug the holes, fix the weak links as it were.  So there he was, involved in about every shot, particularly if the ball came in my direction,  lunging, leaping, shouting “Leave it for me”, springing back and front attempting to cover an area beyond his reach and seeking, in particular, to cover me, with the result that, even as he played very well and gave the game a hundred percent, he seemed to make the most errors and confuse others often.  For much of the six games, I was an interested spectator.  Once, when the ball came twice, in quick succession, in my direction (and I hit into the net once), he hinted darkly that the other team was ‘targeting’ - playing unfairly by picking on the weakest – and did not quite recognise my embarrassment at being singled out as such.  I was immediately moved to another position for which I was even less suited – at the net. 

Of course, the net result (pun aside) was that we lost the first few games, and lost badly.  This got him grumpy and even more meddlesome, and critical of team-mates when they missed, banging the ball on the ground.  We won a consolation game, but in the end, it was a no-contest. 

What struck me was that the other team was just average and, by letting go, trusting his people, encouraging them, communicating far more and allowing them space to work, he could have got a much better result…that other team won, not on its merit, but on our demerit.  The selfie-captain walked away from the court with hardly a bye, making no eye contact with his weakest link; this blogpost is no retribution though! 

….and then, I thought of Ian Botham.  The world’s finest cricketer in the 1980s, a great all-rounder whose skill and talent were unique.  He also happened to be a disaster as a captain, not just losing his matches but his cricket as well that was in utter disarray during his captaincy.  But - here’s the best part – when the captaincy was taken away and given to Mike Brearley, Botham bounced back to being what he was: world class.  Botham’s problem was the same as the selfie-captain’s: a superstar performer who takes on all the responsibility and everyone’s job and does not do his own.  

…and then the thoughts flowed: of the chief of a small company that I had consulted with last year, who is ironically a star volleyballer himself.  He is a superstar software manager, a terrific face of the company, most customer friendly and outstandingly competent.  His team is nowhere close.  The company has been ‘Botham-ed’: everyone is in awe of the chief, he is consulted on everything and he gets involved in everything, he is particularly critical of others’ decisions and the company is in perpetual ‘rush’ mode, yet has hardly grown over the years.  

…and then, many names of superstar captains flashed through my mind and, I realised (with surprise and a touch of consternation) today, that the underperformance of the superstar-selfie-captain is no exception; it is a malaise. 

…..and, finally, I thought of Virat Kohli and the underperformance of the Royal Challengers in the initial part of the IPL this year.  Right through the day today, an image of this guy’s aggression questioning an underperforming colleague in the field has flashed through the mind - a posture, a look, a gesticulation seemed to suggest that he would need to learn to not be the superstar-captain.

Another kind of pugilist

When a man of honourable ancestry, with a lineage of noblemen and rulers stood up to be a spokesman for a forest that was being felled, his voice echoed across the country after the Supreme Court passed a ruling.

The result, even by his modest admission, was stunning.

Godavarman Thirumalpad was born in the royal household of Nilambur Kovilakam in Kerala’s Malappuram district.  The household was the sole owner of the thousands of hectares of forests which stretched from the Mysore border to Calicut in Kerala and spread across Gudaloor.

In 1947, the then ruler, Manavedan Raja, requested the Madras government to take over the land, saying it was impossible to look after it.  The forest was taken over in 1949.

Thus began the problem: after the formation of Kerala, this forest was divided between the state and Tamil Nadu and, over the years, a systematic, rapid and egregiously destructive felling of trees thinned the forest cover down to a fraction of what it used to be.  These forests were rich with wildlife and an astonishing diversity of deciduous and evergreen trees yet, contractors and timber smugglers  who knew the price of everything but the value of nothing tore away at the verdant ecosystem.   The guardians entrusted with the job of conservation, the Forest Department, could do little,  even as some officers participated in the plunder with their passivity and corruption.  When Mr. Thirumalpad tried to persuade the tree-fellers, he was ignored, often treated with contempt. 

The Forest Conservation Act, passed in 1980, was hardly an impediment, followed more in its breach, the felling legitimised with notional fines that were ludicrous. In an interview with Down to Earth , Thirumalpad said: “The trees were being felled in violation of various legislations and rules.  Contractors who obtained permission for felling these trees remitted only Rs. 1000 to the district collector for 50 logs of rosewood.”

Dismayed and angry at the illegal felling of public forests that had belonged to his family, Thirumulpad filed a writ petition in 1995 asking for a stay on felling of trees in that forest.   He had to fight his way through: the dissuaders were many and the enticements were rich, even as the threats followed his persistence.

In December 1996, the Supreme Court - the bench comprising Justice JS Verma and Justice BN Kirpal - passed its order: no trees, it said, would be felled in any forest in India, a landmark, sweeping, incredibly perspicuous judgement by the only Institution in India that has stood by the environment.  The court ordered all non-forest activity like sawmills and mining to be suspended.

Overnight, the entire plywood industry in the country which had grown on the back of surreptitious supply from North-East India shut down.  There was an immediate, significant drop in illegal felling in all States, the transportation of timber from forest areas to urban India came to a halt, the operation of saw mills across the country that had relied on the nexus between forest contractors and the Forest Service ceased at once. (With revised rules, the wood business resumed later, but the plunder had been halted.) 

The Supreme Court took over the status of being the law-maker, administrator and enforcer.  It kept the Godavarman case open using the device of a “continuing mandamus” and, over the years and has heard hundreds of matters related to the implementation of the Forest Conservation Act. The ruling excluded the lower courts from admitting such application, leaving the Supreme Court the sole administrator of the law when it came to forest matters.  

Those who care for India’s forests and wildlife are used to bad news; it’s there in the papers every day.  Yet, it’s important to look at another view: the even-worse case scenario of what could have happened, and then derive the strength that optimism provides. 

The result of the Supreme Court’s judgement in this case has been marvellous: thousands of hectares of forest have been saved from diversion to non-forest purposes, in consequence and over the next two decades, a number of judgements on forest conservation have been passed, a vast number quoting this landmark case as a referral point in protection.    To our generation of wildlifers and foresters, Godavarman Thirumalpad is a legend and will remain so for decades to come.

On June 1^{st 2016,} a few days before World Environment Day, he passed away at the age of 86, followed a few days later by another fighter, Muhammad Ali. 

History will judge which one of them was the greatest.

Notes:

'Continuing mandamus' : which means that the Courts, rather than passing final judgements, keeps passing orders and directions with a view to monitor the functioning of the executive.  

Earth Day

Eighteen years ago, I visited the little industrial town of Valsad on the Gujarat coast, with a prospective client.  He had a marvellous technology for pollution treatment and was talking to Atul Dyes, a large dyes producer, for installing a pilot plant.  As we walked around the ageing, partly decrepit factory, I asked a pending question to the factory employee who was taking us around, ‘You must be needing loads of water for the plant?’  He nodded and gave me a figure in millions of litres, adding  ‘It comes from the river nearby.’  I continued, ‘And what do you do with the liquid effluent from the factory – the equally large volumes of coloured waste water from the production process?’  He grimaced a bit and pointed to the sea. ‘Our pipe goes three kilometres out, along the seabed.’

I had never, till that moment, come face-to-face with such insanity: fresh water to factory –> factory converts fresh water to toxic effluent –> effluent to sea.  

And, just as the reality hit, another one did as well: that this chap saw nothing wrong with all of this, it was business as usual, another day at work. 

Today, April 22^nd, is Earth Day.  Across the World, particularly the ‘developed’ world, corporates organise the standard speech-conserve-plant-a-tree routine, partly out of sympathy for the poor planet, largely out of the positive messages that they send out to all concerned.  In India too, many of the larger companies do the same – the big boss gets a tree planted in his name, everyone cheers, there are lots of soft drinks and snacks passed around, a few banners (all of which create their own waste, of course) and the juggernaut moves on.  Perhaps a CEO or two will refer to the company’s work in reducing environmental impact by installing a scrubber here or a fuel-efficient generator there.  Perhaps, he will add that two per cent of profits are now being ploughed into corporate social responsibility, as per an amendment to Company Law.

The hypocrisy of it all is lamentable.

Nobody really understands what CSR means.  Can I set up a cola factory by digging forty borewells in an area with average rainfall, and spend that 2% on providing drinking water to nearby villages (Coca Cola)?  Can I blow up a mountain for granite or alumina and set up a school for the tribal children with the 2% of the profits from the destruction of the mountain (Vedanta)?  Can we sell cigarettes for a living (and make every effort to sell more year after year), but harvest water for stakeholder villages (ITC)?  Can we contaminate an entire landscape and its watershed with mercury and then empower women self-help groups to sell our products (HUL)?  Can we set up an extra large port in a area where endangered turtles nest and then, quite separately, fund conservation research (Tata Group)?  Can we set up a destructive, Rs. 6400 crore hydro project in an ecological treasure in Arunachal Pradesh that is the last habitat of the black necked crane, and then provide drinking water to a few villages in Rajasthan (LNJ Bhilwara group)?  The litany – and litany it is – goes on…..

The two percent clause has given companies an easy way out to justify the unjustifiable, to throw money at the small picture in the hope that the big picture will be obfuscated, repositioned, concealed behind the convenient curtain of the word ‘development’ and the entirely chimerical notion of Gross Domestic Product growth.  GDP, as economic history and data informs us, is just a average.  Its recent history tells us that GDP means nothing other than more inequality, more concentration of wealth and natural resources, more agglomeration of power, influence and voice in the path of future material creation for the average human.  More GDP today has come to mean more destruction.

So, why is this - the power and cold hypocrisy of the corporate sector in general - important to understand?  In the year 2000, a study Sarah Anderson and John Cavanagh of  the Institute for Policy Studies revealed that 51 of the top economies of the World were corporations and 49 were countries.  General Motors, for example, was bigger than Denmark, while Walmart was bigger than Norway.

In the last fifteen years, this concentration of wealth has grown, not reduced, though the corporations in the top 100 have changed.   For instance, the GDP (Revenues) of Monsanto – a company with a particularly dodgy record of producing toxic pesticides like glyphosate - is over twice the GDP of Nepal, a poor country with 35% of its income coming from agriculture – can farmers’ collectives in small economies negotiate with the Monsanto’s of the world in a truly win-win way that gives them more control on their lives, their health and the future of their watersheds? 

There is enough data today to suggest that corporate power breeds irresponsibility (with few, very few, exceptions).  As urbanities and consumers, we have a big, big responsibility to counter this callousness because we are consumers.  Before we buy anything, we must make it a point to study more about the impact of our decisions on the planet.  If there is no need to buy something, do not buy it; perhaps it can be borrowed on mutual goodwill?  Simple as this sounds, it is the best that we can do for a deteriorating planet.  If, to this, we add the consumption of organic food or home-grown food and the careful, parsimonious usage of water, we would have done our bit. 

As an aside: after the visit to Atul Dyes, I came back to Bangalore convinced that the startup that we were looking at funding was critical, its technology was marvellous and we just had to do this deal, both for the financial returns that could ensue and for the environmental impact it would make.  My boss disagreed, his disagreement affecting our otherwise positive working relationship as well as my annual performance review.  I now believe that this was the tipping point, the moment when I decided to leave the VC business, indeed to give the corporate sector a go-by; it’s a decision I have never ever regretted.

Guddu's Day Out

The other day I was walking past Number 240, an old house that we had once stayed in, a house on what is now a busy arterial road, filled with people, traffic, shops and the perils of progress.  I stood in front and, looking across the road at the apartment that stood on a once-empty plot, remembered 1980.  I saw, in my mind’s eye, the house diagonally behind that plot, the little Sardar boy who lived there and the event that was to leave an indelible memory.

Odd, the human mind is, isn’t it? The way it makes connections…..   

But back to the story.  1980 was not just the birth of a decade, it was a momentous year that saw, among other things, “the longest and costliest conflict in the history of the public sector in India – the Bangalore Public Sector Strike” (as recounted by Dilip Subramaniam in EPW).  Our city was the epicentre, for it was here that the ‘thinking public sector’ existed – the BHELs, the BEMLs, the HALs and the BELs – Government-run organisations that employed engineers and managers, who aspired to stay there all their lives for job security and the occasional modicum of achievement that they could lay claim to within the constraints of a stifling bureaucracy (these organisations spawned an entire generation of entrepreneurs as a result, but that is another story for a brighter day).

I was in my early teens then.  Just behind our house was an empty ground on which a few of us played a sprightly game of cricket in earnest competitive spirit and with the minimal warranted safety attire.  Much of our time on the ground, of course, was spent in discussion, gossip and, when batting, in getting out of the way of the cork ball and keeping certain delicate parts of the anatomy well protected from its impact.  For a few months prior to the strike, we had been joined by a little sardar boy, Guddu Lamba, who was much younger and hence entirely ineligible to apply.  Under normal circumstances, we might have found ways to keep him out, yet the fellow was not just persistent but happened to be the son of a test pilot from the Air Force seconded to HAL (which, of course, did much to help his case in our star struck eyes).  Guddu was a gutsy little fellow, full of beans and fight, and we reciprocated with gentle bowling and batting against him with condescending disdain.

On the big day of the strike, Bangalore wore a deserted look.  Schools, of course, were shut, but I was not complaining, having just discovered Agatha Christie a few months earlier.  Around mid-morning, we heard that a large crowd had gathered down the road and was coming up in a procession, past our home.  Looking out of the gate, I saw – and I am not making this up – the largest collection of humanity I have ever seen (not having visited the Kumbh).  The crowd was in a bellicose mood, the noise raucous and the prudent thing to do was to lock the front door and stay in. 

Guddu stood on the wall of his house – the back wall was separated from the main road by an empty plot of land - watching the crowd, as hundreds of men walked slowly up the road, shouting slogans and jostling with each other.  As the strikers went past the empty plot, one fellow, seeing this little Sardar standing on the wall, apparently shouted out at him, perhaps mocking him with derision or insult (much as I try, what he is purported to have said escapes me). 

He had picked the wrong little boy. 

Guddu jumped down, picked a stone up and hurled it at the crowd.  The next thing we heard was a squeal from the victim and a roar of anger from the men.  After a momentary pause, a number of them, spitting abuse and rage, scampered onto the empty plot, making a beeline for Guddu but, of course, he beat them to it, bolting like a rabbit.

The men were not done.  They gathered about twenty feet away from the wall – a whole mass of them covering the wide empty plot - and began to growl with aggression and vehemence.  Watching now from the terrace, I could feel my pulse quicken, for the men wanted the little boy and his family to come out and face this mob and I could sense violence in the air.  The police presence was notional, and my dad, if I recall,  called up the police station immediately. 

Out of the front door of his home came Ajit Singh Lamba, Guddu’s father.  He was wearing a vest and the inner turban and in his right hand was a long-barrelled gun.  “Get back,” he shouted with firm intent and the crowd, particularly the leaders of the mob in front, retreated immediately, taking a few steps back to create a generous semi-circle of plot space between this one man and their army. 

“My son has made a mistake and I say ‘sorry’ on his behalf,” the Air Force man said, “now please go back.”

The crowd began to murmur and dissent, for a mob, never in its senses, is always overcome by the occasion and its misplaced sense of righteousness.  Lamba, a trim tall man in his early 40s, every inch the Services officer that he was, stood firmly in his driveway, and looking back at that hair-raising event, I wonder just what his inners were made of, for, if any emotion was visible on him, it was counter-aggression.  The men leading the crowd began to argue belligerently, asking for more, and much of their chaotic demands escaped the captive audience on our terrace (for more of our family had joined in by this time).

In this chaos, the mob moved forward again.  Lamba raised his gun at the sky.  “If you come closer, I will shoot.  Before I die, at least some of you will” he said, or words to that effect.

Was he bluffing or just foolish?  The crowd could not quite decide, for in the tense succeeding moments, there were shouts and murmurs from within its ranks, some urging attack, others throwing insults at him, still others provoking the inert middle who remained unprovoked. 

And then, with some momentum from the rear, the crowd surged forward at the wall. 

Lamba pointed the gun up and fired into the air.

No crowd has ever set a dispersal pace as quickly as this one did; men were running in all directions, some seemed to simply evaporate out of fear and, in a trice, the plot was home again to Congress grass and no other species.  As the crowd re-assembled on the road in front of our home, the plucky Sardarji reloaded his gun and took his ready-for-battle stance on the driveway.  Standing on the terrace at 240 and watching this, we all marvelled at his astonishing fortitude that had, by now, pretty much won the battle.  There the two parties stood facing each other as minutes rolled by, each second  edged with anticipation, until the police arrived and moved the crowd ahead with some persuasion and a subdued use of lathi.  Subsequently, I suppose Lamba had some explaining to do, but he seemed none the worse for wear in the following days. 

Three and a half decades later, I learnt that Air Vice Marshal Ajit Singh Lamba had won the Vir Chakra while in service - no surprise, he had won much more in my Honours List-, was now 79 years old and in active retirement. 

And Guddu?  When he came on to bowl the next time, I made it a point of playing him with respect. 

There are some people you never mess with.