BJP

Unlike previous elections, this election provides voters with a clear choice. One side there is BJP (all the other corrupt NDA allies are gone. It is only BJP now. Much clearer that way). The other side there is the Mahamilawat of effectively the corrupt brigade. I try to summarize the choice below.

BJP	Mahamilawat
Impeccable leaders	Corrupt Brigade
Democracy	Dynasty
Decisive Government	Total chaos
Meritocracy	Sycophancy
Wealth creation	Poverty redistribution
Secularism	Jihadi appeasement
Make strong allies	Get beaten by every neighbor
Safety for our children	Bomb explosion every week
Hope	Despair
Performance	Pedigree
Sushma	Priyanka
Modi	Rahul

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About Hiring

I have been taking interviews since 2003. By now I have taken hundreds of interviews and also given a few. I also conducted campus hiring events and walk in interviews, too. I am not good at taking interviews. No I am not being humble here. I genuinely think I am not good at it. I have seen really good interviewers. I am not one of them. One of the reasons I am not good at it is that I do not enjoy taking interviews. Measuring someone’s potential, intelligence and skills in one hour is daunting. Coupled with that the high stakes for making a mistake makes it one of the hardest task at my work. But still I have been made to do this over the years! That is probably because I speak a lot and give the impression that I am always available. So hiring managers used to find an easy “bakra” in me. Ever since I became a hiring manager, I take this task very seriously and end up doing it myself.

Having taken so many interviews I have gathered some working knowledge about it. I am going to share my experience in this article. There is no new wisdom here. This is just a collection of common practices in one place that hiring managers may find useful. So feel free to skip if you are already a very good interviewer.

Let me start by giving a sketch of how typical interviews go.

Say you are a project manager and you need to deliver two important features on IP multicast and MPLS multicast in your next release R10. You have one staff engineer in your team Akash, who knows IP multicast but he is busy with R9 issues and will not be free for next few months. So you got a requisition for a position approved and you want to hire an engineer who can help you with these features. You give a JD to your TA (Talent Acquisition Manager) and he searches with key word “multicast”. He sends a bunch of resumes to you to shortlist. Since you are up to your neck with R9 issues and R10 planning, you delegate this to a senior team member. Then one fine Wednesday afternoon at 2:40 PM you get a call from your TA.

“Subhendu, what’s up? You had a phone screen at 2:30 PM and the candidate called me that he did not receive your call.

“Shit!” You say. “Sorry, I forgot. I will call him right away.”

So you hurry to a conference room. Pull up the resume. Glance through it. Then call the candidate at 2:45 PM. You tell to yourself. “Oh. It’s just a phone screen. I am good at it. I can manage in 15 mins.”

And you are right. It is no big deal. It is a phone screen. It can be and should be done in 15 min. You should avoid doing a phone interview, and only do phone screening. The purpose of telephone screen is to introduce to the candidate you and your company as well as the job so that he gets interest to apply for the position. From your side you verify that the candidate is good enough to call him for a face to face interview. Invest one full day on him. Most of the time it should be discernible from his resume and his references. You should just validate those info over telephone.

So you like the candidate and ask your TA to schedule a face to face interview.

Come Friday morning as you are fighting the traffic to get to work, you get a call from your TA.

“Subhendu, where are you? The candidate is waiting for 30 min in Bombay conference room! First panelist Akash is not here yet.”

You remembered Akash was chasing a release blocker till early morning and he will not come so early and it will take you another 30 min to reach office.

“Is anyone else available?” you ask your TA.

“I see Bhumika there.” Bhumika is from the Java team and she does not know C++ or embedded programming. “I have no choice.” You think.

“Please ask her if she can take the interview.”

So she goes and does a good job interviewing the candidate on his programming skills.

Then goes Anand. He is a very good C++ programmer. But he is from the L2 team. He does not know much L3 stuff and he does not know multicast.

Finally to your relief Akash walks in and jumps straight into his R9 issue. You pull him out and request him to finish the interview first. He goes in and finished in hurry in 30 min.

You meet Akash at the cafeteria during lunch.

“How is the candidate?” You ask.

“He is awesome. He knows more multicast than me. He contributed to RFC.”

You feel very lucky that you got a good candidate.

Post lunch as you are preparing your weekly status report, you again get a call from your TA.

“The candidate is waiting.”

You feel irritated to be interrupted on your work. But hurry to the conference room. By that time you already made up your mind based on Akash’s feedback.

You start speaking to the candidate casually. Somewhat apprehensive to ask tough questions fearing he might flunk. You find him very confident. Also found that he ranked 16 in his JEE exam? He worked for good companies in the past.

“24 karat gold.” You think and jump straight to salary discussion. You are pleasantly surprised to find out that is getting only 36 lakh with 14 years. The market rate is 50. Even if I offer him a 30% raise it is still very cheap.

“What a deal?” You thought.

As a good manager, you gather feedback from two other panelists. By this time you do not want to lose the candidate. So want them to say “yes”. But to your disappointment, you find that they are not OK with the candidate.

Bhumika said that the candidate has an attitude and does not test his code. He hardly even codes. Mostly give opinions to others.

Anand said the candidate is very poor with programming. He does not know C++ at all and is not willing to learn. He thinks we should change to C instead!

Bhumika is being too sensitive. You thought.

Anand is not from my team. He does not know how we work. Besides he does not know multicast!

You ignore their advice and decided to go ahead with the candidate. You walk to your boss’s cabin and ask him.

“Boss, I got this great candidate. Can you please speak to him for a few minutes?”

“I am leaving for the US tonight. I have not even packed. I have to leave now. I do not have time. You should have told me before. Let’s do this next week when I come back.” Says your boss.

“He has other offers. He will not wait that long.”

Your boss has great confidence in you and trusts your judgment.

“If you like him then go ahead and hire him. I will approve. No need to wait for me.” Says your boss and leaves. You lost your last safeguard.

You make an offer. After much haggling, the candidate joins after two months.

Then disaster happens. He took three more months to learn C++ and be productive. Then you find out that the guy does not want to do any work. He has an opinion about everything but does not produce anything himself. Finally you need to pull Akash to deliver the release with more than a month delay. Akash is so stressed out that he may leave. Your boss’s confidence in you takes a dent. And you find out the next three releases are on SDN and NFV. The new candidate has no desire to learn these new things and is useless. You basically have a passenger in your team, who is causing more harm than help and you need to hire more people to deliver the next releases.

Of course I am exaggerating. Most hirings do not go this way. But surprisingly, quite a few do.

So what went wrong here? Everything. Let me try to list a few.

• Preparation: No one plans for interviews. Interview is some invisible task that somehow fits into our schedule. Hiring is the most crucial part of team building. Take it very seriously. Add it to your plan, make time in your schedule as well as the team member’s schedule and your boss’s. Divide the work, who will ask what. One person should cover programming, another networking knowledge, another system building. Train your panelist on what to ask, as well as what not to ask. If the candidate is married, if he owns his flat or rents, where is he from. These are information that you do not need to know. There are other ways to do small talk and break the ice. Most importantly, make preparation in advance on how to receive and evaluate panel’s feedback. Stay objective and do not get clouded by prejudice.
• Hire on potential not on skills: Skills requirements change, potential does not. You are hiring the candidate for what he can do for you, not what he has done before. While past is a good indicator of the future, it is not an insurance. The guy may have ranked 28 in JEE, may have been a star performer 10 years ago. But that is past. You must evaluate what he can do next. And this is not easy. Some tips on how to do is to see how he extends a solution when given additional requirements, how easily he gives up when asked a tough question. How inquisitive he is. Has he learned anything new recently? When a very tough question is thrown at him, does he accept the challenge or recoils with resignation? Ask him something totally new, not at all related to what he is doing currently and see how he proceeds. Introduce a new and interesting concept and see if he shows interest and asks more questions to broaden his knowledge.
• Do not look for a deal:  Look for a deal when you buy a computer, not when you hire a team member. People have emotion and self-worth. When you pay them less than what they are worth, you hurt their self-worth and that impairs their confidence and ability and reduce their engagement. So once you decide to hire someone, pay her market rate and not try to get her at the cheapest. By doing so you are not helping your company much but you are hurting your team big time. You will add a disgruntled team member who will not perform well and will stay dejected and spread negativity. She will become a constant source of worry for you for the next few years. Not worth a few lakh. And once you hire someone at a certain rate, it will be difficult then to correct her pay to market. Rather consider low pay as a red flag. Why is this candidate  paid so less? It may as well be that she was genuinely deprived. But probe that and make sure that this is not an issue. Ask her about her past appraisal ratings, how she fared compared to her teammates. Only when you are satisfied that she is OK you make a hiring decision. On the other hand if you surprise the candidate by paying more than what she expects, you now have an enthusiastic member who is eager to perform and surprise you in return.
• Do not ignore attitude and temperament: Cultures matter. Sometime they matter more than skills and ability. If you have a very competitive team and you hire a soft, introvert member, you are asking for trouble and vice versa. There is a thin line between confidence and arrogance. “I have done this” is confidence. “Only I have done this” is arrogance. You should be careful about spotting that line. For example allow the candidate to brag about some past achievement then observe if she also gives credit to her partners, does she also mentions her shortcomings. Be on the lookout if she persistently cribs about her peers, boss, and company. See if she is very opinionative. Does she focus more on ‘who’ than on ‘what’? Take HR feedback seriously. You do not need to make a hiring decision on a feedback like ‘the guy has attitude’. But make a point to probe her if you get any such feedback.

Here is how I approach this. Again this is not the best practice and I am sure people have better ideas. But I have not made many hiring mistakes so this can be used as a working hypotheses that can be improved.  

I break a 60 min interview into four main parts.

1. I spend first 10 minutes introducing my company, the job and then myself. Thereafter I ask the candidate to speak about him. This has two purposes. One is to know about his past which gives strong indication about his future. More importantly it allows the candidate to calm down and gain confidence. What I observe is attitude and temperament along with skills he picked up.
2. In the second part, I spend 10 min as an elimination round. For most candidates I give a moderate program to write. Like run length encoding or shifting bits in an array. This is an elimination test. If the guy flunks it, I give him another chance with a different problem. If he still flunks, he is out. This again has two purpose. One is the elimination test. It weeds out the bad candidates and saves me 30 min. But for the guys who passes this it gives a morale boost for the next question. It works like a tonic and the candidate gets charged up.
3. The third part is the main interview. This is where I try to gauge the candidate’s potential. What I do is ask the candidate to design something big and complex, like design Facebook or Uber for senior candidate. For junior candidate I ask for example to design a software bridge. First I observe his reaction and his approach. Then I give him lots of hints to make good progress then again I leave him alone to extend. I spend about 30 min in this part. Sometime I give the guy a NP-hard problem without telling him. Like I ask to give a shortest path algorithm. Once he does that I ask him to come up with a longest path algorithm. In the exited state he does not realize that it is hard. Then I observe how easily he gives up or does he try his best to solve it.
4. I spend the last ten minutes on checking cultural fit. I ask questions about her past achievements and failures. Ask her to describe how she received help from peers and boss to overcome shortcoming or gain competencies. Ask her to describe career transforming experience, how she coped with them, who helped her during the process. The objective here is to allow the candidate to talk a lot about her and then look for clues on temperament and attitude. There is no secret sauce for this. This is all about practice and discipline.

Finally I close thanking the candidate and answering any questions she may have. Once again I briefly summarize the job and clearly explain the next steps in the selection process.

So that is a long discussion about hiring. Thanks for reading this far and hope this will be of some help in the upcoming hiring season.  

Quitting an Addiction

Kicking a habit is not easy. If you rely solely on your willpower, you are probably going to lose. Willpower is absolutely necessary, but there are tricks that can help. The key thing in giving up any addiction is staying positive about your life and making a villain of your addiction. If you constantly think that your life with addiction is a great one and you are giving up something precious to prove a point or for long term health benefits, then chances are that you will soon lose steam and get back to your old dear life with addiction. So what you need to vilify the addiction, gather evidence how miserable it made your life. Let’s face it, no matter how you glorify, an addiction never makes life better it only makes it worse. So it is not hard to come up with facts about the short-term negative impacts of an addiction.
So why in the fight between willpower and addiction, it is the addiction which wins most of the time? The answer is simple, cravings are short term, gratification instantaneous while the benefits of quitting are long term and imperceptible. So how do we win this battle? By relying on the short benefits of quitting, while recognizing that while cravings are powerful, they go down very quickly. They are pretty much gone in about a month. So if you can hold on for a month, your chances of winning increases dramatically.
So how do we focus on the short term gain? This is mostly on the healthy living. Whether you are quitting smoking or drinking, it immediately leads to very healthy improvements in your lifestyle. You sleep better, you get more energy. Convert that into activities, cycling, swimming and you will feel a lot more cheerful. You can fight negative thought more effectively. If you are quitting drinking, then you are getting back your wit. Use it to something cerebral and you get an immediate return. Read a book, play chess.
For myself, quitting drinking brings enormous benefits. My wit is all I have. I do not have a great physique, I have no social skill, I do not enjoy the company of others that much, I do not watch TV or sports. I live my life through my brain. I have a house full of books and a computer full of movies. I can enjoy them much better if I keep my wit and use my brain, instead of losing it every free evening I get. Then why it is still so hard to give up! Why indeed :)

Stay Healthy

Folks stay healthy. You cannot enjoy life if you are not healthy. No matter what you have, a private island, Sunny Leone and Katrina Kaif (Hrithik Roshan and Irfan Khan for ladies) as company, a few million dollars in the bank, a yacht of your own, no matter what. Even a small boil is enough to kill your happiness, forget big disease like diabetes or heart problem.
So what should be your priority in life? The following.

1. Have a good night’s sleep. I try to get 10 hours. But everyone should at least get eight.
2. Eat a proper breakfast. Not two toasts and a glass of milk. Proper meal, rice or roti or muri.
3. Do not smoke, chew gutka, pan masala.
4. Avoid drinking. At least minimize to no more than twice a month.
5. Be active for at least half an hour every day. Walk, cycle, play with your daughter, anything. Try to break a sweat.
6. Try not to eat a heavy meal at night, especially after 8 PM.
7. Avoid sugar, packaged food and drink. Most packaged food contains only maida, oil and sugar, sometimes harmful chemicals and no nutrients whatsoever.
8. Remember purpose of eating is to get stuffs that sustains our body, namely vitamin, protein and minerals. Calorie comes with them automatically. The amount of work we do, we need very little calorie. You don’t need to eat extra calories.

We are a pretty healthy family. We rarely fall sick and when we do, they are pretty minor. My guess is that we are plain lucky so far. But there is a little possibility that it is because we follow pretty much all of the above. What we do wrong:

1. We do not drink milk at all.
2. We hardly eat any fruits or vegetables.

I am trying to correct them slowly.

Religion

The power of religion has hardly diminished in last 10000 years. The assumption that with progress of knowledge about creation and the natural world, our faith on an unknown God will diminish does not seem to be correct. Even well educated scientists believe in God. I think our insecurity and inadequacy is too strong to be dispelled by reason and data alone. At least in it's present form. I think instead of trying to explain away the Cosmos and the creation, study of our brain will yield better result in dispelling religion. Draft post. I will work on it later.

Varkala

Spent four days in paradise. Sun, sea and sand. Total bliss. Papanasam beach and Janardanswamy temple absolved me of all sins. Believe me, I sinned. Seashore beach resort was a beauty. The staff were like angels. Had a real good time.

Happiness

I woke up with this idea this morning. I think this is worth noting down. I am unhappy most of the time because I want to change the world the way I want. They key to happiness is to accept the world the way it is. Of course this is morally reprehensible idea, because if everybody thinks this way the world will stay a shitty place it is. But nonetheless it is very comforting.

I am somewhat an extreme case. I worry about things that does not affect me directly and about things I have absolutely no control over. And because I am such a lazy person, I never do anything to change anything. That makes things worse.

Again I am a lazy man. So I cannot finish this post now :) I will elaborate over this idea when I get a chance.

Israel is a colony

I wrote this in response to a blog by Sam Harris. The mail bounced. So I posted this to my blog.

Dear Mr. Harris,

I am a huge fan of Bill Maher and you. I believe everything that you say about the rise of militant Islam and the threat it poses to the rest of the world, especially to atheists like me.

Few days back I wrote a paragraph about how Bill Maher, such a prominent and funny atheist, conveniently forgets that he is being religious when he supports Israel. I also wrote, any Jew no matter how rational, secular she might be, has to support Israel, including Einstein. Jews are the most intelligent people in this world. But when it comes to Israel, they simply suspend all their judgment and support every single atrocity that Israel commits. Then I saw you being so irrational as to support Israel against Palestine and I started thing he must be a Jew, otherwise no rational human being can support Israel in this conflict. I was again bang right.

As you are surprised by the innocence of Ben Affleck, we are by yours. It is obvious like daylight that Israel is the biggest mistreatment meted out by one group of people to another since the foundation of America. It is the last colony in this planet and it has the potential of being the cause of the third world war. Israelite are the most cruel, greedy, land hungry, racist people on this planet, even worse than the British, the French, the American colonists. The Germans were far more benign colonists in Africa than Israel in Palestine.

Hamas is not a terrorist organization. They are a reaction to Israeli terror. Unlike the Saudis, the Egyptians, the Chechans, the Pakis, I have never seen any Hamas fighter doing jihad anywhere outside Gazza. In Gaza, they are fighting for their honour with stones and rifles against planes and tanks. They will always have my support, Muslim or atheist does not matter. Because we were once a colony. We know how it feels when someone takes away your land, your home your honour.

You will never understand their pain. For you, they are terrorists who should be eliminated.

Subhendu

Israel

I love Bill Maher. I watch all his shows on YouTube. He is so funny and witty. I just enjoy when he makes fun of religion. One thing I do not like about him is support for Israel. I just watched one of his shows on YouTube. In it he also had a Jewish guest (Some "Stein". All "steins" are Jews, like all "anis" are Sindhis, Ambani, Advani, Sukhwani). Predictably both Bill Maher (he is half Jew) and his guest were supporting Israel. I just so wished that I was there to tell Bill that he is unknowingly being religious here! All Jews support Israel, including Einstein. Why? The reason is not political. It is religious. Had it been political, they would have bought a piece of land somewhere in the world that is more fertile, less contested and less religious than Israel. They had the money to do so back then. They still have the resources today to move to a safer and better place. But they will not do it. Because they believe that land is given to the Jews by God and they have a duty to live on that land. So all Jews, secular even atheists, subscribe to the idea of Israel. I think the only people who can challenge the Jews in their adherence to faith are the Muslims. Now when these two are pitted together in a contest for the very essence of their existence, I think there is a potential for a third world war here.

That begs the question why am I sympathetic to the Palestinians. I supported Palestinians when I was young because I was an idealist. Same reason I was a Communist at one point. I actually cried when Yasser Arafat died. But I grew up and came to reason. Now I consider Arafat a corrupt leader who should have been removed from power long before his death. I obviously don't like Hamas ideology. Every time, in every conflict, the Palestinians always sided with their fellow Muslim brothers against India, be it Kashmir or Pakistan. Whereas Israel is a friendly country. Sells us guns at a cheaper price than America. I tried my best to change my view and support Israel. But I can't. In every conflict between the two, I end up supporting Palestinians, even Hamas. To me Israel is the last colony, that will never go and Palestinians are very symbol of people resisting occupation. The truth could be something different. But that's my perception. In my opinion, if my land is taken away like that, I should fight back, regardless of the cost. The same reason I support the Tamils in Sri Lanka, even LTTE, knowing full well that they are a blood thirsty corrupt organization that terrorize their own people.

One thing is true, I have never seen a Palestinian terrorist fighting anywhere outside Israel, like the Chechens, the Arabs, the Pakis, the Egyptians, the Uyghur's,...

Rahul Gandhi's Interview in the Hindu

I am no fan of Modi and I used to like Rahul Gandhi. But I am getting sick of his lies double speek. Here are my responses to his responses in his interview with the Hindu.
1) Modi calls him "Shehzada" because probably he is angry. Of course he is, so are most aspiring people in India. Here is a man who is being anointed as the Prime Ministerial candidate of the largest party, without showing any achievement whatsoever. Now he is not to be blamed for that. We are the ones prostrating before him for his last name. But at least he should accept this fact and be embarrassed about it.
2) In Modi's India there is no place for the poor. Not sure about that. But I do know that the Congress loves the poor. So much so, it does not let them out of poverty. How many "Garibi Hatao" programs have they launched? We still have the largest number of poor people in the planet. That is true love for poor people. 3) The Congress is all about internal democracy. Imagine someone contesting for the Congress president's post against Sonia. She will be lynched. Last time I think one guy filed his nomination and he was beaten up by supporters. Its current PM is appointed, its PM nominee is anointed. That's true democracy.
4) All Modi does is give away natural resources to a few business houses at throwaway prices. At least he did not take bribe for them Congress gave away 2G, Coal mines, Gas, land to the same business houses and took huge bribes.
I stopped reading after this. He has already become like his father, doublespeak and peddler of false hope.

Stop Modi

In the last five general elections, I wanted BJP to win. While the left side of my head argued that BJP is rightist and communal, the right side of my heart always wanted them to win. Because deep down, I felt the majority Hindus should take pride of their own country (India is after all a Hindu country), while providing full protection and equality to the minority. Up until Modi came to the scene, I never truly believed that BJP is utterly communal. I rather felt that Congress and other parties are pseudo secular. They are just using Muslim vote bank.
But this time it is different. This time it is not a "VAJAPA Sarkar" (I hate that term), but rather a "Modi Sarkar" (A term I hate even more). I cannot accept Modi as my prime minister. He is exactly against all the values I care for and he is s serious threat to the very essence of our polity, which is based on allowing diversity. Without this tolerance of diversity, Indian polity will break apart. At a social and religious level, India is not a tolerant country. Most differences lead to violence here. However at a national political scene, somehow good sense prevail and politicians realize that accepting diversity is the only way to keep the country together. Otherwise this diverse, intolerant and deeply religious country will fall apart. With Modi, that sense might get lost. He is already showing his unilateral attitude towards his own party. I cannot imagine how arrogant he will be if he wins a majority.
Modi lacks the sophistication to lead such a big country as India. He neither have the education or the experience. He is essentially a Gujrati Bania and knows nothing beyond that. He is anti woman, anti Muslim, anti left, anti intellectual, anti Muslim, anti Christian, anti Gay, not because he has developed intellectually opposed to any of these idea, but simply because he is ignorant of any other thoughts because of his lack of education and experience. To put it simply, "He is a thug".
So friends my heartfelt request, please vote for change tomorrow, but please do not vote for Modi. I believe even without your vote he will win the election. But I hope without your vote, we will put enough fetter around him so that he cannot roughshod his regressive ideas on us. Let's stop Modi. Let's save India.
5 May: After listening to Modi for last few days, I have changed my mind. May be he has point. At least he is bold and hard working, two of the qualities very lacking in most Indians. Not sure anymore. May be he will be a good PM.

Why I am disappointed with the Aam Aadmi Party

What Kejriwal showed us is that it takes a lot of hard work to get things done in a democracy. Just wishful thinking cannot change the country. While there is huge scope of improvement in the mainstream political parties, but they are on the right track. Things are happening in India. We need to make sure they keep happening at a faster pace, there is no need to despair.

We should not always keep comparing ourselves with China. Yes China has improved at a much faster pace, but also at a much higher human cost. An experiment like China will bring disaster in a diverse and deeply religious country like ours. And it is unfair to compare us with the developed countries. We started from an abyss in 1947 and slowly crawling out of the pit.

Our democracy withstood the test of time. No matter how much we complain about dynasty, and disenfranchisement of people, our rulers were more or less accountable to the people. Or they were thrown out, be it mighty Indira Gandhi, or iron man Vajpayee. They were made to bite the dust by the “aam admi” using their vote. Mamtas, Mayawatis, Sushmas do happen in our democracy. If our people were so disenfranchised by the “system” as AAP is trying to portray, Kejriwal could not have become Delhi CM in the first try. With all their failing, our politicians never shown the tendency or ever had the guts to usurp power from the people (except once). We never turned into another Pakistan or Syria or Iraq or North Korea (this one could have been better for us!)

Kejriwal kept on harping about corruption and dynasty. But they are not the main issues facing the common women. Pockets of extreme poverty, inequality of opportunity and lack of basic governance are. These are the things that affect the common people the most. Neither Modi nor Kejriwal is talking about them. I saw one very recent interview of Kejriwal in NDTV where one young "common" man in rugged clothes raised a very interesting point. He asked “To me the biggest issue is the equality education. If my daughter goes to a rundown government school with very poor education, where as a rich man's son goes to the best international school, what chances will she have in from of him. She will always remain disadvantaged. What would you do about it?” The young man spoke with such passion it almost made me cry. I could immediately relate to his concern because I am a father and I am equally worried about my daughter's education. Mr. Kejriwal obviously never thought about this. He breezily said, “We can do two things. Close down all private schools. I do not want to do that. Or make the Government schools so good that no one will send their children to private school. Give us five years and we will make that happen.” He actually said that. I am damn sure he never even thought about this ever. Yet he lied to a bright young man, full of high hopes that AAP will do something for his children. By this time Kejriwal knew that he is going to run away in two days. How better is he than the other peddlers of false hope?

Kejriwal does not represent the interest of the "Aam Aadmi". He represents the aspirations and desires of the urban middle class and the Indian Diaspora. We, the IT people have enough money that we do not need the government, we actually pay the government. Our children go to the best schools. They do not need government education or government jobs. Our main problem is our guilty conscience that we are not doing enough for our country; envy that the illiterate stupid politicians are having it better than us, that Rahul Gandhi, that stupid brat is being propped up as the Shahjada, that the roads that we are driving are full of potholes, that the passport office guy does not speak in English. All these are valid concerns. We have right to demand all these. We pay dearly for all these. But we are a tiny minority. We don’t even vote. For most people of this country it hardly matters Rahul Gandhi was appointed the crown prince, or that A Raja has looted 3000 crores, or Ambanis are bribing the robot to get lucrative oil contracts. For them what matters is that their children’s midday meal is free of poison, their daughter does not get raped on her way back from school, they get the full 100 bucks from NREGA, they get an ADHAR card in time.

With all their failings, Congress did pass the RTI, right to education, food security, NREGA, Jan Lokpal, NPS bills. These are not mean achievements, considering they never had the majority, which Mr. Kejriwal is so complaining about. They did try to pass the Woman’s reservation bill. They did kill several thousand Sikhs in 1984, but their ideology is not based on anti-Sikh or anti Minority. They did “appoint” a Sikh Prime Minister. I do not know what Modi is offering to the people of India other than a vague promise of "Vikash". But what are his plans for education, health care, social investment, eradicating malnutrition, which even the robot accepted to be a shame of the nation. I never even heard him speak about the Maoist problem and what are his plans to tackle extreme poverty. Even the robot rightly understood that extreme poverty and hence Maoists are the biggest threat to the country. No one knows. And Kejriwal never asks. At least Congress is seen to be concerned more about the real issues and not some HiFi "Vikash", and even trying to do something about it. I will not be surprised if they do better than people are expecting in this election.

India is changing, with or without Kejriwal. It is changing for the same reason the whole world is changing, spread of the Internet and the Television, spread of democratic values, spread of education, spread of basic human rights. Political parties in a democracy cannot ignore the demands of the people any more with usual brazenness they were used to. If the AAP wants to be a part of this change, they have to learn how to function in a democracy, how to work with the opposition, no matter how corrupt and compromised they seem. Otherwise they will remain a fringe pressure group, less effective than the Maoists or Baba Ramdev.

Harnam Sing - The Fedayeen

I always held this belief that a nation cannot be built without heroes. To become a human, it is not enough just to have skills and knowledge, but also honor and values. Our politicians are not a special breed of people; they are just a part of our society. They are corrupt because we are all corrupt. We cannot get rid of corruption in our society unless to teach our children honesty, self respect and hard work and self confidence. One way to do this is to put forward the examples of our heroes, who have scarified their life to protect the honor of their country. Here is the first installment of what I want to make a series of stories that tells how our heroes have loved their motherland and sacrificed their lives. I desperately hope that after reading this, a child will get some deterrence from growing up a corrupt, devoid of any honor. Let’s hope.

Below is the story of Harnam Sing, an illiterate village boy. He felt the humiliation of subjugation by foreign rulers that he was willing to lay down his life to rid the country of foreign rule. He knew full well they he will not be able to bring down the mighty British Empire. But for some people, honor matters more than the results. Let’s celebrate the death of these martyrs. Not for them. They are dead. They don’t care what we do, but for our children; So that they can grow up in a better India.


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(Translated from an article by Ronjan Roy in Shuktara 1971 edition)
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Ghadar leader Visnu Ganesh Pingle has returned from America. He told the Indian revolutionaries that Indian freedom has to be owned from Indian soil. Ghadar party workers are coming back to India en masse. Any ship coming from San Francisco via the Pacific or from Quebec via the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, is bringing back at least two dozen of Punjabi revolutionaries, who are determined to give up their lives for the emancipation of their motherland. They don’t dare to come in larger number in the same ship. They have not forgotten the incident of Komagata Maru, how the British brutalized the Indians on that ship. They are certain that if the British even suspect that any ship is carrying a large number of Indian revolutionaries, they will do the same thing again.
Pingle advices that money needs to be collected from India, Indian youth have to be transformed to an army by military training. Germany has promised arms supplies. But getting arms from there is complicated. Until that happens should we stay idle? Of course not. There is a lot of arms right here in India. We have to snatch them from the British.
“But how?” Asks Harnam Singh.
“By force” Pingle replies, “By robbery. We must raid such places where we will get bread and meat together. That means money and weapon. For example Government treasury, where you will get money of course, but also get guns from the guards, or banks or the collection offices of the landlords.”
“I don’t know about money”, said Harnam Sing, “But I can tell you how we can get five or six rifles easily from the Valla Bridge. There are five or six armed guards there. Each carries a rifle and a bag of ammunition on their belt.”
This Harnam is a fire eating lad. He entered the services of a Circus company at a very young age. His job was to clean the animal cages. Each cage has two parts with a partition of a spring iron door. The animal is restrained in one part, while the other gets cleaned. Then the door is opened and the animal is goaded to the clean part of the cage. Then the door is closed again. By that time the cleaner is safely out of the cage. Then he jumps to the other part and quickly cleans away. One day a terrible thing happened. The middle door is spring operated. That day the door malfunctioned. Harnam saw the door is coming down and he also jumped down. It should not take more than a second for the door to close. But when he jumped to the floor of the cage, he was dumbstruck! The door is only half closed and is not closing anymore. The spring gave up.
And the animal on the other side – a freshly captured Royal Bengal Tiger! Not tamed yet. The circus trainer is very doubtful it will ever be tamed. The owner will feel lucky if it can ever be used for a show. The royal Bengal Tiger is crouching on the other side, wagging her tail from left to right, as if to the tune of music unheard by the others. On the other side of the cage is Harnam, with broom in his right hand a three feet long iron spear in his left hand. This weapon is given to the cleaners for eventual emergencies. Harnam is in one side of the cage and the tiger is in the other. The door in between is open. The guard who minds the gate is shouting like crazy, to scare the tiger and to get help. But a freshly captured Royal Bengal Tiger does not heed to shouts. She jumped, one yellow lightning crossed over to the other end of the cage. She landed exactly the same spot where the lad Harnam was standing a moment ago. But he is not there any longer! The tigress jumped like a lightning and Harnam jumped like a bolt and stroke the tiger with his spear. The tiger landed a foot ahead. And Harnam – Did he see the Tarzan movies? How else did he learn these tricks? He jumped on the tiger and straddled her. He held her two ears back forcefully. The spear has penetrated deep on her shoulder. The whole circus area is reverberating with her roar. Help has come by now. The tigress is trying her best to release her ears from Harnam and bite his leg. Had the spear not stuck on her shoulder, she would have lied on her back to dismount her raider. From four sides of the cage they are trying to char the tiger on its paws and on the belly. They cannot afford to disfigure her body. A circus animal must not look ugly. While the tigress is busy defending herself, Harnam jumped up and got hold of the roof of the cage. The roof also had a bolted door. They rescued him opening the door. After this, the tigress became tame and the chief trainer Allahbox took Harnam as a trainee. But Harnam did not stay in that job for long.
“Why are you quitting?” Asked the proprietor.
“There are more dangerous animals outside; the two legged whites.” quipped Harnam, “Now I will deal with them.”
The same Harnam Sing was entrusted to lead the raid on Valla Bridge. Only six miles from Amritsar, this is a bridge on a midsize canal. Around a hundred trains cross this bridge every day. There was one guard on each end of the bridge earlier. After the start of the insurgency, the guard has been increased. Now two men guard each end of the bridge and there are two mobile guards doing rounds across the length of the bridge. Only six riflemen. To engage them, Harnam employeed for dare devils. They are Channal Sing, Kala Sing, Amta Sing and Banta Sing. “Why don’t you take a few more?” Someone asked. “Why?” retorted Harnam. “We will raid in the middle of the night. Before they realize, we will finish two of them. After that they are four and so are we”. One of us will be on the watch. Railway bridge, there is no dealings of money here. The only attractions are the six rifles with the guards and their ammunitions. But weapons are so precious with the revolutionaries these days that they are willing to give up six lives for six rifles. At morning 4 AM one train will cross the bridge. The raiders will hide behind the train. On the north end of the bridge, habilder Chitra Sing and private Phool Sing are on watch. As soon as the train left the sentry post, they were greeted with rifle fire. Before they could grasp the situation, they were wounded. The wounds were not serious. They grasped their rifle and started shouting for their comrades. They were looking around because they could not spot their attackers. When they did, they could not resist. Four kukris snuffed their lives out. But the raiders could not risk leaving them behind alive. Because if they regained strength, they would fire upon the revolutionaries. So they kept stabbing them and finally fired upon them to make sure they are down. The guards on the other end did not hear the sound of fire immediately. The roaring sound of the train masked the sound of the bullets. But finally they heard and realized. But they did not flee. But rather came rushing to help their comrades. They fired while they ran. But they could not aim at the raiders. But Harnam’s mates were firing standing. They killed all four of them easily. Six guards were killed and six rifles acquired. But the revolutionaries refused to see this as murder. From their perspective this was required. The dead are also the son of the soil. Harnam considered them as six dead brothers. But without their death, the revolution could not gain six rifles. India has a lot of people, but alas, very few rifles. By the inevitable rule of supply and demand, a rifle is in more demand than a life! With their booty of rifles on their back, the revolutionaries got off the bridge. The day is clearing up. Another train is coming. There is no time to lose. They were going towards Palasour along the fields. They cannot risk going to Amritsar directly. They were carrying two rifles each and had blood strains on their clothes. They intended to cross Kaleng River near Palasour and hide in the nearby forest. They wanted to reach Amritsar in the cover of the night. The sun came out and with it a few villagers. They are looking at the pary with suspicion. Each carrying two rifles, Harman carrying three! On top of arousing suspicion, the load is becoming unbearable on them. But it seems there is a solution. A rider comes along with a blanket on the saddle. This was a golden opportunity. They can carry their rifles on horseback covered with the blanket. The rider was galloping along but stopped suddenly. He smelled danger seeing four stout riflemen carrying double rifles. Gulab Sign suspected they were robbers. They came to know later that his name was Gulab Sing. Gulab Sing is fleeing. He cannot be allowed to escape. He will reach the village well before Harnams party and alert the villagers and the police. The whole village will be ready for the raiders with whatever implants they have. Only the Guru knows how many innocent lives will be lost in self defense. Dejected, Harnam raised his rifle and fired. Gulab Sing’s body fell down from his horse. Now five rebels stacked their rifles on horseback and covered them with blanket and continued their journey. At midday they reached Kaleng River. If they can cross the river, they can take refuge in the forest. But the boatman is a stubborn suspicious man. He will not let five men with blood stains on their clothes and their horse on his boat. Meanwhile he could hear uproar behind. Villagers have discovered Gulab Sings dead body and organized a search party. So they had to kill the boat man also. They boarded the boat and started for the other bank. But the villagers have arrived on this side. The land lord’s son had a gun. He started firing towards the boat. So Harnams party was forced to fire upon them. Two of the villagers were injured and then they dispersed. They were relieved after entering the forest. The villagers cannot pursue them here. But they cannot rest there indefinitely. They have left blood trail behind. The police will follow their trail and apprehend them. All the police stations around are already being alerted. So they started their journey again. Not towards Amritsar but in the opposite direction, towards Kapurthala. They hoped that they may be able to hide in the native state. But their hopes were dashed. Kapurthala was already alerted. They were arrested as soon as they entered Kapurthala.
They were hanged on 9th August 1915.

Good article by John Gray

This is a remarkably refreshing idea. I will try to elaborate on it in my next post.

“Pakistan – A Hard Country” – A critique

It seems that this book was written with just one purpose, to present an alternative point of view of showing how good Pakistan is, in the guise of a balanced well researched treatise and be a big hit in Pakistan and colonial guilt ridden liberal West (So-called). It so devoid of truth that it seems like it was written about a fantasy land in the authors mind rather than the real country of Pakistan. What is most obnoxious is the style. The author writes in a tone that is similar to a theoretical analysis of a hypothetical society and gives tons of scholarly advice to the policy makers. It hardly contains any fact.

So far I read only the introduction and glanced through the chapter on religion. The following sentences from the introduction scream for an explanation.

1. “When terrorist groups attack India, or Western forces in Afghanistan, their actions enjoy a degree of instinctive, gut sympathy from a majority of Pakistanis – not because of Islamist extremism, but because of Muslim nationalism and bitter hostility to the US role in the Muslim world in general and Pakistan’s region in particular.”
   Then the author goes on explaining how this is not religious but rather hostility to the West. But he never bothers to explain why attacks against India are so popular. Also, as far as I know, The West is always a friend to Pakistan rather than an enemy. America and Britain actually helped Pakistan to stand on its feet defend itself against India, developed its economy, infrastructure and military, poured in billions of dollars of aid. Then why are attacks against the West and Israel are so popular in Pakistan?
2. “Nonetheless, tough they are; and unless the USA, India, or both together invade Pakistan and thereby precipitate its disintegration, the likelihood is that the country will hold together, and that if it eventually collapses, it will be not Islamist extremism but climate change – an especially grim threat in the whole of South Asia – that finishes it off.”
   Remarkably fantastic! Where in the whole world did the author get the idea that either the USA or India is even remotely interested to invade Pakistan? Why? The last thing, the USA wants to do is to invade a “on the face” friendly country without any natural resources and land in the biggest mess of their military history, even if there is imminent threat of the nukes falling in the hands of Jihadists. They will rather bomb them to dust than put soldiers on the ground. As for India, there is no military or strategic interest or political dividend to attempt such madness. Pakistan to India now is an irritant rather than a threat. And gone are the days when attacking Pakistan will win a party an election.
3. “Finally, Pakistan possesses nuclear weapons and one of the most powerful armies in Asia. This means that the option of the US attacking Pakistan with ground forces in order to force it to put pressure on the Afghan Taliban simply does not exist – as both the Pentagon and the Pakistani military have long understood.”
   This statement contradicts the suggestion put forward in the last point. Let’s analyze the conclusion. Pakistan has a powerful army. As far as I can tell, Indian army is one of the most unorganized, under trained, ill equipped army in the world. Pakistani army, armed with superior American arms compared to the Russian supplied Indian army, looses against India repeatedly, even when their numerical strengths are same. They always lose against the Taliban, Baloch rebels, even when they apply the most ruthless and savage repressions against their own civilians. They cannot defend their own establishments in their own country against the terrorists. This shows the strength of Pakistani army. Judging from the Iraqi defeat in two weeks, it seems to me that Pakistan will not last more than two days against a determined US attack. Now about the nukes. What good are they against a US invasion? Even if I assume that Pakistan has weapon grade nuclear device (very doubtful), how can they used it either against America or their allies? They only two types of delivery system they have are mules and Jihadists. They cannot strap a nuclear device to either of them and send them to Tel-Aviv. If America can ensure that they will shoot down every plane out of Pakistan, which they are quite capable of doing, that will ensure that all nukes will explode inside Pakistan.
4. I have just glanced through the chapter on religion. But so far I could not find any discussion about the brutal persecution of religious minorities like Hindus and Christians. Forced eviction of non-sunni Muslims like the Sufis, Bahais, Ahmedis, Shias. It does not try to explain why the liking of the anti-blashphemy-law minister was so popular in Pakistan. It does not talk about the Mohajirs. It just tries to gloss over and justify Pakistan as an ideal radical and extremist Islamic state. An oxymoron.

Female Communist

Communism is supposed to be aboiut equality of all human being, particularly between men and women. When I was young and an ardent communist, I used to argue with capitalist friends that communism is better because it promotes equality between men and women. But where are female communist leaders. I am looking at the picture of Chinese peoples congress and asking myself, where are the women? Even in capitalist counties like US, India Germany we have women like Clinton, Gandhi, Markel. Where are their counterparts in communist world? Even India, where are the female communist leaders? Brinda is a leader because she is married to Prakash, that's all. Other than Rosa Luxemburg, I do not know the name of any notable female communist. This is really strange. What's wrong with the communists?

Beard

Is beard associated to knowledge, intellect? The prophets had beard, Moses, Abraham, Rabindranath, Aurobindo, Socrates. Do we still associate beard with intellect? Why else do Pronoy Roy, Daniel Dennet keep a beard? It's uncomfortable, it's probably unhigenic. To me, It's disgusting (I am not passing any judgement here. Just a very personal opinion). Then why do they keep it?

Sunil Ganguli

I am not a big fan of kobita. But I like kobita. I loved Sunil because of his Kakababu stories. Difficult to accept there will be no more Kakababu-Sontu. I also liked a few stories of Neellohit. I loved his aricles in Anandabazar. Thanks a lot Sunil Ganguli. We will miss you.

Let’s be proud for what we do

Last night I was reading the viewers comments on an “Economist” article about the war in Afghanistan. There were many comments by viewers from different parts of the world, from America, Japan, India, China, Pakistan. They were discussing the futility of war and debating their ideas. I was amazed how technology has made it possible for people from all over the world to exchange ideas and discuss opinions online and instantly. This was unthinkable merely 20 years back. I was reading this while taking break from working on our latest product (I am an engineer at Infinera, a leading manufacturer of optical switches). This new feature that I am working on will make the internet faster, cheaper and better. Then suddenly it hit me that my work is directly contributing to this amazing phenomenon of global communication.

Today we take the Internet for granted and tend to think of it as a tool to pay phone bills, transfer money or buy air tickets. All these things are very important because they optimize our usage of natural resources thereby reducing the strain on Mother Nature. But the Internet is much more than that. Its bigger contribution is communication and ability to exchange ideas. It is used by Arab revolutionaries to organize protest marches, it is used by pacifists to stop politicians from starting wars, it is used by charitable organizations to collect money that fights hunger and eliminates disease. And we help in all these efforts by making the Internet available. How much more gratifying can someone’s job be? When people ask me why I don’t donate for charity or do voluntary work for the underprivileged, I do not have a good answer. But now I realize that my work helps more people than I can ever dream of by doing such voluntary activities. Agreed I get paid for my work. But nonetheless, it has more impact than any charity work that I can do.

Karl Marx and Adam Smith tried to create a more just and humane world with their revolutionary ideas. Their intention was noble and their vision was revolutionary. But they could not achieve it because they did not have the necessary tools to make that change. What these visionaries could not achieve, we, a ragtag army of Indian software engineers, are achieving. We are helping to make the world more just, more humane, more egalitarian, more harmonized than ever before, one bug at a time, one feature at a time. Our work is helping people to stop war, eliminate disease, fight hunger, uproot injustice, every day, every hour, every minute.

The Internet has more impact on our society that any other invention in human history. Fifty years from now, people will look back and see what a change our work has brought to human civilization. It is more profound than any other period ever. And we are the foot soldiers of that revolution. So let’s take pride in what we do. We are making this happen, with our blood, sweat and tear. (May be not! We don’t sweat because we work in air-conditioned offices, we don’t shed blood and I have never seen any software engineer crying for work. May be some :)

Buddha

Today I stumbled upon an amazing idea. All our life we try to optimize the resources of life. We try to save money, health, social reputation, energy, even the planet earth (such audacity). All these rules stems from our instinct to survive. God has programmed us to survive as long as possible and procreate as much as possible. But God has also made us thinking entity. So what if we just wipe off this one rule. Suddenly everything changes. We are no longer obligated to play by the rules of the nature. Instead of creating life, we can destroy it; instead of preserving nature we can waste it. Instead of finding beauty, we can make things ugly. It’s an amazingly liberating experience. I just felt it momentarily.

Of course you cannot fake it. You really have to eliminate your desire to survive. I think I kind of know now, what goes inside the brain of a suicide bomber.