the law of unintended consequences

warning - RAMBLING ALERT. PROCEED AT OWN RISK

There is nothing sadder in this world than a wasted crisis. There is so much to learn and so much to understand from it. To repeat an oft repeated cliché – history repeats itself and those who don’t learn from it are condemned to repeat it. the last few years we have seen the best of crisis hit us. There has been so much to learn from it. A lot of free time is also spent learning and understanding.
The last time (2008) the crisis hit I was hooked on to the RSS feeds. They saved me and my brains from entropy. I read every day and I blogged every single day. Learning and creative wise they have been the best of times. A crisis is much too important an event to be wasted. These times are no different. We seemed to have gone out of the crisis we thought we were getting into and jumped right into another one. I always wondered how the dam euro worked with different countries. I thought – hey that’s a swell idea. I am sure the euro would be managed by one central authority and I thought there would be an amazing fiscal consolidation with all the Euro zone members coming together as one central banking authority. Only the present crisis helped me explain what now seems like a dam stupid idea. You have a monetary consolidation but not a fiscal consolidation. Are you like… nuts? How the hell can you do that? Only an idiot would agree to it. I clearly remember the launch of the Euro on TV. I think it was covered on a program called the world this week. There was plenty of hype and euphoria. But sure, in hindsight vision is always 20-20. These very same critics remained blissfully silent all through these years.
But coming back – this time around I have discovered podcasts. Economic podcasts that explain the situation, explain the issues at hand, possible solutions, historical background, et all. Along with listening to them I have been reading the Economist. A lot of it then begins to make sense. I just can take my mind off the Keynes versus Hayek podcast. Man. All our lives we understood the Keynesian theory and the idea that we must spend our way out of trouble, while Hayek kept reminding us of the issues that we would face with loose money. They also pointed to the rap videos that sought to explain the two theories in direct contrast with each other makes for interesting learning.
V1 -


V2


I must admit that I first saw the video while the first crisis was in full effect and at the time I don’t think couldn’t fully grasp the strength of the Hayek idea. Loose monetary policy will result in misplaced investments and a bad hangover with inflation coming knocking at your door, sooner or later. I think that is precisely the reason why Keynes is an easy policy to digest for the politician. It shows action – one must do something about the crisis now! To rephrase Keynes – in the long run… every politician is dead. Hayek on the other hand possibly tells us to sit tight and bear the pain. Pain is essential but only the tough will survive. Otherwise you will get misallocated funds, inflation and an attempt to prop up the weak, that should have died in any case. Today I see it very clear. Hayek seems right. India followed a loose monetary policy as a knee jerk reaction to the global crisis. We wanted to be seen as a government ready to fight the recession and protect growth at all costs. I too believed in it. What is life without growth after all? So in effect we attacked degrowth when there was none at all. What only happened was that we grew at a lesser pace than before. Which is a natural thing. It is a natural response to the economic situation. But if our FM wouldn’t have done anything, he would have been pillared for twiddling his thumbs. Also the argument could also be that inflation is a lesser pain than unemployment. So possibly Keynesian policy is possibly the right way to go.
Then you add the NREGA effect to this. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) is an Indian job guarantee scheme, enacted by legislation on August 25, 2005. The scheme provides a legal guarantee for one hundred days of employment in every financial year to adult members of any rural household willing to do public work-related unskilled manual work at the statutory minimum wage of 120 (US$2.43) per day in 2009 prices.
When the Congress government kept announcing schemes to promote the socialist agenda, I was the lone dissenter. WTF. We can’t ensure we get any public distribution right, and none of the schemes really work , so why should we support these budgets and call them great budgets. The markets loved them and all was forgotten. Some even attributed some the victory to the NREGA program – read this http://imaginingindia.com/2009/05/28/after-the-election/ . Interesting.
So now you have a lot of money being pumped into the economy. More money and my daughter will tell you – inflation follows. And it does. So we have inflation with prices rising. So now the government tries to control inflation by raising interest rates and attempts to suck out liquidity. It is squeezing our stomach while tightening our belts. Can I hear Hayek laughing?
After all this I was wondering why we never learnt Hayek in economics while we heard of Keynes. A chance encounter with my economic teacher and I got the answer. Keynes is taught at graduate level while Hayek is taught at post grad level. Oh Stupid stupid idiots who set the curriculum. Most of us are going to go through life with a graduate degree. So now we know what to do without understanding eth consequences of what we do. So year after year you will have students who understand that governments must interfere must have not been taught what happens when you do interfere. Oh this is such a wonderful example of our education system. Most of us are graduates with some exposure in economics before we move on to our other streams, possibly management and go through life not knowing about the other side. Sheesh.
Forget it. I am getting too depressed. But here, while we are swimming in different theories, here is one more. I think the reason you will see inflation is because the RBI wants us to see inflation. Economics is nothing but a game that is being played in our minds. Recession happens when we feel not so confident about the future, growth is when we feel better about it, inflation happens when we feel that we have more money and want to spend more to get a good. Economics works in the collective and indivual minds of the people, and our country is not all educated. I am sure not a large percentage of the population has anything to do with economic theory. They behave in tune with what they see. They don’t understand inflation and sentiment. They care if Greece is going nutty printing money. They react to what they see. And the Government or the RBI is telling them in their face that the RUPEE IS DEVALUING. The RBI is taking extra care to ensure it happens. How is that?
Well its simple. They are now telling you that the rupee is now worth a lot less. In fact through a very powerful visual it is telling the population that the rupee is now almost half of what it used to be, sometime back. Don’t believe me? See this… the old rupee and new one rupee coin.

the date on the big one is at the back -2010 and the new one is dated 2011.
Now any illiterate person looking at the coins will also tell you that the rupee is not the same anymore. It has shrunk. And hence now you require twice as much material to be worth the old rupee. In effect the new rupee is half the old one. INFLATION!
I know it’s a corny idea, but I firmly believe that symbolism matters. We decide a lot on the basis of what we see and interact with. Surely the shrinking of the rupee is not just because we shrunk the size, but this is a clear admission of the fact that it has shrunk so those who don’t believe in it, kindly start now.

the Hayek versus Keynes podcast can be accessed here -http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/10/28/141802704/the-friday-podcast-keynes-vs-hayek Listen to it. its fun.

keep running

Oh god. Now at school they want Jispa to come to school early at 7 am for taekwondo practice twice a day. Oh man o man. Now this means leaving home at 6.30am on Tuesdays and Thursdays for school, in addition to the leaving home at 5.30am for swimming practice on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Jasmine and I did not know how to react to this news. Is this a good thing or a bad thing, from two perspectives?
First perspective – Jispa. The poor thing has a packed schedule. There is regular swimming and taekwondo, and one orphaned guitar class a week. Now in such a packed schedule, she has to manage her homework, extra time pass reading, playing with friends, studies during reviews and what not. In addition to this we are wondering on the physical burden on the child. We try and ensure she gets her adequate sleep, even if it requires us to scold her and switch off the lights when she wants to read. The second thing is that how do we give her adequate nutrition? Jasmine had spoken to a nutrition expert through a common friend. Her advice was that till the child reached adolescence, there is more harm than good if one tries to regulate nutrition through planning. Eat well, eat all you want, ensure balance. This is both great and worrying honest advice. This puts the pressure of nutrition squarely on parents. So now we keep thinking of what is enough or not. Add to this the fact that Jispa is developing an awesome abdomen. She had some serious ab muscles. These won’t let her tummy expand. So she will feel full in smaller meals that she would need from time to time. Then comes school, which is not exactly designed for small meals. They have fixed breaks with long intervals in between. How does Jasmine give her adequate food to last her through the long periods when her tummy is small to store much? At least that is the dilemma we believe exits. I think pretty soon I might have to chat with the school and get some special permission to eat every two hours. A small bite, a mini meal or so. And then the problem of cooking something a nine year old would want to eat. Jasmine goes mad trying to cook stuff. Jasmine is not exactly a blessed cook. She is quite adequate to the job but she is a bit bored cook. Asking her to challenge herself to cook something interesting everyday is a bit of a non starter. Compounding the issue is Jispa deciding at random not to eat her school snack completely. Shit. That just gets everything in a mess. So this time when the taekwondo call came in Jasmine was wondering, how are we going to feed her before the class and what do we give her to eat after the class. Mar gaye re… AND THE BIGGEST ISSUE – Jispa takes forever to eat. She is easily the most bored, lost and sleepy eater in the world. She can eat one bite and then take forever to put the next one in. she can put one bite in the mouth and then hold it in her mouth without chewing it for minutes on end. It drives us wild. Especially when you have to beat the clock in the morning. JISPA CHEW is the most popular word in our house. We have to keep reminding her, scolding her, shouting, everything. She sits with one knee raised to her chin and then rests her hand on it and then it’s waiting for Godot. I went hard after the knee bit. No knee on top. Not that I have a problem with it, but it puts her in a position where she just sits and dreams away. she can take 45 minutes for breakfast. We can’t wake her any early; we can go to school any later. This is a killer. Its kills us as parents. We feel like mean bloody driven parents.
I being the father took the complete cop out. This was more than what my brains could effectively handle. So I suggested the simple route – Complan - a milk drink in the morning which claims to have all the bloody nutrients you could think of. It’s like a vitamin cocktail. Jasmine and I never wanted to give Jispa these cocktails. We were of the belief that as long as you eat right you don’t need any artificial supplements. But given the pressures of time and the added responsibility of a square meal, we are left with no option but to give her a glass of complan in the morning. She likes the taste and drinks it one shot. We don’t need to scold her and she is off, ready to pack a mean punch.

Here she is, having a glass of Complan in the morning.
Now Jasmine has to pack something really tasty and pack it for a small fast meal after taekwondo and before school starts. I listed down all the possible stuff she can make. All the tasty fatty stuff, basically I write all the permutation and combinations you could have with potatoes, cheese, butter and paneer. Sometimes you toss them, sometimes you shallow fry them, you pack them, you sandwich them – whatever. Just pass them on.
So now you realize why we did not find great joy on hearing that she was selected for morning Taekwondo. The second perspective is that we are being severely stretched as parents. We got sucked into this mess in spite of not being driven parents. We said no classes for Jispa. Only swimming, which is a good thing? She started performing and moving up and more importantly enjoying her swimming. We had no option but to follow suit. Then this school. We are sucked into a vortex which makes us run around, freely her, revolve our lives around her extra circulars. Waking up early with her is taking a toll on us. How much can we do without breaking? Especially when we get no special thrill in seeing her medals.
All we can do is hope that this will make her a fitter person, a better person and hopefully this is a well-rounded childhood, and most importantly – we keep asking her – you sure you enjoy this, nah? Are you dead sure? You are not doing all this for us – please do only what you can do. The only thing we ensure she does is home work. Rest all is optional.

hair today gone tomorrow

It’s only going to be a matter of time when Jispa will start kicking our butt. She already has a strong opinion on a lot of issues. The tough mind that we tried to build into her is now going to come and bite us in the back. Better bite us than her I’d say.
This weekend was a day we spent a lot of time together and I ended up scolding her quite a bit. We having more than our fair share of run ins. She listens to me and then forgets and then does the same stupid thing again. Oh god it’s really frustrating. These are times when parenting is really tested. Also to add to this, she does really feel bad at our scolding. Even when she gets a rap from me, she doesn’t really get hurt. After our fight, which I ensure is brief, I tell her – you don’t really get hurt or feel bad, don’t you? And I smile and she breaks into a smile – no I feel. But then she adds, but no so much. Not at all, I think. That’s Jispa.
I have seen this in parenting. Every once in a while the truce is broken and we have our share of run ins. This carries on for some time till both of us grow up and decide that this is enough. It requires both of us to grow up and decide enough is enough. Sometimes the pressure just gets to you. How much can you scold your kid and not feel bad about it. It’s just a crazy pressure on parenting. It is unsustainable. I think that’s the reason you need two to parent. It is not possible for one individual to remain focused all the time. When I end up scolding, Jasmine must be patient and when she is letting loose, I get in.
It’s taken sometime to even understand that when I am telling Jasmine to calm down or vice versa, we aren’t necessarily saying – you are wrong and I am right. It’s us telling each other that we are both parents – just that, and by virtue of being parents we are both wrong and right at the same time. We just need each other to see a side of it that Jispa, in her antics has blurred. Like I was telling Jasmine the other day, when we decided to be parents we didn’t know that this constant adjusting would a part of the job requirements. Dam. To add pressure to the woes, issues can come from all sorts of wrong places. Things that you have not anticipated. In fact you get stuff from things you thought you had covered.
Around a week or so back, Jispa decided to get a haircut. Normally jispa likes long hair, but given her swimming schedule and her general distaste for combing her hair, it’s almost an impossibility to keep pace with for Jasmine. So Jasmine is always after her to cut it. Jispa can fend off only till a point after which she agrees. So technically its Jispa’s call, but really it’s her mommy’call – that’s jispa’s version. Jasmine’s version is the exact opposite. “I never force her” is what Jasmine says. Sometimes we fathers do walk think lines.
So now where to get it cut? The Saloon that Jispa liked is shut, the other one was too kiddish and the third one is the one Jispa hates and is Jasmine’s preferred one. Arggghh. So under imaginary pressure, (Jasmine says there is no such pressure and Jispa believes there is) Jispa agrees to the last option. And the horror story happens. Jispa hair is cut well lower than what she instructed. Oops the bad haircut pain lasted a couple of days. It was quite bad. She was really really sad and she did not want me or anyone to tell her that she actually looked good. I even told her some stories of me as a teen wanting to get my hair cut at different places in the hope that I somehow look good. I probably couldn’t accept the truth that it was me not my hair cut that decided my looks. I remember once even going to the Oberoi hotel – a huge thing in those days, just to get a hair cut. If I am not wrong Jasmine even funded that haircut. Nothing turned good for me. I always thought only if I had enough money to get myself a good haircut, I might have looked good. The things we believed in those days... haircuts make you look good, or facials solve your acne issue. Anything went. I told her that in reality nothing mattered. Today when I can possibly afford any haircut in Mumbai, anywhere, I go to the same silly saloon I went as a kid. Surely it matters more to you today than me today, but the truth is that you like people not because of their hairstyles but because of who they are and how they behave with you.
Well said, but no effect. She was pissed as ever. She did not want to talk about it. At all. Even a mention of ‘jispa you look cute, met with a curt reply’. There are these days when you realize your child has grown up and that’s that. She has her mind and she has decided to use it.
Now after a few weeks, she has learnt how to comb it or she has plainly accepted it. This Sunday, I told her – aha…. ‘I think all you needed was to let your hair cut grow a bit. Sometimes styles can take time to grow on you.’ I was mighty relieved she did not snap back. She was ok. she even let me click a pic. Here you are…



I told her that next time she can have a haircut wherever she wants. In the best place in Mumbai. No expense spared. She was a bit zapped. I told her she could blow a few thousand bucks if she so wished. I think it’s for her to decide and learn if the hair dresser really makes sense. And if it does give her something she is happy about – chuck it. I wanted to go to a saloon that was expensive. In parenting we try to not make the same mistakes. We only search for new ones.

new thrills

Cricket season has started to good effect. As the B team we have actually won two matches in a row. It’s a great thing for the B team. We hardly ever won matches and we hardly ever had enough people to make the playing 11. This time around we have more than 15 players to choose from. It happens because we give enough chances for people to play in the 11 and when they play they get to bat or bowl. Now thanks to this everyone wants to play in the B team and the fringe players from the A team are trying to get themselves downgraded to the B team, so that they get to play. Hahah. Now that’s a nice win.
One day while coming in for a match I happened to come in early at Shivaji Park and I saw a coach talking to his wards. He was giving a lecture on batting. He was Lad sir from Bengal cricket club. Taking the opportunity I hung around to listen to him. It was an amazing learning experience. A lot of what he said reinforced what I knew but at the same time a few things helped me improve my game. I always knew that I must keep my hand and body close together but he taught how to. That day after his talk I immediately put the learnings to good use and scored quite a few runs. In fact a few boundaries I hit after being tired were completely thanks to the man. Keeping the bat close to the body helped me not get bowled. It was a learning I am not likely to forget. In fact I was going on so strong I thought I would hit the elusive 50 runs that I have never yet hit in the sport. But we were only two wickets down with five more overs to go. I could have gone on and fulfilled my dream but, thank god I kept my brains about. I knew that I had a bunch of guys wanting to bat. B team is about all those characters waiting to bat sitting inside the pavilion. I started taking suicidal runs, and it took some amount of runs to finally get me out. In bargain I got quite a few runs on board. That is the B team spirit. More get to play.
Here is the photo of the coaching session which I heard.


Hey - that’s a long time since I put a picture on the blog. There will be more coming. I finally upgraded my cell phone from the old trusty blackberry I had. It served me well for three and a half years. It was pretty high tech when I bought it and now in a short period of time it has become completely obsolete. And the way electronics are designed, I suspect they put in an auto destruct mechanism that shuts them out after a predestinated time. My poor handy phone sputtered through most of last year. I would handle the battery with care, the SD card refused to work. The camera didn’t work - everything went wrong except that – I got my mails in time and I could make calls. What more does a guy want?

Well, what more till I got myself the latest android. Now on my Samsung Galaxy, I click pictures, update my good reads account by simply scanning the barcode on the books, download and listen to my podcasts etc. In fact one day in the morning while Jispa was swimming I heard a podcast on Hayek vs Keynes on planet money , understood the difference, went online and checked out Hayek on Wikipedia, the saw two amazing rap videos that put both in perspectives. What an intelligent one hour, thanks to the new device I put in my pocket. Yes it also makes calls and the previous phone was somehow better and faster in that respect but hell, I am not complaining.

lucky chic

Jispa considers herself lucky to be born in 2002.
As I have blogged earlier, I have some great times with Jispa telling her stories from my life. Some older stories of me as a kid. I then build on it and talk about it and our conversation progresses. Last week we were staying at this amazing place called the hermitage guesthouse. No electricity, no phones, no network. Awesome fun. I am quite proud of the way Jispa is now easy with the leeches. She just picks them up, rolls them and flicks them out. A real pro. One day we went hiking up the highest point of the area. At a 1000 meters above mean sea level, it gave some of the most spectacular views of the region. Jispa is quite the enthusiastic climber. Light with strong legs she manages to reach up and keep pace. It was coming down she got tired. On her way back she wanted to rest and was tired.
I then used the trick that seems to be working these days. I told her that if she kept walking I would tell her stories from my life. And I told her stories from my life and she kept walking. I told her about how when I was in fifth standard, when we were at Ahmedabad to attend a weeding when dad got his first heart attack. How an attack works. How the heart is a muscle and how the arteries carrying blood get clogged by cholesterol and stop the blood form flowing. How the heart loses power and then works at lower capacity. And we spoke a whole host of things. Soon enough, we reached the base of the hill and that brought us to end that conversation.
During the drive back home later, we also spoke about Hero ink pens and E=MC2. Don’t ask me how it got there and when she understood from it. But yes we did discuss electrons, neutrons and atoms and molecules and some part of the periodic table.
A few days back while waking her up I was speaking about an story. How when we were younger and growing up, we did not have any brands in the country – no coke, no addidas, no MacDonald’s, no lays, no kurkures nothing. Not even faber castle crayons or stationery. We had no book stores like crosswords and we hardly had books. All we read was the amar chitra katha. And I went on and on. I said that that time India did not want these foreign brands to come into the country and we were scared of them and hence we had very little choice. Then in her half sleeps she asks ‘this is because of what they did to us?’. Huh? “What who did to us?”. “This is because of what the British did to us”. “Who told you that Jispa?”. Her standard reply in these cases – “my brain”. I was pretty skeptical. I quizzed her further. She told me that he teacher had once explained that the British had come to trade with us and then ruled over us and then she connected the dots and voila – this is what her brain told her. Excellent deduction. My baby is growing every day. I guess a nine year old has a decent logical deduction power. We just don’t make them use it enough.
Just the other day I was discussing with someone on the education system; CBSE board or ICSC board or IGSC or the good old now maligned SSC board that I studied in. My belief is that all this curriculum importance is a bit over stated. What is more important is the quality of teachers. I have had my share of really sweet teachers who taught complex subjects well and the idiots who could make any subject dull and boring. Somehow it’s always the Hindi teachers who have been the worst of the lot. A close second come the history and geography teachers. No wonder we have a warped and view of history and our memories of geography is limited to coloring some northern part of Russia blue to denote the tundra region or something.
So coming back to Jispa and her mornings. She summed the conversation aptly by saying – “I am lucky to have been born in 2002 and not earlier”. I think she was almost pitying me. Tch tch.