Some steps to improve the quality of life in cities

These are based on Bangalore, but can be generalized to other cities in India. Some of these are simpler to implement than the others. You may want to add more in the comments section.

1. Remove bus-stops after signals. This is one of the stupidest things that you will see. You just start making a move as the signal turns green only to get stuck behind a couple of busses that make a stop at the bus-stop immediately after the signal!
   
2. Move bus-stops to service lanes and get rid of them wherever possible. Maintain a minimum distance between bus-stops (whatever is the standard). Push bus-stops to the service lane, if there is one. At least, push them as much away from roads as possible.
   
3. Get rid of "service lanes". Make them part of an extended road.
4. Do not give permission to any building that does not have self-sufficient parking space. Probably rules exist regarding this. But they really need to be followed. If you ever had the misfortune of going to Manipal hospital, you'll be amazed at the near total lack of a parking space. How could anyone have commissioned a hospital whose plan does not include parking space corresponding to its size? This rule should be strictly applied to establishments of all sizes.
   
5. Do not let people embezzle real estate for god's sake! The simplest way to embezzle public land anywhere in India is to do so in the name of god. I've seen this in every place I've been to. Once you confer divinity on a tree or a stone, nobody can do anything about it. Even if such gods are very close to roads (or may be right in the middle of the road). On the one hand, trees are cut indiscriminately in Electronic city (the absence of trees there only gives an appearance of the road being wide; the road is really not any wider without those trees), and on the other hand, large trees are allowed to grow in the middle of roads until they become a nuisance. Do not let people grow trees and gods on roads.
6. Either build a wide footpath or don't build one. Don't build an excuse for a footpath inviting pedestrians into danger. Wherever there are no wide footpaths, put enough warning signs for pedestrians asking them to avoid the main road, and take an internal road instead.
   
7. Put garbage bins generously. Many people don't want to litter. But if the cost of that is to look for a garbage bin and walk several hundred metres up to it, people grow indifferent. Reduce this cost by planting garbage bins conspicuously.
   
8. If there are any public rest rooms that allow access free of cost, (and hence free from maintenance,) get rid of them.
9. Mandate sensor based automated flushing in all public rest rooms. The long term benefits will outweigh costs. If people have an option of not flushing, they will exercise it, increasingly so if the place already stinks. And this is true outside of India also, okay? A lot of people are conscientious about being the first ones to dirty a clean place.
   

Regional Language TV vs National TV

I have always thought the regional language channels that serve general entertainment (non-sports, non-news) are much better than national TV (Z, Star, Sony etc.), in terms of the variety as well as the quality of programming. Why is the difference so stark? (If you disagree, do comment.) I believe regional language TV are doing quite well commercially too, despite covering programmes on literature, classical music, agriculture, dialects, warnings to fishermen, political debates, in depth interviews with non-celebrities, along with the usual serials, film based programmes, and possibly 'reality' shows. How is this feasible?

Of routine stereotypes and arbitray simplifications

The US is a vast and self contained country. As a result, probably Americans don't need to look outside for most things such as education, career, opportunities, a good life and pop culture. A common American's day to day life need not involve gaining any amount of understanding of the rest of the world. (While this is true for any person anywhere, it is more so in the US.) When a situation arises wherein (s)he needs to understand or evaluate its significance, arguably, (s)he needs to look at the situation with an Americanised (or at most, a westernised) worldview. Drawing analogies and equivalences help.

So, while it is alright that American analysts and media talks about 'India's 9/11' or 'India's Enron', it's amusing to me when Indians or even NRIs for that matter need such analogies. If an European wants to evaluate and come to terms with the Himalayas as the 'Alps of the East', that's fine. But if I am told how the Kodagu district of Karnataka (or Coorg) is the 'Scotland of India', what meaningful information can I gain in addition to what I already might or might not know? And, yes, I have been told this (by an NRI)! I can definitely locate Scotland on the map; but I've lived in Kodagu for about 4 years. When I think about the Satyam fraud, I feel cheated, but I can hardly relate to Enron. Similarly, if I get told that Amitabh Bachan is the Tom Cruise (or whoever else) of India, the only thing I might learn is that Tom Cruise is a super star. I had read somewhere that Barkha Dutt is India's Christiane Amanpour or Geraldo Rivera. Who are they? And what am I? India's what?

The other thing about the US, the melting pot that it is, is that most of the things here have been simplified and/or standardised: routine social/economic interactions; customs; processes; games and sports, etc.. At least, I find them to be so. I can't even begin to compare baseball and cricket for example. Or the social rituals such as marriages. Probably Americans have simple notions about most things, because they don't need to deal with complexity on a routine basis. It might very well be the case that, analogies, stereotypes and reductions work for them. I see words like typical 'southerner', 'New Yorker', 'midwestern' and so many other phrases being used regularly. Although I can't convince myself that any entity can be that monolithic, I don't know much about America, so I can't judge one way or the other.

But I have no doubts stereotypes and arbitrary simplifications don't work in India. Complexity is the name of the game over here. For good or for bad, we deal it with complexity in our homes, workplaces, traffic, social interactions, what have you. We are adept at dealing with complexity. Why then do we still resort to arbitrary simplifications is something I don't understand. There is nothing typical about South India or North India or particular cities and towns. Recently I was in a salon where the hairdresser asked me if I was from the upper part or the lower part of India, and added, "Because I know that the people from the upper part have lighter skin." Again, if an American needs these simplified distinctions, that's fine. But we see the same simplification being used in India all the time!

Appearances may be deceptive but are still simple things. What about entities such as culture? People talk enthusiastically about 'Indian culture', 'Western culture'. Perhaps 'Kannada culture'. Even 'pub culture'. Where do I find the descriptions? Why do we talk about them as though they are monolithic entities? Or people arguing vehemently if a particular movie depicts the 'Real India' or not. Where is the real India? Is there a way of knowing if I belong to that? There are these and so many phrases in the recent times (even 'Indian Obama') that I don't understand -- that's why this post -- but they just continue to be used on and on. Not just by ill-informed people or upholders of culture, but on TV, in blogs and elsewhere.

Hazaron Khwahishen Aisi

Hazaron Khwahishen Aisi is exceptional cinema. It truly is. There are not many movies that offer a glimpse of the historical context of this huge and complex beast called India. You don't often come across a movie in India that tries to capture the ethos of a time, a place or a people. Not in the modern times anyway, when cinema is by and large unambitious.

The 60's and 70's were important periods of time world over. It is that period that the movie sets out to talk about eventually reaching the mega event called Indian Emergency. In a sense, the movie is a tribute to the ideologies, lifestyle, dreams, successes and failures, of that period. And, of course, the inevitabilities of India.

I had heard about it a few times, but saw it only a few days ago. More power to Sudhir Mishra and his ilk. More power to the artists, especially Shiney Ahuja and Chitrangada Singh. If you haven't seen the movie, I highly recommend it.

Please let me fail!

[Warning: What follows is a rant]

If there is one thing that hinders innovation in India, it is the societal intolerance to failures. People around you are unforgiving if you "fail", especially if you failed in something that is unconventional. Say for your engineering undergraduation you chose a stream that "does not have scope", you are doing something that is dangerously unconventional! And perchance if you fail to get a well paying job at the end of it, god help you! Mind you, you need not have failed because you chose an unconventional path. But you failed allright.

That parents (and family) expect their kids to be safe, settled and successful is justified. What is not justified, however, is that the measures of success et al. are predefined and immutable. I see so many times people worrying that their kids are not getting anywhere (meaning, they don't earn as much as their friends; don't yet have a plot of land unlike the others etc..), whereas the said kids are thoroughly enjoying their life learning new skills and working hard. Let alone the family, even others assume a right to measure a person's success! Just because they have access to the measures!

If one is a PhD student, especially is India, one has to deal with this on a regular basis. If there is some career choice in India that is totally absolutely "out of syllabus", it is chosing to do a PhD in Computer Science, in India! (Add to it, "not from one of the most reputed institutes", if you will.) Imagine doing a PhD in CS, when "software has a huge scope" in the Indian industry! One must be crazy to waste 5-6 years doing a PhD. One gets asked questions such as the following on a regular basis: why PhD; why in India; why not in [great country|institute]; what is the scope for PhDs in India; what is the range of the starting salary for PhDs.

Sometimes, if the people are in good form, the questions are nastier: how good is [the institute where you are pursuing a PhD]  for a PhD; how good are the advisors here (if they were good, they would be in the US or Europe, naturally!); when will you graduate, hasn't it been more than 3 years already; can you get a job in India; may be you should try for a job in the US, I don't think you can get a job in India; why don't you plan to settle in the US.

I am not making any of this up. I get to deal with them so regularly, sometimes from family, sometimes from strangers, that I have got used to them. But sometimes the annoyance accumulates so much that it gets to your nerves. This rant is a possibly a result of that. So, I have one thing to ask: people, please don't bother. I promise to never to pry and never to judge your life. I never do.

Please let me fail! Please let us fail. People who fail matter too, you know. In fact, if you check the history of the world, it is the people who risked failure that mattered the most. When one is exploring something new, failure is the norm! But if such a person even succeeds marginally, it potentially has a happy effect on several others. If I want to find a job in India, it is my prerogative. When a person is doing research work, there cannot be guarantees on time. If I fail to complete my PhD in 3 years, it's alright with me. I prefer failing on my terms to succeeding on yours! I do crave success as much as you do. I do want a well paying job, a cozy home, an LCD TV, and subscriptions to lifestyle magazines. But on my own terms; at my own pace.

I am happy, however unlikely or unreasonable it may appear to you. Happy that I am learning new things. Getting awestruck by the beauty of things. Generating ideas and implementing some. Contributing in my own little way. I am proud of what I am doing. I don't carry any illusions that whatever I do is going to make a difference to anyone. But again, the history of the world is a story of the synergy of countless tiny ideas coming together over time. Unless you allow people to risk going out of established paths, innovation cannot and will not happen. I am sure you mean well when you expect me to be settled and satisfied. But what if I want to be unsettled? Look at the world around you. How can a creative and sensitive person not be unsettled by what he observes and experiences?

And please understand that such aversion or anxiety towards failure is unwarranted. Things have changed quite a bit. People can afford a little bit of failure these days. It's alright if a kid tries something and fails. He has the time and resources to recover from his failures. If someone takes a break from her job to learn fencing or photography (or even just to relax!), it's alright, all is not over for her. I am sure there are more than a just few ways to live a good life. I am not sorry if all this sounds lofty or highhanded, because when you pry on me with condescending questions, you are not exactly being humble.

The Big Why Question

The big why question I am talking about is - why we are the way we are? In fact, that's the question V. Raghunathan's book, Games Indians Play: Why We Are the Way We Are, tries to understand. As the title suggests, the authors tries to answer the 'why' question through a game theoretical perspective. Specifically, he does it by modelling many of our day to day interactions in terms of prisoner's dilemma (PD). And, as you might know, the only equilibrium that two rational people reach in a one shot PD is defect-defect. That is, neither cooperates. The book does not offer anything frightfully new to someone who is familiar with PD and its possibilities. Nonetheless, the book is a welcome and useful approach to understanding India's problems: a lot of times India's problems are stated at very abstract levels; trying to understand them in terms of economics presents a more concrete model.

It does seem that non-cooperation has stabilised in India. In fact, this is quite the antithesis of another book I read recently, The Evolution of Cooperation by Robert Axelrod, wherein Axelrod argues how simple, natural and inevitable cooperation is. Raghunathan suggests that most of the non-cooperative bahaviour that exists in India is because the games we play mostly remain one shot PDs and do not progress into becoming Iterated Prisoner's Dilemmas (IPDs). In this post I'd like to explore this point a little bit. I welcome inputs.

So, the problem is not that we Indians play games. It is that we don't play them enough. Or that our games do not become repeated games involving the same small set of players. Why is it that we don't play repeated games? The obvious first answer is that our urban populations are enormous, thus presenting a potentially unlimited supply of random players to chose from. As a result, two (uniformly) randomly chosen players feel it mighty safe to defect and move on. Owing to the huge sample space, the probability of meeting the same player in the near future is small. Thus, there is no incentive to cooperate in view of future gains. The best example of this is our traffic, where everyone is out there to compete and get ahead (albeit, marginally). If only the commuters could see beyond the 2-feet of as yet unoccupied road, and cooperate with each other, traffic would be smoother, safer and more efficient for everyone. But the commuters work under no guarantees; and everyone around is a stranger without any history of interaction; so why bother?

But is that all? Not really. Even in situations that are repeated, somehow cooperation does not evolve. Let's take a real example. My mom had a domestic help who used to "complete" all the work she was responsible for in a jiffy. My mom complained every day about how carelessly the domestic help worked, and who she has to literally redo everything once the help left. Further, she used to remain absent for extended periods of time regularly, without even informing ahead of time. I suggested that mom could get a different person and relieve the present one. But she presented two difficulties: no one else in the locality would do the job for the amount the present one does it for, they all take at least twice as much; and secondly, the present one is an old woman, and it's not nice to ask her to leave. I argued that it doesn't make sense to pay lesser (or pay at all) if the work cannot be delegated. I also suggested that may be mom could raise the present help's wages. Perhaps she will do the job better. That way it will help both. Mom wasn't ready to accept that. It's all the same; it doesn't matter how much more you give; no point in wasting money.

I think a lot of our interactions follow this model. Two things here: (1) Cooperation seems a huge risk to us. We feel that, in the absence of guarantees, if we are the first ones to cooperate, it will likely lead to personal loss and embarrassment. (2) We fail to work out a punishment model when the other player defects. We are happier to defect right at the beginning. To add to this, we are either not easily provoked in the face of defection against us, or we don't know what to do when provoked, thus preferring not to get into such a situation at all.

Rather than adopting a straightforward Tit-for-Tat, we generally work out a complex balancing act not necessarily based on economics, but on combinations of things like value system, social status and stereotypes. For example, my mother was being nice in some sense by not replacing the old domestic help. Perhaps that was her intention. But was she being nice really, in a game theoretic sense? I think not.
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There's a lot more to say about this topic, which I'll do in later posts. I look forward to your ideas on the big why question and how can this be changed.