The Maanga

The International Mathematical Olympiad has a simple format. Six students from each country solve six problems each with a maximum of seven marks each. The perfect score is a Douglas Adams like 42.  Usually, solving five problems gets one a gold, solving three gets a silver and solving two gets a bronze. Solving just one problem gets a honourable mention.   

Students with perfect scores (just a gold medal will not do), have gone on to win Fields medals, Nevanlinna prizes and Godel prizes in mathematics.  

What is India’s recent record at this Olympiad? Pathetic. We sent a contingent of six students to Madrid in 2008 and they came back with five bronzes and a honourable mention. India was ranked 31^st among all countries. Who was first? China. The last time India won a gold was in 2001. Were we not supposed to be better at all things intellectual when compared to the Chinese? Maybe all we are good at is outsourcing the west’s back-offices.  

So, what gives? We have a National Board of Higher Mathematics (NBHM) which conducts Regional Olympiads, National Olympiads and so on to finally select the six students to represent India. Professors from IITs and IIsc offer postal coaching to students for a year and a month long on-site coaching. Various professors have written books, presumably solving old Olympiad papers to train the students.  

Clearly this is not working. One look at old Olympiad papers shows that the problems are tough, but not very tough. There are many in India who can do all six. But, they are not going to the Olympiad, they are busy preparing for their engineering entrance exams.  

What can be done? One could simply abolish the National Board of Higher Mathematics and its Olympiad exams. I am sure they are making a case right now for the department to get more funds after the nuclear deal, as it is under the department of atomic energy for some obscure reason.   

The solution: Just pick up the top six rankers in the IIT Joint entrance exam, train them for the month or so using the few professors who have solved some tough problems, and send them to the Olympiad.  

That would be a much better than this elaborate charade for five bronzes. I forgot that honourable mention certificate? Stick it up the ………… of the senior professor who led the team this year. Fear is a great motivator. Look at China.   

There is a clear correlation between the few gold medallists India has and the toppers in the IIT entrance exam. While correlation is not causality, a system that seems to work in selecting the brightest students in the country need not be supplanted by one that is clearly selecting morons to be trained by other morons.

I wanted to write a brilliant essay on on how all of India’s problems today and especially those that will come tomorrow are based on one fundamental conflict: between territorial integrity and individual liberty. Later, I realized, someone greater had done that better a long time ago. In 1849. Here is Henry David Thoreau,

After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule, is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it. Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience? — in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice. A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys,(5) and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart. They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined. Now, what are they? Men at all? or small movable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power? Visit the Navy Yard, and behold a marine, such a man as an American government can make, or such as it can make a man with its black arts — a mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and standing, and already, as one may say, buried under arms with funeral accompaniments, though it may be

“Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
As his corse to the rampart we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O’er the grave where our hero we buried.”(6)

Sunday Television is probably the encapsulation of TV in India for the rest of the week: two main talk shows happen to be ‘We the People‘ and ‘Devil’s Advocate‘ on the two major channels. While loonies tend to believe the shows themselves happen to be political conspiracies, regular people merely think: Indian Television hasn’t matured enough to understand that there is a space for serious conversation on TV. That Barkha Dutt is ugly and idiotic is hardly her fault — that she is on TV at 8 PM is Pranoy Roy’s. One could argue the same with respect to Karan Thapar who, interestingly, is only half as annoying on CNBC; the aggressive edge to stupidity must be a function of the channels’ understanding of least common denominator.

Shekhar Gupta, who was probably hired to fill that void has failed. Given avataram’s proclamation that the Radhika who went to Welham did marry a capitalist after all, NDTV’s 9.30PM slot on Sunday evening has now been yielded to Rohini Nilekani for a new show ‘Uncommon Ground‘. The first show had a couple of very impressive guests: Mukesh Ambani and Rajendra K Pachauri.

If one were to compare Rohini’s show with existing shows, one has to rate it high. However, when the man India is so intrigued by, Mukesh Ambani, offers to discuss things, one expects the anchor person to have done her research. Reducing issues to simplistic 30s sound bite has a place — and Sardesai occupies that. Trying to usurp the man who can pose the most complicated question grappling our times and then say “10s” with an absolute straight face isn’t a winning proposition. There is also a guest list that compliments that end of the space: Rajeev Pratap Rudy, Jayanthi Natrajan and dial-the-same-quote D Raja.

Rohini Nilekani’s single biggest differentiator should have been her ability to hold an engaging conversation with two interesting and willing guests. The simplistic role of an interviewer does not need a big name like her’s whereas holding fort demands an equal. Being one and behaving like the other is inexcusable and makes the investment decision look silly. Maybe, Rohini will find her comfort zone soon and we will have a good show. Maybe all she needs is her own research team — one that does not work for Barkha Dutt.

By definition, growing up is confused with having grown up. And Indian business sentiment is possibly the single greatest example[1]. Sevanti Ninan rightly castigates the media at the wrong place. Somehow, one always expects something worthwhile on a Sunday Magazine. Pointing how stupid the stupids are is best left to The Maanga. One thinks.

In an NDTV discussion late last week, predictably, the spokespersons of the CPI(M) and the Indian National Congress were restating their stated positions forcefully. Nilotpal Basu, cleverly started his statement by declaring that the day they were discussing was in fact the thirty third anniversary of the declaration of emergency by Mrs Indira Gandhi. And reminded everyone how the nation should remember what the price of overriding Democracy is. Jayanthi Natrajan, cleverer still, completely side-stepped that allusion and restated her party’s stated position in present tense. After fifteen minutes, Shekar Gupta, the journalist on the panel, in his closing remark, reminded Mr Basu that his party was the only one that vociferously supported Mrs Gandhi’s promulgation of Emergency at that time. NDTV moved on to another program.

In a CNN-IBN program called Devil’s Advocate, where the host is given a license to be probing and the permit is taken quite seriously, Finance Minister P Chidambaram was interviewed. During the interview, when the Finance Minister was answering a specific question, the host tried to ask another question assuming the answer that was just being given out. The interviewee told the interviewer, “listen to me” and went on to explain monetary policy and variables.

Barkha Dutt, in yet another discussion, had Mehbooba Mufti and Omar Abdullah from Kashmir say something about how Kashmir’s people will decide their own levels of tolerance. To a Rajeev Pratap Rudy and a host in Delhi who thought Democracy does not work as rule by majority in one context or the other. Respectively.

[1] — See what I did there?

Remember the Tamil padams of the 80s with badly researched characters for villains? Their fictitious companies and the like? Or, the reasonably the good ones? AAA Projects, AAA Enterprises — it’s stunning and remarkably funny that some people seem to be able to pull off a bad plot that’s two decades old. With such ease.

There are two Indias. The first is a relatively affluent India, the size of a small European country, say 30 million people, with a per capita income of say $15.000 or so, which is growing rapidly, experiencing wage growth of 15% or more. The IT boom, housing boom, stock market boom, wage boom, all apply to this one.  If a consumption basket were created for this specific group, we might find inflation is running at 15% or so. The affluent NRI crowd of some 10 million or so, fights for scarce housing and investment assets with this group, leading to further asset price inflation.  

The other India is the 1 billion or so invisible people who serve this tiny, affluent India. Servants, cooks, farmers, agricultural laborers, factory workers etc. Per capita income of this group is $550 or so, as in a large sub-saharan African country.  

Now, the RBI sets interest rates as per the inflation in the consumption basket of the second group, which is running at 5% or so. This provides the first group with negative real interest rates, leading to further borrowing, further housing and stock market booms and so on. The second group never had any access to bank lending anyway.  

So far, all this is not very different from the roman empire. Except that in this one, the billion slaves get to choose the government. I am sure all this will end in some typically Indian way. Maybe in caste-based interest rates?  100% reservations of all jobs in the private sector? Reservations in stock market investment? In housing loans?