Ideas We Believe

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On the nature of money, and conflit with nature

As with all treatises on economics, one commences with the nature of money and the three purposes it serves: exchange, guarantee, and investment (as Keynes elucidated in his three motives). However, there is nothing quite like it in the natural order. The closest analogue is food . It serves as a medium of exchange (of energy to survive or procreate) and as a means of storage. But food is not an investment; calories do not spontaneously multiply. In fact, food is bound by entropy; its essence and value diminish with time . This victory over temporal decay is the greatest asset of money. It is a refusal to wither. Perhaps it is our ultimate pursuit of immortality, with power and fame being the earlier, more fragile candidates. However, this presents a metastasizing issue. If money only grows over time through interest and accumulation, it requires infinite space (or at least infinite resources) to occupy. But the physical world is finite. The earth’s carrying capacity is fix...

What women want - a YouTube dive for the bored.

On a leading podcast, Palki Sharma (ex-WION, now FirstPost), a leading face of the new age digital indian media, claimed that over 80% of other viewers of indian infostories and news were men. Her next question was more pressing, and rightly so, coming from a lady who loved journalism so much, "Please help me understand what the women of India are watching?" This question is neither new nor unsolved. The television media at the dawn of the millennium had a similar question for itself. As TVs had penetrated homes, broadcasters had realised that a massive half of the population was simply missing out form the audience. The answer to it came from Ekta Kapoor, who revolutionised the soap opera scene in India. When the "serials", as they were referred to, took over, it brought the broadcasters a new mass of viewers, neatly segmented as the daytime audience and evening shows. This move not only altered the course of media, but also advertising and consumer behaviour. For ...

Dragging into Wars - were the global wards triggered by a pandemic?

When the COVID-19 pandemic cast its shadow on the global arena, the fuss was about healthcare, crisis-mobility and supply chains. Each among them held a threat to the existing polit-beareau of international politics, from international organisations coming under fire to the rise of right-wing politics over the globe, could be seen as a precursor to the summer of 2025, which has seen 5 countries go into a direct war with one another. And the cursed thing about wars is they breed quickly like a festering infection. While the theory is that the pandemic might have been the trigger for these global skirmishes, I posit that it was only a catalyst in the larger political cycle. While the 2000s had seen massive army deployments around the globe, the 2010s were a calmer decade. Led by the democrats in the US, and the rise of liberal politics around the EU. And as we have now been made more aware of, those were a decade of political correctness, DEI and more so of anti-inequality. The pock...

Turning back from pull to push

Two recent campaigns deserve attention from marketing enthusiasts, one of Campa Cola (reenergised by the Reliance Group) and of Tata Sampann's species. The challenges these two brands face are too distinct from one another. Campa, on the one hand, aims to fight the global brands like Pepsi and Coca-Cola, whereas Sampann looks to create a market in indian spices that has been dominated by local players like MDH and Everest. However, their strategies have something in common: getting the distributors to stock more of their products on the shelves. Campa is offering the distributors twice the margins, while Sampann is leveraging its vast portfolio to make stocking only Tata products a win for the distributors. Image credit: Economic Times To understand why this is happening, and what makes this interesting, one has to look back on the history of marketing, more specifically the shift from a push to a pull-based marketing, where the focus of the brands shifted from pushing their produc...

When a giant goes on a eating spree

There are a few crown makers in the current start-up world who have honed the art of finding startups with an industry-defining idea at their seed stage and nurturing it to realise a product market fit. But needless to mention, even in their shining armours, there are a few clicks to spot. This only explains why business is an art and not a science. While gaps in the market, consumer behaviour, technology adoption or, for that matter, a blueprint of the strategy today can be readily developed, the challenge is to get the process on the field. I would refrain from taking names, but even the biggest VC and PE out there have had their share of mistakes and have been highly humble in accepting them. What is of greater concern, however, is that most of the analysis of a bad investment can only be made post-ante. This implies that the investors carried out the same processes yet landed at two contrasting star-ups. Oversight, one of the most cited criteria for the failure of venture capital i...

Consulting Constulting

Consultants are the most rampant, yet the most sushed topic in corporate. There are enough consulting firms today, to make one wonder if we need so many of them. And if the conundrum of needing to hire consultants was not big enough, here comes the issue of what they actually do. Over the last few years, many in the media have reported consulting firms to have held too much power for far too long to have become corrupted. Firms have relied on shady practices to keep their business afloat and, on many occasions, have walked out without much consequences. However, I find the above conclusion misrepresenting, if not incorrect. The need for consultants doesn't arise from corporate's need to implement change or resolve issues. Corporations today are locked in an environment of constant change, be it in business models, products or even markets. The law forbids two companies from coming together and promising on a "happy ever-after". The consequence of this is action and r...

Election afterthoughts

The unfolding of the Indian election might have come as a surprise to many, for one is the BJP who steamrolled the campaign seasons with slogans of "400 par". While it remains 240 seats popular in a house of 520 members, a few stories should not go unnoticed. First, the BJP's popularity and the win for a third term is no ordinary feat. Only a few leaders of the past have managed such an elusive feat. This, indeed, is the trust that the brand Modi has built over the years. In politics, we often get acclimatized to the situations, in certain aspects too critical of it. When the young generation looked at Indira Gandhi's cabinet, they vowed never to again let such a solid mandate to a single party that its chief could declare an emergency, and no structures would be able to prevent that. This, however, ended up in fragmented colours in the Lok Sabha, the era of coalitions and surprise prime ministers. Needless to say, the horse-trading of MPs and the mindless corruption ...

The persistence of war

Countess authors have written on war, whether war and peace or the art of war. It's sometimes astonishing how pervading the idea of a war is over human civilisation. But the nature and structure of war have mainly changed, while the similarities are uncanny. But without just being philosophical, let's understand how the terms that are floated today are a realisation of power and limitation of its projection. In that sense, this piece is a treatise on peace or, if I can, a seeming decline in war's enticement. Wars were fought for the expansion of one's territory. But it remains a question of how and who the war served. In that sense, the armies were a protector of the ruler. Thus, the war was intended to gain rule except when it was led by vengeance or the decree of a religion. But what was expected was that most of the greatest conquests were in the form of an expedition, thus having to have a geographical continuity, which became necessary for people to establish loyal...

The wane of Indian trust in Gandhi

There is a statement from Albert Einstein on Gandhi, which always made me think. "generations to come will scarcely believe a man like this walked on earth. " I have always wondered why it would be true. Since Gandhi lived a much more recorded life, I thought it would always be easy to appreciate his efforts for Indian independence. But there is a catch: as we continue to rejoice in peace and independence, we often discount the grief caused by the lack of these. Gandhi preached a different policy in a world dominated by wars and violence, where armies saw war as the inevitable means to take back or take control. Even in the current world order, deterrence is considered a soft stand, and imagine a century earlier preaching for non-violence. Gandhi saw non-violence as a means of getting attention and could use it to create a voice. He did so for 40 years, giving the Britishers a negotiation, while most other independence movements were based on armed rebellion. While India...

Discerning and Disarming

It's often perplexing to note how violent human existence has been. Until the end of world wars, it was common for armies to be raised and sent to die. Only when institutions like trading, finance and learning, which do not occur optimally in turmoil, spread worldwide, there was an incentive to keep peace. This leaves us with a question as to why peace wasn't pursued over the early years of human civilisation. The answer to that would be science or, to be more specific, maths. Before maths, most languages were subjective and interpretive rather than definite and logical. With that power of subjectivity, it was easy to evade having to answer. How big is the earth, you ask? While under maths, you will have to put units, and then under physics, estimate and verify it; in any other language, you can just have a word for it. Subjectivity gives an illusion of an answer, preventing one from digging further and, in this case, striving to learn more. That leaves us with a vacuum, which ...

Against the Open World

The journey of Microsoft as a company can be paraphrased into three leaders and their approach to the industry. When bill gates developed a proprietary OS, he knew he had hit the potluck. Over the next few decades, he ensured that the Microsoft ecosystem kept itself updated and remained a close source. Given the philanthropy that Bill is known for, many expected the then-richest man to let go of the closed head and let the CS community have a look at the masterpiece, but Bill's wrath against open source was second to none. He and his successor Steve Balmer would call the open-source OS like Linux cancer. However, at the turn of the millennia, they were hit by rivals like Google in terms of the biggest tech company. Unlike Apple, Bill hadn't been able to trap its customers into an ecosystem. Therefore the battle moved away from OS to browsers, where the once reigning internet explorer faced an upward struggle from two emergent, one which its earlier rival had open-sourced to, an...

Senegol: A staff of moral jurisprudence.

India's latest parliament building was done within 2 years, which is remarkable in a country where large projects are known to be marred with corruption and bureaucratic blockades, ultimately shooting the estimates. The parliament like most of the other Delhi architectures, was a reminiscence of the colonial era, which the rulers of the day found symbolic in taking over. It has to do with the fact that Indian independence was mostly seen as a peaceful transfer of power rather than a violent outing of the colonizers, as with many other Asian countries. The claim for peace in the process was somewhat lost in the massive riots that followed the partition of the erstwhile British India Colony. But the establishments of the British era were carried on, and sometimes even the legislation still needed to be changed. This, if one would agree, does manifest the Indian idolisation of the Western culture, or at least the veneration of the West among its ruling elite. It was, therefore, impera...

Fulcrum of Statemanship

Prashant Kishor has been the most enigmatic discovery of the new Indian politics. While the BJP, in true merit, can boast of being a poll crusader with the margins and amount of states they have swept, PK remains the undoubted champion for electoral success. The man behind Modi, to the man behind any opposition leaders that one may list in 2023, be it Kejriwal, Mamta, Statin or even Jagan Reddy, all have at least once sought the professional services of India's Ballot John Wick. With his scientific approach to electorate data, straightforward representation of the facts, and ingenious formulations, parties today mick several of his strategies and mantras. The greatest challenge for PK is to retain his reputation; he has to be constantly innovating in the electoral marketing landscape. That is why he did announce his retirement after the victory in Bengal. However, He today is on a different mission, one that looks like something Congress tried to pull off with their bharat jodo ya...

Mathematics: A recondite language.

Before the Newtonian phase of philosophy, when natural philosophy was segregated from ordinary philosophical ventures for its commitment to repeated experimentation and scepticism, which would later be called the scientific way of knowing, there was an abstruse language. Unlike its well-known counterparts, this was extremely difficult to communicate and required well-defined logical reasoning to understand or expand. Essentially the worst kind of language, even millennia after its origin, it continues to haunt people by the name of mathematics. Mathematics, as a language, starts with well-defined axioms. The most visible of them is in geometry, with the definitions of a point and a line. But such esoteric definitions continue all across mathematics. They do serve a great purpose, though, building one abstract concept over another because only when the idea of points well learn is it became easy to build that there can be another abstract concept of line, which passes through two p...

Jurisprudence : augmented legality

The rise of Chat GPT gave way to an interesting question, could the machine learning model come to pace with some of the benchmarks of human intelligence today. What followed next was the GPT models facing many management studies and legal tests and doing fairly worse in most. Chat GPT 4 today has increased its likelihood of passing the bar exam from a mere 10% to a whopping 90%. For someone who has seen how these models work, such a jump from one generation to another is no new. But it, therefore, poses more extensive and practical cases for us to implore. Before these large language models took the helm, any legal practice involved the tiresome job of scrounging through numerous precedents and preparing a case for both the defendant and the plaintiff. This involved rigorous search in databases (thanks to the digital revolution) and coming up with critical analysis from the texts. With AI promising to replace this final step in the process, it removes the final bits of human intellige...

Matsuri Majime

Martin Seligman noticed that much present-day psychology concerned diseases and their redressal. This prompted him to look at wellness and mindfulness as a psychological study, ushering in a new age of positive psychology. In the later years, even corporates noticed that employees' mental health was much more closely related to their productivity than many other factors, including competence. This begs a profound question about the importance of positive social reinforcement in its role towards a developing society. India celebrates multiple public holidays compared to most other places, which relish a vacation during Easter and Christmas break. However, Indian holidays are mostly a day or two, but much more frequent. To look at the positives, these are primarily social celebrations, so instead of a day off from work, it is dedicated to family, friends and community. A rejuvenated mind works much better. Secondly, it is essential to note that the holiday season, as it is cal...

The Search for Similitude

KM Munshi, a revered drafting committee member, wanted a uniform civil code; otherwise, he believed it would be impossible to reform the attitude of Hindu society towards women. However, the case for a uniform civil code would lose out to a 5:4 vote split in the same and has remained a controversial page ever since. Today, the call for UCC is pressing in the Islamic corners of Indian society, as the supreme court noted in its landmark Shah Bano case of 1985. The then-incumbent prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, was already worried about his northeast and south pursuits and did not want to mettle with the turbulent religious politics. Ever since BJP has made it a part of the manifesto. There are a few merits to the UCC case, such as the ambiguous nature of marriages in multiple committees and the growing disparity in the civil laws between the Hindu and Muslim communities. one of the most cited examples is the provision of polygamy in the Muslim community and the triple lakh law. Present-day...

Erudite Exulansis! - How does political bias affect scientific research?

The current debate surrounding science and education is marked by vocal opinions and growing public distrust in established institutions. This crisis of public trust in science, fueled by political polarization and the spread of misinformation, has potentially disastrous consequences for scientific progress and public understanding. By no means has the pace of education slowed; if anything, there is a larger contribution of developing nations to the educated world nowadays. However, it is imperative to note the rise of a vocal opinion against the current educational establishments, especially in the OECD countries, regarding these institutions being aligned with the political left. To frame it better, right-wing parties worldwide, who have found a new series of acceptance in countries, have repeatedly attacked colleges with relatively young populations to be guided by a political motive under the mask of intellectualism. The internet is divided between a public outburst of so-called Ka...

Kuddelmuddel

As soon as the newbie lawyer reaches the valley, he facetiously remarks, "wahan sirf terrorists marte hain, army wale nahi? ". This line is what the writers of shaurya must defend. The reason why an age-old movie makes a mention today is to signify how crudely "Aman ki Asha" was shoved down the throat of millions of unsuspecting Indians. Morarji Desai was given Nishan-e-Pakistan for his contributions to the State of Pakistan, including sabotaging the RAW mission to extract and prevent the nuclear program in Pakistan. The second person who was this close to the Pakistani establishment has to A. S. Daulat. One who was said to know everything about Kashmir, but instead of working out a solution, he kept the status quo, enjoying a leveraged position from the government and the separatists of the valley, selling a dream of peace which kept his coffers filling. At this time, India wanted to make a case for its pacifism, showing the west it was a follower of the Gandhian ...

Whelved Whales

Standard & Poor's (better called the S&P), Fitch and Moody are the three prominent players in the world of credit rating. Their words have such a significant impact on the speculative markets all over the world that one can safely call them the ventriloquists of the modern era. But reputation is a goose laying golden eggs; it must be well-fed and well-kept. Therefore, it's surprising that when Fitch's holding CreditSights reported that the Adani enterprises were deeply debt leveraged, the regulating authorities should have batted their eyelids. A lousy bureaucracy is no excuse for a country aspiring to be in the top 5 of the world's stock markets. In fact, a BBB- is a stern warning that we are looking at the humble origins of the 2008 subprime crisis. A bigger and yet more straightforward question is what drove the Adani stocks so much? And quite a bit of the answer comes from the defence Adani group put out to the Hindenberg research - a rising nationalist sen...

Churns of Time

Throughout human existence, expression has changed forms. The journey has been long and seldom rewarding, from cave paintings to ballads, journals, and memes. Because most often, the authority ascertained to a particular medium of information tends to discredit its predecessor. There is little complaint against this since newer technology promises truth. Ballads, as we know, were changed over time to appease patrons, something that books couldn't do. But what happens when we look at a civilisation's history through the lens of writers who were perhaps biased. There is little doubt about their calibre, but to rule out all bias would be folly. With more intro, let's examine the Indo-Aryan Theory, predicaments and preconceptions. The Harappan Mohenjodaro civilization has long been clouded under an unclear end, without a good theory as to why or where the inhabitants of these well-planned city-states migrated. Given the trade and craftsmanship of the Indus valley civilization, ...

Forged lines

There is furore among diplomats regarding medium-sized autocratic nations wielding more hard power on the new world order. Countries like Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia have begun to meddle in the politics of their neighbourhood, which was earlier restricted to great powers like Russia or Europe. The reason was the grand exit of the US from the world scene post-2016 when it began to look inwards in response to the awaking dragon. However, a bigger picture in these battles must be more easily seen. The fall of the Soviet union was globally witnessed, but none stood watching when the colonies fell into the European merchants. In fact, the peace that shadowed post second world war saw colony owners sign on behalf of their holdings. Boundaries were drawn to satisfy the European view of the world. Thus the constant turmoil in these autocratic nations speaks of a history that was ignored in this treaty of the west. Baghdad, for example, had long been the capital of the Islamic dynasties. Howe...

Idol in the making

Korean pop has been a vital engine to the peninsula's soft power projection. The concept of creating an idol, rather than just marketing them, has been well formulated and is now ready to reach the world. In fact, of late, k-pop has been inducting foreigners into the groups to capture emerging markets in Japan, China and other Asian states. One of the few groups which boast today of an enormous global influence is BTS, a boy band from Bangtan, which calls its fans ( Stan's, to be specific ) an army. The whole formulae have become quite a household knowledge in South Korea, where the big three, namely YG, SM and JYP, vouch for making idols out of talents. The trick is gruelling training which can last up to five years (or more), where talent is groomed into performance. This method has worked exceptionally well, churning out bands one after other who sway the audience to their tune. In fact, these companies are known to plan out the entirety of the band's activity, from the...

Purge of Shame

Faced with the dearth of religiousness, the 21 century has a new guidebook to the purpose of life. A complex interplay of identity and oppression, and revaluation of self as the saviour. From the speaker's perspective, it is a brilliant story of liberation and may have some benign outgrowths like the cancel culture. The first step is identifying the oppression. The first context in which oppression came into my vocabulary was the freedom struggle from colonisation. Thus a scary picture of pressure is etched into my memory. But, the oppression, like everything else, could be subjective. When I learnt of the hardship of my parent's childhood, I was to believe that I had successfully leapt out of oppression. However, it's clear now that I was a victim of an oppressive third-world system, where my counterparts in more prosperous economies lavishly spent their young years. There is a subjective truth in this. And perhaps masked envy. But what is distinct is that it combines dis...

Skepticism

Before it was named science, this branch of rational debates on natural phenomena was a part of philosophical discourses. However, the biggest differentiator was the approach. Scientific truths were to remain objective and under scrutiny forever when one phenomenon that contradicts a hypothesis is enough to bury it. This explains that scepticism is the central facet of scientific thinking. Today, the nature and physics of systems have gone too complex for the truth to be objectively identified. We gamble on the empirical formulation of reality and quantify its error. Also, specialisation has made science disciplines wander so far off that a singular authority is hard to conceive. This has ushered into an era where unscientific theories conspire to challenge established truths. This problem is pressing since it seeks to undermine centuries of human intelligence. Today, when information is abundant, the means of verification are limited and sources of authority in multitude, what could b...

Behind the Gig economy.

The battle between push and pull is familiar to supply chains. For ages now, industries have produced goods they thought were relevant for the customer and then used networks of distributors and retailers to push these to the consumers. The apparent outcome of this is the massive scale of advertising that uses tactics to lure a customer base for the product. The shift to a pull-based supply chain seems more rational. One is where the production takes in the customer's demand before the show. Not only does that minimize the risk of product failure, but it also captures the market sentiment with greater accuracy. In other words, it caters to an existing demand rather than creating one for itself. This process is lean and profitable, except for a shortcoming; Production takes time. During the early 90s, when the internet spread like wildfire, people almost immediately expected the internet business to take off. However, it was only after a decade and a massive dot com bubble that tod...