..The inconvenience caused is deeply regretted..

Since the initiation of economic reforms since the early 1990s, life for the middle class Indian has changed beyond recognition. From unreliable home telephones which would often go " dead ", today's customer is spoilt for choice with umpteen number of mobile phone connections available. The ancient-looking Fiat Padminis and the Ambassador Cars have been replaced by sleek modern Hyundais and Suzukis. The monopoly of Doordarshan has given way to a proliferation of private 24/7 news and entertainment channels. And the Internet has brought the world at the fingertips of the middle class indian. For many Urban Indians, the neighbourhood kirana shop has been superseded by glitzy malls and supermarkets. Mc. Donalds and Subway, words once restricted to the vocabulary of NRIs , are rapidly becoming the favorite food joints of the increasingly affluent middle class Indian.

But if there is one aspect of life, that has barely changed since those days, is intercity transportation. With regular Air travel still beyond the means of most of the population, the venerable Indian Railways continues to hold monopoly over this vital aspect of life. And barring some superficial changes in the ticketing and reservation ( computerised, online reservation, "Tatkal" ( immediate ) quota ), there have been apparently no major changes at ground level in the running of trains.

Yesterday night , I had the misfortune of travelling in "Duranto" (quick) Express, the first non-stop train between Lucknow and New Delhi. And as I had expected , the "non-stop" tag was on paper only--it seemed to halt at every passing station, even made some stoppages in the middle-of-nowhere locations . It has been the same old story for indian trains since i was a child in the early 1990s--- our train halts in the middle-of-nowhere, we are told " there is no signal " , after some time we see a train passing by on the nearby track (in the same direction as our train ), and after it has passed, finally our train wakes from its siesta, whistles, and starts moving slowly again. This scene would be familiar to most seasoned travellers of the Indian Railways--it has barely changed since my childhood, and god-only-knows how many generations of Indians have spent tiring and irritating time , waiting for the other train to pass by and their own train to resume moving.

Today, with the Indian Economy growing by leaps and bounds, and India being one of the "emerging economies" , we see rapid visible change in nearly all aspects of life ( atleast those related to technology, if not those related to society ). But somehow, this advancement seems to have bypassed the Railways almost entirely. The Indian railways continues to move at a sluggish pace, both its trains and its plans and strategy. The Railways are still largely run as a social service , rather than a revenue-generating, profit-seeking business. The IR is one of the last remaining remnants of socialism in the otherwise liberalised-Indian Economy. So severe is the dearth of new ideas, that even today, the outer walls of trains are not rented for commercial advertisements, an action that would be politically feasible and would generate enormous revenue for the old warhorse of Indian transportation.

In the summer of 1994, my family boarded a train from Lucknow to Howrah. It reached its destination some 6-7 hours late. And today morning, the latest wonder train of the IR, the "quick" Duranto Express proved only quick enough to reach NDLS 90 minutes late. ( 9.5 hours for a journey that was scheduled to last 8 hours )

..And as they say " Punctuality is a word which does not exist in the dictionary of the Indian Railways "

And if you are not familiar with the title of this page, you have probably never spent more than a few minutes at an indian Railway Station.

Is brainwashing by parents the cause of fundamentalism among hindus ?

among hindus of india, parents are the primary source of fundamentalist brainwashing. parents show affection and approval if kids follow hindu norms, while reprimand the child if he/she does anything that deviates even an inch from hindu norms. fundamentalist norms include not eating meat, not eating eggs on tuesday ( for some ,not eating eggs on any day ),not getting haircut on thursdays, not trimming nails on thursdays.
sounds crazy ? well many people in india stick to these norms and consider any deviation from them a moral transgression.
..these irrational norms are passed on from generation to generation.

Liberation from the bondage of marriage ?

I sometimes wonder whether i will ever get married. Reasons for this doubt are not tough to understand.

Firstly, the " essential qualification " i look for in a prospective spouse is that she should be financially independent and not a " typical indian housewife" . Based upon my experiences and observation, i know that most indian females don't really look forward to a career.. they pursue education ( even professional education ) solely as a means of finding a rich groom and then sitting comfortably at home at watching saas-bahu serials ,the rest of their lives. I often fear that my spouse will declare herself to be " career-minded , and not like those girls " before marriage, but soon after marriage, she will find a lame excuse to quit her work. ( I know that a rare variety of indian females are genuinely career-minded , but i know they settle for nothing less than a millionaire for a groom )

Secondly, as a psychology student i am well aware of the fact that atttraction and liking between two people is often dependent upon the degree of similarity and dissimilarity between the two. While I am a die-hard atheist, i am very well aware that most indian females are hindu fundamentalists ( vegetarian, don't eat eggs on tuesday, don't eat anything on specified days, don't get haircut on specified days , wearing costly rings on fingers to ward off evil and for " luck " ) -- I am not sure how an atheist and a hindu fundamentalist would be able to live together peacefully. Psychologists have not been able to find any evidence for the popular belief " Opposites Attract " and further, it is well known that " dis-similarity depresses liking much more than similarity enhances it " --hence in the case of sharp dissimilarity in values , an affectionate , loving relationship is not the most likely outcome.( I have often observed that my atheist friends are much more likely to make friends with like-minded people; experts have long known that " birds of a flock fly together " )

Whats more, most indians continue to have outdated views on mental illness, which i often find to be offensive. That even further dents my chances of finding a like-minded partner.

Surely , I am well aware of the importance of intimate relationships in ensuring a happy, satisfying life ( intimate relationships are known to be a important factor in " subjective well-being" ). But in this case , i am very doubtful i would be able to establish an intimate, close relationship with someone i cannot agree with , on some of the most important values in life . Whats more, i dont consider financial liability a good cost to pay for intimacy.

Think about it, Facebook offers me the oppurtunity of meeting and befriending like-minded people, and even establishing intimate relationships , without having to assume any financial responsibility.

Does that mean, I would end up being "permanently single " as many of my Facebook friends ? Well, only time will tell that .

How womens' participation in workforce is far more important than their particpation in legislature.

The past couple of days have seen heated debates and drama on the issue of womens' reservation bill. The proposed bill would reserve 33% of the electoral constituencies ( for national and state elections ) only for women, thereby reserving 33 % of the seats in central and state legislatures for women. Proponents of this bill claim that this change would usher in a new era of womens' empowerment and gender equality. I certainly wish them well in their great intention, but i doubt as to how exactly would such a change bring about womens' emancipation.

First of all, some statistics: India's rank in the Gender Gap Index is at the pit bottom, and we rank only above Islamic countries of Middle East. (refer to my previous posts for more info ) . The report also ranks India at the pit bottom for the parameter of Womens' participation in the workforce. Hardly surprising, as the vast majority of Indian adult women are " Homemakers " .

I have often wondered how can India progress economically and socially as long as womens' participation in the workforce remains at the present dismal levels. Census of India 2001 revealed that only 11 % of urban women are employed; this too, i suspect, includes the large number of poor women employed as unskilled labour in construction industry. Hence, it is clear that participation of educated middle-class women in the workforce is dismal . ( In contrast to developed countries like Taiwan , where workforce participation of women is almost 50 % )

I have argued in my previous articles that womens' lack of participation in the workforce is proving to be a great hindrance in the economic development of this country. And I also wonder how any real empowerment of women can be brought about without first ensuring financial freedom for women. Greater workforce participation would bring about greater gender equality , than participation in legislature.

The job of MPs and MLAs is to make laws; but i am not sure that how greater number of women among lawmakers would change the situation-- Indian laws are already biased in favour of women, claim many legal experts. Infact , many accuse Indian laws like the Domestic Violence Act to be unfair towards men, and say that it makes innocent men vulnerable to frivolous and false litigation. Many accuse the Indian Government of making laws that would victimise men, and would be misused by women for settling personal scores. Critics of such laws also say that the genuine oppressed women, whom this law claims to protect, are actually unaware of these laws, and rich, educated and already-empowered women misuse the law. I fear , that with a greater number of female lawmakers, more of such unfair laws would be enacted.

I wonder if this bill is just another technique of " votebank politics ".

Instead of increasing the number of females in legislatures by reserving seats for them, it would be better for the Government to urge more women to take up careers , by issuing advertisements in newspapers/ TV . Though the government is already giving many incentives to working women in the form of lower income tax slabs, I believe it is high time the government should start encouraging women directly, in the form of mass awareness campaigns , which create awareness about the benefits of womens' employment among the masses.

A typical Indian vegetarian platter. Hinduism , India's predominant religion forbids members from eating meat, and therefore most meals are " pure vegetarian " . Result : vitamin b12 deficiency, with its numerous consequences , including mental illness

Since the advent of offshoring, India's economy has had a dream run, and India has been transformed from a " backward " country of " snake charmers " to a rapidly advancing society of software geeks. But how long will this dream run , almost entirely dependent upon offshoring , continue ?

Two Indias, side by side : On the left is the office of a MNC bank, with its shiny glass facade. On the right is the white Ambassador car ( which is pretty much unchanged since 1950s ), and on the extreme right is the autorickshaw.

The Other ( Dark ) side of the moon.

First of all , let me make it clear that I am no economist or management expert, just an ordinary ( but nonconformist )individual with an investigative bent of mind. And neither i am a doomsday prophet.
In the previous decade, the Indian economy has grown by leaps and bounds ,and India has emerged the second-fastest growing major economy of the world. India now has great economic clout . Most of this impressive progress has been due to the practice of OFFSHORING, defined simply as the practice of hiring an external organization to carry out some business-functions in a country other than the one where the goods and services are actually sold. It is an example of labour arbitrage, in which a company outsources work to low-wage countries to save manpower costs. The simple logic behind this practice is that a worker ( whether a call-center employee or a computer programmer ) in India takes only a fraction of the wages taken by a US worker for the same job, thereby saving the company great deal of costs and hence improving its competetiveness and enabling it to offer goods and services to customers at a much lower cost , than would have been otherwise possible.

I have observed that Indian media just reveals the benefits of offshoring, not its negative consequences . Common sense would reveal that there is a flaw in this practice: a flaw that might eventually undo the very reason why offshoring was adopted. If offshoring contributes to increasing job losses in the US, then the consumer spending in the US is bound to plummet, and the sales and therefore the profits of the companies are bound to suffer . ( and if this continues unabated, the loss in sales due to mass unemployment will might even neutralise the cost-saving on offshoring work overseas. ) Indeed, at the time of writing this article , the US was staring at what is called a " jobless recovery " with the GDP growing at 5.7 % but with double-digit unemployment.

A simple web-search on Google.com ( not on google.co.in ,the Indian version ) reveals that even today, there is no consensus among economic experts on the long-term sustainability of this practice. There are arguments both FOR ( in favor of ) and AGAINST this practice, and many experts seem to be unsure that whether , in the long run, which one of the set of arguments would win. The situation seems to me (after reading expert opinion on many American websites ) that even today , there is NO UNANIMITY or CONSENSUS among experts about the long-term consequences of this practice. Proponents of offshoring often cite a report by Mc Kinsey , released in 2003, which declares offshoring to be a " win-win situation " , which will bring benefits both to US as well as India, but disproportionately more to the US. But soon the accuracy of this report was challenged by another report released by Economic Policy Institute.

Even I myself found some of the arguments of offshoring's proponents to be flawed: one of them being that when low-skilled ( and low paying ) jobs are offshored, American companies would be able to create more higher-skilled jobs due to the more profit earned after offshoring. For anybody who has ever turned the pages of a psychology textbook, this seems to be a poor joke. Simply because most of the low-skilled workers would lack the intelligence (IQ ) to take up higher-skilled jobs . ( the correlation between IQ and work performance has been known since decades ) . This might leave the laid-off low-skilled workers unemployed for long periods.

I also was not convinced by the arguments of the proponents of offshoring that how offshoring would create more jobs in the US in the long-run. Today, a whole spectrum of jobs, from call-center to programming , to website designing to even reading X-ray reports and medical transcription are offshored . The proponents say that services like retail , restaurants, education , construction etc are ones which can never be offshored and expansion in these would compensate for the loss of jobs in call centers and IT. But I am not sure if I know anyone who considers the job of a restaurant waiter or cook as prestigious as that of a IT professional.

Once again, I would emphasize , that I am no expert, I have only read many articles on this issue, analysing them neutrally. And I have come to the conclusion that there is simply no consensus among economists about this practice, that offshoring has both its pros and its cons . (right now the pros outweigh the cons, but how long will this last ? ) As a psychology student, i have often wondered why the Indian media only reveals the positive aspect of offshoring, only the arguments in favour of offshoring , only the pros and not the cons ? Is this not an example of selective exposure ?

http://management.about.com/cs/generalmanagement/i/offshoring.htm-- read both the pages of this neutral , balanced debate.
http://www.answers.com/topic/offshoring : another balanced, neutral discussion.
http://hei.unige.ch/~baldwin/ComparativeAdvantageMyths/IsOffshoringWinWin_McKinsey.pdf
--the Mc Kinsey report often cited by offshoring proponents.
http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/bp155/-- Mc Kinsey report challenged for its alleged inaccuracy.
http://www.citizenstrade.org/orftc-release100308.phpnearly 1 in 5 Oregon jobs are offshorable . countless such articles can be found online.
http://www.citizenstrade.org/orftc-release100308.php-- the grim picture for MN.