On Caste System

Recently, some one wrote on FaceBook:

"For the past few days, I have been noticing some friends uploading some posters on their walls seeking pride for the respective castes they belong to. The sentence remains the same; the name of the caste changes depending on who is seeking pride.

This is both sick and funny. In Indian history, every caste is found to have done something horrendous at some point of time that its members must be embarrassed about in this modern age. First, identifying with this unscientific classification is regression. Second, if you must relate to it, have the moral courage to own up your mistakes as well: from persecutions to capitulations to manipulations."

I do not see anything wrong in one celebrating success by any caste provided they also own the horrendous treatment of other castes, especially the downtrodden castes. For example, I am proud of my "caste"; I am a Chitrapur Saraswat Brahmin. We are a community of just about 20,000 world-wide, but have incredible achievements. One of us (Sir B Narsing Rao) was one of the drafters of the Indian Constitution. We have had four star generals and Air Chief Marshals (a distant uncle of mine), and we have had some of the finest Bollywood producers and directors. There are literally thousands of doctors, professors, engineers among us. It is virtually impossible to find among us non-college educated, and almost no one goes to bed hungry. That is certainly an achievement worth celebrating about.   

And yet I am ashamed of the way our temple musicians, who are usually of lower caste (so-called untouchables,  perform from outside the temple and yet are not allowed inside the temple. But then I am also very proud that my father treated everyone alike and even allowed the so-called untouchables inside our house even for food. That is the way I was brought up, to treat all human beings respectfully. That is worth celebrating too.

Caste system can peacefully and amicably coexist with decency and respect for each other if there is a will.

On Indian Independence.

It was FDR (Roosevelt) and the US that played the crucial part in the Indian independence movement. Churchill and Britain would not have let go of India even if they had to eat grass. USA also tolerated the Ghadar movement even though it impacted the one-sided so-called batshit "special relationship" with Britain. Indians should be eternally grateful to the US and President Roosevelt.

Read the following:
Source: http://east_west_dialogue.tripod.com/american_system/id10.html
___________________________
An eyewitness account of the struggle between President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, over the fate of the post-war world is contained in the book by the President's son, Elliott Roosevelt, 'As He
Saw It,' (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1946). Elliott Roosevelt was an aide to his father at all but one of the Big Three conferences during World War II. Elliott Roosevelt recounts how his father, the American President laid out his determination to shape a post-war world free of colonialism, and his perspective for the economic development of the former colonies to eradicate poverty and illiteracy.
The following are two excerpts from Elliott Roosevelt's book. The first is from a meeting of Roosevelt and Churchill at the Bay of Argentia, of the coast of Newfoundland. It was at this meeting where Roosevelt forced Churchill to sign the Atlantic Charter on August 14, 1941. This charter contained key aspects of Roosevelt's vision of the post-war world.
The first section is Elliott Roosevelt's account of the conference between Roosevelt and Churchill at Argentia Bay off Newfoundland. The Atlantic Charter was signed at this meeting on Aug 14, 1941.
(It should be emphasized that Roosevelt is not promoting the British doctrine of free trade. Indeed the British only followed the free trade approach when it was to their benefit. The British Empire was based on monopolistic trading arrangements that enriched Great Britain and impoverished the colonies. Trade between British colonies and other countries was severely limited.)
Roosevelt and Churchill Meet in August 1941
It must be remembered that at this time Churchill was the war leader, Father only the President of a state which had indicated its sympathies in a tangible fashion. Thus, Churchill still arrogated the conversational lead, still dominated the after-dinner hours. But the difference was beginning to be felt.
And it was evidenced first, sharply, over Empire.
Father started it.
'Of course,' he remarked, with a sly sort of assurance, 'of course, after the war, one of the preconditions of any lasting peace will have to be the greatest possible freedom of trade.'
He paused. The P.M.'s head was lowered; he was watching Father steadily, from under one eyebrow.
'No artificial barriers,' Father pursued. 'As few favored economic agreements as possible. Opportunities for expansion. Markets open for healthy competition.' His eye wandered innocently around the room.
Churchill shifted in his armchair. 'The British Empire trade agreements' he began heavily, 'are--'
Father broke in. 'Yes. Those Empire trade agreements are a case in point. It's because of them that the people of India and Africa, of all the colonial Near East and Far East, are still as backward as they are.'
Churchill's neck reddened and he crouched forward. 'Mr. President, England does not propose for a moment to lose its favored position among the British Dominions. The trade that has made England great shall continue, and under conditions prescribed by England's ministers.'
'You see,' said Father slowly, 'it is along in here somewhere that there is likely to be some disagreement between you, Winston, and me.
'I am firmly of the belief that if we are to arrive at a stable peace it must involve the development of backward countries. Backward peoples. How can this be done? It can't be done, obviously, by eighteenth-century methods. Now--'
'Who's talking eighteenth-century methods?'
'Whichever of your ministers recommends a policy which takes wealth in raw materials out of a colonial country, but which returns nothing to the people of that country in consideration. Twentieth-century methods involve bringing industry to these colonies. Twentieth-century methods include increasing the wealth of a people by increasing their standard of living, by educating them, by bringing them sanitation--by making sure that they get a return for the raw wealth of their community.'
Around the room, all of us were leaning forward attentively. Hopkins was grinning. Commander Thompson, Churchill's aide, was looking glum and alarmed. The P.M. himself was beginning to look apoplectic.
'You mentioned India,' he growled.
'Yes. I can't believe that we can fight a war against fascist slavery, and at the same time not work to free people all over the world from a backward colonial policy.'
'What about the Philippines?'
'I'm glad you mentioned them. They get their independence, you know, in 1946. And they've gotten modern sanitation, modern education; their rate of illiteracy has gone steadily down....'
'There can be no tampering with the Empire's economic agreements.'
'They're artificial....'
'They're the foundation of our greatness.'
'The peace,' said Father firmly, 'cannot include any continued despotism. The structure of the peace demands and will get equality of peoples. Equality of peoples involves the utmost freedom of competitive trade. Will anyone suggest that Germany's attempt to dominate trade in central Europe was not a major contributing factor to war?'
It was an argument that could have no resolution between these two men....
The conversation resumed the following evening:
Gradually, very gradually, and very quietly, the mantle of leadership was slipping from British shoulders to American. We saw it when, late in the evening, there came one flash of the argument that had held us hushed the night before. In a sense, it was to be the valedictory of Churchill's outspoken Toryism, as far as Father was concerned. Churchill had got up to walk about the room. Talking, gesticulating, at length he paused in front of Father, was silent for a moment, looking at him, and then brandished a stubby forefinger under Father's nose.
'Mr. President,' he cried, 'I believe you are trying to do away with the British Empire. Every idea you entertain about the structure of the postwar world demonstrates it. But in spite of that'--and his forefinger waved--'in spite of that, we know that you constitute our only hope. And'--his voice sank
dramatically--'{you} know that {we} know it. {You} know that {we} know that without America, the Empire won't stand.'
Churchill admitted, in that moment, that he knew the peace could only be won according to precepts which the United States of America would lay down. And in saying what he did, he was acknowledging that British colonial policy would be a dead duck, and British attempts to dominate world trade would be a dead duck, and British ambitions to play off the U.S.S.R. against the U.S.A. would be a dead duck.
Or would have been, if Father had lived.

On College and grades

When I completed my masters degree I started working for  a large pulp and paper company (www.bilt.com). It was founded by one Karam  Chand Thapar
 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karam_Chand_Thapar), an Indian industrialist. The corporate folklore has it that while a student at the well-known Forman Christian College at Lahore Pakistan (http://www.fccollege.edu.pk/about) in undivided British India, he flunked five times in his sophomore year. Forman Christian College was then the equivalent of Harvard in South Asia. Its students went on to occupy the top positions in the industry, government, and education in South Asia.
Failing five times provided K.C. Thapar an incredible advantage; he came to know the students in five class years. That paid handsomely when he started his career (without a degree). He knew everybody in the industry and the government. He went on to create the Sugar, Pulp & Paper, Electronics, Banking, Coal, Chemical,... industries and was a billionnaire in an era when you could count billionnaires in India on one hand. His sons served on the Boards of universities including USC (one of his grandsons donated $1 million to SUNY Albany three years ago, I had nothing to do with that).
The reason I narrated the above story is to make a point that for the employment (and entrepreneurial) market the grades are absolutely irrelevant so long as you have the right address. The market does not need a finer signal than that you got in and that you have the backing of its enormous social network, and if you do not want to alienate any one, it is stupid to have grades at all. That is the reason why when I was at Claremont Colleges I used to joke that they should auction to the highest bidder their degrees once students were admitted.
Once the prestige is established what counts is that you got ion, and that you have the entire social network behind you. With that, it must be a miracle if you fail.

What matters is what you do when you succeed with or without Ivy education. Thapars were wonderful employers; I literally cried when I left them. They provided rent-free housing for all employees, provided schooling, college, and even had a university (http://www.thapar.edu/) for the employees along with others. The place IO worked at they even had a country club for the managerial employees. So I was not at all surprised when I heard that they were the first Indian company to gain ISO certification.

When my daughter got into an Ivy school (Brown) and other fancy schools, I advised her to go to a state school (University of California at San Diego) that did not have a football team and did not have a business school. She was not very happy then, but she did fine. This year she was nominated for an Emmy award in the news category for one of the news programs she produced.

Life is a wonderful cruise if you get into one of these schools, but making it without all that tail wind must be exhilarating and self-fulfilling.

On the compensation of Accounting faculty.

In my humble opinion, the demand for accounting PhDs is artificially created by AACSB and us the accounting faculty to keep the salaries high. Being a practice field, there should no reason why for most courses except for PhD pnce (it is questionable if most of them are accounting at all) a CPA is not adequate. At least the way accounting is taught presently.

As department chair I found it unconscionable that we paid more to accounting ABDs than what we paid senior faculty with stellar research records and prestigious awards (such as Guggenheim, Mcarthur genius,...). I hope one of these days some one calls our bluff. I can not accept that it is the "market", for the so-called market is a fake, a figment of our imagination created for our own aggrandizement.

On an Einstein (or Keynes) Quote.

"Whether you can observe a thing or not depends on the theory which you use. It is the theory which decides what can be observed." http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein

It is incredibly naive to say that physical scientists stole all of the easy problems. It is probably more meaningful to say that weaker physical scientists stole all the low hanging fruit. But then there is a clearly defined hierarchy of problems in the physical sciences when it comes to what is important, and that is why Einstein is revered but many others are not.

We should not be surprised at all if Nate Silver misses the results at times. After all, the domains he deals with are probably not governed by laws even in a statistical sense (that does not mean statistical analysis has no role to play).

In the old days when I took my econometrics course, OLS and all that stuff was disposed off rather quickly and we were told to concentrate on building a structural model of the problem domain, study it, derive from it the reduced form model and so on. I think those days are gone, and these days most (not all) feel quite satisfied with a single equation model.  The concept of a rich model to represent mathematically some aspect of nature, the hallmark of physical sciences borrowed in to the social sciences, has just abut disappeared. In the physical sciences, usually you start with a system of equations (differential/difference) and ultimately come up with a solution that is very easy to comprehend. In accounting we start with an equation and end up with a cartload of statistical mumbo jumbo.

In the physical sciences there is a clear distinction made between those who model and those who test them. Theoretical physicists work with mathematical models, but experimental physicists just verify them in nature. Nevertheless, the two collaborate in rather peculiar ways so that the science can advance (I have given instances of this in earlier postings). This enables theoreticians to hypothesize things that have not even been shown to exist. Bosons were conjectured by Satyen Bose with Einstein in the 1920s, but experiments to confirm their existence is now becoming possible 40 years after the death of Bose.

In accounting, on the other hand, we all pretend to do both with the result that we have perverse incentives to claim advances in both. We do not recognize that the skills needed for theoretical and empirical/experimental research are very different and rarely does one come across a person who can do justice to both.

Most sciences see this dichotomy between theoretical and experimental/empirical aspects of research but collaborate in ways that help the domain. When I switched to Computing towards the tail end of my career I found the way these two collaborate absolutely fascinating. I wish there was more of that in accounting.

Incidentally Keynes was a mathematical tripos student, and graduated twelfth wrangler at Cambridge. His thesis was in mathematics (Treatise on Probability, a classic). )Unfortunately, he lacked the genius in mathematics and so chose Economics  as told by the economist Harrod in his biography of Keynes, "... logical faculty, his accuracy and his lightning speed of thought made him a thoroughly competent mathematician. He had no specific genius for mathematics; he had to take pains with his work; ... he did not seek out those abstruse regions which are a joy to the heart of the professional mathematician.". (See http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/Biographies/Keynes.html).It is likely that, Keynes said those words. On the other hand, I think it was Einstein who said something to the effect that he opted out of economics because it was too difficult. It is possible that Einstein found the verbosity of the then German economists tiring.
 

On cooperatives.

Here is a fascinating video. Co-operative movement was popular when I was growing up, but disappeared with the emerging dominance of corporate capitalism. Now the clock seems to be turning back.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCDV7IUqSfs

Auditing Chinese companies listed in the US.

This whole case (http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/06/19/judge-dismisses-suit-against-auditor-who-failed-to-detect-fraud/) is surreal. American shareholders suing a Hong Kong auditor of a Chinese company in American courts. Should we be surprised that the communist chinese government is stubborn when it comes to auditing? They know that with US it can get away with anything, and they have nothing to lose. Unfortunately, we US taxpayers are left holding the bag while China  gets all the benefits of American capital markets while suffering none of its handicaps.

I doubt this decision will stand on appeal, but with kind of freewheeling justices in the majority, who knows?

Furthermore the cases against the underwriters and the outside auditors are still pending. It is difficult to believe that SEC has problems serving papers on Puda's chairman and CEO. We must discover a commercial equivalent of extraordinary rendition to cover cases like this.

And yet most Americans think China is a great place to do business. Lenin was prophetic when he said they would sell the capitalists the rope to hang themselves with.