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2019 – Winner takes home nothing

For a country of 70 years and many more years to come – one election that is likely throw up either a hung parliament or a toothless government is quite insignificant. Unless we follow elections only for adrenalin rush, we should not follow 2019 general elections at all. The earlier blog was based on current sentiments and elementary game theory. It has thrown up some names and scenarios. We all know that the electorate is fickle and so are the sentiments. We also know, that the BJP election machinery is the best in the country today {sans probably the BJD in Odisha – which has an equally hard nosed and through machinery; in addition it has the finesse to be not seen as giving war rhetoric despite ruffling many a feathers) so the tables can turn. However for the purpose of this blog, lets assume my prognosis in the last blog holds true. It is a good read and nice spice for future story-telling, but such situations will not result in lasting success for the winners. What t...
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Picking the Winner – 2019

There are two sagas which will dominate the Indian psyche in 2019.   One is the much awaited Cricket World Cup. The other is the magnum opus, the road to the gaddi in New Delhi. The CWC will be played out in England. The other will play itself out in the streets of India and social media (na, not TV channels – they don’t have any influence. TV anchors, espl. the ones in English channels, don’t need to take their jobs or themselves very seriously. The people who notice them or care for what they say do not count in Indian elections). Without further ado, lets pick the winners first. My call, based on current mood in the country, probabilistically the person with the best odds of becoming the PM is Mr. Rahul Gandhi. Yes, it is him. Call him by whatever name you want. But game theory picks him to be ahead of others in the race to the gaddi. Probabilistically, though, of his becoming PM is well less than 50%. Another shocker – and an ‘apparent’ contradiction to the above – ...

For a religion or a product, an open door policy will work best

In the recent past, we have been witness to catchy rhetoric with regards to religious conversion. Strident calls to banning conversion, Ghar Wapsi, Love Jihad et al. I would like to stick my neck out and say almost everyone, right (‘bhakts’), left (‘liberals’), centre (government), has missed out on the most balanced perspective. A person has a right to choose a city and country different from his parents, he or she can also change his or her name given by the parents, what is wrong with the person choosing a religion different from he or she was born with. Religion is an experiential product. Products thrive when they are responsive to customer feedback. We go to five-star hotel to get pampered, if we are unhappy with the service we may not return. If the hotel has a problem with service quality, then over a period of time it will lose substantial business; then either it will buckle up based on customer feedback or will go out of business. That is exactly relevant for a re...

The high GDP growth and low employability anomaly in Indian Higher Education Sector

The high GDP growth rates of India relative to the rest of the world should normally lead to higher demand for higher education. During the late 2000s, there was a lot of talk of how low GER's may impede growth; however today we are in a situation where there is huge under-utilised capacity in the higher education sector despite decent macro-economic growth.  The premium and top decile institutes continue to get large number of admission applications. Students in these institutes generally get jobs commensurate to the cost of education and these institutes manage to command a premium compared. That is par. Top 10% institutes all over the world find it easy to get students. The problem is that, while in other countries only the bottom quartile has student intake problems; in India, for more than 90% of the higher education institutes there is a shortage of applications and seats go vacant. This despite the fact that India'...