Marketing@Olympics and other things

Yesterday while I was watching the 200m race, i saw Usain Bolt grab a camera from a Sports journalist and click away. Later it was all over the news. Many thought he was exploring the photo enthusiast part of his persona, but I wondered - How much would he have been paid for this? I mean top sportsmen who have worked hard to be where they are, don't even drink a cola for free on the street (they can actually be sued if they are photographed drinking a rival cola anywhere) why would he grab a new Nikon D4 introduced in January, on one of the biggest nights of his career and do the best kind of advertisement (one that looks natural) in one of the most watched moments around the world.

Marketing runs so deep in the system that you can never be sure if you really want some thing or you have been subconsciously suggested to want it. If you see the expression "The Beast" of Yohan Blake, that he does when he is being introduced at the start or during celebrations, he almost resembles the Puma which is his sponsor. Now that is some clever shit, and I wouldn't be surprised if that celebratory stance is actually paid for( how it works is it draws your attention to the logo he is also wearing on his jersey while he is on the screen and so registers it on your brain).

I see so many amateur photographers, who all incidentally have found out that photography is a good hobby to have and develops you artistically just when the digital camera technology was becoming economically feasible and companies needed a market now that they had the product. That maybe partly true, but I am sure a tabla or painting offers equally satisfying artistic experience, but they have no takers.  World is full of people who have little idea of what they want, they are just being manipulated everyday.

I am skeptical to an extreme (from experiences of course), to be aware of what i really want and what is being pushed by some party. I did not even read the Harry Potter series when it first came out and became a hit (well that was my loss), because even mainstream literature is usually shitty, like Chetan Bhagat or a Fifty shades of Grey. I let it grow stale and if it is any good it will stand the test of time. And then I will read/consume it when I am sure it is not me who is being monetized. Also the body of literature is so vast out there that if you are reading the best sellers, you are probably just lazy not to find out where all the good stuff is.

Monetizing everything runs very deep in capitalist culture. For example in many countries marijuana was not banned until few decades ago. It was a policy pushed by the US because as a vanguard of capitalism it is principally opposed to Marijuana as it is very hard to monetize. Of course Alcohol is much more harmful than marijuana, but that is legal. Because you can grow marijuana at your home and be satisfied, it is illegal. It is not good business and it is also not  good for business.

Cute Penguins?

Penguins are probably considered one of the cutest creatures around, with their shiny smooth skin and the way they waddle and slide on the ice. They have captured popular imagination in the movie Happy feet and also as a mascot of the Linux kernel. I recently read on a FB status how when a male penguin falls in love with a female penguin it searches the whole beach to find the perfect pebble to present to her. So cute and romantic right?


Let me tell you some things about Penguins that might change your opinion. 


Emperor Penguins are known to push each other in water to test if the water is safe and free of predators. When the penguins are hungry they gather around the shore and wait for somebody to go near the water. Eventually the hungriest one does and at this time they take the liberty to push him with a light nudge into the water. Then they watch his fate intently, and only when they are assured that the coast is clear they take the leap to find some food.


In the early twentieth century on an expedition to south pole, George Murray Levick studied the Adelie penguins, their habitat, reproduction etc. What he found about their sexual habits was so shocking that the information could not be published at that time and was under censorship for nearly a century. He reported acts of Homosexuality among the Penguins. And to that if you say - "Well, that is why homosexuality should not be illegal as it has been documented in around 1500 species, it is safe to say it is totally natural" what do you have to say about the acts of Pedophilia reported among the cute creatures down south?


And it does not stop there. Mountaineers who are reported missing in expeditions are sometimes found buried in ice 50 years later and identified by their photos. This is possible because ice preserves the flesh. The same happens in Antarctica and you can find bodies of penguins dead over a hundred years ago if you dig beneath the new layers of ice. It is not hard to find a perfectly preserved Penguin corpse in the Antarctic and it is also not hard to find a living Penguin over it. Those cuddly penguins have been reported to carry out the most depraved act of all - Necrophilia.


So much for cuteness! And I am sorry if I ruined that penguin stuffed toy you like so much for you.

The Politics of IITs

It first came to my notice in early 2003. I was a first year student at IIT Kanpur then. On winter mornings sipping tea at MT and going through local hindi news papers like Aaj and Dainik Jagran, I would find small articles about IITK somewhere on sixth or seventh page. Usually they would be about cultural or technical festivals (Antaragini and Techkriti) or sports festivals. Or about some project that was completed or announced by a lab in collaboration with some corporation or government body.  This sort of news was not present in Lucknow newspapers. But over the course of time I could see more news about IITs in Lucknow news papers as well.

Then they during the placement season they started publishing the details of job offers students were bagging with top offers being emphasized. Over the years these top job offers news started making to front page in Kanpur and started being reported in Lucknow newspapers as well. The feel good nature of these kind of news stories was identified and exploited by mainstream media outlets nationwide. The emotions it generated in the public were similar to the likes of "Mukesh Ambani 3rd on the Forbes List of 100 richest people". Somehow media fools you into being proud of what shouldn't concern you at all and probably isn't even news worthy. IIT stories are also popular because it represents class mobility. Most lower middle class Indians consider IIT a door to upper middle class and they like to be reminded that despite their current predicament, there is a way out.

Being continuously fed stories about IITs for years, general public feels involved with them. A bit like people generally having views about the saas-bahu soaps they follow. Public is enamored with good news and disturbed by what they perceive to be bad news much more then they should be if their involvement was only at a rationally justified level. And whenever public feels strongly about something, politicians emerge on the scene to exploit those feelings.

Since becoming the Education minister Mr. Sibal took upon himself the crusade for making the IITs socially inclusive.  The entrance test was to be changed to a format which would eliminate or significantly reduce the relevance of coaching classes. Because coaching classes are an unfair advantage to a certain strata of the society and also the formal education system gets sidelined. Marks obtained in class 12th board examinations were to carry 40% weight.
 
Thankfully Mr. Sibal was not very successful in his bid and the final arrangement looks nothing like his original plans. Only top 20 percentile of each board will be able to appear for the JEE, which is a reasonable rule although if it were up to me, i would rather not have that as well. If you believe otherwise,  a few stories of injustices dealt by UP and Bihar boards can easily convert you.

What was amazing though was the magnitude of the effort Mr. Sibal put in his endeavors. With a population of 1.2 Billion, of which majority of households do not have access to decent primary education and the university education is in ruins, he is most worried about reforming a system which takes in less than ten thousand students an year and is probably the best performing institution in the country.

When will we see similar zeal from the minister to reform the primary education system? If he really wants to make higher education socially inclusive, shouldn't the school system be reformed first so that the quality of students increases. Instead his preferred solution is to twist the rules of the game. The JEE is in my opinion is one of the fairest systems in India (barring the externals ) and it is best if it remains fair.

But tinkering with the IITs offers Mr. Sibal much more political mileage than reforming the school system. First reason is that reforming school system could be a costly affair for the government which is already missing its fiscal targets under the weight of its welfare programs. The second and the more important in my opinion is that a shrewd politician like Mr. Sibal has recognized the irrational fancy the Indian population has taken to the IITs over the years. Populist moves regarding the IITs give him most "bang for the buck".  He is implicitly promising a bigger share of the pie to his vote bank.

I can only wish luck to the IIT system which is now on the radars of  politicians playing class and caste politics, partly due to its own success.

The Unabomber Manifesto

Recently I stumbled upon a brilliant essay from Ted Kaczynski, better known as the 'Unabomber' - A name that doesn't do justice to what he stood for. If it were up to me, I would call him the Waldo  of our times although that parallel stops where the bombings begin.

From Wikipedia -

"Kaczynski was born in Chicago, Illinois, where, as an intellectual child prodigy, he excelled academically from an early age. Kaczynski was accepted into Harvard University at the age of 16, where he earned an undergraduate degree, and later earned a PhD in mathematics from the University of Michigan. He became an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley at age 25, but resigned two years later.

In 1971, he moved to a remote cabin without electricity or running water, in Lincoln, Montana, where he lived as a recluse while learning survival skills in an attempt to become self-sufficient. He decided to start a bombing campaign after watching the wilderness around his home being destroyed by development.From 1978 to 1995, Kaczynski sent 16 bombs to targets including universities and airlines, killing 3 people and injuring 23. Kaczynski sent a letter to The New York Times on April 24, 1995 and promised "to desist from terrorism" if the Times or The Washington Post published his manifesto, Industrial Society and Its Future (also called the "Unabomber Manifesto"), in which he argued that his bombings were extreme but necessary to attract attention to the erosion of human freedom necessitated by modern technologies requiring large-scale organization."

His manifesto can be found here . It is a pretty long read for a manifesto but thoroughly enjoyable for most parts. His world view is completely objective analysis of the consequences of being part of a industrialist society. I do not agree though with his view that we need a revolution and complete dismantling of the system.

The most interesting part for me was his psychoanalysis of the Leftist mind. Examining the case of Indian Naxal movement- It is my opinion that people who are oppressed and part of any Leftist movement are actually yearning for Freedom and their plight is hijacked by the leftist activist coming from middle class backgrounds. The oppressed want to revolt because their freedom are being compromised but if they were aware of the fact that any leftist movement turns into a totalitarian regime which actually causes more suffering and oppression, they would hardly opt for the path they have chosen. The poor and the illiterate whose sufferings are showcased by the activist types, are in it because of the political ignorance. Part of the blame lies in lack of pro Freedom Humanitarian organizations in India as well.

And the Activists are mostly people of a certain kind. 'The two psychological tendencies that underlie modern leftism we call "feelings of inferiority" and "oversocialization." Feelings of inferiority are characteristic of modern leftism as a whole, while oversocialization is characteristic only of a certain segment of modern leftism; but this segment is highly influential.'

I found that what Ted wrote in 90s perfectly describes what personalities like Arundhati Roy have been doing since then. My understanding of the Leftist brain is considerably enriched after reading the manifesto.

Euro crisis

Euro crisis was misjudged by most market participants and even the authorities as a fiscal crisis. It was the prevalent opinion in 2010 and 2011. The dominant theme emerging now is that it has more characteristics of a balance of payment crisis rather than a fiscal one.

After the advent of the common currency, Germany became highly competitive compared to the peripheral nations. Germany was the major exporter of goods to rest of the Europe and it enjoyed a period of low unemployment and high growth coupled with low and stable inflation. Trade surpluses surged and prosperity increased. Policymakers couldn't have hoped for better outcome.

Peripheral countries had a period of high deficits financed by external debt. Loose monetary policy created a credit fueled real asset bubbles most notably housing in Spain. Wages increased while competitiveness declined compared to core Europe.  When the credit crisis hit, value of the collateral on bank balance sheets collapsed. Both banks and governments were in a precarious situation at the same time nursing an over leveraged balance sheet. Bank needed to bailed out causing accelerated increase in debt to GDP ratios. With sovereigns being unable to print their own currency, much needed liquidation of debt through monetization and inflation could not happen.

 The current situation in Europe is certainly not a stable state. The Fiscal and structural imbalances need to be fixed. It is very difficult to predict the dynamics of the situation, because that depends on how the politicians act. Politicians try to move in the direction of the consensus to limit collateral damage. There is tremendous activity in European countries towards manufacturing of consent on some articles while politicians are busy preparing there own road maps, which in itself is not a simple exercise.

But somethings can be deduced regarding the final outcome of the situation with more clarity than the dynamics. At this time, there seem to be two possibilities.

 First is the path of political disintegration which leads to breakup of the Euro. Peripheral countries have a reason to resent German stubbornness with austerity. But first major step in this direction will probably come from Germany because of its creditor status. Just like in the Soviet disintegration where the process of disintegration was started by the disenchanted beneficiary, Russia. This will lead to separate currency blocs or a situation similar to pre Euro era, but with heightened acrimony between nations. Trade will not be as free as it is today. Target 2 imbalances would have to be restructured to be settled in a future date. Peripheral countries will have capital controls before the breakup to prevent the flight of capital. The new Lira, Peseta and Franc would devalue after the issue while the Deutschmark and Guilder will appreciate in value. Germany will lose its competitiveness and suffer a recession while peripheral countries will re surge.

The second solution is the path that leads to political integration in Europe. Some sort of compromise is reached regarding the structural reforms and the fiscal compact. If the problem has to be addressed at its root  it should lead to a competitive periphery compared to Germany.  In a common currency framework this can happen through relative inflation in Germany compared to the periphery. Since peripheral deflation is not an option, we can only expect stable prices in the periphery and 4 to 5% inflation in Germany(despite the Bundesbank mandate). Wage inflation in turn will lead to real asset inflation.

Consequently, I am pretty bullish on German real assets- real estate, commercial property, inflation linkers etc for the next decade. In both the cases above- the asset classes stand to gain - either through re denomination or inflation. The risk to the view is how well the imminent German recession is managed.

The Spirit of India

Growing up in the nineties in India when cricket was the ultimate passion and an unparalleled mania, there was one event which had the most impact on the fans. In late 90s, a match fixing scandal involving a number of high profile cricket players with bookies and punters in India and Pakistan emerged. As a result Indian cricketers - Mohd. Azharuddin, Ajay Jadeja and Nayan Mongia faced bans. But more importantly it turned a whole generation of cricket fanatics  to disillusioned cynics. Never was the game of cricket same again. Fans still cheered when India played, but it was not like before. You could never trust the outcome and any bad performance by the cricketers was seen with suspicion. To me it was a tragedy of faith. It was probably the worst event in professional sports history, but sadly the hurt caused to a billion hearts is not quantifiable.

More than a decade later, cricket in India is a much bigger money spinner. It has changed drastically and has come to resemble an organized industry. Human passions are being milked for money by the industrialists  and what appeared quaint when it all started is being accepted by an ever growing majority. Events of more than a decade ago remain etched in the memories but the sands of time have put them in the background.

How did the cricketers involved in the episode fare? Ajay Jadeja and Nayan Mongia occasionally are seen on TV providing commentary and match analysis in the studios. But the home run was hit by the king pin, captain of the cricket team involved in the racket - Azharuddin.

He contested the Loksabha elections in 2009 on an Indian National Congress ticket from Moradabad. And to the surprise of many he won the election. He now represents Lakhs people in the Lower house of Indian parliament.

Think about it for a moment. A person who cheated a billion people, instead of being prosecuted by law has been elected to represent the same people where his job is to protect their interests and work for their development. You got to be kidding me! How the hell is this possible.

Are we so forgiving as a nation. Or is it that the rest of the candidates were even worse then him? Hard to imagine. I am told that the candidate against him was a Hindu and Moradabad is a Muslim majority district. I am uncomfortable swallowing the reality of caste/religion politics. I am aware of the Indian propensity to forgive the scamming politicians who have no shame  going back to their constituencies asking for vote and being involved in ten different corruption cases at the same time. But if Match fixing doesn't make the cut what will? If Cricket is a religion in India and we ignore the crime against what we are most passionate about as a nation, what will we ever stand for? I am wondering if it is the extension of the "Spirit of Mumbai" which Mumbai summons the morning after a terrorist attack and reports to work. "Spirit of Moradabad", "Spirit of India". Nobody cares if the Motherland gets plundered and raped. We forgive the rapists, we even make them our Kings.