social welfare

A collection of 20 posts

Micro targeting

Recently the Obama re-election campaign employed similar population-wide behavioral analytics to micro-target voters to ensure his re-election. There is no reason why we in India must not look to technology to devise ingenious methods for near real time data collection and population-wide analytics of social performance. This will not only

Feb 23, 2013 1 min read

Books

Book Review: The Checklist Manifesto

I recently read the book The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande – a respected surgeon, noted author, MacArthur fellow, New Yorker staff writer, and a professor at Harvard Medical School. The premise of the entire book is the author’s dive into the concept of a checklist and how they have

Aug 21, 2010 8 min read

Business

How to build an online community?

Every now and then, I try to build a group of people to talk about specific topics but it quickly dies because of inactivity. Although I really saw the value in having such a community, I just didn’t know how to build one. Even if one person keeps pumping

May 25, 2009 3 min read

India

Vote for the Candidate

I attended a Bangalore South Lok Sabha Candidates’ debate yesterday, this time held at NMKRV Jayanagar and organized by the Rotary Clubs of South Bangalore. Only Capt. Gopinath (Independent) had arrived on time. Ananth Kumar (BJP) arrived a bit late but immediately greeted each and every individual in the hall

Apr 20, 2009 4 min read

General

Thought for the Day

I had grown up among engineers, and I could remember the engineers of the twenties very well indeed: their open, shining intellects, their free and gentle humor, their agility and breadth of thought, the ease with which they shifted from one engineering field to another, and, for that matter, from

Mar 21, 2009 1 min read

General

What's your vision for Bengaluru?

The ABIDe, i.e. Agenda for Bengaluru Infrastructure and Development Task Force (setup by the current government) is working on a roadmap for development of Bengaluru along with deadlines and regular 100-day monitoring, etc. The comprehensive reports are available in PDF format on a public website with even discussion forums

Feb 9, 2009 3 min read

India

Water Sports in Sharavathy Valley

Last weekend, I was back in Sharavathy Valley in Shimoga, but this time for some water sports. Here’s a photo essay of the trip: When we were reaching our camp area, the entrance itself was impressive, and I was excited by such clear blue water. We had Breakfast and

Jan 24, 2009 4 min read

Books

Outliers : What leads to Success

I read Outliers, The STORY of SUCCESS by Malcolm Gladwell last week and found it fascinating. Here’s an excerpt: Cultural legacies *matter*, and once we’ve seen the surprising effects of such things as power distance and numbers that can be said in a quarter as opposed to a

Jan 15, 2009 3 min read

General

Common activities means better friends

If you want to make new friends, there is no use in just saying hi to people, something of value should be exchanged or there should be a common activity. That’s when they become friends. Real friends. I’ve added a page on my wiki to list the type

Oct 22, 2008

India

Politicians should have a retirement age

If there’s one thing that I wish could change in India, I would vote for having a retirement age for politicians. When there is a concept of retirement for many other careers like engineers, bankers, CEOs, etc. why shouldn’t the same apply for politicians? If the reason for

Oct 15, 2008 1 min read

Tech

Social networks of yore

I wonder why people consider “social networks” to be a “new thing”. It’s the “rage these days”, they say. Actually, they’ve been around for a while but in a different disguise. Take the case of the Erdos number: In order to be assigned an Erdos number, an author

Aug 1, 2008 2 min read

India

Indian Innovations for the Energy Challenge

After reading Atanu Dey on India’s Energy Challenge and Vijay Anand on Why the N-Deal is important, I was wondering if there were some interesting things being done in India regarding energy. And sure enough, I came across these: * Water * Balakrishna has created a turbine to generate power from

Jul 29, 2008 2 min read

General

To live unconventionally

Imagine a conversation with your doctor that goes like this: “What do you do for work?” the doctor asked me at the beginning of the interview. “Well, I’m trying to start my own social movement.” (There was a long pause, but he didn’t ask anything else about that.

Jun 24, 2008 4 min read

Books

Super Crunchers

Today, I re-read a book called Super Crunchers: How Anything Can Be Predicted by Ian Ayres. So what is supercrunching? Now something is changing. Business and government professionals are relying more and more on databases to guide their decisions. The story of hedge funds is really the story of a

Jun 23, 2008 5 min read

General

Why television and movies are captivating

From Philip K. Dick’s 1978 article “How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later” (emphasis mine): The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must

Apr 23, 2008 2 min read

India

Two unofficial traffic rules in India

1. Ignore all honking. Most of the honking is by nincompoops who want to save 30 seconds in travel but waste away their lives during the rest of the day. * Solution: We should ban all horns. It’s purpose has been lost. Reduce the noise pollution, please. 2. Never drive

Mar 6, 2008

General

Why does crowdsourcing work?

Tim O’Reilly’s definition of Web 2.0 makes it clear that “crowdsourcing” is one of the defining features of Web 2.0, not only RIAs: “The service automatically gets better the more people use it.” Crowdsourcing is about taking it to the next step where people ‘contribute’ something

Feb 25, 2008 4 min read

India

Urban Development

Around the recent gastroenteritis scare in Bangalore, NDTV was running a poll: Then, there was this whole one hour dedicated to hearing viewpoints from Veerappa Moily, Swathi Ramanathan and the general public regarding Bangalore’s infrastructure. Okay, okay, I know most of you by now are saying “Oh, come on,

Jan 30, 2008 3 min read

Business

Useful Websites for India

Like a broken record, I keep coming back to What are the killer web applications for India? So, I decided to make a list. A list of websites that are useful for most people in India. But what kind of websites am I looking at? The website should be something

Jan 24, 2008 1 min read

General

How to defend India?

I’ve been provoked and I can’t stop thinking about it. Incident 1. It all started on Day 2 of my Singapore trip (Dec 23 Sun) when a hotel owner was too friendly. Maybe he didn’t have much work, but anyway, he got pretty chatty with us and

Jan 23, 2008 10 min read

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