The Yahoo Internship 2011 (Part 3)

From the second week of July, I started working on the second part of our project. I started with testing out some basic existing algorithms on the data. This involved coding in Matlab. The algorithms were simple but had issues regarding tuning of parameters. Once the baselines were ready, we started on our own algorithm. I suggested one algorithm and Dhruv suggested another. I implemented the first one and soon had good results. Dhruv was quite delighted, and declared that we had "publishable" results. But over the weekend I discovered a strange behavior of the algorithm and after a lot of brainstorming finally understood the problem. I explained the issue to Dhruv, but none of us could find a convincing way to get around it, and so I started implementing the second algorithm. This was much slower, but did not have any other issue. We could convincingly beat the baselines. Buoyed by the success, we tried out a large number of variants throughout July. Dhruv sometimes sat with me and we coded together. Soon I got his habit of saying "Fight kya hai saale ka?" on getting unexpected results or mysterious errors. I now knew that the internship had been fairly successful- a departure from the endless string of failures i had had over the previous year.

In the middle of July, there was a presentation "Intern Showcase", where the interns had to give a 15-minute presentation on their work. During this i got to see many of the interns for the first time, and what they worked on. It was soon after this that Rajeev decided that a large-scale implementation of the project was in order. Charu, a research engineer, was put in charge of this. The last two weeks of my internship often involved myself explaining my work to her. I taught her the basics of topic models and explore-exploit algorithms, and then ran her through our framework and explained my code in detail. I developed a good working relation with her. We always spoke in Hindi, thus making the relation feel more comfortable and informal. It was decided that I would continue to come to the Yahoo! office about once a week over August and early September to help her with her coding, and if possible try something myself in IISc.

As I have said in the previous post, throughout May, June and early July life had been monotonous. It was all work and no play. But in the middle of July, there came a paradigm shift. Uma, who used to sit in our cubicle, had temporarily left Yahoo for a company-sponsored PhD in IIT Bombay. In her place came Isha, a new intern from BITS Pilani. In a matter of a few days we became good friends. She was part of a huge group who joined Yahoo from BITS Pilani- most as interns and some in permanent positions. At lunchtime, Isha's friends like Monika and Priyanka came to call her, and she called me to come with them. I was too happy to dump my original group of lunchmates. Lunchtimes became a lot happier in a company of my own age group. To make things better, one day the Labs team arranged a lunch in the Pyramid restaurant for the interns and their mentors, where most of the interns came to know each other. There were quite a few interns from the IITs who were in BTech or MTech Dual Degree. There were 4 more PhD interns like me, but all were studying outside India- UCSD, ASU UT-Austin etc. Among the BITS-Pilani girls, only Isha was in the Labs team. The following day, all the Labs people (except a lazy few) were taken to Leela Palace for bowling and lunch. Now most of the interns knew each other finally, though most were to leave in a couple of weeks. Most of the younger interns and the BITS Pilani people became friends. Every day a new friendship was made. Next week was Priyanka's birthday, and all of us went over to Pyramid restaurant again. Later the same day, Isha pulled me to a movie being screened in the Cafetaria - "How to train your Dragon". I never had a taste for this kind of movies, but thoroughly liked it (perhaps because of the company). As if all this was not enough, Dhruv went on holiday for a few days and I had lots of fun with Isha and co. The last part of the internship was nothing short of a blast. I decided that even in undergraduate days I never had had so much fun!

(Over)

The Yahoo Internship 2011- part 2

From the second week, the work began in full flow. We had a discussion on the initial model to be tried, and I had to derive the inference equations and then code it up. I was given a Java implementation of LDA written by a Lab member called Prithviraj, and I had to first understand it and then modify it to our model. Also a fair amount of text processing was involved. For two very hectic weeks I was busy with all this, and even had to work full time on weekends, albeit from home. The code was long, and I was always afraid that there will be some bug. There was no concrete way to understand if there is a bug or not.  Throughout the coding phase I tested on small parts of the data. My mentor was often not satisfied with the result and insisted that there was a bug somewhere, and made me look for it. Sometimes a bug was located, and sometimes not, and we had to conclude that the model had limitations. When the code was ready I started to run it on the full data. The results were moderate, but my mentor was not satisfied. However, my advisor in IISc also wanted me to do some work for an approaching deadline. The fourth week of May was very hectic as after returning to the campus in the evening I again had to run to the lab to do this work. Finally in the final week of May my adviser arranged a 1-week break in the internship so that I could do the work in IISc. The leave was granted, but the IISc project did not work out, and I rejoined internship on 1 June.

After the initial results with topic models in May, we decided to try other approaches. This involved designing of features. Throughout June, we tried a wide variety of features, some inspired by other papers and some based on our understanding of the data. I spent quite some time just going through the data to get a feel of what could be good features. We consulted different people, including the Signal Processing stalwart Malcomn Slaney, who had come to India to give a talk at a summer school jointly organized by Yahoo and IISc. Nothing, however gave really promising results. Dhruv once observed that Rajeev's voice was gradually rising, and was worried that a bashing may be coming up soon. Finally, by the last week of June we decided to freeze the issue of features, and go back to modelling. Most of the Java coding was done by me, while Dhruv wrote a few Matlab scripts.  After a fair amount of hard work for a week, Dhruv was satisfied with the results, and decided to move over to the next phase- Explore-Exploit Algorithms. I was satisfied with the hard work and the learning experience, but often rued the lack of freedom and a scope to try my own ideas.

Throughout June and the early part of july I was thus preoccupied with the work. I hardly had any leisure time when in office, and though there were some more interns i never got any chance to make friendship with them. The lunchtimes were monotonous, as already described in the previous post. In the cab also there was no one of my age group except Pavan (1 year senior), but he rarely came, and even if he did come he was busy with his laptop throughout the journey. However, i have the ability to enjoy solitude, and I had a nice time observing the route and the other passengers. I soon picked up the route and with the help of Google Maps, developed an fair idea about the geography of some of the areas we covered during the journey. The most interesting part of the journeys was the Kannada film songs which played on Radio City FM radio. Although I did not follow the lyrics I found the tunes quite amusing. Memories of those tough days are abound with the tunes of "Ore Pinkuu..", "Don't worry Padmavathi", "Sanju mattu Geetha" and "Thara Thara Hidisire".

Another interesting part was in observing the copassengers. In the original schedule I was the first pick-up, but later Sarvanan superceded me. He was an elderly and glum person, who sat quietly on a seat throughout the journey. Shortly after my boarding came Inayat Shareef, the accounts officer in his 40s, with whom I developed an unlikely acquaintance despite the massive age difference. Next were Preethi and Pavan, both of whom were always late by around 5 minutes, introducing a delay of nearly 10 minutes. They boarded near Mathikere bus stop, after which we drove to MS Ramaiah Institute of Technology, where on some days the bulky S. Balakrishnan boarded and promptly started reading something on a Kindle Reader. Down the same road was the quiet and ever-punctual Vipin, followed by Shiva and Ravi near MS Ramaiah Hospital. Next was Nethra in Sanjay Nagar, who also kept us waiting regularly at the door of her house, till she returned from the market on a scooter and handed over the vegetables to her maid. After this the bus drove a long way to Kaveri Cinema where the gorgeous Deepika boarded, usually on time.

The bus usually reached the office around 8:30AM, after which I had breakfast in the Cafetaria. There was a wide variety of food, but my menu revolved around veg/onion-cheese-grilled sandwich, masala dosa and idly-vada. Usually the breakfast was taken alone, though sometimes Amit (Swagato's friend) also joined. During the work hours, when I needed to relax the brain and eyes, I strolled around the building. It was 6-storeyed, and we occupied the 3rd floor. Each floor had a "theme", and all the glass-doored conference rooms in that floor were named according to that theme. In our floor, the theme was "Cars", and so the different rooms were named as "Toyota", "Nissan", "Ford" etc. Each floor had a few "Breakout Areas", some of which were for beverages/snacks and some for foosball and TT. Throughout the building, the restrooms were hilariously named "Go-pee" (men's) and "Go-pee-ka" (women's) :-o

(To be continued)

The Yahoo Internship 2011- part 1

2011 was a year full of many experiences, and in contrast to the previous 4 years (except 2009), there were more good/interesting experiences than bad ones. Most of these experiences were acquired during my internship at Yahoo! Labs, Bangalore.

The offer for internship came around February. The timing was good- it served as a morale-booster at a time when my morale was in the lowest possible ebb. A journal paper had been rejected recently, but even worse, i had no direction to work on. So I was rather pleased to get the offer. After consultation with my advisor, i fixed the period of the internship from 2nd May to 29th July. I had been told who would be my mentor, but not what my project would be. At any rate, I had been assured that it would be on Machine Learning. I knew that here was a chance for me to resurrect my failing PhD, and I must make the most of it.

On 2nd May I had been asked to report to Yahoo's Embassy Golf Link office at 9AM. A week before, I had travelled to the place and located the office. On D-Day i woke up at 5:30AM, shaved, bathed and dressed in formals, nibbled a few biscuits and around 7AM, left IISc. I boarded a bus, and after changing at Majestic, getting down at Domlur, walking for 15 minutes and waiting 10 minutes to cross the Intermediate Ring Road, reached the office around 8:30AM. There was a huge, plush building with glass door and a fancy reception hall. It was Monday, and every Monday Yahoo takes in a group of new recruits. I was asked to wait in the reception hall, along with the new joinees. I spent time watching the televisions which were flashing news about the killing of Osama on the previous night. Around 10AM, we were hearded off to a medium-sized lecture hall. A HR member called Vineeta Varkey conducted the orientation of the group, introduced us to the different facilities in Yahoo and made us fill up lots of forms. She also divided us into random groups of 6, and conducted a short GD on why Yahoo is special. There were about 45 people joining on that day, of which only I seemed to be in a technical position. Most of the people were older than me, and came from other companies. By the end of the particularly boring day, I had my laptop and accessories, but the cubicle which had been assigned to me turned out to be already occupied by someone else! But it was already nearing 5PM, and at 5:30 the vehicles leave. So i had to pack up for the day without even meeting my mentor and manager, though I did find out their cubicle numbers from Vineeta. I had to speak to the transport officer Mr. Venky and he assigned me to a cab (Yahoo has a fleet of 50 cabs in addition to shuttle services and late-night cabs). I boarded the cab-a Tavera- and returned home after a long journey through heavy rains and heavy traffic jams.

Next day I again had to come to office by myself, and this time after breakfast went straight to the cube of my mentor Dhruv. He was in his position, and helped me get a seat in his cubicle. It was a cubicle with 4 desks. I would sit diagonally opposite my mentor, and the other two positions were occupied by Subhajit and Uma. Soon after I had established myself at the position, that I was called for a meeting with Rajeev, my manager, along with Dhruv. The problem was defined and I was given a set of papers to read. I was somewhat disappointed that it was related to text and not vision. The major components of the project were Topic Models which I knew in theory but had never worked with in practice, and Explore-Exploit Algorithms, about which I had no damn clue. So the first week was devoted to reading the papers sent to me, and getting a working knowledge of the subject. Throughout this week I got acquainted with the different people who worked in the Labs, and often we went for lunch together in the Yahoo Cafetaria. This lunch group had, except myself and Dhruv, Sundar (IISc alumnus), Vinod, Vidit, Sachin, Ajesh and sometimes Pankaj and Charu. Dhruv, Vidit, Vinod and Sundar were Research Scientists and the rest Research Engineers. Unfortunately most of them were quite older, and discussed matters over lunch which were of no interest to me. So i stayed quiet and simply listened to them.

The first week was marred by transportation problem. While returning there was no problem, and the 1.5hr journey was made entertaining by Shijo and Sharmila who kept fighting and pulling each other' legs all through. I also got acquainted with Keerthi, Srikanth and Inayat. But in the mornings i could never catch the cab. The cab driver spoke only Kannada, and though other passengers helped us negotiate a pick-up point, the cab either did not come to that point or it was full by the time it came. So every day i had to wait till about 8AM for the cab, and then take a bus, jostle through the crowd, and reach office around 9:30, which is an hour late. This issue was fixed the following week, when i was assigned to a new cab- a Tempo Traveller- with more seats, a more convenient pick-up point and a driver who could speak a language which was an acceptable approximation of Hindi.

(To be Continued)

Sustainable Human Development in India: Some thoughts

India is the 7th-largest country in the world in terms of area, but the 2nd-largest in terms of population. Recently, the population crossed a staggerring 1.2 billion. This means that roughly 16 per cent of the world's population lives in India. The question is, what is their standard of living? Unfortunately, the answer is "very unsatisfactory". In terms of Human Development Index, which is supposed to reflect an average person's access to what is considered as basic amenties-food, water, sanitation and education (and others), India ranks much worse than many African countries.

The Indian cities have been witnessing phenomenal growth in population. This is mostly due to migration of people from smaller towns and villages, in search of jobs. Some of these migrants are educated youngsters who come to work in the companies (Bangalore, the IT and engineering hub of India attracts educated youngsters including myself from all over the country), and many others come in search of lesser-paying jobs like drivers, labourers,  carpenters etc. Many others travel each day to the cities from suburbs as daily wage earners. The first category are paid lucrative salaries by the MNCs-there are reports of college freshers being offered 40lakhs per annum-with which they start living luxurious lives. The second category often earn as little as 40K per annum, despite severely demanding nature of their jobs. Apart from this disparity of income, the profligate lifestyles of the rich citizens tend to hamper the living conditions of the cities. Bangalore suffers the problem of traffic congestions as it has far more private cars it can handle. Added to this is the problem of pollution. I will advocate a law that no citizen should be allowed to posseess more than 1 car or two-wheeler. Moreover, private cars and taxis should be allowed to travel only if they carry some least number of passengers (perhaps 3). While this may be looked upon by some as encroachment on personal freedom, such a step may be necessary for sustainability of the system given that it is under enormous stress. On the other hand, the government has to improve the public transport system. This will not only reduce the need for personal transport, but also provide employment.

Housing is another issue in big cities. While the rich people often practically own several flats-far more than what they need-the poor people are forced to stay in slums or congested settlements, in poor conditions. We can do with a law that will allow a person to own only one flat in a city, and that too if his wife/her husband and his/her parents do not own a flat. If a family is too big to be accomodated in a single flat then additional flat can be owned, but only after a verification by a commitee.  There should be a dedicated municipal body in each city to control housing. Once the rich people consume less space, the extra space can be used to provide better living conditions for dwellers of slums and shanties.

Two of the deepest problems in India are corruption and population explosion. For corruption control there are laws which are usually ineffective, as the enforcers are themselves corrupt. For population control the government has tried out different measures over the years-from forced sterilization to awareness programs. Yet there is no let-up in population growth. I wonder if the government can observe every alternate year as "Birth-Free Year"s, in which no new birth will be allowed. Of course, it will have to be made known well in advance so that families can plan accordingly. Any birth reported in such years would be considered as an offence, and will be dealt with accordingly. The government had coined a slogan "Hum Do, Hamare Do" over a decade ago, urging couples to have at most two children. It can be turned into a law.

It may not be nice to have such restrictions on people in a democratic country. But India has serious problems with her economy, population and living conditions of the people. Unfortunate but true, Indians still consider cars and houses as status symbols, and are driven by the desire to possess more of them without caring about the larger picture of sustainable growth of the country. That is why I find it important to have such laws, even at the cost of some personal freedom.

A train journey (a completely random post)

It was a warm and sunny day in Bangalore. Around 12 noon, I put my bag on my shoulders, double-locked my hostel room, called home that i am departing and set off. I bought some snacks from the shop opposite Kabini, and went out through the main gate. After waiting a few miniutes, a Majestic-bound bus came and I boarded it. Around noon on a saturday the roads were clear, and in about 20 minutes i was outside the huge building with "Bangalore City" written on top in 3 languages. I texted mom and entered the station building.

Like any major railway station in India, it was very crowded inside. After moving about arbitrarily for a few minutes I finally found the electronic display for arrivals and departure. My train, Vrindavan Express, had been scheduled on Platform 1. So, no overbridges. I reached the platform and found it vacant. I sat on a bench and waited. The platform was clean and relatively empty. Soon i got bored and started walking up and down, looking at the various charts put up along the walls. Before long i heard a whistle and turned back. The Up train was coming from Chennai, led by a red WAP4 loco. The same rake will return to Chennai. The train stopped, the passengers got down, the railway staff locked the doors from inside for maintainance. Finally around 2PM they were opened for the Chennai-bound passengers. I pulled out my e-ticket printout and checked my coach and seat number. It was AC Chair Car, and I had booked a window seat. I was only the third passenger to board my car, and quickly found my seat and occupied it. 

Ever since childhood, i have had a deep passion for train journeys. Even at the age of 25, nothing attracts me more than train journeys. I really find it weird when i see people sleeping on the upper berth all through the day in a train. On a train I never need a companion, or even a book, and sit glued to the window all day. The ever-changing landscape, the stations, tracks, other trains and locomotives fascinate me. 

There is another kind of excitement that i feel when i first board a train. Who will be my co-passengers? Will there be a family, a group of college students returning home, servicemen travelling alone? Most importantly (though least likely) will there be a nice girl of my age, travelling alone to the same destination? I sat in my seat for several minutes, in optimistic excitement. Soon my copassengers arrived. A sikh family of 4 members- husband,wife, child and another male. The adults were in their early 30s. The sardarji sat next to me, and his wife on the corridor seat. It was time for departure. Soon there was a long whistle and the train moved. I texted mom again and looked out. The journey had begun!

The train rolled slowly, over the elevated tracks. We were travelling next to the busy main roads of bangalore. The train was crawling slowly, and the vehicles on the road were overtaking. I hate this stuff. I don't understand why the vehicles appear next to the train only when it is crawling- why can't they come when it is running at full speed? On long journeya, very occasionally when the tracks come next to a highway and I see my train overtaking the trucks, buses and cars, I feel really excited! After several minutes of rolling, the train reached Bangalore Cantonment station. Many people boarded my car. The TTE appeared soon. I gave him my e-ticket printout. He checked the name, ticked it and returned it to me without nothering to check the identity card. Sardarji got his ticket checked, and looked at me. He asked in Hindi if I was travelling alone. I replied in the affirmative. Then he asked me whether I lived in Bangalore, and then which school I studied in. I have got used to being asked this in trains. I replied that I study in a college. He looked genuinely surprised. This is the one moment I hate on trains. I would generally love to talk to copassengers- but as a 25-year-old matured person, not as a 14-year-old boy which they usually consider me (not without reason). On further questioning by Sardarji I just said that I study engineering, and was going home in Kolkata. This is what i usually reply when asked on trains what i am studying- I really hate it when people stare at me, obviously wondering how this 14-year-old boy is doing PhD....has India finally got a new child prodigy?

To avoid further questions I concentrated on the window. To be polite I kept looking into the compartment from time to time, so that Sardarji did not think i was avoiding conversation or something. When he asked nothing more for the next 15 minutes, I pulled out my earphones and plugged them into the ears, and started enjoyong the journey. The train had now crossed the city limits of Bangalore, and was moving at a good speed towards Bangarapet. There is a curious feature next to the track- a hillock with extremely large round rocks on it. As it passed, I thought of photographing it with my mobile camera but decided against. I tried to estimate the speed of the train by looking at the mileposts and measuring the time. We were taking 33 seconds to cover a kilometer- more than 100kph. I was satisfied.

The train reached Jolarpettai bang on time, and departed. I sent yet another text home, and again concentrated on the window. It was a bright sunny afternoon over the fields and meadows. The train was rushing at over 100kph again. I loved it all- the weather, the scenary, the speed, the fact that i was going home, the song playing in my earphone, and the very fact that i am on a train. The speed reduced after some time, and soon we came to an unscheduled halt in the middle of a field. Obviously the train was waiting for signal. 15 minutes passed. I was feeling disturbed. The journey resumed finally, and we reached Katpadi behind time. The sikh family got down, and two other people boarded the train and took the seats next to me. This time, the person sitting next to me was actually a girl. As soon as she took her seat she pulled out a phone and started speaking over it in Tamil. I took out my lunchbox and ate the snacks i had bought in iisc. It was getting dark. There was not much to look outside. This was a problem with AC coaches- nothing can be seen at night as the glasses reflect the interior of the car. I abandoned the window and looked into the car. The girl had an e-ticket, and had kept it ready for the TTE. At one point i gave a short glance out of curiousity- Meenakshi, 28 years, Katpadi to Chennai.

A couple of hours passed. I was getting bored inside the car, and kept peeping through the window occasionally but nothing could be seen outside. Only i could feel the train moving. To entertain, I kept following the music in my earphones. At length, lights became visible outside. We were entering into an urban area- possibly chennai. We were soon travelling next to roads, buildings and shops. Finally the train entered Chennai Central. The delay had been more than made up-we were 15 minutes before time. The passengers got down, and from the platform i gave a call home. Then i hurried to find the electronic displays- i had to find the Chennai-Howrah Mail now.

The Vegeterianism Issue

One issue that is frequently discussed and debated in India, and with much lower but increasing frequency across the world, is that of vegeterianism/veganism. Lots of arguments are put forth by a small but extremely vocal group of people who advocate shunning of meat/animal products. A large fraction of them are Hindus from India, who have been born in vegeterian families to start with. Also in developed Western countries, where non-vegeterian foods from a large number of animals form a very large proportion of the diet, some people are voluntarily taking up vegeterianism, and some of them are also vociforously campaigning for the cause. As is the norm in my blog, I will analyze the major arguments one by one, and finally express my personal opinion.

1) Philosophical/Religious argument: Killing is unethical/a sin. Some recent philosophers say that killing "sentient beings" (beings that are aware of their surroundings) is unethical. But immediately we are faced with the question- What about plants? Why is killing them NOT unethical/a sin? Just because we think plants are insentient, do we have the right to kill them? And why at all should sentience be the criteria in this regard? Why not any other criteria- either more restrictive or less?

2) Cruelty argument: This is PETA's main argument. Lots of videos are available showing the pathetic conditions in which animals are reared in the large-scale, mechanized meat industry, particularly in US. Many animals are so much overfed that their legs break under the weight of their bodies, and in some cases animals are skinned alive. These are facts, but not sound arguments for vegeterianism. Their demand should be to make the rearing houses and slaughterhouses more sensitive to the livestock.

3) Emotional argument: "How can u eat such sweet little creatures?" or "Don't u feel that these are sons/daughters of someone else?" - Well of course these can appeal to some people, but once again it is not a sound argument. Nonvegeterians will quickly point out that there are many carnivorous animals as well, and food chain is a natural phenomena. Claims like "human beings are naturally vegeterians- they take meat only out of greed" are baseless- human beings learned to hunt long before agriculture, and many tribals, who are the most "natural" human beings are non-vegeterians.

4) Health arguments: Both types of diet have their benifits and drawbacks. Studies do not show any marked difference between health standards of vegeterians and non-vegeterians.

5) Environmental arguments: At least in the US, where animals are reared for meat on a very large scale, a lot of land is taken up by this large-scale meat industry. Slaughterhouses emit large amounts of Carbon Dioxide and other harmful gases. Rearing animals requires utilization of water several times higher than that required for cultivation. Moreover, to feed the livestock and make them fleshy, lots of foodgrains are required, which could have been consumed by human beings themselves- hunger and poverty still exist in shocking degrees in developing countries including india. It is too fantastic to expect that if all or most of the meat industry closed down, the foodgrains would be distributed among the poor- that is a different issue altogether. But this environmental argument does carry a lot of merit. However there is a rider: if the animals being reared for food were released, and the industry closed, these animals will continue to exist freely, and graze, eat and drink..... what will be the environmental impact of that? Has it been studied? Unless it is, the argument will not be complete.

Although I have systematically contradicted the arguments for vegeterianism, I am myself vegeterian. Not by religion, but by choice. I had made the choice in early 2010 mainly because I felt guilty somewhere inside that beings are killed for my food, but soon I got confused when the "plant angle" (discussed in point 1) came t mind. Still I continued the vegeterian diet as a personal choice, without appealing to others to follow suit. There are many arguments for vegeterianism- though often unsatisfactory as shown above, but there is no satisfactory argument for non-vegeterianism either!! And the Point 5 as above seems to tilt the scale towards vegeterianism. So I am continuing to be on vegeterian diet. But i am critical of the self-righteous and often effusively sentimental views of the veggie activists- as individuals they are free to do whatever they believe, but they can't expect others to follow unless they have valid, universally acceptable reasons.

The "Anti-corruption" Movement: some thoughts

The hottest news in India at this time is the anti-corruption Jan Lokpal movement led by activists Anna Hazare, Arvind Kejriwal etc. They are leading a movement to pressurize the Indian Government to pass the Jan Lokpal Bill, which will set up the post of Jan Lokpal to control corruption- definitely one of the biggest problems in the country. For this purpose, Anna Hazare went on two prolonged fasts in Delhi, both of which ended after the government agreed to consider their demands. The movement has won tremendous popular support from the Indian people, at least in urban areas. On the other hand, some critical voices are also being heard, though far far fewer in number.

Most of the criticisms against the movement hinge on three issues- 1) The activists are resorting to "unconstitutional" methods of protest like "fasting unto death"  rather than participating democratic processes 2) It does not have a coherent political agenda 3) The very idea of Jan Lokpal is flawed as it involves giving unlimited power to one person -the Jan Lokpal (Anna's proposal demands that even the Prime Minister should be under it). It is not clear how such a person will be selected, and how it can be ensured that he himself is above corruption. Extreme Left-wing activist Arundhati Roy (whom I usually hate) also questioned the definition of "corruption"- is it just financial irregularity, or something more?

Personally, I agree that these are valid criticisms. But it is not difficult to understand why Anna and his followers avoid "constitutional methods"- it is because most people have lost faith in them long ago. Most people look upon politicians as the main enemies of the nation (I will come back to this point). Most probably the Anna also believes this to some extent. While the movement at the moment lacks a long-term political goal at the moment, maybe it can develop one if it keeps on going. On the other hand, the criticism regarding the idea of Jan Lokpal (point 3 as above) seems very genuine. Regarding the definition of corruption, I consider it as "using the power of one's money/post/uniform to win unfair/illegal advantage in terms of money, service or power without explicitly causing/threatening to cause death/injury to anyone". I don't buy the Left-wing's argument that the anti-corruption movement is just an eyewash to conceal other issues like agricultural suicides, land acquisition etc.Of course these are serious issues, but so is corruption, and one cannot downplay a movement just because it is not focussing on the issues of his own primary concern. Nevertheless, I am not particularly worried about these issues. What i am concerned about is something else.

There is no denying of the fact that Anna Hazare's movement has caused a massive mobilisation of the urban population. Rallies and gatherings in support of the movement have become regular in cities. The enthusiasm of the youngsters is particularly conspicuous. For quite a few decades, the Indian urban youth were accused of being glued to entertainment and turning a blind eye to the problems of the country. But this time, they have become very much aware of the movement, and are turning out in large numbers to support it. The primary reason appears to be that the movement is about corruption- something that touches everyone in India in some way or the other. Some cynics suggest that sporting "I am Anna" T-shirts, or sticking "I support Anna Hazare, what about you?" stickers on cars has become a new fashion in the fashion-driven urban world. While I do believe this to some extent, I also believe that there has indeed been a mobilisation of the urban youth, which is a good sign. But the question is, will this actually lead to something meaningful?

I understand that the timing of the movement is very significant, as it has come at a time when two of the biggest financial scams in India were doing rounds in the news- the CWG scam and the 2G spectrum scam. People are understandably outraged by the corruption of politicians- those people who are often looked upon as the main enemies of the country because of their corruption. But most people who are participating in Anna's movement seem to be overlooking the fact that politicans are a sampling of the society itself. Obviously, if the politicians of a society are grossly corrupt it will indicate that either the society itself is grossly corrupt, or the non-corrupt people do not go into politics. Neither inference is flatterring for the society, but I understand that it is the first possibility that is true. Most of Anna's supporters, or even Anna himself, seem to be assuming that there is a corrupt India of politicians and perhaps government employees, and a non-corrupt but stoic India, which they represent and are trying to mobilize. Such an assumption seems absurd.  The corrupt people of today are the youngsters of yesterday. Most of Anna's most vocal supporters are the urban youngsters- but most of them have already cheated in exams, made "lateral entry" into queues, and will soon bribe cops after breaking signals and/or civic laws, will evade taxes and so on. Those who will take up government jobs will demand bribes from poor people for performing their basic duties, and those who will join politics will behave in the same way as the current generation of politicians seem to be behaving! 

What is most important is that the we, young generation, who are supporting the movement, have to transform ourselves, so that we ourselves do not indulge in corruption as the previous generation has. If we do transform themselves, automatically the corruption will come down in future. Controlling one's own greed is more effective than criticizing others. And it is not difficult to do. It does not require any fasting, agitation, courting arrest etc. Yet I do not hear too many voices appealing to Anna's young supporters to transform themselves. Some people do talk about arousing ourselves to gather courage to protest against corruption we face in our daily lives. It is not easy to gather courage to protest against corruptions of people we encounter, but to me, it is of secondary importance. It is, of course, important to resist/punish those who are already corrupt, but why not do the basic thing first? A battle against the corrupt can be fought on the streets of "Dilli", but a battle against corruption can be fought and won in our own "Dil". Which is more effective?

Some of Anna's supporters accept that they are also liable to get corrupted, as greed is one of the "6 basic sins" of mankind, but that is precisely why they want stronger anti-corruption laws. But why don't existing laws work? It is because, corruption is a very widespread, all-pervasive and deeply established cancer in the society. Those who are entrusted with implementing the existing laws are themselves corrupt. Even if we do get a new law, we will need some institution to enforce it. How will it be ensured that this institution itself will not get corrupted? Corruption is very different from other law-and-order-related problems like say robbery or terrorism. This is because, very few people in the society are robbers or terrorists. They can be contained considerably if not completely by laws and adequately powerful police and military forces. But corruption is different - it is the enemy within ourselves!!

Thoughts down the streets of Bangalore......

(The Yaadein series will be continued. Digressing for two posts.)

I just completed the summer of 2011 doing an internship for 3 months. This internship required me to travel down to a different part of my present city, bangalore, every morning, and return in the evening, by a small bus provided by the company. This was my first real exposure to the city of bangalore, although i have been living in the IISc campus for 3 years. Although i have grown up in a metropolis (Kolkata) that is possibly even more overcrowded than bangalore, and certainly less organized (Kolkatan Hawks pardon me please), a journey through the bustling traffic appeared a very new (and unpleasant) experience for me, possibly because i have grown used to the evergreen, zero-pollution environment of the campus. In this post, i want to write a couple of random thoughts that crossed my mind during these journeys.

At a couple of traffic signals, one near the Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium and another on Sankey Road, i saw a sight everyday. As the sea of two-wheelers, cars, buses and company vehicles (like mine) waited, 3-4 people, some of them female, can be seen making their way through the vehicles, holding in their hands some umbrellas, or small toys like aeroplanes or motorbikes, and trying to sell them to the people in these vehicles. Who will buy these in the busy traffic signal? Moreover, even if it was not a busy junction, would anyone buy? In this age of glitterring shopping malls, does the  newly-rich urban consumer ever pay any attention to the small traders or shopkeepers? I don't think so. Even in our childhood in the early 1990s, as young children we were fascinated to see small toys or painting books in roadside stalls, and often craved for them. If i were again a child 20 years later, i would probably be looking for toys in a air-conditioned shopping mall, and throw a condescending look at those being sold on the pavement, or by the wandering traders. The advent of these malls have distracted the urban consumer completely, relegating the small-scale traders to the background. Do these poor people, who are risking their lives daily in a desparate attempt to sell their ware, ever succeed in selling even 1 piece a day? i hope they do, but i fear that they probably don't. I have been crossing the places almost every day, for 3 months, i have never seen a piece being sold. Where have these people come from? And where will they go?

The second thought is regarding the traffic. In the morning the roads are reasonable free, and the journey is smooth. But in the evening, often we get trapped in an ocean of vehicles. Most of these are small private cars, and sometimes cabs. There are many cab companies in Bangalore (Meru Cabs, Easy Cabs, Go Cabs just to name a few). Many of these are A/C, and highly expensive. I have noticed that most of these vehicles carry just 1 passenger except for the driver, while the car can accomodate 5-6 people. Isn't this a gross wastage of resources? More cars mean more traffic congestions, and more consumption of petrol/diesel which is already becoming scarce. Nevertheless, as people of Bangalore are becoming richer thanks to the IT sector, the number of private cars is increasing day by day. People buy cars not just because it is convenient, but also because (or mainly because) it is seen as a status symbol. As the people increase their status, what is going to happen to the city? and to the petrol/diesel stocks?

Of course,  some people may view the issue from a different angle. The more the number of cars, more is the demand for mechanics and drivers. Thus, more jobs are created in the city. More unemployed people find employment. Isn't that good? Why think of tomorrow, let's think of today! In fact, a similar argument was given by some political parties of West Bengal in 2006 to environmentalist Subhash Datta when he demanded that the settlers along the Ravindra Sarovar Lake be evicted, as they are polluting one of the last pollution-free parts of Kolkata. Where will these people go then? How can so many people be evicted for environmental concers? The root problem seems to be the ever exploding population. Unless the population can be controlled, no good can be achieved.....neither for the people nor for the environment.

Yaadein: Semester 4 (JU)

The fourth semester was the first of the three busiest semesters in JU. It was a almost a paradigm shift from the slow and tranquil life of the previous three semesters. It started in february 2006, but ended in april, and there were exams in may. This left only 3 months for classes, 12 classtests and lab assignments all packed together. To add to this, was the project guide selection, which turned out to be a huge drama.

One of the earliest memories of this semester was that of one morning, when I, along with debarshi, anirban and haimasree went towards the Arts and Science section of the university. Debarshi needed to collect a form regarding some french class he was attending. He went to the Arts department building, while I sat near the building gate with anirban and haimasree. Whenever some girl walked past, haimasree would ask me whether i liked her or not. Earlier in the first semester, when dripto frequently asked me these questions, i got highly uncomfortable and tried to move away. But on this day, when haimasree did the same, i thoroughly enjoyed it, and became aware of the change which 1.5 years of college life had brought about in me.

Sayan, i have mentioned in earlier posts, was highly focussed about Ph.D. in USA. But in this semester, he also started preparing heavily for GATE, even though that was still two years away, and we had hardly studied much Computer-Science related subjects. But he selected Automata Theory and Discrete Maths, and started studying them and practising problems. Souri had got a collection of previous years' question papers of GATE, and Sayan started solving them. I particularly remember one day, when I found myself with the geeks of the class-namely sayan,swagato,arpan, souri and shibasis, engrossed over those questions. Sayan started singling out the questions related to graph theory, discrete maths and automata theory, and solved them before I could understand the questions. I  was shocked to see what was going on, since my own plan was to appear in GATE after two years. I panicked and started studying automata from that semester. Although i did not particularly like the subject, by the end of the semester had picked up a reasonable understanding of it.

Students are required to do a project in their final year, but many students start working in the third year itself. In this semester, we were taught digital logic by Prof PK Das, who taught particularly well. He ran the Center of Mobile Computing and Communication (CMCC) of JU, where some of our seniors worked. Some of us, including myself, had a fascination for working with PKD sir on this topic. Now PKD selected students on the basis of an interview and CGPA, and there was a heavy demand for him. 12-14 students approached him, including some of my close friends- arpan, souri, haimasree, debarshi and arijit. He asked us to organize ourselves in groups of 3-4 students each, so that he could interview in groups rather than individually. He asked us to study the fundamantals of Java and Linux for the interview. Some seniors had warned us to prepare well. I had no experience in either of the two, but picked up books and read the introductory chapters. My group members were arpan and arijit. On the D-Day, around 4:30 in the afternoon, all the 14 students huddled into the CMCC- a small but air-conditioned, brightly-lit, neat and tidy room on top of the administrative building. After a long and anxious wait, PKD started calling the groups one by one. Our group was second to go in. PKD asked some questions about java and linux, we answered whatever we had understood by our one-chapter reading. I don't remember any of his questions or our answers, but the latter ones must have been very weird. We were very tense after the interview, but after a couple of days he put out a notice stating that all 12 of us were selected except for Pramit and Ankit, who had interviewed with him but voluntarily opted out as they wanted database-related projects.

The above two incidents added to the tension of the anyway overloaded semester. To relieve myself of this tension, i often used to wander about the building during the free periods. It was a huge building consisting of two wings, connected at the second floors by a narrow hanging passage. The main building was 8-storeyed, and housed the Computer Science, Electronics, Civil and Architecture departments. The annexe building belonged almost entirely to the Computer Science dapartment. Both the buildings were dark, old, damp, dusty and even filthy at certain places. However, I thoroughly enjoyed my solo strolls to every nook and corner of the buildings, every passage and staircase, familiarizing myself with the names of the faculty, the different labs, reading the paper abstracts and posters displayed at different places on the walls. I am sure I knew the buildings better than anyone else in the class. It was fascinating, and for me, the best part of the semester.

It is in this semester that most of us, including myself, opened our Orkut accounts. Very soon, Orkut was the main talking point in the whole class, along with the book Five Point Someone. Everyone took great care to fill up his own profile, and often read others' profiles in great details. Very soon, orkut had become an important mode of communication among us-as important as the telephone. In fact, in later semesters it became still more important, and it could be claimed that for many (or most) of us, the Orkut existence had become as important as the real-life existence!

Though the semester was hectic, the summer holidays in june were particularly refreshing. It was the best vacation I ever had in my entire student life. The days were magical at home- the hot, sunny afternoons, the beautiful "Chand Sifaarish" or "Tu hi meri" playing on Red FM or my favourite Radio Mirchi, and the world cup football! After reading Five Point Someone I had become inspired to think beyond books and exercise problems and try something innovative- and I started to design various digital electronic circuits and implement them on a simulator. I had developed a deep passion for this, and also for networking, which was related to both PKD's project and our project in IIMC. Sometimes i would go to JU during the holidays, and met friends. Unlike students of other departments who hung out in canteens, the playground and the "lakeside" (a venue for lovebirds and smokers/weeders), the favourite hangout of some of my classmates was the Computer Architecture Lab where they surfed the web, and particularly Orkut. I went to this lab sometimes for some coding related to the IIM project, and had a great time mixing work with fun as many friends were around. I dare say, this was the best time for me in JU.

Yaadein: Semester 3 (JU)

This semester started in late august 2005, due to the delay in the previous semester caused by the Semester Boycott. The earliest memory of this semester that I can recall was that of the first day, a particularly cloudy day, with me, Dripto and Souri sitting outside the department below the Jupiter Building and discussing an Ashes Test match. Soon the classes started. In this semester, unlike the previous two semesters, we had interesting subjects. There was Data Structures, which was taught by Prof Chandan Majumdar (CM). He taught better than the previously seen JU teachers, and gave programming assignments which had to be done in groups of two. My partner was Arpan, a particularly "aggressive" (a term which i am in no mood to explain here ;-)) guy when it came to assignments and projects. His "aggressive" behaviour caused him to be disliked by many classmates, but i managed fine with him, at least in this particular semester. We implemented linked lists, stacks, queues, heaps and even b-trees and 2-3 trees - structures i have never used after that :-P. Besides there were the sorting algorithms. It was hectic, but enjoyable.

The other subjects included digital logic which was taught by DKB (never knew the full name). His teaching was quite horrendous, but i liked the subject. In fact I loved it. And I also loved the electronic circuits, 555 timers, schmidt triggers and all which were taught by Manojit Mitra- a part-time faculty in JU (actually based in BE College, Sibpur). Although I did not use them subsequently in any project, and gradually forgot them, these two subjects instilled in me a love for what I was studying- Computer Science and Engineering- for the first time.

A particularly interesting experience of my college life was the project at IIM Calcutta. It started in this particular semester, and continued for two years. It all started when Sayan mentioned to me, Arpan and Arijit about Debasis Saha, an ex-faculty of JU, currently a faculty in IIMC, was looking for 3-4 students for a project. At that time i had absolutely no idea of what exactly a project was- "a food or a hair oil". But Sayan and Arpan, the two guys who were always 1 year ahead of the others in class particularly in matters related to going to US for phd, convinced me and Arijit that this was very important for our careers. Shortly before the first visit to IIM, I fell severely sick, and the other three went there. I joined them in our second visit. We boarded a S-31 bus from the 8B stand, and went through unknown roads to an unknown place called Joka- at the southern extremety of kolkata-where IIMC is located. We entered the campus and went to a building called "CAM center"- to the first floor. After waiting for some time in a air-conditioned, tidy but empty lounge, the prof called us in. He gave us a paper - "A survey on sensor networks" to read and prepare a presentation on it for the next meeting. He also asked us to write a C program to display some circles randomly moving around and occassionally overlapping- each of which represented the range of a moving sensor node. For the next few weeks we were busy trying to make sense of the paper- most of it made almost no sense to us at that stage. However after going through Tanenbaum's textbook on Computer Networks, it started to make some sense, and I started liking it. However, soon after this meeting Sayan dropped out, and was replaced by Souri.

In november 2005, there were again prolonged strikes in JU- on an issue which I have forgotten now. It was at this time that I started making close friendships with other groups in the class. Beyond my established circle of friends consisting of Sayan, Arpan, Souri, Swagato, Dripto etc, I got closely acquainted with the group of Debarshi, Chiradeep, Pinaki, Haimasree, Sourav and Anirban. Debarshi, Chiradeep and Sourav were computer-addicted, technology-obsessed guys, but all of them were nice and jovial. Pinaki was a peculiar character -a bit rustic in taste but with a weird sense of humour that made him loveable. Haimasree was a nice and sweet girl, always keen to talk about romance and relationships. Their company induced a joviality in my own behaviour, which had probably been missing till then.

In a nutshell, the third semester was important to me because 1) it was the first time i learned to love Computer Science 2) i got a new circle of friends and a new dimension -joviality- was added to my character 3) the IIM project started and 4) It was a semester full of peace and tranquility despite the rather hectic workload - a peace that i never felt again in the subsequent semesters in JU. In fact the subsequent semesters were often marred by tensions, as will be described later.

Yaadein: Semester 2 (JU)

For me, the second semester was possibly the least eventful semester in JU. Regarding the classes, there were two teachers most of the students immensely disliked- the electronics teacher Tapati Ganguly (TG) and the Programming teacher Abhijit Kar (AK). The first one was disliked because of her horrible teaching and strict attitude like a school teacher -like she used to ask questions everyday, while the second one was disliked because of his supercilious and arrogant attitude. While I had no issues with AK, I disliked TG thoroughly.

One real ordeal was the mass-bunking of TG's classes. Most teachers did not mind a mass-bunk once in a while, but TG not only reported every bunk to the CSA office, but actually went around the building to capture the fugitives. These fugitives mostly hung around the architecture lab and the corridors, and TG would walk up to these places looking for them. If she caught anyone, she would first reprimand him and then assign him the task of finding the others and asking them to surrender :-D. Another comic situation arose when she had caught Aveek writing a love-poem in class, and had even read it out to the class!!!!

Though the semester by itself had been rather short and eventless, there was a huge and long-lasting event at the end of it. This was the "Boycott of the Semester Examinations" by the student's council in protest against the suspension of 4 students who were found guilty of unruly behaviour during some protest held some 2 years in the past. Most of us, including myself, opposed participation in this Boycott, since we had no idea where the students were guilty or not- the incident had happened long before our admission to JU. Besides, we thought that boycotting the semester exam is hardly a sane and logical way of protesting. Nevertheless, we had to participate in the boycott as no one wanted animosity with the seniors/union leaders. It was really boring- we had to study and come prepared on all 6 exam days only to find huge crowds of students crowding in front of the department. We would stand there and chat for an hour or two before dispersing. 

None of the exams were held at the scheduled time, and were postponed to june. But just before they could start, the 4 suspended students went on hunger-strike. As a result, again the exams were boycotted. But this time, 4 days into the hunger strike, on the night of 10 june, a huge police force in battle fatigues swooped on the strikers and rounded them up after a massive "lathicharge". Many were injured. Though this ended the hunger-strike, the university authorities came under severe criticism from all quarters for the use of force. They finally decided to set up a review commitee to review the roles of the suspended students, and set up new examination dates, which were finally followed.

A lot of articles were published in the newspapers regarding the boycott. Many people heaped lavish praise on the participating students for throwing themselves behind the 4 students even "putting their own careers in jeopardy". The ultra-left union of JU hailed the "historic protest". Cynics suggested that the students of the current generation rise in protest only when their own interest are affected, and are otherwise aloof about the society unlike the students of the 70s. I had never really supported the movement, and found all these comments weird. I do not know the truth, but I feel that the Union called for the boycott because they were sure that the authorities would not take any action on the boycotters and arrange for an alternate date. And it was hardly spontaneous, most people participated just by following the mass. Most students had no reason to boycott as they had no idea whether the accused students were guilty or not; indeed if they were not guilty, why and how would the probing commitee single them out?  And semester boycott is an extermely illogical way to protest. With due respect to all, I still feel that the boycott was largely a gimmick.

Yaadein: semester 1 (JU)

The first semster of Jadavpur University started in July 2004. The first experience of college life. 8 students were joining the Computer Science department from my school. Of them Sayan and Arpan had my good friends for the past two years, and i also had speaking terms with Aveek,Dripto,Dhrubo and Debarshi. Apart from them, there was Haimasree, whom I was not acquainted to in school. In the initial days, during the ragging and settling-in period, the first seven people from the school stuck together though Haimasree, somewhat to the surprise of us, would hang around with a different group. Our temporary group had marked diversity- Arpan mostly talked with us and the seniors about career plans, GRE and CAT, Sayan talked about combinatorics problems and plans to go to US for phd, Debarshi talked about football (Euro Cup had just ended) and English movies, Dripto and Aveek talked mostly about the girls in the senior batch and Dhrubo....well forget it :-P.

One of the earliest memories in this semester were the games of cards. Debarshi, Dhrubo and Dripto were into cards before joining college. In the first few weeks, classes were few and far between, so to kill time, I also joined them. Arpan was furious at the irregularity of classes, but even he joined sometimes. We played "Call Bray" and "Hearts" in the classroom sitting on the desks, or in the A-C canteen, over coffee and egg chops.

The classroom ragging by seniors had happenned for the first 4 days, and I was the biggest victim in the class. However this ragging was only verbal, and nothing objectionable had happened. However I had heard horror stories of ragging in CET canteen from Aveek and on the central playground from Chiradeep. They used to narrate the stories with great enthusiasm, as though they wanted to face such experiences. But I felt scared. For the first 2-3 months, I never walked in front of CET canteen. We had a class in the Mechanical Engineering department beyond the playground, and I felt scared to go there. On thursdays we had Drawing class and had to carry the "T" on the shoulder. This "weapon" would give me some sense of security :-D.

Dripto's fascination for the girls in the senior batch, and his open flirtation with them had become a hot gossip in the class. Everyone from Karati to Arpan was talking about it. That was fine, but Dripto often kept on asking how I felt about different girls. I felt quite awkward when asked such questions, but Dripto insisted. Taking a walk in the campus with Dripto in those days was a real ordeal for me. Whenever a girl walked past he would ask me how I felt about her :-D.

The Freshers' Welcome was to be held in september. The freshers were supposed to perform- drama, music, dance, instrument or whatever. Dhrubo had prepared a drama which he thought, would please the raunchy-minded seniors. Most of us thought it would only provoke more ragging. The theme and dialogue of the drama were enough to scare away the innocent guys Souri and Swagato. I was offered the lead role in the drama. I was reluctant, and considered staying away from college on the day of the Freshers' Welcome, but Dripto convinced me that it would result in a much worse ragging on the following day. So thus I was persuaded into acting. We rehearsed for several days. I always had a thing for acting, and transcending my initial hesitation, got into the role. My acting drew arousing appreciation from the other dramatists and viewers. But on the D-day, the seniors were not impressed with the drama. They did not appreciate the over-raunchy theme, and stopped the play midway, much to the disappointment of Dhrubo and ... well, even myself :-P.

Apart from the theoretical classes held in the classroom, we had practical classes, called "Sessional" in the terminology of JU. In this semester, there were 4 sessionals: physics lab, drawing, workshop and technical arts. Almost everyone complained that these were completely irrelevant to Computer Science and engineering. But for me, the worst part was that the class was divided into two groups- A1 and A2. Most of my friends and acquaintances were in the A2 group, while I, by virtue of my advanced rank in the entrance exam, was in A1. I found myself clubbed with Satyajit, Sourav, Arijit Khan, Rajdeep, Biswanath- most of whom came from suburban areas, and initially I had a bit of problem synchronising with them, having studied in a posh urban school for 15 years. These sessional classes of the first semester were quite boring for me- not only because the work was boring, but also because I could not connect with the company that well.

Personally, the first semester of JU was memorable because of the great change associated with it. For the past two years there was endless pressure to study, and now all the pressue had disappeared so suddenly that I was quite confused what to do...how to adopt myself to the changed situation. I thought I would forget about the change and study by myself, but what to study?? I tried studying physics- the Feynman Lectures of Physics, but soon discovered that I was not really being able to commit myself into it, and was just wasting time- neither studying nor enjoying.

On looking back casually towards this semester, the first things that come to mind are the peculiar odour of machine lubricants in the technical arts lab, the games of cards in the AC canteen, the songs "saanso ko saanso me dhalne do zara" (Hum Tum) and "dhoom macha le" (Dhoom) which played all the time over the new FM channels, the hubbub of the freshers' welcome, the times spent with Sayan, Arpan and Dripto, and the confusion- to study or to enjoy...and if to study, then what????

"Yaadein" series

Ever since leaving school in 2004, I have spent 12 semesters of college life in 2004-2010. First 8 were in Jadavpur University, Kolkata, and the next 4 in Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. Each semester is associated with many memories... some good, some bad and some neutral. In my present life, somewhat uneventful and lonely, i often delve back into the past, and re-visit those memories....and try to re-live those days. A peculiar psychology of the human mind is that, while reminiscing, even the bad times seem to be nice. In the next 11 posts, I will try to paint this collage of memories. There will be one post for each semester, with the exception of the 8th semester of JU, for which there will be no post.

Do we really need politicians and political parties for democracy in India?

A lot is said about the gross corruption of politicians in india. It will be agreed by most people that most politicians in india today come to politics just for power and/or money, rather than any particular ideology. A large section of common people are angry with politicians, and even look upon them as enemies of the country. Others argue that it is unfair to blame the politicians alone for the rampant corruption in the country, the common people also have played a role in it.

Recently, there were elections in four states of india-tamilnadu,kerala,west bengal and assam. While the congress held on to power in assam and narrowly won in kerala, in West Bengal the TMC-Congress combine routed the 34-yr Left Front regime, and in TN AIADMK took the incumbant DMK to the cleaners. While I am not in a position to comment about the first two results, it is the other two which seem somewhat thought-provoking to me. When the people of WB and TN voted, did they vote for TMC/AIADMK or against CPM/DMK respectively? In WB, I understand that people were fed up with the arrogant and undemocratic rule of the CPM-led front for 34 long years, and wanted a change. I doubt they consider Mamata to be a good administrator, but they voted her because she was the main anti-Left campaigner for many many years. But in TN, Jaya and Karuna come to power in alternate terms. Both of them have had lots of corruption charges against them. This time, top DMK leaders like Kanimozhi and A. Raja were accused of corruption in the 2G spectrum case. Because of this, there was an anti-DMK wave and Jaya came to power. But she herself is no better, and had lost earlier for the same reason-corruption!! Then did the people really vote her because she was a better alternative? Or is it because she was the only alternative??

This actually raises a fundamental question- are there enough alternative political forces in India? A large section of the people are disillusioned with the current political system. While there can be no doubt that a multi-party/multi-view parliamentary democracy is the best form of government seen so far, is it really working meaningfully in india? If a disillusioned voter is to be  brought back to a polling booth, (s)he should have enough options to choose from. In practice, in every election there are two main camps, and parties/leaders switch frequently from one camp to another. In WB, TMC once goes with BJP, once with congress. In TN, AIADMK and DMK keep switching between NDA and UPA. In elections, the chief ministerial/prime ministerial candidates remain mostly the same year after year. Jaya had earlier been defeated for her corruption, but she again contests. Why should people at all be motivated to vote?

The parliamentarians/MLAs are supposed to be representatives of people. But in the current system, once they are elected, they work independant of the people for the rest of the term. There is no system of an elected member getting feedback/suggestions from the electorate, or being replaced for failure to deliver. Then, are they true representatives of people? And actually, is there at all any need for representatives of people? Is there at all a need for the concept of political parties and politicians in india? Cannot a parliamentary system function without them?

The main function of the parliament is to discuss policies of governance, and once decided, order the concerned departments to implement these policies. The discussion is suppossed to happen among the parliamentarians- the so-called representatives of the people. However, instead of having representatives, is it not possible to directly take the opinions of the countrymen on issues? With the rapid development of the Internet and social networks, it should not be impossible to obtain the viewpoints of a substantial number of people. Indeed good discussions on various matters of national interest happen on online communities in orkut or facebook. Of course, involving too many people will tend to cause confusion. So we will need a dedicated group of people to moderate the discussion, and identify the majority view. This group of people should be professionals.....just like there are IFS,IAS,IPS,IRS etc, we can have an Indian Parliamentary Service-whose job will be to conduct such discussions among the people. Any common person, irrespective of his/her social status should be able to raise a discussion thread or participate in a discussion. The service should have its own boards for management, promotions etc. And the different people will have their own views-some can be liberal, some conservative etc. Thus we will have a multi-view parliamentary democracy without a political class. Isn't it possible??

Necessity is the Mother of Invention

Last week, I had made a blogpost about my dissatisfaction regarding the current situation in Computer Science research around me. Based on that, I also started a discussion thread on Facebook: "Should IISc and the IITs attach with each lab a dedicated group for India-specific research?" I also discussed this with friends in person, on phone and over gmail chat. The thread of FB continued for two-and-half days before it had to be withdrawn due to an unfortunate incident of spamming and personal attack on me. Nevertheless, I understand on hindsight that I had failed to highlight my main intention, which is why some people grossly misinterpreted it. The main misinterpretations were as follows:

1) I am making a patriotic appeal to indians to serve india rather than fleeing to US

2) I am suggesting that iisc should narrow down its research by putting the interest of india before that of the world.

3) I am suggesting that phd students should do the job of social workers and the government

4) I am confusing between social responsibility and good research.

I first of all make it clear that I intend none of these things. To describe what I actually intend, let us proceed step-by-step.

What is the aim of research? In my understanding, it is twofold: a better understanding of the world and nature (Science) and of mankind (Arts) (basic research); and applying the understanding thus gained for betterment of country/society/world (engineering and medicine) (applied research). Since most of us are students of Computer Science and Engineering, let us focus on that. About a third of CSE is basic research, and the rest applied research. The areas which are basic research are mostly related to discrete maths (graph theory/algebra/geometry), probability theory, complexity theory, learning theory etc. The nature of research in these areas is exploratory; discovering properties of graphs, automaton, markov chains, algorithms etc. Applied research in CSE involves design for efficient performance (algorithms, compilers, architecture, database, network protocols, programming languages etc) and modeling of real-world situations for efficient solution (machine learning, data mining, computer vision, NLP, game thoery, network management etc).

Although I have not made any literature survey on most of these fields, I understand that, in the initial stages, say the first 30-40 years, a lot of research has been done towards the most fundamental challenges- sometimes unsuccessfully. For example, the P=NP problem still remains unsolved. Modern researchers in complexity theory seem to have accepted that the problem is possibly too difficult, however to keep their careers alive, have found ways around it. Lots of new complexity classes have been proposed. However, many people remain sceptic that these are actually not of much theoretical significance, and have been mostly proposed for the sake of publishing papers. An eminent Computer Scientist, Richard Karp, recently expressed this view in an interaction with students in IISc. Another trend that has developed in many disciplnes under theoretical CS is to explore some special cases in case the general case is too difficult. That's perfectly reasonable, but again the question arises: are the special cases being investigated actually of any use to anyone? Of course, as researchers in basic science they need not look for problems which are of real use, but since they are anyway making a compromise with the main problem, should they better not look for something which are of use to someone else?

The situation is much worse in the modeling-based areas. These are aimed at modeling real-world situations. On many questions, the first round of reserach is complete, sometimes unsuccessfully. The general tendency of research in the current times are to address situations where existing methods will fail, and build solutions for them. It also happens that researchers have a method in mind, and look for suitable applications for it. But the problem is that, in most cases, the researchers are hardly aware of the ground situation in the real-world applications they are targeting. For their greed of publishing papers thick and fast, they "invent" problems to push their solutions- problems which may not exist at all, or may exist in a different form altogether. Or it can happen that the assumptions they make in their proposed solutions, are often useless. This type of research is, in my opinion, dishonest; it is almost like insulting the real-world problem.

Whatever the case, this is how research goes on; people in academia publish papers thick and fast. I am not saying that all of the papers are corrupted by the above problems, but most people around me agree that it is the case more often than not. Of course the conferences have review processes but they are far from foolproof, and paper-hungry researchers know how to beat them...often they innovate strategies for it.

How do researchers justify it? Mostly they say that they are interested in the theoretical aspect only, or that they hope some day there will be situations where the assumptions made by them, or the special cases explored by them, will be of interest. Without contradicting this point, I have a question: have we really explored the present before jumping into the future? And regarding the first point (interested in theoretical aspect only), I would say that in the pretext of doing research one should not forget the point that the most of CSE is applied research only, and the final aim of appiled research is a practical one: namely the betterment of people.

So here  is the proposal. Research is based on explorations and solving problems. Researchers are "inventing" cases to explore and problems to solve, but the problems of the world are far from over. Especially so in the developing countries. My institute, IISc, is in India, which is a developing country, and has lots of problems. Has there been any honest survey aimed to check if any of its problems can be solved by the current state of research? Do any of these problems open up new research problems? Do they give the explorative researchers new and meaningful special cases to explore? Do they give modeling-based researchers new constraints and challenges to model? If not, then maybe we can move on and continue whatever we were doing. But i think, to improve the quality of research, it is necessary to replenish the supply of problems. Necessity, of course, is the mother of invention. And examples are not far-fetched when real-world problems turn into problems for fundamental research. Remember the Seven Bridges of Konigsberg?

Why do people come to research at all? I guess there are 3 main reasons:

1) Better career opportunities/ material benifits

2) Desire to do some service to country/society (applied) or civilization (basic)

3) Desire to do whatever they want, without bothering whether it is useful or not.

I guess the third category is very small in size, and i cannot comment on them. The current tendency of research of course makes sense to the first category, while the second category is likely to be annoyed by it. My proposal is put from the perspective of the second category, without hurting the interests of the first category.

Most people in the world will accept that they have some responsibility towards the society/country they live in. That should be particularly true in countries like India. In highly developed countries, like USA, people can really afford to do anything that they want. But in India, I don't like the fact that researchers should waste their time and the governemnt's money doing useless things. Of course, the aim of iisc is to do good research, and hardcore researchers argue that research and social responsibility should not be mixed. Make no mistake, by useless I don't mean research that is not of direct use to society, I mean research that has the flaws mentioned above. I am perfectly in favour of continuing abstract research provided it is done honestly. But I guess, from the arguments above, the proposal is not just about social responsibility, it is about improving the quality of research also. Moreover, there is no narrow nationalist interest in this; if a solution is found for a problem in India, it can also be made known to the rest of the world. And the proposal never says that implementing the solutions (if found) in India should be done by the researchers in IISc. No, that is for the government and social workers. The proposal only talks about finding the solutions if possible through research. 

Finally it may be asked, "what is the need for problems when there are so many problems in the papers?" True, but if there is a problem in a paper there is also a solution to it, why look for another solution?  If it happens that one particular case has been analyzed in the paper and i want to generalize it, then it's fine. But in real-world modeling-based areas of CS such generalizations are not possible, simply because one cannot generalize all possible variations in the real world. One can say that he wants to look for a better solution. If he finds, good, but otherwise he has to propose some variation of the same problem, or some special case of it, and most likely he will again end up "inventing a problem". The general strategy of researchers who choose problems from papers is to choose "relatively new" problems so that there are not too many competitors, but then why not try a new problem altogether? That should be more ethical as well as more practical.

Academic Research as it appears to me today

(Disclaimer: The views expressed here are somewhat negative. They are a reflection of my thoughts and feelings at this time. I hope these will be proved wrong sometime in the future.)

PhD. The acronym still evokes a feeling of awe among many people. At a time, in the 1800s and 1900s, only a handful of people could get it. And they often went on to make ground-breaking work in their respective fields, mostly physics, chemistry, mathematics or literature, history, philosophy in those days. The world has thoroughly changed now. Doing a PhD is nothing uncommon now, in fact it is quite common. In every main city, in every single locality you may find a PhD-holder. Apart from the traditional subjects mentioned above, PhDs are now common in engineering (especially Computer Science - which is to the current world what physics was to it in the 1800s and 1900s),  management, finance, economics and what not.

Most people treat PhD as an important step in building their careers- and rightly so. That is how it is in the current world. And yet, there are some people who still romanticize the idea of PhD. They feel that to do a PhD is noble. Some of them think that academic research is the fullest attainment of  intellectual satisfaction. Other people think that PhD is a way to become a great scientist who will change the face of the world/country. That was the impression forced on me when i was in high school, and maybe even college. As a research student in Computer Science, i feel (at least now) that these people, unfortunately, are living in fool's paradise. Whether it should be so or not, is a different question, but definitely it is not like that. In fact, one prof in my dept has recently gone on record saying that he views research as "Business"- sell ideas to conferences/industry and get papers/patents in return. And that is where i feel frustrated.

In PhD, in most parts of the world, the first step is to "find a problem". Alyosha Efros, professor of Computer Vision from Carnegie Mellon University, said in a conference, "In PhD, spend 3 years looking for a problem. Then spend 1 year solving it".  This, to me, looks a very baffling idea. In a highly developed country like USA, people probably can afford to do this, but what about India? A student is typically 24 years of age when (s)he joins PhD- in other words (s)he is at the prime time of his/her life. Its the best time in life to go ahead and do something concrete, something significant and impactful. Is it then really worthwhile to spend 3 years searching for a problem? There are many many problems in India- poverty, social injustice, unemployment, corruption, population explosion, pollution, insurgency.... the list goes on. If a youngster approaching a prof for a problem and the prof does not have a problem at hand to give, the youngster should better go and attack these problems, which are visible and quite shocking. By the time a student would finish PhD, (s)he will be 28-29, and it would be time for him/her to marry and raise a family, and settle down into a life. One can still do social work after that, but family responsibilities (which cannot be and should not be avoided) will take up a significant amount of his/her time.

And in any case, even if a problem is found in the academic realm itself, is it always impactful to the world/country? I strongly doubt so. Because of the enormously large number of people turning to research, the current state of research is very esoteric, something that cannot be explained properly beyond a cliquey society of profs, students and maybe industry people  who are familiar with the area. I am working in Machine Learning/Computer Vision, but when my uncle, who also has a PhD (but in Bengali Literature) asks about my research, i found it difficult to explain to him what the work is about. Same thing happened when some delegates from Hitachi Labs visited our lab, or when UG students of Computer Science itself visited our department on the IISc Open Day. And it is not that I can't express well...the same problem was faced by most of my labmates. How can some work, which is not even understood by people beyond a clique, be of any significant impact?

The most common way in which Computer Science-related research (particularly Game Theory, Machine Learning and Algorithms) do create an impact now is that they are used by the internet giants like Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft and IBM. They use the research to improve their web services, and provide the user with better facilities. I am not saying anything against that, indeed i am writing this blog because of the facility offered to me by these companies. But my doubt remains- for an average Indian, is it at all an issue? The mother of all problems in India is assymetric progress of people, and as far as India is concerned, this sort of research will only help that small part of its population which has already been pampered excessively, especially since the economy opened up in 1991.

And even then, does the academic research actually help in solving such problems also? Sometimes they do, the most impactful ideas in Internet Research-the Page Rank Algorithm, Latent Variable Model, Topic Models,  etc came up from  academia only. But more often than not, problems in academic research remain only of academic interest. This is especially true in India where there are bright people in the academia but not enough collaboration with the industry.

Remember this article is not written by a cynic who knows nothing about PhD but by a PhD student himself. So if u r a patriotic-minded Indian (which I am), and u r thinking about PhD, do think again!!

My First Love

I was in class IX then. Our school had several sections in every standard. In class IX, the sections were reorganized on the basis of additional subjects. So the section had many faces new to me. Among them was a girl, about my height, very fair in complexion and a stunningly beautiful face. Her seat was not far from mine, but we had not talked in the first few months. While I thought she was beautiful, i had felt no particular attraction towards her.

31st july 2000. There was a Bangla Bandh, and just 8 of the 62 students in the class turned up. Among them she was there. The class hour had not yet begun. The 8 students were scattered around the classroom. I was standing, somewhat absent-minded near the door. Suddenly i heard from behind me, "Had the class teacher given some homework for today?" I turned and saw that it was she. Somewhat taken aback that she suddenly spoke to me, I replied that she had not. But then the class teacher entered the class, and

we stopped. No class was held that day because of the scant attendance, the students just spent the day chatting. She sat in the bench in front of me, and was taking history notes from another boy's notebook. While the other 6 students huddled around the rear part of the classroom and played Dumb Charades, she spoke to me while writing. We chatted for a long time. At length the slow and workless day came to an end. As I walked home, I was replaying in my mind the moments spent with her. I felt nothing special, but thoroughly enjoyed it. Over the next few days I did not get a chance to speak with her, but kept looking forward to talking to her again. The chance came after 10 days. She was showing me what a careless mistake she had done in the Maths test. But after that the Half-Yearly exams started, and everyone got busy with the huge syllabus. The test was tough, specially mechanics. During the exam days i saw her once in the corridor, but she did not see me and walked past me. But on september 8, when the classes resumed, i raninto her again. She smiled gleefully at me, and we had a long banterful chat. By now the feeling had crept within me. I knew for sure i was longing to talk to her all the time, and knew that she enjoyed my company. However i wanted to be cautious not to overdo things. We spoke several times in september, but then the exam results came out. I had performed well, in fact topped the class. But unfortunately her performance was very bad. I felt a bit embarassed to talk to her by myself, and waited till she talked to me. The school would remain closed for a month (for Puja) in October. Before the vacation started, as per traditions, a party was to be arranged in the class. It included food and a couple of dramas by students. I loved acting, and chose to participate in a bengali drama by Sukumar Ray. The day before the party, she waved to me, and asked me about  the drama and my role. I was happy, and even more happier the next day after the drama when she congratulated me for my performance! Then came the Pujas. Every year I visited lots of pandals in South Kolkata. It was, for me, an opportunity to walk the roads and discover the geography of the city, which was (and still is) one of my passions. On the closing day of Puja, I decided to go to a famous pandal. It was located in an area whose geography seemed particularly attractive to me. But another reason was that I had known that she lived somewhere in that area. Of course I had no idea where exactly she lived, and the odds of seeing her in the crowds of Puja was ridiculously low. Nevertheless I went around building castles in the air of me running into her during the Puja.

6th October, 2000. Kolkata was at its festive best. The drums were beating at every pandal. In the evening, i set out for the pandal with my dad. We walked through several pandals, and moved close to the main pandal i wanted. We saw a puja and walked towards it. A crowd had gathered in front of the pandal. In the pandal some musical program was going on. As we moved towards the pandal, i somehow turned left towards some people sitting on chairs, and guess what!!!!!! She was sitting there, right in front of my eyes!!!! My heart beat so fast that i literally felt unwell. I hopped-and-ran towards her, and greeted her. We spoke for a couple of minutes, but since my father was there, i had to leave with him. But i was completely dazed and stupefied. I was finding it hard to talk. It had been nothing short of a miracle. And i thought, if such a miracle can happen, then surely we are made for each other. Even on returning home i was still dazed, and i was somewhat afraid that parents would notice my abnormal behavior. I dreamt of the incident in my sleep. The next day i went to my uncle's place, where my cousins were also there. And there was a match- India vs Australia in Champion's Trophy 2000. Even sitting with my cousins before the TV, watching Yuvraj's classy innings and Zaheer yorking out Steve Waugh, i was mentally replaying the incident all through. The puja vacation passed, and classes  resumed. Through November and December i spoke to her regularly. We were now good friends. I was determined to make the approach. I had never felt like this for any girls. Though talk of affairs was common in class, there were not many affairs going on in the class. So it would be quite a novel thing. I decided not to rush things but take steps steadily. The first major step would be to gift her a card on New Year's Day.

2nd Jan 2001. I came to class with the card. I had cards for a few more friends as well, and i gave those away to the intended recipients. And then, during the lunch break, i finally got a chance to talk to her. After speaking a couple of minutes, i took the card and gave it to her. She was completely stunned for a second, as if finding hard to believe what was going on. Then she almost screamed out in joy or whatever emotion as she took the card. But i was embarrassed beyond hell. I knew immediately from her reaction that she has got the message already, which was not what i wanted. i wasn't prepared for this; i had not meant the card to be a proposal. i understood that i had blushed completely, and i could stand there no longer in embarrasment, i rushed out of the class.

What happenned after that? the news spread like wild fire, and was known to almost the entire school. i was unable to digest the fact that such a gossip was being created about me. i was embarrassed and even ashamed that i had done such a thing. I fought with myself for two months, trying to free myself of her infatuation. I never proposed or made any other move to her later, but we remained good friends for the rest of the school life. We lost contact after school, and despite searching for her on social networks i never found her. There were a couple of reunions of the schoolmates, but she did not turn up. It was only as late as 2010 that i finally found her on facebook, and then on orkut. But by then she was engaged, and soon she was married and moved abroad with her husband. I am still here, hopelessly single.