Chase your dreams, they do come true.

I have borrowed rather got inspired and learnt much from Sachin Tendulkar than just this quotation. People always talk about his cricketing skills but I think that there are deeper things to learn from him. Every chapter of his life holds myriad lessons. This is my tribute to my hero, Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar. 

The most striking thing to me is his quality to learn from his mistakes and get back. I saw this in the 2011 Freshman Letter video of Princeton University. Somewhere it says “When you make a mistake, admit it, but don’t dwell on it. Rather, get back up again.” This is synonymous with Sachin and I believe one of the principal reasons why he is so great. I think it takes character to be so strong so that failure becomes your strength. Not everyone can do it. It’s hard. But there are only a finite number of mistakes one can make. And if you don’t let the passion die, you’ll eventually win. 

The other thing that sets him apart is his hunger to learn more and take it to perfection. Ever since I’ve seen him, I’ve seen the strokes in his armour increase and getting better by the passing day. He is never content with what he has. I have not seen this in any other batsman. There have been greats, who have their style. But after a point all of them became stagnant in their stroke play. Sachin keeps growing and hence there is always so much to learn from him. It also keeps him from getting dated. This may sound trivial when you are in the process of acquiring success. I think the quality of driving oneself to improve even when you are at the pinnacle relative to others, when there is no mortal incentive to do so, is extraordinary. 

Geniuses think differently. I have always marveled at the way Sachin thinks about situations. Even the legends do not think that way. Everyone wanted Sachin to retire after the world cup. Hailing that as a gallant exit. Exit at a time when people will remember you forever. Sounds perfect. Greats have done it. Imran Khan and Kapil Dev said that it is the correct thing. The most cited example is that of Sunil Gavaskar. Sachin says that it is a selfish thing to do. When you are playing at your best that is when you can contribute to the team most. I was stunned when I first heard it. 

Sachin’s way of looking at things is so different yet so perfect that I have given up questioning his decisions long ago. Many experts (let alone people who have never held a bat) who pass judgments do not realize that they do not understand things like he does. Perhaps they never will. 

Sachin’s argument of not taking runners and his plan on how to win the 2003 world cup final had left most of us in awe. And yet we criticize his judgments, when they do not work, simply because we do not understand them. 

Chasing dreams does not mean dreaming about your dream. It takes a lot of hard work. Relentless hard work. The willingness and the passion to do so. Not ordinary people can sustain so many injuries, both mental and physical, that Sachin has. It takes a lot of character. It takes discipline. It takes humility. It takes focus. 

In my journey from St. Stephen’s to Princeton, I have borrowed so much from Sachin. At times I had to make decisions and I always looked up to him for reference. I tried to see what he did in a similar situation or imagine what he would have done. Sometimes I took the decision first and an analogous incidence with Sachin would come out in the papers later. If it matched, I knew I was correct. 

No one can tell you when to quit. You are the best judge. For you know if you can make the effort. 2007 I was told to quit academics by “experts” for they thought I would not survive. 2012 I get through the world’s best PhD program. Incidentally 2007 was also when Sachin was asked to quit. 2012 comes the century of centuries. Hard work and perseverance can take one beyond imagination. No one will ever know how much work it takes to realize dreams until you have achieved it yourself. But there is nothing that hard work cannot achieve. Period. I can say that from experience. And it is not that we cannot work that extra bit. Everyone can. 

In the past few years, my biggest strength has been Adidas’ “Impossible is Nothing”, well because Sachin said it. I had that written on a poster in my room. My friend thought I was an Adidas fan. So he wrote “Just do it” below that. What a coincidence it is that the “impossibility” is actually “done”. For Princeton there are many people to whom I am thankful and grateful. But I owe a big one to Sachin. I was also too fortunate to have Sachin to look up to. Without him I may not have survived. 

Vivian Richards puts it beautifully for me. 

 “Sometimes, walking away is the easiest thing to do. When pain, injury, age and naysayers conspire, it takes a very courageous individual to keep at it only because he has it in him.” 

 What next? Just as Sachin would. Extend the frontiers. Simple.

A World that Never Sleeps!

Merry Christmas to all. I, like many of you had read in books about the globalized world, the highly efficient supply chains, vertical and horizontal integration and similar things. Recently, I experienced it myself. I find it amazing and hence this post. Most of my friends working for MNCs would already know this but to me this is still very exciting. I use DHL to courier my documents for my applications to the US. They are extremely efficient and my stuff reaches in exactly 3 days. I was not amazed by this at first. But then I looked at the details that they send us.

It works as follows, so the day I give my courier to the agent it is sorted at New Delhi and put onto a plane to London the very same night. They again sort it, send to another location in the UK from where it is again put onto a different plane to the US. After the final sorting, they send to the state and then to the city. This is a reflection of a highly efficient system that works round the clock. So my guess is that all the couriers to the US from the east are collected at the UK and then put on the right plane depending on the destination region. Don't forget that the senders and the receivers can be infinitely many. These guys therefore are solving a very complex matching problem in real time. The right time of departure both from New Delhi and London so that there is no delay en-route. The right choice of the departing aircraft that will take it via the most efficient route. Doing all this and at the same time minimizing cost and the delivery time. Globalization and competition has taken us to our best.

I don't want to take either a pro or anti-globalization stand but right now but I am just amazed at the situation and the world we live in. Micro institutions work round the clock, where every person just contributes his bit and the macro picture that emerges is simply astonishing.

Who said research was boring?

The title of this post will in itself raise some eyebrows and tighten other facial muscles. After all, no one said that scientific research or its step cousins are boring. However, my inquiry is into social science research in general and more focused into my first hand experience of it. Hence, largely I am going to talk about my personal experience and shed light through it on the general question in hand. That researchers are mad, sadist people, is a notion on a decline but that that is also true for people dwelling in social sciences research may not be a widely accepted notion. Unless of course, you’ve come across the very colourful (“black”) and forever young Debraj Ray or exotically eloquent speakers like Kaushik Basu. I will however, try to convince you that even lesser mortals like us are not too boring after all and more importantly ask important questions even if we can’t answer them.

My experience so far has followed the plot structure of a Shakespearean play. The Exposition which introduces characters and the setting which would translate into identifying the research question in our context has been the longest. It’s also perhaps the hardest part if you are into development economics. This period has had a mix of both dry and interesting spells. Digging into papers looking for an interesting unanswered question can be as exciting as finding clues inside a maze. However, I must concede, that there have been extremely demoralizing times. Especially because we were doing research for the first time. For example, the times you think that you have a research question but end up finding out that someone has already dealt with it. What is however reminiscent of this period are the discussions we had with my professors and other people. Getting exposed to absolutely new thoughts can be very stimulating.

Once we had the research question, then came the Rising Action. In my case, this required the divine intervention of Mausumi di (Prof. Mausumi Das, DSE). Had it not been for her, we could never have convinced Tridip da (Prof. Tridip Ray, ISI) with the research question. I had been struggling and fighting with it for almost 6 months. Every time I would have a proposal, it’d get turned down. But this was the most exciting part for me. We got into modelling, building conjectures and proving them. This is also the time when I got to work closely with my “teachers”, but now they would look unto us and listen as co-authors and not students. It’s an amazing experience. Just to know the fact that some of the things that you think are actually important and worth thinking! This was also the time when we could go for CCD trips, for tea during a full day work and talk about a lot of stuff. I am waiting to graduate to dinners soon, though.

The Turning Point for me was when I could prove, what I fondly call “my last conjecture”. (The fact that all risk averse agents prefer ICLs to bank loans, details in paper!).  So I was working on this for a while, and this would make all the other results really important. This conjecture would be the focal point of the paper. The proof then just occurred to me, in a flash and even though the proof is very simple, but just the fact I could do it by myself, without any help made me ecstatic. Months of research and hard work, all paid off. It was time for celebration.

Falling Action has to be attributed to writing of the paper but that has not happened yet. The high points of doing research according to me are that you get to learn and create something new. Something no one has ever thought of. And that feeling can be one of great excitement. Social Science research is not rocket science where you can make someone land on the moon. But to understand issues like poverty and suggest measures that can be potentially very useful is a part of a huge rocket.  This brings satisfaction. Using math tools that appear absolutely useless otherwise and suddenly becoming a magic wand is unforgettable. Our laboratory is not that glamorous. But working in a nice office with serene scenery outside, or in a coffee shop in Khan Market (yes we can afford it!) are good substitutes. Our research also uses technology beyond just typing. And like my corporate friends, who have seen the real world, we can also party.

In my case, we also built a very nice rapport and a relationship with our professors. Once Prof. Patha Sen told me that when he started as a young professor he made friends with a lot of his students and I always wondered how that would be like for his students. Coming from Stephen’s where the student-teacher divide is less than it generally is, I looked forward to it. But now I could experience it first hand. Staying in academics, I am pretty sure that these associations are meant for a very long time. With your friends, who’d in future become your colleagues. Your teachers, who’d become both your friends and colleagues.

I had read somewhere that if one is working very hard for something, one won’t enjoy the goal when one achieves it unless one enjoys the journey (with ALL the hard work). And, even though, this paper (whenever it develops into a full-fledged one) will feature in my CV forever, I think it is the process of writing it...that we'd cherish the most!

(The context is my work with Tridip da, Mausumi di and Seher. A lot of the “we”s refer to me and Seher. To Tridip da and Mausumi di, I still wonder why you took us on. Thanks a lot for introducing me to the world of research and for always keeping faith and being supportive.)

Lokpal or some mechanism design theory? Your choice.

Top politicians and so called members of “the civil society” are all enthusiastic to get the best Lokpal bill in the world. What bewilders me is the fact most of this is show off and meant to gain media mileage. I do not think that these sudden saints of India care about corruption or welfare at all. If they did, then there are probably easier mechanisms that you’ll find in any elementary economic theory text book which are easier to implement, easier to manage and more welfare improving than designing laws and getting passed. My worry is that if the society is inherently corrupt and works largely in self-interest then no law would serve the required purpose. What would work however is a mechanism which is incentive compatible and individual rational for all participants of the society. Better still, some of the leading experts in game theory and mechanism design are Indians. To a student of economics names like Dilip Abreu, Arunava Sen and Rajiv Vohra are well familiar.

Some years ago I remember two IIT-IIM graduates, working for ONGC and some government construction company in U.P. and Bihar respectively, getting killed because they had gone a little too deep into the business of the local mafia. Obviously, even the local police did not do anything because unarguably even they were involved. As far as I remember, nothing eventually happened. Even the national media have forgot about them and are spending their airtime covering the jackass, good-for-nothing Ramdev. No member of the civil society ever pursued what happened to these young kids and what they were after. And I can assure you that there would be plenty cases like these which do not even get reported and no one really cares. In such an environment then, it inherently becomes the best response of every one to play the strategy to maximize their own welfare and forget about the society. It’s like the classic co-ordination failures game!

Do we have a better solution? I believe we do. Let me give an example. Kaushik Basu says that typically we have too much of government and ideally government should be scarce. I buy his point entirely. Why do you want to do everything yourself? Delegate. The government should just create incentives so that funds get allocated in the right areas and work happens. Consider a system in which the local government or panchayat lists out the facilities that are required in its area – roads, schools, electricity, sanitation, houses anything. Let them also run a fund where anyone can contribute and would be eligible for a r% tax rebate. Let r vary according to availability of funds in schemes. So like in a stock market, some scheme that has received more funds offers a lower rebate than a scheme that has received less funds. Market would ensure that all the funds get equally allocated. Then the panchayats can develop local areas on their own. This reduces the burden on the tax authorities, budget allocators, government, and bureaucracy and gives incentive for everyone to contribute. Since the payment will be online or electronic it will be easier to monitor. Alternatively, corporate giants can take care of small villages entirely and develop them with their money. My hunch is that even if you given them an over 100% rebate it’ll be better for the government in terms of the bureaucratic inefficiencies they have to deal with. Better for the companies also. Obviously, all corruption won’t be over but it’ll be reduced and hence better.

You can also have some government servants to look over the work that the corporate sector does. Again one might expect collusive corruption but if the local authorities have an equal say in ensuring that the rebate actually happens then this would again reduce. What I just said is not foolproof but you get the point. I’m sure if people like Sen, Vohra or Basu sit and create schemes they’ll come with actual better ones. What I am saying is that you do not always need stringent laws. It’s a waste of time. If people now have means and ways to escape the present laws, they’ll surely find ways to escape the new ones later. However, what you need is to get around the “middle men” and put in place a mechanism that is incentive compatible and rational for everyone. With some leading mechanism designers from India, I do not understand why they are not engaged in policy making. For example, why weren’t Sen or Abreu contacted for designing the auction procedure for 2G or 3G spectrum.

Obviously, this is not incentive compatible for the government and the “civil society” because they are the ones who benefit the most when development of any kind happens through the government. Hence, everyone just moves towards creating newer laws and getting more media mileage.