There is a lot of speculation about who is going to be the republican nominee for president of the United States. Although Donald Trump is clearly the front-runner now, he is hated by the folks in the republican establishment, who would rather see someone like Jeb Bush getting the nomination. Now that none of their favorite candidates are in the race, it boils down to one of the four who are in the race. The second in line right now is Ted Cruz and he is also someone the folks in the GoP establishment love to hate. The other two simply don't have the numbers. The question is why are they still in the race. Marco Rubio is in because he is expected by the GoP establishment to win Florida, a winner takes all state, and deny Trump or Cruz (mostly Trump) a majority needed to ensure automatic nomination. Similarly John Kasich is still in because the GoP establishment hopes that if he wins his home state of Ohio, another winner takes all state, Trump will not be able to gain a majority, denying him an automatic nomination. If all this works, the GoP establishment can field a preferred candidate - someone like Mitt Romney - who will replace Trump, despite not being in the race. But what the pundits at the GoP are not calculating is that Cruz and Trump can broker a deal wherein they could say one of them will get the presidential nomination and the other will be the running mate. It is win-win for them both. Ideally, Trump will become the presidential candidate for the republicans and Cruz will be his designated deputy. Since Ted Cruz is relatively younger he can get a good shot at occupying the White House after Trump's term there - i.e., if Trump gets elected as President. But even if Trump loses the presidential race to the democrats (most likely to Hillary Clinton), it is no big deal, Ted Cruz will still be a favorite candidate for the republications the next time around. So he has a lot to gain by joining hands with Trump. But assuming that doesn't happen and the GoP establishment fields a non-contender as their presidential candidate, this will piss Trump and Cruz off and both may run for president as independents. This will make victory easy for the democrats in this years presidential race. I would not be surprised if Hillary even wins with the highest victory margin in American history if this happens.
Friday, March 11, 2016
Tuesday, March 8, 2016
ICICI Bank's Social Responsibility Gimmick
I recently came across a news report on one of ICICI Bank's corporate social responsibility initiative. The title of the report was "ICICI Bank to let women work from home for a year". At first glance it sounds all rosy and kind but ICICI Bank's social responsibility record is abysmal... They sell insurance products as though they are the best investment alternative out there... They hire goons to recover bad debts from the poor and broke... they place unrealistic targets on their sales personnel that many end up choosing unethical means (with their boss's blessings/direction) to meet their insane targets... they don't allow investor's to book their profit, instead they ask them to reinvest in another "scheme"... So I suspected this "women friendly" initiative cannot be as rosy as it is made to sound. Exactly as I suspected, this initiative is biased and is just a publicity gimmick... According to the report, "Women in all roles, except those in direct customer-facing ones, would be eligible for this initiative based on their life stage needs." A majority of women who work in ICICI bank are in "direct customer-facing" roles... So it is pretty much for the upper management and corporate elite... that is a shame!
Sunday, March 6, 2016
HRD Ministry's Priorities
I read a recent report in the Economic Times about an initiative of the HRD ministry to identify institutions that will emerge as world class in teaching and research. I welcome this initiative but I am a bit concerned about the priorities of the HRD ministry. Yes, we need to identify potentially world class institutes and such a ranking process can be very helpful but the priority should be on research not on teaching. Don't get me wrong, teaching is important but the quality of a institute has to be judged by the quality of the research that comes out from there. Right now, there is Indian institutes that can match up to the top schools of the world, or even Asia for that matter, in terms of research productivity. We need to fix the teaching as well but it is important to identify that the priority should be research.
I recently had the opportunity to visit three of the top institutes of management in India and interact with the faculty and grad students in these institutes. I made a few observation there. First, most of the faculty that I met there were motivated to do good research. Of course, there was a bit of self selection here... the ones who are not keen on doing good research would not be interested in spending time with a visitor who was invited there for a talk... also the ones who consider themselves to be good researchers already will not be motivated to spend time with me. Second, the amount of time they spend on teaching was insane... it is simply impossible for someone to spend that much of time on teaching and still find time to do good research. Third, even the super motivated ones who squeeze time for doing research are not trained at their grad schools to publish their work in leading journals in their field... in fact they are strongly motivated against it. They even are trained to believe that international journals are biased against the scholarly work of non-western researchers from non-western schools. This is why they aspire to publish their best work in the Economic and Political Weekly rather than in the American Economic Review or the Quarterly Journal of Economics for instance. Yes, international journals have had their biases in the past but they are much more open these days to non-western scholarship. The Chinese and Koreans have been able to overcome such biases, if any. So why can't we? Mindsets need to change and incentives need to be aligned. My suggestion is not that we start copying what the Chinese did or the Koreans did, which essentially was blindly copying what our western colleagues did. My suggestion is that we learn to embrace our history, experience and current realities in doing our research. This will allow us pursue research that matters. But the trick is making what matters to us also relevant to the world. This leads to my fourth observation: Grad programs should train grad students to engage in phenomenon motivated, theory rich research, using cutting edge research techniques... Further, Grad students should know that the PhD dissertation is not the end of one's research journey but just the beginning. The role of teaching should be to inspire students to enjoy their research and publish their best work in reputed international journals not in obscure domestic ones (or obscure international ones). Only then will research from India gain visibility and recognition.
So when the HRD ministry ranks the potential of Indian institutes, it should use a rubric that places a greater weightage on research than on teaching... this would mean that an institute that affords more research time for its faculty will be higher up in the ranking.
I recently had the opportunity to visit three of the top institutes of management in India and interact with the faculty and grad students in these institutes. I made a few observation there. First, most of the faculty that I met there were motivated to do good research. Of course, there was a bit of self selection here... the ones who are not keen on doing good research would not be interested in spending time with a visitor who was invited there for a talk... also the ones who consider themselves to be good researchers already will not be motivated to spend time with me. Second, the amount of time they spend on teaching was insane... it is simply impossible for someone to spend that much of time on teaching and still find time to do good research. Third, even the super motivated ones who squeeze time for doing research are not trained at their grad schools to publish their work in leading journals in their field... in fact they are strongly motivated against it. They even are trained to believe that international journals are biased against the scholarly work of non-western researchers from non-western schools. This is why they aspire to publish their best work in the Economic and Political Weekly rather than in the American Economic Review or the Quarterly Journal of Economics for instance. Yes, international journals have had their biases in the past but they are much more open these days to non-western scholarship. The Chinese and Koreans have been able to overcome such biases, if any. So why can't we? Mindsets need to change and incentives need to be aligned. My suggestion is not that we start copying what the Chinese did or the Koreans did, which essentially was blindly copying what our western colleagues did. My suggestion is that we learn to embrace our history, experience and current realities in doing our research. This will allow us pursue research that matters. But the trick is making what matters to us also relevant to the world. This leads to my fourth observation: Grad programs should train grad students to engage in phenomenon motivated, theory rich research, using cutting edge research techniques... Further, Grad students should know that the PhD dissertation is not the end of one's research journey but just the beginning. The role of teaching should be to inspire students to enjoy their research and publish their best work in reputed international journals not in obscure domestic ones (or obscure international ones). Only then will research from India gain visibility and recognition.
So when the HRD ministry ranks the potential of Indian institutes, it should use a rubric that places a greater weightage on research than on teaching... this would mean that an institute that affords more research time for its faculty will be higher up in the ranking.
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