Muthu's Weblog

Interesting numbers will be a section on my blog where I point out statistics that I find are interesting, mildly amusing and provides a new, different perspective. 25% TamilNadu is a key market for Education loans in India, accounting for 25% of all education loans disbursed across the country, amounting to around Rs.20,650 Crores. 1.5Million No. of hectares of forest diverted for non-forest purposes through Forest Conservation Act 1.8Million No. of tribals to be evacuated under a recent supreme court order, under the pretext of preventing protecting forests.

Being a mentor is a not an easy thing. There are a lot of things that a mentor has to do, beyond imparting knowledge. To mentor is to mould and sculpt - to recognize there is a permanence to the teaching for better or worse. One of those things is choosing when to intervene as a mentor, and to fix the mess created by your student. My favorite description of the importance of this intervention is captured in a novel by Arthur Hailey, titled Airport. One of the pages has a story about an air traffic controller training a new recruit - "George Wallace nodded and edged closer to the radarscope. He was in his mid-twenties, had been a trainee for almost two years; before that, he had served an enlistment in the U. S. Air Force. Wallace had already shown himself to have an alert, quick mind, plus the ability not to become rattled under tension. In one more week he would be a qualified controller, though for practical purposes he was fully trained now. Deliberately, Keith allowed the...

Privilege - A special advantage that people enjoy over others. It is this elusive idea , hard to understand for a lot of people. Why is it so? Why do so many people carry on with their lives completely oblivious to the privileges they enjoy by virtue of their very existence? How can so many people miss such an obvious thing as one that pervades all your life? Is it the extraordinary levels of insulation that people can enjoy in this society? Or is it merely an inability to think beyond their little ponds? Can people be pathologically incapable of recognising privileges that they enjoy and the others so cruelly denied? It is not hard to find people like this. People who rant about having to pay taxes, or people who rant about reservation system or people who in general think that the society is unfair to them because they do not always get their way. Don't get me wrong. People are well within their rights to question high taxes or nepotism or inordinate majoritarianism in corne...

Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? by Michael J. Sandel My rating: 5 of 5 stars Ever felt that you are being meted out injustice due to reservations based on Caste? Ever felt that the shopkeepers who sold Milk for 300 Rupees a packet and Water for 200 Rs a Can should be punished? Ever felt strongly for or against same sex marriage? Euthanasia? Cannibalism? If your answer to any of the questions is an yes, then you need to read this book. This book will take that question, rip it apart, then patch them up again, making you understand the various strands that held the question together in the first place. One of those rare, must read books. View all my reviews

Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy by Raghuram G. Rajan My rating: 5 of 5 stars TLDR; If you want to understand the '08 crisis without getting bogged down in jargon, this is the book to go. Also, Dr. Rajan makes perceptive observations about India and it's politics, governance, and social security. This book aims to narrate the various factors that contributed to the global economic crisis of '08. he writing is lucid, clear and flows smoothly. Dr. Rajan explains Sub prime mortgage crisis very well, and is clear cut in his reasoning as to why the Government intervening (or not) was bad. He doesn't paint anything to be a panacea, and doesn't bat too much against the bankers, and not for too much regulation either. Her repeatedly makes it clear that there was a lot of things going wrong, and makes very interesting commentary on the social implications of the crisis, and the solutions that tried to corr...

An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India by Shashi Tharoor My rating: 5 of 5 stars This is a well researched book that covers all the aspects of the argument against British Raj. There are not only nationalistic arguments, but points against social, cultural, moral, technological, political and utilitarian theories that seek to support the British rule. Shashi tharoor makes no bones about calling out the people who say that British provided us with democracy, and those who say that they were better rulers because of their liberalism. There are some great data and writing that sum up how British imperialism maimed India badly. The pages about famine and War efforts make for some really grim reading and out to shut anyone up who plays the utilitarian card. This might very well be Shashi tharoor's first classic. View all my reviews

A world without Fidel Maruthan Fidel won't be able to read the thousands of tributes and eulogies that are being written from all over the world. But he has read many eulogies written for him. He has amused himself over the failure of numerous attempts on his life by the world's prime super power, smiling over a cigar on that tiny island. We do not know if he ever saw the viral video 'Castro's last Journey?!' that was released in 2011. But he smiled saying that he has seen news about his own death on the TV and read about it on Twitter. From Eisenhower who broke off diplomatic relations with Cuba to Barack Obama who tried to renew the relations, Castro has seen 11 US presidents, and opposed them consistently. Just as he looms into our view as one of the greatest personalities of this century, Fidel Castro also remains the most abused and hated "dictator" for many. His death on 25th of November, 2016 has created a vacuum not only for those who admired him,...