Bad Planning or an Indifference to People?

 I have had to travel through Porvorim more often than I would have liked. Each time I am struck by the chaos and wondering does it have to be this way.

Do we plan for the fastest completion time or as fast as possible while minimizing the inconvenience during construction? 

Do we even consider the inconvenience and implicit costs caused by the chaos during construction?

Does the planning even include the impact on the people who need to use these roads and have no alternate option during the construction? I think we are invisible to the planners. Just a group to be tolerated while a great and bright future opens up to us.

I am certain that after the flyover is completed, I will again be able to reach the Dabolim airport from Mapusa in 50 minutes, like I used to do when I moved to Goa 25 years ago.

Meanwhile I crave for a future paradise where I can walk without fear or looking over my shoulder keeping track of traffic behind me. Travel by  public transport and not have to worry about where to park.

Oh, well. If I had money, I could have moved to Europe.... 

 

The Age of Sanyas, the trivial hope of fixing an issue with EPS and how to live a worthwhile life after rejecting Sanyas

 I certainly have no plans for a sanyas or leaving for the Himalayas! 

Yet a couple of days before the d-day, I could sense a heaviness in the head which lasts even a day after. Since I am indifferent to religion, it has to be the social importance of turning 75.

I have no plans to change the course my life but a fogginess in the head persists.

I wanted to have a cozy house in a quiet area - started just before Covid, which delayed it. But we are now in it for the last two years. I am finally installing solar panels - not for economic reasons and not even to save the planet as we continue to consume and pollute more. 

It is more for the selfish reason of being off-grid in case of grid collapses. If California can now experience them, Goa is of course an easy and likely victim. Hence, it again doesn't give me happiness of doing something useful.

We also were able to dispose parental property on our terms of no cash, in spite of advice that we are losing money and paying more tax. Again it was for the selfish motive of peace of mind. I have no expectation that it will make any dent in the economics of sale of properties.

My investments are passive and not requiring much effort except occasional reorganisation of funds to minimize risk. A necessity in light of the absurd pension I get for Employee Pension Scheme.

I do need to continue to fight the EPFO - not for my pension but in the hope to help others less literate facing the same issue. In shifting my pension from Chandigarh to Goa, my date of birth has been incorrectly entered. The digital life certificate is rejected as the date of birth on the Aadhaar card does not match the record of the employee pension scheme. Their solution defies reasonableness - provide a certificate from the bank each year as they inform me verbally that they can't change the date in their records. I wonder how they will deal with my death certificate! I keep hoping that my occasional pestering will result in some internal escalation and fixing my birthdate. 

I can recommend to them that if they can't change the field, create another field the database 'Legal Birth Date' and use that instead. I doubt if they will listen. Even if I succeed, I can at best feel a tiny and momentary sense of achievement even after the age of sanyas.

The satisfaction from this achievement, if at all it happens, is hardly enough to clear the mental fog.

Grandchildren are also too old to be needing or wanting our advice or input. 

I am trying to convince myself that it is not being 75 years old, but I need to find something to work on which keeps me occupied and in principle could be useful even if it is never actually used.

So, time to meditate on what next!

 

Why I wish I could be Superman

 As I started to cross the road, I noticed that a car had speeded up. I wished I had been Superman. I would have fearlessly crossed the road and enjoyed watching the car get crushed.

Instead, I waited  and waited. And waited but lived to tell the tale.

Random walk and thoughts around cars parked on the sidewalks and roads where there are no usable sidewalk

 As I walk past and around cars parked on the sidewalk and the road in front of houses, I find it ironic that the very people who feel entitled to use the public space for their private comfort are horrified at the thought of homeless people using the same type of space for their shelter.

My thoughts of irony are disturbed by a car which wants me to move aside so that it can drive on the road.

About time: replace nepotism by luck in recruitment - nothing else can be fairer

 The concept of finding the best candidates for a routine job would be fodder for The Onion were it not so impactful in its hypocrisy. 

If there are over a hundred qualified candidates for a job(or an educational program), we might as well accept and institutionalize the role  of luck in life.

Definitely have a test or a  process to shortlist the candidates meeting the minimum requirements. 

The test does not have to be secure and no-one need bother if someone cheated.

The next step is  to select the required number of candidates randomly.

The selected candidates must reappear for the qualification test in person to  ensure that they had not cheated and had not been impersonated. 

If any fail, replace them randomly from the shortlist of  candidates.

The whole process can be fast, inexpensive and as fair as the luck of  living allows.

Living Wage, Inflation and Guaranteed Minimum Income

Suppose we want less traffic on the roads:

We could reduce the need for private cars if the taxi drivers were paid a guaranteed basic income so people use taxis instead.

The concept can easily  be expanded to shared taxis, mini-buses and any other type of public transport.

It is easier to sell the idea if it is not treated as a subsidy but as a saving on needless infrastructure of roads - which also frees a lot space which could be better used for various public purposes.

We also want a comfortable society.

I am not comfortable when I see people struggling to survive. I cope with it by avoidance. There is nothing I can do as an individual that will help.  Donating or giving to charity makes me feel even worse.

I would love to see a living wage implemented even in India. 

We want to see a brighter future. We need peace and a low inflation.

If the wages of the workers in supermarkets, coffee shops, Udipi's,  child care centers, house hold workers, etc. are to be living wages, then the prices will increase.

Suppose instead each of these persons gets a minimum income. How much do they need to be paid? 

Depending on the nature of the work, we may actually be able to lower the prices. I can imagine a person having to clean toilets having to be paid even more than now while a child care worker may well even volunteer for just the pleasure of being surrounded by little children - esp grandparents whose children live far away :)

I wonder what has happened to minimum income programs for the common good -

"Barack Obama, in a reflective speech in South Africa, mused that basic income would figure prominently in the years ahead, and prominent corporate folk endorsed it again, including Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk."

This was in 2019. I hope the support of Elon Musk still holds. At least it did in 2021 as well.

 

 

 

The need for and benefit of owning a Car - depends on where

For over 5 years, I have not had a car for my visits to Chandigarh and I have rarely missed it. Even after the age of  70, I can easily walk and do most of  my  work. On occasions when  I did need a vehicle, Uber/Ola have been very useful. Usually, I get a taxi in a short period of time. It is the advantage of living in the center of the city and my trips are to places from where taxi driver will have no problem getting a new customer.

I wish I had the option of a taxi on demand in Goa, whenever I needed it. But I don't. So, I continue with owning a car which I will need to replace as it will be reaching retirement age of 20 even though it is not driven much and runs well. In stead of  using a taxi, when my children were also here, it was simpler to rent a car for 2 weeks!

It is obvious that a taxi will not be economical from the perspective of the consumer in Goa for either the short distances that I need or even an evening trip to a nearby beach. There just isn't enough volume of traffic throughout the day for a driver to make enough money.

In Delhi, I used Uber more this time than I usually do. I normally use metro only and walk and this time, an auto driving over my wife's foot had made the option of  walking impossible. 

Stuck in traffic, I would wonder how  much the driver could possibly be making. It couldn't be much. The condition of the taxis in Delhi reflected that. 

Uber is a terrible model. The society needs something better. Uber represents a need; however, the people who profit from it are NOT the ones providing the service.

The difference in the cost of using a car and taxi has the following parts:

• Operational cost. In this case, it makes little difference whether it is  a personal car or a taxi.
• Capital cost. In all likelihood, a taxi is used a lot more than a personal car. So, the effective cost per km should be lower for a taxi.
• Driver's earnings. We don't pay ourselves for driving, so this is indeed the big challenge.

If we want the ownership of personal cars to reduce, the  society must agree to guarantee a minimum income to the drivers - at least until self-driving vehicles replace them. 

Something like MANREGA for the urban areas?

 

Tremendous Expenditure and Progress in Infrastructure and We are even Slower

 I drove for 50 minutes from Mapusa and just reached Bambolim. It would have taken another 20 min to reach the Dabolim airport.

When I had moved to Goa 30 years ago, it would take me 50 minutes to reach the airport.

To be fair, a year ago, I had again reached the airport in 50 minutes with the new bridges over Mandovi and Zuari rivers and the new expressway from Bambolim to Zuari bridge.

I am also pretty certain that once the elevated highway is completed in Porvorim in a year or two, I will again be able to drive to the airport in 50 minutes.

I suppose that is progress. Here is an example of a regular experience for me and this is 2 and half years AFTER the report and - “We have written to the NHAI about the issues at the junction and steps to be taken to rectify the problem”. 

Probably the designers did not include or talk to anyone who stayed in Mapusa or was familiar with it.

Suppose instead, we spent a part of the money spent on improving highway and bridges on public transport, could it have been any worse?

First objection that comes to mind is from the categorization of the expenditure:

• Building roads and bridges is spent on infrastructure - A GOOD thing as it is an investment for the  future
• Spending money on public transport is a subsidy - Obviously a BAD thing. 
• Why can't we categorize it as a SAVING of money we do not need to spend on infrastructure to have an even better quality of life in the future?

 

An ideal example for a negative vote when facing a good, a bad and an ugly option

 As I was reflecting on the dilemma facing the uncommitted movement, the current US election seems to be a perfect example for the need for an option to vote against a candidate as well. 

If we are faced with the choice of a good, a bad and an ugly, we can vote for the good candidate, fully expecting him or her to lose. Our negative vote can be against the ugly in case, as we expect, the good candidate is the last one.

 If we do not  have the option for a good candidate, we can ignore our positive vote and still vote only against the ugly. We should not have to choose a lesser evil even if the result of the election would not be any different.

Would the victor of such a system celebrate and brag about his success, when the voting data would clearly  show that it is the ugly candidate who lost?

Goa is a small state. I wish the  election commission would experiment here.

A year on and my brain is perpetually stressed

I have no connection with Palestine or even any Arab. The last Indian news channel I watched was NDTV till it was taken over. I have relied mostly on European news channels, DW, France 24 and, to a lesser extent, BBC, and youtube selectively for Indian news, trying to escape emotional onslaughts on my brain.

It all changed a year ago. My brain just could not reconcile the contrast between the news of from Ukraine with the news from Gaza. I had to switch channels and reached Al Jazeera. I still watch it primarily though I have to turn off the tv as I can't cope with the developments  still going on after a year. It pains me as I liked to believe that we were long past the colonial era and were far more enlightened.

Today the words of the Western leaders in particular may sound nice and comforting while the images stare in bleak contrast. My brain can't cope.

I find solace in Scandinavian crime fiction where even though the criminals may be awful, there is a sense of closure and what is the most significant part, the hero does NOT use violence - from the characters created by   Sjöwall and Wahlöö to Jørn Lier Horst ! 

I focus a lot on the videos of  Robert Sapolsky even though I have never appreciated or understood chemistry or biology and hope that these will help. 

How does one run away or escape from any thing unpleasant?

Who knows, I may even try ChatGPT or Google's version, except that I worry these may make matters even worse.

What Depresses me even more about the state of Indian Education since I left it

 It was bad enough to have a centralised examination system at the University or State level. The logic or even the reasonableness of a person having greater merit just because he or she got a mark extra in an exam is beyond my comprehension. 

Applying that rule to a central entrance exam for jobs or admissions just breaks my heart. Blaming the students and their parents for desperately trying to find an alternate option is even more heart breaking.

The absurdity of the system would not matter if there were enough opportunities, which obviously are just not there in India. 

What is merit any way or its importance? I can't think of any better way than listening to Dr. Michael Sandel explain it. A critical issue is the recognition of luck in our life.

If we accept luck as a critical component of our life, and if we accept that there aren't enough opportunities for all, what would be an appropriate way to select candidates for admission? It is easy to imagine that the current system of admission will cause stress -more likely, severe stress. Here is  very short introduction to what it can do to the human body. If we further accept, as Dr. Sapolsky argues, humans have no free will,  we need to worry as a society about the impact of failing the admission tests by a massive number of candidates.

The fact that the number of seats is limited cannot be avoided. Nor can we avoid selecting a small number of candidates to fill the seats. We need to accept that there is no fair or equitable or perfect way to select the winners. So, why not follow what happens anyway. Use luck.

1. By all means use a test but only to determine competency for the course/job.
2. Optionally, use information which seems appropriate to assign a weighting score to each candidate.
3. Let a system select the candidates randomly using  weighting score as a bias.

Will it be a perfect selection? Obviously not but neither is any other system at present.

Implications:

1. Will  the winner be proud of his meritorious achievement. No. He will realise and accept that he has been lucky. (I for one won't miss the ads by coaching shops advertising the candidates who cleared the exam from 'their' center.)
   
2. Will the loser conclude that he was not good enough or a failure or had been cheated. No. He will accept that he was unlucky and had no control over what happened.
   

I can expect a large number of people who lose the lottery will have well connected parents or relations. Wishful thinking - they may well be motivated into creating additional opportunities for young people within the society instead of what we are convinced happens today.

Revisiting a 20 year old experience - nothing is right with our colleges

 I really had no idea of how to respond to the Vice President's rant about diseased kids dying to go abroad to study!

My personal sympathies are obviously with Ravish Kumar's views. 

However, it brought back my memories of 20 years ago, when I had expected to finally be able to do something which was useful and made me happy. However, I might as well reproduce what I shared then - I may cringe at some of  the tone now but let the old feelings be:

Farewell to Academics

In my personal little universe 3 years ago, the planets and the stars imposed a gravitational field which constrained me. Fortunately, the need to change while remaining in my tiny world also provided an appealing opportunity. I had always wanted to teach – may be after retiring. Now I could start half a dozen years sooner.

The first year of teaching engineering was very exciting. We focussed on improving the labs. We used thin clients, which allowed us to have almost double the number of workstations within the same budget. We introduced Linux, open source databases and various other applications. My objective was not just to save money but a conviction that students must be exposed to a variety of environments so that they can learn and make decisions with more information. The wider range of exposure also prepares them for coping with changes, which are inevitable in the IT area.

After the high, the decay started. Water is there but the horse refuses to drink it! Something did not seem right - students of computer engineering and information technology not particularly enthusiastic about programming. Some may have decided to make a career in management but not such a large majority! Each semester I tried to correct what I thought were the problems but the impact was minimal.

It was clear that I was on the wrong track. I chanced upon a website on connected mathematics (http://ccl.northwestern.edu/cm ). The goal of this project was to help learners at all levels make sense of complex, non-linear phenomena. It was clear that I had not understood the complexity of the issues involved. I was not dealing with individual students but with a collection of students with interactions between them. The behaviour of the students was a consequence of the environment in which they were operating. That is why the same students would become pretty good programmers after joining a company while avoiding it during their studies for a degree.

I looked at my laundry list of the problems and realised that I could address none of them. Each item in the list may not have meant much but collectively, the impact was overwhelming. So, why get frustrated, especially when the gravitational fields had weakened considerably.

My (partial) laundry list of the environmental issues follows:

1. A class size of 60 or more is too large. We are no longer dealing with a group of individuals but with a crowd. “We have unanimously decided to mass bunk.”

2. Compulsory attendance. It is the wrong solution to solving the problem of disinterested students or tuition classes.

3. Teachers are allowed to teach but are not qualified as examiners. That is clearly putting the cart before the horse.

4. Every college in a university has the same syllabus. “You can choose any colour as long as it is black.” A teacher cannot innovate.

5. A common final exam. The examiner, in order to ensure fairness to all colleges, is constrained to set a question paper which follows a well understood pattern. Our question papers invariably become a test of memory. Anything else would risk a front page coverage, “Out of syllabus paper”.

6. The governments impose a ridiculous amount of paperwork and inflexible rules on colleges in order to tackle the problem of some unethical teaching institutions. We wind up penalising the honest institutions. A small headline in a paper, “Fed up with corruption, NRI donates college to the University.”

I do not know about my students but I learnt a lot in the last three years, including ridding myself of a 30 year itch to teach.

About me

PhD in physics but working in the software industry for 25 years.

A Light Comment almost 50 years ago and it still troubles - Butterfly Effect?

It was almost  50 years ago. We were having a chat about my stay for a year in Europe. I had loved the stay. I have no recollection of it except for a side comment I made and this was long before Nokia made the world conscious of the existence of Finland.

 If I had a say in where I was born, I would have chosen Finland.

Even today, long after my parents have passed away, I can still feel the unhappiness of my father. He did not understand my statement. Perhaps no-one did. 

I did not  wish to be a migrant - or worse, a refugee. However, that does not prevent me from a desire to have been born and brought up in a society which is egalitarian, caring, trusting and, I cannot explain, the feeling of being made comfortable and welcome even to a stranger like me. 

The trigger today was a forward I did not see, which said that we would not have known about it if "a CCTV camera had not been installed by my  brother".

I do not want to live my life worrying about a stranger robbing or killing me. That risk is negligible compared to each trip I take on the road -  whether driving or walking!

An Embarrassing Failure of Saving and Recycling Water - What not to do to save the planet

 I have long been bothered by using fresh water in a flush. I finally got a chance to  do  something about it when we decided to build an independent house.

I had a hard time convincing the contractor and the plumber of  what I wanted. The plumber was a little more emphatic that it won't work though he did not explain - unfortunately. 

I got them to separate the waste bath water and save it in two tanks - first one with a filter and second one to store it. The tank and pipes to the WC tanks were separate.  There was a separate pump to lift water from the grey water tank to the overhead tank meant for WC's only.

I moved in and the troubles started.

The waste water from the bathrooms wasn't much! Just the two  of us. Fortunately, especially with the water saving toilets, even the water requirement for the WC tanks was not much, despite 2 senior citizens needing to use the flush more often than they would have preferred.

So, the first lesson was that the cost of the additional expenditure did not match  the gain.

Worse was to follow.

I had searched a lot for filtering  grey water. There were the treatment plants which made no  sense at all for our needs and volumes. The rest were for rain water harvesting. Reminding me of the old crow and water pitcher tale. Bath water and washing machine water seemed quite clean. So, filtering with stones, sand and  charcoal powder seemed fine.

After a few days, there was a strange smell in bathrooms. We just couldn't figure it out. We called the plumber and he said that he had told us that it wouldn't work. The smell was the grey water smell and it will get worse. He  then said that he had made a provision to fill the WC tank with fresh water,  knowing that we will have to abandon the experiment. Shall he do so. And of course, I agreed.

I still had grey water. So, I got an additional small pump to use the grey water for gardening. 

Given the rains, I haven't used a drop of it for over 3 months now. Plus, even when it is bright and sunny, we consume enough to water a small part of the lawn.

I try to cheer myself up by trying to believe that every little bit helps even though my logic tells me - of course not. The upfront costs exceed the savings. I have made the planet a little worse.

I decided to share my learning experience in the hope that it may save someone from making the same stupid mistake and spending sleepless nights thinking about how could I have been so illogical and had refused to think through the implications.

" Tamil Nadu CM Stalin Wants Education Shifted from Concurrent to State List"  triggered the old memory of "question out of syllabus" experience. 

It is now over 20 years since the complaint of a faculty member Mr. X and students of another college that the Vice Chancellor had called a meeting and agreed with Mr. X. The VC said that we raise the marks of the students. This was done without even looking at the results. 

Mr. X had a  problem as raising the marks increase some students' marks to over 100%. He somehow managed. In my view, the process was unfair to students who had understood the concepts. But why does this incident still pain me like a simmering wound, a permanent damage with no hope of healing?

The real cause of pain comes down to the implicit and explicit remarks that I had told our faculty member to teach these examples in our college. The thought had never even crossed my mind that anyone could interpret it as such. Or the belief that "The correct answer must be written in the text book" ; hence, I must have cheated.

Making education a state only subject does not guarantee improvement. However, it does give me hope that may be one of  the states may do better. At least there is a possibility that somewhere over the horizon,  learning may become a focus point for the future generations.

Overcoming a bleak year

I butt dialed an old colleague and chatting with him made me realise how bleak the last year had been. Searching mails for a contact made me realise that at the end of 2021 we exchanged hardly any holiday greetings. The greetings at the end of 2020 were full of hope that the coming year will be better. It wasn't.

It seems as if I/we have gone into hermit-mode and interacting even with friends feels awkward. The most social contact has been with shop keepers! In fact, yesterday only, I enjoyed interacting with the owner of a bathroom fixtures shop. May be he too was affected because he gave me a very good discount😀

I had been perfectly content with the constrained life, except for not physically meeting grandchildren. The pleasure of such social interaction came alive again and surprisingly made me realise how I have unconsciously stopped making any effort to have any face to face social interaction.

I have to renew the effort but it seems so hard now😒

A way to get rid of reservation in higher education

 "Show me where is the answer in the text book!" - stated in an aggressive tone by a faculty member from another college. This memory was triggered by "The Habit of Copying: Are We Creating a Culture of Plagiarism?" 

 

I could not even have imagined that anyone could have such an expectation for a management information course. My disappointment with teaching is documented here.

 

If there is a shortage of supply, there will be malpractices and there is a shortage of seats for a decent education. Gaming the system, blaming reservations, etc will be inevitable.

 

Instead of trying to stop loopholes, what if we accepted that there is a shortage and that there is no perfect way to select the best. We could, of course, auction the seats. However, I doubt if that would seem ideal to anyone, including those supporting auction of coal mines and mobile spectrum! First come, first serve will also not be an acceptable option.

 

An alternate system is a random selection from among a set of shortlisted candidates. The selection for shortlisting could be very much like the current system; except that there is no queue; rather, a set of acceptable candidates. 

 

We can eliminate reservation of seats for varying categories of candidates. The focus can be to ensure and help candidates from deprived communities clear the entrance test barrier.

 

The tuition industry would suffer but, at least, I have for one would not shed a tear to see it disappear. 

A generation or two later - What if Corona Virus were handled differently

A great theme for speculative fiction novels:

What would the future be like a generation or two later depending on how the Corona Virus were handled. 

A pessimistic version assuming that the Corona Virus were as destructive as some have feared, especially for the older people,  and the societies couldn't control the virus. Would we still be an aging society looking for young people?

I was intrigued by the possibilities as I read the news that China is now encouraging couples to have a 3rd child! 

Furthermore, there was the news about the very high and worsening level of inequality now. How would this change were the pandemic let loose?  An obvious historical parallel is the black death and the Renaissance in Italy. 

The Black Death marked an end of an era in Italy. Its impact was profound, resulting in wide-ranging social, economic, cultural, and religious changes. These changes, directly and indirectly, led to the emergence of the Renaissance, ...

 An optimistic version. Personally, in spite of being in the very high risk group, I am convinced that the societies have overreacted. I was reminded of this by the efforts to control the spread of Omicron variant. 

Here is a simple question: If the Omicron variant is thrice as transmissible as the Delta variant - as is suggested tentatively by the existing data - why are we putting so many people in one holding area? Will this not ensure that many uninfected people may actually get the infection?

Some of the major outbreaks of the infections might very well have been because of our societies' efforts to prevent the spread! 

In spite of such questionable implementation issues, damage from virus infections has been more-or-less contained. This reinforces my view that the light touch of Sweden remains the most sensible approach to the handling of the Corona virus, even though it is very hard to find any articles which do not predict failure and doom for that approach.

What if societies decided to handle Corona virus lightly, realizing how vulnerable human societies are, focused on the imminent issues facing human societies, e.g. climate, inequality, desperate migrations.

Obviously, the former will sell, the latter will not!

A very clean memory

More memories of Andhra :)

My breakfast on each visit to Andhra was black grape juice and pesarattu. It probably started with a night's stay in Vizag on my way, I think, to Orissa. 

I can't recall how I wound up at the hotel, but it seemed nice from the outside. They had no A/C rooms available. Since it was just for a night, I decided to stay there even though I was taken aback by the room cost. After my experiences in the North, I had very low expectations given the price of the room!

However, the hotel lobby and the passage were clean and well lit. The room itself was very clean and remarkably airy. Sadly, I have forgotten the name of the hotel though the stay was very comfortable and pleasant.

Given the above experience, cleanliness doesn't have to be expensive. 

I have never understood - what prevents cleanliness in our societies?

 The 'rise and fall are the “Andhrapreneurs” ' reminded me of my first account with a private sector bank. I had always felt uncomfortable with private sector banks. A couple of interactions with their representatives had left me uncomfortable, similar to my comfort level in 5 star hotels, that is, I don't belong there.

On an impulse, I walked into the branch of Global Trust Bank in Panaji. I needed a demat account and they were on the list given me by the share broker. I was very surprised. 

• It was clean and pleasant. 
• It was tech savvy.
• The person was genuinely helpful.
• I felt at ease.

My relationship with the bank increased. There was once some financial interaction my parents had to do. They visited the GTB branch in Chandigarh and were very impressed as well. They too opened an account there :) Had it been nearer, that would have become their primary branch.

Even after the bank was taken over by Oriental Bank, these branches continued nearly as before. I believe part of the reason must be that the working environment in these branches was much better than in one of the original Oriental Bank branches I visited. 

I miss the absence of GTB and wonder 

• what if election funding was far more transparent in India?
• what if we got rid of the 'First Past the Post' elections given the multiplicity of parties and interests they represent?

I am sure the fate of entities like GTB would have been very different and India would be a far richer and better country.