As a confession (from someone who knows tamil a bit and someone who enjoys hip-hop) I must say I like this song and I dont mind hearing to it even if we judge them to be wannabes.

Rap in the US evolved in many ways in the US, with various versions such as Gansta Rap and Gansta-Funk (G-Funk) [Source:Wikipedia]. Rap has an important cultural side and its intricately linked with the life and linguistic style of African Americans. This fact is difficult to appreciate unless one interacts with them and tries to understand these intricacies. The language, the style, the dress, the culture basically comes right out of someone who lives in a ghetto. This is the reason why most of the Hip-Hop artists came right out of the ghettos.
Rap began its small begin as a natural outcome of the Afro-American lifestyle. The affluence and the fame of the successful HipHop artist help promote the more recent developments of the disco-graphy of the albums and also to a large extent the Ghetto lifestyle began to evolve into a hip-hop style sophistication, such as a “bling-bling” culture[source:Wikipedia]. Hip-hop thus had a market of its own, and hence a life of its own. It became something like a fad, a “fad” which people like my dad believed wont last long, but it did and it spread around the world. Local artists emerged as a result of the popularity of American rap, giving the same “rap” tunes but in thier own cultural style.

I listen to french rap as well. The group Bisso Na Bisso and the Congo Hip-hop artist Passi are some of my favourites. Here is another gem from Cheb Mami(of the “Desert Rose fame” and who, by the way, is one of the best “Rai” singers) and K-Mel which is one of my favourite songs (I dont understand a single word, but the tunes are just amazing):

Here is the LINK for the video in case you are not able to see it.
During my stay in Los Angeles and my interactions with a few young hip-hop singers here, I did notice that they were culturally very attached. They had a strong identity, which probably will never go away. Its the same with most “Rap” artist from any other culture.

This cultural attachment is what I want to bring about. Check out the Cheb Mami Video for example. Its good hip-hop and yet they dont have that “bling-bling” nature, the dress is mordern yet its NOT ghetto style. Contrast this with our Tam Rap video, and one just has to say that our brothers are just wannabes. The music is good. The lyrics are strong. But man, why do you have to throw away your cultural background and act as someone who you do not even understand! Even if one throws away his culture and dresses “casually”, its fine. But trying to be something that you are not and CANNOT be is something extremely stupid.

Why are we desis like this? Why are we wannabes in everything? Cant we define anything of our own. One need not have to be culturally bound to be creative, nor do we need to be a wannabe to be creative. Creativity is something inherent and it rings well with the concept of originality. If these people were singing that Hip-hop song in a desi dress, like a lungi and jubba/shirt I would have appreciated them more. I would have appreciated them even more if they did not show any cultural biases.

To all the talented young men and women out there: Please dont be wannabes, be yourself.

Look, women working by day and late at night,
They sing of bright days that were,
A long way back and forth forever

Bright days they were… bright days they were indeed!

thats right!!!!! CODE BLOCK!!!!!!!!

Sorry about the delay

Coming to the Indian side of the scene. I never think we would have even bothered to send a representative into this meeting. I am also sure I have never heard India walking out of any meet. Nor have i heard any technology for mass social action being used and propagated in India. Nor have I seen any politician defending our nations technology. Or in the least, allay some fears on outsourcing.

The explanation for this is simple and logical. While the chinese see technology as a social catalyst. They are proactive in the case of Techonolgy as a social development catalyst. This is an important step towards industrial development.

When will we learn!

Consider the case of the Chinese search Engine:- Baidu! Baidu went for an IPO sometime ago and guess what :- they are now valued at $3 billion (Source) and some claim that its near $5 billion(Source). I am no economist, though I have a strong economic orientation, but I would say that this either shows over-confidence or foolishness. Over-confidence, though not necessarilly always, is a sign of foolishness.

A market cap of $5 billion is a HUGE thing. What this means is something like this: Say the Chinese net browsing population is something like 400 million, and say 80% of the people use Baidu. This means that the advertizers have partial access to some 320 million chinese, which is a very substancial thing because it represents a critical mass of people which can generate a substancial ‘advertisable’ base. Let us for the moment (highly) optimistically assume that the net browsing population will double in the next 10 years. That means Baidu will generate enough revenue of about $ 8-10 billion ($5 billion is the discounted valuation) in the coming years by selling ad-space to advertizers who intend to benefit from the , undoubtedly large, net-savy population of China!

If that does not ring a bell (I ain’t no economist ) then consider the side-effect of the above: To spend $8-10 billion in advertizing, the ad companies have to allot a percentage of their profits (which is an indicator of the growth of the economy , something also related, in some sense, to the risk free rate of returns), lets say they allot some 20% of their profits to advertizing. And say some 60% of that goes into i-net advertizing. That means 12% of the profits go to advertizing. Which means that the companies that do business with Baidu should make around 80 - 100 billion $ (i.e they should be valued something like 45 - 50 billion $ now) in profits in order for the market cap of Baidu to be the same as its true value. If I were having stocks of Baidu now… there is one thing that I should be doing SELL! You decide!

Philosophically, this more or less represents the trouble with the internet or to be more precise ‘high-tech’ firms! The valuations are hyped up by innacurate information and incommensurable entities. This was , in my opinion, the reason for bubble - 1.0. Everyone who had some amount of money was going tech-savy, over-valuing everything that was remotely related to i-net. This is the next generation bubble, which has become more mobile, more technologically nascent and more irrational.

May the bubble Hail!

I appreciate our outrage at the direction our fabled fatherland is going.
That’s good news coz it tells us that we take India and its debacles
personal. I’m afraid I haven’t had the patience to read the transcript. I
must admit I haven’t watched the interview on TV either. But I know one
thing for sure. What politicians say to the media is hardly of
significance. What matters is the decisions they make. The justifiability
(in a socio-economic sense) and the motivation behind political decisions
are easy to read into, even when the politician doesn’t part his lips for
a moment.

Reservations (wherever they might be) as we all know is a powerful weapon
in vote bank politics. When we know that it is vote bank politics at work,
does it make a difference as to what the venerable Arjun Singh says about
it?

Anyways, let’s for a moment take focus off the statements of Arjun Singh
and take a look at his actions. Vote bank politics is what is called
‘principal agent problem’ in economics. The principal is the stakeholder
in a country, company or contract. The agent is someone who makes
decisions on behalf of the principal. In a publicly traded company, these
terms translate to shareholders and managers. In a democracy they
translate to the people and the politicians. The sheer number of people in
a country and their inability to make collective, coherent decisions by
themselves and be accountable to those decisions gives rise to
politicians. (The assumption here is political decisions have to be made
and we can’t live without them. This assumption can be challenged by
extreme libertarian/anarchist thinking. But let’s stay prgamatic and go
with the assumption). However we need to realize that the agent
(politician) is a self intererested individual too at the end of the day.
There is a conflict of interest to some extent (the extent varies with the
individual) between the role of the politician and his personal desires
and motivations. It’s impossible to separate the two personalities,
however much we may want it as principals (people in a democracy). Looking
at it from the politician’s perspective, there is hardly any conflict of
interest between his roles. His office is meant to further his personal
goals. (I’m not making a statement on individual
goals are holy or unholy. They are just personal and have a bearing on
political decisions. Mahatma Gandhi, to the best of my knowledge, was a
man of holy intentions. Yet, when we made him our agent, he forced
perpetual appeasement of Muslims on us, for he thought it’s good to be
secular and had an extremely lopsided view of secularism.)

Democracy is, in a way, like consumer marketing. It’s all about the
numbers. The unit of money is here a vote! Different parties and politicians
target different demographic groups (based on economic status, religion,
caste, ideology….), much like automobile manufacturers do. Democracy is
egalitarianism are directly at conflict with each other. If a
politician/party can impress his core segment of consumers, even at the
cost of disparaging some other segment, that’s fantastic enough. That
brings us to the conclusion, a politician is not the representative of
everyone. A politician is the representative of only those who vote him or
are likely to do so at least. The incentives of the politician are not
aligned with the incentives of the entire populace, but those of a niche
segment of people with the numbers to catapult the politician to the
office next time. (I’m afraid, men like Arjun Singh, don’t have the
incentive to capture the office next time either, coz they are guaranteed
not to live that long!). In fact the interests of the principal are never fully
aligned with those of the agent. When you got to a doctor, your interest is to
get yourself cured of your disease, probably at the least cost (if you pay), while
the doctor’s interest is to charge you the highest fee he can to cure the disease.
Health insurance is a good way to align these orthogonal incentives.

I fully understand the frustration against reservation. But, I’m afraid,
it has become a sacred cow in Indian politics, much like agricultural
subsidies and perpetual tax holidays for farmers. (You can even compare
it with the funding for public universities in the US). The politicians
who introduced reservation first did so to gain a competitive advantage in
the electoral box office, much like Intel developing a new 64 bit
microprocessor). The moment they did it, it skewed the whole equation of
Indian politics. It became a Darwinian place for the politicians and
parties “adapt to reservation or perish, much like what happens to AMD
when Intel develops a killer product. It’s interesting to note that the
good or bad of the reserved castes is nowhere in sight in my argument.
Well, it’s nowhere in sight even in the minds of politicians either!

Reservation for OBCs in IITs/IIMs is just a tiny manifestation of the
colossal problem of reservation itself. The same holds for reservation
in medical colleges. There are some changes in
phraseology. That’s about it. I’ve heard people many times say that they
are ok with reservation but not ok with the way it is being implemented.
Let’s accept the truth.

1) It doesn’t matter whether reservation is acceptable to us or not. It’s
a game of numbers.
2) Reservation can’t be acceptable to all people and all demographic
groups no matter how it is phrased. The only thing that has a chance of
being acceptable to all, at least over time, is meritocracy.

If we want to fight against reservation, let’s fight about the very idea
of reservation, rather than the phraseology of it. Abolishing reservation
can discomfit the classes dubbed backward (I find it to unsulting a
nomenclature though) for a while, max for a generation. After that, their
survival instincts will take over and they will end up as competitive as
the other classes. I dare to prophecy like this, coz, I believe (somewhat
utopically) that all men are created equal. If there is nothing inferior
in the genes of the so called backward classes, there is no reason why
they should be disadvantaged in any way in a meritocratic system. If at
all they suffer from any disadvantage, it’s because of 56 years of
mollycoddling by the government. If we have to end reservation, we have to
stop this mollycoddling some day and give the normal men, unfortunately
branded backward, a chance to prove their competency. The longer we take
to stop the mollycoddling, the more painful we make it for the backward
classes to transition themselves to meritocracy.

Lastly, I’d again want to emphasize my de-emphasis on IITs/IIMs. Mates,
I’m afraid, India is a lot bigger than these places. There is no way
reservation can be acceptable at BMSCE and unacceptable at IIT Delhi.
There is no way reservation can be acceptable for SC/STs and unacceptable
for OBCs. (By the way we have silently accepted reservation for SC/STs
for 56 years. What sin have the OBCs committed to be excluded from the
coveted title of backwardness? If you are jealous of an unworthy
reservation candidate going to IIMA and landing the job of a
hedge fund manager at Goldman Sachs or HSBC, let me
assure you of something. If the candidate is really unworthy he is not
going to make it to Goldman. Goldman Sachs is not a govt organization and
has no obligation to social justice. (Or shall we say injustice?) There is
every reason for recruitment at Goldman or HSBC to work the free market
way. In fact the private sector job market is very close to a free market.
If a reservation candidate makes it to HSBC, you can rest assured that he
is worthy of it and would have made it anyway with or without reservation.
While we allay our fears this way, it is very important to note that the
proposal for reservation in the private sector must be fought with the
greatest fury. We simply can’t afford to destroy one of the very few
meritocratic systems we have managed to build. But this is where corruption
helps our otherwise medieval political landscape orient toward the free
market. Thanks to corruption and alliance between politics and business
(holy or unholy), I believe that business leaders will make sure that the
job market remains a free market, coz it is in the interest of business.

More similiar stuff by Atanu Dey here.

]]> http://desibell.org/blog/2006/05/25/before-you-shout-part-2/feed/ http://desibell.org/blog/2006/05/19/todays-gyan/ http://desibell.org/blog/2006/05/19/todays-gyan/#comments Fri, 19 May 2006 16:50:52 +0000 laks Quotes http://desibell.org/blog/?p=176 Hard-Work is an excuse to make lazy people look dumb!

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