Perfect Competition!!!.

This is my experience on 7 April 2009 while having a cup of tea at a very famous Dose shop in Jayanagar Bangalore. Its called Ganesh Darshan. It is more popularly known as Dose Camp. As a matter of fact Dose at Ganesh darshan can be regarded as one of the best available in the city.

It is a common sight in a crowded city like Bangalore to find hawkers everywhere. We find them in all crowded roads and at prominent eat outs and temples.

The greatest problem faced by these hawkers are the policemen. Policemen are generally very harsh on the Hawkers. Unless the hawkers grease their palms, policemen would not allow them to do their petty business.

Generally in all these darshini type eat-outs, people stand and eat. Due to space constraints, its a common thing for people to stand on the foot path and sip their drink or enjoy the delicacies. Policemen do not trouble the customers since they normally have a tie up with the darshini restaurant/eat-out.

Today was a scene which was slightly different. When i was enjoying an awesome cup of tea standing on the foot path of main road in jayanagar, i saw a petty flower vendor pleading with the security guard of Ganesh darshan. He wanted to spread a sheet below a tree in front of the restaurant and sell some flowers. The security guard(a private security guard employed by the restaurant) would not allow him to do so. I listened to the conversation for few minutes. The hawker was pleading him. Then i interrupted the conversation. I was little annoyed by the security guard's behaviour. The foot path does not belong to him. So i asked him what authority does he have to prevent the hawker from doing his business. He told me that he has been instructed by the restaurant's owner. He told me that the customer's at the restaurant complain that the hawkers on the foot path disturb them(customers). So the security has been asked to drive them away.

Its such an unfair world. People who pay 20 rupees for a dose and 8 rupees for a cup of tea can stand on the foot path and eat or drink and also disturb the pedestrians. But nobody questions them just because they belong to the middle class and they pay. The poor hawker would be making may be 10 rupees per a yard of tied flowers.

Well this is common. We all of us see these in our daily life. There was one interesting stuff here. It was security guard's job to drive the hawker away. It was hawker's job to sell the flowers. Both of them have to do their job to fill their stomach. If only the hawker sells his flowers he can fill his stomach and only if the security guard drives the hawker away he can fill his stomach (otherwise he will lose his job). Its such a paradox, one person to fill his stomach will have to hit the other person's stomach.

Adam smith, the father of economics said that under perfect competition, "No one can be better off without making someone else worse off". This incident was in perfect affirmation of Smith's theory. There was certainly a competition to fill the stomach.

So its neither the security guard's mistake nor the Hawker's mistake. Its the mistake of the customers at the restaurant. It is they who occupy the foot path meant for pedestrians and cause problems for themselves and the pedestrians.

If 2+2=6, then......................?

This is in sequel to the previous blog.
We called in the previous blog the result of the operation 2+2 as 6. or 2+2=6
So we could say that 2x2=6 and so on.
In the final step we got 6x2=18; but how?
6x2=2x6=2+2+2+2+2+2= 6+6+6=18;

Now if 2+2=6 then is 6+6 equal to 12 or 6+6+6=18?
Actually i do not know the answer. I feel that 6+6 will not be 12 if 2+2 is not equal to 4.
Lets take another case; if 2+2=6; then what is 2x7?
2x7=2+2+2+2+2+2+2= 6+6+6+2 (is it correct?)
Even if it is correct; what is 6+2? or 18+2.

Of course, if i change the convention and call 2+2=parrot, then all the above calculations will be redundant, rather...............

This is where my basics of mathematics or logic stands. If the simple convention of 2+2=4 is changed to 2+2=6 ; i do not know how to complete the derivation of other operations like 2+4 or 2x6 or 2x7 or 18+2. Yet i call myself an engineer. Its unfortunate, but that is how we are thought and this is how i learnt.
We are thought that 2+2=4; neither we questioned nor anybody explained why 2+2=4?

What if 2 + 2 = 6?

Why is 2+2=4? This sounds silly, but why should 2+2 be 4. Cant it be 5 or 6 or a or b?
I have failed to understand why is 2+2=4. Is it a convention or something scientific or something absolute? Its strange to question if the answer 4 for 2+2 is scientifically proven or not. Of course, this throws cascading questions like what is scientific and what is science?
Mathematics is known as the queen of all sciences and physics being the king of all sciences has to follow the queen. So the entire structure of scientific thinking rests on this pair.
Now questioning the rationality the above simple equation(2+2=4) sounds irrational at the outset. But read on, it may not be so irrational.
Many a time i get a strange feeling that these are conventions. It may be true. We just call 4 the result of the operation 2+2. We may as well call it 5 or 6or whatever we feel.


For a moment let us assume;
2+2=6......................................1


=>2=6-2....................................2


If 2+2=6, then 2x2=6.....................................3


=>2=(6/2)


Therefore (6/2)=(6-2)...................4


Therefore 6=(6-2)x2


i.e. 6=(6x2)-(2x2)


Therefore 6= 18-6......................5 (Because, 2+2=6; 6x2=18)


Find out if equation 5 is correct.
There is no message or inference from these equations. But its only an attempt to know whether the mathematics we know is based upon some underlying convention/assumption or its a branch of knowledge which is absolute.
This question stems from digits. We know of numbers 1,2 , 5 ,100 etc. But we cannot define any number without a reference or an objects. For example, number 4 does not have a meaning in isolation. 4 has to be with a reference such as 4th place, 4 bananas, 4 boys etc. As such 4 does not convey anything nor can 4 exist in isolation.
So 4 is a tool to convey the quantity of something(Bananas). So 4 cannot be absolute so 2+2 cannot be absolute. But Banana can be absolute.


Mind you i am only saying "Can be" .

Accept Society- Compassion in action

On 1 April 2009, i had an opportunity to visit Accept society, A NGO located in Bangalore (Off hennur cross) on a 3 acre plot. It is located just behind Karanataka rehabilitation center. it is surrounded by few other NGOs mostly working on women and child welfare, Rehabilitation of AIDS patients etc. Mostly all NGOs located here work in health sector. Accept India is also one such NGO who care and work for AIDS patients. They counsel the patients, rehabilitate them, give them care and love. They also perform their last rites.

One of the leading corporate audit firms who as a part of their CSR initiatives, are funding accept society had invited me to study the water management practices of the place and and give recommendations on how to augment the water sources and better manage water. Currently Accept society is facing huge water shortage and paying a heavy price for tanker and bottled water.

My job apart, the concept of accept india, the motivation of the people who work there and the atmosphere there struck me.

I took about an hour and a half in studying the drawings , the layout etc. Then i asked the administrator to tell me something about Accept society. The administrator in his early sixties was more than happy to receive my request.

He was quite overwhelmed by my request. He started the story with the genesis of accept society, he showed us around the campus, the different facilities, he introduced us to the doctors, nurses, cooks, drivers, and the patients. Below i write my experience of close to 3 hours time i spent there.
As soon as i entered the place, i was struck by its cleanliness. One cannot believe that its an hospital or a rehabilitation center. The lawns were moved perfectly, the drains speck clean and the floor nicely wiped. Actually it was in stark contrast to even few big private hospitals who do not even reach 50% cleanliness i saw here.

The society has few rooms(wards) named after biblical names. There are two big halls for the patients. Each hall had about 12 beds and a cupboard for each bed. All of them are speck clean and maintained very well. Apart from these two halls, the society has a common kitchen, common dining hall, common prayer hall and a community hall.

I was amazed to know that this society also accepts people who have been infected by opportunistic viruses post contracting HIV. So there is an exclusive 10 bed ward each for male and female who are suffering from TB.

The most touching part of my experience was the children home. No staff of accept calls the children as patients. Everyone from nurse to doctor to the cook call them (children) as "Our children".

Children are given all the possible facilities with the limited budget of accept. All the children go to school. When i was there in April, it was summer vacation. So there was a summer camp arranged within accept. So the kids were singing, some of them playing. One will be surprised to know that the teachers there get their kids too who are not HIV positives to the summer camp and play with the children (HIV positives).

The sad part is that almost all children there are orphans. Sadder is the fact that all of them know that they are suffering from a disease. The kids i saw there were all in the age group of 4 to 10.

The most moving part was the plight of the two resident doctors there. One of them specializes in the real last minute care. She told me that she can identify patients who are likely to breathe their last about 15 in advance. She specializes in taking care of those patients for the last 15 minutes of their life. God give her the courage. She has been doing this job for the last 3 years.
HIV itself is deadly and the person who contracted it is most unfortunate. One can blame the adults for their misconduct or carelessness for contracting this deadly virus. But what is the fault of those innocent children? They have just got it from their mother. World is really unfair.
Well, no one feels happy visiting those places. But one surely gets moved. The saddest part of the entire thing is that every kid in the society gets to know when there is a death of one of their peers. The administrator told me that there is no way to insulate the news.

The challenge the administration faces apart from taking care of the patients there is to revamp the group of children, to build confidence in children, to energize the children, to fill in courage to children after each death. And this has to be done almost week after week.

I left the place around 2 in the noon. Just before getting onto the bike, i saw a nurse walking towards the children home. The courageous lady, she knows she is going to see one more death in a few days. But yet puts up a bold face. What substance you should have been made of to know that the people who visit you come to spend their last days with you. They come to you to see them to their last journey. Hats off to all the staff of Accept India. hats off to the real heroes. May god give them the courage and energy.