What's next ?

Yeah Rafa's gone. I feel kind of sad. I don't think it could be called a firing or a sacking. It's got to do with the money available(or rather not available) to buy players.

Liverpool are not the financially strongest club in the EPL. ManU, Chelsea, Arsenal and Man City can all easily outspend Liverpool. One can make an argument that even Spurs have a better purchasing power than Liverpool. I think it makes it that much more impressive that he has done what he has.

2005 - EPL(5th), Champions League (W), League Cup (Runner Up)
2006 - EPL(3rd), Champions League (16),FA Cup(Winners), UEFA Super Cup(Winners)
2007 - EPL(3rd), Champions League (F)
2008 - EPL(4th), Champions League (SF)
2009 - EPL(2nd), Champions League (QF)
2010 - EPL (7th), Champions League (Group), Europa League (SF)

People tend to criticize RB's transfer policies. I think he's brought in quite a few undeniably good players. I would put his transfers into 4 categories.

Good Transfers : Pepe Reina, Glen Johnson, Mascherano, Alonso, Kuyt, Torres, Skrtel, Agger, Ngog, Lucas

so-so Transfers : Babel, Aquilani, Riera,

Oh God what was I thinking : Robbie Keane, Dossena, Voronin, Pennant etc

Why did I let them go Transfers: Crouch, Bellamy, Alonso, Sissoko etc.

The total loss incurred on these players was about £15M. That's really not bad. (He made a profit on selling a lot of players like crouch, bellamy, alonso, gonzalez etc). Considering how other clubs have Purchased and had flops

ManU - Ferdinand(£33), Rooney(£26M), Anderson (£20M), Berbatov (£32M), Hargreaves (£20M), Carrick (£20M), Nani (£18M), Valencia (£16M), Ronaldo(£15) (That's a £200M).

Chelsea - Well Chelsea kind of went ahead and bought a whole new team. Shameless actually. I don't understand why anybody supports the club.

I think Liverpool's big problem was not Rafa, but those clowns in the board room. Dicks and Guillotine (Yeah that's what I call em jokers). In case you are wondering what the hell has happened and how did a stable club get into financial trouble.... Dicks and Guillotine took a £200M loan to buy Liverpool. They haven't been paying the loan off and interest accumulates on that loan @ 14% per annum. That interest clubbed with existing debt has helped reach a grand figure of yes .... hold your breath..... £350M. Under the previous owner David Moores Liverpool had a debt of £80M. I am sure that had David Moores taken a £270M loan to invest in players we would have been much better off. But not to worry. Other clubs are not that well off either. ManUre has debts worth £750M and Chelski has £500M worth of debt.

I am sad to see Rafa leave. Interestingly RB's stay at Liverpool coincides with my stay at IIIT. 2004-2010. Lets see what the world has in store for Rishabh and LFC.

Rebuilding for the next season

Ok. That was a disaster. Can we look ahead please ? If I was Rafa

Out - Riera(5M), Babel (10M), Degen(3M), El-Zahr(2M),Aquilani(15M),Aurelio(free) Total : ~ 35M

In

1. Joe Cole(Chelsea) : He is out of contract at Chelsea. Would fit brilliantly into the Liverpool Starting line-up. Liverpool should pay him what he wants and get him (Replaces Babel)

2. Stephan Wornock (Aston Villa) : Former Liverpool player. Had a really good last season with Villa. Would love to see him back at Anfield. Approx ~ 10M (Replaces Aurelio)

3. Raul (Real Madrid) : Raul doesn't seem to fit in at Madrid. It's hard to make a case for playing Raul when you have Higuain, Benzema and obviously Ronaldo. I don't think Madrid would look for a fee if he wanted to leave. I can see him forming a good partnership with Torres. Raul's game was never based on pace and he's hit 20 goals in the last two seasons before the previous ones.(He scored in his last game but came off injured). Free (Replaces El-Zahr)

4. Martin Petrov (Man City) : Petrov is out of contract at City. I've always liked Petrov and thought his finishing and power were really good. Would be a straight swap for Riera.I think he would make a good squad player. Free (Replaces Riera).

5. Higuain(Real Madrid) : He is good. Higuain has been Madrid's top scorer for some time and his presence has saved them once too often. For some strange reason Madrid seem to want to get rid of him. Liverpool should pull out all the strings to sign him.Torres + Higuain = Lots of Goals. Approx ~ 30M.

I think that all this might end up costing Liverpool as much as 10M, but it's a better shaped squad with a better starting XI and a better bench strength.

So How does Liverpool line up ?

Reina(GK) - Johnson(RB), Carragher (CB), Agger (CB), Warnock (LB) - Mascherano(DM), Joe Cole (LW), Maxi Rodriguez(RW), Gerrard (AM) - Torres, Higuain.

Subs : Random-GK, Skrtel, Lucas, Benayoun, Petrov, Kuyt, Raul.

Squad Players : Another-Random-GK, Kyrgiakos, Insua, Ayala, Shelvey, Ngog, Pacheco, etc etc

Of Donating to IIIT

I was recently reading Halley's blog post on Alumni Funds. He talks about what some other colleges have been doing with their alumni funds and their targets and so on. He goes on to talk about other things like his experiences with the Alumni fund among others. For those who need a bit of a history lesson Halley and I are perhaps the two most vocal critics of the IIIT administration on both the campus and the blogosphere . It's important that one understand what the Alumni fund is doing and why it's very important to contribute to it.

What does the Alumni Fund do ?

Evey year among the many kids who write AIEEE and get ranks good enough to make it to IIIT, there are a few who cannot afford to come here. Yes the fee at IIIT is very high. But this is a group of students who cannot afford to pay for any form of college. They have neither the savings nor any form of holdings to provide a bank guarantee for a loan. This is a situation unimaginable for most of us. But it happens. The Alumni fund is to help such students whom nobody else is willing to help. The money in the alumni funds is given out as a very low interest loan to pay for the tuition fees of such students. This money doesn't go anywhere else. Yes the money does indirectly go to IIIT but they would get that money anyways. If not form this student than another richer one who can afford it.

Why is this important ?

We all know how hard it is to get into IIIT. Some of us took extra time beyond our 12'th class to get year. And whatever one may say , IIIT has provided us with an education, an exposure and above all access to opportunities the rest of the country can only dream of. When a student who clears AIEEE and gets a rank good enough to go to IIIT, drops that idea because of something like money, it is a collective failure on the part of IIIT community to promote merit. In some sense out-pricing somebody from an education is tantamount to reservation; reservation for the rich. As a community IIIT has always put merit on the highest pedestal, and this would be a step in line with those ideas. The situation is best summed up by what Varun Boppana wrote in a mail on our mailing lists.
"It's not like, we are asking money for IIIT..its for some students studying there...for their fees..just to get to where we are..thats it!."

Why this should not be a big deal for IIIT Alumni

Over the last couple of years the average pay of a IIIT graduate has been about 7 LPA. If you gave just 1% of what you earned to the Alumni fund, it would be enough to support all the needy students. 2K3, 2K4, 2K5 and now 2K6 have about 150+ students who have graduated with pretty nice jobs. That's about 600 people. If we assume 25% people contribute that's 150 contributions. If each of these contributions are at least worth Rs.5000 then that would make up 7.5 lakhs, which is almost 75% of what is required to support students. The rest of the money would come from donations from caution money, loans recovered from students and off course contributions from other batches. As a community that has almost 2000 members we should be able to support about 20 students per batch. It's not a big deal. For starters, donate your caution money. Yes BLN might give you a weird mess bill to settle or the office might have something in store for you, but still donate your caution money to the Alumni fund. That will take care of your first year after college. After that it's up to you and your generosity

Don't mix this with other things

Whatever your experiences/opinions of the IIIT administration may be I think it's not relevant to Alumni Fund donations. I have heard classmates say "IIIT never gave a damn about me, so why should I ?". Well, donating to the Alumni fund is about helping fellow students. Donating to the Alumni Fund, does not imply you are okay-ing whatever is happening in college. Rather, it shows your concern for IIIT and that what happens here is still important to you. In some sense you continue to remain a stakeholder long after passing out. And it's the right thing to do, you know it :)

You can donate here

My $0.02 on IIIT's new admissions Policy

I like certain things in this years admissions process. On the top of my "I Like" list is the admissions to the Dual Degree program for people who have cleared the Math/Informatics Olympiads at the national level. I don't know how many people will apply as most people in this category get admitted to some IIT anyways. For any student who attends a national camp at the Math/Physics/Informatics Olympiads we should
1. Allow them to join any course they want at IIIT
2. Give them a 100% tuition fee wavier
3. Have no limit on the number of such students we admit.
Whatever financial implications this may have will be more than made up for in other ways. This might mean that we would get to see more people like I.V. Aprameya Rao and Anshuman Singh and Nadeem ( Yes they are examples of people who have participated in national Olympiad camps) on campus. Even if we manage to admit say 5 such students every year, we would eventually have 20~30 of them on campus and that would make a great difference to the atmosphere at IIIT.

I am also pleased that with the different avenues of entry IIIT is considering to look at while admitting CNS dual degree students. The CNS course is slightly different from a regular B.Tech course and perhaps it calls for special admission procedures. The list of Olympiads/Scholarships listed there is quite long and I am hopeful that some of those people who join will be pretty enthusiastic about course. Personally I don't agree with the philosophy of shoving kids into a particular stream without letting them explore other areas of study. I don't agree with either the CNS or the CNL dual degree courses.

There is also this thing to admit foreign students. I haven't a clue about SAT scores and really don't know how that is going to work out. I just hope that we don't end up admitting some yahooo's who think that they own the campus.

Also CBSE and CCB deserve a kick. Their sheer stupidity has forced us into having our own counseling. This also pretty much completely screws up the idea of a national time table for all colleges (Which I thought was a nice idea !) Kapil Sibbal if you read this, fire whoever is running CCB!

I have spent some time looking the dynamics of admissions in US universities. And Indian Universities. The major difference I can see is a lack of diversity on campus in Indian universities. Almost everybody here doesn't have very many skills(of note) other than being good at Phy-Chem-Math. Yes the odd person can sing and paint and dance and some more people can play something but nothing significant. I think that makes for very poor exposure and a sense of elitism that only people really good in PCM have a right to study Engineering at the best places in India. I would love to see IIIT admit kids who are really good at say some arts or sports or something else. Of course we also have to make sure that they have a minimum academic standard as well (perhaps a mixture of 10th+12th Marks + AIEEE scores or whatever) so that they can successfully complete the course. I don't think that studying engineering should be the preserve of only the very insanely nerdy PCM kids. Any sincere kid who does well at school is good enough to go through the curriculum.

IIIT has already been very bold with the present initiatives and perhaps this idea comes ahead of it's time. However I suspect that this is something that the think tank at IIIT has had at the back of their mind. I think having a center like CEH is a step in that direction. The problem with that approach is that you are going to have to deal with kids who have a mindset where joining a place like CEH is simply "not an option". Lets admit some different people for a change !


PS : I don't understand why IIIT has asked people to register before the AIEEE results are declared. Before the results are out a lot of people would like to believe that they have a chance. I can imagine around 6~7 thousand people registering at the very least. IIIT might as well have had people register after the results were declared or at least charged them later. I am not aware of the logistics of doing something like this (I assume it would not be trivial), but if they have done this to make some money then it is indeed very naughty.

Prof. Sangal's reply to "The Al-Qaeda of Jeevan Vidya"

After going through my last post Prof.Sangal replied to my post via e-mail. As per his request I am putting his reply on my blog. I am writing it as separate post because there is too much clutter on the previous post and I felt that his reply may be lost in the mess. The reply is posted as is.
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Dear Rishabh,

This is to provide clarifications to many points of misunderstanding.

Note that I am addressing only the substantive issues, I am not responding to many speculative statements and remarks.

(1)
When IIIT-H took the decision to introduce Human Values as an essential part of the curriculum, we placed 4 conditions which must be satisfied by the content in such courses. The content must be:

A. Logical - Should follow reasoning and should be open to discussion and questioning in the class.

B. Verifiable - One should be able to observe and verify through experiments by the self. (No mystic element!)

C. Universal - Applicable to all human beings without regard to their caste, creed, colour, religion, etc. (No sect of any kind!)

D. Human - Should be for the good of the human being.

Jeevan Vidya was chosen because it satisfied all the above. IIIT-H is open to using any other philosophy which satisfies the above.

(2)
It was also decided that Human Values course must be taught without preaching or dos and donts.

In JV shivir, there is no insistence on anyone to accept what is being said. In fact, on the first day itself, it is written in bold, asking people not to accept, but examine and evaluate. They should accept only if they find them ok after evaluation!

(You have said that JV asks people to do good, control their desires, etc. But JV never gives any dos and donts including these two! It only says "what can make a human being happy", and there too, it says that one should accept only after verifying on one's own right. Have you attended a complete JV shivir as yet? You can attend a full shivir, and indeed point out to the teacher, if any do's and dont's are being given.)

(3)
When you use the word "religion" for JV, it suggests that it is sectarian. It is normally understood that if you are a Hindu you cannot be a Muslim at the same time, and if you are a Sikh you cannot be a Christian, etc. Jeevan Vidya is not like that. Whatever be your religion, you can follow or relate to JV. Most people are able to connect JV with whatever religion they are practising. As a philosophy, it is even "open source". (See the attached article on Evaluating a Philosophy by Vineesh Gupta.)

Today, it is "fashionable" to say that I do not believe in any philosophy or thought, and that I am free. In such a prevailing situation, one might brand others who might have come to some conclusions as "religionists", and pass snide remarks at them. But one should examine whether that is an acceptable mode of conduct.

(4)
Education means not just training in a narrow discipline but developing an ability to think critically and independently. It implies an ability to separate "essence" from "form" when faced with any situation in life, not limited to problems in a narrow discipline alone. (It also means developing the strength to take decisions, particularly about one's own life, and acting on them.)

An academic institution strives for excellence in education and research. It functions in a cultural and social milieu, using accepted practises and procedures. In higher education today, accepted practise is to have a 4-year curriculum with semester-long courses with credits. We accept it and implement it at IIIT-H, even when 4-year duration or semester long courses might not fit everybody. Are we forcing every student to follow it? Probably we are, because of the currently accepted practises of society. But is "forcing" the right word to describe the situation.

In a curriculum, the courses are designed to cover the breadth and depth of educational goals. In the existing curricula, many courses are compulsary whether data structures, communication theory, or human values. We are even asked at times why are we forcing students to learn such and such a course in their discipline, when it is not needed for most jobs? We are also asked why do we have broad education with Human Values? But all this is the goal of education. Is "forcing" the right word in such a situation. (It goes without saying that Human Values should be conducted without preaching.)

Society today puts a lot of pressure on the individual, without taking into account their interest. Students succumb to this pressure, and take admission to areas they have no aptitude for, or come into higher education even when they do not wish to study! As a result, for many things they perceive being forced when these things are a part of education. (We would like to help by making it possible for the students to choose their area of interest, to the extent we have the facilities and disciplines. IIIT-H has examples of such help in the past. But doing something is difficult when the student has no interest in higher study and perceives the entire curriculum as "being forced".)

As the society and the individuals evolve, we hope that we will move towards a situation, where only the truly interested come for higher education, pursuing the areas they love, in a journey of joy.


- Rajeev Sangal
14 January 2010

The Al-Qaeda of Jeevan Vidya

For a long long time I have thought about writing this post. I refrained from writing it because I was not sure about my competence to comment on a philosophy so many "educated" people have subscribed to. After attending a Shivir (over the course of 2 years!!) and taking a course that was for all practical purposes JV - 101 (Understanding Work and Life), I think I have some background to make certain observations about JV and it's tryst with IIIT.

The Philosophy itself : Having read a bit about JV, I can say that JV as a whole is pretty much oriented like any other religion is. Do good, be good, be in harmony with nature, surroundings, control your desires and so on. Since the philosophy has roots in a modern society, there seems to be a trend to rationalize every argument presented as part of the philosophy. The validity and thoroughness of these rationalizations is a debate better left to theologians rather than MSbR students :). There is also no component of JV that prescribes rituals or anything of that sort. In it's simplest form, the message of JV is pretty elegant and I couldn't not help appreciating it. If I was an alien visiting earth I could very well believe that JV was yet another among the various religions practiced on earth with a decent following.

Which is where my problem with JV's association with IIIT begins. Today, if the powers that be at IIIT were prescribing to interpretation of a Hindu or Islamic or Christian ideology the same way they seem to be enamored by JV, there would have been an uproar of epic proportions. Since JV doesn't quite have the status of a proper religion like say Hinduism or Islam, people just don't know how to give a name to whats going on. I don't think you can talk about Human values and spirituality without imprinting on the listener, a certain version of your own religious beliefs. Now, no matter what Prof.Sangal or anybody else says, I do consider all JV activities to be religious. Which is in itself not bad. But only provided you do not provide official patronage and pamper only JV. I don't see any Hindu Shivirs or Islamic Halaqas being arranged on campus. Do you ?

One of the reasons the Muslim League argued for a separate Islamic state was that, "Islam and it's tenets extend to every aspect of life, whether it is social discourse or even business. There is no activity that is not religious by nature. A separate Islamic state that understands this notion is required to safeguard the Islamic way of life". While I don't fully agree with this statement I can understand the sentiment. A close look at our lives would tell us that our religion shapes almost all aspects of our decision making in some way or the other. It would then come as no surprise that the philosophies of JV made their way into the decision making process at IIIT. A number of changes in the campus over the last 5 years, can be attributed to a JV or JV-ish justification from the decision makers. As time progresses, JV is firmly embedded in the psyche of a lot of influential people at IIIT. What is the result you ask ? Well in it's simplest form, I am forced to study a course on Literature from Vinish Gupta (as learned as he may be). I would rather take my chances with Prof.Sudhakar Marathe who is conspicuous by his absence. The fact that half the Humanities courses are offered by people strongly associated with JV or even officially associated with it, is troubling. I have already written about this.

But there is more. I see a more orthodox IIIT. I see JV inspired people complaining about girls in skimpy outfits in felicity. I see "Swayamsevak" committees popping up and I see faculty members making sure that they don't miss a single session of JV, all while MS student's can't get placed, IIIT is short of funds, ECE is a mess and we have a new main building reminiscent of a WW2 ruin. I see certain civil engineers have a greater say about the way IIIT is run, than the experienced pioneers of science that grace our campus. I see dance teachers being paid more than the people who help maintain the IT in IIIT. I see a lot of people not being valued for sharing different beliefs. I see a systematic removal of people with non-JV or anti-JV views from the seats of power in IIIT. It's almost like JV-ists are the new communists !

Where there is a religion there are fanatics. A few months ago I was reading Osama bin Laden's biography (by Adam Robinson). The book provides a detailed description of how Osama, fed up with his life, saw redemption in Islam and Jihaad and how he rallied thousands from different nations, from Kings to commoners and from the educated to the illiterate to form Al-Qaeda. The parallels I see with JV in IIIT and the people concerned are amazing. Both started out as small movements. Al-Qaeda had Afghanistan-1989 and JV had this. Boosted by their initial success and the charisma of their leaders the groups snowballed into fanatical movements, convinced about their interpretation of a religion, each wreaking their own version of a catastrophe on the world they interact with. Hell, we even have our own Osama bin Laden and Zwahiri, with a dollop of young impressionable lieutenants. Both believe in catching em' young (JV in the 1st year), and sending them to training camps far away in the mountains (Mussoorie). It is interesting to ponder over the question if it is JV that is to be blamed or the people who follow it here at IIIT ? That said, a more pertinent question remains : Is there a JV 9/11 round the corner ?


PS : The Al-Qaeda comparisons to JV are obviously satirical. But isn't the problem pretty much correctly described ?

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An Update

After reading this post, Prof.Sangal commented via email. His reply can be read here
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Interview Shinterview contd....

Fortunately or unfortunately for me, I did not get shortlisted by IBM IRL. I spent the whole day wondering why I did not manage to get shortlisted by a company where I have enough research work in 3 different areas that I could easily fit into 3 different groups at their lab. I thought it might be GPA, but they shortlisted people with lower GPA's. Was it the level/quality of publications ? Was it the nature of my work ...what the bloody hell was it ? Chunni (aka Anshul )spent an hour calming me down and told me that it might be something as simple as them not having a vacancy in any of the groups that I can fit into !

I also kind of figured out that things like A+ and A are truly meaningless methods of classifying research work when it comes to placements (Many would feel that it's a stupid way of classifying work for any purpose !). One man's A+ is another mans F-. I will take this opportunity to welcome myself to the club of people wondering why they haven't been shortlisted or selected.

I was also happy that Bharat Joshi got his first interview today. The guy is smarter than most 9 pointers you would meet and a bumper job would be fair reward for some smooth work he has done over the years. I am also sure that the IBM people would have liked some nice lessons on secure multiparty computation from Hans :)

more to follow...

Interview shinterview

We have IBM IRL coming to campus 2moro. I did send my resume with 2 recos. It'll be interesting to see what they have to ask me. The only group that I could possibly fit into is their High Performance Computing group. Now, while I do have relevant research work(s) (in a conference titled IEEE-ACM High Performance Computing) I have no fracking idea about multi cores or parallel algorithms or anything remotely "high performance". If the state of my laptop is anything to go by, I barely manage to get any performance at all. They do not have a crypto group, so impressing them goes out the window. The only hope that remains is that they ask me something about distributed computing and preferably PRC :D

But whatever the outcome, I hope to meet a few people from IBM and see what they are up to. It is after all IBM. They have been great pioneers in electrical engineering and computing. I am sure that whoever they send would be somebody senior. I also hope they send a guy called Vijay Garg. He has a nice range of research work covering theoretical and applied distributed/parallel computing. It would be worth my while just meeting him.