This is why I have not posted anything ...

A typical day in the life of an overworked MBA student ...

Elections in India ... need for reform

Its been a very long time since my last post, and a lot has happened since ... the latest development has been the reelection of Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister in India. I have been motivated to write this post after reading Niket's post on the election. I started writing a comment on his blog, and at some point it became too big for a comment, and decided to post it on my own blog instead. Here it comes ...
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A concern I have had with the Indian parliamentary process: the lack of a 'run-off' to see who really has the mandate. Nearly every constituency has tens of candidates contesting the election. And in a large number of them, the majority of the votes are split between 3-4 major candidates. So we often have the winning candidate getting say 29% of the votes cast. Is that really a mandate?

I wonder what % of the votes cast went to the UPA coalition - I am sure it's well below the 50% of the seats that they actually hold in Parliament. Definitely not the people's vote, is it?

In many Presidential systems around the world, there is a runoff if no one gets an outright majority - heck, we even have runoffs for elections to positions in business school. But in a parliamentary system, how does one achieve a runoff? The system was inherited from Britain where its primarily a 2-party game, and worked in India for so many years where there was just one dominant party. But would it work in today's fragmented political environment, the present setup just doesn't seem right. An example of that is the elections in Maharashtra. The Shiv Sena has always been dominant, especially more so in Mumbai. But this time, the Congress swept it all - did they have a clear win? No, I think not (again I would have loved to make this argument with numbers to back me up, any help would be appreciated). Raj Thackrey's MNS was clearly able to get a significant chunk of the Shiv Sena's votes, allowing the Congress to take advantage of the situation. This was clearly a situation where a runoff would have helped the Shiv Sena not lose this battle, and yet allow the people to determine a clear victor - also eliminate some of the 'king making' opportunism that we see from the regional parties these days.

Its hard enough holding direct elections and counts for 400 million voters, but to do a runoff? Almost surely out of the question. Perhaps an electoral college type of setup? They use that for Presidential elections in India anyway. Not sure what a practical solution would look like! Any suggestions?

Reclaiming lost numbers ...

That the green-card system in the US is quite messed up is pretty well known. Every year, about 140,000 green cards can be issued in the "employment-based" (EB) categories. The inefficiencies in the processing has meant that over the years, lots of these go unused (currently estimated at ~ 218,000). Obviously, this unused figure is not because of a lack of applicants.

Congress did not foresee this situation arising, and never provided for the unused visa numbers to roll over to the next year. As a result, the only way to "reclaim" those lost green card numbers is by new legislation. Even in the best case scenario, the USCIS seems to be able to use about 95% of the visa numbers. As a a result, this new legislation is almost imperative.

So finally, Representatives Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) introduced a bill (H.R. 5882) two weeks ago to “recapture” employment-based (EB) green cards that Congress authorized in the past but that went unused before the end of the fiscal year because of government processing delays. Being an election year, its unlikely that the visa numbers will get increased - this bill getting through seems to represent a best-case scenario for those waiting for years to get their GCs. Zoe Lofgren has been at the forefront of the greencard debate - no surprises, she represents most of San Jose and Santa Clara (where Indian, Chinese and Hispanics dominate the populace), just smart politics I suppose. No wonder she is serving her seventh term in the House.

Hopefully, the bill prevails and prevails soon ...

Waste of resources ...

Every year, I get 3 big fat telephone books and yellow pages. This is despite the fact that I do not own a land line (although I did own one till about 2 years ago). Yesterday, I took all my phonebooks, some old magazines and some old newspapers and dropped them off at the local recycling center. Now, I ended up driving about 12 miles extra to drop off the stuff (which weighed about 45 lb, most of it was the phone books). It got me wondering ... was it worth going out of the way to drop it for recycling (as against just dumping it in the regular trash)?

I am trying to figure out answers to the following questions:
* The cost of the gas not withstanding, was the pollution from driving 12 miles justified by recycling 45 lb of paper?
* Why do I get those big fat phone books at all? I never even use them - whatever information I need I can get online! What a colossal waste ...
* Is there a better way for companies like AT&T or YellowBook to get money from companies who advertise in these publications and not dump so much garbage on society. Even if one believes that a good chunk of it gets recycled, its like trying to clean up a spill that never should have happened in the first place ...

Fear and Greed

Quotable quote of the month:

I always say you should get greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy. But that's too much to expect. Of course, you shouldn't get greedy when others get greedy and fearful when others get fearful. At a minimum, try to stay away from that.

-Warren Buffet (Fortune magazine)


Of course, easier said than done Mr. Buffet ...