Lokpal Bill: We need to think and debate not just march out on streets

At least those of us who have been trained to think should really try to think various issues related to the ongoing clamor about the Lokpal bill in India, instead of just blindly supporting a bunch of self-proclaimed representatives of the 'civil-society'.

While it is great that some people in India are taking interest in they way the politicians and the bureaucrats have been running the country and are willing to sacrifice their life for the cause.  But we should ask ourselves if this is the way we want to run the country where laws are made because some one (Anna Hazare) is threatening to kill himself? If so then why we are ignoring so many others who are protesting in the similar vain? Media is completely devoted to the cause now and Anna Hazare is projected as the savior the country and as if there is no other news. But clearly Anna Hazare is not India and India is much bigger than that?

We should once really think about the following:

• What this Lokpal bill is and why since its inception in 1969 it is still not implemented? Is it only the political unwillingness or are their some inherent problems with this concept which are specific to the Indian context?
  
• Is it going to solve the problem India as a country is facing?
  
• Is it the kind of beginning we want to (re)solve national issues?
  
• How correct Anna Hazare's methods are?
  
• To what extent we are ready to compromise democracy and the institution of parliament?
  
• Are we really ready for the meritocracy that the so called 'civil society' is trying to introduce in name of the Lokpal?
  
• Can Lokpal really change things on small time scales when this new institution is expected to work with the existing police and judiciary? If not how are we going to change the executive arms of the Lokpal?

There are many similar and pertinent questions and instead of just sitting with a man who is really low of glucose and is certainly not in a position to think for himself, or agreeing to the ideas and fancies of some self-proclaimed representatives of the 'civil-society', we would do better service to the cause by thinking about the associated issue and contributed to a better Lokpal bill. Those of us who have read various versions of this bill understand its shortcoming and more brains can only help us better structure the bill.

IPL2009 Over by Over Analysis

Recently Ananth (the owner of an excellent blog "It Figures" at cricinfo.org) did very good anaysis of numbers that came out of the IPL 2009 version. He provided over by over runs scored (with their averages and standard deviations) and wickets fallen (with averages and standard deviations).

The statistical analysis (at least in first look) matches very well with it madness on field as very correctly captured by the 'Coefficient of Variation' [ratio of std. and mean] . A CoV of one means a random process (e.g. Poisson Process) and if the CoV is more than one it means that there are clustered events. In any case CoV in runs scored per over and wickets fallen per over in completely is a random process.
However, there is still some hope as there is some pattern in the data generated by IPL 2009.

The top panel in the figure below shows the cross-correlation as color-coded (blue means high negative correlation and red/brown mean high positive correlation), between any two variables e.g Average Runs Scored and Average Wickets Fallen and so on. The significance of correlation is shown in bottom panel. The white boxes are for the auto-correlation (which is One always by definition, so excluded). Both the panels are symmetric along the diagonal.
There is an interesting correlation between Average Runs scored and number of wickets fallen in an over.

Average Runs (RAvg) scored (see second column) is strongly (and significantly) positively correlated with Number of Wickets fallen (Wkts), Average Wickets per over (AWkt).
Correlations should not be confused with causality but the data indicates that Average number of runs scored is related to number of wickets fallen in an over. This is kind of a paradox to me. If a wicket falls in an over it means that there are less balls left to score. I leave it to you guys to make suggestion to resolve the paradox.




right arm over
Arvind

PS: Maybe the incoming batsmen tend to start with big-hits in IPL or in Twenty-Twenty Cricket, if wickets fall early in an over. It is also possible that the wickets fall when the batsmen is going for big-hits that means that most wickets should fall towards the end of the over.

Figure below is on suggestions from Annesh. I left out last three over from the correlation analysis. The correlation between Avg Wickets and Avg. Runs still remains high and significant.

Why Indians Like Cricket

There are two things all Indians usually agree to -- English the language and Cricket the game. Its rather easy to understand why Indians like to learn and use English as mode of communication -- in a country of hundreds of languages its easier to agree on a neutral language as a mode of communication.

After the World Cup victory in 1983 Cricket has seen an exponential increase in its popularity in India (also in the sub-continent) and emergence of Indian Premier League is a clear sign of Cricket's popularity and emergence of India as a powerhouse of Cricket.

Why Indians started to like Cricket so much? Somehow it does not make sense? A colonial game becoming such a huge success, maybe it has something to do with having a chance to defeat England (particularly in England). But is that all? Most people will agree on it. There is one problem though. Before a population, a country realizes that Cricket is an opportunity to defeat England, the game of Cricket must exist in the public imagination, i.e. a large population should find interest in the game and appreciate it.

Why Indians or for that matter the sub-continent chose Cricket over Soccer? Why a game which potentially takes up days (in its most traditional sense), whose rules (actually they are called Laws) no average person can really fathom. How difficult Cricket is, becomes very evident when you try to explain the game to someone not already familiar with it, say to the Germans. After explaining the basic idea of Cricket, its not easy to find people who would like to know and follow cricket. You essentially have to grow up into an atmosphere filled with it to really appreciate it.

In the following I propose my conjecture why Cricket could capture the imagination of a huge population in India and in the sub-continent and why other sports such as soccer failed to find a niche in the sub-continent. In fact I will use the example of soccer to make the case for the popularity of Cricket.

India is a country of a huge middle class and a equally large number of people live below the poverty line. Those in the middle class are in a strange state, in fact they are in a transition state, as all factors indicate that are just one step before making it to the so called upper-class. So, all their efforts are directed to achieve something in their life, make it big and complete the transition to upper class. Education is traditionally seen as a means to complete the transition.

Kids are asked "what did they do?" instead of "how did they do?" in any thing they do.

If a kid comes home after a game of soccer, his parents and other elders would ask him what did he do in the game? Not all players can score a goal in soccer. But how will you tell this to your parents, for them running around after the soccer ball with other 21, is an utter wasteful activity. It appears that Indian parents want a quantitative measure of the performance of their kids.

Cricket provided them exactly that. After the game of cricket, you can tell your performance in number, 10-2-28-3 or 32 runs, two catches or a run out, or even more mundane but hugely appreciated 3- fours or 2 sixes.

Arguably, cricket is one of the most democratic of all team sports. Physical strength is a not such an important parameter, if you can manage to stand and run every now and then, over five days, it will do. If you cannot bowl fast, you can become a spinner; if you cant hit big shots, you can still be a very effective accumulator of runs. In fact, no other team sport can show so many physically unfit sports-persons in their hall-of-fame. For a country like India, where middle class does not only refer to economical status but it also conforms with the standards of physical strength (excluding perhaps the farmers), cricket emerged as the perfect game for the middle class.

Further, in Cricket when your turn comes to play your part, no one is allowed to disturb you. In soccer for example as soon as you get the ball, at least four other player will come around you to snatch the ball and of course, besides skills, physical strength of the players does influence the outcome. In Cricket on the contrary when you are on the wicket, batting, the laws prohibit even a small whisper from other players. Similarly when you are about to bowl, the opposition players dont come around and distract you right when you are about to release the ball. Ok, sledging happens. This feature necessarily makes it a popular choice among kids who are not physically strong and need to mentally focus to apply their skills.

Sports are traditionally thought to be for the those physically strong. Cricket removes this bias and still provides a quantitative way to measure up the performance. I think these are most defining aspects of Cricket. In my opinion, these two aspects of cricket contributed to the popularity of cricket in middle class and it was a matter of time (about a generation) when India came out of age and is on its way to become a super-power of Cricket.

I think that similar reasons exist for other countries such as Pakistan, Sri-Lanka, Bangladesh and perhaps even in the West-Indies.

-----------
PS: Scalability and flexibility are two necessary things a game needs to become a popular sport. As far as the rule (or Laws) of the game go, they may appear very complicated in an MCC manual. In practice the game is amazingly scalable to any arbitrary number of players and amazingly flexible to bend the laws without altering the spirit of the game.

Pseudo Democracy in India

India is going for another election and as always Indian politicians and journalists would remind the Indians and the rest of the world about the strength and deep roots of democracy. It is true that in the 60 years of history of local rule (I would not say independent), democracy was never really threatened unlike several other countries of about same or lesser age.

Aristotle thought that in a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme.
In India it is still true but in a bit convoluted manner. In India the majority of the poor votes can be easily purchased but the power of money or shear strength. So even when Aristotle is still right, in India, still the rich have the power. Yet another paradox in a truly Incredible country.

In a democratic process, all individuals are given a single and equal vote. For the success of democracy it is important that each voter realizes the worth of its own vote and the candidates who are seeking the public mandate respect the idea of individual vote and do not demean the vote by offering some monetary or personal favor in return.

In India, whether we accept it or not there none of the above holds on average. A randomly chosen citizen (irrespective of a his/her education or geographical location) would not be able to explain you the worth of his vote in an election comprising of several million voters. An average voter who can never understand the meaning of his one vote among the other several million votes is very likely to sell off his/her vote for small benefits. A large fraction of politicians exploit this ignorance and offer monetary or other kinds of benefits in return of a single vote.

In a slightly remote village (where most of the votes reside), the early birds get the worms i.e. the candidate who is the first to send some money and means of transport to take the votes to the polling station, is more likely to get the votes of that group of people. On top of this physically or economically strong candidates are more likely to get the votes, irrespective their agenda. To put it in other words, in India a candidate without money to buy votes or gain favor of a political party is unlikely to win in any election, no matter how strong development agenda that person has? It is not a hidden knowledge but it appears that as a country India accepts these non-democratic practices as a part of democracy.

So even after India has seen some 15 or so general elections and numerous by-elections, voters dont understand the worth of their vote and anyone can purchase votes and in turn the public mandate. Given this situation can we say that there exists democracy in India?

So long as individual voters do not understand the meaning of their vote, we cannot say that democracy is successful and is flourishing in India. Indian system of governance may be based on democracy but it is a very degenerated kind of democracy that they practice in India.

Should we blame the average voter for his/her ignorance about his vote? I do not think so. As country India has completely failed to educate its votes about the process of democracy and thus, there is no mutual respect between voter and vote and between candidates contesting in the election and the voters.

How do we educate a poor voter that his vote is worth more than some money or a small favor the politician has promised him? I dont know if there is an easy solution but unless that happens we cannot say that Indian rules are determined by a process of democracy. At best it is a pseudo-democracy.

Disclaimer: On a personal level I do not agree with the idea of democracy, because it gives equal vote to all the citizen. When citizens are not equal in their knowledge and understanding, they all should not have equal vote. More on this later...

Attacks on SriLanka Cricket Players-- Please Dont Isolate Pakistan

The attacks on the Sri Lanka cricket player while they were on their way to resume the third day of a test match is really unfortunate and is very rightly drawing a lot of international attention in condemning this act of terror.

I am pretty sure that no one in this world (except for the terrorists themselves) would have expected that there could be a terror strike on the cricket players, even in Pakistan; because in Pakistan and in the sub-continent cricket is like a parallel religion and cricket player, irrespective of their nationality are treated like demi-gods.

So if cricket and cricketers are not safe in Pakistan then who is...

The cricket world is all but scared and future cricket-tours to Pakistan have been cancelled. Pakistan as a joint host of the 2011 world cup is very doubtful. It unlikely that any team can be convinced to tour Pakistan in near future. This is so unfortunate as with this tour of Sri-lankan team cricket barely resumed and this act of shame happened.

A lot of words have been and will be written about the yet another lapse in security and why not even after such an attack the gunmen managed to escape, making a full mockery of the security in Pakistan. It is obvious that given the circumstances, Sri-Lankan team should have been given a top-class security. Note that Sri-lankans traveled to Pakistan, despite the advice of not traveling to Pakistan. Sri-lankans showed their solidarity by traveling what did they get in return... Former cricketer Imran Khan noted that some irrelevant ministers have better security than the Sri-Lankan team.

The effects of this particular terror strike certainly will go beyond cricket for instance the stock-exchanges in Pakistan crashed fearing that all investments will dry up. The economy which is already in shambles will completely crash.

After this particular strike the opinion is converging to isolate Pakistan and declare is a terrorist state. My biggest fear is that once Pakistan might even be quarantined.

I dont know who planned and executed the terror strike (and it doesnt really matter), but I am sure they are not stupid that they cannot predict that the attack on visiting cricketers would result in a complete isolation of Pakistan on the international stage. If they still went ahead and executed the strikes, indicates that terror outfits want Pakistan to be isolated from outside influence. Perhaps an isolated Pakistan would be easier to tame into the fundamentalistic mentality of the terrorists outfits.

Pakistan is a country full of brave and talented people with a great deal of knowledge about the latest technology of all sorts. Leaving such a pool of knowledge and talented population in hands of the terrorists would only strengthen the terrorists and they will pose challenges of bigger surprise factor and magnitude would become more frequent.

After the shameful terror strikes if the we would leave Pakistan alone, then we will commit a crime of bigger magnitude. This is a time when Pakistan needs genuine support.

This support should not be in the form of money to the government but it should be provided in the form of intelligence and logistics support. When a country cannot provide proper security to a visiting cricket team, it means that basic concept of security is somehow messed up in the system. So the world should come forward to provide necessary training and equipments to the security personnel in Pakistan.

At the same time there should be more pressure on the so called democratic government to enforce the law from the United Nations, US or other countries including India. The government in Pakistan should evaluate the fear of the fundamentalist forces more seriously and rise above the short-term gains of retaining power and protect the freedom and honor of Pakistan.

My sincere hope is that Pakistan government will take this one instance of terror strikes seriously and the rest of the world will behave in a more responsible way and support Pakistan in controlling the terrorists organizations and we will see among other things, cricket resuming in the country.

Terror Strikes in India and Elsewhere: Whom to Blame

Who is to blame for the recent terror strikes? Tradition is to blame those who attacked. India has followed this tradition for many years. And why just India, every country who is at the receiving end of the terror strikes follows this tradition.

This approach gives the impression that the those attacked are innocent and were attacked for none of their faults.

I hold a slightly different opinion on it.

Its human nature to conquer others and expand. So it is but natural that others (henceforth enemies) would attack and overtake.

But this means that technically we cannot blame the enemies for the attacks or in recent times for the 'Terror Strikes".

In my opinion the "Terror Struck" populations are to be blamed. It is their inability to secure themselves makes any terror strike a success. The fact is that the success of a terror strike is directly related to the failure of the "Terror Struck" population in identifying the build up process of a terror strike.

So, nations and their people, please stop blaming the terrorists for attacking your borders or create terror from within the nation. The act of blaming others only creates a delusion. In fact, its your lack of security measure and intelligence, that lets the "Terror Strikes" happen.

I am not trying to suggest that Governments show enforce a very dense intelligence system and increase the budget of armed forces in order to improve intelligence information and security.

This not likely to work because the terrorists have made their way in the countries and most strikes are planned from within the country. There is no way armed forces can track those, neither intelligence agencies can keep track of all the people without creating a situation of public panic. We have example of US in front of us, where in name of securing the nation from terror strikes, the governments has increased the scope of FBI and have essentially panicked that whole country.

When enemy or the terrorists are more or less uniformly distributed among the non-terrorists or law-abiding citizens, efforts organized by the Federal governments will not work, without creating a panic in the masses and disturbing the day-to-day life in the country and most likely in the following election the government would be changed.

In my opinion the solution lies in finding a solution that is also distributed like the terrorists are. When we realize that most of the terror strikes are organized from the within, it means that success of every terror-strike is in fact, a failure of every citizens and not just that of the governments.

Had the citizens been vigilant and had the vendors who supplied logistics information and/or the raw material for the weapons and ammunition, been a little careful and had asked few simple questions, I think none of the terror strike would have been possible.

When the terrorists are among us its only a vigilant population, that can bring them out.

To reduce the probability of any further terror strikes we do not need to blame the terrorists and the countries presumably supporting them. Neither, do we need to start any special organized efforts that involve multiple nations and intelligence agencies.

As a first step we need to blame ourselves for lapses in the intelligence and security system.

Secondly, we need to secure our system by developing a better more distributed intelligence network. A vigilant population, in which every citizen is aware and conscious can already make a very effective intelligence network.

If we can drop our short term small benefits and as vendors of information and or raw material, we ask a simple question while dealing with other -- whether this exchange of material or information can in some way support a potential terror strike.

This does not mean that we start to distrust our fellow humans. Neither do I mean to say that by default assume that every single one is a potential terrorists. According to me the job of the distributed intelligence system would be sniff any suspicious activity in its local neighborhood. [More on this in a latter post]

I strongly believe that only a distributed intelligence system made of common people can bring out the terrorists hidden in the population and negate the terror plans.

What was unique about the Mumbai 26/11 terror strikes

For the first time terrorist tried to directed their attack on the rich and influential people. To me this appears as a paradigm shift in the nature of terror strikes.

For some reason none of the new media took notice of it.

Usually terror strikes occurred at places like busy train stations, market places. In such place of course it was more likely to target more people. But most of the victim were likely to be from the working class and middle class.

For the first time, terrorists in India target places like Five Star Hotels which are mostly visited by high profile, influential and typically rich people.
I think terrorist are understand there is no point in killing or terrorizing the middle class, because such a class of people rarely are the focus of government policies.

Even if a terror strike consumes lots of working class people, rather rapidly the tragedy will be forgotten. Such is the nature of the middle class, They are so engrossed in their struggle for life that even death of fellow people does not stop them from their daily struggle for money or fame or power. But if a single powerful person is killed for years that remains a part of the public memory.

So in this instance of the terror strike, rich and influential people were targeted. Of course terrorists want there terror to be alive for longer time.

I hope this will work against the terrorists and some serious actions will be taken.