Una verdad simulada

Amit Varma quotes the following Allan Sloan piece in CNN:

If you want a real bonus outrage, consider this: The operation getting the biggest taxpayer subsidy of all - the federal government - pays bonuses to its employees too. This year it plans to hand out about $1.6 billion of bonuses, despite running more than $1 trillion in the red.

No, a lot of people actually do have problems and are outraged with waste of taxpayers money. People like Varma and Sloan often hammer a strawman rather than discussing the real issues. The actual problem with AIG bonuses, from what I have heard, was that executives at AIG got paid entire year’s salary as a bonus to keep them from switching jobs. A friend we met a month back was telling how one of his ex-colleagues got Rs. 1.3 crores just so he doesn’t leave AIG (until then, I didn’t even know AIG had India operations).

Getting back to what people like Varma and Sloan were arguing for the last four years or more: Markets work because they create appropriate incentive system. I don’t see how getting bonuses because your company failed (and got rescued) is an “appropriate incentive” to actually do good work.

So yes, in a way, the bailout works against the free-market principles. But people who will hurt and bleed if AIG or other companies fail are not the executives — they still get their multi-million-dollar severance package; they still have a few houses and a good amount of cash stashed for the rainy day — its the common folks who had no role to play in the crash, except that they trusted these big firms with their monies and trusted these firms to know what they are doing if they are insuring their assets.

Bush himself has wondered aloud if it would have been better for the general confidence had he not allowed Bear Stearns and Lehmann Brothers to fail.

And I still don’t know if bailouts is the right way to go; I just know that letting some of the large companies fail is the wrong way.

Tags: General by Niket
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Currently, there is a bit of discussion going on about pay scale revisions for faculty at IIT, IISc and other institutes in India. My final take on this matter is that when the 6th Pay Commission recommendations are implemented, our salaries are going to be adequate. Raising a family with two kids and ailing parents with the current salary stretches resources quite a bit.

Anyway, this post is geared towards those who have made the decision to start their academic career in India. While specific to IITs, I think the main message of this post is more or less applicable to other research positions in India as well.

Joining and Settling In

First and foremost, its my considered opinion that one should join the institute in the middle of a semester rather than the summer break. I joined IIT-M one month before the start of July-November semester.

I was hoping to get settled in within a month and start teaching from my first semester itself.

However, things move quite slowly in India. You need to give yourself about 10 weeks time to settle in. My quarters got allotted just a week before semester started; with minor repair work done, I moved in three weeks into the semester. The first 8-10 classes of my career were taught while I was still living in the guest house. I had no time to write proposals to get research funding.

Joining in the middle of the semester gives you the advantage of having a couple of months or more to get settled in and ready to teach the next semester. Moreover, there is a chance you’ll get eased into teaching by sharing one-third or quarter of a course with another faculty.

Starting Your Research

Again, these are not detailed tips… just a discussion about one major issue we faced as we got started with our academic careers in India. There are several aspects to a successful academic career. As someone who has not yet submitted a paper with his students, its quite rich of me to write a post like this one. Still, this post is limited to the kind of situation one faces at the beginning, which some of us were not ready for.

The main issue for an experimentalist in India is to generate funding. Its not that funding does not exist; when you start, you do not have the track record for the funding agencies to trust you with a large chunk of money. I think based on my experience, the advice I will give people who are about to start their academic career in India is this: Think about what experiments you can set up with 15 lakh rupees so that you will have two papers in about two-three years time.

The number 15 lakh comes from the amount of money you will receive quickly and relatively easily when you start. The institute pays 5 L as a startup fund (its 10 at IIT-B and IISc). The Chemical Engineering PAC of DST (Department of Science and Technology) is prompt in assessing the project and sending approval/reject within a few months. With fair amount of effort, one should be able to raise 17 L from DST. Of this, 3 L goes for overheads and other stuff and 5 L goes for paying a research associate. Remaining 9 L is available. Moreover, you can expect some small amounts from the department (for furniture, a computer and printer etc). All this amounts to a total of up to 15 lakh that can be availed of within a semester of joining.

I am not trying to give this as a gospel, I am not saying larger amounts of money aren’t available, I am not saying that getting DST funding is easy; all I am saying is that 15 lakh rupees is something that one can count on receiving fairly quickly and with lesser bureaucratic strings attached than other monies. It might be a good idea to plan as per this.

If you are joining IISc or IIT-B, that amount would be closer to Rs. 20 lakhs.

Tags: General by Niket
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A lot of trolls and ignorant fools are talking about the salaries for faculty at IIT and other institutes. Just to put those numbers in perspective:

My take-home salary as an Assistant Professor today is approximately two-and-half times less than what my take-home salary was in the final year as a PhD student.

And no, a lot of us do not consider returning to India as a sacrifice or a service to nation; its just a (unreasonably high) pay cut for doing what we enjoy doing. So stop with the Swades references already.

</rant>

Update: There is a room for debate on adequateness or inadequateness of salaries. I respect a principled view of our pay as government servants. But arguments should be based on facts, not perceptions.

Update 2: The immediate provocation for this post was comment left on Giridhar’s blog; but there were at least a couple other examples of people expressing opinions that we don’t really earn the salaries we draw from taxpayer’s money (again, valid point if argued on facts, not assumptions).

Update 3: As Giri points out in the comments, I did not account for accommodation. With that, the pay turns out 1.5 time less, not 2.5 times less.

Also, one cannot put a rupee amount on various advantages of staying on campus: (i) low pollution, (ii) less stress, (iii) amenities such as swimming pool and gym, (iv) institute internet access (which means access to databases and journals 24/7).

Tags: General by Niket
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I don’t know how I landed on Memsaab Story two hours back. It was just past 9 pm when I started; its quarter past 11 already and I enjoyed reading every bit of her blog. If you are a Bollywood fan (I was a big fan until 2003), go visit her site (and several others on her blog-roll).

Tags: General by Niket
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I finally did it (about 2 weeks back)! The tips I mentioned earlier kind-of worked. A few things religiously followed:

• The most important upgrade is interest rate. 13% is too low… you’ll soon run out of gold.
• At the third (or the fifth, if you go for two interest upgrades) halo, research ice. It slows down the creatures and has splash damage.
• Two arrow towers are equivalent to one arrow tower with an upgrade. An upgrade is twice as costly as building a second tower. So, until the entire map gets well-covered, do not go for upgrading towers.
• Three bomb towers are equivalent to one tower with an upgrade. In the initial stages of the game, build more bomb towers instead of upgrading. This is less effective than arrow towers due to the limited range of bomb towers.
• Due to the limited range of bomb and ice towers, its better to not build arrow towers next to the road.
• Corner spots are prime real estate. Do not build arrow/magic towers there
• Towards the later stages, you need storm towers. Completely upgraded storm towers (cost: 100 + 250 + 400 gold) are the only way to kill the creatures after, say, stage 35. You need enough gold stored to buy and upgrade the towers.

Tags: General by Niket
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I am teaching a graduate-level course this semester titled “Process Analysis and Simulation“. This course, by its very design, has a significant overlap with the previous courses in Chemical Engineering. After mid-term Quiz-2, I passed on a questionnaire to get feedback from students. The feedback clearly shows the real difficulty I face in this course. Quoting from some feedbacks:

Some of the contents are redundant.

Several diverse topics — It would be better if some common topics like Numerical techniques, Linear Algebra etc is avoided and more focus is given to the other portions.

Another feedback:

Considering my exposure to mathematics, programming […] the coursework and assignments are somewhat pretty difficult […] All of us [first year graduate students] are finding this course difficult compared to others. […] The [course] was a bit too fast.

All these comments were anonymous. Among the students who put their names against the comments, the ones who agreed with “redundant” comment have so far scored 75% (average of two); the ones who agreed with “difficult” comment have scored 47% (average of three).

I think I am doing OK.

Tags: General by Niket
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