An American in Madras apparently free to watch on YouTube.
Sunday, May 31, 2020
Friday, May 29, 2020
Revisiting old stuff
Since my education has not been systematic, I find that there are lots of things in mathematics that I assumed without learning the lengthy proofs. But I keep thinking about them and try to see why they are plausible. The process seems to help but takes time. Sometimes, the final proofs I found are considerably simpler than the original proofs. Here is one example of a proof found after about thirty years:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/math/0108116.pdf
The final proof is only about two pages, assuming what was considered standard by then. This seems to be how things are simplified and subsumed in later work.
Another, slightly more complicated example:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/math/0401308.pdf
I am currently revisiting a topic from 1974-75. This process of learning also makes research fun.
Here is a monstrosity from me and Peter Scott:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/math/0703890.pdf
Waiting for it to be simplified.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/math/0108116.pdf
The final proof is only about two pages, assuming what was considered standard by then. This seems to be how things are simplified and subsumed in later work.
Another, slightly more complicated example:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/math/0401308.pdf
I am currently revisiting a topic from 1974-75. This process of learning also makes research fun.
Here is a monstrosity from me and Peter Scott:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/math/0703890.pdf
Waiting for it to be simplified.
Wednesday, May 27, 2020
Durga Devidas post on Facebook about the current govermental paralysis
“ I think this govt is shell shocked.
The stranded migrant situation is the first real big physical crisis they are facing and the modi and gang have got terrified and as usual have absolutely no clue on how to tackle it.
Moreover, they don't have a good machinery to sort this. Unlike the Congress, their own party workers are a bunch of freeloading unscrupulous untrustworthy louts who have only been trained to create insurgency but not to contain it or deal with it or direct a crowd to a good fruitful end like in this case, to help the poor migrant reach his home.
Though this is not an insurgency, the sight of so many people standing up together looks extremely intimidating and confrontational to this govt with a primary school bully mindset.
This govt which is stuck in a permanent election campaign mode, seems very confused.
The gigantic bunch of mostly poor people is not a crowd which the govt has pulled in, with the help of campaign event managers or agents.
This is not a strike or an election rally. This is not something the opposition party or parties have organised which needs to be quelled. The govt is unable to lathi charge them or call the army in which are only two options the modi and amit shah know when they see an unprecedented crowd of ten people or more for whatever reason.
Besides, the modi regime does not like anyone else, say the Congress or perhaps even a good samaritan individual or organisation, trying to help either, simply because, they are afraid they (the bjp) will lose credit and worse, their worst mortal damned enemy will score political or electoral brownie points for sure.
I have never seen such a tiny minded, jealous, petty and a completely petrified lot like the bjp when it comes to action, ever.”
The stranded migrant situation is the first real big physical crisis they are facing and the modi and gang have got terrified and as usual have absolutely no clue on how to tackle it.
Moreover, they don't have a good machinery to sort this. Unlike the Congress, their own party workers are a bunch of freeloading unscrupulous untrustworthy louts who have only been trained to create insurgency but not to contain it or deal with it or direct a crowd to a good fruitful end like in this case, to help the poor migrant reach his home.
Though this is not an insurgency, the sight of so many people standing up together looks extremely intimidating and confrontational to this govt with a primary school bully mindset.
This govt which is stuck in a permanent election campaign mode, seems very confused.
The gigantic bunch of mostly poor people is not a crowd which the govt has pulled in, with the help of campaign event managers or agents.
This is not a strike or an election rally. This is not something the opposition party or parties have organised which needs to be quelled. The govt is unable to lathi charge them or call the army in which are only two options the modi and amit shah know when they see an unprecedented crowd of ten people or more for whatever reason.
Besides, the modi regime does not like anyone else, say the Congress or perhaps even a good samaritan individual or organisation, trying to help either, simply because, they are afraid they (the bjp) will lose credit and worse, their worst mortal damned enemy will score political or electoral brownie points for sure.
I have never seen such a tiny minded, jealous, petty and a completely petrified lot like the bjp when it comes to action, ever.”
Monday, May 25, 2020
Some good news from india
The work NGOs some formed spontaneously. The first one from Indus Martin in Telugu. He started distributing sandals and saw the transformation
https://www.facebook.com/1058915620/posts/10220422781413795/
The second from Bharati Ramachandran in The Guardian
Global development Where India’s government has failed in the pandemic, its people have stepped in
When people have this sort of capacity why did they elect the leaders they did?
https://www.facebook.com/1058915620/posts/10220422781413795/
The second from Bharati Ramachandran in The Guardian
Global development Where India’s government has failed in the pandemic, its people have stepped in
When people have this sort of capacity why did they elect the leaders they did?
Sunday, May 24, 2020
Saturday, May 23, 2020
Why are India’s labour laws not working for migrants?
Why India's Legal and Labour System Needs to be Reconfigured to Really Help Migrant Workers :
“ If the law is there, then why was it not implemented? If the migrants are entitled to a dislocation allowance then why was it not given to them? In fact, why were even the monies due to them not paid? If the contractor who hires them is to be licensed then how did he disappear deserting them and leaving them to fend for themselves? Why were health facilities and other basic amenities not provided? If even some of this would have happened, then we may have been able to hold back these workers from embarking the journey back home. The answer is that the Act is in many ways obsolete and hardly enforced anywhere. One may wonder, how is that even possible, but that is the harsh reality.”
Barbara Harriss-White suggests that it is a deliberate policy:” So much for policies of apparently deliberate state inaction. When we turn to active policies, the direction of travel is obvious: states seizing opportunities to fast-track reforms to formalise de jure punitive practices that have operated de facto for years. Labour Law reforms in some states enable the working day to be formally lengthened to 12 hours, and overtime pay to be made unnecessary. Elsewhere they have been waived for three years. Minimum wages have been reduced. Reforms to Agriculture are being enacted at speed to incentivise contract farming by agri-business and to enable reverse tenancies, in which small landholdings are consolidated by large tenant enterprises expected to benefit from economies of scale. As the transport of marketable surpluses is dislocated by the lockdown, reforms relaxing the states’ Agricultural Produce Markets Acts are pushed through to incentivise the use of ‘e-NAM’ (NationalAgricultural Markets) – just as though e-markets can substitute for real markets for more or less perishable material supplies. A new wave of environmental assaults is also being reported. Hard-won citizens’ rights such as those to food and livelihood are being denied. The newly announced relief package is mostly an exercise in re-labelling allocations already made. The autonomy of bankrupt state governments is under attack as they reel under the weight of responsibility for ‘disposable people’: the country’s federal structure is being weakened.”
“ If the law is there, then why was it not implemented? If the migrants are entitled to a dislocation allowance then why was it not given to them? In fact, why were even the monies due to them not paid? If the contractor who hires them is to be licensed then how did he disappear deserting them and leaving them to fend for themselves? Why were health facilities and other basic amenities not provided? If even some of this would have happened, then we may have been able to hold back these workers from embarking the journey back home. The answer is that the Act is in many ways obsolete and hardly enforced anywhere. One may wonder, how is that even possible, but that is the harsh reality.”
Barbara Harriss-White suggests that it is a deliberate policy:” So much for policies of apparently deliberate state inaction. When we turn to active policies, the direction of travel is obvious: states seizing opportunities to fast-track reforms to formalise de jure punitive practices that have operated de facto for years. Labour Law reforms in some states enable the working day to be formally lengthened to 12 hours, and overtime pay to be made unnecessary. Elsewhere they have been waived for three years. Minimum wages have been reduced. Reforms to Agriculture are being enacted at speed to incentivise contract farming by agri-business and to enable reverse tenancies, in which small landholdings are consolidated by large tenant enterprises expected to benefit from economies of scale. As the transport of marketable surpluses is dislocated by the lockdown, reforms relaxing the states’ Agricultural Produce Markets Acts are pushed through to incentivise the use of ‘e-NAM’ (NationalAgricultural Markets) – just as though e-markets can substitute for real markets for more or less perishable material supplies. A new wave of environmental assaults is also being reported. Hard-won citizens’ rights such as those to food and livelihood are being denied. The newly announced relief package is mostly an exercise in re-labelling allocations already made. The autonomy of bankrupt state governments is under attack as they reel under the weight of responsibility for ‘disposable people’: the country’s federal structure is being weakened.”
Tuesday, May 19, 2020
What can one say?
Congress, U.P. govt continue to spar over buses for migrant workers
“ The controversy took off on Monday when, after a studied delay, the U.P. government accepted Ms. Vadra’s offer of 1,000 buses but sought the names and other details of the drivers and conductors.”
“ The controversy took off on Monday when, after a studied delay, the U.P. government accepted Ms. Vadra’s offer of 1,000 buses but sought the names and other details of the drivers and conductors.”
Sunday, May 17, 2020
About my mathematics
Recently, somebody asked me me to write about my mathematical experiences. Here it goes, based on comment in Pramathanath Sastry’s post.
There is no precedent for mathematics in the family. I came from a farming family, though my father was a teacher who taught English and History. I started studying mathematics, a B,A. (Hons) course in Madras University since father thought it would be good for competitive examinations, particularly, I.A.S. Examinations where one could choose two optionals in mathematics. I was doing ok but did not understand what I was doing. Even calculus I started understanding only after I saw how real numbers were constructed. Slowly, it be came a passion, mainly learning. Also I was not in any sense trained, cutting classes and learning what I liked. When it came to research, I did not want to guided and continued learning what I could understand. So the background was always patchy and incomplete. There was no ambition or aim except that I settled on topology early after browsing Hausdorff’s ‘Set Theory’ in college. Some of the results seemed metaphysical, like the invariance of domain and dimension, and I wondered how such things could be proved at all. Luckily I found an unpublished lecture notes by Samuel Eilenberg in 1964 and saw the proofs. To this day Algebraic Topology has been the first love.
For a long time I was happy with abstract and formal thinking without worrying about examples. As late as 1992, a collaborator was exhorting that integers were a counterexample to what I was trying to prove. Anyway, with interest more in learning than career, learning continued. If I could not do a ph.d. there was always the possibility of going home and teaching in a mofussil college. After a few years, research came easy since there are always natural questions when you learn some thing. So it continues.
Then at some stage, around 1978 or so William Thurston came long, and learning became difficult. After a few years I went back to old books on Complex Analysis trying to learn the background to Thurston and organised a one year seminar in I.S.I. Delhi. Around this time Peter Scott advised that it would be difficult to learn this stuff without talking to others and invited me to a conference in Warwick which he organised. There I found that even senior professors were struggling with this and were trying to figure out even the definitions. In any case, I started talking to others and trying to learn through conversations.
Then luckily in the late eighties, Peter Scott decided to collaborate with me perhaps because he used some of my early work. That led to a different sort of approach. I was getting interested in other stuff like political economy and would not work in mathematics for months. But once in a while there would be queries from Peter related to joint work. It would take a week or so to understand the definitions and start thinking about the problems again. Sometimes, I did not understand my own papers and a colleague Lawrence Reeves kindly agreed to listen to me when I tried to read them again. Again talking to others helped. Then at some stage, some of the areas of research became more crystallised and one could start thinking about them without too much paraphernalia.
For the last 25 years or so, it seems more physical. You have these things floating around in front of you and keep staring and feel some thing emerging. Often the results are approximate but stable. Recently I found that several things in a 2003 paper were incomplete and since then there are few more papers based on that paper. But over all they seem correct. May be it depends on how much one is exposed to at a given stage. But in my case, keeping the problems in front of my mind and staring at them for days and months seem to help. But this is with somebody not particularly talented ( I know since I collaborated with some good mathematicians) and I do not know how it works for others. Somehow, the work in the last three four years seems to be the most satisfactory work I have done so far.
There is no precedent for mathematics in the family. I came from a farming family, though my father was a teacher who taught English and History. I started studying mathematics, a B,A. (Hons) course in Madras University since father thought it would be good for competitive examinations, particularly, I.A.S. Examinations where one could choose two optionals in mathematics. I was doing ok but did not understand what I was doing. Even calculus I started understanding only after I saw how real numbers were constructed. Slowly, it be came a passion, mainly learning. Also I was not in any sense trained, cutting classes and learning what I liked. When it came to research, I did not want to guided and continued learning what I could understand. So the background was always patchy and incomplete. There was no ambition or aim except that I settled on topology early after browsing Hausdorff’s ‘Set Theory’ in college. Some of the results seemed metaphysical, like the invariance of domain and dimension, and I wondered how such things could be proved at all. Luckily I found an unpublished lecture notes by Samuel Eilenberg in 1964 and saw the proofs. To this day Algebraic Topology has been the first love.
For a long time I was happy with abstract and formal thinking without worrying about examples. As late as 1992, a collaborator was exhorting that integers were a counterexample to what I was trying to prove. Anyway, with interest more in learning than career, learning continued. If I could not do a ph.d. there was always the possibility of going home and teaching in a mofussil college. After a few years, research came easy since there are always natural questions when you learn some thing. So it continues.
Then at some stage, around 1978 or so William Thurston came long, and learning became difficult. After a few years I went back to old books on Complex Analysis trying to learn the background to Thurston and organised a one year seminar in I.S.I. Delhi. Around this time Peter Scott advised that it would be difficult to learn this stuff without talking to others and invited me to a conference in Warwick which he organised. There I found that even senior professors were struggling with this and were trying to figure out even the definitions. In any case, I started talking to others and trying to learn through conversations.
Then luckily in the late eighties, Peter Scott decided to collaborate with me perhaps because he used some of my early work. That led to a different sort of approach. I was getting interested in other stuff like political economy and would not work in mathematics for months. But once in a while there would be queries from Peter related to joint work. It would take a week or so to understand the definitions and start thinking about the problems again. Sometimes, I did not understand my own papers and a colleague Lawrence Reeves kindly agreed to listen to me when I tried to read them again. Again talking to others helped. Then at some stage, some of the areas of research became more crystallised and one could start thinking about them without too much paraphernalia.
For the last 25 years or so, it seems more physical. You have these things floating around in front of you and keep staring and feel some thing emerging. Often the results are approximate but stable. Recently I found that several things in a 2003 paper were incomplete and since then there are few more papers based on that paper. But over all they seem correct. May be it depends on how much one is exposed to at a given stage. But in my case, keeping the problems in front of my mind and staring at them for days and months seem to help. But this is with somebody not particularly talented ( I know since I collaborated with some good mathematicians) and I do not know how it works for others. Somehow, the work in the last three four years seems to be the most satisfactory work I have done so far.
Saturday, May 16, 2020
Two on graduate advantage
Experts have jobs. They have to understand those who don’t:” Lind’s book, “The New Class War,” argues that the best way to understand America today is through the lens of class conflict, which has been sharpened by the rise of an “overclass” that dominates the three spheres he mentions. In all three, leaders tend to be urban, college-educated professionals, often with a postgraduate degree. That makes them quite distinct from much of the rest of the country. Only 36 percent of Americans have a bachelor’s degree, and only 13 percent have a master’s or more. And yet, the top echelons everywhere are filled with this “credentialed overclass.””
Deaths of despair:Angus Deaton “And we saw very quickly that this was happening to both men and women, and, most importantly, that this decline was only happening to white people who didn’t have college degrees. Those of us with at least a bachelor’s degree, the educational elite, were somehow exempted from these horrors.”
Deaths of despair:Angus Deaton “And we saw very quickly that this was happening to both men and women, and, most importantly, that this decline was only happening to white people who didn’t have college degrees. Those of us with at least a bachelor’s degree, the educational elite, were somehow exempted from these horrors.”
Michael Pollan on food supply chains in USA
“ The advantages of local food systems have never been more obvious, and their rapid growth during the past two decades has at least partly insulated many communities from the shocks to the broader food economy.
The pandemic is, willy-nilly, making the case for deindustrializing and decentralizing the American food system, breaking up the meat oligopoly, ensuring that food workers have sick pay and access to health care, and pursuing policies that would sacrifice some degree of efficiency in favor of much greater resilience. Somewhat less obviously, the pandemic is making the case not only for a different food system but for a radically different diet as well.” from The sickness of our food supply by Michael Pollan
Thursday, May 14, 2020
Taleb on Covid-19
The Pandemic Isn’t a Black Swan but a Portent of a More Fragile Global System
“ For Taleb, an antifragile country would encourage the distribution of power among smaller, more local, experimental, and self-sufficient entities—in short, build a system that could survive random stresses, rather than break under any particular one. (His word for this beneficial distribution is “fractal.”)
“ For Taleb, an antifragile country would encourage the distribution of power among smaller, more local, experimental, and self-sufficient entities—in short, build a system that could survive random stresses, rather than break under any particular one. (His word for this beneficial distribution is “fractal.”)
We should discourage the concentration of power in big corporations, “including a severe restriction of lobbying,” Taleb told me. “When one per cent of the people have fifty per cent of the income, that is a fat tail.” Companies shouldn’t be able to make money from monopoly power, “from rent-seeking”—using that power not to build something but to extract an ever-larger part of the surplus. There should be an expansion of the powers of state and even county governments, where there is “bottom-up” control and accountability. This could incubate new businesses and foster new education methods that emphasize “action learning and apprenticeship” over purely academic certification. He thinks that “we should have a national Entrepreneurship Day.””
Wednesday, May 13, 2020
Coronavirus lesson to india
Coronavirus has upturned the world – and forced us to revisit India’s economic history
“ Lady Corona is also lifting the cover off the ugliness we had hidden away. For example, in India, the dreadful exploitation of people who have been denied access to education, a living income, decent housing. Like in one of those science fiction horror stories, we chained them to oil the engines of production and exchange, and when Lady Corona walked in, we ran into our homes and cabins, leaving those who were oiling and running the engines of our economy, homeless and starving.
“ Lady Corona is also lifting the cover off the ugliness we had hidden away. For example, in India, the dreadful exploitation of people who have been denied access to education, a living income, decent housing. Like in one of those science fiction horror stories, we chained them to oil the engines of production and exchange, and when Lady Corona walked in, we ran into our homes and cabins, leaving those who were oiling and running the engines of our economy, homeless and starving.
But that was not enough. When they decided to walk back to their families and homes to survive this deprivation, we sprayed them with disinfectant, stopped them and held them in cages. They were needed for our return to production and trade, they were the engines of the growth of our economy. After all, foreign capital came to India to reap the benefits of abundant, cheap and unorganised labour.
Now governments and the firms want them back. We recently witnessed the viciousness of that desire when the chief minister of Karnataka banned outgoing trains for migrants. The audacity of that gesture reveals the terror the government felt over what would happen without vulnerable migrant labour. The entire edifice of our cities would collapse without them.“
See also Don’t blame Covid or financial package. Politics is holding India’s migrant workers hostage
See also Don’t blame Covid or financial package. Politics is holding India’s migrant workers hostage
Saturday, May 09, 2020
Facts about US labour market
Facts about labor markets ouch, when are rising wages bad edition
Via MR. “ Workers in the bottom quintile of the wage distribution experienced a 35 percent employment decline while those in the top quintile experienced only a 9 percent decline. ”
A documentary about Capital-21
Are we returning to “ “master and servant” laws in the United Kingdom that made it illegal for workers to quit.”
https://theintercept.com/2020/05/05/capital-21st-century-documentary-thomas-piketty/
Another review https://variety.com/2020/film/reviews/capital-in-the-twenty-first-century-review-thomas-piketty-1234596239/
https://theintercept.com/2020/05/05/capital-21st-century-documentary-thomas-piketty/
Another review https://variety.com/2020/film/reviews/capital-in-the-twenty-first-century-review-thomas-piketty-1234596239/
Saturday, May 02, 2020
Cholera and coronavirus
Cholera and coronavirus: why we must not repeat the same mistakes “ Besides the basic moral argument for a system of public health and international cooperation that benefits all people, it is also in everyone’s interests, because as long as infections blight poor countries, they will continue to pose a threat to the west, too. The Nigerian global health scholar Obijiofor Aginam has written that “enormous sacrifices must then be made by the developed world to confront mutual vulnerability”. Coronavirus has reminded us, once again, of this mutual vulnerability.
To prevent further pandemics, Aginam calls for a “communitarian globalism”: a bottom-up approach, “based on ideals of fairness, justice, and equitable distribution of scarce but moderate global resources”. We have already seen glimpses of this kind of solidarity in the current crisis: from the communist government in Kerala giving food and shelter to migrant workers; to the Somalian doctors offering their help in crisis zones such as Italy; to Cuba allowing an infected British cruise ship to dock to receive timely medical care by its doctors.”
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