Greatest accomplishments of "Independent India"

For a people and a region that has contributed to human advancement as much as (or more than) the Greeks and the Romans combined, talking about 75 years of Independence makes India appear younger than a young country like the USA. This period is, however, a good marker for modern India.  Below, I've opined about the 5 Greatest achievements of the past 75 years.  Perhaps more importantly, I've dropped some references for you to look up. I will write a second post on the 'Also Great' list soon. 

I do have to start with the disclaimer that all issues are in grayscale, and so there is always something to complain about even in our admiration. Also, this is just about the past, and there is no guarantee that all of these won't erode (in fact, some of it may already be) in the next few decades. In any case...

The Constitution & stability

The Indian constitution is a remarkable document in how forward thinking it was. Indeed, truly living up to the aspirations of the constitution is quite impossible (as in any country), but it is well-crafted, nuanced and progressive.  This document has to be viewed in the context of 1947:

- An incredibly diverse population (22 major languages - each much more dissimilar to each other than the major European languages are to each other - and many more cultures make this more of a continent rather than a country)

- A shaky union including 562 princely states 

- Extreme poverty (70%) 

- Extreme illiteracy (12%)

- Psychological impact of British rule & the trauma of partition

Against this backdrop, the constitution set the stage for a stable and functioning democracy, with remarkably stable transfer of power every single time, and of course, reduction of inequality via reservation (aka affirmative action). Literacy (officially, at least) is now 80+% and extreme poverty is estimated to be less than 15%.   There are a number of great books on the constitution of India, but I will just list this set of  exceptional videos on the making of the constitution. Must watch! 

The Space & nuclear programs

This one is obvious and does not require much commentary. India's indigenous space program went from practically nothing to not just being a player in the international stage. Beyond the Moon and Mars missions, ISRO has had a huge impact on India's technological growth, societal evolution, scientific temperament, and of course as a source of immense pride.

Relatively speaking, I feel ISRO's impact is more significant to India than the American achievement of starting from scratch (well.. with German scientists) after WWII to putting a man on the moon in 1969 (which is one of the greatest chapters in American history). 

The same goes for India's nuclear program. On that note, I consider Homi Bhaba, Vikram Sarabhai and Satish Dhawan to be among India's greatest nation builders. As a starting point (on ISRO and the latter two men), I would recommend reading this nice book that details the evolution of the space program through the eyes of someone who was a part of it from the start.

The Telecom & IT revolution

As recently as the early 1980s, Indians had to wait years to get a telephone line. What happened after the the foundation of C-DOT (Center for the Development of Telematics) in 1985 is one of the awe-inspiring stories of Modern India. Whatever your political affiliation is, be thankful to Rajiv Gandhi & Sam Pitroda. Sam Pitroda's blog (read from bottom) is a great place to start. You don't have to take everything literally, but some facts are facts. His biography is also highly recommended.   This laid the foundation for the development of computing in India (Rajaraman's book is a treasure), and of course, India's Information Technology revolution. India employs 5 Million people in the IT sector, and IT exports are currently at $150 B (and still growing at a rapid pace).

The Green revolution (& the Dairy revolution)

The generally accepted version of the green revolution is that newly independent India was struggling with food production, had two famines and had made some policy blunders. Enter the Green revolution in the mid 60s headed by MS Swaminathan and American help, a switch was made to modern high-yield crops (mainly wheat) and agricultural production grew exponentially. 

Of course, the situation on the ground is more nuanced, and some revisionist takes  throw some shade on the true benefits. Nevertheless, India went from that struggle to being the second largest agricultural producer in the world. Roughly around the same time, India was milk deficient and used to import it! It is now the largest producer of milk (accounting for 20% of the world's production). Regardless of nuances and current issues, this was vital to a young, overpopulated country of half a billion mostly impoverished people.

The IITs  (& AIIMS, IIMs, etc)

India's contribution to science has always been immense, and pre-independence, there were small pockets of excellence (e.g. Indian Institute of Science, CV Raman). When the government set upon establishing the first 5 IITs, it was to develop technical excellence for the future of Indian industry and infrastructure.  Within a remarkably short time span (less than two decades, which is very short in academia), the goal of technical excellence was achieved, and quality of students graduating from the IITs was arguably "better" than the output of the top institutions anywhere in the world. Of course, while the rigor of the entrance exam and the extreme competition to get in ensured good inputs to the system, the institutions were also set up and run in a unique way. One can argue about the brain drain to the west, but the soft power created due to the global impact of IITians is significant. Similar - but less direct - things can be said about the very high quality talent pool and education in other national institutions of learning such as AIIMS & IIMs).

Most significant Tennis matches of the GOAT era

So here we are.. The GOAT candidates are still tied at 20 slams apiece. It is a futile endeavor to be objective about this kind of argument, but I would say that all 3 belong in the Top 5 of all time along with Laver and Borg. But if had to pick titles:

- Federer is the Greatest tennis player of all time for the way he waltzed his way to 20 slams, seemingly without breaking a sweat, for straddling 3 generations of players, and for setting the standard for his two competitors to match

- Djokovic is *clearly* the statistical GOAT (and the best career and has the best head-to-head records)

- Nadal is *clearly* the Clay GOAT

Also, in my opinion, here are the most significant matches between these 3 as far as GOAT arguments go

3. Nadal vs Djokovic, French Open 2021

 This is in 3rd place mainly because it is a semi-final and so it wasn't definitive for the winner. But if Nadal had won, he would've had a chance to establish a 3 slam lead over Djokovic, and would've stopped the two-time career grand slam for Djokovic. Instead, in a matter of a month, it was 20/20/20.

2. Nadal vs Federer, Australian Open 2017

   If Federer had not come back to win the last 5 games of the 5th set, 31 year old Rafa would have been just 2 slams behind Old man Fed. Rafa would've soon passed Federer's slam count and then had some gas left in the tank. Instead, Federer had a resurrection (and even beat Nadal 5 times in a row starting with that match)

1. Federer vs Djokovic, Wimbledon 2019.

    Undoubtedly, this is the one. Let's consider what would've happened if Federer had converted his match points in the 5th set: I don't think Djokovic would be capable of crossing Federer if he had lost that one (would've needed at least 7 more slams to do so) ; and a past-prime 38 year old would've demolished his greatest demons by coming back in the 5th set against his (40-15) tormentor and THE ultimate competitor who in his prime. 

Of course statistically speaking, any slam final between these three would have the same implications for the overall slam count, so here are some honorable mentions:

- Djokovic vs Nadal, French Open 2020 : Of course, vanquishing the clay GOAT in Roland Garros would be amazing, and the count would've been 20/19/18

- Federer vs Nadal, Wimbledon 2008 : Federer was untouchable on grass (in fact, untouchable on anything except clay), and Nadal was just a great Clay court player. This was the match that brought him into the discussion as a potential all time great.. .and of course, it is perhaps the greatest tennis match of all time.

COVID / India / May 28

The estimates and hot spots from last time appear to reflect the situation well, and it looks like India is past peak in deaths now.  The table below is updated. 

But here is the most important piece of info. Bhramar Mukherjee (Chair of Biostats @ UMich), a leading expert on the Indian COVID picture just released a preprint:

https://twitter.com/BhramarBioStat/status/1398413410719707138

Of course, many assumptions are made, and it is based on serosurveys, but this is about as good as it can get. Her estimate is that deaths are under-reported by a factor of 4.5 and cases are under-reported by a factor of 15.  That puts the deaths / Million at 1037, inching closer and closer to the US/UK/EU numbers. The peak in deaths might be of the same order. Again, all said and done, the India numbers might end up similar to US/UK/EU (factored by population).

Country   Cases/100k  |   Deaths/100k | Total deaths| 2nd/1st peak|  2nd/1st peak

                (Daily Peak)|   (Daily Peak)   |  per Million |  ratio cases   |  ratio deaths                                                                                                                    

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

India            28**               0.3**               233**            4.3**            3.6**

US.              75                 1.04                1800*            7.9               1.6

UK              89                  1.86                1913*           11.9              1.3

Brazil          36                  1.47                2164*            1.7               3.0

EU              49                   0.8                 1617*             7.6              1.2

1918 Pandemic                                                                                 4.8

California energy production

 This is a really cool website

http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.html

Breaks down energy production by type. Renewables generated almost 90% of the total energy (during the day) yesterday, and Solar is doing particularly well! As I hinted here,  I am not sure that installing solar panels at home (in California) saves the earth.

Solar is shining

The Global Picture

Around 10 years ago, I was into renewable energy and was curious about energy in general (e.g. this , this). I remember being fascinated by Stanford's energy institute seminars and future projections of the cost of energy. Stanford has saved slides and videos of the weekly seminars for the past 14 years (Go Cardinal!). As an example, here is a presentation from 2009 that said solar energy cost around 30 cents / kWhr and I vaguely remember discussions that suggested that the cost could reduce by a factor of 5-10 over the next 10 years. I will admit that I was somewhat skeptical. I've not followed this evolution as closely as I should have, but I recently looked it up, and have been amazed. See the plot below

This is simply remarkable! All the curves are interesting, but let's focus on PV (i.e. Solar panels).  The associated report from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) is fascinating, and has a lot of detail (see fig 1.3 for instance), but the relevant takeaway is that solar energy sold at big auctions averages around  4 cents / kWhr. Note that the range for fossil fuels is 5-15 cents/kWhr! 

The report says that this year "up to 1200 gigawatts of existing coal-fired capacity would cost more to operate than new utility-scale solar PV would cost to install". Of course, numbers are numbers and IRENA may or may not be biased in its accounting, but the conclusion is straightforward: Solar is in the same ballpark as fossil fuels and is extremely competitive.

The Local Picture

Clearly, energy generation is going to change in a big way, but I also wanted to see what Solar panels can do for me, now. I've attached the breakdown of my electricity bill at the bottom of this post, but effectively, I pay 15.5 cents / kWhr + $11/month.

Average monthly usage : 400 kWhr. Daily : 13 kWhr

Average monthly bill = $80

From the internet, I can infer that a 3 kW solar system will generate about 13 kWhr per day. Let's be conservative (Michigan!) and say that it takes a 5 kW solar system to do the job. The cost of the 5kW solar system seems to be $14,000 (with 30% federal tax credit).

For reference, here is a friend's 10kW unit which cost him only $24,000, and here is his energy production in March (March was brighter than average). He easily generated 30kW-hr/day in March! In Ann Arbor!!!

Not to belabor the point, but here is a neat NREL website that tells us what to expect in any location. I plugged in a 10kW panel for Ann Arbor, and I got the following estimate (which happens to be spot on!). 

These numbers are great : a 10kW panel gets you 1 MWhr/month in Michigan, 1.25 MWhr/month in San Francisco and 1.4 MWhr/month in Arizona. Not as big a difference as I would've imagined!

The bottomline is that we can breakeven in less than 15 years. This doesn't account for the fact that you can sell electricity to the grid (in which case, we could breakeven in say less than 10 years). I've  ignored things like financing, but the 10 year number is quite reasonable.

Let's work out some numbers on the 5kW panel:

The cost of the solar panels is about $2800/kW-installed. 

Conservatively the panels will generate about 24 MWhr/kW-installed of energy over its 25 year lifetime

Thus, conservatively, buying the panels is the equivalent of paying 11 cents / kWhr.

Note that we are currently paying 15.5 cents / kWhr.  

Our utilities provider buys back excess energy at 8 cents / kWhr.

Local vs Global question

It is obvious that solar panels make (and has made for the past 5-10 years) economic sense at a personal level. However, since utility providers themselves are going to integrate much more large scale renewables into the grid, I am not super sure whether it is going to make sense (from a tree-hugging perspective) to install solar panels @ home say 10 years from now. But that's a good problem to have. Another BIG question is how to recycle/ dispose these panels.

Interesting times. 

================================

My Electricity bill

Power Supply Capacity Charge 433 KWH @ 0.045000 $19.49 

Power Supply Non Capacity Charge 433 KWH @ 0.041760 $18.08 

Power Supply Cost Recovery 433 KWH @ 0.003220 $1.39 

Delivery Charges Service Charge $7.50 

Distribution 433 KWH @ 0.066110 $28.63

LIEAF Factor $0.91

Other Delivery Surcharges $2.56 

Residential Michigan Sales Tax $3.11 

Total Charges $81.67

Most amazing sporting achievements of the 21st century while facing adversity

India beat Australia in Brisbane to win the series in test cricket on Jan 18th 2021. This is the long form of the game - played over 5 days, and it comes down to true grit. It was shocking for many different reasons. Imagine if the Miami Heat had beat the Los Angeles Lakers in 2020 missing Butler AND Adebayo AND a few bench players while starting 2 rookies. But more explicitly,

- India was severely depleted, losing their captain (the best player in the world),  and more than half the team to injury (including the entire first string and most of the second string bowlers). They also lost players in the middle of matches (and they can't be replaced).

- Australia has the best bowling attack in the world, and all 5 of India's bowlers were debutants

- Australia is close to unbeatable in a series at home, and also hadn't lost a game at Brisbane in 33 years. India is no slouch (both countries are comfortably in the top 3 in world cricket), but unlike in any other sport, the home country has a big advantage because of the playing surface (India is close to unbeatable in India, and the difference between the surfaces is like the difference between the French and US Opens in tennis).

- India had been embarrassed in Game 1 and were bowled out for their lowest score ever (Imagine the Heat scoring 50 points in a game), came back and won Game 2 and looked like they were going to lose Game 3, but held on for a draw. TV networks showed India had about a 1% chance of winning Game 4 on the last day.

There are many other subtleties, but I will not go into it. Perhaps this gives some insight (for higher level, here is the New York Times highlight!). So given all that, I was thinking of comparable sporting achievements in the face of adversity in the 21st century. I had to set some rules:

- Individual games don't count. I am sure we can all find thrilling individual games and comebacks (Tom Brady's Superbowl 51 comeback, for instance). Has to be a championship or a very important series of games (e.g. Sox vs Yankees)

- It has to be somewhat significant in the global scale (or at least matter to 10s of millions).. that rules out US college sports. But even if we keep college sports, nothing measures up in College Football (big guys always win the championship,) and the closest in college basketball is if George Mason had won the NCAAT or if Butler had beaten Duke without Gordon Hayward (but they didn't and had Hayward). 

So there are 4 categories. Talent differential between teams, Adversity faced (i.e. how close were they to losing, injuries, etc), Achievement relative to the biggest prize in that sport, and  Shock value of the result (i.e. how surprising the result is, independent of other factors)

Here is an unranked list of similar events with scores out of 10 in each category.

Team                                          Year     Talent  / Adversity  /Achievement/  Shock

                                                                 Diff    /    faced       /(in that sport)/  Value             

Leicester city wins the EPL        2016       10                 3                   8                   10

Redsox beat the Yankees            2004        3                 10                  8                     4

Cavaliers beat Warriors              2016        6                  8                  10                    8

Greece wins the Euro                 2004       10                 3                    9                   10

India beats Australia                   2021        7                  9                    8                    8

Liverpool wins the Champs L.   2005        6                  9                    8                    8

Giants win the Superbowl          2008        6                  4                   10                   8

 I am sure I am missing some obvious ones (in Rugby and NHL, for instance, so this will be updated...)

Hot takes from the election

We didn't learn anything new about America : 

        And we never had a chance to learn anything new.  People who thought it would be a landslide for Biden were always going to be wrong. There was never going to be a repudiation or a blue (or a red) wave. There is no silent majority, nor are Trump supporters just a vocal minority.

Caveat: You could argue that the extent (post-election) to which Trump's base and some republicans sank to has been surprising, and I'll give you that. 

Hard to say whether Trump hurt or helped the republican party at the polls :

      Looking at - for instance - Pennsylvania numbers and the fact that Republican congressmen got a lot more votes than Trump, it is easy to lay a hot take that there were many more negative Republican votes for Trump. However, it is not that simple. We don't know how many congressmen actually got votes because of Trump. Overall, the numbers show that Trump underperformed with relation to the GOP, but that doesn't tell a complete story.

Caveat: Trump clearly hurt the party in suburbia, but made gains among non-white voters, but it is hard to disambiguate, especially because of the incumbency effect.

The polls were "accurate" (again) : 

         Whatever your hot take is, I think that the polls (I mean, high quality aggregates like NYT and 538) were pretty good (especially, but not only because of all the pandemic/turnout/mail-in uncertainties). Every single state and every single senate seat that was supposed to go red or blue went red or blue. See the attached pictures from NYT

There were also exactly ZERO big upsets (and 7 mild upsets) out of 535 house seats.   Perhaps if you just follow American politics, you're used to 98% certainty, but if you step out of the red, white and blue sphere, it is pretty remarkable how predictable American elections are (goes for 2016 and 2018 also.)

Caveats: You could argue there was a 3-4% red shift in the tossups, and I'd give you that (though I was sure that it would happen). But really? a 3-4% shift in such a complex system is a big deal?

There was a tiny blue shift (overall) in the presidential election

            In 38 states, Biden's margin was +2% or higher than Clinton's. Only in -2- states did Trump have a +1% or higher margin compared to 2016. This was evenly distributed over battleground and safe states. Geographically, the only major surprise was a big red swing in south Texas. See pic below from Nate Cohn.

Compare that to the 2012-2016 shift, and that's all we need to know.

If that's not very clear, take a look at this (from Cook political report).. 

Trump never had a plan :

           The defining characteristics of Trump : make shit up, survive news cycle to news cycle and bully/fire people to get his way. All those who credited him as an evil genius were always wrong. He is certainly as much a moron as he is evil, and he is certainly not a genius. He has lost 34 out of 36 post-election lawsuits so far, and the two that he won are insignificant. We all know this is just a ploy to create more doubt and stall  certification, but even then it has been an absolute shit-show. 

American institutions are neither strong nor weak :

          But they are getting dangerously weaker by the day. Well.. this one is obvious and doesn't need qualifiers

I was wrong about one thing :

        I thought Americans hated "Losers" more and thought people would jump ship sooner. It could still turn out that Trump will be cast into the rubbish dump of history soon, but as of November 19, I am certainly wrong.