The Satyam Swindle

The Satyam-Maytas swindle deal has been dropped by the promoters, after the stock price crashed following the original announcement of the deal that would have enriched the Raju family members tremendously -- the deal was valued at $1.6 billion!

There has been tons of commentary. In particular, the shameful behaviour of Satyam's independent directors was flagged two days ago by T.T. Ram Mohan in a hard-hitting post (see also his follow-up posts.

Poor judgement on Mr Raju's part and also on the part of the board of Satyam which approved the deal. How could the board have even imagined that the company would get away with a deal of this kind? The board's independent directors comprise: M Rammohan Rao (director, Indian School of Business), Vinod Dham(the Silicon valley entrepreneur), T R Prasad (former cabinet secretary) Dr(Mrs)Mangalam Srinivasan ( a retired academic and bureaucrat), and Prof V S Raju (former director, IIT Delhi). It also has HBS prof Krishna Palepu as non-executive director.

The independent directors were paid between Rs 12.1 to Rs 13.2 lakh last year as sitting fee and got between 5000-10,000 stock options. Did the chairman get the board's consent for calling off the deal? Or will the board simply ratify the chairman's decision?

This meme has been picked up by Mint whose editorial has a blunt message: replace the independent directors and the management.

family that controls India’s fourth largest software services company thought it could use a slim 8.6% stake, worth $275 million on Wednesday morning, to spend $1.8 billion of reserves and fresh borrowings to bail out two sister companies in the realty and infrastructure businesses. It is time to ask Satyam chairman B. Ramalinga Raju to step down voluntarily (as we did in our front-page Quick Edit on Thursday) and sack the independent directors on the company board, who have been appointed to protect other shareholders against precisely such raids on their company.

Spicy IP's Sumathi Chandrashekaran makes an interesting connection between the now-dropped proposal to siphon away over 1.6 billion dollars of cash from Satyam and the company's legal troubles arising from a lawsuit filed by an American company called Upaid.

In a Business Standard column, Shobhana Subramanian gives us other examples of similarly shady shenanigans by the promoters:

In the past institutional investors in this country haven’t really spoken up against corporate misbehaviour. Even Sterlite’s attempt, in September this year, to transfer the high-quality aluminum business and merchant power to Malco, in return for the low-quality, high cost, copper Konkola mines, again without so much as a by-your-leave, didn’t anger shareholders. In that instance too, the promoters were enriching themselves, at the cost of minority shareholders, but no mutual fund really said so. There have been numerous other instances, admittedly of smaller consequence, that should have provoked mutual funds to ask questions.

The Sterlite example is important for those interested in India's higher education, because its promoters are behind India's most audacious university project: the Vedanta University, for which the Orissa govenment has allotted several thousand acres of land.

Links

1. What are blind people's dreams like?

2. Australian universities' dependence on foreign students.

3. Gary Stix in the Scientific American: Darwin's Legacy: Evolutionary Theory 150 years later.

4. Vijaysree Venkatraman| in the Christian Science Monitor: Ethan Zuckerman on how to engineer serendipity online .

The IISc Centenary Conference: Inauguration

Just a couple of links about the inaugural day of the Conference.

First, the PTI report on Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam's address, in which he outlines his vision for the IISc:

Sidebar

Update: Here are a couple of other reports: The Hindu and The Times of India.

Former President A P J Abdul Kalam on Saturday envisioned a greater role for the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in its second century by emerging as one of the top 10 institutions for science in the world.

... [H]e said that his vision for IISc 2030 included creating 10 Nobel laureates in different disciplines.

Over at Lab Rats, Seema Singh offers a somewhat more personal take on what was said at the inauguration:

While President Kalam, in his characteristic style, gave a PowerPoint presentation listing a bunch of things he wants to see IISc achieve by 2030, he made it look lofty as well as simplistic (which, for some reason, all his solutions appear). But I was amused at his credulity - he expects 10 Nobel laureates from IISc by then. Was he kidding himself or others?

The only one Nobel connected with IISc is of Sir CV Raman, and he won it in 1930, became IISc director in 1933. Thereafter, we've not even had a nomination, through rumour is rife that CNR Rao was in the reckoning once.

This (Rao) grand old man of Indian science and two-time director of IISc, loved and somewhat criticized (for acting like a banyan tree and hindering young talent) in great measure, was candid enough: If IISc strives to be the best in India, it's not hard; if it wants to be the best in the world, it's not easy.

Faculty perceptions of university education in India

Sidebar

The IISc Centenary Conference kicks off this afternoon with speeches by Prof. C.N.R. Rao and former President Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.

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Professor [A.H.], head of electro-technical department found, “the main weakness of the university science graduate is his entire ignorance of mechanical engineering and lack of workshop experience. As regards the work done by students during the session, it was found that not one of them was sufficiently well-trained, either as regards to actual knowledge of the theory of the subject or practical acquaintance with the method of measurement.” Echoing his observations, Professor [N.R.], who had four students in his applied chemistry department, makes a stinging remark on Indian education system [...].

“These students possess to a more or less greater extent, one peculiarity, which I attribute to the system under which they have studied, in which the passing of examination appears to have been the main object of University life. I refer to the fact that the students have rather an experience of learning than real knowledge itself...”

It's interesting how (some) faculty perceptions have remained stubbornly static for nearly 100 years!

The IISc Centenary Conference: The IISc Press

In a way, the Centenary Conference will double up as a launch party for the IISc Press. I can't think of a more big-bang launch than the release of these wonderfully produced beauties by two of IISc's people about IISc's non-people:

The Inaugural of the IISc Centenary Conference will see the release of Secret Lives by IISc graduate (and blogger) Dr. Natasha Mhatre, and Indian Institute of Science Campus: A Botanist’s Delight by Prof. Sankara Rao.

Together, the two books cover the vast variety of plants and animals that reside in the IISc campus. Published by the newly created The IISc Press [they are not its first publications, however], they will go on sale after their formal release tomorrow; if you buy them at the conference, you'll get a 20 % discount!

Breaking news ...

Area Man Travels Back In Time To Kuriya, USSR, On An Important Mission

Farokh Arumugam, a Mumbai area man, has defied all odds to become the first Indian to travel back in time. His flight took off yesterday from an undisclosed location near Mumbai. If his first mission succeeds, he may just be able to rid this world of certain kinds of terrorism forever.

Mr. Arumugam has gone back to the post-Revolution years of 1917-18 to Kuriya, in the former USSR. In a press conference before his historic flight, he said his plans include a lawsuit in the Revolutionary Court of Altai Krai. His lawsuit seeks to force a local area couple to use contraceptive technologies he has brought from the future.

The couple in question are the parents of one Mr. Kalashnikov.

Mr. Arumugam said if his legal maneuvers in Kuriya didn't succeed, he would resort to his Plan B, which he declined to elaborate.

Mr. Arumugam claimed he was inspired by another Mumbai area man, Amit Karkhanis, who has reportedly filed a lawsuit that shares the spirit -- if not the audacity -- of Arumugam's quest to save humanity from itself.

If I had time, I could have developed this story further. For the moment, this will have to do.

The idea about time travel and the teaching of contraception comes from an ancient -- and very, very funny -- Dilbert cartoon, which I'm not able to locate right at this moment.

IISc Centenary Conference: Just three more days to go ...

... things are getting more exciting.

Last Sunday, the IISc Alumni Association organized a "Science And Technology Run" that attracted over 1500 participants. Rupesh and Gururaja have blogged about it, with pics. Check them out.

An interesting new intiative is the Centenary Gallery, which has been created to enable folks here (and elsewhere) to share their pictures and videos of the Institute, its people, and its science. For something that was created just days ago, there's already quite a bit of activity. Check out, for example, Prof. A.G. Samuelson's IPC Archives should be of interest to graduates of the Department of Inorganic and Physical Chemistry.

Links ...

I want to start with the mystery link.

* * *

Michael Nielsen: The Future of Science: Building a Better Collective Memory. Money quote: "Unfortunately, science currently lacks the trust infrastructure and incentives necessary for such free, unrestricted trade of questions and ideas."

Phillip Davis: An Authorship Accelerator: Value of authorship in the age of 3000-author papers.

Female Science Professor: Which is better: thesis after papers, or papers after thesis? [Link via Guru]

Doug Natelson: Words of Advice about Giving Talks.]

IISc Centenary Conference: Six days to go ...

A couple of days ago, Divya Gandhi wrote a short piece about a book on plant biodiversity in the IISc campus: Indian Institute of Science Campus: A Botanist’s Delight by Prof. Sankara Rao. The book is expected to be released during the Centenary Conference.

One hundred years ago, when the Indian Institute of Science (IISc.) acquired its campus in the city, it was not quite the green oasis it is today. In 1909, the campus was essentially a vast tract of thorny shrubs and rocky outcrops characteristic of the stark landscape of the Deccan Plateau.

Interestingly, the exotic flowering trees, orchids and sedges that set apart the IISc. from the concrete jungle (and keep it several degrees cooler), were brought from all over the world as part of a greening project that began in the 1930s.[...]

The large woody creeper that twines around the CES building was brought from the Western Ghats; the vermillion-flowered Sterculia colorata outside the metallurgy department comes from south-east Asia and the tall coniferous trees that flank the main administrative building are from Australia, he explained. Among those to whom IISc. owes its greening is Gustav Hermann Krumbiegel, one of the chief architects of Lalbagh Botanical Gardens who introduced several exotic plants in Bangalore. “However there are still precious pockets of original vegetation left. There are several old trees, including the banyan that pre-date the campus,” he added.

Here is some visual evidence for the statement that a hundred years ago, "the [IISc] campus was essentially a vast tract of thorny shrubs and rocky outcrops characteristic of the stark landscape"!

And here are two   pictures that give you a glimpse of the very twisted (and weirdly alluring!) plant -- "the large woody creeper" -- in front of the Centre for Ecological Sciences.

Links

1. Anjali Deshpande and S.K. Pande: Three days of Mumbai terror reporting:

We support the call for restraint reporting, for terrorism has international and national linkages and is often used to destabilise countries. The initial role of some of the media was to grab the eyeballs rather than ask questions and reflect all facets of life as they unfold without adding to the tension strife and trauma in such situations. In some cases the ethics evolved over the years was thrown into the dustbin. Add to it all the fact, that when some restraint began more than a touch of jingoism took over.

If there is one thing the electronic media helped in particular to do in the last three days was to bolster the confidence of terrorists and to give them a sense of achievement far greater than their action may have provided them.

2. While we're on the disgraceful coverage of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai (particularly by our TV news channels), I should link to the critiques from Sevanti Ninan (in The Hindu) and Harini Calamur (who has a lot more on this issue on her blog).

3. Swaminathan Anklesaria Aiyar: Dangers of Bushspeak:

Many Indians, while sympathising with the US after 9/11, pointed out that 6,000 feared dead in the World Trade Centre wasn't a big number compared with 50,000 killed over a decade in Kashmir. The US was getting a small dose of the Islamic terrorism that had long devastated Kashmir, and was over-reacting. The US never equated Kashmiri terrorism with war, and always told India to be calm and not bomb terrorist training camps in Pakistan. But when the US itself got a taste of this at home, it went ballistic, declared it was at war with terrorism, and vowed to bomb and kill all those bad guys.

Cooler heads pointed out that "war on terror" was a meaningless phrase. Terror is simply a tactic used by certain groups, and you cannot wage war against a tactic. You can declare war on an enemy country, but not on an NGO (terrorists are exactly that - non-government organizations). When terrorism arises from an ideology or set of grievances, imaginary or otherwise, killing one bunch of ideologues may simply deepen the grievances and create thousands of fresh terrorists.

4. Shashi Tharoor: Time to improve relations between police & minorities:

We in India also need to recognize that if we want under-represented Muslims to compete effectively for police jobs, they need to feel the police is part of them, rather than an external entity. It's clear we need to: actively solicit applications from minorities for the police at all levels (including the Provincial Armed Constabulary and the Central Reserve Police); offer special catch-up courses open only to members of the minority communities that will prepare them for the entrance examinations; at the moment few feel qualified to take the exams, and fewer still pass; and require police officers to work with community organizations, mosques and madrasas to encourage minorities to apply.

In other words, instead of more "reservations", with the resentment that breeds, let us make it easier for minorities to join the police. But let's not stop with recruitment: we also need to focus on the retention and progression of minority officers. ...

5. The tension between India and Pakistan is so intense that the latter gets spooked by a hoax call:

Pakistani officials said Saturday that a bellicose phone call to President Asif Ali Zardari from India, purportedly placed by the Indian foreign minister, prompted Islamabad to put its air force on high alert before concluding the call was a hoax. [...]

Prof. C.N.R. Rao: 75 years and over 1500 papers

Yesterday, Prof. C.N.R. Rao's 75th birthday was celebrated in a grand fashion by his students and admirers. While I missed the event, I was happy to see two news reports on it. Some excerpts from one of them:

"The Indian Institute of Science is celebrating its centenary year and this year is also my golden jubilee as a scientist. The only weapon I have is publishing papers, and I want to do research till my last day,” said Scientific Advisor to the Prime Minister, CNR Rao, here on Friday.

“The only Indian scientist that I know who did research till his last day was Sir C V Raman. Most scientists publish one or two papers and forget about it. I feel miserable if I do not publish 20-30 papers a year. The only way to stay alive in science is to publish papers,” Rao said in his address during a felicitation ceremony organised to honour him on his 75th birthday. The Linus Pauling Research Professor, who published his first paper at the age of 19, has about 1,500 papers to his credit.

“As I am getting old there is one doubt that bothers me: What happens after I am gone? Will all things I did disappear? To this I would say that publishing paper is the only course to reach immortality.

There are many people in this country who look down upon people who publish papers or comment on their work. In fact, I am sorry to say, some of the Academies have encouraged the art of non-publishing,”

IISc blogging

Rupesh has compiled a great list of IISc faculty, students and alumni who blog. Go check it out.

If you know of blogs that should be on that list, please leave a comment on that page.

Kumari L. A. Meera Memorial Lecture

Here's an opportunity for those of you in Bangalore to listen to a very impressive speaker: Prof. P. Balaram (Director of IISc, and Chief Editor of Current Science), who will deliver the the 17th Kumari L. A. Meera Memorial Lecture.

The lecture is scheduled for 6:00 p.m. on 12 December 2008 (Friday) in the Indian Institute of World Culture, B.P. Wadia Road, Basavangudi, Bangalore.

Prof. Balaram will be speaking on Chemical Analysis in the Age of Biology. Here's the abstract:

Analytical chemistry has been transformed over the past two decades from an old, classical discipline to a vibrant area of research focused principally on biological problems. Mass spectrometry, NMR spectroscopy and a variety of imaging methods based on optical and vibrational spectroscopy have begun to provide a level of sensitivity and resolution which have led to a renaissance in chemical analysis.

This lecture focuses on the applications of mass spectrometry in biology. A brief historical account of the field, whose origins may be traced to the work of J.J. Thomson will be followed by a consideration of the soft ionization procedures which have made biological analysis possible. Specific applications to the identification of disease causing mutations in proteins and the analysis of complex peptide libraries in natural venoms will be illustrated.

The lecture is organized by Kumari L.A. Meera Trust. My friend and colleague Anant is on its board of trustees.

Some of you may remember the previous edition of this annual event featuring Prof. M.S. Ananth, Director of IIT-M.

IISc Centenary Conference: 9 days to go ...

... and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was in our Institute to "inaugurate" its centenary celebrations. He covered quite a few different things in his speech. Here's something about what his government has done for science and technology:

The Government has done a lot in the past four years to improve opportunities in education in the sciences. We have created a number of scholarships and fellowships. The Ramanujan fellowships have been instituted to attract young talented scientists to work in India and the J. C. Bose fellowships have been created to reward outstanding senior scientists. We have improved the emoluments of research students taking up Ph. D. studies.

One of the most significant initiatives of our Government in this area is the special scholarship scheme titled “Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research” [INSPIRE]. This programme seeks to attract youth to the study of science and targets learners in the age group 10-15 years. One million young students are proposed to be covered under this scheme. Scholarships will also be provided to senior students for continuing science education. Assured Opportunities for Research Careers is another initiative under this scheme that will support a thousand young researchers with contract positions backed with research grants of Rs. 10 lakhs per year for five years.

At another function in Bangalore, Dr. Singh also "dedicated the International Centre for Material Science to the Nation and opened the C.N.R. Rao Hall of Science." His speech at that event is here.

Terrorism and politics

After the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, it has become fashionable to suggest that we should banish -- or, at least, rise above -- politics and seek ways of preventing terrorist attacks, and of minimizing the damage and loss of life if a terrorist attack does get underway.

But it seems to me that any suggestion about what needs to be done is inherently political. Consider the following suggestions/demands/ideas:

1. the ritual resignation of some minister or the other.

2. different kinds of internal security measures -- POTA, for example -- which imply different levels of loss of personal freedom

3. going to war with a nuclear armed neighbour -- "There is only one way to deal with [international terrorism] - the Dubya way!"

4. getting Ratan Tata to be our Prime Minister with NSG commandos running the state's affairs.

Which of these ideas is not political? Even if one couches them in non-partisan rhetoric -- "I don't care who's in power, NDA or UPA.I want action!" -- each of the ideas depends on a certain view of the state, who should run it, what it should do, and at what cost. When each of them comes into conflict with others -- your POTA is my draconian law, after all -- what you have is politics. Gnani puts it even more strongly:

... [T]errorism is not above politics. It is politics by other means.

To come to grips with it and to eventually eliminate it, the practice of politics by proper means needs constant fine tuning and improvement. Decrying all politics and politicians, only helps terrorists and dictators who are the two sides of the same coin. [...]

Let me leave you with some links. And, yes, they are all intensely political:

1. Gnani Sankaran's class-based take on how our media -- especially the TV channels -- are spinning the terrorist attacks. [Update: See also Mukul Kesavan's column.]

2. Biju Mathew asks us to be skeptical about what the media tells us about the attacks. A lot of their stories are based on selective leaks from the police, intelligence agencies and the armed forces; when the leaks are selective, they are likely to be self-serving and/or ass-covering. [See this, this and this]

3. Why did we end up losing top police officials and NSG commandos? Mad Momma wants to know, because "because tomorrow my son might want to join these forces."

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Let me end this post on a not-so-political note with the following links:

1. WSJ has a detailed -- and chilling -- account of how the terrorists did what they did. Here's an equally chilling account from an NSG commando of the fight to liberate the Taj.

2. A daughter recounts the hours and days when her father -- a police official -- was inside one of the hotels fighting the terrorists.