Economic and Political Weekly: Table of Contents
Monday, June 19, 2017
Baibhav Agarwal; Author; The Cost of Ambition receives the prestigious Kalinga Literary Youth Award 2017 (Special Citation)
Bhubaneswar: Baibhav Agarwal; Author; The Cost of Ambition receives the prestigious Kalinga Literary Youth Award 2017 (Special Citation); now in its 4th year. The Kolkata based entrepreneur said, ‘There is a price you need to pay for everything. I paid for pursuing my dreams too. I’m glad that the book has received global acclaim and is gaining recognition; it being my first stint at writing.’ The highly coveted award was conferred onto him by the ace writer-author Anand Neelakantan; The Rise of Sivagami; Book 1 of Baahubali – Before the Beginning, who was also at the festival to receive an award.
About Baibhav Agarwal :
At twenty-nine, when most of us are trying to fit in the corporate milieu, trying to defy this world which is in a flux, Baibhav Agrawal shines from a distant horizon, steady on his feet. Baibhav, a Chartered Accountant par excellence is seen ably managing an empire of conglomerates. A youth icon in the making, Baibhav dared to dream and soared high like an Eagle, taking the world in his stride.
Success came early to Baibhav, who meticulously and industriously chalked out his plan; to make a difference in the society by becoming a social entrepreneur. His passion to excel combined with his value systems ensured that he was here to stay; an indelible mark in this fast-fading world. ‘I look at productivity each hour and hence, I have a firm and dedicated time-management system. I compartmentalize my weeks into number of hours and then divide them into various verticals, i.e. – Social, Personal, Work and Society’. This is his mantra that time needs to be valued.
Born into a family of Chartered Accountants, It is noteworthy that he leveraged his limited means and modest family background into creating and curating a magnificent empire in the making.
A Calcuttan at heart, the intelligentsia bug bit him in his formative days, with Baibhav aspiring to become an author. A go-getter, his maiden book, tiled ‘The Cost of Ambition’ provides an insight into his life and his pining for scaling up against all odds. A graduate from St. Xavier’s College; Kolkata, Baibhav crafted his dream by launching a consultancy and mentoring house in 2007. The year 2010 witnessed him joining his family business; the venerated CA firm. A stickler for innovation and expansion, the visionary in him prompted him to lay the foundation for coal and energy trading organizations. By 2012, he had commenced a shipping Company which was soon followed by mining operations. The same year, an industrious Baibhav was also seen purchasing cotton farms in Ethiopia; Africa.
If International and heavy industries didn’t fuel his passion enough, he forayed into real-estate in 2014, adding to the cityscape. 2015, he decided to venture in a start-up. Baibhav today is a globe-trotter, having offices at Singapore, Dubai and the United Kingdom. With an iron-fist and the soul of a seeker, he keeps an eagle eye on the transpiring of his global corporate kingdom. Solace for him is in the hours he dedicates to his Trust – Dor; Rukmini Devi Shivchandram Foundation, after his grand-parents. As people say, when passion meets perfection, master-pieces are born … so is the epitome of excellence, Baibhav himself. After all, one who draws inspiration from legends and stalwarts like Ratan Tata and Elon Musk, cannot be an ordinary man with average life goals! Can he?
Source: Indiaeducationdiary, 19-06-2017
Economic and Political Weekly: Table of Contents
Vol. 52, Issue No. 24, 17 Jun, 2017
Editorials
From 50 Years Ago
H T Parekh Finance Column
Law and Society
Commentary
Review Article
Perspectives
Special Articles
Notes
Current Statistics
Postscript
Letters
Web Exclusives
Appointments/Programmes/Announcements
- See more at: http://www.epw.in/journal/2017/24#sthash.g7gWlFoI.dpuf
A quantum step to a great wall for encryption
Quantum mechanics (QM) is the dark arts of physics. Though physics — in the Newtonian mould — tells us how every object will precisely behave when pushed and hurled, QM deals with the invisible world of subatomic particles, where counter-intuitive rules apply.
QM inhabitants such as electrons and photons live in zombie-like ‘undead’ states. The very act of observing them makes them beguiling tricksters. Though not always understandable, science knows, in bits and pieces, how they can be manipulated for purposes that benefit the visible world such as making integrated circuit chips and fibre-optic lines for global, instantaneous communication.
Transparency may be the shining ideal of modern society but countries and corporations are now infinitely more obsessed with secrecy than in the days of ancient Greece. On Friday, the world took a major leap in employing QM to the cause of secrecy.
How it works
China — as a study in the journal Science reports — has combined satellite technology and the elusiveness of quantum mechanics to demonstrate how secret information can be transmitted over a thousand kilometres — a tenfold increase over what has so far been achieved — with the guarantee that any unauthorised attempt to decipher it would be immediately discernible.
One of quantum mechanics’ cardinal principles, of Heisenberg Uncertainty, follows that no physical object can be known entirely. Measuring, say, its momentum with increasing precision reduces the accuracy with which you can determine its position. For long this was seen as a barrier imposed by nature to us fully comprehending a physical system but for a few decades now, the field of quantum cryptography has evolved around designing ‘keys’ or alpha-numeric codes exploiting quantum mechanical strictures.
Pairs of photons share their quantum properties no matter how long they are separated or how far they have travelled. These can even be created in a laboratory and are called entangled photons. Modern, electronic secrecy works by two parties encrypting the messages they want to exchange and sending each other ‘keys’ (which are chains of numbers) that can be used to decrypt the information. The trouble is that a third eavesdropper can intercept these keys. An “un-crackable” system would be one where both parties know if an intruder is trying to pry out information from the keys.
Enter the entangled photons of QM. Connected just like the ends of a see-saw, in that one going up necessarily means the other is going down, and using such photons to forge a key would mean that any change in their state indicates that someone’s been trying to manipulate them.
While this principle has been understood fairly well since the 1980s, it has been hard to transmit entangled photons through the atmosphere because they are extremely fragile and can disintegrate through contact with other particles in the air. Until last week the world record was a transmission of a few hundred kilometres.
Leading the way
The Chinese set-up transferred entangled photons through a satellite, called Micius, between two ground stations that were 1,200 km apart. According to a report in Science News, the researchers shot a laser beam into a light-altering crystal in the satellite. The crystal emitted pairs of photons entangled so that their polarisation states (or how they are oriented in space) would be opposite when one was measured. The pairs were split, with photons sent to separate receiving stations in Delingha and Lijiang, which are telescopes on mountains, 1,200 km apart. Both stations are in the high mountains of Tibet, reducing the amount of air the fragile photons had to traverse. This team then simultaneously measured more than 1,000 photon pairs. They found the photons had opposite polarisations far more often than would be expected by chance. The technological challenge in this case was ensuring that the transmission between the satellites and ground observatories was so steady that the stream of hyper-sensitive, journeying photons weren’t broken even though the satellite was cruising at nearly 8 km per second. “…The obtained link efficiency is [in] orders of magnitude higher than that of the direct bidirectional transmission of two photons through telecommunication fibres,” says an accompanying press statement.
Only one out of six million photons sent could be recovered, which experts toldScience News, was better than previous ground studies of entanglement but still not good enough for the moon-shot goal of sending secure keys using quantum mechanics principles. Doughty China has publicised plans for international collaborations and transmitting entangled photons in a trans-continental project. Were that to be successful, organisations and people reliant on online financial transactions — that are increasingly dependent on satellite-based Internet — and paranoid about security would take a shine to quantum satellite encryption technology.
The endeavour also underlines the extent to which the West’s domination of science has eroded. The so-called Quantum revolution in physics occurred in Germany after it had imbibed and innovated on the classical physics structure arraigned by Isaac Newton. The action moved on to the United States that built on theoretical insights to usher in the Information Age out of Bell Labs and then the enterprises of Silicon Valley. Today, the number of high-quality science publications out of China is second only to the U.S. Along with advances in the manipulation of stem cells, this latest step shows their command over the great symbols of the modern scientific age: the satellite, quantum and the Internet.
Source: The Hindu, 19-06-2017
What is Ordoliberalism in Economics?
An economic ideology that views the the state as an institution that offers an appropriate legal framework for the efficient functioning of the market economy. It emphasises that the state has a crucial role to play in fostering market competition, by preventing the rise of monopolies that can exert harmful economic and political power. At the same time, the state must also avoid distorting the free market. Ordoliberal principles, famously adopted by former German Chancellor Ludwig Erhard, played a major role in the miraculous rise of the German economy in the post-Second World War era.
Source: The Hindu, 19-06-2017
Contest vs. consensus: on selecting a presidential candidate
ether an enlightened public figure or an active politician, the next President should be one who enjoys the widest possible acceptability. For this to happen, there should be meaningful discussions towards building a consensus among the major political parties ahead of the presidential election. The BJP’s overtures to key leaders in the opposition appear to be merely exploratory. Approaching opposition parties for their cooperation without putting forward a name will be unfruitful. It appears that the Union Ministers who met key opposition leaders requested that the latter should not field a candidate merely for the sake of a contest. Such an approach is more likely to succeed if the Centre draws up a list of possible names and seeks the cooperation of opposition parties in getting one of them elected. It would also help the opposition parties arrive at an agreement among themselves on whether to field a candidate or back the ruling party’s choice. The BJP may want to elect a President who will share its political outlook and philosophy. After all, in the last two elections the Congress succeeded in getting its party leaders elected President. But it is worth recalling that the main opposition of the day did not oppose K.R. Narayanan and A.P.J. Abdul Kalam in 1997 and 2002, respectively. A consensus is still possible if the candidate chosen meets one of the most important qualifications for the presidency — a general acceptability.
Too often, contestations in the political realm make it imperative for the opposition to field a candidate in the interest of demonstrating its unity in the hope that its combined strength will pose some sort of a threat to the ruling dispensation. There is little doubt that the current political mood in the country is not entirely conducive to successful cooperation among diverse political forces to get an eminent citizen elected without a contest to head the republic. There is widespread unrest among farmers and there are credible fears among several sections that there may be an attempt at homogenising the country’s cultural diversity. There will be little surprise if parties opposing the policies of the National Democratic Alliance regime would want to make use of this opportunity to join hands and make a determined attempt to challenge the electoral supremacy enjoyed by the BJP in the recent elections. On the other side, the BJP may believe it has an edge in the electoral college consisting of all members of Parliament and the State Assemblies, as it can count on the backing of some regional parties. In such circumstances, a contest is likely. However, it would be best if someone who inspires confidence that he or she would act in a non-partisan manner is elected with the support of both the ruling party and the major parties in the opposition. It would enable the next incumbent to be the honest broker and wise counsel the Constitution envisions him or her to be.
Source: The Hindu, 19-06-2017
Leaders as Servants
CHIRDEEP S BAGGA
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Leadership is often associated with power. Today , the term has acquired negative connotations, particularly in politics. One has come to question the relative importance of being recognised as a “leader“ when what we sorely need are individuals who both lead by their service and example and follow the universally accepted principles of responsible living.We are beginning to see that traditional autocratic and hierarchical models of leadership are slowly yielding to a newer model. This model -of leaders as servants -will simultaneously enhance the personal growth of the led and improve the quality of our institutions through a combination of individual and community teamwork in decision-making infused with ethical and caring behaviour.
Servant-leadership is a practical philosophy concerned with the ethical use of power and authority . Servant-leaders believe that power and authority are for helping others grow, not for ruling, exploiting or gaining advantage by setting individuals or groups against one another.
Servant-leadership advocates a group-oriented approach to analysis and decision-making as a means of strengthening institutions, and of improving society . It also emphasises the power of persuasion and consensus over the old “top-down“ form of leadership. Some liken this to turning the hierarchical pyramid upside down, so that in the mind of the servant-leader, the needs of his or her employees, customers, constituents and community become the most important reason for a company's existence.
Servant-leadership is a practical philosophy concerned with the ethical use of power and authority . Servant-leaders believe that power and authority are for helping others grow, not for ruling, exploiting or gaining advantage by setting individuals or groups against one another.
Servant-leadership advocates a group-oriented approach to analysis and decision-making as a means of strengthening institutions, and of improving society . It also emphasises the power of persuasion and consensus over the old “top-down“ form of leadership. Some liken this to turning the hierarchical pyramid upside down, so that in the mind of the servant-leader, the needs of his or her employees, customers, constituents and community become the most important reason for a company's existence.
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