Fat VAT and other Moans and Groans (For Gentlemen Only)

 This piece was written in the weeks following De-monetisation, and has since been updated slightly.

My wife was unexpectedly looking very happy when I reached home last evening, with an expression much like that of a cat that has just licked off the last remains of the cream from its moustache. (I hasten to clarify here out of abundant caution, my wife most certainly DOES NOT POSSESS a moustache).

After 30 years of enforced domesticity (some of my long-time friends’ wives would say servitude), I had learnt the folly of asking her directly the reason for her happiness. Even when, and especially because, she looked demure, lowering her gaze as I approached.  Even so, I knew that such a question would have an answer that would, in some new way, show me up as severely wanting. So usually, I would be the more accurate candidate for feline analogies – seeing that when at home, I miaowed occasionally, soundlessly padded about the home messing up things, and sidled up next to her with arched back, looking for a stroke or two of appreciation. (I would have purred with anticipated satisfaction if I could, but unfortunately, the only purr I am capable of is abominably abdominal, that too sometimes involuntarily audible and, if spelt with a few more r’s at the end, onomatopoeically accurate).  

For the last few weeks now, I have seen her privately smiling when she sees the news on TV. De-monetisation, my wife thinks, is a capital idea, IN CAPITAL LETTERS. Nowadays, our PM, I realise with a slight sinking feeling, is becoming more and more capable of making my wife smile than I seem to be. Whenever I spy her smiling, I inwardly console myself with one known fact, viz., that our PM leads the life of a confirmed bachelor; and another fact (known to her and me) that I am only single-digit-inches shy of his (known to all) chest dimensions, with a similar count and colour of hair, whether facial or on the head. 

Why does she love de-monetisation so much? Many reasons, but the main ones as I have gathered, from hearing, observing and guessing, are: 

1.      We have been paying horrendous percentages of our income as taxes, for decades now, so that we can sleep well. At last, she hopes that it will not only tax the pockets of those who have got away with generating ‘black money’, but also convert them into insomniacs who will be jealous of our ability to sleep like babies. 

2.      My wife has an inbuilt, unceasing, self-refreshing To-Do list in her head. It includes at least a dozen items that appear at the top of the list every month: the tasks of making fund transfers for compensating all kinds of service providers. The To-Do alarms are apparently so loud in her head, that they regularly keep popping up as overdue tasks minutes after the date changes, forcing her awake, until they are paid. If the alarms were any louder, they would have disturbed my sleep too. But that is not necessary – she disturbs my sleep - I don’t need the alarms. To ensure her (and my) peaceful sleep from the night of Nov 30[RH1]  she swung into action very quickly by Nov 10 (not to dispose of 500- and 1000-rupee notes stashed away secretly, as you might infer but for this clarification).  All our service providers were told individually that if they did not give us their bank account details, they would not get any further salaries – whether with new notes or old. The only way we will pay them, we told them, is cashlessly. Today’s mantra is Less Cash. And woe betide anyone who objects to what our universally loved PM’s Mann ki Baat[RH2] . On the morning of Nov 30, when I was in office, I got a dozen loud SMS notifications in 20 minutes, each notifying me that a payment had been made to our “Iron Man”, Car Washer, Milkman, morning cook, evening cook, driver, etc. etc. (and even to the home-visit beautician!). 

Even our PM’s stone-hard visage would crinkle into a smile if he knew that we are now the most digitally banked household in the whole of India (I am sure even Nandan Nilekani’s household must be spending more in cash as a percentage of expenses every month, than we do).

But then we have digressed. I began telling you about her suppressed smile this morning. 

Today, she was not watching the news on TV. She was (I know because stole a glance at her iPad over her shoulder) reading something on Google Play Newsstand[RH3]  News. And she was, I saw with a  shudder, smiling while reading a story that spoke of the Kerala[RH4]  Government’s unique (in India) action of passing a law that is being billed by the media as the Fat Tax. Pizzas, Burgers, Doughnuts, Tacos and other junk food served in branded restaurants will henceforth attract a 14.5% Fat VAT in the State. 

Some persons quoted in the media have said that the tax would not change consumption patterns, but only yield more tax revenues, but it is undeniable that the higher taxes levied for decades on ‘sin’ products like tobacco products and alcohol have reduced the percentage of people smoking. Earlier, we had sections in restaurants for non-smokers. Now we have separate enclosures for smokers and bans on smoking almost anywhere else.  

Now, let’s re-focus on the home front. I suddenly understood why she was smiling and looking at my midriff. She wasn’t demurely gazing downward! She was smiling in anticipation of an unexpected ally (Pinarayi Vijayan, the Kerala Chief Minister) she had got in implementing her next challenge – viz., ensuring that my midriff growth graph made a U-turn and receded faster than my hairline has been wont to.

For the last 10 days, she has been reminding me at least twice every day that she is recording the number of days I actually get out of the home and walk at least 2 miles. This was to hold me to account for my promise (made in a weaker moment) that I would do this regularly at least 5 times every week. My problem, I like to believe, is not uncommon. I love having exercised, though I hate to exercise.  I have begun to resign myself to the realization that this exercise regime will become more inflexible as the weeks and months tick by. I now fear that she will not stop at reminding me twice daily. She must have learnt this trick too, from our PM. For weeks he kept telling people to come clean in the Income Declaration Scheme. And then, he stopped telling them. He acted – in one fell stroke, he de-monetised 86% by value of cash circulating in the country. Like our PM has been justifying the pain brought on by de-monetisation, she will now tell me that there is no gain without pain. I will say plaintively that nobody will even notice my weight loss, so why should I go through this pain? After all, who can sense any difference in the weight of a mountain if a rock rolls off it? But she knows that eventually, I will come round. And go round and round the nearby tank-that-masquerades-as-a-lake. In the hope that my shape becomes less round[RH5] . 

Being a Chartered Accountant for much of my life, I cannot resist ending with some precedents and results of my ‘sin tax research’. My better half and the Kerala CM both have precedents on their side, it seems. In 2008, Japan passed a “metabo” law (Google the term if you don’t believe me) that mandated an annual waist measurement check of people aged between 40 and 75. (Human Resource Managers, take note! Go beyond Bone Density camps! Make PwC[RH6]  stand for People without Cholesterol). Employers and the local government had to ensure participation. If they failed, it was NOT fine. The “metabo” law levied a fine! 

Denmark levied a FAT TAX on butter, milk, cheese, pizza, meat, oil and processed foods loaded with saturated fat in 2011. However, in 2012, it was abolished, because it failed to change peoples’ eating habits, and retailers complained that their customers were taking their business to nearby countries. 

This ‘prohibitory arbitrage’ has been seen in some Indian states as well, with other ‘sin control’ measures like prohibition in place. Gujaratis[RH7] , young and old, predominantly male, are known to drive across the border to enjoy a tipple at bars that have mushroomed in ‘border towns’ like SIlvassa. Now, Keralites, young and old (and not just male) will begin driving into Tamil Nadu or Karnataka to gorge on branded burgers and  tacos. 

There are many more precedents for a soda[RH8]  tax - more than 15 countries either currently levy, or have in the past tried to levy, a soda tax. 

In India, lobbying is frowned upon, but bandhs[RH9]  are acceptable. In most homes, in our current PM-raj[RH10] , don’t be surprised to find ardent supporters popping up, among the fairer sex especially, for soda bandh, fat bandh, and/or tobacco bandh. They will impose it on family members (especially males). Our PM is fresh from successfully mobilising the fairer sex in a pan-India project of toilet-training men by the millions in villages and urban slums with the stated objective of making India Open Defecation Free. The Kerala CM and the ex-Gujarat CM won’t stop at that - they have now embarked upon making us men change our eating and drinking habits, which is a pointed reference to the aforementioned soda tax, fat tax and prohibition.

Earlier I used to bemoan that I had reached the age where everything I like has become either illegal, immoral or fattening. In the near future, I can tell that all our future Tann ki Baat[RH11]  and Tunn ki Baat[RH12]  will have to remain our Mann ki baat. My moan will morph to: Everything I like is either illegal, illegal or illegal. 

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 [RH1]The first month-end after demonetisation was announced in India on 8 Novermber 2008

 [RH2]The title of our PM's popular weekly radio talk, meaning "Matters of the Mind".

 [RH3]Since re-christened as Google News

 [RH4]A state situated in the south-west tip of India

 [RH5]Update 14 years later: I have shed 2 stone 4, and become hooked to my daily constitutional. I go for walks without her needing to needle me.

 [RH6]I used to work with PwC, one of the Big Four, when this piece was first published , and I wrote this article mainly for internal circulation.

 [RH7]Residents of the Indian State of Gujarat along the west coast.

 [RH8]Sparkling water, a proxy for all sugary carbonated drinks

 [RH9]Bandh: A non-violent protest in support of a cause

 [RH10]Reign in the Hindi language

 [RH11]Matters of the Body

 [RH12]Tunn is Hindi slang for drunk

The Quiet Disappearance of the “Family Doctor”

When I grew up, we had one doctor who fulfilled almost all medical care needs of our family. The doctor had his clinic in the next building in the same compound. If I got hurt while playing, I would go confidently and directly to ‘Doctormam’ – Doctor Uncle in my mother-tongue – even if we had no money in our pocket. I never saw him hurried, he went about his work humming some barely audible tune under his breath.

·    For lacerations, he would carefully clean the area, apply tincture of iodine after telling me how brave I was, so I braced for the sting, then apply an ointment (Furacin) topped by cotton and sticking plaster. 

·    If the problem was a cut on the skin, say on the eyebrow, he would make me lie down on his examination bed, clean the wound and take a needle and thread and stitch and dress the wound carefully. Within a week, after one or two dressing changes, there would be a slight scar that would vanish as I grew up.

·    If the problem was a fever, after his examination and using a mercury thermometer, we would have to go to a cubicle net to the doctor’s cabin where a compounder dished out a mixture (we called it carminative mixture) in a translucent green glass bottle, on one side of which he would cut and stick a dosage indicator strip based on the doctor’s instructions.

·    If there was a dislocation or a fracture of an arm or a leg, the doctor would treat it in his clinic, with a Plaster of Paris cast, where appropriate. 

·    If the patient was too weak to visit the clinic, or there was some other reason that forced us to request a visit, he would visit our home within a few hours for a modest visit fee. He came carrying a doctor’s leather brief case packed with all tools of his trade.

Given the wide variety of ailments and conditions that our family doctor routinely treated, his ‘catchment’ area was a mere 20-25 surrounding buildings with around 300-500 households. It was sufficient to ensure that he was busy all the time. It was a rare day when his clinic did not have 3-4 patients waiting outside his cabin in the waiting area while he treated one during consulting hours.

Our doctor’s main work was running the maternity clinic attached to his consulting room, where patients came in for pre- and post-delivery consults, treatment and delivery. He always had 2-3 ‘sisters’ who would hang on to his every word and do his bidding.

Over a few years after our family doctor passed on, without our realising it, the model of medical practice changed. His son had become a “Gynaecologist” – he was no longer our “family doctor”. We then started going to different specialists for various problems. One big difference I barely noticed: We always had to go to these doctors’ clinics/ hospitals; they never visited us.  All Doctors (even GPs) had at some point simply stopped doing house calls, no matter how dire the patient’s need was. This is how it seems to me and came home to me forcefully in 2007: My father was diagnosed with an incurable, aggressive cancer with very poor prognosis – death within a few weeks. The treating surgeon in the hospital suggested we might consider taking him home to die (which I later learnt was not because of his empathy, but because he did not want his record besmirched by having a patient die under his care). We hired a hospital bed and brought him home. But he was in extreme pain and groaned if we touched him. So we first asked the treating doctor, then another doctor whose consulting room was very near where we lived, and finally my father’s GP of over 10 years, to come home and administer him morphine to relieve the pain. We told them to name their price, and that we would pick them up and drop them back.  They all refused saying that they did not do house calls. My father died in unrelieved excruciating pain for a few days while we watched helplessly. The medical profession did not help, and we could do nothing. Then we had difficulty getting a death certificate because he died at home and was technically not under the direct treatment of any doctor for the last few days before he died.

I think the late 70s and early 80s mark the period when the General Physicians with an MBBS degree, started quietly becoming less visible, to be replaced by a dazzling variety of specialists (at least in populous urban areas). In dental care, alone, for example, we now have specialisations that include paediatric dentistry, cosmetic dentistry (with a super-specialisation called “smile management”), 3D-printed prosthetics, maxillofacial surgery, and probably many more. Earlier, we had eye surgeons. Now, we have cataract specialists, retina specialists, squint specialists, paediatric ophthalmic surgeons, and so on. Left-eye doctor and right-eye doctor is no longer a far-fetched joke.

General Physicians (GPs) have not totally disappeared. In every batch passing out from medical school, perhaps 80% opt for further studies to become specialists of one kind or the other, and get an MD, MS or MCh degree. The remainder become General Physicians.

All who opt for specialisations now require 7-10 years to complete their medical studies. This naturally means (as compared to doctors with only an MBBS degree) foregoing income for about 3 years more. Also, the fact that they are so highly specialised means that to get enough patients to make it financially worthwhile, they have to cast their net wide – impossibly wide, which eventually pushes them into the arms of large corporate chain hospitals that have a brand name and recognition that can pull in patients.

If (say) 20% of doctors are MBBS doctors, why do I say that the Family Doctor has disappeared? It is because of how most of their practices have got reshaped completely, to be unrecognisable from the kind of practice of GPs before the late-70s. A few hypothetical examples follow.

·    If there is a patient with a cut requiring say, 3-5 stitches, today’s GP only cleans and dresses the wound, for which he may charge (say) Rs.800-1,000 and then refer the patient to a specialist – with whom there often is an allegedly hidden arrangement to get a cut out of the surgeon’s billing (which is why such a practice is commonly called ‘cut-practice’). The specialist will stitch the wound neatly, charge (say) Rs.5,000 or more, which price includes the stitching, dressing and one or more follow-up visits. The patient gets good treatment, the GP makes money from at least two sources, and the specialist acquires a patient at a fixed cost (not known to the patient). Sometimes, the patient gets reimbursed by his medical insurance provider, which further sweetens the deal: Net cost to patient is near-zero. Everyone is happy, except uninsured persons! Surely a Win-Win situation for all concerned!

·    If there is a patient with a fever or undiagnosed growth, now the first thing the doctor orders is a battery of blood, urine, and other diagnostic tests (sometimes scans and X-Rays too), whether needed or not. This practice has a beautiful euphemism: Defensive Medicine. They often recommend a particular pathological laboratory, and if the patient gets his tests done there, the referring doctor (allegedly) gets a cash referral commission from the lab. Thereafter, the MBBS doctor may refer the patient to a relevant specialist doctor (say an Endocrinologist or an Oncologist). By this referral, the MBBS doctor has successfully passed on his malpractice litigation risk to the specialist, who in turn has passed on the risk to an insurer through a malpractice insurance policy.  If the patient is medically insured, he bears only a small part of the total cost eventually. If the patient’s case is allegedly botched, the senior specialist’s financial risk is kept manageable through his malpractice insurance policy, which was hardly known in the time of ‘family doctors’. Here too, we can see a Win-Win situation for all parties, except uninsured doctors and patients.

·    If the specialist has signed a contract to work with a large chain hospital, he enjoys the brand recognition of the chain. But the doctors in such hospitals are under constant pressure to attract patients, fill beds, prescribe tests and otherwise generate revenue. Indeed, I know of a specialist doctor who closed his own practice and joined a corporate hospital as senior doctor. In a few years, his reputation among his patients and peers went from being a conservative doctor who recommended very few surgeries only where unavoidable to one who prescribes unnecessary tests, surgeries & unnecessarily long hospital stays.

·    Can you see any trace of a trusted “family” connection in this chain of relationships described? That, I’m afraid, has been lost for ever over the last half century. We can only get that if we are fortunate to have a doctor in the family, who also lives nearby. As a direct result of this lack of family connections, patients have become more untrusting and litigious, and doctors have become more defensive about exposure to possibly litigious patients or their family members – not exactly a fertile ground for trust to flourish.

So now, there are no family doctors who do home visits if needed (at least in populous urban areas), but there are uncounted doctors (GPs & specialists), healthcare service providers and health/ malpractice insurers. Each of them makes good money.

·    Do you think the model that medical practice has evolved into is a good thing as compared to the more genteel era of the ‘family doctor’?

·    Do you miss having a family doctor?

·    Do you have different thoughts/ experiences worth sharing?

How many Countries are there on Earth?

Lana Turner, the famous Hollywood actress of yesteryear, when asked her age, answered with a straight face, “I don’t really know because it keeps changing every minute".

Believe it or not, so it almost is with the number of countries on Earth.

• In 1945, when WW-II ended, there were 74 countries.
• By 1970, the number had swelled to 127 countries (that were either members of the UN or were observer-States) or that had de facto sovereign control over their territories).
• Today, there are 232 such territories (World Population Review).
• In the last 51 years alone, we have added 105 new countries – about 2½ new countries every year, or one new country every 177 days.
• This figure does not include territories that are still fighting for independence or claiming to be independent countries but are not sufficiently recognised as such. These include:

o   Kosovo (landlocked; North of Greece and East of Italy)

o   Abkhazia (with access to Black Sea, with Georgia in the East and Russia in the North). 5 countries recognise it as a separate country.

o   South Ossetia (landlocked, with Russia to its North and otherwise surrounded by Georgia). 5 countries recognise it as a separate country.

o   Transnistria (landlocked mountainous strip of land between Moldova and Ukraine stretching from its South-East to North-West and Ukraine from its South East to its North West). No UN Member country recognises it as a separate country, but Abkhazia and South Ossetia (themselves not recognised) do recognise it.

o   Taiwan (Republic of China) Its political status is ambiguous. The PRC (What we know s China) rules only Mainland China and has no control of Taiwan, but claims Taiwan as part of its territory under its "One China Principle".15 countries recognise Taiwan as a country.  

o   Tibet (Landlocked, mountainous, shares its southern border with India, Nepal, Bhutan and Myanmar. Lies to the South-West of China, and is under political control of China)

o   Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus

o   Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (Earlier called Western Sahara)

o   Nagorno-Karabakh (disputed between Armenia and Azerbaijan, with Russia enforcing agreements)

Phew! An easy question to answer, right?

Predictable Surprises

The title of this post is oxymoronic. It is also the title of a book published by the Harvard Business School Press in 2004[1]. Predictable Surprises are dangers which many of us know all along but do little to prevent or stem. In the following paragraphs, we explain some Predictable Surprises that have hit us in the last 25-30 years.

The COVID19 Pandemic – and the Second Wave

The COVID19 pandemic was famously predicted as the greatest threat to humankind by Bill Gates in a TED-X talk in 2015[2]). Several epidemiologists the world over also predicted it, but none of these voices – not even Bill Gates’s – were sufficiently heeded to prevent the Predictable Surprise from causing untold damage.

Bill Gates said in 2015,

“If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, it's most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war. Not missiles, but microbes. …  We're not ready for the next epidemic … you can have a virus where people feel well enough while they're infectious that they get on a plane or they go to a market …  a virus spread through the air, like the Spanish Flu back in 1918 … would spread throughout the world very, very quickly.”

That led to a deadly global Predictable Surprise. Much of the world, including the richer countries, was caught unawares.

We did not sufficiently heed the dire prognostications of an exponentially larger ‘second wave’ – and many countries (among the worst being India) were caught unprepared for a second Predictable Surprise. The Third Wave has so far not had severe effect because we woke up partially – the spike in cases has been mitigated by better medical infrastructure, beefed-up vaccination drives and indications of possible ‘herd immunity’ by serological surveys, indicating that a rising proportion of countries’ populations have developed COVID19 antibodies.  

About two decades before this, in a single year – 2001 – the world saw two predictable surprises unfold.

Failure of Auditor Independence

The Enron-led financial meltdown which came about because of what we knew all along – conflict of interests of auditors leading to unreliable financial statements. After Enron, other large corporates like Worldcom and Global Crossing also bit the dust. This led (over the next year or two) to many countries introducing laws and rules mandating auditor rotation and prohibiting audit firms from taking up non-audit work for the same client or client-group (a good example is the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the US). It is widely understood that these rules only reduce but do not eliminate the conflicts of interest.  

Terrorism and the Aftermath – More Autocratic Democracies, More War

The 9/11 Security Meltdown led to 3,000+deaths and 6,000+ injuries in the US alone. This was a Predictable Surprise because the US Intelligence Community had been hearing of enough chatter about impending terrorist attacks on the US mainland. They even heard that bin Laden might try to attack US targets using airplanes as weapons. Yet, nothing was done to elevate the perceived threat level of what the chatter indicated. This was a failure of prioritisation by the US Political Leadership.

In the years that followed, hitherto democratic Governments hid behind the fig leaf of the War on Terror to arm themselves with and regularly misuse excessive surveillance and spying powers, especially the PATRIOT Act in the US and the UAPA in India. The UAPA, though enacted first in 1967, has been significantly amended 5 times since 2004, each amendment curtailing the privacy and freedom of the country’s citizens. This includes spying on a large scale which Edward Snowden famously blew the whistle on. Since then, has surveillance been curtailed? Attempts have been made to curb this, like the USA Freedom Act in the US. (In India, the individual privacy situation has gotten worse in the last decade). 

War was declared and affected several other countries including Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Israel, Palestine, Syria in the decades following the 9/11 Attacks. India too has suffered several terrorist attacks.

Choosing where to live: An Ongoing Predictable Surprise

California and Japan (Kyoto to Tokyo) are the Top Two Most Risky places to live in, ranked by proneness to natural and man-made disasters –

·    Japan with its Earthquakes – (there are 100s of tremors every month), Tsunamis (they have happened often enough to be one of the Japanese language words accepted into the English lexicon, Nuclear Plant Meltdowns, and

·    California in the US with its risks of Forest Fires and pollution (happens every year, and for upto 8 months every year), Earthquakes (there are 100s of tremors every month in some places) and Volcanoes (the entire Yellowstone National Park is one huge Caldera – it is the mouth of the largest on-land volcanic crater on Planet Earth). SF regularly has huge sinkholes appear suddenly into which cars can get swallowed.

·    Southern Gulf of Mexico bordering states face hurricanes and typhoons every year, even over extremely populous areas. Eastern border states (NY/NJ/Mass/Penn etc) face blizzards and snowstorms routinely almost every winter. Frequency of occurrence of such extreme weather events has increased to an extent that it can no longer be denied plausibly that this is in large part due to Climate Change which has been predicted and denied in equal measure.

Yet, people live here in ever-growing numbers in complete denial of these obvious risks – like frogs in the steadily heating up beaker. These places are among the most densely populated places on Earth, having the world’s costliest real estate. Choosing to live in these states ignoring Nature’s signals is inviting Predictable Surprises into your door.

Tragedies of the Commons

This is a class of Predictable Surprises caused by collapse of ecosystems because the incentives of an individual member of a Group with common interests and shared resources has incentives that are opposed to the Group’s well-being.

Excessive extraction of non-renewable resources, Drawing excessive electricity from the electrical grid leading to grid collapse, Clearing forests for agriculture, Freeloaders in Cooperative Societies who do not co-operate with the majority, Over-extraction of ground water, too much livestock grazing, over-fishing, and Burning of post-harvest sugarcane stumps before replanting leading to pollution in Delhi are all examples of Predictable Surprises in the form of collapse of the relevant ecosystem/ common resource.  

Can you think of any more such Predictable Surprises?

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[1] This piece is based on ideas from this book, authored by Max Bazerman and Michael Watkins.

[2] https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_the_next_outbreak_we_re_not_ready/transcript?language=en

Great online collaboration tool

Google Drive and Google Docs have made online collaboration easier than ever before. Google Docs allows many people to edit a single copy of a single document at the same time, and allows each person to see the other's cursor's as well as his/ her own, at all times when the document is open. 

Now, Mindmeister, which is a Chrome browser plug-in that integrates with Google Drive, carries this a step further. It allows multiple persons to edit or work on a single mind-map. This is mind-blowing. It allows, for example, multiple persons working on a large project, to create a mind-map of the project and keep updating progress on the tasks of the project - the updates become automatically visible to all those entitled to share that project tracking mind-map document. What's more, it supports entering percentage of work completion on every task. Any other digital artifacts related to each task etc., can also be uploaded and shared.  A task can be configured to remind you or other persons with the project is shared, of tasks to be done on a daily basis - making it akin to having a secretary. I might add, that it brings slick graphics to mind-mapping. Compared to Mindmeister, open source tools like Freeplane and Freemind, in terms of graphics, seem very basic.

Best of all - you can try all the features for free, and decide whether or not to subscribe much later. This will allow you to play around and imagine a 100 ways of being able to use Mindmeister before agreeing to become a paid subscriber. There are three subscription plans to choose from, none of them very expensive, compared to the benefit one can get from using it. Once you experience collaborative working on Mindmeister, you will really want it - so be forewarned!

They even have iOS and Android apps to allow you to view the mindmaps while on the go. I have tried the Android app, and it works great for viewing even very large mindmaps, but I haven't yet used it to actually create or edit the mind-maps yet, at the time I write this. 

What victims will Smartphones claim?

When television was introduced, initially, there was no impact. Then, there was a seconday impact on our social habits - we stopped visiting relatives and friends as often, lest we disturb their watching Chhayageet or the Sunday movie. Apart from that, the generation gap between children and their parents grew wider - with TV viewing being the commonest friction point.

When Desktop Publishing arrived, for some time, it was a curiosity - because only 2 fonts were available and the software was terribly slow on PCs. But within 3-4 years, jobs of "Cut-and-Paste Artists" at phototypesetting units disappeared totally. Of course, they were replaced by KPO Companies offering Pre-Print Services.

Similarly, when the Internet and mobile telephony was upon us, we did not initially realise the impact. Then several impacts happened:

• Email went from being an esoteric, nerdy mode of communication, to an absolute essential (What?! You don't have an email account?!) in less than 5 years.
• The Post Office lost one major source of revenue - post, now pejoratively dubbed "snail-mail" - almost for ever. In the same period of time.
• Porn - an deluge of it - was upon us. The parents of teens among us either remained blissfully unaware, but kept wondering why their wards had become so withdrawn or rebellious; or wrung their hands with worry about the warping influence that it could have on our kids. Now, it has become so commonplace that few parents, if any, worry so much anymore.
• When adoption of mobile phones (more or less contemporaneous with the Internet) exploded, the Post Office got another body blow - how many send greeting cards today? We use SMS or MMS or e-Mail. We innovated the "missed call". 

Now, smartphones, phablets and tablets are well and truly upon us. They have already washed away the PDAs - PIM devices that were not mobile phones. Now, I am counting what else has been washed away (at least as far as I am concerned) by the computing revolution that the smartphone represents:

• No more "mobile stereo music devices" like Walkman, Discman, or Radio. Even iPods are on their way out. 
• No more radios or even Car FM Radios for music - we can choose what we want to hear on a 16GB USB stick that can carry a zillion songs. And we can get FM Radio on some of our smartphones. 
• For important news on the go, now, there is Twitter - anything that I really need to know will be on Twitter quicker than I can hear it on radio. 
• No more wristwatches except as a style statement. 
• No more alarm clocks. Anyway, I can no longer imagine leaving home without my Google Nexus 7. 
• If there is a choice, today, I would choose e-Books over physical books. Imagine book that can be read at night with the lights off, without disturbing your spouse! And that does not burden you any more? I am now reading more books than since my college days - due to the sheer convenience. A book often weighs more than a Tablet.  
• Newspapers and Magazines will die out too. Newsweek, and Martha Graham are two big marquees that have gone online only. There are several online-only publications like Huffington Post (which recently bagged a Pulitzer) and Business Insider.  I am still to wean myself off newspapers, it is too ingrained a habit - but that can happen, very, very soon. Already, I don't remember when I last bought a magazine at a newsstand. Not because I don't read them -  but because I get a host of Indian and foreign newspapers and magazines on Flipboard or Google Current; updated automatically every time I open it. Sameeer and Vineet Jain need to really worry - their huge, profitable franchise is likely to decline, but before they do, almost the entire newspaper industry in India may wither away. 
• I now use my Netbook (already written off by many as a dodo, but still surprisingly useful and convenient) only to write - and rarely to read. That includes work-related reading as well. So probably, PCs and laptops will fade from my memory. Already, all working in my office have their own tablets and smartphones. They often share documents using Google Drive, which could be done using a Tablet as well. 
• Much less spending on movies - with smartphones capable of HD video, Teenagers will watch movies in cinema theatres only for the company, or for new movies that they cannot download and watch. For the older generation, it is easier to watch old movies or song clips, or listen to old songs on the Internet; and what can be more convenient than watching it on a tablet in Hi-Def? 
• The jobs of watchmen and security personnel will disappear - but not so fast - what with cheap DVRs and security cameras with output viewable on a Tab wherever you are, proving to be more efficacious - my friend, an industrialist, keeps tabs on his factory using his Tab over wi-fi or using a SIM-based Internet connection, no matter where he is. He actually caught one of his security guards stealing copper wire by playing back CCTV footage; and nabbed the thief before he reached home!  

Can you add to this list of possible victims of smartphones? 

Continued Rise of Evils identified as Culprits of the 2008 Crash

1. In 2008, in the wake of the financial crisis, assets under management in so-called "retail alternative funds" in the US [a.k.a. alternative investments, and defined to include absolute return, commodities, currency trading, dedicated short bias, equity energy, leveraged strategies (both long and inverse), managed futures, market neutral, multi-strategy alternatives, natural resources, options arbitrage, precious metals, real estate and volatility strategies; but to exclude distressed debt] crashed in the US from $368Bn to $275Bn. However, as a percentage of "all long term retail fund AUM" [defined to include mutual funds, closed-end funds, ETFs and UCITs (Undertakings for Collective Investments in Securities) structures, and excludes limited partnerships and separately managed accounts], it never fell - indeed, the figure of $275Bn in 2008 was 5% of LT Retail Fund AUM in 2008 whereas the bigger figure of $368Bn was 4% of the same figure in 2007. 
2. From 2009, the share of alternative investments as a percentage of the all long term retail fund AUM started rising once again, boht, in the US, and globally excluding the USand they have been growing @21% CAGR in absolute terms in the US, and at 11% globally excluding the US;  till 2011.
3. At the same time, several other disturbing parameters have been heading in the "wrong" direction. See the table below, which shows these statistics as they stood  at three different times I have tracked them in my blog. 
4. Reading this table closely shows that the average American is on the right path (reduced personal debt per citizen; higher GDP per citizen) but the US Government has continued its profligacy with a vengeance (rise in National Debt as % of GDP; Total Debt per Citizen; and US Debt held by Foreign Countries). Just look at the US Total Liabilities and US Interest Burden per citizen from April, 2010 to September, 2011 to see what havoc the US fiscal and monetary policies are wreaking.   
5. What is worse, the investment bankers are back with a vengeance: as paras 1. and 2. above indicate, and as the figure of Currency and Credit Derivatives in the Table below confirm, what Warren Buffett famously termed as Weapons of Financial Mass Destruction are growing in value at an uncomfortable pace.  Derivative exposures have risen by as much as $91 Trillion (or 6.37 times the US GDP in just 30 months), when they should have been falling! 
6. It is time that the US Investment bankers are stopped from selling "innovative" risk-masking derivative products - for the sake of the financial health of the entire world.

Table 1

Parameter	8 Apr 10	26 Jul 11	11 Sep 12
US National Debt as % of US GDP	89%	98%	104%
US National Debt per citizen ($):	41,381	46,619	50,959
US GDP per citizen ($):	46,381	47,488	48,805
US Total Debt per citizen ($):	1,80,484	1,76,113	1,81,307
US Personal Debt per citizen ($):	53,787	51,441	50,132
US Interest Burden per citizen ($):	1,493	11,664	12,343
US Total Assets per citizen ($):	2,34,181	2,43,086	2,96,124
US Total Liabilities per citizen ($):	3,50,054	10,26,974	10,54,522
US Gross Domestic Product ($):	14.333 Tr	14.809 Tr	15.342 Tr
US Debt held by Foreign Countries ($):	3.875 Tr	4.584 Tr	5.376 Tr
Currency and Credit Derivatives ($):	648.975 Tr	611.499 Tr	740.277 Tr

Sources of data: 

Para 1 and 2 above: from "The Mainstreaming of Alternative Investments - Fueling the Next Wave of Growth in Asset Management", a Report by the Financial Services Practice of McKinsey & Co, Sep 2012.

Para 3 : extracted on 11 Sep, 2012 from www.usdebtclock.org,

Table 1 above: extracted on dates mentioned in cols 2-4 of table 1 from www.usdebtclock.org,