Random thoughts and opinions

2022-11-15

This page outlines my idelogy, my personal views on some of the topics, which forms a basis of decision or choices which I make. The page is forever incomplete. I have noticed core ideas (which are outlined here) remains constant but it's manifestations evolves. The ideas are mostly based on observations from rural Tamil Nadu.

Socio-Economic development

I care about socio-economic development for all. To this end, I support charities which work in the field of education. I see it more as an investment than charity because when we invest on a child's education, it uplifts a family which have been suppressed for generations.

Language development

One thing which I don't like about Indian school system is the first language is not often the mother tongue or the native language of the child. Often, when the student finishes high school or college, they end up without being proficient in any of the language which they learn in school. Without good language skills, there exists a first level barrier to frame thoughts and communicate them. One solution is to develop scientific knowledge via translations of text books will help in reducing the barrier. To this end, I allocate some of my spare time in translation documentation of FastAPI to tamil. (We need reviewers, translators for this project. If you are interested, checkout tamil translation of fastapi docs here)

Unknowns

These are somethings I don't understand.

Financial Incentives

Government gives financial incentives to people like self-help groups, farmers, etc. The policy is good, it helps people but it's not sustainable and it makes people lazy when government perpetually gives them financial incentives. Money spent on perpetual financial incentives can be put on education, infrastructure, etc which can help people in the longer run.

Democracy

People claim democracy is great but I have some questions over it. Politicians in a democracy needs to face approvals from population every 5 years or so. This raises two main concerns for me.

• Will not policies of the government be populist to garner votes, resulting in sub-optimal policies?
• Politicians can't make bold decisions which can incure short term loss but long term gains fearing loss of vote bank.

Eating Rice

Rice forms a primary diet in South India. A kilo of rice takes about 4500 liters of waters. Agriculture creates a stress on water table. Will not moving away from eating rice make it better? South India has a couple of traditional grains and millets like Kambu, Keppai which consume less water and more nutritious.