The Mathematics of Mortgage, Overpayment and Refinancing Decisions

October 7th, 2009 admin

With mortgage interest rates at historically low values refinancing home loans is an option currently being investigated by many here in the US. I, too, considered the same issue recently and discovered that this is not an easy decision to make. I developed a spreadsheet to figure out if this was a good idea. You can download this spreadsheet by clicking on this link (Microsoft Excel 2003). In general, the spreadsheet was also intended to show how loan repayment terms are set, how banks make money on loans, when overpaying monthly payments makes sense etc. Feel free to use the spreadsheet and improve upon it or tailor it to your situation. The rest of this article is a tutorial on how to make decisions about mortgages, how mortgages work in general, whether overpayment of the monthly payment makes sense, and what to consider when refinancing. The focus will be on the mathematical aspects of the decision making.

Taking an Interest in Loan Mathematics

Let us first try to understand, in simple terms, the philosophy of any loan process. In particular, I’ll focus on the home loan process. You intend to purchase a house. Why purchase, and not continue to rent? Well, that is an interesting question in its own right. But, to not get distracted, let us say you got tired of the rent going up each year, or moving every few years, or actually figured that it was economically better to buy rather than rent. So, you decide to buy a house. You need money. You go to the bank (a mortgage lender). Say you want $200K ($200 thousand). The bank gives you the money at a certain interest rate, say, 5%. What does that really mean? Here in the US, the norm is to calculate the remaining balance every month. The 5% is actually 12*0.4166%, where 0.4166%, or 0.004166, is the monthly interest rate. That is, after the first month, the outstanding balance is $200K + $200K*0.004166. In other words, because the bank did you a favor by giving you $200K which you did not have, it wants $200K*0.004166, which is $833.33. As a quick aside, notice that because the interest is calculated monthly, the annual interest rate is, in reality, greater than the 5% we started with. The real annual interest rate would be 1.004166^12=0.0511, or in other words 5.11%. Nevertheless, the common practice is to quote this as 5% base interest rate, and that is fine, as long as we know what it means.

Now, continuing with our example, in the first month, the bank wants you to pay $833.333 as interest accrued over that month. Say you paid exactly $833.33. The outstanding balance at the beginning of the second month would then be exactly 200K again. And at the end of that second month, the interest would be $833.33 again. Say you pay the bank $833.33 again. The outstanding balance at the beginning of the third month will again be $200K. This pattern could go on endlessly. You may argue that this looks like renting. Every month you pay the rent. You don’t see any of that money. But with buying there is a fundamental difference. After 10 years of doing the above, that is, paying $833.33 each month, you decide to sell the house. The house itself, typically, appreciates in value. Say the value of the house is now $300K. You sell and make a $100K profit. You paid 10*12*$833.33 over the 10 years, which, coincidentally, comes out to exactly 100K. What that means is you basically lived in a house for 10 years for free (of course you did pay property taxes, painted the house a couple of times, bought a lawn mower, replaced light bulbs, and took care of the house in general). But overall, it sounds like a pretty sweet deal.

One word we all glossed over in this discussion is “typically”. Home prices “typically” appreciate. The bank does not gloss over that word. If the value of the house drops, say 10 years later, the value of the house drops to 150K. You have paid your “rent” for 10 years, and are ready to sell. The bank wants its 200K back, since you never paid any principal all these years. The sale, however, would only fetch you 150K. The bank has the title (ownership document) to the house. It will not let you sell. It says give us 50K first, then sell for 150K, and gives us that 150K as well. You do not have 50K to give to the bank. The loan is foreclosed - the bank keeps the title to the house, but the bank does not like this situation. The bank now owns the house. But the house is worth only 150K. The bank does not want to be in the business of selling a house, especially one that won’t bring them their original 200K back.

To prevent this scenario, the bank employs two interesting tactics. Firstly, it does not let you pay only the interest of $833.33 each month. It requires you to pay off some of that principal on top of the interest. Secondly, the amount of principal you pay atop the interest is calculated such that the loan is guaranteed to be paid off in a certain “term”. Further, to keep the payment terms simple for the customer, the total payment each month remains unchanged. It is important to recognize that calculation of interest depends only on the interest rate. The calculation of the monthly payment which includes both the interest and some piece of the principal requires the notion of the “term”. The payment has to at least be the interest due that month. It is a bit more than that each month because of the principal paid. (In reality it ends up being even more because you pay a part of the annual property taxes, hazard insurance etc. each month – but we can ignore that for this discussion). Paying a bit of principal each month causes the outstanding balance reduce each month; this causes the interest payment to reduce a bit each month. This allows you to pay off even more principal each month, and that cascading effect finally ends exactly when the term runs out. Throughout this period, as mentioned earlier, the actual monthly payment does not change. The reduction in interest is compensated for by the increase in principal payment, which in turn reduces the outstanding balance and causes the next month’s interest payment to reduce even further. This constant monthly payment (interest + principal) is carefully calculated to achieve this effect. “Term” is the number of months the loan is supposed to be fully paid off by. The shorter the term, the better the rates, in general, because to pay off a loan faster (shorter term), you have to pay greater amounts each month. So there needs to be an incentive for you to pay more money each month to the bank. And that incentive is the lower rate. Otherwise, wouldn’t you rather go with the longer term, pay less to the bank each month and invest that leftover in the stock market?

By forcing you to pay a bit of principal each month, the bank is earning less interest each month. But the good news is that, if after 10 years, you decide to sell the house and the value of the house is only 150K instead of the 200K you bought it for, the bank risks less. You have already paid off about 40K. So the loss for the bank is only 10K instead of 50K, if it had allowed you to only pay the interest each month. So in other words, the bank wants you to pay principal each month not to help you reduce your interest payments, but rather to help it stave off any chance of losing money on the house if prices fall.

Black Magic - Calculating the Monthly Payment

When you talk to a mortgage banker on the phone, you will notice that they like to quickly tell you that your monthly payment would be some x amount. They use the phrase, “run the numbers”, with some pride. It is interesting and empowering to understand how the monthly payment is actually calculated.

We have all the information we need. At the beginning, we have a 200K loan. Let us use L to indicate this “Loan Amount”. Say, the monthly rate, which is 0.004166 in our example, is represented by c. Say, n represents the term, n months. Say, P represents the monthly payment. We want to determine P ourselves, instead of depending on our loan officer to tell us that information.

After the first month, the outstanding balance is:
L + L*c - P
= L(1+c) - P
This is because the loan amount L increases by the monthly interest amount, L*c, but then we make the payment of P. This is the outstanding balance for the second month.
At the end of the second month, the outstanding balance is:
{L(1+c) - P}(1+c) - P
= L(1+c)^2 - P(1+c) - P
= L(1+c)^2 - P{(1+c)+1}
At the end of the third month, the outstanding balance is
= {L(1+c)^2 - {P(1+c)+P}} (1+c) - P
= L(1+c)^3 - P {(1+c)^2 + 1+c) + 1}
If you are still with me, you may start seeing a pattern emerge. After n months, the outstanding balance will be:
= L(1+c)^n - P {(1+c)^(n-1) + (1+c)^(n-2) + … + (1-c)^2 + (1+c) + 1}
Which, can be rewritten as
= L(1+c)^n - P {1 + (1+c)^2 + (1+c)^3 + … (1+c)^(n-1)}
Now. The punch line. After n months, we *know* that the outstanding balance should be 0. So
0 = L(1+c)^n - P {1 + (1+c)^2 + (1+c)^3 + … (1+c)^(n-1)}
P {1 + (1+c)^2 + (1+c)^3 + … (1+c)^(n-1)} = L(1+c)^n
P = L(1+c)^n/{1 + (1+c)^2 + (1+c)^3 + … (1+c)^(n-1)}
There you go. That is P, your payment each month. Phew! Done? Well, almost. The denominator in the above calculation is not Excel-friendly. Remember, you want this to go into a spreadsheet that can help you with decision making. The number of terms depends on n. Not good. Let’s try to find a closed form solution for the denominator. Thankfully, it is not hard. Notice that the denominator is of the form:
1 + a + a^2 + a^3 + … + a^(n-1)
where I replaced 1+c with a. Let us call the above sum X.
X = 1 + a + a^2 + a^3 + … + a^(n-1)
Adding a^n to both sides (as an aside, this kind of intuition is the reason Kavita hates math)
X + a^n = 1 + a + a^2 + a^3 + … + a^(n-1) + a^n
Shamelessly using some more of that darned intuition, we extract out a common factor, a, from the last n terms to get to:
X + a^n = 1 + a {1 + a + a^2 + … + a^(n-1)}
But notice that the stuff inside the {} is precisely what we defined X to be. So:
X + a^n = 1 + a*X
X + a*X = 1 + a^n
X * (1 + a) = 1 + a^n
Therefore,
X = (1-a^n)/(1-a)
Replacing a with (1+c),
X = (1-(1+c)^n)/(1-(1+c))
X = (1-(1+c)^n)/(-c)
X = ((1+c)^n - 1)/c
Finally, substituting this into the equation for P:
P = L.c.(1+c)^n/{(1+c)^n - 1}
Now we are seriously done with this calculation.

Let us try to use L=200K, c=0.004166 and n=360 (a 30-year term, which is quite common in the US), and calculate P, your monthly payment. P comes out to $1073.64. The interest component is $833.33, and the principal is $1073.64 - $833.33 = $240.31. Because you pay off a tiny bit of the 200K principal, the outstanding balance at the beginning of the second month is $200000 - $240.31 = $199759.69. The interest for the second month is therefore going to be lesser than $833.33. In fact, it is $832.33. This $1 we pay less in interest goes towards the principal, which increases from $240.31 in the first month to $241.31 in the second. Looking a few months into this process the interest payments are $833.33, $832.33, $831.33, $830.32, $829.30, etc., and principal payments are $240.31, $241.31, $242.32 etc.

Click on the thumbnails above to see the monthly and cumulative payment schedules. The first figure shows how much interest, principal and total payment needs to be made each month. The second figure translates that to a cumulative amount, that is, at any given point in time it tells us how much interest, principal and total payment you would have made. It is interesting to note from the first figure that in the first few years the bank makes most of the money it expects to make on the house (the interest tails off during the later years). The second figure shows that by the end of the loan term, you’d pay about 200K in interest!

Does Overpayment Make Sense?

At this point it is important to understand that by paying off the $240.31, $241.31, $242.32 etc. principal each month the benefit you are getting is in terms of reducing the interest you pay each month. By actually being vested in the house, that is, by owning that piece of the house, you do not get any direct benefit; when the house sells, its value will not depend on how much of the house you actually own. Think of it like this - the principal payments you make are investments where the rate of return is determined by the reduction in the interest payments.  Let us take an example. Say, somehow, you convince the bank to allow you to pay only the interest, $833.33, each month. You take the difference between your bank-determined payment of $1073.64 and your negotiated payment of $833.33 and invest it ($1073.64 - $833.33 = 240.31) in the stock market at 10% annual rate of return. Either way, after 10 years, we’d have invested $240.31*12*10 = $28,837.2. Since the investment is accruing a rate of return each month, we need to carefully calculate how much profit we make (I use an Excel spreadsheet to do this, however, we could use a closed form expression similar to the one we developed above). At a 10% rate of return, we make about $21,000. If we put this same $241.31 into the principal payment each month, after 10 years, our profit (the interest savings compared to the case where we do not pay any principal payment each month) is $8,478. Of course, the actual profit by investing is reduced by the tax you need to pay on that profit. Regardless, it is still a sweet deal to invest the money in the stock market, provided you can guarantee the 10% return on investment. Even if we assume a safe 6% rate of return (after taxes and everything), we stand to make $10,900 in the stock market vs. the $8,478 we “make” by putting it into the house. In any case, this is a moot point, since the bank will not allow you to make interest payments only. What this discussion is intended to drive home is that it may not make sense to overpay above the monthly payment of $1073.64, unless you intend to stay at the house for a shorter term. If you stay for a shorter term in the house, then the stock market rate of return may be too risky, whereas the paying into the house guarantees a certain rate of return.

The figures above show monthly and cumulative payments for a 15 year loan term - that is a loan for which the monthly payment has been calculated such that is supposed to be paid off in full in 15 years. Typically, 15 year loans have a slightly better rate than a 30 year loan, to give you the incentive to give up more of your cash each month in payment. However, since I am continuing to use a 5% interest rate to plot these curves, these really indicate how your overall payment time line changes if you overpay each month. The overpayment amount is basically the difference between the monthly payment shown in this figure and the minimum monthly payment shown in the previous section. As you can see here, even in the first month you pay as much towards principal as interest, and secondly, by the end of the loan term, you pay only about $80K in interest. The advantage of this scheme is that you are required to only pay in accordance with the 30-year term, but you may choose to overpay if you wish to reduce your interest payments. That way, if you occasionally miss your overpayment target, that is fine as long as you pay the minimum payment for that month. That said, like we discussed above, it may still make sense to not overpay if you can invest that money instead.

Does Refinancing Make Sense?

Now that we have understood some of the nuances of the loan process, let us consider how to make a refinancing decision. Refinancing is the process of getting a new loan in order to pay off an existing loan. If this were a free process, that is, there were no cost of refinancing, the decision would have been very simple. If the new interest rate is better than the old interest rate refinancing would make sense. However, there is, typically, a cost involved. The question then changes to how long do you need to stay in the same house after refinancing to recoup the cost of refinancing. Let us take an example. Say you currently have a 5% loan with $200K outstanding, and a different lender offers a 4% loan, with a $2000 closing cost. The current monthly payment is $1073.64. The new monthly payment is $954.83. Since the interest rate is lower, you’ll likely be paying less interest each month with the new loan. So over time the cumulative interest you pay the bank may be lesser with the new loan. For this example, after 1 year the total interest paid with the current loan is about $9900, whereas with the new loan it is $7900. This is about $2000 in savings in 1 year just from the interest rate reduction. Since the interest you pay is like the fees the bank charges for its services, you have found a low-fee option. So in 1 year you have overcome the $2000 cost of refinancing. From year 2 onward you stand to gain by doing this refinance. (Note: I am ignoring that interest is tax-free money, that is, you get the taxes you paid on the interest in your next year’s tax returns. The savings from interest reduction are therefore about 20 to 25% lesser than the savings I am quoting here and in the spreadsheet. It is easy to fix that though, if you choose to. Instead of saving $2000, you’d have actually only saved $1500 if you fall in the 25% tax rate bracket.)

Now, let us see what happens to the rest of the money you are paying each month, the principal. With the current loan the cumulative principal payment after 1 year is
$2950. With the new loan the cumulative principal paid in 1 year is $3522. That is, you own more of the house. But this is not important by itself. Yes, you own more of the house, but the net is you converted some cash into a bit of house. If you had not owned any of the house you’d have been left with cash which you could have invested and actually grown it. The house grows or falls equally in value regardless of whether you are invested in it or not.

But there is one more component to this equation other than the interest and principal. The overall monthly payment has reduced from $1073.64 to $954.83. That is a freeing up of $118.81 each month to be invested as you choose. Even if this was invested conservatively in a 6% rate of return investment, you end up with $1472 at the end of the first year. This is money that would not have been available at all with the current loan. So in fact, at the end of year 1, you have save $2000 + $1472, the former coming from the interest savings and the latter from investing the cash freed up. This means, the $2000 cost of refinancing will actually be made up even sooner than 1 year. Given the above 6% assumption it is more like 7 months. If you plan to live in this house for 7 months or more, go for the refinancing

The figure above shows the time to recoup the cost of refinancing, considering only the interest savings and also considering the case where the overall reduction in monthly payment can be invested at 6%.

Acknowledgements

My understanding of the issues involved in refinancing, in particular, and mortgages, in general, is based upon my going through this decision-making process recently. Much of this understanding was developed during discussions with my friends Gordie and Srini. If you find flaws in my understanding please let me know. Some online resources that helped me were http://www.mtgprofessor.com/formulas.htm , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refinancing and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortgage.

Posted in Experiences, Information, Tutorials | 2 Comments »

iPhone 3G Yes!

July 19th, 2009 admin

Though not an i-Phone addict yet, I am now an iPhone user. From the time I have been introduced to the iPhone, by friends, I have constantly admired the versatility and the sheer quality of the product. And after a few bad experiences with our previous phone service with Sprint we decided to switch to AT&T. It has been a relatively seamless switch. But the highlight has been the iPhone.

Even before I opened the iPhone box I was impressed with the immaculate packaging. The phone was surprisingly easy to learn using, and any non-obvious features were easy to search for on the web. The ability to download the applications of our choice and even develop your own applications is a tribute to and celebration of innovation and creativity embodied by the iPhone. I could rave about this Swiss-army knife of mobile gadgets or I could argue that no one really uses a Swiss-army knife in normal life. Indeed, I have not yet figured out how best to effectively use this phone. Some of the features that translate into time and money savings are the GPS when you are lost on the road, the ability to look up the Internet to get answers to simple questions when you are in doubt, the ability to entertain yourself when you have time to kill (books, podcasts, puzzles, YouTube, newspapers, iPod music), the ability to shoot video and ship them to your friends (thus avoiding hours of procrastination) and the ability to synchronize the contact list and calendar entries with Google. In short, this tool allows you to use small pockets of time more efficiently, either the educate or entertain yourself, or to rewind. This is important, to me at least, because then the time with family does not need to be compromised for trying to rewind in my own way. Simple example: if I feel like listening to Louis Armstrong I can listen to him and other jazz artists on Pandora while driving back from work. Then once I am home, I can spend time with Kavita, as she wants me to.

So, finally, thank you, Anu, Shankar and Sandeep, for live demos and persuasive nudges, and thanks Kavita for the final push. I’m on board and I am enjoying the ride.

(I posted this entire entry from the iPhone. I am getting very good at typing on this, something I was not so sure about only two days ago.)

Posted in Events, Experiences, Reviews | No Comments »

A Fleeting Experience

December 26th, 2008 admin

We are driving towards Orlando in our overloaded Pontiac Vibe. Anant is in the driver’s seat; Kavita is sitting behind him, with a mountain of boxes and bags filled with camping stuff, food, clothes, maps, cameras and stuff for our week-long road trip almost leaning onto her to her right and from behind her. We are listening to Ira Glass’s “This American Life” CD. Up until a few minutes ago, I was reading the New Yorker magazine that Anant had brought with him from California. But as the light outside faded, I could not read any more and my mind wandered.

I was looking out of my passenger-side window when I noticed a tall tower with two red lights, horizontally arranged atop the tower, a thin cloud of mist in front of it and a dark night behind. To be more accurate, I only saw the lights, and I imagined the tower’s existence. As those lights were flying past me, I craned my neck for a few seconds trying to keep my sights on those two red lights. In those seconds I realized something. The fleeting vision of those lights behind a cloud of dark, foggy mist and my fruitless attempt at trying to hold on to that view made me realize how I (we all, perhaps) crave focus. We want to be able to hold on to experiences. One after the other after the other. I realized, also, how fleeting the nature of all experiences is. What you experience, what you take in, is different from what you set out to experience, what you probably wanted to take in. The moment that you want to experience, is past by the time you actually are able to take it in. In this constant rush of fleeting images, fleeting thoughts, fleeting sensory experiences, we keep chasing that impossible goal. We crave an experience we can truly and completely call our own - an experience we can hold by the scruff of its neck and do with what we choose to. But alas, it unfailingly slips out of our grasp, always leaving us with a few tattered thoughts and shadowy images - and even these leftovers belong to a different moment altogether, not the one we were trying to go after. And what you take in is really what you want to take in. Can you ever truly experience a moment, when time keeps the scenery ever-changing? What you can hold on to is that which is not changing with time - that which is independent of time. And maybe the only such thing, which is within you control, is that which is within you. That which you can truly experience, necessarily, has to be an idea that is of your own creation - an idea that which you can readily recreate, that which is truly obedient. Does that mean that, that which is outside, that which is real, is really not? And that which is hypothetical, imaginary, and, obedient, is the reality we can experience?

These rhetorical questions apart, one other thing these fleeting lights maybe helped me see is one reason why I like photography. For once, I can hold time nearly still. A shutter speed of 1/1000th of a second is pretty close to being momentary for me - short enough to not allow multiple thoughts to cross my mind. And when I look at that picture later, I can study every detail at my leisure, without the nagging fear of something discreetly changing in the bottom left corner of my view while I was busy breathing in the top right.

Posted in Experiences, Philosophy | No Comments »

Bharat Ek Khoj - Shyam Benegal’s discovery of Nehru’s Discovery of India

September 14th, 2008 admin

My good friend, Rajeev, discovered this treasure trove online - Bharat Ek Khoj, a TV series based on Jawahar Lal Nehru’s book, The Discovery of India. Nehru, the first Prime Minister of free India after the British Rule, wrote most of this book while imprisoned. The effort evokes in me pride, respect and awe. Attempting to capture the essence of the spirit and history of India in a 500-odd paged book, is in itself a courageous attempt. Doing so, while in prison, also shows inspiring determination, discipline, value for time and sense of duty. I cannot comment on the literary and factual quality of the book; I have not read it yet. However, this TV series, which started in 1988, is something I can comment on. Directed by one of the great Indian film directors, Shyam Benegal, and with a cast that clearly is stellar when you look back at those names (Om Puri, Roshan Seth, Ashok Kumar, Anjan Srivastav, Sadashiv Amrapurkar, Neena Gupta, Salim Ghouse, Tom Alter etc.) with a couple of decades of work since then for proof, Bharat Ek Khoj is a gem in history of Indian television. Even though I was quite young when this series was on TV, and even though it was quite serious in tone and not a children’s show, I distinctly remember loving it. It’s catchy, yet philosophical, credits set the tone for the self-discovery that the series embodied. The seriousness of the attempt to discover that spirit of Indianness in each episode, the honest, accurate and non-fantastical version of epics and other historic records, and the wonderfully rich use of Hindi and Urdu languages were all aspects of the show that drew me to it. When I watch it today, I can watch it with the same dedication and curiosity to learn about India. I realized that though nostalgia is a part of discovering any such childhood treasure, that is just a fleeting feeling. I have seen several other old TV hits online, such as Ye jo hai zindagi, Hum Log and Mr. Yogi; however, with those the interest typically dies out after a few episodes because the nostalgia wears out and the paucity of quality hits you, and you wonder, “Well, may be it was good in its day, but it is not really that special”. Bharat Ek Khoj, on the other hand, still seems fresh. With each episode, my interest in wanting another one increases rather than diminishes. After 20 years since the show first appeared, I can still learn from it, and formulate a more complete picture of India. I found that series is available in DVD format for purchase here. It is quite expensive, with 2 episodes costing $30. This would run the total series to over $600. So the decision for now, for me, is that I will read the book.

Posted in Experiences, Friends, Reviews | 4 Comments »

On the role of the media in sports in India

September 13th, 2008 admin

Some things are only visible from the corner of the eye; they vanish when you try to look at them directly. Similarly, I believe, the best approach to religion  is not a headlong dive to grab its elusive essence, but rather, an indirect infusion of those ideas and ideals via a more concrete medium. One such concrete medium, which India seems to have never given much chance to, is sports. My friend, Akshay, sent me an article by Professor V. Raghunathan (author of the book “Games Indians Play: Why we are the way we are”) on why India’s performances in sports in general and Olympics in particular falls way short of what one would expect from a nation of over a billion people. The article is called “Games Indians Don’t Win“.

I agree with most of Dr. Raghunathan’s observations though I find that some of the arguments could be further strengthened by factual details. I also felt that the article does not point out one factor which can elevate the status of sports in India - media. I see many children and young people nowadays finding no outlet for their natural instincts to exercise their bodies and minds via sports. Instead much of their energies are being channeled towards unimaginative, creativity-sapping shows on the TV and the inescapable din created by the industry that religion is becoming. Lot of it is because in population heavy urban areas, there are not enough facilities and open spaces for the young to play. In rural areas where there are open areas and, arguably, time at hand for kids to explore sport, facilities and, more importantly, awareness are severely lacking. There is no incentive to try to be great at a sport.

The young minds of the country, with no reason or facilities to go out an play, are increasingly being moulded by what the see on the TV. Some get influenced by the western media and the western culture they see on the TV and blindly jump on to that bandwagon. The remaining shun the western influence so much that they lean to the other extreme, and get swept by fundamentalist religious rhetoric. In either case, the TV influences their ability to think for themselves. Instead of making the youth broad-minded in their approach to cultures, science and entertainment, it makes them confused, at first, and, dogmatic and narrow-minded, eventually.  Religion in India is losing its real meaning; it has become a service industry. It is encroaching the airwaves via loud speakers and TV and radio shows. It is encroaching every free piece of land, which should have been left as play areas for children, by temple construction projects. It is sucking up every rupee anyone can and cannot spare to feed its furnace of the self-fulfilling prophecies. It is taking over people’s ability to think. Its misinterpretation and misrepresentation over the years is reaching a point where sense and rationality no longer prevails, and democracy itself, that fairest social system, might no longer be able to see right from wrong. The opium of the masses, as Karl Marx called it, is finally taking over the sanity of a democracy. If a majority in a democracy are disillusioned, I wonder what keeps a democracy from self-destruction? The economic prosperity that India now enjoys is a great opportunity to keep religious and other extreme influences in check by clearly communicating to the masses the true reasons for this economic upturn; this upturn is in spite of the religious fervor gripping the country, not because of it.

Coming back to the topic on hand, I think the media is best equipped to extricate the population from such extremes and let some sense prevail. Sports is a great leveler and is one of the best ways to bring a nation together. The media has a huge role it can play to help kids play in their free time, rather than watch soap operas and immerse themselves in religious discourses. Here is a snippet from an email I wrote on this topic to some of my family members.

“Media, especially television, has a tremendous control over the nation’s psyche. Media can make or break national opinions. The current fascination with game shows, song-and-dance competitions or soap operas is by and large a media created state of mass-hypnosis. The same power of the media can get people to start appreciating the importance of physical exercise and sport. More importantly, it can be an enabler for pulling in interest and, therefore, money into regional and national sporting events. An example is the recent city-based cricket leagues. An entire industry, a multi-billion dollar enterprise, can be built around sports in India. It is an largely untapped market. Doordarshan’s depressing, half-hearted, monopolistic attempts at covering sporting events in India makes people even more reluctant to try sports professionally. Sports is real-life drama and entertainment. It needs professionally trained media-men to bring out that drama on screen. Once that excitement, that tension, and the drama can be conveyed, the audience will pay attention. This might require bringing out the personal backgrounds of the players, their histories, their stories of hardships and determination to the people. Once people are latched, competition increases both in the sport and the coverage of the sport. The advertising revenue starts to flow in. With money flowing in, there is a feed back effect. More people want to take part in sports, more people want to watch sports, more people want to cover sports and make money. For example, why do we prefer Harsha Bhogle to Sanjay Manjrekar in the cricket commentator’s box, and why do we prefer Star Sports to Doordarshan for sports coverage? Quality. People can perceive quality differences. Similarly, why is Praveen Kumar, the cricketer, evoke national interest? Because of his background as a wrestler from a small town. These small-town heroes are the media pets. They help catch the public’s fancy. “If it can be him…it can be me!”, they aspire.

In India, shooting, archery, wrestling, boxing are relatively easy to make popular. The sports persons have to be cast into media demi-gods… only then will people know their names and their existence, let alone pay much attention. When the drama of sports is discovered and conveyed by the media to the audiences, even shooting can be made into a heart-racing, edge-of-the-seat thriller.”

One thing that I should clarify is “Why should children play sports - a rather mundane, pointless exercise?”, “Why is winning medals at the Olympics that important?”, “Why not let the entire nation, instead, spend all their energy and time learning their place in God’s scheme of things?”. The answer, I think, is because they will discover their God, their place in the scheme of things, their goals, better, by participating in sports and playing their heart out, than by cracking coconuts, lighting agarbattis, exchanging bananas or watching TV.

Posted in Experiences, Friends, Information | 2 Comments »

On Choice

September 11th, 2008 admin

My friend, Sandeep, sent me a link to a very interesting talk given by Dr. Barry Shwartz, a sociologist, who observes and persuasively argues that excessive choice is bad.

I agree with this observation. More generally, this observation applies to any kind of decision making. We make many decisions in life - in everyday life and in the grander scale of life. In everyday life, we decide on things like which vacuum cleaner to buy, or, which hair conditioner to buy, both of which were decisions I had to make last week. In the grander scale of life we need to make decisions such as who to marry, or, which profession to work towards.

To make a decision we weigh pros and cons across several dimensions and finally settle on a decision. If we do a good job at making the decision, we have considered all the dimensions and all the pros and cons along those dimensions. We are happy that we have come to a global optimum across the search space of the solution, and we can pat ourselves on the back for it. As the number of dimensions grow, however, the search space explodes in size. The resources and time to do this optimization become overwhelming. We are forced to work with a smaller search space that we can handle within the time we give ourselves to make the decision. Say we have an hour to kill and feel like watching come TV. We sit in front of the box, pick up the remote and flip through channels. We want to decide which channel to watch. We do not want to spend that hour trying to optimize that choice. To make a decision in some reasonable time, we need to make more decisions first. We need to decide which dimensions of choice we want to ignore. This is choice-pruning. For example, we might not care for a show if it is not in Hi-Def. Then the choice-space shrinks by an order of magnitude. However, once we do shrink the choice-space, we have to settle for something that may be a sub-optimal solution compared to the global optimum. And that can take away from the satisfaction you draw from your, potentially sub-optimal, choice.

For some of these decisions there is no way to know the optimality of the solution. For example, once you marry a person, you better make appropriate adjustments and make happiness out of it. There is no point comparing the decision to anything - what if I had married someone else, what if I had taken up that other job offer 10 years ago? In some ways not knowing the optimal solution is a boon. You can rest assured that there is no such thing as an optimal solution in that case. The decision you make is the only decision that matters. No one can prove to you that a different choice would have definitely been better. It is calming to know that your decision is beyond judgment. Still, too much choice can be paralyzing in this case also. The only saving grace is that almost any decision is really a pretty good decision.

For some other decisions however, there is a direct measurable impact. These are the decision that can haunt. The stock you choose to invest your money in may tank, while that other option you were considering just as fervently, does really well. The vacuum cleaner you chose sucks, while the one that your friend bought for just a little bit more money, sucks better. And it is for these decisions that too much choice can not only be paralyzing, but also be humiliating. You blame yourself for the sub-optimality of your choice; after all, you have proof to justify that blame.

I routinely find myself presented with this overdosage of choice. And being mathematically and engineeringly inclined, I tend to at least give choice-pruning and optimization a fair shot. As I wrote to Sandeep in my response email:

“Being an engineer I tend to compare the available choices across many dimensions, and the search space grows multiplicatively. I was looking for a hair conditioner yesterday, the dimensions were - ingredients (should not have any obvious bad stuff), the company (should be something I have heard of), the quantity (should not be measured in gallons), the price (should be reasonable), delivery mechanism (spray vs cream), application time (dry hair or wet hair - further subdivided into needs rinsing after application or not) etc. Comparing all this across the 30 brands in the store left me tired.”

In fact, excessive choice wastes time and energy, and therefore, wastes money. Just by spending 20 minutes to decide on a hair conditioner, I am sure I bumped up the price of the produce by a few dollars. Time is money, and this was time I could have better spent elsewhere.

And the solution to this problem of excessive choice is not communism, or even reducing choice, necessarily. Availability of choice is not the root problem. The problem is the excessive demand excessive choice places on the decision-maker. The decision-making has to continue to be streamlined. The choice has to be presented to the chooser in a structured, standardized, unbiased way. This is really a service, which I like to call “choice pruning”. It can be an industry in its own right. An example of this is epinions.com, where people’s past experiences with their decision-making about buying a product are collected, analyzed and presented to the customer to help speed up his or her decision making process. The opinions are not strictly standardized, and I can spend days reading through the reviews there, as I recently did when trying to decide on a vacuum cleaner; but still, it does help. At least you know that with hundreds of respondents, there is a chance that any biased views and any person-to-person variation in the interpretation of the measurement scale are evened out.

By spending time on what we are choosing, we affect what we are choosing. If I spend 5 years to decide which stock to invest money in, I have already lost more money than a sub-optimal decision could have cost me. In other words, as the time to make a choice increases, by the time you finally choose, the choices available to you might end up being different than the choices you optimized for! Thus anything to speed up the selection, anything to assist with the optimization, anything to reduce future repenting, is a much-needed solution. For me, rigorous, instinctive, choice-pruning, indifference to the actual choice made, and a poor memory, help make this process faster, reasonably optimal, and guilt free.

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Protect your platinum - catalytic converter theft

June 25th, 2008 admin

Someone neatly sawed off and removed the catalytic converter from under Kavita’s Pontiac Vibe yesterday while it was parked in the Friday Center park-n-ride lot in the UNC, Chapel Hill, campus. When Kavita started up the car, it started up with a loud, complaining roar rather than the usual hum. Clueless about why the car was so loud, she stopped the car and started to look under the hood to see if she could spot any obvious problem, when someone shouted from across the lot, “Looks like your catalytic converter was stolen as well.” He was another of the many victims of such theft yesterday. He called campus police, which was good because Kavita was not sure what she should do next. She tried reaching me, but I was in the gym, away from my cell phone. So she called Anant in California, got my gym’s number and had the lady at the front desk in the gym call for me over the PA system. I came home from the gym, got Kavita added as an associate on my AAA account and ordered a tow-truck to get the car to our mechanic at Wasp Automotive. Meanwhile, the campus police officer, a lady, stayed with Kavita until I reached there. This was nice of her. With typical wait times of 60 minutes for the region, we were expecting a long wait at the lot for the tow truck. However, he showed up a few minutes after I reached the Friday center in my car. He noticed that Kavita’s license plate had expired and the tow-truck guy could not, therefore, tow the car as part of AAA’s services. He was a nice guy though. He had a huge lump of tobacco pushed against the inside of his left cheek wall, and in between spitting, he informed us that in the very same lot, last Wednesday, there were nearly 40 cases of the exact same incident. He had himself towed many a cat-less car that day. He said, “If you want me to tow this to Wasp, I can do it, but you can save yourself a hundreded and twenty five dollars by just driving it yourself. It will be loud, but fine.” He wanted us to file a complaint with the campus police since they had not provided any protection to the lot in spite of the sudden spate of these thefts since last week. We thanked him showing up at such short notice, and for not charging us a penny for his time and effort. His trip must have cost him at least a few bucks of gas. He did inform us that the state will slap a $250 fine on us because of the expired license plate. I drove the car with the emergency blinkers on to Wasp and left it there with a note that the insurance people want to take a look at it before we start off any repairs. So with the $250 fine, the insurance deductible (assuming they pay for it), this misadventure will cost us upwards of a thousand dollars. With our trip to India planned for this Sunday, I am not even sure if the repairs/insurance claims etc will be done before we leave.

In any case, the point of this whole entry is that catalytic converters are a relatively easy part of your car to steal. They contain precious metals like platinum, palladium etc. and when mined for the metals can fetch $50 to $100. Replacing them, of course, costs more than a thousand dollars usually. There is nothing you can do to avoid such theft except avoiding parking in desolate lots. When parking in public areas make sure you park at a location that is visible to pedestrian or vehicular traffic. Such visibility maybe a deterrent. Park close to mall entrances if malls do not have police cars driving around the lot or surveillance cameras. Comprehensive insurance is a good idea, as long as the deductible is low enough that you don’t end up paying the whole amount. Park inside a garage where possible. If you have any other ideas about how to reduce the chances of such theft, let me know.

Posted in Experiences | 2 Comments »

Spelling Bee - Can you spell a L-E-T-D-O-W-N

January 7th, 2008 admin

Kavita and I saw the Broadway musical, “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee”, at the Memorial Auditorium in Raleigh’s downtown yesterday. We bought the cheapest tickets ($21), but given that the auditorium was almost half empty, it was not hard to move down closer to the stage. I was not having as much fun as I normally do at musicals and theatre. I wondered if getting closer might help us catch some subtle expressions which I was missing, and, therefore, not enjoying the play as much. We did move closer to the stage, about 20 minutes into the show, of course, trying to choose an appropriate time so as to least disturb the thin audience and the performers.

However, the show never really managed to significantly challenge my expectations from a play. There were moments where it was inspiring, but most of it was a drag. The storyline, whatever little there was of it, was linear, going through each character’s circumstances and personalities one by one. There was hardly any complex, thought-provoking, interaction between the characters. The ballad, called the “The I Love You Song”, where one of the contestants remembers her mother who is in far-away India, seeking enlightenment, is powerful. Another sequence that I liked was one where a contestant, who, before spelling a word, always writes it on the floor using his “magical” right foot, does it in super slow motion. The sequence starts off at normal speed, ramps up in speed to a frenzy, and then slows down to a low frequency stupor, before rebounding to normal. The songs were not awe-inspiring, in general, and some dialogues bordered on being vulgar.

The stage and props remained quite static throughout, with not much in terms of visual impact. The literary impact, which must have been the main motivation behind making this a play, instead of letting it stay in the book that it originates from, was not terribly impressive either. I am sure I did not get all the subtle jokes, but before I denigrate myself too much, let me add that I did not want to go the show having done any homework. I went there to be entertained; if I did not catch all the subtle jokes, maybe they were too subtle. There was one piece of clever wordplay, where “what” is spelled by taking the w from a word where w is silent, h is taken from a word in which h is silent and so on. Such a “what” is never heard, claimed the contestant. Clever, but such cleverness would do just as well staying in a book. The theatre is supposed to be a feast for the eye and the ear, thought-provoking and awe-inspiring. This play does not manage to consistently meet such criteria, although it grazes those thresholds once in a while. There were some members from the audience who participate in the early stages of the spelling bee, providing some opportunity for seemingly impromptu, but potentially well-rehearsed, jokes, before their pre-planned elimination. Some of the commentary and references were from surprisingly recent political events. Participation by some members of the audience and this sensitivity to current news indicates that the script for the play lends itself to some modification and improvization.

Reviews I have read online were surprisingly positive, even rave, about the show. This is a small-budget production; maybe my expecting it to be comparable to the few other plays I have seen - “Phantom of the Opera”, “42nd Street” and “Annie Get Your Gun” - was wrong. However, even then, given that the tickets were priced just as any regular show would be ($21 to $70), I just did not guess that it would be a low-budget production. I am glad we did not buy more expensive tickets. I feel that plays are over-priced in the US. Except for one of the contestants walking into the audience throwing candy, most of the action was on the stage, which stayed pretty much unchanged as well. I do not see why I needed to go there in person to watch this show, when I could have probably seen it clearer, and, for less, on a DVD, feeling just as involved.

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Entering the US using an Advance Parole

January 3rd, 2008 admin

I have been using my H-1B Work Visa to enter the US the last few times I traveled abroad. A few days back I entered the US using an Advance Parole document, instead. I provide a few tips here for someone in the same situation. An hour or so before the inbound flight is expected to land in the US Port of Entry the airline staff will pass around a Customs Declaration form, a Visa Information form (white in color) and a Visa Waiver form (green in color). Everyone has to fill out the Customs Declaration form. Its purpose is to declare to the Customs official at the port of entry, how much money and what other goods you are bringing in to the US. It is straightforward to fill out and requires you to make some quick estimates about the value of the stuff you are bringing in. For the purposes of this form and the others, if you are traveling on an Advance Parole, you are a “resident”. That is, you are not a visitor and you are not a citizen. You do not have your Green Card yet, so you are not a permanent resident yet, but you still are considered a resident. The green, Visa Waiver form applies to some specific countries and the airline staff can help you identify if you need to fill that form. India is not one of those countries. Indians, traveling on either a visitor or work Visa, or an Advance Parole, will need to fill out the white, Visa form. A part of this form eventually becomes the I-94 card that is stapled to your passport by the immigration official at the port of entry. A question in the white Visa form ask for the place and date of Visa approval. I simply put in the place and date of the Advance Parole approval, since I was using that document instead of a Visa to reenter the country. After landing at the port, Newark, in my case, I went through the Immigration Check first. There are 2 separate groups of lines. One group is for US Citizens and Residents. Another is for visitors and other Visa holders (such as H-1B or F-1 visa). I went to the US Citizens and Residents line. This line is much shorter than the other one. An Immigration Officer checked my Advance Parole, Customs form, the white, Visa form and my passport, put them all into a clear plastic envelope and asked me to take those to another officer who would verify the Advance Parole details. I assume this is needed only for people traveling on Advance Parole, and not for Citizens or Permanent Residents (Green Card holders). I took an elevator down to this next officer. His cubicle was actually right next to the baggage claim carousels and I think their office also inspects luggage which fails customs clearance. After sitting for about 10 minutes in the waiting area there, the officer got to my envelope and called me over. He checked everything was good and gave me my stamped and dated Advance Parole original, the stamped and dated Customs Form, the stamped and dated I-94 stapled to my stamped and dated passport. Then I stepped out of that area, picked up my checked-in baggage from the baggage claim carousel and joined the customs inspection line. I handed over the Customs Declaration form to the officer there and walked out of there with my luggage. Some people were being diverted, along with their luggage, for a customs inspection. I am not sure if it was because their Customs Form was not stamped like mine was, or because they wanted to actually inspect something in the luggage because of what was declared by the traveler. The last step, in my case, was to re-check-in the check-in baggage and go through the security check again because I had a domestic flight to catch to get back to Raleigh. The re-check-in area was placed, conveniently enough, right after the Customs. So I could not miss it. My bags had been checked in all the way to Raleigh at Delhi itself. So I did not have to actually check-in again. I simply dumped by bags in the re-check-in area, where it was helped on to the moving luggage belt by a couple of guys. Then I walked a but further and noticed the long security check line to reenter the terminal. That was it. My international journey was over and the domestic journey began.

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In Phase Interview

September 30th, 2007 admin

A little over a month ago, Sourabh Sriom, a current student at Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, contacted me for an interview. IITG is where I earned my Bachelors degree. Our class, the class of 99, was the first to pass out of the new institution. The ECE Department at IITG has an ECE society called Cepstrum. On september 20th, 2007, Cepstrum released the first issue of the monthly magazine called In Phase. The purpose of In Phase is to both help the students be in touch with the happenings in their field, Electonics and Communications Engineering, and to help restore the social networks between alumni, faculty and students. I was honored to be asked for an interview. It helped me give the current students a view of how my career progressed, after graduating from IITG, and also helped me a chance to reflect on a few things. I would like to thank IITG and Cepstrum for giving me this opportunity. I also was pleased to see the continued support of the faculty at IITG, many of whom I studied under, in this endeavour. It was great to read Dr. P. K. Bora’s communication to the In Phase team, which appears in the magazine too. Here is the original link to the magazine, which appears in the Cepstrum webpage here. I also made a local copy of the magazine on my webpage here. Note that this is a 5.8MB pdf file. It might take some time to open up, and your browser needs to be able to open pdf files. A few questions and answers form my original response had to be removed due to space constraints in the magazine. If you just wish to read the interview questions and answers, the full interview follows.
1. Being a student of the 1st batch of our IIT, tell us about your apprehensions and pre-conceived notions, if any, about IITG.

From what I recollect about my state of mind then, I believe I was more excited than apprehensive. The opportunity to study at an institution where the quality of education, faculty, students and facilities was reputed to be at par with the best in the country excited me. My inclination was towards ECE as a subject area and I was only grateful that I could pursue that subject at IITG when I probably could not elsewhere, given my rank in the JEE. My only preconceived notions about IITG were that it would be a young institute looking to build itself, both in literal terms and in its beliefs and character. I knew it would be an institute that would not have much to show for itself in the first few years in brick and mortar terms. I also knew that when you put smart, motivated and courageous people - people who were smart enough to get into IITG, motivated enough to prioritize their area of academic interest over the place of study, and courageous enough to choose an hitherto unexplored destination – the chances are good that you will end up with an institution you can be proud of.

2. Did these feelings live up when you finally entered IITG? That is, how were your first few days at IITG?

The disappointment of seeing the small, unassuming, pale, four-storied building tucked in the cramped, commercial heart of the city, further isolated by the agonizing groans and rumbles of slow-moving trains on railway lines on one side, and the noisy arch of the Pan Bazaar flyover too close for comfort on another, could have been overwhelming; for me, however, there as no disappointment. The lack of a tangible, photographable campus with large buildings and facilities was probably compensated for, subconsciously, by trying harder to do the best we could with what we had. And what we had were a batch of 64 motivated students, great faculty and the hope that everything else an institution needs would come in due time. I think the one thing that IITG had from day one was fantastic people. And that takes care of the two main aspects of undergraduate education – developing academic skills and developing social skills.

3. Did you feel let down at any point during your stay here? (If, yes what or who boosted your confidence?)

No. I do not recollect feeling let down at any point. The reason might have, partly, been that I had nothing to compare our experiences to. But even in absolute terms, I think the IITG Administration was sensitive to our needs and were always receptive to our suggestions. Even when there were the occasional drooping shoulders, the administration, faculty members and other students would boost the morale by providing honest perspective.

4. Talk us through the experiences of the rest of your B. Tech, the faculty, other students, and, the placements.

We were lucky to have some highly motivated faculty members whose knowledge of their subject was thorough, and, enthusiasm for their craft, contagious. It was a pleasure to actively learn from them in the classroom and beyond. With 63 other students to begin with and with more joining in the future years, it was a non-stop learning experience in social behavior. The emotional support, comic relief, opinionated exchanges and lifelong friendships are experiences we students shared with each other and the faculty. The combination of our being in our late teens, the 4 years we were together for and the shared adventure that was IITG, might be the reason why the friendships made in those days are still so strong. The placements and higher studies are but a blur in my mind. I remember that even then we were able to attract some of the best companies and were offered good jobs with competitive pay.

5. What prompted you to go for higher studies abroad?

My main motivation for higher studies was that I felt I had only begun to skim the surface of my field and there was a lot more for me to learn. The other school of thought was that what you really need to learn you can learn while doing a job. Though that was true to the extent of doing your job well, I wanted to learn more for its own end. That is, I wanted to learn what great minds of the past had thought up or discovered, for no other reason than that I wanted to know. I had no plans for how I was going to use that knowledge. Why abroad? I wanted to explore the kind of academics and research that is practiced in other reputed institutions of the world. It was, in some sense, IITG all over again - the yearning to put yourself in a new situation, to, hopefully, gain a new perspective.

6. Did the department guide you in this goal of yours? If yes, then in what way?

Yes. Because we did not have any student history to go by, being the first batch, we had to research the process of applying for a PhD or a Master’s ourselves, to a large extent. We had faculty members who were extremely helpful in educating us on how to go about applying, how to attempt standardized tests for graduate school entrance, and which schools to choose, based on their experience and contacts. Lastly, they wrote us honest recommendation letters.

7. What were the major differences you felt graduating from a premier institute in India to doing your PG from a reputed university in the US?

I went to Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, USA for my Master’s in Electrical and Computer Engineering. It was a gigantic University compared to IITG and certainly a bit overwhelming. The size, the history and the bureaucracy were the first things I noticed. It worked like a giant machine with things happening like clockwork running on old but well-oiled and well-cared-for parts. However, I was able to find myself an apartment, make new friends, get a decent understanding of the geography of the large campus, get my head around the official rules and requirements, participate in a different culture, continue good performance in academics, and participate in sports and other extra-curricular activities. So all in all, I think IITG prepared me well to take up the new challenges in the new environment.

8. How did you land up in IBM? Tell us something about your stint there.

Similar to placement interviews at the end of a B.Tech at IITG, there was a job fest organized at Purdue University’s ECE Department. I interviewed with several companies and decided to get some exposure to the industry. I joined IBM, primarily, because of the company’s reputation, the breadth of knowledge the company seemed to possess and because the team that interviewed me seemed to be doing very interesting work. The main difference between academia and industry is that industry tries to channel research into an end product that is tangible, useful and therefore, sellable. IBM has a Research division too; however, the team I joined is part of Development. I work as a Future System Performance Engineer. My work deals with helping hardware designers and system architects optimize the design of a future computer system such that it performs the best it can, given various requirements, such as expected workloads, throughput and latency requirements, and constraints, such as the area and power budget, architectural or microarchitectural extensions allowed etc. I learn a lot of new things on the job and work with some very sharp people.

9. At what point during your job did you make up your mind to go for a PhD?

I noticed that high importance is given to innovative thinking at IBM. I realized that with better knowledge of the Computer Architecture field, I could not just solve the current design problems better, but more importantly, I could foresee future problems and try to incorporate that vision into the current solutions. I also noticed that in the region where I live and work, there were several good Universities and IBM management was always supportive and encouraging in allowing me to go back to school for either an MBA or a PhD. So after working for about 4 years at IBM, I applied to and joined North Carolina State University in Raleigh as a part-time PhD student. By then I had gotten a reasonable understanding of the types of design and technology constraints computer architects and hardware designers face in their work and the kind of solutions that make a product competitive in the market. I thought the time was right to look at the directions academia was taking in this field. Academia and Research are typically a few years ahead of the Industry and Development. Therefore, being in touch with academia allows you to see patterns that would be harder to see from within the industry.

10. How was research in ECE different from a job in the area?

Though I have not yet started serious research as part of my PhD, and am currently taking classes and only recently formed my Advisory Committee, I can give you my current view on this topic. Since I joined my PhD after some exposure to the industry, I can research a topic that is a new and interesting problem both in academia and industry. Such overlap is usually not perfect, but if research in an academic setting is guided to some extent by real problems faced by engineers, it leads to research that is more purposeful.

11. How would you compare India and the US in terms of opportunities in the ECE field?

Having limited exposure to the industry in India, I have to go by my understanding of what I have heard or read. I believe that India has a foot in the door to becoming a knowledge superpower. India is already a major player in the software and services industry. From being a middle-man providing support to the producers and the consumers, India is itself moving towards being a big producer and a big consumer. That is a significant shift, because as a producer you create value where it did not exist before, and as a consumer, you provide a reason for the producers to produce. India seems to be on the threshold of a gear change in this engine of value-creation and value-aware-demand. In ECE and related fields the differences in opportunities between the US and India will continue to shrink as long as India continues to take the opportunities that come her way and discover or create new opportunities on her own.

12. Would you like to share a piece of advice with our readers about how they should plan their career moves.

Based on my limited experiences, based on what has served me well, assuming a vast majority of the readers are students at IITG, and assuming a general guideline rather than a strict example is useful, my advice is, be honest and positive. By honest, I mean several things. Be forthright in your assessment of where you are, where you want to be, how to get there. Be a humble follower when you should be, and likewise, a confident leader when you should be. Be connected to reality by being aware of your thoughts, your motivations, your limitations, your duties and your actions. By positive I mean, most importantly, try to keep improving yourself. Try to do the best job in everything you do. How you define “improvement” or “best” depends on how honestly you can judge where you are and where you want to be. Try to improve that ability to judge as well. By positive I also mean be creative. Get into the habit of practicing your innate creativity. We have the brains and the training to actively create value, rather than passively consume it. Even when being a consumer be an active one. Be a good follower (active consumer) and be a good leader (active producer). Let the opportunity to partake in creativity guide your career moves.

13. Finally, a word for the very first people at IITG, the director, the faculty of the department, the HOD. I’m sure they all would be proud of you.

I am and have always been impressed by the positive energy of the IITG Administration and Faculty. In twelve short years the progress made by IITG has been remarkable and most of the credit should go to these nurturing souls. I am grateful and proud to have been, and still be, a part of IITG. I am positive it will continue to grow in stature and fulfill its role in shaping the world.

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