Inconsistencies and Contradictions

  More than 100 have died in Balia and Deoria district of Uttar Pradesh in last few days . These districts have experienced heatwave conditions. IMD has given orange alert warning (40℃ to 45℃) for these as well as other districts in Eastern Uttar Pradesh. For those who are aware, Kim Stanley Robinson’s Climate fiction ‘The Ministry for the Future’ opens with a stunning description of heatwave related deaths in Uttar Pradesh. What is happening now in Deoria and Balia district has uncanny resemblance to what author has imagined. In some sense, we have been made aware of what awaits us, though we have decided to bury it because it is inconvenient. Even now, these deaths are not officially attributed to heatwave. Here is what I think have happened. It is a hypothesis rather than a statement with some proof. Balia and Deoria are districts near Ganga, a large water body. Rising temperatures have caused greater evaporation of this water body leading to excessive humidity in the surround

 AC local ticker rates have been slashed. Economic argument for right type of price decrease is as follows. Prices are to be lowered when it is expected that it will lead to higher demand (since now prices are cheaper than earlier) which leads to considerable rise in revenue but not so much rise in costs. In economic jargon, demand should be elastic (so as it rises when prices are cut) while costs are increasing returns to scale (a lumpsum fixed cost up to certain level). Once we consider this, we can see why Railways lowered the prices of AC locals. The intuition of price reduction is understandable. Running an AC local costs certain fixed amount to the railway unless air-conditioning inside the train is precisely adjusted as per the number of passengers. (Though I am not sure whether that will have huge implication on cost.) Adding few more extra passengers will not change the cost much (some extra wear and tear is to be added to the cost, but that is not very significant rise at d

 4th round of seroprevalence survey by ICMR in June-July 2021 has revealed that nearly 2/3rd of Indian population has antibodies. The presence of antibodies is assumed to indicate prior exposure (though not necessarily manifested with disease symptoms) to Coronavirus. Exposure to virus can be seen as indicative of low probability of Covid-19, at least for the short-term. Very high seropositivity, more than 70%, suggests low probability of occurrence of severe Covid-19 outbreak.  Table 1 After feeling somewhat relived over national estimate, if we look at state-level results, there is a variation of seropositivity levels. (Table 1) Seropositivity is highest in Madhya Pradesh (79%) and least in Kerala (44.4%). It has been noted with hint of surprise that Kerala and Maharashtra do not have very high seropositivity despite bagging the attention for their high Covid-19 numbers for sustained duration.  We must understand that one should read these state level numbers with some caution. Not a

  Kiran Limaye, Himank Kavathekar -----------             On 8 November 2020, it will be four years to an announcement of policy of withdrawal and reissuance of high denomination currency notes, or what we popularly call ‘demonetization’. One of the stated objectives of the policy was encouraging the use of non-cash payment modes. It is generally considered that non-cash payment modes, debit and credit cards, mobile based payment mechanisms like UPI and prepaid payment instruments like mobile wallets are better than cash, for individual as well as for a society. These non-cash alternatives have less risk of theft and both ends of transactions are traced unlike cash which can be used without trace. But these non-cash modes require higher consumer involvement (for example, knowing pins and maintaining their secrecy and ability to operate smartphone beyond routine call receipt and dial) which are not acquired by section of population, mainly due to factors such as age or education. It w

I thank Milind Watve for a thought-provoking blogpost ‘ Covid 19: We need neither vaccine nor herd immunity ’ (dated 27 th May 2020). The key argument of blogpost is death rate of Covid19 is declining and in future it will be like seasonal flu.             The argument has been presented with the help of certain graph which I am reproducing here. The graph represents Case Fatality Rate, ratio of deaths due to diseases to infection due to diseases  https://milindwatve.home.blog/2020/05/27/covid-19-we-need-neither-vaccine-nor-herd-immunity/?fbclid=IwAR1D0wMndXAMT5p41H5yyfklETgEEpnzzB72kOWNn1UykOx5nk8oaelD-ZY It is based on this graph that blogger concludes that there is a downward trend in CFR. He further states, that after certain number of days (35 as per his prediction, though he has expressed caveats about it), ‘Covid 19 will remain only as dangerous as any seasonal flu’ ( emphasis mine ). I would like to note that blogger has used CFR when he wants to talk about mortality rate. H

Abhijeet Banerjee and Esther Duflo (henceforth AE) have written an opinion piece about CAA and NRC in Indian Express on 1 st January 2020. The core argument is ‘since NRC cannot be done with accuracy, it should be avoided’. The argument has been made by even by many sympathizers of government. If government cannot do something with accuracy, then it should not attempt it – is a very problematic argument. There are lot of things government does with limited accuracy, for example, many of the welfare schemes. Can we argue the same for such schemes? The answer is affirmative, provided exclusion error, of not able to help deserving beneficiaries, is very large. AE are arguing the same. Using their (anecdotal or representative?) experience of observing poor households, they argue that many households, who are Indian by all criteria of citizenship, are likely to be left out of stringent NRC due to want of documents or their inability to make babus work for them. The fear is just

         I am trying to analyse the effects of income-based reservations in terms their effect on representation of SC, ST and OBC.  Consider the case of 10% income based reservation introduced by Central government. It is generally assumed that since income based reservation carves a separate 10% of resources (seats at education institute or jobs) than already existing quota, it will not harm the interest of groups already provided the reserved access. This harm argument assumes that the representation of social groups (SC, ST and OBC) will remain unchanged since new reservation is above/different than the pre-existing reservation. This naïve belief assumes that candidates from these social groups access the resource only through reservation . This assumption is not accurate (at least in all cases) and hence any new reservation is likely to change the representation of the social groups. The change in social group representation has welfare consequences as government jobs hold varyi