Writing tips for civils

 1. Mains is “Writing, writing and writing”. Had it been knowledge then people in the sixth attempt would have been toppers and first attempt guys would have not found a place in the list. Accept this.

2. Writing is the most difficult part of this examination. It is a reality check of your preparation. The only way to crack this problem is to “practice without hesitation”.

3. Knowledge and writing go hand in hand. You will never be prepared fully to write the exam. Therefore, do not delay the writing. If you are not confident about the subject or GS content, at least begin with the essay.

4. Simple rule for writing practice is 90-120 minutes daily. The general principle is 250 hours of intense and condensed writing. Given the time frame of 60 days, I would put a bet on 120 hours.

5. Your rank is determined based on the last 30 minutes of writing in the paper. For the first 150 minutes, nearly all people write with the same efficiency. So, ensure that you simulate similar pressure before the exam.

6. Ensure that before mains, you can write 4 papers back to back in 2 days. If you wish to run a marathon of 20 km, you will prefer to practice running more than 20 km before the final race.

7. Writing will help in consolidation, memorizing, and recall so do not fear it. Learn from tests.

8. Once in the service, your whole life, you will be writing comments on files. So, this is nothing but preparation for the same.

Hence the writing must be unambiguous, solution-oriented, action-oriented, clearly delineated. A plain straightforward answer has more chances of fetching more marks. Imagine as if you are writing on a file that is going to be read by PM and CM. It should help in decision making rather than confusion.

9. Facts, examples, case studies, constitution, or legal references help but do not spend more than 3-4 lines on a single point. More the number of points or dimensions, the more are the marks fetched

10. Best should never become an enemy of good. If you are not able to write for 3 hours, then at least write for 30 mins. If not 30 mins, then write for 10 mins but “write, write and write”.

Tips for writing:

1. Make a weekly schedule for writing. I suggest practice during the 9-12 or 2-5 schedule.

2. Sit for full three hours when writing the test. Take it as a final exam. Simulate that pressure.

3. If you are not able to recall something during writing, do not get depressed, frustrated. It is normal. Everyone faces this.

4. Do not wait till the completion of the syllabus to start writing practice.

5. Keep a timer and ensure that the first question is not stretched beyond 8 mins.

6. The answers are evaluated section wise. Every section has marks. For example, in the Introduction 1 mark, each sub-point carries 0.25 or 0.5 marks. Conclusion carries 1 or 2 marks. Therefore, you should be addressing all subsections, write an intro as well as a conclusion.

7. As soon as you see the question, underline all the sub-questions. Make sure you answer all the sub-questions by making headings.

8. Before you start the paper, write 4-5 points on the wall.

a. Underline, Underline, Underline

b. Address all subsections by making clear heading

c. No need to be flowery. Try to write to the point

d. Relate the issue with Indian context or administration

e. Be solution-oriented

f. Keep an eye on the time

9. Do not spend too much time on how to start the answer. The general way to start is “Recent context or Importance of

theme which is being asked or One-line historical link or Background or evolution of topic in one or two lines". Keep reading the question so that your answer hits the bull's eye.

10. Some general conclusions should be set in the mind beforehand. This saves a lot of time.

The most important skill you take from this exam is writing. This is your chance to develop that skill. Writing is the single most challenging task. It is like meditation. It is like war. Enjoy it. Immerse yourself in it. Starting today, if you write for 150 hours honestly in the next 60 odd days, you can take it in writing that you will get called for an interview. But I bet nearly 95% of people fail to do so.

Challenges in Bureaucracy

Indian bureaucracy is considered the steel frame of India. They are considered as a group of faceless, nameless leader who scripts India's future outside parliament. They are trained administrators who are masters in managing a variety of teams and getting the work done. However, the 21st century poses a big challenge to the traditional notion of bureaucracy. 

The first challenge is that the current bureaucratic dispensation is centered around administrative activity whereas the globally focal point of leadership has moved from administrative leadership to technical leadership. In essence, bureaucrats are expected to be technology leaders rather than mere administrative leaders running the show with the help of consultants. The idea of a people manager does not have buyers in government as well. To extend this further, we have entered the age of specialist rather than a generalist.

The second challenge is regular promotions. Currently, bureaucrats see regular fast-tracked promotions based on ranks obtained in the UPSC exam or state service exam. As a consequence, they suffer from a lack of motivation for job performance. Jobs are defined by rank and paygrade rather than quantitative and qualitative performance outcome indicators and feedback obtained from the general public. 

The third challenge is homogeneous teams rather than cross-functional team structures. Bureaucratic teams are experts in passing files around rather than getting any real work done. This is the biggest bottleneck in their performance. Teams are not formed on the basis of functional competence and skill maps. As a result, there is no person-job fit in the bureaucracy. 

Collectively these challenges of generalist bureaucracy, absence of quantitative and qualitative indicators for performance outcome, and poor person-job fit are rusting the steel frame of the country. Solutions to this require a drastic restructuring of bureaucracy.

Every job description in the government job should be re-aligned and reassessed in terms of clear job performance parameters. For example, Teachers' jobs should be rated in terms of the percentage of scores obtained by students in the school. Police jobs should be rated in terms of the reduction in crime in the area.  The revenue officer's job should be in terms of how much revenue does he collect in the assessment year. At the senior level, the success of the job could be defined in terms of the size of the project which is successfully completed and audited, and the impact of the project in social-economic terms.

The second related reform could be to rearrange the bureaucracy in terms of functional competence. The government should identify thousands of pilot projects and invite bureaucrats to bid for the same w.r.t. time of completion and impact it can create. Bureaucrats should be able to submit small RFPs on their own for any new project and form teams on functional lines. For example, suppose the government wishes to replicate an equivalent of a Chinese product in the Indian market and the private sector is not coming forward then a pilot project could be launched by the government. This project could be headed by a cross-functional specialist bureaucratic team who can run the pilot and showcase a path for the private sector to take up the project.  

The vision of new India substantially hinges on the shoulder of bureaucracy.  Without bureaucratic makeover, any other kind of reform is difficult to succeed.

Privacy discussion

 Recently, I have been reading some interesting articles about Privacy. Following are some interesting thoughts:

1. A Very little bit of privacy is secrecy. Secrecy is hiding the information whereas Privacy is being unobservable. 

2. Privacy is not only important from the perspective of harm and invasion but also from the perspective of freedom, rights, and self-respect.

3.  Definition of privacy itself is a challenge. It includes Intelletucal privacy, Communicational, Spatial, Informational, Associational, Behavioral, and many other dimensions.

4. The ways to protect Secrecy

• Encryption of communication channels
• DB encryption, DB techniques, SQL injection
• Hardware solutions like NIPS (Intrusion prevention system), Firewalls, APT (Advance persistent threats),  Load Balancers, Anti virus solutions
• Key exchange protocols, certificates, Authentication systems
• Digital signature, MAC-based solutions
• Whitelisting of IPs, MAC-binding of end-user machine, Private internet solution
• Zonation of the architecture (DMZ, MZ, IDMZ, EDMZ etc)

5. The ways to protect privacy is

•  Anonymization
•  Zero-knowledge proof
•  Localization
• Consent based architecture
• Differential privacy
• Access control
• Data minimization principle
• Purpose limitation
• Privacy by design

The biggest challenge to my mind was how can a designer or a coder code abstract concepts like privacy in the code.  This requires a detailed level of a variety of design patterns corresponding to a different type of privacy control. Let's see how the discourse shapes in the next few years.

 

Career in computer science

We are living in an Information age. The pace of production of this age can be gauged from the fact that the amount of data generated in the last five years is more than the amount of data generated in the entire history before this timeframe. The main engine of this pace is innovation and research in Information and Communication Technologies(ICT). Every day there is so much new happening in this field that people in ICT often feel outpaced by the pace of new development and research.

Take for example, till 2008, smartphones were nowhere in the picture, and then suddenly smartphone, and the android operating systems emerged. While technologists were adjusting to this change, Artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning came to the forefront. In parallel, the traditional client-server architecture made way for cloud computing and the cloud became ubiquitous and the whole notion of DevOps changed in a span of 2-3 years. Cybercrime, Datacenter technologies, Software-defined network, and a host of other development happened in a short frame of time that an engineering degree syllabus started looking dwarf and incomplete. Therefore, the biggest challenge which Computer Scientist, Researcher, and Professionals face is how to keep themselves relevant in the face of changing contours of technology. 

The key to making a successful career in computer science is to learn, unlearn, and relearn on a continuous basis. The moment you stop learning new technologies, you would simply become obsolete in the field. However, this is a simplified understanding of the subject. People in different job profiles face different kinds of challenges. 

Take, for example, a technologist working in a core product company. Life is much sorted for him as he is the driver of change in this field of work. The learning and research atmosphere of the workplace may help in satisfying his insatiable hunger. However, he does need to invest his extra time to update his superficial knowledge about various other developments happening in the larger domain.

Take, for example, a developer, programmer, or architect, or team lead in the service-based industry. He has to work on the regular job deliverables and along with that he needs to work on enhancing his skill set. This is possible only when either he learns on a weekend or gets sponsored training on the job or get enough time on the job to experiment and learn the new technology on a routine basis.

Take, for example, a professor or a researcher in the industry. They work on a dedicated sub-domain of Computer Science but as computer scientists, they are expected to be aware of the development happening in the related field. For them, a workable way is to attend conferences, seminars and sit through classes and lectures of fellow professors. Such group-based learning and constant discussion help them in keeping up to date with relevant new developments in the field. Moreover, need-based dive in the extensive literature further helps them in learning new concepts.

The real challenge lies for people working in the government sector as IT consultants and professionals. The general atmosphere is not conducive to learning. The bureaucratic hurdles in training and skilling demotivate the staff. The security of a government job further dents any such zeal and bring down the enthusiasm. Hence, a career in computer science with a government job is akin to the slow death of technologists and the reluctant rise of a bureaucrat. The only solution to this mayhem is to "learn on your own". Pick an area of specialization and ensure that at least one certification is done every year. Take full command of the technical work and be self-motivated. 

As a general rule for a career in Computer Science is:

• Invest every day 2 hours watching relevant videos and reading relevant books.
• Do at least one certificate hands-on course every year.
• Work on a side project as an exercise for gaining practical experience
• Keep looking for better jobs with higher pay, leadership roles, and better job security.
• Pick one area and increase your indispensability quotient at the workplace.

Economic Vision

 The Indian economy has entered a recessionary phase. The GDP has shrunk by 24.5% in the first quarter of FY 2020-21 as a direct result of Covid repercussion. Even before Covid, the present government apparatus has been criticized for failure in presenting a cohesive and inclusive economic vision for the entire country. 

The Indian state is very peculiar in its design. The scale and disparities in different strata of society make it very challenging for any government to present a cohesive vision. One can find a Mercedes standing by the side of a bullock cart at traffic signals. On one hand, we have the opulence and luxury of big fat weddings budgeted more than 100 crores whereas, on the other hand, we have a large segment of population malnutrition and stagnated. Many families live on one meal a day and sleep hungry. The global hunger index ranking of India is testimony to this. Therefore, we need an economic vision that can cater to the needs of a beggar to billionaire, which can serve all sections of the society like below poverty line, economically weaker sections, lower class, middle class, or upper class with equal zeal.

In the past, government philosophy has been that it needs to take care of the lower, neo-middle, and middle class. It was assumed that the upper class is capable to take care of their own. The government policies were largely influenced by the interest and prospects of poor Indians rather than rich Indians. However, there were no direct means to transfer benefits to the poor and middle class hence the government relied on the trickle-down effect. Unfortunately, trickle-down proved to be a failed experiment.  In the words of Ex-PM Rajiv Gandhi, if 100 paise dropped from the top, only 15 paisa reaches to the ground.  

Trickle-down began as an experiment in the 1960s in order to fulfill the vision of the socialistic pattern of society. However, it was considered a failure by the late 70s. The breakdown and failure of trickle-down were attributed to various distortionary factors like caste/class structure, outdated legislations, poor technology and research, the problem of ghost beneficiaries and middle man,  unskilled labor, demerit nature of subsidies, bureaucracy-businessman-politician nexus, riskless entrepreneurship, informal/unorganized nature of the market, complicated labor laws, political and social influences on the market mechanism and interlinkages and cross interactions between above-mentioned factors. The key underlying challenge was channels of trickle-down were found to be clogged, fragmented, broken, or absent in our economic system. Since the 80's no government has been able to present an alternative vision that can unite different strata of the society in one thread of common economic vision though every government claims their model as an inclusive one. 

The problem was suspended for a while due to heavy push volume falling from the top. The market reforms of the 90s created a flood for a while in the first decade of the 21st century. It resulted in broad basing of the economy and covered up the real problem of absent economic vision for some time. However, the 2008 mortgage crisis, the global recession in the second decade, and increasing global protectionism has put some breaks on the economy. This has led to the resurfacing of the problem of absent economic vision.

One of the proposed solutions is to remove the existing structure and create a fresh one. For example, create an economic system that is based on card currency rather than paper currency. Similarly, set up a system with no demerit subsidies. However, it is nearly an impossible task to build such a system from scratch. It requires alternative behavior models, tools, and institutions to be put in place. For example, if we wish to switch to card-based currency, ten have we provided financial literacy to our population so that they can use cards rather than cash.  If we are moving to an online model of business, have we made a robust technological backbone for this purpose? Demonetization and Covid disruptions offered an opportunity but alternatives were not in place. This led to the deterioration of economic growth because most Indians survive hand to mouth situation and search for jobs every day. Therefore, we need credible workable alternatives.

One of the alternatives is to take one channel at a time and fix it. For example, the GSTN is launched. Income Tax reforms are in pipeline. Labour laws are next on cards. Then after we can go for rural property cards, income reporting frameworks, and formalization of markets for all sectors. However, most systems are intertwined with each other. Hence it is easier said than done. For a country of the size of India, regulatory reforms are not sufficient. In any such effort role of the private sector needs to be clearly outlined. While there is no denying that all of the above listed are urgent reforms, from the experience of the initial few reforms, one can say that poor implementation, the ill-defined role of the private sector, and poor ethical design of the system has resulted in collateral damage and short term churning in the system.

While there is no magic wand to bring sudden overnight reforms, one thing has come out clearly from the reform experience that any long term solution should adhere to the following 7-8 principles.

1. India needs to unleash its entrepreneurial spirit. Without this, it can not cater to a vision for 140 crore people.

2. Government can not cater to everything and everywhere. Hence the government should realize its role as regulator, ecosystem creator, bootstrapper, information provider, and hand-holder. 

3. As a regulator, the government should work on legislative and regulatory reforms. It should weed out old rules and laws and set the process for new ones.

4. As an ecosystem creator, the first and foremost requirement is an investment in infrastructure systems. It includes physical, social, and communication infrastructure.

5. As a bootstrapper, the role of government would be novel and crucial. This role of the government should act as an anti-dote to riskless entrepreneurship. Our small and medium-class entrepreneurs suffer from major information asymmetry and failure complex. Hence the government needs to work in a corporate style to start new industries on a pilot basis and take this as an opportunity to create a knowledge repository of life cycle information. This knowledge repository could be opened to the private sector so that they can replicate the same model at other locations across India. This will solve the problem of Information asymmetry in the country.

4. No need to emphasize, the role of government as a bootstrapper would require rearrangement of bureaucracy as skill-based project-oriented teams. 

5. As a hand-holder, the government should ensure that all e-solution, support systems, ancillary industries, and project-specific apparatus are served through a single-window free of cost.

6. All of these should be complemented with a parallel support system in the form of regulatory, multi-sectoral socio-economic-political reforms like taxation reforms, population control, and electoral reforms. 

Indian economy is often envisaged as an elephant. Today we are standing at a crossroad. If we are not able to move fast enough then we run the risk of collapsing under our own weight. Hence it is necessary to turn this elephant into a camel (if not a horse) by bringing appropriate change in the way we function.