Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp.

Veni, Vidi, Vici. So many tycoons claim to have arrived in a city “with nothing but fifteen cents in my pocket” and, having done that, promptly proceeded to transfer wealth from the pockets of the citizens into their own. Today, on a sunny Mumbai Sunday, I’m participating in an interesting experiment along with two other people to test how we will fare in a similar situation.

Our challenge today is to step out into the city with just our wits and Rs. 30 ($0.65) between the three of us, and parlay our meagre capital into as much money as we can within two hours.

The rules are simple: without our wallets and purses, lacking any meaningful cash for food, water or emergencies, without any identification to prove who we are, without our watches and jewellery, without our mobile phones and having forsaken the help of any friends and family for the duration, we will be venturing truly naked into the urban jungle.

With me on the experiment are two smart women; AM, a dynamic 32 year old placement executive at a Mumbai B-school, and Sanidya Shetty, a lissome 18 year old commerce student. We set out in the Vile Parle area at 12:00 noon without much ado or preparation, empty handed except for our seed fund of Rs. 30.

Firstly, we need a cause to motivate us. We begin by asking ourselves what will we do with the money after we’re done. After a few minutes of discussion, we decide to utilize any money we raise to feed street urchins. Now that we’ve adopted a cause, it becomes really simple to figure out what we will do – we’ll just ask people for the money!

Now it’s time for some strategy. We decide to start with targeting crowded places, and places with an overall younger (and so less cynical) population, and wing it from there on.

Cause? Check. Strategy? Check. Now it’s time to go raise some funds!

We start by pouncing on the nearest people we can see, who happen to be a squad of marching cadets training to be in uniform. An impassioned appeal by the feisty AM to their commander hits home almost immediately, and he allows the marching cadets to break formation and get us any cash they’d like to donate.

My notepad becomes a subliminal symbol of authority.

This lucky stroke nets us our first cash, but we quickly realise we need more than luck. We need an authenticity boost if we’re to convince people that we’re not just hucksters looking to make a quick buck. What we need, apart from oodles of confidence, is a prop. We ‘invest’ half of our capital into a notebook and pen, so one of us can stand around taking down donors’ names and looking all official, while the other two pull off their confidence trick pitch.

We don’t have any receipts to give people, nor do we have any ID. So we decide to present ourselves as a bunch of students who’ve decided to do a good deed on the weekend. Like all lies, the imaginary backstory builds up around itself gradually, and soon we have a waterproof tale to tell while soliciting funds.

We quickly learn that it is pointless to ask shop owners for donations, they’re too jaded for that. Not even Udipi hotel owners part with their cash, despite Sanidya’s shy attempts at a pitch in her native Tulu. Students are more receptive to our pitches, and middle aged and older women even more so. There are a few poignant moments, like the young student returning from college who says she really would like to contribute to our kitty, but all she has is the six rupees for her bus fare.

It is quickly apparent that it is pointless to solicit from students, who have their hearts in the right places but not much disposable cash in their pockets. We don’t want to spend time collecting Rs. 10 per person in the trenches, when we could be collecting 100 bucks each from the right sorts. Our quest for juicier marks takes us into the noisy crowded marketplace, bustling with activity. And women who are willing to contribute to our noble cause.

Descent or ascent, sometimes the difference can be just a point of view.

Our running tally grows by leaps in the marketplace, but our story about wanting to feed street urchins gets us into trouble when a few hard-nosed ladies decide to contribute in kind, rather than cash. We’re loathe to refuse from a fear of appearing blatantly insincere, and we end up with two huge bagfuls of bananas and peaches. Which SS and I then have to lug around for the next hour.

We move towards the station, expecting more rich pickings, but people here are in a hurry to catch their trains and we don’t manage to pitch to many. We move back into the interior lanes of suburbia, where the marks are fewer but the pickings richer.

Our purse has been growing steadily, and AM’s pants soon threaten to fall off with the additional cash stuffed into the pockets. The maximum amount we get is Rs. 200, from a 30-ish anonymous well dressed male. Women give more than men, middle aged people are the most cynical, and while poorer people are more willing to give, it evens up because richer people give more.

Soon, it’s almost two o’clock, and we decide to call it quits. The total we’ve raised today is Rs. 2156 (and some bananas and peaches). While not a fundraising miracle, we’re happy in the context of our original goal.

If we were a scam, we’d have a whopping 7187% return on our original Rs. 30 in the span of two hours. Actually, we’ve ‘invested’ only Rs. 15 of our ‘capital’, so the ‘returns’ are more to the order of 14,373%. Not bad for a couple hours’ work.

This has been an interesting experience, so let me try and list the lessons learnt.

1. God helps those who help themselves, but people help those who help others.
2. It is simpler to act when you have a cause you believe in.
3. All you really need to take money from people is a lot of confidence.

We end up sharing a bit of the fruit among ourselves, and donate the rest, along with the cash raised. Anything for a good cause, I say.

His point of view is indeed understandable. Anyone travelling even a fourth of this country by road or rail cannot but notice the striking differences in geography, language, culture, and even race and ‘genetic stock’. Anywhere else, smaller differences would have been reason enough to split such a landmass into more homologous parts. (Here’s looking at you, Europe!)

However, in the past half-century India has disproved Mr. Churchill’s contention stoically, transitioning (albeit painfully) in that period from a collection of independent states to a united republic. We have had our secessionary movements, notably Khalistanis and Naxalites, but the concept of India seems to be in no sense in any grave danger.

The Constitution of India is the foundation stone of the idea of modern India. It is, in verity, the document that defines India, introduces the idea of being Indian, and safeguards India against Indians at the same time.

The Constitution defines the fundamental reasons and objectives for the existence of the Indian Republic. It breathes life into the systems that make the functioning of this country possible. The Constitution draws its power from the people, in that it outlines the rights we give to our ‘Government’ over us.

It is this document that makes us an island of stability in a subcontinent rife with disorder. It is this document that allows you and me to go to work today while our neighbours are burnt alive because they are Tamil or Rohingya.

“It is only one document,” they cry. “Exactly,” I say. Have you read it?

You can download a PDF copy of the Constitution of India here.

Astute readers might notice that the sub-title of this website refers to this document.

Preamble to the Constitution of India.

While it’s a simple matter of entering in items into my schedule, what’s a realistic way to enforce adherence to that schedule? On the face of it, it seems simple – just keep on referring to your calendar every now and then. But I believe a ‘push’ model would work better than a ‘pull’ model here; it would be awesome to have your calendar tell you what to do when it needs to get done!

iCal has e-mail options which enables it to e-mail you about upcoming events and scheduled items, but it does not take advantage of text-to-speech for some reason. So here’s a little Applescript to add that functionality. Calling this script on the event will read out (in the default MacOS ‘Alex’ voice) your event, in this format:

Attention! It’s 10 o’clock. Time to Sell Nesco shares.

This is assuming my event was ‘Sell Nesco shares‘, and scheduled at ten.
(Statutory disclaimer: This is not stock advice, and the author has interest in Nesco shares)

Without further ado, here’s the code:

set Now to current date
set Earlier to (current date) - (0.1 * hours)
set Later to (current date) + (0.1 * hours)

tell application "iCal"
 set AllCalendars to every calendar
 repeat with EachCalendar in AllCalendars
 set CalendarName to name of EachCalendar
 tell calendar CalendarName
 -- just change the above line if you want to 'say' events from one calendar only
 repeat with thisEvent in (every event whose start date is greater than Earlier and start date is less than Later)
 -- or (start date is MidnightToday and allday event is true))             

 --say ""
 -- say CalendarName
 if contents of thisEvent is not missing value then
 set TheEvent to contents of thisEvent
 set EventProperties to properties of thisEvent
 set EventName to summary of EventProperties
 set EventLocation to location of EventProperties
 set EventDescription to description of EventProperties
 set EventStartDate to start date of EventProperties
 --say (time string of (current date))
 set {hours:hr, minutes:mn, seconds:sc} to current date
 set SpokenTime to "Attention! It's "
 set SpokenTime to SpokenTime & hr & ":" & mn
 say SpokenTime
 -- say mn
 set SpokenEvent to "Time to "
 set SpokenEvent to SpokenEvent & EventName
 say SpokenEvent
 end if
 end repeat
 end tell
 end repeat
end tell

To use this script, open up Script Editor from  Applications/Applescript. Paste the script in and save it to a good location. Apple recommends /home/library/scripts, I believe.

While adding or editing the event you want to be spoken out, you can now choose Run Script as your alarm, and point to the script you just saved. here you can see my own screenshot, where I’ve saved the script as iCal_SpeakEvents.

Editing iCal Events and using a custom script

Suggest modifications in the comments below!

CIBIL: One Sided Conviction?

Credit Information Bureau of India Ltd. (CIBIL) is an organization that provides information on Indian individuals’ borrowing and bill paying habits.

CIBIL is the major credit bureau in India. This means if you apply for any financial credit (home loan, personal loan, credit card, car finance etc) within India, your lender  will ask CIBIL about you before approving your loan or credit. Your lender and CIBIL identify you by your PAN number, among other things.

CIBIL does not tell your lender to give you a loan (or not to),  it only provides the lending bank with a report of your loan and repayment history, as told to them by other banks. This report is called a Credit Report, and each report is identified by a 9-digit ‘Control Number’. Your lending bank uses this Credit Report to generate an internal Credit Score, based on their policies. For example, Axis Bank might have a stricter policy, and not provide loans to you based on your report, but ICICI might overlook a few discrepancies and charge you a higher interest rate to compensate for the increased risk.

So based on the information about you provided by CIBIL, you might receive or be denied credit.

But are all Credit Reports accurate?

One important point to note is that CIBIL does not actually investigate whether your payment history – it just collects information provided by banks, and allows other banks to access it. This means that CIBIL does not have any true responsibility for the content of the reports it provides.

But the information contained in the Credit Reports can be inaccurate due to many reasons. According to American studies done on their credit rating systems, 80% of all credit reports in the USA contain factual errors such as duplicate listings, incorrect dates, tradelines placed on the wrong person’s credit reports, and omitted positive credit accounts. These American studies also indicate that 25% of credit reports containing errors significant enough to result in a credit denial.

With the opaque and review-less system in India, the error percentage is bound to be higher.

Since lenders are not suitably penalised for reporting credit defaults incorrectly,  they have no incentive to correct errors in the reports. CIBIL’s current policies therefore push the onus of correcting errors in the Credit Report on to the individual consumer – while denying them access to tools or information to do so.

Also, American consumers are entitled to one free copy of their Credit Report every year, which means they can try to correct errors. Indian consumers have no such option. CIBIL has been promising to allow Indian borrowers to access a copy of their own credit report, for a nominal Rs. 100 fee. But since 3 years, CIBIL has not delivered on it’s promise. Which means that the Indian consumer does not even have proper access to his own reports, let alone access to means of correcting errors in them.

How is an inaccurate report corrected?

Because you don’t have access to your own Credit Report, you cannot resolve any potential problems before they affect you. At the most, you can request your bank to pass on a Credit Report if they have one on you. But there is no reliable mechanism to know for sure if a report has been drawn on you.

If a Credit Report accuses a person of not having paid up, the person has the inalienable right to confront his accuser. Every time CIBIL delivers a credit report to a bank but denies access to the same report to the individual, CIBIL is depriving the consumer of these rights.

While Banks and Lenders face the risk of default if a Credit Report is incorrect, denying appropriate credit to individuals who deserve credit stifles the country’s financial growth. CIBIL needs to start being responsible and accountable for it’s actions.

How should we fix the lack of transparency in Credit Reports?

As we have seen, CIBIL’s current policies tilt the playing field against the individual consumer. What is the solution to this imbalance?

• CIBIL should immediately allow individuals access to their own Credit Report.
• For each day CIBIL denies an individual access to their own report, they should be held accountable and fined Re. 1 per day per report, per person.
• Banks and other entities who report transactions to CIBIL should be held accountable for the accuracy of that information. Any organization that provides incorrect information to CIBIL should face punitive fines, to the extent of having their license suspended for repeated errors.
• Till the time CIBIL does not provide Individuals access to Credit Reports, they should suspend Lenders’ access to the same Reports.
• Every individual should be entitled to one free copy of their own Credit Report, per annum. Additional requests can be charged a nominal Rs 100 fee.

The crux of the problem is that CIBIL has been dragging its feet over making reports accessible to individuals. This is not fair to the individual Consumer, making CIBIL a one-sided and unaccountable entity.

Denying credit when it is due has far-reaching effects on India’s growth and development, and transparency in the Credit Reporting system will ensure that lenders don’t deprive people of credit without due cause.