Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Bludgeoned to death

News of Graziano India’s CEO’s death by irate fired workers leaves me seething and shocked. You wouldn’t expect to die in job as executive, not until now.

This thing is wrong from so many angles. It's sign of sick mindset of people and mob mentality that excuses everything done in crowds. Killing someone for getting fired is weirdest thing to happen. And it's a serious blot on foreign industrial presence in India. Corruption, infrastructure, IPR regime aside, which company would want to come to employ these savages. I just wish these people are well publicized and nobody ever hires these goons.

Shamefully, such things are infrequent but recurring in India. Professor getting beaten to death for disciplining a student, women thrown acid for rejecting a love proposal, a policeman getting beaten to death when objecting to false weights at local vegetable market, person thrown out of train for asking his legitimate seat from occupiers, and so on. Killing brutally (and burning buses) seem to have become a natural way to solve problems. And why not? As long as mob does it, law is helpless and one can get away with anything from rape, murder, pillage and what not.

And what does our dishon’ble minister says? That firms should learn compassion dealing with workers. Right, what about these workers learning some humanness first. He wants workers to be organized. Some people never learn lessons. Kill a CEO now and be sure that in next 20 years no new jobs will be created then those savages can roam with with their pride and hunger on the street.

I sometime wonder if there is a possibility to use high resolution satellite imagery to identify and convict criminals in mob violence and vandalism. As far as I know, ISRO does have this resolution and capability, and most mob violence are in open. People engage in these precisely because they know they can get away lost in crowd. And I suspect that people who engage in religious riots are not just driven by religious hatred, they seek this anonymous opportunity to loot and plunder shops and houses, rape women, throw stones and kerosene bombs, and in some sick sense of way have fun. If every person who torched, or helped torch, a bus would have to pay ten lakh to replace it, I doubt anger will hold any longer.

Edit: To my surprise, if Digg readership is to be believed, Americans are supporting this act, mostly in frustration with current Wall Street crisis.

Breaking the Bias – Lessons from Bayesian Statistical Perspective

Equitable and fair institutions are the foundation of modern democracies. Bias, as referring to “inclination or prejudice against one perso...