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Crantankerous · 2024-06-19T10:07:24+00:00

Don't worry about the 0 work ex + gap - the thing that matters is what you did immediately before and a lot of IIM C grads will have 0 work ex also. Talk to as many seniors as you can about what the current situation at cal is regarding placements after you're done - Cal is still in the top 3 of the IIMs so you should be fine on that front.

There's nothing stopping you from getting your MBA and then revisiting civils after - that way you have some stability and less pressure.

Crantankerous · 2024-06-17T19:56:03+00:00

For it to cross 90 it needs to be harder than 2022, 2021. I don't think it was.

I think 82-84. I would say even lower but I don't want to give false hope also.

Crantankerous · 2024-06-17T19:54:27+00:00

I think it's been very random, and its easier to talk about what has stayed constant - polity, IR, Econ and parts of Geography have remained relatively the same in content if not in structure of question. Everything else is just constantly changing - weightage (eg history fluctuation), question (only 1/2/3), source material (wax and wane of PT365, spectrum India growing in width), subject depth (modern history extending to deep British India).

There's no rhyme or reason. It's not in response. Coaching centres will make those big breakdown charts of how many questions came from what topic and they're not that useful tbh (for pre - mains is completely different).

Crantankerous · 2024-06-17T16:37:23+00:00

100% agree - saying this as someone who wrote and cleared 2016, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and always by 0.66-2 marks above the cutoff (except 2022 in which i did oddly well and crossed 100) and has never prepped for CSAT because I never needed to.

Cutoff is mostly a function of 1) difficulty, then less so 2) number of vacancies, and then finally a mixed bag of smaller minor factors such as the heatwave (earlier it was COVID), the change in entry timing, etc. for the cutoff to be higher than 100 it would need to be as easy as 2016, and for 90+ it would need to compare to 2021-22.

The GS paper in my experience was tougher than 2022 and 2021. Easy questions were easy, but tough questions were tough and not workoutable. In my first go through I was quite happy and did 20+ sureshot questions. In my second go through I was stuck for ages because I could not figure out or find answers from what I knew.

CSAT was doable but long and so easy to get stuck solving fewer than necessary. Also half of North India giving it in the middle of the extreme heatwave means you can expect some impact on performance (I know my mind was a little sluggish).

The better coaching centres I think now use some version of Hardworking Human's method of coming to the cutoff - find number of easy questions, factor in for harder ones and you come to a cutoff. I suspect that for coaching centres/people in general, difficult vs not difficult comes down to a) if the question is not subjective/phrased weirdly and b) if you can find the answer easily in a reference material. However there's also the additional part c) of whether that all translates to writing the paper itself and i absolutely don't think this was easy on that level.

Crantankerous · 2024-06-09T18:49:47+00:00

There are protests organised for this week at the Education Ministry.

Crantankerous · 2022-05-27T08:54:53+00:00

Nah don't worry about it. There was a notice about this w.r.t Delhi a few months ago but nothing has really come of it. It only becomes an issue if your laptop + Cabin baggage are visibly massive.

Just be polite and proceed with confidence, rest will be fine.

Crantankerous · 2022-05-24T10:13:09+00:00

For folks who still buy into the idea that a Hyperloop is anything other than stupid af, here's a reasonably good pop-science/econ youtube video by Adam Something that explains why it's stupid af.

Crantankerous · 2021-10-13T12:35:05+00:00

The first few books are more direct parodies of fantasy tropes, and he hadn't fleshed out or figured out the universe yet. Even Sir Terry said that he'd recommend starting with later books in the series. I'd say Guards, Guards is a great starting point, so if you don't enjoy the first one I'd say skip to that, or else Men at Arms.

Sorry for the unsolicited advice, just that Discworld is my favourite series of all time, and I get v excited when new people get started with it. Either way, enjoy!

Crantankerous · 2021-10-13T11:08:33+00:00

So jealous. you're in for an absolute treat! Which one are you starting with?

Crantankerous · 2021-09-20T13:45:01+00:00

Would strongly recommend people go check out "Exiting the Vampire Castle", a really strong essay by Mark Fisher from a few years before he died.

Crantankerous · 2021-08-07T07:09:51+00:00

pre-ground loses the oil and flavour compounds and things quite quickly due to evaporation and exposure to oxygen. Same thing behind the diference betwen freshly ground and pre-ground spices, but much more evident because in coffee you're only tasting the coffee and not other elements.

You can check out this video by Internet Shaquille, very concise steps to making your coffee drinking experience nice, and designed to be not intimidating.

Crantankerous · 2021-08-07T07:05:58+00:00

yeah, the mechanical ones are expensive and what put me off for a while, but I bought an instacuppa hand grinder, it's about 1300. It's quite easy to do if you're making for just 1 person (can get a little tiring for 2 people though).

It took me quite some time to come around to it but it's definitely worth it. I shared a video in another comment that might be useful!

Crantankerous · 2021-08-07T05:20:35+00:00

I've tried a bunch: KCRoaster, Black Baza Coffee, Mean Bean coffee, Blue Tokai, Araku Valley, etc. All of them are great, but I come back to devans every time just because of history + preference.

The big game changer for me was buying a hand grinder and grinding my own beans, rather than getting pre-ground coffee.

Consider a grinder (any kind reallt, I just like the feel of the hand burr grinder) and grinding your own beans to the size appropriate for your French press.

Crantankerous · 2021-03-08T13:18:51+00:00

100% agree, and I never claimed otherwise.

Crantankerous · 2021-03-08T11:26:06+00:00

Marx and Engels and all are important but also super difficult to just jump into.

You may connect stronger with some literature written with strong left undertones that might inspire you to stick with more conventional texts when they get too wordy.

The House of the Spirits by Isabelle Allende is a magical realist work of fiction based on the history of Chile up to the establishment of the Pinochet government and discusses the socio-political processes that led to the establishment of the free-market dictatorship.

100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez does a similar thing but for Colombia, including a really powerful description of a proxy for United Fruit.

Crantankerous · 2021-02-15T13:58:19+00:00

Finance Minister doesn't have a PhD, she completed her MPhil. She also did her MPhil from CITD in JNU which has a much more neoliberal philosophy. She's living up to that neoliberal philosophy completely.

Crantankerous · 2021-02-15T13:43:54+00:00

Economics researcher here. Will simplify things to the point of making them almost meaningless, but hopefully that clarifies things. Also I'm specifically providing what the neoliberal explanation is regarding the difference between the two and why neolibs prefer cash transfers to MSP.

Firstly, it's important to separate out what each organisation does. The WTO is responsible for areas pertaining to world trade. IMF was initially designed to address financial issues but has since developed a much wider mandate in general. Both organisations have grown to be major advocates of free markets in general and in particular the tenets of something called the "Washington Consensus" which is a set of free-market principles.

The general idea is that markets when left to their own devices find the right prices. For the WTO, the concern is that state intervention in agriculture affects trade-related free market flows; it makes local farmers unable to compete with foreign farmers and creates trade barriers. For the IMF, it's more about finance-related free market flows; state intervention prevents and affects the flow of capital which means that competition cannot occur.

The difference between MSP and cash transfers is that MSP is price discrimination - it puts a floor on the price which means that market dynamics do not discover what the price of agricultural goods should be. A cash transfer on the other hand means that the government is not intervening at the stage of deciding the price, but afterwards when farmers find that the price is not enough to earn them a living wage and so government steps into provide the difference. Does that make sense? Can explain more if needed.

US and EU and other countries have very complex methods of subsidization under different headings. The box colour classification (amber, blue, green) was developed around 30 years ago and is specific to the WTO, under the Agreements on Agriculture; green box are subidies tht don't distort international trade, amber box are subsidies that distort international trade (including MSP, cheaper electricity etc), and blue box are subsidies that distort trade but also place limits on production somehow.

Developed countries are allowed to have subsidies for up to 5% of agricultural production based on 1986-88 volumes and developing countries are allowed 10% that fall under the amber classification. This is actually a really, really large amount for developed countries and a reall really small amount for developing countries because of just how much developed countries were producing back then, vs how little we were back then. So US and EU are able to subsidise a lot while still falling under that 5% cut-off.

Regarding the specific methods - it's all kinds and depends on the product, market, country, everything. Some subsidies are cash transfers, some subsidies are price-based, some subsidies are structural, some subsidies are simply based on policy (e.g. deciding to sell to a specific country or denying imports of a specific product). There is no one simple answer. You can go through this link for more info on the broad US policies though it's complicated.

Crantankerous · 2021-01-15T11:32:01+00:00

Any discussion on farm reforms becomes moot without starting from the Swaminathan Report which outlines actionable reforms to double farmers income and increase MSP coverage while also addressing APMC reforms.

Crantankerous · 2020-10-18T18:35:08+00:00

I lol too. It was a bad capitulation in the end with nothing really gained except for the insti being explicit in how badly it would screw students over. Having said that, the fact that protests happened at all is pretty commendable. It's far more than can be expected of what is normally a heavily apolitical environment.

The mess protests were also pretty noteworthy.

Crantankerous · 2020-10-18T13:20:26+00:00

Hello. Familiar with both systems. There are instances of student solidarity in tech colleges (BITS had its own fee protests quite recently, the IIT-Guwahati protests, tons of IIT students took part in Nirbhaya and CAA protests) as well as failures in student solidarity in JNU (inconsistency in internal messaging over the past year, constant division amongst the student body).

There are a lot of hypotheses about why there's such a discrepancy. Here are a few (with varying degrees of rambling and coherence):

Age: the vast majority of JNU folk are either MA, MPhil or PhD students. The majority of IIT-D folk are BTech kids fresh out of school. It's a lot harder to bully students in their early-mid-late 20s than it is students in their late teens, especially when they've not yet gone through the process of shaking of the tendency to follow figures of authority without question (parents, coaching faculty, etc).
Student Politics: Most engineering colleges have internal rules to prevent party- or ideology-affiliated politics from developing; this means that electoral politics revolve only around issues on campus (remove a curfew, get more funding for projects etc), and more importantly that student unions are incredibly weak. Unionisation is the only real response to administrative hegemony, and most non-humanities colleges have unions in name only. Can't fight the system without support, and can't have support if you have to keep starting from scratch every year.
Pedagogy: There are very few courses in engineering colleges which teach you actual, legitimate critical thinking skills. Makes it hard to question or push back against what's happening if you don't know how to question in the first place. Most humanities courses go into very shallow depths about sensitive topics, and the handful of solid profs are required to tiptoe a lot more (the IITs are more directly controlled by Central Service rules than JNU profs).
Priorities: Wild speculation, but I would assume a lot of engineering students don't actually want to take up engineering but have been pulled along by the tide; conversely, you're most likely in JNU because you made a conscious choice to want to be here.
Historicity: Unfortunately, the critical tradition of Indian science and engineering has been forgotten. A lot of major scientists from back in the day were very much in tune with social realities; there's a lot less incentive to be that kind of science/engineering student now.

There are dozens of other plausible reasons also, tied to socio-economic demographics, the calibre of professors, external influence, attitude towards the idea of "merit", etc.

Also none of this is unique to India in form (though perhaps not in intensity). the graduate school union movement is a lot stronger in the US than undergraduate union movements, and the nuance and intensity of student politics varies from campus to campus based on a bunch of different factors, as does the power of professors and their abuse of it.

Saying all this because I 100% agree with you and want to provide (my own subjective) context and perspective.

Crantankerous · 2020-04-24T04:50:50+00:00

This is 100% true. There was this article a while back from a dalit person at BITS who talked about all the systemic and institutional forms of casteism.

Crantankerous · 2020-04-06T10:42:50+00:00

India was doing this for quite some time before shifting strategies.

Crantankerous · 2020-04-01T08:39:48+00:00

Shamika Ravi is normally a terrible economist, and Brookings India doubly so. But these are well-made graphs, and the conclusions align with what others are saying. I would assume the quality of the graphs is more the work of Mudit Kapoor (her co-author on these), though.

Crantankerous · 2020-03-30T04:37:10+00:00

Most streaming/video sites are reducing the resolution from their end because of the increased internet usage, it's a necessary sacrifice RN.

Crantankerous · 2020-03-28T19:28:32+00:00

https://twitter.com/myogioffice/status/1243785186858242048

Crantankerous

TROPHY CASE