Jai Kamal's Blog : Work in Progress

Have you ever wondered how much food do we waste? Is the food, if stopped from wasting, enough to feed all human beings? Well, I didn't ask such questions until  I saw a video on Facebook last year.  I was surprised to know that we currently produce more food than all humans can consume. I was under the impression that we don't produce enough, and that's why some people go hungry.  No doubt, the video was an eye-opener for me. Today also I came across a similar video and again I am stunned. There are many such videos on YouTube that highlight the problem of food wastage. Image source: Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) According to FAO , one-third of all food produced for human consumption gets wasted. This waste is an enormous amount. If not wasted, this food should be more than enough to feed all those who go hungry.  What can we do? We can do at least our bit. In our individual capacities, we can practice good food habits such as buying...

Today news is being circulated that Amazon is launching  "Palm scanners" for secure transactions. Can we trust this transaction system? Probably NO. Because data breaches are too common nowadays and the impact of misuse of this particular system is huge.                       Recently one night at 2 AM,  I and one of my friends were planning to have a cup of coffee so that we can wake up till morning and finish some work. While the milk was boiling, we thought of watching a video on YouTube. Our eyes popped out of our heads after watching the very first advertisement. Seeing Ad was not a problem for us, we were surprised why YouTube's recommender system gives an Ad about coffee even before the coffee was prepared. I never searched about "Coffee" in any of my devices for at least 15 days prior to this event. The only way YouTube could get this information if some app on mobile was recording my voice (obviously, w...

Whenever I have too much to do in the last hours, it reminds me of one person. Guess who? Mahendra Singh Dhoni. I have not witnessed such an exceptional player in pressure situations. I like him so much that I pasted his image on my wall ( the same image I have used in this blog).  Look at the calmness on his face. Such a calm face in tough situations!  In nerve-wracking situations, I used to look at this image and calm myself down. On several occasions, this image works as a motivation for me to perform well in the last hours. Trust me, I have won in almost all of those occasions. There is no doubt Dhoni is the most successful finisher in the history of cricket.  Among all the last over chases, I like the chase of 23 runs in an IPL game most. If you can chase 23 runs in one over, that too with two dot balls in first four balls, isn't it some kind of miracle? Image source: https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/3m0FYPhLPt6HSkxHzkeaZI/How-does-Mahendra-Singh-Dhonis-scorecard-as-...

The motivation for writing this blog comes from a post recently shared by one of my friends as his WhatsApp Status. His status reads like this    "If you feel anguished about the elephant killing in Kerala but you yourself love eating non-veg food just for your taste buds, then you are the part of the problem".  I immediately replied to his status "So true". But later on, I gave it a thought and I changed my mind.  In the aftermath of the incident of  the elephant killing in Kerala , a lot of posts similar to this were shared across social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram among many others. The main reason for sharing such posts could be to criticize people for their hypocrisy, make them feel guilty, and try to change their food consumption practices. Are people empathetic in one case ( Killing of the elephant) and they are not empathetic in other cases ( say, killing of chicken)?  Yes, they are and they are in...

I  joined PhD program in June 2017, around two and a half years ago. I have learned  many things (both academic and non-academic) during this period. The focus of this article is to highlight some major academic learnings. Discipline and Consistency  Research is a mix of interesting and mundane tasks. Unfortunately, a lot more mundane tasks than interesting ones. Who will not love to finish interesting work ? The problem arises when you meet a roadblock of mundane tasks. To finish them, you need discipline. You will have to put your heart aside and try to finish tasks at hand like a duty. Consistency can outperform intensity when it comes to a long journey like PhD. A typical engineering student mindset suggest to complete things by working intensely in last hours.  At times they think themselves like Dhoni who can finish game in the last overs. But, this strategy doesn't seem to work well when it comes to PhD which is much like a test match. In test ma...

Ram , a 26 years old MBA student at one of the prestigious institutes in India, is known for his academic excellence and decision making skills. He has been a bright student throughout his life and his family has a lot of hope from him. He is lucky to have parents who don’t force their decision on him and he has been taking his own decisions since class 12th. He is proud of his strategy that he takes the best possible choice at every stage. He has ability to find what is best for him as he has very clear preferences and ability to calculate the payoffs from actions. For example, after completing class 12th, he decided to take admissions in B.Tech. and after completing B.Tech. he choose to work rather than going for higher education. After 2 years of work, he decided to pursue MBA. So far he has taken the best possible alternative, according to his preferences, at each stage of his life and he has reaped benefits of this strategy. Now, he is supposed to sort companies in his preference...