Mr.Raghuram rajan-Engineer to RBI Governor

He didn't change course too much.  It felt like a natural progression for him.

BTech at IIT Delhi ->MBA at IIM Ahmedabad -> Phd in Management at MIT Sloan -> Finance Faculty at U Chicago.

At Chicago he was noted for his brilliance in finance and he was recruited as the Chief Economist at IMF. He was again brilliant there - warning a drunken world about how drunk it has become - Has Financial Development Made the World Riskier? 

After his warnings came true in 2008, he was brought in as an advisor to the Indian government and then rose to become the Chief Economic advisor. And finally the governor of Reserve Bank of India. 

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At the core, Engineering and Economics are not that different.  A professor who taught both in my undergrad would say these are just two different ways of looking at the same thing. Engineering is about optimizing and is about system design that best utilizes the inputs. Economics is also about the same thing - how to allocate the precious resources for our unlimited wants. 

Both engineers and economists focus their life on managing resources. Both engineers and economists understand that life is full of trade-offs and pure science has to be remodeled for the real world. Both use extensive curve fitting on vast quantities of data and use mathematical models to interpolate and extrapolate and understand the world better. 

I presume that Rajan enjoys playing in that intersection. He is a great one to have at the RBI and like many of his predecessors he will stand up to the government.

What are some mind blowing facts about RBI?

. The RBI logo was inspired from the East India Company Double Mohur.

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2. The financial year of RBI is from 1 July to 30 June.

3.RBI is responsible only for printing the currency notes. Minting of coins is done by the Government of India.

4. The first woman to become the deputy governor of RBI is K. J. Udeshi. She was appointed in 2003. 

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5. RBI demonetized notes in the denominations of  five thousand rupees (Rs. 5,000) and ten thousand rupees (Rs. 10,000) in 1938. They were reintroduced in 1954 and again demonetized in 1978. RBI can print these notes according to the RBI act of 1934.

6. RBI was also the central bank for two other countries. It played the role of Central Bank of Pakistan till June 1948 and the Central Bank of Burma ( Myanmar) till April 1947.
 

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7. The bank was established on the recommendation of the Hilton Young Commission. 

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8. RBI does not have second class employees. It has 17000 Class I, Class III & Class IV employees.

9. Manmohan Singh is the only Prime Minister to have also served as the Governor of RBI. 

10. The first Indian to hold the position of the Governor of RBI was Mr. C.D. Deshmukh. He was the third governor of RBI.

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11. RBI has 29 offices in India which are mostly located in the state capitals. 

12.RBI runs a Monetary Museum in the premises of the Mumbai head office.

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​13.On Indian Rupees you can’t find these “I, J, O, X, Y, Z” alphabets / letters on the number panel. As in these case RBI only have twenty alphabets are used as insets. For security reasons, Reserve Bank of India doesn’t reveal which inset alphabet/ letters are assigned for which printing press.​

14. Initially the headquarter of RBI was in Calcutta (now Kolkata) but in 1937 it was permanently moved to Mumbai, Maharastra.

15. RBI is a member bank of  the Asian  Clearing Union.

16. The bank has also two traning colleges for its officer,  viz Reserve Bank Staff College, at chennai , and College of Agriculture Banking, at Pune.

17. RBI Prints currency in 17 Languages. Apart from Hindi and English which appear on the front side of a note, 15 other languages appear on the reverse side. 

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18. RBI can issue currency notes as much as country require, provides  it has to take security deposit of Rs. 200 Crores, out of which Rs. 115 Crores must be in gold and Rs. 85 Crores must be FOREX Reserve.

19. RBI is a member of IMF 

20. At present there are total 90 banks in second schedule of Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934 ( Latest inclusion - Bhartiya MAhila Bank ).

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What are some amazing pictures one has to see twice to understand?

Colgate created an ingenious advertising campaign to promote their dental floss, but before getting into detail in these images, check them out first..
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
All right, now that you have had time to check out the images.

• In the first one you will now notice that the man has only one ear.!

• In the second one a phantom arm is floating there.!

• & In the third one she has one finger too many in her hand .!

 
The message from this campaign was: Food on your teeth draws more attention than any physical defect.
 
I guess many of you saw those picture twice!! ;-)

Hardest thing to decide in life?

To decide whether to "move on" or "try harder".

Can a single photo describe a player?

This photograph speaks for itself about the fierce yet silent rivalry between these two Chess legends:

Vishwanathan Anand Vs Magnus Carlsen 
(The King of Chess Vs The Chess Prodigy)

(The person touching his hair is Anand and the one looking at him is Carlsen)

Look at the image carefully:

Both are playing an important match. Both have frustrated their respective opponents. And if you notice carefully, they are not looking at each other but at each other's chessboards. This is just a small glimpse of the fierce rivalry they share.

can india beat china in war today?

No. Neither can China.
     The war between India and China will result in a stalemate. China is militarily much advanced than India. But then there are always many other reasons and determinants of a war. 

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  There is a natural physical boundary between these two giants, the Himalayas. That makes a ground war between two nations difficult for both of them, making the air and navy force to be the contenders. When it comes to Air Force India has a lot less than China. China has a clean superiority over India in terms of aircrafts and soldiers. But when it comes to Navy, India has a slight superiority over China. India operates two aircraft carriers INS Viraat and INS Vikramaditya, while China has none. But wait that still cannot account to India ending a war in stalemate.
The big advantage to India: 
         India Navy sits upon critical global trade routes like the,

Strait of Malacca

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   This is one of the biggest trade chokepoints in the world. The bulk of east Asian trade passes through this strait. Over a quarter of world's oil passes through this strait from the Persian gulf to the east Asian economies.
And all of China's oil passes through this route, India has its Andaman and Nicobar Joint Command right at the gate of this strait to strike under such a situation. 
India can block all of China's oil and goods.
     And without oil no country can fight a war, let alone win it.
With this route and other routes like Strait of Hormuz on which Iran can help India, Indian Navy has a vast presence and influence sphere on the seas.

Help from other countries:
 Most of the countries are not comfortable with China's gigantic growth and influence, like the USA and Japan and China has border conflicts with most of its neighbours. In the advent of a war these countries will indirectly help India win the war because a war torn China is good for the growth of their economies. 
  China has no advantages for an offensive attack and India has many advantages on the defence front, thus making this war hypothetic. These two giants know of the disadvantages of a war between them and the many many advantages of a strategic trade partnership.

Indian railways....Isn't really amazing?

Some very powerful facts that i came across about Indian Railways. Must read. :)

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The chugging of the train and the soothing vibrations manage to transform every traveller to a different space. Indian Railways – the World’s third largest Railway Network encompasses a host of facts that most of us are not aware of.

1. Indian Railway is constructing the highest rail bridge over Chenab, in J&K

Five times the height of Qutub Minar, it will be taller than the Eiffel Tower.

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highestbridges

2. Loco-pilots (train drivers) are paid more than an average software engineer

Salaries are the tune of Rs. 1 Lakh per month and more.

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The Hindu

3. No loco-pilot has abandoned the train even in the face of certain death

 

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AP

4. The Indian Railways website gets close to 12 Lakh hits per minute

Hourly traffic on irctc.co.in is more than annual traffic of some of the most popular Indian websites. It can support almost 5 million threads at one time. But, we’ve got more people than that.
Hence the never ending trolls.

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nextbigwhat

5. The slowest train goes uphill at the speed of 10 kilometers per hour

You can jump off the train, light up a smoke, take few drags and climb on the train again. It’s the Mettupalayam Ooty Nilgiri Passenger train.

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mysticindia.co.uk

6. If the tracks of Indian railways were to be laid out, they would circle the earth almost 1.5 times

 

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farm9.staticflickr.com

7. The trains got toilets after Indian Railways completed about 50 years!

Back then, passengers had to wait till the next station to answer the call of nature!
Thank Okhil Chandra for making Indian Railways do the needful. He wrote the following letter to Indian Railways and finally, there were toilets in 1909!

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alphaideas.in

8. Back in the old days, elephants were used to position the cartridges

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9. Its 161 years old!

Edit - 162 is the figure, It has been 3 days since April 16th. 

16th April, 1853. That’s a long time ago.

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10. The station with the longest name isVenkatanarasimharajuvaripeta

And it’s sometimes spelled with ‘Sri’ prefixed. Quite a mouthful.

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techbreezy.com

11. Most unreliable train in Indian Railways is Guwahati-Trivandrum Express

It is late on an average by ten to twelve hours. Gosh!

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ovguide.com

12. The longest tunnel in the country is 11.215 kilometers long!

It is the Pir Panjal Railway tunnel in Jammu and Kashmir.

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indiatoday.intoday.in

13. The station with the smallest name is called ‘IB ’: It’s in Odisha. There is one more called 'OD' in Gujarat.

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techbreezy.com

14. Before installing the Automatic Point System, hundreds of guards lost their hands and fingers trying to fix it manually. Every time a train got delayed and we complained, an Indian Railways employee had probably lost his limbs for us

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Wikimedia

15. The longest running train covers a distance of 4273 km between Dibrugarh and Kanyakumari: It’s called the Vivek Express

 

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kochigallan.com​
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static.ibnlive.in.com

16. A train covers a distance of 528 km without a single stop

Train - Trivandrum – H. Nizamuddin Rajdhani Express.
Stoppages - From Vadodara Junction till Kota and vice versa. :)

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farm6.staticflickr.com

17. Howrah is the busiest junction in the nation: ​Train Frequency of 974.

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Trainspy- 20 most Busiest Train Stations of India

fotothing.com

18. A massively successful organization – running 11,000 trains in a day is no joke!

 

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timesofindia.indiatimes.com

19. Indian Railways transports almost 2.5 crore passengers daily

That’s nearly the total population of New Zealand, Australia and Tasmania put together!

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indiamarks.com

20. The Rail Museum in Delhi is the largest in Asia

It has working and non-working models both.

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Wikipedia

21. The railway station of Navapur is built in two states; half in Maharashtra and the rest is in Gujarat. There is one more station shared between MP and Rajasthan

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22. Indian Railways has a mascot – Bholu, the Guard Elephant

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23. World's Largest Route relay Interlocking system in New Delhi Railway Station

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​Source - Topyaps.