Programming the driverless car for India

In Google’s California campus, the spooky spectacle of driverless cars moving quietly on the road is apparently common. Now Google is letting these cars roam the city streets, and, according to a recent article in the New York Times by Matt Richtel and Conor Dougherty, the cars are not enjoying sharing the road with human drivers.

The article describes how, seeing a pedestrian at a zebra crossing, a self-driving car slowed down, but the car behind it didn’t. The result? The pedestrian was unharmed, but the Google car ‘was hit from behind by a human-driven sedan’.

I smiled. Then, as I read what Donald Norman, an expert on autonomous vehicles, had to say, I chortled aloud: “They (driverless cars) have to learn to be aggressive in the right amount, and the right amount depends on the culture.”

How appropriate it would be for the car to be trained in India, I thought, affectionately reflecting upon our famous driving culture. I imagine being tasked to travel in the driverless car in Chennai (with the ability to take over control at my whim) to figure out what changes are needed in the car’s programming to inculcate an appropriate sense of aggressiveness in it.

I get into the car and input my destination into the map. The car reverses silently into my colony road. When we reach the main road, instead of turning right, the car switches on its indicator and waits. Immediately the driver behind us blares his car’s horn and gesticulates ‘Move, idiot!’ with his arm.

The phone may be smart, but...

Do you remember the traditional camera, a box-like thing with a lens in front and something black and plastic-like called the film inside? The film served the useful purpose of limiting the number of photographs that could be taken and therefore ensuring that people were judicious in using the camera, taking pictures only of stuff they needed.

Then along came the digital camera. Immediately the need for thrift and common sense vanished. Instead of limiting themselves to perhaps 20 pictures of their child’s birthday party, people took 200. Where earlier an animal lover might have exhausted a full reel on a visit to the zoo, returning home with 36 photographs, they started taking 36 of each animal! I once took a visiting friend, his family and their newly-purchased digital camera to the zoo. The 17-year old daughter, assigned as official photographer, was enthusiastic and unrelenting in her duties. I felt sorry for her, clicking so furiously that she did not have the time to view a single animal through her naked eye.

“Why don’t you look at the animals, Ritu?” I asked and reached for her camera. “Let me hold that for a while.”

She pulled the camera close to her chest and looked at me as if a trunk had replaced my nose. “Why?! I’ve captured all the animals here and I can see them later at leisure, on the computer.”

However, even the most prolific digital photographer didn’t carry the camera everywhere: so they only photographed worthy occasions like birthdays, weddings and zoo visits. And they could share these only after removing the card from their camera and loading it into their computer.

But now, with the smart phone and its built-in camera, things have got out of hand.

Telling a good story

I’m tired of people in every sphere of life telling me, in voices gushing with excitement, how wonderful the internet is and how it has made life easier in every way. But it has not. Take the subject of party conversations for example. In the halcyon pre-internet era I found it very easy to hold audiences spellbound on topics that I had only a vague knowledge about and others on which I knew nothing.

For example, I clearly remember one dinner I attended in that splendid period before www.something invaded our lives. A few days before the dinner, I had watched a television programme about the meat-eating customs in different countries and was keen to share some insights with my friends.

“In China,” I declared, “they eat frog legs.”

“Wow!” said someone. Others gathered around me to listen, the topic having piqued their interest.

“Yes, they do,” said Ganesh Subramanian with an air of authority. “In Thailand too…”

“They also eat snakes in China.” I said sharply. Having introduced the topic and secured attention, I was not going to let it be hijacked. “In fact, they not only eat snakes, they drink their blood.”

I smiled to myself as Ganesh closed his mouth and others opened theirs. This was obviously something new to all of them.

“They believe the blood is a potent aphrodisiac,” I continued. People drew closer, mouths opened wider and words like ‘Wow!’, ‘Fascinating’ and ‘Disgusting’ were muttered.

Crazy pricing is the right pricing

My accountant friend KS Srinivasan invited me for a quiet dinner at a restaurant to seek my advice. He described his large ancestral property in Kodaikanal and told me he was converting it into a resort. Now that his children had left home, he and his wife wanted to move there permanently from Chennai and run the resort.

“But I have no qualification to be an hotelier,” he said.

“Nonsense, Srini!” I said. “You own the property – that’s the most important qualification. And you’re an accountant, able to count the money as it comes pouring in. That’s all you need. Hire people for the rest. How many rooms in the resort?”

“30, with half of them air-conditioned.”

“How will you charge for the rooms?”

“`5,000 per night for AC and `3,000 for non-AC rooms.”

I shook my head gravely. “You should charge `7,000 for rooms without air-conditioning.”

“That’s crazy!”

“Crazy pricing is the right pricing today,” I said. “Say Person A flies from Mumbai to Hong Kong, via Singapore. Person B takes the same flight, but gets off at Singapore. Who pays more, A or B?”

“A!” he said immediately. “He’s flying a much longer distance.”

“Wrong! B pays more because his flight from Mumbai to Singapore is non-stop, whereas A’s is not! Pricing based on the logical cost of providing the service is so old hat it smells of mould. Pricing today is based on perceived value only. The trick is to name your rooms appropriately. Call the cheaper room ‘normal air-conditioned room’; call the other ‘premium natural weather room’ and describe it as: ‘Kodaikanal’s natural beauty and fragrances brought inside your room’.”

Watching the watch

A month after I had met my friend Balwant Sinha and gained a useless understanding of measuring sleep, I ran into him at the mall.

“Got to show you this!” he said briskly, holding up a shopping bag. “Come, let’s have coffee.”

“Is it another device to measure sleep?” I asked with some foreboding when we had sat down.

“No! But it measures stuff that will help me sleep better. Since Monday I’ve slept only an average of 5 hours 23 minutes each night – that’s 5.3833 hours, if you prefer irrational numbers – against my target of 6 hours. And you recall my ZQ target, right?”

“No. In fact I don’t recall what ZQ is.”

“I told you last time,” said Sinha, sounding annoyed. “It’s a single sleep measure capturing the positives (REM and deep sleep) and the negatives (sleep disruptions). I’m scoring 36% against my target of 65%. And I’m not able to lift my game.”

“Talking about lifting the game,” I said, trying to change the topic, “did you see how Chennai Super Kings played against Knight Riders?”

“Exercising helps in sleeping,” he said, ignoring my intervention. “So I started running after dinner. But it worsened things: my average ZQ dropped 7%! Then further research revealed that one should exercise at least six hours before bedtime. In the immediate period after exercise your metabolism is quicker and you’re more alert, energetic and not sleepy.”

“Dhoni, they say, does his workout in the early afternoon.” I tried a diversion again. “In last night’s…”

“I too have started exercising in the afternoon,” said Sinha. “But I also learnt that overdoing exercise can worsen the quality of your sleep.”

The science of sleep

“Hi Paddy: over here!” my friend Balwant Sinha cried from across the room. “I’ve been dying to talk to you.”

I was touched by his greeting. I didn’t realize how much my company meant to him. There was obviously something heavy on his mind that the poor fellow needed my opinion on, some weighty problem that only I could solve.

“Really sorry,” I said, sitting down next to him. I looked deep into his eyes with empathy. “What’s troubling you?”

“How well did you sleep last night?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Forget that. What are you dying to talk to me about?”

“That’s it: your sleep, man! How well did you sleep last night?”

“Ok, I guess,” I said, “but…”

“Don’t guess!” Sinha sounded cross. “Do you know that extensive studies have highlighted that not getting proper sleep is a key issue today?”

“Yes, I’ve read something like that. But getting to something more important, why…”

“Nothing is more important,” said Sinha. “So think: did you sleep well last night?”

I threw my mind back (not literally, of course) and said, “Yes, I slept well.”

Our bureaucracy is alive and well: part 3

A week after being thwarted at the passport office my friend re-submitted his application with a fresh schedule F stating unequivocally that he had been staying at his present address, as opposed to his permanent address or his previous address, for the past six months. Three days later he received his new passport. But he also received a text message requesting his presence at the neighbourhood police station for post-passport-issue verification; so he went there and handed his passport to the sub-inspector.

“Show me proof of citizenship,” the police officer said.

“It’s in your hand,” my friend replied.

“No, I need your birth certificate or school leaving certificate, preferably CBSE.”

My friend was surprised that the police thought so poorly about the passport’s ability to prove one’s citizenship but since he had carried his thick ‘passport-preparation file’, he did not press the point.

“Take both,” he said.

Instead of showering him with kudos for providing two documents where only one was required, the policeman said, “Also need proof of residence.”

“Again?!” My friend was shocked but also well prepared, ‘proof of residence’ being the biggest obstacle he had had to overcome on the path to passport. “Here’s my employer’s letter showing my address. Using it I transferred my private sector bank account to Mumbai: here’s that passbook stating my address. With this I acquired a public sector bank account: here’s that passbook. Submitting this I got the passport, already with you. That’s four proofs of residence and please note – all carry the same address, exactly.”

Our bureaucracy is alive and well: part 2

A month ago I ended my article feeling sanguine about my friend’s passport prospects. To recap for readers with a weak memory and other readers who, to their great regret of course, missed the article completely, my friend had, after three unsuccessful attempts to submit his application for a fresh passport, finally collected all the required documents, in the right format, texture and sequence. He now had to go back online, submit a fresh application, seek a fresh appointment and pay up a fresh `2,000.

“All the best,” I had said to him on the phone and added a tennis analogy, as I often do in life’s crisis moments, “Serve well and keep your eye on the ball.”

The good man followed my advice. He went back to the passport office, having practised his serve and his forehand, determined to win this tournament. When he saw that his previous nemesis had been replaced with a new clerk at the desk, he took it was a positive sign that he had been handed an easy draw. But, watching her as she pored over his documents, he realized that this new player was a seasoned member of the circuit. Soon she looked up and said, “This passport was issued in a different city. You can’t renew in tatkaal!” But it was a weak ball. Like Sampras at the net, my friend dispatched it gleefully: “Doesn’t matter. Old clerk said it was okay. Also, the passport instruction booklet carries no mention of this rule if I provide annexure F, which I have.” She was flummoxed. Quietly, she proceeded to examine annexure F before finally accepting defeat by handing the documents to him and asking him to get them signed by the officer before coming come back to her for a token.

My friend then swiftly proceeded to the officer as directed, confident but not complacent. He knew that a first round victory is a far cry from winning the Wimbledon trophy and that this officer was a top-ranked player, a veteran of the tour.  So he handed the papers over to this champion, who immediately began examining them closely – making a tick here and a mark there. My friend waited, prancing on his toes, preparing for a strong service to be fired at him.

Our bureaucracy is alive and well

When an old tennis friend of mine had to renew his soon-to-expire passport, I warned him that the process might be bureaucratic and that he should exhibit patience, tenacity and an unwavering will to win if he hoped for success. He said that I was mistaken, that doing it today was as easy as sitting on a cushioned bench. All he had to do was fill an application form online, submit it online, pay `2,000 online, apply for an appointment online, land up on the scheduled date with the required papers – just his old passport and a proof of residence – in his hand.

“Three days later I’ll have a new passport in the same hand,” he said, sounding smug.

I was curious to know what happened; so I called him a day after his appointment. 

“I missed it,” he said morosely. “The proof of residence proved tricky. I don’t have an electricity, telephone or water bill since I moved to Mumbai recently and am staying in my company flat. The passport office accepts a public sector bank passbook showing my address; so I went to one to open an account. But they asked me for proof of residence. I explained to the manager that I was opening an account in his bank because I did not have the proof and for no other reason. Instead of showing sympathy, the man got annoyed; but then relented to say he’d accept a private bank passbook as proof. Unfortunately private banks require proof of residence too! Luckily my private bank accepts a letter from employer if you’re ‘changing address’. So I transferred the account from my previous city to Mumbai submitting my employer’s letter as proof of residence, then opened an account with the public sector bank submitting the private sector bank passbook as proof of residence, so that I can apply for the passport submitting the public sector bank passbook as proof of residence. It’s like progressing through levels of the computer game Warcraft, but not as much fun. I’ve asked for a second appointment in three days, by when the public sector bank will complete the paperwork.”

When he reached the counter for this appointment, the clerk told him that annexures F and I were missing. My shocked friend said that this was because the website made no reference to them. In a bored voice the clerk informed him that he had heard that story many times before and had not found it gripping on any of the occasions.