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small-scale projects from beginning to impact small-scale projects from beginning to impact Scroll down to content Posts Posted on 1 July 2019 14 October 2020 Indians: Save Your Country — Please Do NOT Use That Toilet This is a plea for continuing the practice of open defecation (OD). During a time with a toilet-building frenzy and a larger media frenzy espousing toilet use and also touting results, this message is likely to completely ignored or receive a deluge of criticism as great as India’s sewage flows. But this message must be said. https://medium.com/@aandolan/please-do-not-use-that-toilet-2b958fd9ff67 Posted on 20 December 2018 20 December 2018 Burglars Bring Out Dirty Laundry Originally, published in HaasWeek, the newspaper of the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley on May 5, 1997. In the last two weeks, i have been the victim of two burglaries. This is not about my wallet, but about incidents that took place at my home in Oakland. Not break-ins, but things wandering off my doorstep. The first time, the miscreant took off with a bag in the middle of the night. Imagine their shock at finding out that the bag contained 78 soiled diapers that i had put out for the diaper service to pick up in the morning. I found the bag at the end of my street the next day. The second time the thief was smarter, waiting until the diaper service left a sack full of clean diapers before committing the crime. So what is my defense? With the ‘keys to the kingdom’ i am now in the elite. With my brand new MBA, just like the rest of you i command an obscenely high salary, far more than i need, and can move. Away from BART, away from the poor, away from crime. A place with great schools, with a responsive police force, a place where there are no homeless. A place where its easier to identify those who don’t belong by their bags, their shopping carts, their junky bikes and their old cars. Someplace where i can be safe for a few years. What am i fleeing? What am i afraid of? Should i be afraid of a bunch of people desperate enough to steal garbage bags to find some goody to eke out their existence? I see these people outside of BART stations every day and am not threatened by them. But should i be? What is their limit? The moment when they stop panhandling and try manhandling. The moment when they try to mug me or break into my apartment because they are so desperate. I am terrified not of this limit but of the next. The moment when they cannot control their anger, their frustration and decide to let it out on me. When they don’t want anything i have; they just want me. While MBAs are in high demand and our salaries and sign-in bonuses are outpacing inflation, the bottom 50% of the population have seen their wages fall for the past 15 years and cannot see the possibility of future improvements. The people further down the economic chain are in worse shape and their population is increasing. Yes, we are in a rising tide, but one that does not lift all boats. How long will they accept the state of affairs? Are we acting like the French nobility before the Revolution? Remember the LA riots? We can and probably will continue our move to safer places-it’s survival. That will mean longer commutes and isolated communities. There is another solution that involves facing the problem and trying to solve it. Try to heal communities, to increase equity, to help meet the needs of the desperate. To give hope to people who have lost it. Posted on 6 September 2016 17 November 2016 Man-made Air-conditioning and Man-made Heating – Two Climates of Bangalore In Bengaluru, 500 years ago, there was a drive to change the climate to a cooler one. And an intense drive to heat it today exists. Man can create local weather and it depends on the society’s values and the economic system it adopts as to which gets created. Note: Bangalore and Bengaluru are the two names for the same city, and Kempe Gauda and Kempegowda are two ways to spell the name of it’s founder. They are used to delineate eras in this essay. The rocky plateau of Bengaluru was originally a combination of grassland and scrub and thorn forest, with small trees. WIthout a historical record of the original climate, we can conjecture that is was warm and dry, similar to Kolar and Chikballapur districts nearby, possibly receiving only about 300-400mm of rain, with the temperatures somewhere in the low-thirties. In recorded history, two different climates were created in Bengaluru, by man. Bengaluru’s first man-made climate change In 1537, Kempe Gauda I started to work on his dream – a new fortified city. A regular dream – ambitious ruling class members always dream of expanding territory, erecting victory towers, building a walled city by a river or port. But Kempe Gauda’s vision was difficult: to build a city where nothing existed. Nothing. No rivers, no tropical forest, no resources. To achieve his dream he had to first create all the resources the city would need. Lakes as the foundation Bengaluru is the only city in the world that does not have a river feeding it. A city cannot exist without water and Kempe Gauda started on his vision by creating a supply of water, a perennial supply, where only a couple rainfed tanks existed. Kempe Gauda and successors continued to build on his vision, hundreds of more tanks were built and the an incredible network of kaluves (canals) was built to connect them all. The lakes of Bengaluru have always attracted attention, but it is the kaluves that make them work. Over a thousand kilometers of these lake-connectors ensured that not a drop of rain left Bengaluru’s three valleys until all tanks were filled. Work on this design followed for generations of rulers; the Wodeyars in the last century continued to build kaluves and tanks and a couple of lakes were even added by influential citizens and farming communities. It was India’s famous tank culture on steroids. A water culture was created. Everyone knows water is life, but to conserve and protect it became Bengaluru’s religion. For centuries the lakes remained pure and one could drink from them because nobody would let any waste enter the lake system. But the problem shifted from water storage to water itself – there was not enough rain to satiate a growing population. The world’s first air-conditioned city How can we attract rain? We see how extraordinary Kempe Gauda’s vision was because of its results. He and his successors knew that if Bengaluru grew a forest, it would rain. And so a major investment into tree planting was made. It was also an activity that continued for centuries. As the forest grew, it breath became bigger and started influencing the climate. The water released from the trees as transpiration and from the lakes as evaporation formed low-lying clouds and then came down as gentle showers. The temperature dropped. Bengaluru became the coolest city in the south and later the coolest in the summer across India. This attracted more rain from the monsoons that earlier would pass by without interest. Now the monsoon clouds, lightened after crossing the western ghats, dipped lower due to the cooler climate and shed some more of their weight – rainfall more than doubled. The world’s first fully air-conditioned city was born. It is said that in 1835, Bangalore had temperatures of 14-16°C at peak summer time. This AC needed no energy and was almost zero maintenance. The problem of water scarcity was solved. The Vrishabhāvati river – that carried excess rainwater off the rocky plateau started flowing out of the city perenially. Other side-effect such as the creation of a rich layer of topsoil that remained moist and a high water table also created lasting benefits in food security and livelihoods. Economics for cooling – Kempenomics Economics is a social creation. In this article, we will refer the economic system used in South India five centuries ago as kempenomics and today’s system as smithanomics, just for the sake of...