28th March

Clean it up

The article expresses the need to remove the opacity in the funding of election campaign as the opacity is detrimental to the Indian democracy. 

Tata Communications’ Chairman Subodh Bhargawa’s Claims of alleged demands to the corporates by the political parties for funding the election campaign is a no surprise. So are Rahul Bajaj’s claims of slush of funds being rife. Seeing at the unrealistic cap of Rs. 25 lakhs on the candidates for the election campaigns, there is an ample room for such practices. What is needed is to raise the cap to realistic mark since it is absolutely insufficient for the election campaigns. Also since there is no clear way to distinguish the spending by the candidate and its supporters, there is an ample room for opacity. By increasing the cap, it is possible that such practices would come under control and also the corporates would not be compelled to show lesser contributions. Also it might incentivize corporates to route the funds through trusts adding transparency to the process. However, increasing cap can be an uneven advantage for financially strong parties over the regional parties. But this can also be offset by public funding and by providing free airtime on national television to such underprivileged parties. 

Campaign financing needs reforms as the cartel between the corporates and political parties can have strong incentive for hidden funding. While there is no clear solution to this but coming the elections, it is time to hunt for answers right now. 

Don't spoil the fun

The article talks about the recent algorithm devised by an American computer science specialist to crack any given Sudoku puzzle in the world. However, author asserts that no computer program can provide as much fun as provided by the intuition, imagination and judgment skills of human brain.

The most beloved game all over the world and one of the all-time-great time-pass games, Sudoku, has been surmounted by a computer program devised by James Crook that can crack any given Sudoku puzzle. All a person needs to do it is to fill in the numbers already given into the computer program and see the program compute the solution. However, he also knows that people still love the thrill of sitting with pencil and paper to work out the Sudoku solution. Just like in chess, people don’t hold up honing their skills although they know that there is a computer program that’ll defeat them anyway. However, in Sudoku case, there’s good news. The algorithm devised is too lengthier and too laborious that it takes about an hour to complete. We all know that an average Sudoku puzzle doesn’t take more then 20 mins to get solved by a human being. The main reason is that human brain works more intuitively, depends on judgment skills and also some luck. While machine strategies are time-bound, rigid and involve lot of number crunching, human brain is rather game-bound, flexible and relies on mental dexterity. 

Finally, author hopes that one day computers would also work just like human brains. A human brain excels in leaps of imagination, enjoys the perils of adventure and fears failure and that’s what we call fun.